Mississippi Mound Trail
Posted: April 1, 2018 Filed under: America, America Since 1945, art Leave a comment
On one of the episodes of Theme Time Radio Hour Bob Dylan himself says that the actual highway 61 is boring now, nothing but ads for riverboat casinos. That may be true south of Vicksburg but north of the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum and the Catfish Row Art Park, I found the road compelling.
Mississippi Fred McDowell was born of course in Rossville, Tennessee.
It was Dave [David L. Cohn] in God Shakes Creation who said, “The Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.” He was always welcome at the Peabody; they were glad to see him – he stayed there whenever he was in Memphis – but they never even gave him a cup of coffee, and he thought it was rather amusing that they had so little appreciation of this publicity.
So says Uncle Shelby, of Greenville and Memphis:
Since we’d been to Memphis we steered towards Oxford Miss to visit Faulkner’s house:
On Highway 61 lots of blues type sites, Muddy Waters’ birthplace for instance:
marked by signs for the Mississippi Blues Trail. But many signs tell you you are also on the Mississippi Mound Trail.
Mounds make a thousand or more years ago by some lost culture, perhaps connected to the people who built Cahokia:
And where in the beginning the predecessors crept with their simple artifacts, and built the mounds and vanished, bequeathing only the mounds in which the succeeding recordable Muskhogean stock would leave the skulls of their warriors and chiefs and babies and slain bears, and the shards of pots, and hammer- and arrow-heads and now and then a heavy silver Spanish spur.
So says Faulkner in his essay Mississippi. In Sanctuary he says:
The sunny air was filled with competitive radios and phonographs in the doors of drug- and music- stores. Before these doors a throng stood all day, listening. The pieces which moved them were ballads simple in melody and theme, of bereavement and retribution and repentance metallically sung, blurred, emphasised by static or needle – disembodied voices blaring from imitation wood cabinets or pebble-grain horn-mouths above the rapt faces, the gnarled slow hands long shaped to the imperious earth, lugubrious, harsh, and sad.
You can only listen to so much of that though; when I pulled over for Dunn Mounds I was listening to Maron interview Jennifer Lawrence.
The Raven map tells the story of the Delta. Another flooding bottomland is the Nile delta:
where they also kept slaves, and built mounds.
source: Ricardo Liberato on Wikipedia
great tour of the Blues Trail sites here on Wiki by Chillin662.
The Painter of Light
Posted: February 27, 2014 Filed under: art, painting, pictures Leave a comment
The Times further reported that [Thomas Kinkade] openly groped a woman’s breasts at a South Bend, Indiana, sales event, and mentioned his proclivity for ritual territory marking through urination, once relieving himself on a Winnie the Pooh figure at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim while saying “This one’s for you, Walt.”[37][38]
In 2006, John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion six years previous, Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting “Codpiece! Codpiece!” at the performers. Eventually he was calmed by his mother.[37]
Doesn’t this look like Garry Shandling?
Posted: July 8, 2013 Filed under: art, Hans Holbein, Met, museum, painting, people, pictures Leave a comment
The Metropolitan Museum has five portraits that they’re pretty sure are by Hans Holbein The Younger. Let’s have a look:
Here is Derick Berck of Cologne:
Here is Erasmus of Rotterdam:
Here is a member of the Wedigh family, probably Hermann von Wedigh:
“Truth breeds hatred,” is what that note in the book says, according to the Met, which “perhaps served as the sitter’s personal motto.” Weird motto, bro.
And here is Man In A Red Cap:
Now. Take a look at this one, of “Lady Lee”:
The Met says “The painting is close to the manner of Holbein, but the attention paid to decorative effects and linear details at the expense of life-like portrayal of the sitter is indicative of workshop production. The portrait was likely based on a Holbein drawing.”
(Are these guys for real?)
The Barbarians (Max Ernst, 1937)
Posted: April 2, 2013 Filed under: art, painting, pictures Leave a comment
A recent Artwork of the Day at the Met.
Airplane Travel
Posted: November 9, 2012 Filed under: art, painting, travel Leave a comment
Mural painted by Allen Tupper True in 1937 for The Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. Not sure if it’s still there, somebody in Denver have a look!
Lionel Pries
Posted: September 9, 2012 Filed under: architecture, California, pictures Leave a commentReading up on some Disney animators and writers.
Ken Anderson, one of the credited screenwriters for The Rescuers, Aristocats, The Jungle Book, and Cinderella, was (wikipedia tells me) “particularly influenced” by his University of Washington architecture professor, Lionel Pries.
Lionel Pries designed the Andalucia building in Santa Barbara:
Here’s a house he designed for himself:
“He used affordable modern materials — concrete, concrete block and cement-asbestos board.”
Here’s another house Pries designed, in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Seattle:
Wikipedia:
Pries was gay, but deeply closeted in the University of Washington community. He anticipated teaching at least until he reached retirement age, but was forced to resign his university position in 1958 after he was picked up in a vice sting in Los Angeles. The reason for Pries’s abrupt departure from the university was concealed at the time.
