Rupturing through the slick apathy of corporatized America, where last the semblance of public utterance was underwritten by the Koch brothers in the form of the Tea Party, this autumn found another voice.  Unlike the AstroTurf patriots of the tri-corner hat costumed shills of wealth, whose origins were transparent in their corporate logo mass-produced placards, the Occupy Wall Street movement – triggered by the example of the Arab Spring, fueled with Twitter and Facebook and ironically their corporate heft, as well as seeded by the Canadian anti-corporate magazine Adbusters – is instead truly a grass-roots phenomenon, as signaled in their simple hand-made singular signs.  Willfully lacking “leaders,” the Occupy movement has baffled our “authorities,” be they of the government or pundits representing the ruling class, all of whom take hierarchical order as a natural state of affairs and cannot comprehend its absence.   At its outset, occupying Zuccotti Park in New York City, OWS was seen as a brief quirk, a small cluster of mostly college kids camping in downtown Manhattan.  Palin’s “lame-stream” press did its best to ignore them, in a manner tipping its corporate hand:  when the Tea Party entered the scene the coverage was instant and massive.  But of course, hidden behind the screen, it was their party, supporting corporate interests.   OWS was certainly not theirs, and in the classic Pravda style of the good old USSR, if they didn’t report it, it wouldn’t exist.   And so the major media of America issued its black-out fatwa, very much as the Mubarak regime had done, and officially Occupy Wall Street vanished from view.  But, just as in Egypt, the internet provided the mechanism for an end-run around the the views of officialdom, and rather than withering in a matter of days, variants of OWS began to pop up around the country.  Flummoxed, authorities applied their usual remedies:  police were used to cordon and attack, rules were suddenly applied or invented.  And yet with each maneuver of suppression the movement gained support and within a short period, despite repeated attempts at official suppression and ridicule from the punditry, Occupy Wall Street managed to gain from 47 to 70% favorable polling (depending on which), and the national conversation drastically shifted from discussing how to slash Social Security or Medicare, into  discussing how it was that 1% of the population sucked up most the wealth, had bought the government and the press, and had pretty much ruined things for the 99% below them.  All in six weeks.  Without a “leader.”  Without a talking-point agenda.  Without going on one of the TV network talk shows, or Sunday morning political platforms.  Without all the requisites of corporate dictated politics.

Whether in its current form Occupy manages to survive, or develops into a potent political force, it can reasonably be said that it has already been a massive success in articulating the rage underlying our political and economic system.   Without presenting a platform or a list of requested demands, it has made clear that our economic system is utterly out of balance and does not serve the larger public, and it has pointed the finger at the Masters of the Universe who occupy the suites of Wall Street and K Street, and dictate to our corrupted politicians – from Barack Obama to Mitch O’Connell and on out to the far-right extremes of those presently running for the Republican nomination.   In changing the national conversation from the bullet points of neo-liberalist economics and neo-con foreign policy, it has made a major contribution already towards correcting the insanity which has engulfed our national politics.

Governor Scott Walker, Wisconsin

George Kuchar sees the futureScott Olsen, Iraq war vet attacked by Oakland policeFrom Nathaniel Dorsky’s “The Visitation”

Autumn has arrived here in Seoul a bit late – the leaves aren’t yet turned, though in the last days a hint of cold arrived.  Perhaps, as was this past summer, autumn will be truncated – a more direct shift to the oblique light and harder temperatures of this hemisphere’s winter.    In my life the change is also signaled other ways:  the body seems a bit more cranky, prone to morning pains.  On the left side of my torso a bulge near the groin suggests another hernia operation, slap in a piece of plastic meshing to do what the muscle wall no longer can.   Maybe next week.  And, as drifted by in previous years, autumn, at this age, induces autumnal thoughts – pondering if this may or may not be one’s last.   Other changes carry the same tonal shift:  singular again.  And again, no longer employed, back upon the tight-rope of fiscal insecurity.  In my case, it is something needed, and already I feel the juices of creative urges running – somehow my soul works better without a safety net.   Two weeks ago, shoved into a self-made corner, managed to shoot a new film – 60-80 minutes long I imagine, shot in less than 3 days on tsunami ravaged island near Sendai, Japan.  Devastatingly simple, I think it should be strong.  With help from Moe Toema, young woman who took my workshop in Tokyo and speaks English well thanks to 3 years in Australia.

We arrived in the morning, meeting up with a man who works with a non-profit organization.  He took us on a little drive around the island, introduced us to some people.   I did a handful of shots of the place, got a sense of things.  We stayed overnight in a kind of B&B guest home, slightly damaged by the quake – things out of line – but on high-ground and untouched by tsunami.  Excellent fresh seafood dinner.  Next day we went to shoot some people, not interviews but coaxing them to talk about their experience during the earthquake and then tsunami.  For the most part it worked well, with Moe figuring out how to keep them going without talking herself – lots of nods and smiles.  Lighting and set-ups were catch as catch can: I wanted blank backgrounds and in haste found what I needed; lighting was whatever was there.  Got six of these, ranging from 6 minutes to 15 minutes long.  Moe suggests what is said was interesting, so I think there’s a short feature in it.  I figure to round up some Japanese poems or haiku’s about earthquakes and tsunamis, find some old graphics or paintings around the same, and get it all done by the end of November.

The man above, a fisherman, was swept away by the tsunami, and managed to grab hold of something for dear life, and survived.   Shooting him was its own little adventure – a little ferry ride to another island to which he’d moved, Moe’s deadline to get back to Tokyo in time to make a medical appointment, and the crush of time.  When we got to his house Moe told me we had five minutes before we had to go back to catch the return ferry in time to make her train.  We walked in, I sized up a place to set him, shot for 7 minutes and as we were leaving to walk back the man said he had a little pickup truck and he’d drive us.  I shot from the back while he drove and Moe worried I’d fall out as we bounced along the ravaged once-road.  I had fun, it all reminding me of long ago days of shooting while sitting unharnessed on the hood of a pickup truck (opening shot of Last Chants for a Slow Dance) and other such things.  We made the ferry with about 30 seconds to spare.  The whole wham-bam two and a half day shoot seems to have rejuvenated my creative spirits.

Nakai-san and Moe TomoedaAbstracted tsunami

While I was in Japan, another kind of tsunami seems to have risen – an echo of the Tunisian, and then Egyptian and then Libyan uprisings: our own Occupy Wall Street.   Triggered by the mix of social networking tools, an economy in a deep swoon, and the utter arrogance and disconnected manner of our ruling elite – financiers, politicians and their courtiers all – a small minority of people have decided to speak and act out.   They occupied a small privately managed park near Wall Street, camping out.   At the outset it was a pitifully small number – a few hundred.  The press and local authorities initially simply ignored them as if they were unworthy of notice.   They stayed.  Slowly through the internet news was spread.  The mainstream press – including such allegedly “liberal” papers at the New York Times – then reported, but in a petulant and snide manner – both in articles and on their opinion pages.  Right-wing media began to ventilate.   And yet OWS grew, and branches began to sprout around the country – in Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and even in places where such protest was virtually unknown: Tampa, South Carolina, Denver.   Again the numbers were small, but despite hostile press and politicians, they kept growing.  Their tactics seemed to confuse the “authorities” who fumbled with evicting such camps, surrounding them with heavy police forces, and most recently attacking them.   As if they could learn nothing from the recent history of our Arabic friends, with each effort at suppression by authorities and the media, the participants grew, and a reading of polls showed that a majority (53 to 70%  depending on which poll) of Americans were supportive.  This, in contrast to the Tea Party of last year, which the press gave wide coverage, and where the police were invisible despite the many gun-carrying TP people, provided a clear lesson in how America is presently run.  In turn OWS and its off-shoots enlarged again, and finally the mainstream press began to report in something other than a negative manner, and started to pick up on issues raised by OWS.  Clearly it had grown too big to ignore.

Occupy Albany, NYOccupy Atlanta, Ga.Occupy ChicagoOccupy Wall Street

Occupy !

