Who The Hell Is Tula Ellice Finklea?

Cyd Charisse, born Tula Ellice Finklea (1922-2008) in Singin' in the Rain, 1952 - d. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly

MGM didn't know what they had with Cyd, did they?

Gene Kelly

A Fistful Of Levinas

Oscar Muñoz (b. 1951) - Line of Destiny, 2006 (single screen projection)

1. The object which presents itself to the thinker determines the thinker. But it determines the thinker without touching the thinker, without weighing down on him; in such a manner that the thinker submits to the imposed content of thought ‘in good grace’, as if he had anticipated the object right down to the surprises it holds in store for knowledge.

2. [Every] loss of time, every lapse, holds on to itself, or is recuperated in the memory, finds itself again, or is reconstructed; it adheres to an ensemble through the agency of memory or historiography. Consciousness in reminiscence glorifies the ultimate resilience of presence. The time of consciousness lends itself to [self-] representation – this is more strongly synchrony that diachrony.

3. To represent is not simply to render present ‘again’, it is to fetch back to the present itself an actual perception which is flowing away . . . to fetch back to the instantaneity of thought everything which seems independent of it.

4. The Same, in its relation to Alterity, refuses what is exterior to its own instant, to its identity in order to rediscover in that free-floating instant . . . as conferred sense, as a noema, everything which had been rejected.

5. Admittedly, the self which conducts its thoughts becomes (or, more exactly, ages) in the time in which are spread out its [the self’s] successive thoughts throughout which the self thinks in the present. But this becoming does not appear on the level of representation.

Emmanuel Levinas

Musique Du Jour: Pendulum Music, Steve Reich

Hey, Who's Winning?

Brian and Stewie patrol the streets of Iraq in 'Saving Private Brian' (Family Guy, Ep. 4, Season Five, 2006)

Musique Du Jour: When Johnny Comes Marching Home, The Civil War

Build It And They Will Muse (Redux)

Nike Savvas - Atomic: full of love, full of wonder, 2005

. . . in all time
Calm or convuls'd - in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving; - boundless, endless, and sublime -
The image of Eternity . . .

Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it "creative observation". Creative viewing.

William S. Burroughs

Expressing what exists is an endless task.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Musique Du Jour: Across the Universe, Fiona Apple

This Is Not A Paint(h)ing: Part Two (Redux)

Hiraki Sawa (b. 1977) - Going Places Sitting Down (video still), 2004

I believe a leaf of grass is not less than the
journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand,
and the egg of the wren,
And the tree toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours
0f heaven . . .

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Psychologists - and more especially philosophers - pay little attention to the play of miniature frequently introduced into fairytales. In the eyes of the psychologist, the writer is merely amusing himself when he creates houses that can be set on a pea. But this is a basic absurdity that places the tale on a level with the merest fantasy. And fantasy precludes the writer from entering, really, into the domain of the fantastic. Indeed he himself, when he develops his facile inventions, often quite ponderously, would appear not to believe in a psychological reality that corresponds to these miniature features. He lacks that little particle of dream which could be handed on from writer to reader. To make others believe, we must believe ourselves. Is it worthwhile, then, for a philosopher to raise a phenomenological problem with regard to these literary "miniatures", these objects that are so easily made smaller through literary means? Is it possible for the conscious - of both writer and reader - to play a sincere role in the very origin of images of this kind?

Yet we are obliged to grant these images a certain objectivity, from the mere fact that they both attract and interest many dreamers. One might say that these houses in miniature are false objects that possess a true psychological objectivity. Here the process of imagination is typical, and poses a problem that must be distinguished from the general problem of geometrical similarities. The geometrician sees exactly the same thing in two similar figures, drawn to different scales. The plan of a house drawn on a reduced scale implies none of the problems that are inherent to a philosophy of the imagination. There is even no need to consider it from the general standpoint of representation, although it would be important, from this standpoint, to study the phenomenology of similarity. Our study should be specified as belonging definitely under the imagination.

Everything will be clear, for instance, if, in order to enter into the domain where we imagine, we are forced to cross the threshold of absurdity, as in the case of [Bean Treasure] , Charles Nodier's hero, who gets into a fairy's coach the size of a bean. In fact, he gets into it with six "litrons" of beans on his shoulder. There is thus a contradiction in numbers as well as in the size of the space involved. Six thousand beans fit into one. And the same thing is true when Michael - who is oversize - finds himself, to his great surprise, in the house of the [Beggar Fairy], which is hidden under a tuft of grass. But he feels at home there, and settles down. Happy at being in a small place, he realises an experience of topohilia; that is, once inside the miniature house, he sees its vast number of rooms; from the interior he discovers interior beauty. Here we have an inversion of perspective, which is either fleeting or captivating, according to the talent of the narrator, or the reader's capacity for dream. Nodier, who was often too eager to be "agreeable", and too much amused to give full reign to his imagination, allows certain badly camouflaged rationalisations to subsist. In order to explain psychologically this entry into the tiny house, he recalls the little cardboard houses that children play with. In other words, the tiny things we imagine simply take us back to childhood, to familiarity with toys and the reality of toys.