Pries worked as a drafter until he was able to retire in 1964, then lived quietly until his death in 1968.
Lionel Pries:
(Pries photo is credited to Dorothy Conway and the Pries Collection, Special Collection, UW Libraries, Pries house photo to Charles R. Pierson from the same collection, Laurelhurst house photo “courtesy Max and Helen Gurvitch, and I got them all from this Seattle Times article by Laurence Kriesman.)
Bob Ross
Posted: August 7, 2012 Filed under: art, painting 2 CommentsAfter enjoying this video:
I did a typically cursory investigation into his backstory:
Ross enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 18 after graduating from Elizabeth Forward High School in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania and was living in Florida early in his military career when the Air Force transferred him to Eielson AFB (in Alaska), where he first saw the snow and mountains that later became recurring themes in his artwork; he developed his quick-painting technique in order to be able to create art for sale in brief daily work breaks. Having held military positions that required him to be, in his own words, “mean” and “tough”, “the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work”, Ross decided that if he ever moved on from the military, “it wasn’t going to be that way any more”, “vowing never to scream again.”
Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog, 1818
Posted: June 4, 2012 Filed under: adventures, art, mountains, painting 1 Comment
Caspar David Friedrich.
By 1820, he was living as a recluse and was described by friends as the “most solitary of the solitary”. Towards the end of his life he lived in relative poverty and was increasingly dependent on the charity of friends. He became isolated and spent long periods of the day and night walking alone through woods and fields, often beginning his strolls before sunrise.
Hills around the Bay of Moulin Huet, Guernsey (Renoir, 1883)
Posted: May 9, 2012 Filed under: art, painting, pictures, Renoir 1 Comment
Met Artwork of the Day nails it again. This might be in a similar spot, anyway the closest photo I can find on Google streetview.
Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, by George Chinnery
Posted: May 6, 2012 Filed under: art, George Chinnery, painting, pictures Leave a comment
And here’s Chinnery himself, done by himself:
North Shore Homesick?
Posted: April 29, 2012 Filed under: art, Childe Hassam, Fitzhugh Lane, Met, museum, New England, North Shore, painting, pictures, Winslow Homer Leave a commentSometimes my friends from the North Shore of Massachusetts who live in New York get homesick and call me up, desperate for a solution. Always I tell them the same thing! “Go to the 760 galleries on the second floor of the Met!”
There you can see Childe Hassam’s “The Church at Gloucester”:
Then you can see Winslow Homer’s “Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide):
Then you can see “Stage Fort Across Gloucester Harbor” by our boy FHL:
“Thanks Hely!” they say.
The Head of John The Baptist on a Charger
Posted: April 22, 2012 Filed under: art, beheadings, Christianity, Met, MFA Boston, museum, painting, pictures, religion Leave a commentWe here at The Hely Times are shameless about catering to our readers. We’ve discovered that pictures depicting beheadings are among our most popular subjects. So, today, a review of one of the great themes in Western Art, John the Baptist’s head on a charger. NOTE: some other day we’ll do actual action-shot beheadings of John the Baptist. Today, we’re just dealing with the paintings that include the charger as well.
Caravaggio did it twice. There’s the National Gallery, London:
And the Palacio Real, Madrid:
Met has a good one by Aelbert Bouts:
MFA has one by Bernardo Luini:
Lucas Cranach the Elder, now hanging in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest:
That’s enough.
Last stop on the Hemingway/Lillian Ross tour of the Met
Posted: April 21, 2012 Filed under: art, Cezanne, Hemingway, Met, museum, painting, pictures Leave a comment
We came to El Greco’s green “View of Toledo” and stood looking at it a long time. “This is the best picture in the Museum for me, and Christ knows there are some lovely ones,” Hemingway said.
After we reached the Cezannes and Degases and the other Impressionists, Hemingway became more and more excited, and discoursed on what each artist could do and how and what he had learned from each. Patrick listened respectfully and didn’t seem to want to talk about painting techniques any more. Hemingway spent several minutes looking at Cezanne’s “Rocks – Forest of Fontainebleu.” “This is what we try to do in writing, this and this, and the woods, and the rocks we have to climb over,” he said. “Cezanne is my painter, after the early painters. Wonder, wonder painter…
As we walked along, Hemingway said to me, “I can make a landscape like Mr. Paul Cezanne. I learned how to make a landscape from Mr. Paul Cezanne by walking through the Luxembourg Museum a thousand times with an empty gut, and I am pretty sure that if Mr. Paul was around, he would like the way I make them and be happy that I learned it from him.”
Wiki, close out Cezanne for us:
One day, Cézanne was caught in a storm while working in the field. Only after working for two hours under a downpour did he decide to go home; but on the way he collapsed. He was taken home by a passing driver. His old housekeeper rubbed his arms and legs to restore the circulation; as a result, he regained consciousness. On the following day, he intended to continue working, but later on he fainted; the model with whom he was working called for help; he was put to bed, and he never left it again. He died a few days later, on 22nd October 1906. He died of pneumonia and was buried at the old cemetery in his beloved hometown of Aix-en-Provence.