Confronted with a national uprising rooted in the real problems which beset the country, and which declines to enter into the binary Republican/Democrat so-called two-party system, the governmental authorities – acting at the behest of their corporate masters – are showing their impatience, and in the last few weeks have begun to carry out heavy-handed policing actions such as the entrapment on the Brooklyn Bridge and now in the forced closure of Occupy camps across the country.  The most visible case of such tactics was demonstrated in Oakland, where police used tear-gas, stun grenades, and seriously injured an Iraq war vet.  By such mis-steps do the government and the corporations it supports, show their hand transparently.   Like Mubarak, like Gaddafi, their recourse is to force when they are unable any longer to dissuade with fraudulent politics.

Police in Oakland, Ca.Oakland, Ca.

Scott Olsen, hit by tear gas bomb which fractured his skull

There is no question that those who rule America will behave exactly like those who ruled Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, when push comes to shove.  They will not leave willingly, nor admit their errors, nor concede any power.  They will if necessary deploy the military and declare martial law and institute a police-state.  They have already done many things towards this end.  Under Bush there were “free speech” areas cordoned off, where the Constitution allegedly applied – though “free speech” is a Constitutional right and should be allowed anywhere in the USA.   By such means are “rights” diminished – such as habeus corpus, which the Patriot Act deleted in many cases.  Step by step our corporate masters, acting under the guise of the government, are reducing America to a version of the USSR:  a defunct economy, a bloated military, and rampant corruption among the elite – socialism for the rich, and “capitalism” for the poor.

I encourage everyone to fully support the Occupy movement: with your body, with your voice, with whatever support you can give.

This summer, it seemed, was different.  Certainly for me, on a personal level, it provided a sharp change.  For one, I decided to quit my nice cushy first-ever job, as a “Distinguished Professor” at Korea’s Yonsei University.  It was about as easy as you could imagine, more or less a casual day’s work per week for around 7 months of the academic schedule, decent enough pay in a place one can live quite inexpensively, plus a fat discount at a first-rate hospital.   I’d been there four years and for a complex stack of reasons I decided to call it quits, though they wanted me to stay.  Somewhere else I’ll write some of it, but the real seeming problem was that security doesn’t fit me well, and having it seemed to act as a damper on things I seem to care about more.   So I canned the job, the pay, and am back on the tight-rope at 68.

I took a planned trip to Europe, the only really compelling reason for which was to join up with my wife, Marcella, and have some time with her.  I had a week in London, and then met up with her in her hometown, Matera, down in southern Italy.   A few days after arriving, in a gentle way, she said she’d like to part ways.  It wasn’t at all what I wished to hear, though I’d inwardly known it would come some day, some how, for some reason.  Marcella is 34; I am 68.  In the back of my mind, when I’d said OK for her to go off and do a scholarship thing in close-by Potenza, back in December, I seem to have understood that being back home, among people more her age, in the comfort of her own culture, it was likely she’d feel the urge to stay.  And seems I was right.   And I understand only too well:  it’s what she needs for her own life, to step out on her own, gain her self-confidence, learn that she is able to survive, enjoy, live on her own.   I needed the same thing long ago, at a much younger age, and it is something I certainly understand.  And, perhaps, after this many spins around the sun, I see love can be given many tints, and I love Marcella and see this is what is right for her.  I’ll manage, no problem.   We – Marcella and I – still love, just in another way.  She’s in Madrid now, doing her internship at the Filmoteca Espanol.  We talk almost every day.

Constable cloud study at the V&A, London

While the USA got a roiling spring and summer of hyper-tornadoes, torrential rains, heat-waves, and now hurricanes – all somewhat “normal” except it seems now on steroids – in Europe it was another story.  A summer – the 2nd one in a row – that more or less wasn’t.  Instead, where I was – in southern Italy, a brief stay in Rome, then Berlin and Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam and back to Paris – it was mostly rainy and overcast, and generally a bit on the cool side.  In all of July and August a fistful of sunny days, a few warm, but mostly wet and cool – it usually felt more like autumn than summer.  Naturally people complained at this change in the seasonal expectations, though had it been a sizzling August as once seemed the normal, they’d complain about that too.

Back in Korea friends reported, as did the news, torrential monsoon rains that flooded the center of Seoul – rains that never stopped and tropical-style heat to go with it.  They too complained about the summer that wasn’t.

Joplin, Mo., springtimeMid-west America, spring 2011Gangnam, Seoul

In the broader world – in Europe, in the USA, and everywhere connected to them – the summer was one of a kind of roller-coaster economic thrill ride, though one almost guaranteed to run off the tracks.  While the politicians and economists tried to put a good face on it, between the lines one could read panic:  it seems not only did America and some parts of Europe (the PIIGS) go out for a few decades on a plastic spending binge they couldn’t pay back, so did everyone else.  And it seems the same dubious money was shuffled from this bank to that, to shore up the same bad deals.  Now the chickens are home to roost, and the big boys of France and Germany are quivering as their banks are deeply exposed to the debts of Greece, Italy, Spain and all the rest.  And behind them, so are America’s banks.  So once again, mimicking 2008, there is a vast rustling in the back rooms as the Bilderberg crew try to keep their “market” system cranking against all evidence.  They built a house of cards, one which for the most part the public bought into, and now that house is collapsing.

On a close-up personal level that means my little stack of Korean Won just shrank about 6% in the last week as the undercurrent of lousy news about Korea has hit “the market.”   Like their brethren in the USA and Europe, Korea’s biggest  construction firms went out on a limb, over-built on spec, and now as property prices are headed south, and there’s a surfeit of apartments and offices, those big chaebols are dancing near bankruptcy.  And the Won caves with them.   So my little savings stash takes a hit – thing is I’d expected it.  Any money can just go poof in a second since the money in and of itself is a pure abstraction: when the social contract as to what it means dissolves it even makes for lousy toilet paper.

And so globally the extravagant decades of the recent past are closing down, the $5 coffees, and designer nouvelle cuisine, the vacations in the south Pacific, the second homes, 3rd cars, and endless “credit” are all together shriveling, and neither our politicians, nor those who ran up their personal debt (heavily encouraged to do so by their friends at the bank) know what to do.   So unemployment, foreclosures, and other economic unpleasantries, along with the natural corollary, social tension and anger, are the consequence.   And this – in Europe, in America – becomes a political explosion.

Unhappy GreeksUnhappy ParisiansUnhappy BritsUnhappy Italians

Unhappy American on Wall Street

It was, it seems, an unhappy summer – the gloom of weather reflecting the political climate, whether in the relentless rains of Asia, or the cool gray of Europe, or the torrid heat of the US.   A summer of discontent.  Of course in other parts of the world it was perhaps different: the Arab spring bled, literally, into the Arab summer as the revolt against Gaddafi and Assad carried on, one with a rather heavy assist from NATA/USA (lots of oil there), and the other with limp words (not much oil).   The uncertainty of a rosy future seems to have seeped into the global consciousness, a sense of impending doom pervading the landscape.  Or doom is far too heavy a word – rather the happy-go-lucky excesses of our immediate past seem challenged, and perhaps for many the idea of dumpster-diving seems impossible after a decade or two of costly cups of coffee, or flipping houses, or whichever had become a seeming norm.  Staring into the future from that vantage point, there doesn’t appear to be one.

Wall Street protestors

Minimally reported by America’s corporately owned and controlled press (especially television), there have been in the last week protests at the altar of our holy church of the market, Wall Street.  While merely an outward manifestation of the current economic squeeze, this is but the harbinger of what will doubtless come about as our grand house-of-cards-and-illusions system collapses in on itself.   For the moment fear rules – a carefully cultivated and purposeful fear, stoked in the last decade and more by the hidden hands of real power.   It is the fear that you, like your neighbor, may lose your job, or your house may be foreclosed, or that some other most tangible material economic truth may smash your illusions.  So one hunkers down, does not speak, hopes the storm will blow over….

