Your unusual dish of everything.
Literatura și Arta
Bohumil Hrabal’s “I Served the King of England”
May 25th
What is funny and forlorn, where is the comic pathos, in the following sentence? ‘A fortune-teller once read my cards and said that if it wasn’t for a tiny black cloud hanging over me I could do great things and not only for my country but for all mankind.’
Instantly, a person opens before us like a quick wound: probably a man (that slight vibration of a swagger), grandiose in aspiration but glued to a petty destiny, eccentric and possibly mad, a talker, rowdy with anecdote. There is a comedy, and a sadness, in the prospect of an ambition so large (‘for all mankind’) that it must always be frustrated, and comedy, too, in the rather easy and even proud way that this character accepts his frustration: is he not a little pleased with the ‘tiny black cloud’ that impedes his destiny? – at least it is the mark of something. So this character may be grandiose in his ambition, but also in his fatalism.
Such are the goods packed in a typical comic sentence by the great Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal, who died in 1997. The character relieving himself of this little confession is a garrulous cobbler, who admits to being ‘an admirer of the European Renaissance’, and is the narrator of Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age.
And there is Ditie, the picaresque hero of I Served the King of England, a waiter in a Prague hotel, who once served the Emperor of Ethiopia, and worked with a head waiter who once served the King of England. Ditie is usually wrong about everything – he marries a German athlete just as the Nazis are invading Czechoslovakia – but sometimes he says something wise or prescient, and whenever he is complimented for this, he replies, ‘modestly’: ‘I served the Emperor of Ethiopia.’
Hrabal wrote in an expressive, highly visual style. He affected the use of long sentences; in fact his work, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé) (1964) consists of a single sentence! Political quandaries and their concomitant moral ambiguities are a recurrent theme. Many of Hrabal’s characters are portrayed as “wise fools” – simpletons with occasional inadvertently profound thoughts – who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances.
Much of the impact of Hrabal’s writing derives from his juxtaposition of the beauty and cruelty found in everyday life.
The 2006 Czech film, I Served the King of England, directed by Jiří Menzel and based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal. This film is Menzel’s sixth adaptation of the works of Hrabal for film. The film was released in the UK and in the US in 2008.
A must-see. Here’s the trailer and the review on rottentomatoes.com.
Codex Seraphinianus
Jan 19th
The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, a thus-far undeciphered alphabetic writing.
Who were the people who had invented Tlön? The plural is unavoidable, because we have unanimously rejected the idea of a single creator, some transcendental Leibnitz working in modest obscurity. – Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
Like a Borges story, this is as much about the quest for knowledge as it is about the knowledge itself. It involves books missing from libraries, lost translations, and people not answering letters.
The Codex is divided into eleven chapters, partitioned into two sections. The first section appears to describe the natural world, dealing with flora, fauna, and physics. The second deals with the humanities, the various aspects of human life: clothing, history, cuisine, architecture and so on. Each chapter seems to treat a general encyclopedic topic.
The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in our world: bleeding fruit; a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one; a lovemaking couple that metamorphoses into an alligator; etc. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with a delicate appearance, kept together by tiny filaments. There are also illustrations readily recognizable, as maps or human faces. On the other hand, especially in the “physics” chapter, many images look almost completely abstract. Practically all figures are brightly coloured and rich in detail. More >
The Magical World of Maurice Sendak
Dec 18th
Best known for his children’s books, Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen, Maurice Sendak has spent the past fifty years bringing to life a world of fantasy and imagination. His unique vision is loved around the globe by both young and old. Beyond his award-winning work as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, Sendak has produced both operas and ballets for television and the stage.
Maurice Sendak
Born in Brooklyn, New York (June 10, 1928), to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents, Sendak was a frail and sickly child. Spending much of his young life indoors, he turned to books at an early age. His view of the outside world was often limited to the family that came to visit him and the little that he could see from his window. It was during this time that he began to draw and to allow his imagination to run free. At age twelve, he went with his family to see Walt Disney’s Fantasia. This animated world, constructed completely of invented characters and fantasy, had a great influence on him.
Throughout high school, Sendak continued to draw, and after graduating, published a handful of illustrations in the textbook Atomics For The Millions. In 1948, he began working for F.A.O. Schwartz as a window dresser and continued there for four years while taking night classes at the New York Art Students League. After finding work illustrating Marcel Ayme’s The Wonderful Farm and Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is To Dig, Sendak left F.A.O. Schwartz to become a full-time, freelance children’s book illustrator.
Throughout the 1950s, Sendak worked regularly, producing nearly fifty illustrated children’s books. He saw in book illustration the opportunity to expand the imaginary world of the reader. While many illustrators had concentrated on clarifying the images in the text, Sendak believed that an illustration should add to the mystery of the work. His oddly grotesque characters seemed strangely inviting in their imperfections. Unlike much of the Disney cartoons and the illustration that followed it, Sendak’s artistic imagery brought a self-conscious attention to its origin and its maker. More >
Maps from 1942 of the never-was Nazi invasion of North America
Dec 15th
These diagrams from the March 2, 1942 issue of Life detailed the Nazi invasion of America shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Check out such alternate reality battles like the bombing of Detroit and invasion of Norfolk, Virginia.