Captain George K. H. Coussmaker (Joshua Reynolds, 1782)
Posted: April 20, 2012 Filed under: art, Hemingway, Joshua Reynolds, Met, museum, painting, pictures, writing Leave a comment
“What the hell!” Hemingway said suddenly. “I don’t want to be an art critic. I just want to look at pictures and be happy with them and learn from them. Now, this for me is a damn good picture.” He stood back and peered at a Reynolds entitled “Colonel George Coussmaker,” which shows the Colonel leaning against a tree and holding his horse’s bridle. “Now, this Colonel is a son of a bitch who was willing to pay money to the best portrait painter of his day just to have himself painted,” Hemingway said, and gave a short laugh. “Look at the man’s arrogance and the strength in the neck of the horse and the way the man’s legs hang. He’s so arrogant he can afford to lean against a tree.”
remembers Miss Ross.
Coussmaker sat for Reynolds 21 times and his horse 8 times between February 9 and April 16, 1782 – an exceptional number of times.
Van Dyck, Portrait Of The Artist (possibly 1620-21)
Posted: April 19, 2012 Filed under: art, Hemingway, Met, museum, painting, pictures, writing 1 Comment
Weighed in already but let’s get Hemingway’s take:
Mrs. Hemingway called to us. She was looking at “Portrait of the Artist” by Van Dyck. Hemingway looked at it, nodded approval, and said, “In Spain, we had a fighter pilot named Whitey Dahl, so Whitey came to me one time and said, ‘Mr. Hemingway, is Van Dyck a good painter?’ I said ‘Yes, he is.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m glad, because I have one in my room and I like it very much, and I’m glad he’s a good painter because I like him.’ The next day, Whitey was shot down.”
– from Miss Ross again.
Still more on Francesco Francia’s Portrait of Federigo Gonzaga
Posted: April 18, 2012 Filed under: art, Francesco Francia, Met, museum, painting, pictures, Raphael Leave a comment
Raphael’s Santa Cecilia is supposed to have produced such a feeling of inferiority in Francia that it caused him to die of depression. However, as his friendship with Raphael is now well-known, this story has been discredited.
Here it is, anyway:
Go see that next time you’re in Bologna. What’s that? In no hurry to get to Bologna? Perhaps Mr. James Salter can persuade you:
“Bologna is famous for three things,” she said. “It’s famous for its learning – it has the oldest university in Italy, founded in the twelfth century. It’s famous for its food. The cuisine is the finest in the country. You can eat in Bologna as nowhere else, that’s well known. And lastly, it’s famous for fellatio.” She used another word.
“It’s a specialty,” she said. “All the various forms are called by the names of pasta. Rigate, for instance,” she explained, “which is a pasta with thin, fluted marks. For that the girls gently use their teeth. When there used to be brothels there was always a Signorina Bolongese – that was her specialty.”
More on Francisco Francia’s Portrait of Federigo Gonzaga
Posted: April 17, 2012 Filed under: art, Francesco Francia, Met, museum, painting, pictures, Titian 1 Comment
In July 1510 the ten-year-old Federigo Gonzaga was sent from Mantua to Rome as a hostage. On his way to Rome he stopped in Bologna, where Francia astounded everyone by painting and delivering his portrait in twelve days. The picture was subsequently taken to Rome for the admiration of the papal court and was only reluctantly returned to Isabella d’Este, Federigo’s mother. The fine execution of this famous portrait is typical of Francia’s best work.
– says the Met, where this painting is NOT ON DISPLAY. Later in life, Titian would take a crack at Federigo:
Portrait of Federigo Gonzaga (Francesco Francia, 1510)
Posted: April 16, 2012 Filed under: art, Hemingway, Met, museum, painting, pictures, writing Leave a comment
“Here’s what I like, Papa,” Patrick said, and Hemingway joined his son in front of “Portrait of Federigo Gonzaga (1500-1540) by Francesco Francia. It shows, against a landscape, a small boy with long hair and a cloak.
“This is what we try to do when we write, Mousie,” Hemingway said, pointing to the trees in the background. “We always have this in when we write.”
– “How Do You Like It Now, Gentleman,” by Lillian Ross, The New Yorker, May 13, 1950
The Green Cathedral
Posted: April 11, 2012 Filed under: architecture, medieval studies, music, nature, trees, UNESCO Leave a comment
The Green Cathedral or De Groene Kathedraal located near Almere Netherlands, is an artistic planting of Lombardy poplars (Populus nigra italica) that mimics the size and shape of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Reims, France….The work was planted by Marinus Boezem (b. 1934) on April 16, 1987 in Southern Flevoland, Nederland.
While walking there I assume you should listen to Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame (1360s), composed for the cathedral at Reims (which isn’t too shabby in stone either).
Machaut survived the Black Death which devastated Europe, and spent his later years living in Rheims composing and supervising the creation of his complete-works manuscripts. His poem Le voir dit(probably 1361–1365) purports to recount a late love affair with a 19-year-old girl, Péronne d’Armentières, although the accuracy of the work as autobiography is contested.
Pictures from wikipedia and from inhabit.com
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