Yemeni protestor

But it will not harmlessly – to you, or I – blow over.  It is like the lull of the phony war at the end of the 1930′s, when Europe deluded itself and then fell into a cataclysm of war.   We like to think we “learned the lesson” – of the Great Depression, or of how something like WW2 just couldn’t happen again.  We like to think “adults” and learned persons now run the world.  A look at America’s Presidential candidates should be enough to disabuse even the most stupid person of such thoughts, but it is not so – today a look at the world’s “leaders” should be enough to prepare one for the worst.   The future’s crystal ball seems occluded, and what hints the present gives tilts towards the negative.  Whatever tomorrow holds, it seems likely to be worse than today.   Small wonder the summer seems glum.   Winter is approaching.

Future’s wake

]]> http://jonjost.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-summerless-summer/feed/ 5 jonjost DSC_0275 DSC_0156 28storm_511-custom5 storm in america seoul flooded million-dollar-bill 05norris_g-popup krw greece and austerity paris-riot UK demos Fiatjp-popup 21protester-cityroom-blog480 occupywallstreetnow yemen sept 19 18SUR_SPAN-articleLarge http://jonjost.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/samson-and-the-philistines/ http://jonjost.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/samson-and-the-philistines/#comments Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:05:56 +0000 jonjost http://jonjost.wordpress.com/?p=2153 ]]>
Samson Slaying The Philistine, Giambologna, V&A, London

Some time ago, while living in London, I’d visit museums – Tate, National Gallery, British Museum, the V&A, and others.   In my haphazard manner I was studying.  I’d take photographs, sometimes make sketches.  Occasionally I took notes.

Giambologna, a Flemish sculptor working in Italy, did a number of mythological works, among them the Samson Slaying the Philistine at the V&A.  At the time this piece drew my attention I knew little of nothing of the artist, and not having had any kind of “classical” education;  having never read the Bible, I knew equally little about the story of Samson, only that when his hair was shorn, he lost his strength.   What drew me to the sculpture were its dynamic qualities, its psychological and physical capturing of a primitive hand-to-hand fight.  I both photographed it, and shot it with video, as well as did sketches.  Only recently did I bother to Google the story that lies behind it.

Also at the V&A there is a hall with plaster casts of Michelangelo’s Slaves series, which along with many other people, I find extraordinarily compelling.   Of them I did only sketches.

This past year, invited to Jerusalem for screenings at the Cinematheque, I was asked if I also had somethings suitable for a photography gallery, and I used the request  to finally transfer analogue photos of the Samson sculpture which I had long thought might make a  strong collage.   The two versions here were my first attempts, which for me are not quite satisfactory – in part because my understanding of Photoshop  is so limited.  I’d like to use  transparency masks to make the collages more subtle and organic.   One of these days….   These collages should be about 6 feet high.

June 4     catching up

My last day in Madrid was poignant and tugging on the heart strings as the last day of things are.  After a week of fighting off jet lag I finally arrived on the solid earth and then, suddenly,  it is time to go.  Using my day pass I walked down to the Prado and went in to look at just two or three paintings for about an hour or so before meeting Edith’s friend at the Madrid Cinematheque for a tour and perhaps lunch before getting a ride from my hotel to the airport to fly to La Coruña.  I went to the the rooms of the paintings from the 1400′s only.  Again I spent a lot of time with the Van der Weyden Deposition.  This painting, which is filled with so much to discover for the eye in terms of patterning and criss cross overlapping of clothes and limb textures plus its very effective emotional validity, especially when so often The Deposition can be played a little melodramatically, well it IS a rather dramatic moment, is newly surprising and powerfully real with each viewing.  The  semi-three dimensional quality which manifests at quite a distance is endlessly fascinating. Here we are at the intriguing fulcrum point of the medieval and the Renaissance world. Almost a bas relief of sculpture and painting simultaneously.  It is the 3-D curvature of the naked body supported by the flatter, rather well dressed helpers of the descent that endlessly fascinates and involves us emotionally.   Someone looking at the painting next to me mentioned that it is one of  the first oil paintings.  I do not know if that is true, but the size of it, and the intensity of it, may come from this among other things.

Then I went to see the Bosch, or as he is called in Spain, El Bosco, Temptation of Saint Anthony, which is also a super star painting and never being observed as The Garden of Earthly Delights draws the crowd.  This depiction of Anthony is one of the most extraordinary composition in the all-over sense I have seen from that period or any period.  The color range of browns and coppers and olive greens and magical blues (used on the water and a building) is to die for….  I can think of no better words to describe it.  And the all-over effect comes from the presence of tree branches with surround and caress the various multiplicity of details in such a way that you do not even quite see it at first and then suddenly see it all.  I do not know if this painting is effective in reproduction, but seen in the real, it is unbeatable.

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Hieronymous Bosch, The Temptation of St. Anthony

Another painting I took notice of and got involved with for the first time on this last visit was a rather large triptych by Memling of The Adoration of the Magi.  I do not know how to describe this, as Memling can be envisioned.  There is so much to talk about in every detail of this masterful work that I almost cannot begin.  The tiny tiny perspective placed pedestrian figures on the streets of the city in the far far far background beyond the columns of the foreground scene,  the GREEN angel in attendance, the black king and the exact luminosity of his face in relation to his surround, not to mention his shoes, the quality and intensity of reds and oranges  and on and on and on.  I know I have seen a number of these both at the Met, the National and in Saint John’s Hospital, but this seems exceptional.  As Jerry once said to me about Picasso, doesn’t he ever have a bad day?

Hans Memling, Adoration of the Magi (to see big double click image or see this.)

And finally I spent my last energy with the Fra Angelico Annunciation, a great cleaner and enlightener, and went on out into the crisp sunny air of the streets I was beginning to love in an unsuspecting way.

Fra Angelica, The Annunciation (to see big see this.)

The flight to La Coruña was short and sweet.  The airy architecture of the Madrid airport also help remove that airport hysteria and dehumanized necessity of security and claustrophobia. The landscape as we descended was greener and more mountainous and the ride from the modest and well designed airport was along charmingly modern and well done highways winding through valleys and hills. The Spanish seem to have the most elegant sense of how to be in the modern world that I have witnessed in my small range of travel. Everything seems so well done and understated but eye catching and right for the real needs of the human psyche.  I will save the arrival in La Coruña and what followed for another entry.

Your, Nathaniel

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If your Spanish is OK, here’s an article from El Mundo, a conservative right-wingish national newspaper.  I found it a rather odd and somewhat self-cancelling item.  The juxtaposition with the other filmmaker made no sense at all, and in the meeting the critic himself disappears and we have no idea what, if anything, he thinks.

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Castle, La Coruna
Praxa Maria Pita, Coruna

Dear folks,

Now, I am finally finished with all my obligations or shows and interviews.  A free Sunday…  and this early morning it is pure SF fog but warm.  The other days here have been pure SF also with bright sun and cool sea air, crisp light, etc.  (where is my Bolex!!)  I wish I could describe to you the feeling of this  northern Spanish architecture of this seaside small city.  The many storied porticos, which they call galleries,  of white painted wood and glass, so that whole side of buildings, perhaps 6 or 8 stories high are ALL glass but in an old fashioned, genuinely 19th century style of framed painted white wood. I have never seen any thing even remotely like it in my very limited life.  Maybe I can find a picture of it on the internet that has some feeling for it.  So I have today free and most of tomorrow as I do not fly back to Madrid untill about 8pm, but then must after the hour or so flight get to my hotel (there will be a driver) and then get up early for the 11am flight to Chicago.  Well, that is a lot, but here we go, as they say.  But first, two days of rest in this very Spanish seaside resort.  I was going to go back to Santiago, but I do not think I can, it was so depressing to me, but here is beauty and tons to explore by foot.  I could also just take a train to somewhere, let us say two hours, and come back. The trains and stations are awfully pleasant.

