zygosphere: barcelona parallax

Saturday, February 13, 2010

barcelona parallax

I am in a city I haven't been to for over 20 years...a city in the invigorating throes of resumption, progression, self-determination...
we stay in the Barri Gotic, immersed in its medieval murkiness that is now tinged with fresh youthful hits, and yet on dark cloudy days, we are reeled back to a shadowy and more beguiling world...

but under sunny catalonian skies, we emerge to more recent times and wind our way up voluptuous architecture from the love-laboured hands of Antoni Gaudi and stand high above a crystalline city gleaming on the edge of the Mediterranean...[on the roof of Casa Batllo, below pic]

the giddily honey-combed Sagrada Familia is an almost never-ending project - and the tenacious spirit of Gaudi continues to preside over its organic construction from his resting place in the crypt...

the Mercat del Born is under renovations to update its airy metal-laced volumes to house and display again the poetically luscious arrangements of catalonian bounty...

and from an architectural pilgrimage to the Pavello Mies van der Rohe, reconstituted from its original manifestation at the 1929 International Exhibition, I lean over the slightly tattered barcelona chairs to peer past the mossy green marble wall from a glassed-in space that is the epitomized prototype of modern structural revelation...

on to venture into the 21st century thrusting of power-towers punctuating the catalonian nightsky in conical light curtains... a plump and sexy beacon to taunt that skeletal iron maiden to the colder north...[Torre Agbar, above pic]

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nouvelles

Architecture themed Photo-folio

photo galleries of buildings, staircases, architectural elements, the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, the Sonneveld House in Rotterdam, and paintings of houses.

ididiom = my id ++ your idiom
photo+imagery of text+ual art...and other typo+coolness...

SAVAGE STATES::
a photo-imagery and poetics site to record the visually vigorous and unruly spaces of Vancouver...

PARIGIGI's french bits and pieces::
to offer up for sale all the bits and pieces that I have collected over the years from countless brocantes, flea markets, antique fairs and vide-greniers in Paris and all over France.

PARIS PRIMITIF::
a visual blog featuring the street ephemerae and raw poetry of my Parisphere...

ARCHITECTURAL BONDAGE::
an on-going series of paintings
focusing on architecture in the modernist era.

Some of the images are derived from my travels in France and some are based on the work of my architect father who designed most of his modernist-inspired buildings in a small town on the northern coast of Borneo - these paintings are my homage to him and his modest architectural legacy...

les photos

the images on this blogsite are culled from thousands of photographs that I have taken in france [and now spain, denmark, sweden, germany, the netherlands] over the years...some of which inspire the paintings, some the writing, some for both...
including ones of magnificent cloud formations in the skies of the south finistère in britanny; fading advertisement signs on the walls of crumbling buildings in the countless villages passed through on many a road trip; and always the odd and charming details and ephemerae that manifest along the way...

[a house like me]

art + architecture apparel by ZY-XIN

is a limited edition line of tee-shirts featuring hand-painted mini-canvases of a series of iconic houses, including the villa savoye, casa malaparte, farnsworth house, maison à bordeaux, neuendorf house, and crescent house.................
[please view some of the t-shirts in the [a house like me] photo set on www.flickr.com/photos/zy-xin/

now available through the artist...please contact ggverster@gmail.com

...."I grew up in a house designed by my architect father on the island of Borneo - this house was his love and his legacy...
Years later, I fell in love with another house, Casa Malaparte, on the island of Capri - Curzio Malaparte called it his "casa come me" [house like me]...
Since then, I have fallen for other houses, houses built by visionary and poetic souls - houses that speak to me profoundly, enticingly, patiently...

This series of small sketches is my homage to these houses and their creators."
ZY-XIN

la belle plume

"Explaining how painting is done might perhaps interest the idly curious because they'll never understand anything.... Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.... besides, is this vulgarization of artistic matters really necessary?
.... Ah, when all France quibbles about painting it will be as if run over by a huge roller of impotence...
Everyone talented and no one a genius!!!"
...Berthe Morisot from Berthe Morisot by Anne Higonnet [Harper & Row, 1990]

"There's also a woman in the group, as in most notorious gangs; she's called Berthe Morisot and is curious to note. In her case, a feminine grace is maintained amid the outpourings of a delirious mind."
...Albert Wolff, powerful critic for Le Figaro, April 3, 1876, on the occasion of the second Impressionist Exhibition

"Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms." ...Mies van der Rohe

"The art of becoming, the perishable, the transitory and the expendable."
...Filippo Tommaso Marinetti on futurism from modernism by Richard Weston [Phaidon Press Ltd., 1996]

all is nothing, nothing all:/ to tired tiberius soft sang the sea thus,/under his cliff-palace wall./the sea, in soft approach and repulse,/sings thus, and tiberius,/sea-sad, stares past the dusking sea-pulse/yonder, where come,/one now by one, the lights, far off, of surrentum./he stares in the blue dusk-fall,/for all is nothing, nothing all.
[first verse of 'II. Tiberius on Capri' from Two pieces after Suetonius by Robert Penn Warren, 1960]

"I was a cubist till somebody threw me a curve"...stuart davis from stuart davis's abstract argot by william wilson [chameleon books, 1993]

"l'architecture est un art social... l'architecte peut seulement créer s'il écoute et comprend les voix des millions d'hommes, s'il souffre comme eux, s'il lutte avec eux pour les sauver... il emploie le fer qu'ils ont forgé, il les guide vers le futur parce qu'il sait ce qui appartient au passé."...pierre chareau from pierre chareau by brian brace taylor [taschen, 1998]

"architecture really is the need to synthesize the best out of life, out of history... whatever is still valid, I do not care how old it is, use it... and what is not valid, abandon it."...i.m.pei from i.m.pei: mandarine of modernism by michael t. cannell [random house, 1995]

mon amour j'étais dans tes bras/ au dehors quelqu'un murmura/ une vieille chanson de france/ mon mal enfin s'est reconnu/ et son refrain comme un pied nu/ troubla l'eau verte du silence...

[de 'zone libre', louis aragon]

le réalisme

le titre de réaliste m'a été imposée comme on a impose aux hommes de 1830 le titre de romantiques. les titres en aucun temps n'ont donné une ideé juste des choses; s'il en était autrement, les oeuvres seraient superflues. sans m'expliquer sur la justesse plus ou moins grande d'une qualification que nul, il faut l'espérer, n'est tenu de bien comprendre, je me bornerai à quelques mots de développement pour couper court aux malentendus. j'ai étudié, en dehors de tout esprit de système et sans parti pris, l'art des anciens et l'art des modernes. je n'ai pas plus voulu imiter les uns que copier les autres; ma pensée n'a pas été davantage d'arriver au but oiseux de l'art pour l'art. non! j'ai voulu tout simplement puiser dans l'entière connaissance de la tradition le sentiment raisonné et indépendant de ma propre individualité. savoir pour pouvoir, telle fut ma pensée. être è même de traduire les moeurs, les idées, l'aspect de mon époque, selon mon appréciation, en un mot, faire de l'art vivant, tel est mon but. G.C. [the realist manifesto, 1855]...from courbet by james h. rubin [phaidon, 1997]

"pour les attraper, il vous faut une ligne et un hameçon avec un appât de viande ou un morceau de tissu rouge. une fois les grenouilles prises, coupez-les en deux par le milieu du corps près des cuisses et videz leurs intestins. prenez les deux cuisses que vous pèlerez toutes crues après avoir coupé les pattes. puis lavez-les à l'eau froide; si elles restent pendant une nuit dans de l'eau froide, elles en seront d'autant meilleures et plus tendres. après qu'elles auront trempé, il faut les laver à l'eau tiède puis les essuyer dans une serviette. ensuite elles seront roulées dans la farine puis on les fait frire dans de l'huile, de la graisse ou un autre liquide. les mettre ensuite dans une écuelle avec de la poudre fine d'épices." ['friture de cuisses de grenouille'...le ménagier de paris, anonyme, vers 1393]...les français à table: atlas historique de la gastronomie française [hachette livre, 1997]

"...madame rêve ad libitum/ comme si c'etait tout comme/ dans les prières/ qui emprisonnent et vous libérent/ madame rêve d'apesanteur/ des heures des heures/ de voltige à plusieurs/ rêve de fougéres/ de foudres et de guerres/ à faire et à refaire/ d'un amour qui la flingue/ d'une fusée qui l'épingle/ au ciel/ au ciel/ on est loin des amours de loin/ on est loin des amours de loin/ madame rêve/ au ciel/ madame rêve/ au ciel/ madame rêve..."...alain bashung, in 'madame rêve' [barclay, 1991]

"goya found no followers during his lifetime, but by the middle of the nineteenth century he had become a god of the romantics - not only the painters, but such literary figures as victor hugo. and he has been adopted on one ground or another as the natural father of successive generations of innovational painters. but, all historical considerations aside, the ultimate question in the case of goya is an uneasy one: what has he told us about ourselves?