These maps were created as a follow-up to an article about an American defeat in WWII by pioneering science fiction author Philip Wylie, who wrote the proto-superhero novel Gladiator. These maps were made in the early days of US involvement in World War II, so there was a sense that this invasion was a real possibility. You can read more about these maps at Ptak Science Books. More >
Masters of Photography: Brassai
Dec 9th
“When you meet the man you see at once that he is equipped with no ordinary eyes.” Brassai (pseudonym of Gyula Halász) – 9 September 1899–8 July 1984 – was a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century.
Gyula (Jules) Halász (the Western order of his name) was born in Brassó, Transsylvania, Kingdom of Hungary (since 1920 Brașov), in Romania, to an Armenian mother and a Hungarian father. He grew up speaking Hungarian. When he was three, his family lived in Paris for a year, while his father, a professor of French literature, taught at the Sorbonne.
As a young man, Gyula Halász studied painting and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Magyar Képzőművészeti Egyetem) in Budapest. He joined a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army, where he served until the end of the First World War.
In 1920, Halász went to Berlin, where he worked as a journalist for the Hungarian papers Keleti and Napkelet. He started studies at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste).
There he became friends with several older Hungarian artists and writers, including the painters Lajos Tihanyi and Bertalan Pór, and the writer György Bölöni, each of whom later moved to Paris and became part of the Hungarian circle. More >
Kaliningrad
Sep 21st
The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea is sandwiched between Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east.
Annexed from Germany in 1945, the territory was a closed military zone throughout the Soviet period.
In 2008, Russia threatened to deploy short-range missiles there if the United States went ahead with its plan to build controversial missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.
OVERVIEW
Koenigsberg, as the city of Kaliningrad was once known, was founded by Teutonic knights in the 13th century. It became one of the cities of the Hanseatic League and was once the capital of Prussia. The philosopher Immanuel Kant spent all his life in the city and died there in 1804.
The region was part of Germany until annexation by the USSR following World War II when it saw bitter fighting and suffered rampant destruction. The German population was expelled or fled after the war ended. More >
Dalton Ghetti – the King of miniature sculpture!
Sep 4th
Many artists use pencils to create beautiful pieces of work – but only one creates stunning masterpieces on the TIP of one! Microscopic artist Dalton Ghetti spends up to two-and-a half years painstakingly crafting each handmade piece on the graphite of a pencil.
Mr. Ghetti, who works as a carpenter, has been working with pencils for about 25 years and his stunning sculptures include Elvis, the entire alphabet, linking chains and even an entire church which is just 10mm tall.
The 49-year-old said: ‘At school I would carve a friend’s name into the wood of a pencil and then give it to them as a present.‘
‘Later, when I got into sculpture, I would make these huge pieces from things like wood, but decided I wanted to challenge myself by trying to make things as small as possible.‘
‘I experimented sculpting with different materials, such as chalk, but one day I had an eureka moment and decided to carve into the graphite of a pencil.’ Dalton uses three basic tools to make his incredible creations – a razor blade, sewing needle and sculpting knife.
He even refuses to use a magnifying glass and has never sold any of his work, only given it away to friends. More >
Amazing Art Works Based On Children’s Drawings
Jul 22nd
The premise for all three came from one single question: What would a child’s drawing look like if it were painted realistically?
The photos you are about to see are part of the “Monster Engine Project“, created by Dave DeVries. It includes a book, a demonstration, lecture and a gallery exhibition.
The Monster Engine is based on the idea of creating realistic paintings from children’s drawings.
It all turned out to be a great success and an innovative concept. Sometimes artists just happen to get to one point where their imagination stops. But not children.
They are an endless “resource” for creations and we are going to prove that to you with this post.
22 images presenting the drawing made by children, all around 6 years old and then their representations made by Dave DeVries.
The night sky on fire: 2,000 firefighters battle inferno that blazed for 15 hours in China after TWO oil pipelines explode
Jul 18th
Structured Settlement Investments Firefighters today extinguished a fire that raged for more than 15 hours after two oil pipeline exploded at a Chinese Structured Settlement Investments port.
An explosion at a pipe transporting crude oil from a ship loan rates to a storage tank blew up yesterday evening, causing a blast at a second, nearby duct.
More than 2,000 firefighters and 338 mesothelioma layers engines from 14 different cities worked loan rates through the night in the north-eastern port of Dalian to put out the blaze which illuminated the sky in a strange orange glow. More >
First photos of a tribe living in rainforest trees
Jul 12th
Back in 1995, George Steinmetz, an award-winning photographer, documented clans of tree-dwelling people in Indonesian New Guinea. They had no prior contact with anyone outside their language group.
These are amazing beautiful images of the Korowai and Kombai clans living in tree houses that stand in clearings they have carved out of the forest.
PHOTOS AFTER THE JUMP More >