Yesterday morning three fine young men (so intelligent and knowledgeable about film) did a video interview with me for 3 hours for their e magazine which contains long video pieces.  They also recorded all my audience q and a’s.  They came all the way from Seville. Many people here  told me  that in Spain there is a big interest in the post P Adams Visionary Film generation, especially me and Peter Hutton and James Benning.  It is hard to believe, but true in some small sense, amongst the film buffs at least.  In talking about film, there was nothing these earnest young guys did not know..  I mean they knew at what age Ford directed Straight Shooting.  And when we discussed shooting that had the two to three layer principle, they were able they were able to point out many examples form Ford and Hitchcock.

Oh well, these two retrospectives have taught me a little about my own work and I see what I might be interested in at this point. I feel something a little different (but the same) coming. I am even a little tired of images for the moment.  Spain is so very nice and interesting and so different in a very specific, but non-exotic, exotic way than I could ever imagine.  My only regret is not going to a bull fight as when we past the HUGE arena de TORO…  one got a little excited to say the least. The sports pages here have photos everyday from the bull fights along with the other more familiar activities of the field.

I am concerned about the missing negative for my two shots in my film. It is the only thing keeping me from printing right now as the title has arrived at the neg cutter. The neg cutter is confident that I will find it in my apt.  but I wonder.  Well, we will see what will happen. She says, do not worry, it always turns up… but where is my concern.  How could I have the  WP and not the neg?

Peter Hutton (who is very much loved in Spain) has sent news a day or so ago of the death of Adolfas Mekas, and last night sent on the enclosed email.

Love to you and thanks

Nathaniel  *****

Peter to follow:

N: We put Adolfas in the ground yesterday.I had the honor of carrying his casket w/ jonas and his son Sean.  It was touching, sad, yet a beautiful day.   I shot a roll of plus X on a 1920′s camera.  Ken and Flo were there as well as a bunch of Ny geezers and students from 10,000 years ago. We dropped lemons into his grave, there was a film reel nailed to his simple pine  coffin. Time and tide….. smell the earth.
Love,   Sailor

Marisca

6.06

Dear Battered and Abused,

Sorry my letters are winding down…   I think I sent the one of the final visit to the Prado before leaving or these pleasant but less electrifying place.  I expressed my surprising disappointment and dead on or dead head or dead me take on it all.  Not even inspired to detail that.  I am quite tired now as I had two evenings of the Spanish one, two punch….   dinner at 1am plus and film shows the next day with extensive interviews…  one, a three hour one done by three touchingly dedicated and knowledgeable young lads who had traveled all the way from Seville. (Now , suddenly, I think I wrote to you about this…  you can see I am losing it.)  They will prepare and edit the three hour conversation with Spanish subtitles and also my q and a’s from the presentation on their website or web magazine. Whatever it is, I will be sent a link, so if I do not self destruct as I was forced to do sitting along side your noble and handsome presence in Rotterdam, I will pass it on.

So now crash time and a whole day lying around my hotel room in and out sleep and dreams…   this afternoon I fly back to Madrid (what I would do to have three more days there!) for a quick overnight and then I will be canoned off to Chicago and slam dunked into SF…..   YIKES….

Your Eurobud…  nathaniel….

and thanks again for the illustrated presentations…    I hope you soon put up more of the letters so that I can catch up with myself.

San Francisco in fog

June 18, San Francisco

I awake at dawn’s gray light. It is warm and foggy and moist and the birds have begun to sing. My job is in a place I have never mentioned to you because I so seldom think about it. It is a small city across the Bay called Oakland. I have not been to its downtown area in many many years. The editing room is in an office building on the fourth floor with many large windows facing out in several directions. Each of the windows had a very thin Venetian blind that was down but open.  Through these parallel horizontal slats one could see the most beautiful array of buildings from the earlier part of the 20th century. Art Deco or some such period of very ornate modernism and dignity. They are much more like the older buildings in Manhattan with elaborate cornices and noble facades expressing the very essence of being a building rather than our more no nonsense contemporary sense of efficiency and minimal human spiritual concern. Every time we had a little break I went out into the hallways to look through the many windows in the varied directions they faced.  Oh, I wish I had my movie camera, I felt so inspired by suddenly coming upon something so magnificent that is only a half hour from my apartment that I have never given any attention to. It made me feel a little ashamed of my limited habits of looking around. Well, I can always bring the camera again.

Paramount Theater, Oakland Ca.Cathedral Building, Oakland Ca.Paramount Theater, interior

Today was clear and sunny and the light was beautiful. I had my toes done by the toe ladies after breakfast (the nail is getting healthier) and then went to my camera store to pick up the reels and cans for the prints of my new film and then went home. I was supposed to go to either Walkere or drive over to Berkeley to the PFA to see great films by the Kuchar brothers, but by about 4 pm I got overloaded and life seemed too be getting too abstract and mental and I felt I was losing my grounding in a serious way. So I decided to just take a big four or five hour walk in the park, which I did. I need so much to ground myself in the company of natural forms. I think that yesterday, after 7 hours of working on a video documentary on the horrors of Burma and then suddenly plunging into the 2 and a half hours of intense standing/viewing at Rheingold had left my delicate brain a little disconnected from the world that I am now occupying.

Going to the park for the last hours of the sun was a good thing to do. In the late afternoon the fog began blowing in with the cool air of the sea and dissolving into the clear blue sky right over where I walked. So breezy cool and with a warm sun to soften butter. I found one of my favorite benches in the arboretum that is surrounded by baby Alder trees. Their heart shaped leaves are green on one side and a silver on the other and they flutter and flap and rustle in the wind like the little rattles of a shaman. They are real allies and always pull me toward the deeply magical, so purifying. Anytime my mind spirals into the lower or sticker realms, this chorus of young spirits begins to shimmer in the the wind, the leaves vibrating their double color and the light cascading in their love. I had a chance to have my first small smoke in almost three weeks. It was so good to really relax and begin to feel and smell and see the place I am in. These weeks of travel have been wonderful for my vanity in a simple and basic way, but my life was such a passing scene of airports, time zones, airplanes, new cities, new people, airplanes, and then my home life again. I was able to begin as an animal to feel a little present in the place that I now am. In short, it was good to relax amongst the trees and blowing winds and light.

I came home as it got dark and put away the very last things from my travel. I do not have to work again tomorrow, so I will do other little things. Perhaps I can look for the remnants of the black leader film I have been thinking about. I can feel that I want to start working on something, but money is scarce.

From Nathaniel’s most newest film, The ReturnThe Return

[The Return will be screened in Toronto, London, and New York this autumn.  He'll be in Toronto and New York to present it.]

Thanks Nathaniel for letting me post this sequence of letters here – for me they are a lovely revelation and insight, and I am sure there are many others who share this sense.  A real pleasure and privilege.  Love, Jon

Manhattan Loop Bridge, Edward HopperTuscaloosa, Alabama, after twister

Babe Ruth, heavy hitter

Corporate heavy hitters of today

Coryell’s Ferry, by Joseph PicketMissouri River flood

Patriotic paintingBoise City, Oklahoma, droughtUS/Mexico border, CaliforniaOcean Park series, Richard Diebenkorn

July 4th, 2011.  Subdued by a near-decade of terrorism alerts, innured to the steady encroachment of police-state “security” measures, mired in 2 and a half unfinished wars, with a bloated military sucking up 50% of Federal “discretionary” spending, and sucker punched with a double-whammy yo-yo ride on the banker-built debt balloon that crashed in 2008, the nation limps into its 235th birthday celebration less convinced than ever of its Number One status in God’s graces.  Official unemployment sits near 10%, giving ample proof that governmental statistics are bent like pretzels, and fed by a willing and compliant mass media to the public, which is supposed to accept them, like airport body scans, as the price of life in the greatest nation on earth.