he has told us that we are vain, cruel, superstitious, and easily deluded; that at our best, when we rise to affirm our noble potential, we are most likely to be annihilated as individuals. but he believed in one thing, and his work says it again and again: in spite of everything, to have been alive has been worthwhile. he knew that life is as wonderful as it is terrible, and that the only thing more terrible than life is its alternative - nothingness." ...john canaday, in 'goya and horror' [an essay in horizon, summer 1968]

"and mind, my dear fellow, paris is paris. there is but one paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even - the french air clears up the brain and does good - all the good in the world."...vincent van gogh, in a letter to h.m. levens in 1886 [from in the footsteps of van gogh by gilles plazy]

"for that would be, amid the roses and raptures, to go on writing about paris all day, all night, and so into the dawn..."...marcel aymé [from paris que j'aime...]

"nostalgia is the poetic awareness of our personal past, and since the artist's own past is the mainspring of his creative potential, the architect must listen and heed his nostalgic revelations"...
luis barragàn

"casa come me," said the stylish man,... [as] he looked down to his beloved house. blood red, it sat on a rocky outcropping in the midst of capri's wildest terrain. "this house, my 'portrait in stone'," he mused, his features softening. "a house like me," he said again, "but which me?"...curzio malaparte from malaparte: a house like me by michael mcdonough

il y a qu'à me pencher sur le précipice de la fusion sans espoir de ta présence et ton absence

j'ai trouvé le secret de t'aimer toujours pour la première fois...andré breton ('air de l'eau')

"an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse"...kakuzo okakura, on a tea hut in the book of tea

plutôt que de traîner/ mauvaise poésie/ d'ambiances surannées/ en intérieurs cosys

plutôt que d'enforcer/ dernière fantaisie/ les portes du passé/ je cultive l'amnésie

j'ai vidé mon grenier/ fait voler la poussière/ les photos les papiers/ et mes amours d'hier

j'ai vidé mon grenier/ sur un coup de colère/ appelé les chiffonniers/ et pas les antiquaires... art mengo ('j'ai vidé mon grenier' on his album la vie de château)

one of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventures. everything is so well arranged, so admirably combined, so plainly labelled, that chance is an utter impossibility; if we go on progressively in this fashion, towards perfection for another century, every man will be able to foresee everything that will happen to him from the day of his birth to the day of his death... [and] an intense feeling of ennui will then take possession of the universe... théophile gautier (1811-1872) in wanderings in spain

captain misson was a [17th century] french filibuster opposed to slavery, favouring equality, democracy and fraternity... he founded the utopian colony of libertalia in northern madagascar... an idyllic socialist community of peace-loving pirates with its own universal language and rudimentary parliamentary system... kevin rushby in hunting pirate heaven

"pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés"... old french proverb

del rumor cadencioso de la onda/ y el viento que muge,/ del incierto reflejo que alumbra/la selva y la nube;/ del piar de alguna ave de paso,/ del agreste ignorado perfume/ que el céfiro roba/ al valle o a la cumbre,/ mundos hay donde encuentran asilo/ las almas que al peso/ del mundo sucumben.... rosalia de castro (1837-1885) galicia

[galician was the language of literature and courtly poetry in spain... "expressing quintessentially galician emotions for which other languages lack words, for example, the sweet sadness of plaintive 'saudade', connoting solitude, longing for the absent, and a paradoxical comfort in the very melancholy it conveys."]... from the defiant muse edited by angel flores and kate flores

"not so long ago in france, there was a grand château that belonged to a distant relative - the château de la grillère, not far from the loire... it was a benignly haunted castle where the resident ghost wandered the garden freely, surprising the odd visitor... every summer medieval pageantries would take place at the castle with the whole family and the villagers dressed in ornate costumes to return to more quixotic times...

haunted castles and haunting landscapes... this is the france that continues to inspire my unabated passion and to fuel my constant return"... g. verster in vespertine views [ongoing project]

"from nora's house, in the village, you could easily see the castle. no one had lived in the old castle for a long time. "there may even be ghosts there," people told her. when it was stormy, or on gloomy winter days, you could really believe what they said. but when the weather was fine, how beautiful the castle looked! was it really true that no one lived there? one day during summer vacation, nora decided to find out for herself...................

these days, when nora looks out her window, she still sees the castle - her castle. in the beautiful countryside, it looks as it always did, silent and mysterious. but now, when the people of the village tell her that the castle is deserted, nora smiles and thinks fondly of all her friends who lived there. but she never tells anyone what she knows about the castle. it is her secret."...satomi ichikawa in nora's castle, [a children's book based on the château de la grillère and dedicated to the esser family who had once lived there in such playful splendour]