The day will be filled with political hot air, with Presidential-aspirants floating trial balloons as the nation’s spirit deflates in the face of realities concocted in the back-rooms of big business and the government it now fully owns and controls.  Americans will be told, as their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere are, that austerity is the demand of the times, except, of course for the tiny percentage on top who command multiple million and even billions of payment annually for their hard labors.  Meanwhile the columned porticos of the foreclosed McMansions disguise the reek of formaldehyde soaked plywood and the fiberboard and Chinese sheet-rock moulders, revealing the more fundamental fraud that accompanied the dicey mortgage loan with which they were bought.

Accelerating faster than our political shell-game masters can shuffle the deck, the public is left behind in a welter of ever more Orwellian slogans,  led towards serfdom in the name of “freedom.”   Unaware of where their previous wealth was secured – by imperial/capitalist exploitation – when the same is applied directly to themselves, the citizenry of the once all-powerful USA finds itselfs grasping at straws.  Economically whipped into line, they duly line up for good-old-boy Wally’s Wal-Mart, to buy cheapened goods at basement prices from those who took their jobs, and in the country-western song line, shoved it.  Mainstreet America is boarded up while the Board of Directors of Wall Street corporations dance like Scrooge McDuck in their hoarded wealth.

At the same time, obscured in the shadowy world of the real powers that run the show, a scramble is on to beef up the security system, militarize the police, and pass laws that will allow the military to police internally when the rupture between reality and fantasy evokes civil violence.  Drones which patrol the borders will find themselves directed inland to survey the wreckage of the American dream, laid waste metaphorically of late in tornadoes, and bank collapses.  Yankee doodle no longer dandy.

Post-bin Laden Obama GI Joe doll

Nuclear test “X-Ray”

Following the earlier Back Steps and Wood, the next of Leighton’s digital works expands on the aesthetics he was developing for this media, while the subject remained the same – the magical realm of childhood, and of the growing consciousness therein.  Water seeking its level, seen from one aspect, is again as simple as the earlier two works – a young boy stands in a rushing stream, the water dazzling, the rush of sound immersing us in some mystical world of impressionist’s color.  The back yard has moved to a park in southern France (though we don’t know this and little beyond the not-Iowa colors at the stream’s bottom suggests it, and the title note “St. Pons”).  Leighton swiftly orients us with his musician’s use of sound: we hear a rush of water, of a few steps into it  – audibly instantly recognizable, though the imagery which comes next is a swirl of abstraction which the sound “describes” and gives us our bearing.   A fluid passage of color quickly delineates the essential elements – a young boy’s leg, his touseled blonde hair, the boy’s feet standing as the water distorts them and the stream’s floor into a dazzle of color, a hand thrusting down, grabbing beneath the water and then holding a small stone, his small voice saying, “Daddy, look.”  

Daddy has indeed been looking, and looking deeply – not only at the little scene before him, but at the tools he is using to depict it.  Here a flourish of rich muted reds, modulated by the optical warping of water, blonde flesh and hair, are shown, but by the artist’s intervention with how he uses the camera and editing techniques he transforms the mundane into the cosmic in the most gentle and unpretentious of manners  (though using no corny “effects” menu items – all is done  organically directly with the image itself, in a manner more akin to a graphic artist’s multiple printing of the same basic image – say, see a series of woodcuts of Munch’s Madonna, or lithographs by Helen Frankenthaler).  The image caresses his son, the nape of his neck, his arm and leg, and embraces him in what is transparently a parent’s love.   Daddy is looking passionately.

And listening.  The water rushes by, the child’s hand is immersed in it, and his small voice comments how cold it is; the hand makes the water leap, and then clenches, the water stopped, and with it the sound.  Gentle hints of water drips, and in the subdued quiet slowly sound of liquid rushing builds, presaging a cut to the lip of a small waterfall, presented in almost pure abstraction but instantly identifiable.   And then slowly this crisp rush of water dissolves into a muted image not so readily understood – debris settling to the bottom of a lake?  Or….  it is snow, falling gently to the branches of a tree.  Water, in its varying forms, seeking its level.

Water seeking its level is a cinematic poem of a disarming simplicity of “content” which expands out to suggest the whole of a life,  our whole universe.  It is awash in love and stunningly beautiful.  Technically it is simply masterful in all aspects from its seemingly casual camera work, to its hidden and dazzling editing of both image and sound.  In five minutes it compacts, with a complete lack of pretentiousness or ponderousness, a whole poetics of life – its beginning, its future, its meaning.

Never once saying so, or pointing to the metaphoric possibilities of its primal source in water, Leighton’s film is drenched with the pathos of love, of our being here, of a parent’s deepest feelings and sensibilities for his child.   This is what makes this small five minute cinematic poem so rich, along with its truly masterful aesthetic and technical control.   He does not say so except in purely poetic terms, but within this joyous work there is the acknowledgement of Heraclitus’ wisdom:

πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει” καὶ “δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης”
Panta chōrei kai ouden menei … kai … dis es ton auton potamon ouk an embaies
“Everything changes and nothing remains still …. and … you cannot step twice into the same stream”

Hendrik ter Brugghen, Heraclitus

With Evaporation Leighton extends this theme, in which vapor and fog collude invisibly to suggest the ephemerality of childhood and youth, and by implication, life itself.   Here a young boy, who in this brief film becomes a young man, is seen looking out a window toward the sea, then near a harbor, walking on a pier, then gazing from the rails of a small ship.  A rush of liquid abstractly rushes over a fall, the shifting fractals of waves move mysteriously, a boat sets out from the mouth of a river into the hazy infinity beyond.   The boy looks pensively from the deck of a boat, the water rushing swiftly by.  And we return to the window which looks out upon the sea, now empty.

Evaporation

In a second passage we find the boy in a field, with grasses lit by the sun, on a pathway glistening with wetness.  He hesitates, turning to look towards the camera, and then turns to go forward.   Our gaze is directed to the swaying, wave-like motion of the grasses, from which emerges, in another time and seemingly place, a glimpse of a grown boy, seen intermittently, walking away.  His image at first is lost in the blurred shifting of foliage, and then we see him, clearly older, and, with a painful poignancy, receding to the distance, taking off upon his own life.  It is a father’s poetic farewell to his son, who now is on the path of his life, receding from the parental embrace, lighting out to his fate.   With Evaporation Leighton Pierce gracefully acknowledges this parting, and the film is a gesture of pure love, lovingly crafted, and a profound gift to both his son, and to us.

In a culture besotted with celebrity and bombast, where artists are advised, whether directly, or by the insistence of the clamor of the world around them, that to be heard they must make a grand splash with aggression and transgression, Leighton Pierce – like Nathaniel Dorsky – offers instead a counter-current of beauty and love of the world expressed in the greatest gentility.

Happiness

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

                                      Raymond Carver

[I am happy to relate that after 20 some years at the University of Iowa, Leighton is taking over the reins of the Media and Film Department of Pratt Institute in NYC.  I hope being in the vortex of America's creative navel he'll finally get the attention long overdue to him.  I hope to hell one of the major museums finally gives him the space to put up some of his extraordinary installation works.]

[Series to be continued as time permits.]

5.31        yes yes yes
Last night was fun in that we had a dramatic thunder and lightening storm for many hours.  I kept my glass door open to the little balcony and a big towel on the floor so I could enjoy the energy of it all.   So much fun, lying in the semi-dark. This morning was almost a little chilly.  One could have worn a pull-over but not really.  I took a walk in a new (for me) section of Madrid a few major avenues over from my normal routes as I was going to another important museum which the internet Miss Informed of it being open on Monday…   The Academy.    The avenue it is on is so grand and noble that I am glad I was forced into seeing the city. The buildings along it, and on other smaller circular squares nearby are so wonderfully and childishly imaginative that you cannot stop smiling upon coming upon them.  The day was perfect as the sky was dark and low but the a strong fill light was coming in under the heavy cover.  This made everything seen, seen at its best.  The buildings have facades which contour with the public space they face. Some curved beautifully or wedged or sometimes forming a series of curved shapes one after the other.  The real joy is the over the top sense of grandiosity and power.  When are they from?…  The 1920′s or so?  They are designed like a kid let loose in a soda fountain and allowed to pile on all the ingredients gravity could bear.  Huge, and I mean huge, chariots pulled by sets of four horses, riding on top of huge gold orbs that are resting on wedding cake columns and presenting angels, winged naked woman, puti two stories high, parapets medieval or more English ornate gothic flamboyance, etc, etc…  So many of them and so crazy with grandeur.   I guess a lot of them are banks or other government facilities. There seems to be no over riding style that I can name, only how many things can one pile up to the point right before falling over. Very very charming, at least to me.

The morning was a  battle between rain and sun with sun sparkling showers, dark pouring moments,  and glistening cobbles.  I took shelter under a long, long canopy of fully mature sycamores that went on for blocks interspersed with public fountains, statues, etc.  These trees in late May are so deeply green and the barks so alive with the multitudes of grays and and browns and yellows.  They so transmute the light into healthy air, nutrition for themselves, and a deep psychic peace for the creatures that move through and under them.  A zone of  green aura’d air and light.   Then the rain took the day, or I should say, the hour, as now it is quite hot and sunny,  and I went into the modern museum again.

They have a wonderful collection of French poetry/artist books and seem to specialize in surrealism and cubism.  There are also rooms of  Spanish contemporaries we know so much less of.  God, I wish I could be hired to patrol museums and give tickets, if not jail sentences, to curators.  They need to be policed!!  Don’t they know the unpleasantness of threesomes in bed?   Perhaps they are from another more prudent age.  I mean, does every room of paintings have to be  overwhelmed with audio from either audio sculptures (I prefer the ball game) or sound tracks from early surrealist films dvd’d onto white walls in the wrong ratios in broad daylight.   Think of Miro with Tristan blaring and you get the picture. That in itself should be a 4,000 euro fine.  But, I have fun complaining, as actually the museum is wonderful and full of spaciously presented things and the crowd of  all nations, a respectful and fun to look at joy.  None of that DIN which dominates the Modern in NY.  Guards who actually ask people to speak more quietly, can you believe that… and they do.

I have learned so much about painting this trip…  so much… from all periods…   but always the same thing:  there are those that show and then there are those that are… I have put my money on the ares….

Well I am back in my hotel room taking a rest.  I know people here are waiting for night time as so many walk and talk the entire night through till dawn hits the sky.  I had heard about it, but so nice to experience.   Well, tomorrow at 8pm is my first show.

Love,  Nick

I share Nathaniel’s amazement and amusement at the outsized grandiosity of the ornamentation decorating – if that’s what one can consider things so huge – the buildings in the center of Madrid.  Rather wacky, but strangely, despite the melange of styles piled on top of each other on such a scale, enjoyable and fun.  Makes you smile.  They in their fashion seem to have been doing “post-modern” about a hundred and more years ago.

May 31  a PS to yesterday

Dear Folks,

I finally (the fifth night of being here) fell asleep through the night.  It was the same in Rotterdam, four almost sleepless nights before I was able to move the arms of my clock into a relatively synchronous position.  This morning I have awoken at 7am.  The internet which seems to go off about 10pm every night has not yet gone on… at least the hotel guest connection.  (Ahh, I see it now goes on at 8am)   I notice that across the street from me there are some working offices, and at least there, people seem to work till 10pm and then, I imagine go home or out for diner.  There are so many cafes here…  tables spread out onto wide sidewalks and plazas everywhere and many, many of the city streets given over to pedestrians.  Most of them seem full all day long.  Are people just waiting for the night?   It seems that way. (Please excuse my complete out sidedness of all this).

Upon waking at seven (finally the streets are quiet…  the vampire tradition of running for cover with the first dawn of the sun seems quite real here) I wanted to say a sentence or two more about the work I saw at the Reina Sofia, the modern art museum I spoke of yesterday.   Oddly enough, their collection of early 20th century art was most touching to me in their coverage of the Paris scene and people who painted or wrote poetry there, and especially those whose social relationship seemed to be painting/poetry.  As I mentioned, their collection displayed of little books of poetry illustrated by painters was so moving.  Of course, we in SF are so fortunate to have experienced this often at our Legion of Honor.

But besides this there is a very nice room of Miro and other mixed rooms of Picabia and Schwitters etc.  They have many rooms completely full with paintings by Dali.  There are one or two that are really excellent and truly successful as “dream” landscape.  These seem in the spirit of Yves Tanguey.  One,  I liked so much, but I cannot remember the name of,  from the early 30′s….  perhaps when the internet goes on I can find it.  It is kind of painting that inspired Kate Sage (the wife of  Tanguey…excuse my early morning memory and spelling skills)…    a large abstract shape, rising into a gorgeously painted sky of the strangest of mixed colors.  The perspective goes way, way back to some blue mountains with some populace and in the semi-foreground before the large shape is the most subtle depiction of a small rock on the smooth surface of the earth its  most touchingly subtle shadow. This one painting for me made it with two other whole rooms of more showy works which again where “showing (off)” rather than being.  It is interesting that paradoxically, to genuinely include yourself you have to be completely absent (I mean so that there is space to see all there is including self) and to include the self by including the self it pop all potential for depth and transmutation.  I know these things maybe self-evident, but it is the main theme I am experiencing in seeing all these glorious paintings here in Madrid.

I am ashamed to say that I did not check out the two or three floors of contemporary work….    black and white photos of spray painted grave stones and other such politically poignant knee jerking.  I know this is not good on my part as in Cinema…  if one never saw any experimental film but only knew the more classic cannon, I would say one was missing something very vital (overwhelmed of course by hideous works in those areas).    Well enough of me, me, me for the moment…  I guess being here alone and without my Bolex has put my excess energy into writing these emails.  Perhaps in the future I should travel with my camera and not my macbook.

Love to you,  Nath

Dali

6.01  rolling on

dear friends and lovers….    The film curator from the Reina Sofia came to the show and seemed blown away and tonight the curator from the Madrid Cinematheque will come…  so maybe there is a chance of return…      show was DEEPLY appreciated by the audience. I only wish the projection was a little better…   book selling really well and talk of a Spanish translation…  went to the Academy museum yesterday and saw more Goya….     this place is just too much for painting…   no time to write as I have to bathe and meet someone in the lobby here at the hotel.

love to you  from the hot blue days of spain  n.

more of you can take it… be well

Dear Friends,

Today I went to the Thyssen Museum here. They seemed to have started collecting in the 1980′s and have spent more money than the entire populace of the USA just on paintings.  I wonder who their buyer was. Now, finally, I am truly humbled.  Just when I thought I was getting some sense of what Madrid had to offer in terms of painting, I go to this museum opposite the Prado and come upon more paintings than I ever seen in my life.  From Duccio, Piero della Francesca, Memling, Breugles (real ones)  etc. through all the Dutch painters we know so well, there must be 6 Jacob von R’s, to the entire 19th and 20th century of French painting, including pre-Paris van Goghs and gorgeous impressionists, through to the Americans of Gorky, Rothko, Pollack,  even Clifford Still, boxes by Cornell, great box-like collages by Schwitters, and amazing  Hopper of a sail boat passing a sea-gulled sand bar off Wellfleet to all the Russian avant-gardists, to the cubists (and I must step gladly on my own tongue to say they have some Gris to make Picasso kneel) and Mondrian and great Klee’s on and on and on and on…..   three floors, all wall painted a salmon pink (you truly do start to go mad), room after room after room after room after room and this not one of my usual exaggerations.  I think more paintings than exist in NYC all together, just in this one place which sits in the shadow of the Prado….  I mean one would have to spend two weeks here to take it in without sublime-rectangle-syndrome causing an unmovable scar from the psyche.