"we write to taste life twice"...anais nin

mon enfant, ma soeur,/ songe à la douceur/ d'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!/ aimer à loisir,/ aimer et mourir/ au pays qui te resemble!/ les soleils mouillés/ de ces ciels brouillés/ pour mon esprit ont les charmes/ si mystérieux/ de tes traîtres yeux,/ brillant à travers leurs larmes.

là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté/ luxe, calme et volupté....charles baudelaire ['l'invitation au voyage']

j'aime le jeu, l'amour,/ les livres, la musique/ la ville et la campagne,/ enfin tout; il ne m'est rien/ qui ne me soit souverain bien/ jusqu'au sombre plaisir/ d'un coeur mélancolique....jean de la fontaine (1621-1695)

"when one travels and works with visual things - architecture, painting or sculpture - one uses one's eyes and draws, so as to fix deep down in one's experience what is seen. once the impression has been recorded by the pencil, it stays for good - entered, registered, inscribed. the camera is a tool for idlers, who use a machine to do their seeing for them."...le corbusier

now we are on dieppe beach: on the pebbles,/ a bottle of muscadet, a portion of frites,/ pâté de campagne, bread, goat cheese and cherries./ i do not want to do anything else in life/ except to sit on these grey stones, madly in love,/ and eat this picnic, and stare at the slack grey sea.

at noon/ as i am painting a cemetery on the cliffs/ a bell with a dreadful resonance sounds the angelus,/ the sound of french continuity humming out over the sea.... from 'a day in france' by david holbrook

"my native country is for me the country that I love, that is, the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well. I am as much chinese as french, and I don't rejoice about our victories over the arabs because I'm saddened by their defeats. I love those harsh, enduring, hardy people, the last of the primitives, who at midday, lie down in the shade under the bellies of their camels, and while smoking their chibouks, poke fun at our civilization, which quivers with rage about it..."...gustave flaubert (c.1850's) [from the art of travel by alain de botton]

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Norman Foster: A Life in Architecture by Deyan SUDJIC, 2010
Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet by Otto Friedrich, 1992
Berthe Morisot by Anne Higonnet, 1990
Jean Prouvé by Nils PETERS, 2006
Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules VERNE, [written in 1863, published in 1994 by Hachette Livre, and translated from the french by Richard HOWARD, 1996]
A Daughter of Han by Ida PRUITT, 1945
The Heart of the World by Ian BAKER, 2004
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de BOTTON, 2006
Stuart Davis's Abstract Argot by William WILSON, 1993
Pierre Chareau by Brian Brace TAYLOR, 1998
I.M.Pei: madarine of modernism by Michael T. CANNELL, 1995
le Paysan de Paris by Louis ARAGON, 1966
The Emperor's Handbook by Marcus AURELIUS [a new translation of 'The Meditations' by C. Scot HICKS and David V. HICKS, 2002]
The Impressionists' Table by Pamela TODD, 1999
Paris by Emile Zola, 1898
A Speaking Likeness by Joseph PLASKETT, 1999
Goya [Librairie HACHETTE, 1964]
Old Man Goya by Julia BLACKBURN, 2002
In the footsteps of Van Gogh by Gilles PLAZY and Jean-Marie del MORAL, 1997 [translated from the french by Linda HERBERTSON, 1998]
Paris: Architecture and Design by Christian van UFFELEN, 2005
Parisian Views by Shelley RICE, 1997
Palais-Royal by Richard SENNETT, 1986
When Things of the Spirit Come First by Simone de BEAUVOIR, 1979 [translated from the french by Patrick O'BRIAN, 1982]
The Sex of Architecture, editors Diana AGREST, Patricia CONWAY, Leslie Kanes WEISMAN, 1996
MALAPARTE: A House Like Me by Michael MCDONOUGH, 1999
Midnight in Sicily by Peter ROBB, 1996
The Arch of Kerguelen by Jean-Paul KAUFFMANN, 1993 (translated from the french by Patricia Clancy, 2000)
Les plus beaux Poèmes d'Amour Anthologie by Patrick POIVRE d'ARVOR, 1995
The Art of Travel by Alain de BOTTON, 2003
Memoirs of a Breton Peasant by Jean-Marie DEGUIGNET (translated from the french by Linda Asher) 2004

Saturday, February 13, 2010

barcelona parallax

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