What is so sweet here, which have not mentioned at all are the school groups touring all the museums of have been to.  So often one sees 20 or so 4 or 5 years olds sitting on the floor, raising their hands and being coached on by the most loving for female teachers.  It is so touching you could cry.  And then, of course, their are the adolescents going crazy with lack of concentration, but the woman who lecture to them are so alive and humorous and intelligent.  I saw a group get won over to a Rothko and Mondrian by one these super loving guides to beauty.  The small kids, though, are to die for.  I have only seen this in France, but here there seems to be more love in the whole thing, rather than learning the manners of vanity.  Oh well…..   the Spanish seem to have true sense of the value of culture.Tonight is my second show.  There will be a TV interview of a half  hour or less before hand for the government public station that will be broadcast next week.  And what is amusing, an interview before that from the right wing newspaper and then tomorrow from the left wing paper.  I have been told by most hosts that it is better for the arts in Spain when the right wing is in charge because they do not meddle with the arts. (I am prepared to talk of the nobility of montage).   When the left gets in they begin to tell the arts organizations what to do, ie. show more Swedish films as we have many tourists from there…. they are obviously better capitalists. ( I am prepared to speak to them of the lack of hierarchy in my montage). So if I have enough energy for all this, I hope to do a good job.   And I hope I can improve the projection a little.  I will also see how many more books I can sell…  I may hit thirty here in Madrid alone (and there is more talk of a Spanish translation).  And as I mentioned the curators from the Reina Sofia and Madrid Cinematheque will be present…  the former deeply loved the work last night).

The day is crisp and clear.  I do not know if I can look at another painting.  The street and many many promenades are quite walkable and there is a place to sit down and have something every 20 feet, so  survival is possible. Tomorrow at four I fly to A Coruna and then train to Santiago..  and have three shows.

Love to you (before I drop),  Nathaniel

Juan Gris greets Nathaniel

[More letters to follow.]

I hope these little informal glimpses into the sensibility of an artist like Nathaniel are as delightful and informative to some readers as they are to me.    As his friend it has of course a different caste for me, but I think his spirit, which is lovely, spills out clearly from these words, and I am happy he agreed to let me put them here.

Nathaniel in Rembrandt Laughing, 1987Nathaniel’s feet and miso soup

Following his very successful sell-out screenings at the Rotterdam film festival(*), my friend Nathaniel Dorsky received an invitation to go to Spain, for some screenings in Madrid and La Coruña.  He’d never been to Madrid or Spain before so I wrote him some thoughts about things to see – paintings, the Church of San Antonio da Florida with the lovely Goya frescoes on the dome interior, the Goya tapestry cartoons at the Prado.   I like Madrid a lot, and assured Nick he’d likely find it as wonderful as I do.   He went last week, and shaking the jet-lag, went off into the city and in turn sent me some letters, which I found delightful – expressive of the almost child-like joy of his wanderings in museums and streets, the tasty jamon iberica, the architectural treats.   The letters were such a pleasure for me I thought others might find them similarly joyful, even if one doesn’t know him, and asked him if I could publish them here.   He thought about it a little and accepted.

Madrid facades and street life

5.28   your tumbling tumbled weed
Well about Madrid…  I arrived in the middle afternoon, a driver and all,  and then my hostess, Beatiz, led me around a little after a lunch (the only vegetables here are green house tomatoes, little  pickles, iceberg lettuce and canned string beans…  but more to come…)  I walked in the super lovely huge park, dark and dense with  Chestnut trees and lovely earthen alleys, charm, charm, charm…    and then went to the modern museum (all the museums are open till 9pm everyday…   well that is still two hours before diner time ) (I eat  breakfast and a late lunch, only) where they have just great Picassos and Juan Gris etc.  Today I went to the Prado.  Bigger in a  sense of the actual paintings than the Louvre.  Boy, do I not enjoy painting from the 1600′s.  And now I know another reason why…   I hate the gesture of the frozen moment in time which this century held so dear, it so terribly dull, egoic, and sickening. Beforehand, then it is good, and the 1700′s become heavenly, especially at the Prado where the Goya collection is almost worth walking here from SF.  He, not unlike Picasso, can paint in any style required and they are all very very touching and beautiful and generous to the  eye and the heart and the profound sense of the cosmic and the  color, so right and so healing.
.
Also the Bosch collection includes the HUGE  Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych along many other of his paintings and  paintings  from that period, including an amazingly avant garde Van der Weyden Descent from the Cross which took care of the 1600′s in one fell  swoop.

Now I am home resting and the hot day has cracked and it is pouring  with bursts of yellow lightening.  My hotel doors to the tiny balcony are open and cool airs wafts across my sweaty self.

.
And I also loved on the very top floor all the Goya “cartoons” for tapestries if I can trust my non existent Spanish… and there are also three large circular allegorical paintings (one of two woman spinning yarn)  that I found SO touching both as human depiction and color rendition….  wow…   and I went back this evening and re saw with MUCH less people the Bosch’s ..  that earthly delights MUST be seen in the real….    wow…  and came upon, that goodness, the very large Annunciation of Fra Angelico which I found deeply moving….   the shadowed exterior of the banishment from Eden and the columned portico illuminated by purity of the angel’s golden wings and and golden rays of light….

.
Yes, tomorrow San Antonio da Florida  n.

AND:

Today I went to the train station that has an iron and glass roof, not quite as pretty as the stations we love in Paris, but it is filled with tropical trees of all sorts, so it is like being in a dream that is one half the glass houses in Jardens des Plantes and one half Gare du Nord.  The train was super modern, a kind of TJV with reserved
seats and I took it for on half hour to a Toledo.  There is a very famous Cathedral there with many great paintings in it. The glass to me looks like it is from the 1400′s. They have a Caravaggio I actually loved… which is genuinely quite unusual for me. His paintings are usually not so sympathetic, but rather more demonstrative. It is a terribly sexy depiction of a young Saint ?? (who has a lamb and a staff, a body to end all bodies and hung out in the desert as a teenager?) OH, The Baptist, of course. This painting does not suffer from the frozen-moment-syndrome and actually allows one to enter and it brings forth presence… of course
it is rather “body”.  [Later, I received an email from a friend, Vivian, who informed me that a friend of hers who is an expert art historian told her that the painting is in question as to whether it is painted by Caravaggio. Now is not that interesting?] 

The not Caravaggio in Toledo [Just as Toledo Ohio is not...]

There were many El Greco’s also but gosh the 1600′s are missing my psyche right now and also a dark Goya which was hard to appreciate.  Then I visited  the Jewish section of town which had two synagogues from also that period of time in a more Islamic style.  I walked back to the train station from high on the hill and crossed over a beautifully constructed stone bridge arching high over the river surrounding the town built by the Romans.  From the bridge you could see another they built.  They are so sturdy and graceful and practical and must be almost 2,000 years old.  No upgrades…  working perfectly.
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A thunder and lightening storm began just as I reached the station which has all sorts of Islamic architecture with colored glass windows in  that style.  They have many benches out on the platform under the cover of an open roof, so one could enjoy the cooling down pour as dry as could be.  Now I am back home in my room.  I think tomorrow I will  go back to the Prado, as looking at paintings is the thing I by far enjoy the most here, especially the deepening discovery of Goya.  They have almost 200 paintings by him in many many different styles as we have discussed. The Prado is closed on Monday, so I think I will save that day for going to San Antonio da Florida to see his frescoes.

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OH!  Spain must of just won a football game as everyone out my open window is suddenly screaming as the evening comes in.

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I am quite alone here and it is almost too much.  The Spanish culture is a new one to me that I appreciate the way one might appreciate New York, but I have no real feeling for it or its language.  I am simply HERE walking around.  It is not France and it is not Italy and the Christianity is just TOO haunted by the immeasurable amount of pain, murder, and torture that has gone down under its name to shake loose of that for me.
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I have been warned that only 20 people may show up for my shows as ag film has no presence here and certainly no following.  But being here has been a truly great inspiration in terms of painting.

Your meat-filled Jew boy,  Nathaniel

5.29        as we speak
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Dear Jon, Thanks for the fill in’s. Those demonstrations for more jobs (in the huge square) are two blocks from “my” hotel. They seem to be working, as more police seemed to be employed than ever….. ahh, the political process in action.

AND:   my new film is at the neg cutter and the title is being shot and sent to her and then she will send the a and b’s on to my lab in  Colorado.  It is 27 minutes long and could be titled:  The Return        or it could be titled:   Broken Moon      Any suggestions.  I worked at it as hard as I could to perfection (not biting of lower lip) from pre-breakfast till 11 pm ever since we last saw each other in Rotterdam.  There are three shots from that wintry place, all shot on that Saturday (you were already in Amsterdam) the was extremely windy. Perhaps you remember.  It is 80% fuji neg and 20% eastman neg, a very rich and varied and workable cocktail of failing emulsions.  (our river trips footage a hair too descriptive for the film’s need).

Today I will either go back to the Prado or to San Antonio….   this Goya love is just too interesting and can only be quenched in this city   (someone just walking by playing ” Tequila” on a trumpet).   My hostess wants me to take a train to Cordoba…  a little expensive…   to see a little more of southern Moorish Spain and its architecture…   not sure if I want to be stuck for the day in such a place… they all seem SO tourist-tamed… ultimately depressing… how many sword, cross and helmet shops can you see without wondering about all that happened because of that nice Jewish boy who could see through everything except self-deification (a major sin, to say THE LEAST in the good old testament days). But then, the deification could be the results of
Spin Doctor John, and have little to do with who knows what really happened.

Well, be well……     and thanks for the football info…       nick

Foto by Jon in Madrid summer 2010

Barcelona had just beat Manchester United, 3-1, for the Champion’s League Cup, the World Series/Super Bowl of European Soccer.

5.29    lip flap from afar
Dear Jon,

I spent the morning at San Antonio de la Florida where Goya did the ceiling frescos….   such a beautiful and subtle sense of color.  I have never seen dome and ceiling painting so brushy and in such subdued but deeply beautiful colors.  Perhaps there are some online as everything seems to be these days.  Then I went over to the Prado again as my day pass continues to work. This time I began with Goya and looked at everything again.  Then I went to the 1400′s and so deeply loved the Fra Angelico Annunciation which is quite large. After looking at it for awhile in detail I went back to a seat in front of it and sat there for an hour, falling asleep and awaking again and again…  every time I popped back into the room there was a different configuration of people looking at it wearing different color clothes and many times, no one.  It made a very wonderful  personal film with the refrain of the painting mixed with quick dreams.  Then I went and looked at the other great work from the same century, and I mean Great!  They have a Dirk Bouts four views of the Virgin’s life which is extraordinarily beautiful…  the one of The Visitation is definitely one of the greatest paintings I have ever seen from that period…  the colors, the composition, the poetry…   a major major masterpiece sitting right there, hardly noticed.  I then went and looked at  Bosch’s Earthly Delight triptych again and for great good fortune no one was there (as usually there is a crowd of folks) and I think I eventually saw almost every detail which takes about a half hour to do.  There is always some new super charming thing to discover.  And then to straighten myself out again I went in the next room to look again at two David’s from that century of a Madonna and Child….  both of the very very highest order.

Then after two salads in the cafe (the only green thing to eat I have seen here since arriving)  I decided to look at all the paintings I had not liked the first day just to see them as this museum has more great work on a high level than any place I have ever been…  more than the National Gallery in London, I feel.  And that was interesting and could enjoy them more because I had been so healed by what I had already experienced.  I cannot even name all the great geniuses from the 1600′s that are there in great number and great quality.

The lovely park I spoke of before is up a hill behind the Prado and I walked up there and bought some water and strolled under the dark green canopy highlighted by the evening sun, sat around a little and listened to the doves as the day began to cool slightly and walked home and am now resting.

Love,  Nathaniel

PS: Sitting in front of The Annunciation I began to enjoy the title:   The Return     more because it is an announcement of an event, that event being the montage to follow, rather than a name as such.  And also I seemed very uninspired in my attempts to improve it…  but I  am OPEN….

Goya fresco, dome of San Antonio da FloridaVan der Weyden’s Deposition

Reading these letters I was transported from somewhat soulless (at least for me) Seoul, to the vibrant world of Madrid, and prompted to go once again to the museums, to walk the streets, to go out in the late night social whirl of cafes and talk.   Getting these two I begged Nathaniel to keep up his missives, which I find joyful and revealing, and also remind me of him – one of my very favorite people.  Knowing his films, one can glimpse the intense visual and spiritual acuity he brings to the paintings he speaks about, which makes me want to go see them myself, again.    After writing this last one, his screenings were on tap.  I told him I thought likely the forewarning of an audience of only 20 was not going to happen as I have found for myself lively and full audiences and I thought he’d do OK.   He’d been surprised in Rotterdam so perhaps Madrid would provide another.  (See this for words on Nick’s Rotterdam shows.)  More letters later.

Dirk Bouts’ The VisitationFrom Nathaniel’s The Visitation

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While being far from any expert on Caravaggio, I have seen very many and unlike Nathaniel I am, I guess, a “fan”.   In Rome some years ago I saw a large exhibition, I think it was in the Scuderia del Quirinale (former horse stables of the grand palazzo where Italy’s titular President lives), of Caravaggio and his school.  I think I might have seen this one there.  I recall seeing some, which like this one, had slack or miscalculated proportions – to me the torso here is missing some structural form, and the arm on the left is too short in the shoulder to elbow part, and the one on left is too thick.   Also the leaves are rather unlike the foliage I have seen in other Caravaggio’s.  And the light, while chiaroscuro, is not, as nearly always done with the master, used for drama.   So I bet against this being by Caravaggio, though I imagine in the dark setting of the church there, maybe it looked passable.   And it raises for me the curious matter of what if a painting by an artist you really like, happens to be not by that artist?  One of my most favorite Vermeer paintings, Girl with a Red Hat, certainly has a lot of circumstantial evidence suggesting it is not by Johannes.  And while it is one of my favorite of Vermeers, I would have to say that evidence decisively says it is not his.

Alleged Caravaggio St John the Baptist

[Note: if you double-click on many of the painting images you can see them bigger - check the Bosch that way.]

When I was young, rather some time ago – the 1960′s – I had little experience in the arts, though a year or two in college in Chicago (IIT) quickly altered that, and I found myself drawn deeply into the vortex of contemporary art back then:  Warhol, Rothko, de Kooning, Rauschenberg, Johns, Stella, Clifford Still, Motherwell and the whole roster of abstract expressionists, pop, and others.   I had not come from a background remotely concerned with the arts, though my family had a few Gauguin prints on the walls, and I recall a big coffee table book of paintings from the Louvre of which a David Rape of the Sabines provided some bare-breasted masturbation imagery.  Otherwise it was a desert.  I left home at 17 knowing more or less nothing of the arts, or for that matter, life.

But something in me was drawn to the arts, and on my own,  I jumped in, full tilt.  The visual arts, music (I saw and heard Segovia from the farthest reaches of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Hall in Chicago, and van Cliburn playing piano).   I was ignorant, but eager, though back then outside music in which I liked classical work, I found older art – meaning anything not contemporary or very close – something I could not look at.   Naturally, as time went by, this inverted, and in these days it is difficult for me to look (without acidic comments) at most modern and contemporary art, and I long since took a kind of refuge in things ancient to older.  In phases I’ve been drawn to Vermeer, Uccello, Duccio, Goya, Rembrandt (primarily graphic arts and self-portraits), Constable (sketches mainly), Turner, Manet, Monet, Munch (graphics mostly), Lautrec, Degas, and many others.

For some years I’ve fantasized of the chance to be in London for a month or two, with the possibility of going each day to the National Gallery, the British Museum, and other smaller such institutions, to look slowly and carefully at the vast collection of imperial and royal robbery and prerogatives.  To look, to think, to perhaps sketch and write.

The Elgin Marbles Room

Quick sketches at the British Museum and Victoria and Albert, 1996-7