But the imagination deserves better than that. In point of fact, imagination in miniature is natural imagination which appears at all ages in the daydreams of born dreamers. Indeed, the element of amusement must be removed, if we are to find its true psychological roots.

. . .

Representation becomes nothing but a body of expressions with which to communicate our own images to others. In line with a philosophy that accepts the imagination as a basic faculty, one could say, in the manner of Schopenhauer: "The world is my imagination." The cleverer I am at miniaturising the world, the better I possess it. But in doing this, it must be understood that values become condensed and enriched in miniature. Platonic dialectics of large and small do not suffice for us to become cognizant of the dynamic virtues of miniature thinking. One must go beyond logic in order to experience what is large in what is small.

Gaston Bachelard

Musique Du Jour: Badlands, David Chesworth

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition XIV

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840): Landscapes Of The Soul

Before Sunrise, 1830-34

Hill and Ploughed Field Near Dresden, 1824

The Garden Terrace, 1811-12

Evening, 1824

The Evening Star, 1830-35

Moonrise over the Sea, 1821

By intuition, Mightiest Things
Assert themselves — and not by terms —
"I'm Midnight" — need the Midnight say —
"I'm Sunrise" — Need the Majesty?

Omnipotence — had not a Tongue —
His lisp — is Lightning — and the Sun —
His Conversation — with the Sea —
"How shall you know"?
Consult your Eye!

Emily Dickinson

Musique Du Jour: Symphoniae (Spiritual Songs), Hildegard von Bingen

Onto Every Cheek Some Tears Must Fall

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) - Girl Crying, 1964

Sam Taylor-Wood (b. 1967) - Crying Men Series (Tim Roth), 2002-2004

Tears unshed are far more bitter than those that flow.

Victor Hugo

Musique Du Jour: Cry Me A River, Combustible Edison

After We've Smoked Another Silence

Nan Goldin (b. 1953) - Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC, 1983

To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

Quentin Crisp

Musique Du Jour: Drive You Home, Garbage

Madness Became Him (Redux)

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

God is just another artist, like me.

Salvador Dalí

Musique Du Jour: Soy Caminante, El Camarón de la Isla (and Salvador Dalí Interview, 1963)

Arresting The Unfurling Of Sensation

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906):

Midday at L'Estaque, c. 1876-1879

Chestnut Trees at the Jas de Bouffan in Winter, c. 1885-1886

Dovecote at Bellevue, 1889-1890

The Bibémus Quarry, c. 1895

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bibémus, c. 1897

Château Noir, 1900-1904

[It] is Cézanne's genius that when the overall picture is seen globally, perspectival distortions are no longer visible in their own right but rather contribute, as they do in normal vision, to the impression of emerging order, an object in the act of appearing, organising itself before our very eyes.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Musique Du Jour: Preludes, Claude Debussy

Sex Is Not The Enemy (Redux)

Patty Chang (b. 1972) - Doll, 2001

I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.

Woody Allen

Musique Du Jour: (1) Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?, The Revolting Cocks, (2) I'm Ready, The Twilight Singers (Low Fidelity Allstars Remix), (3) Big Dumb Sex, Soundgarden, (4) Throw Me On The Bed, Machine Gun Fellatio, (5) Fuckin', Hot One, (6) Too Drunk To Fuck, Nouvelle Vague

Take Your Soul For A Spin

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) - Whirling Dervishes, c. 1895

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

The ultimate most holy form of theory is action.

Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Musique Du Jour: Ya Rayah, Rachid Taha

The Other Black Orpheus

Bo Diddley (1928-2008)

I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob.

I was out to destroy the audience. I wanted to destroy 'em, just make the toughest dude in the crowd pat his foot. I'd find a groove to get 'em by watching feet, and once I got one guy moving, I'd start working on the dude sitting next to him.

I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I'm about to get.

Bo Diddley

Musique Du Jour: Ten tracks by Bo Diddley

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition XIII

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

Picture in Remembrance of Johann Emanuel Bremer, 1817

Griefswald in Moonlight, c. 1817

Northern Sea in the Moonlight, 1823

Swans in the Reeds by Dawn's Early Light, c. 1832

Evening Landscape with Two Men, c. 1830-35

The Nets, c. 1830-35

Art stands as the mediator between nature and humanity. The original is too great and too sublime for the multitude to grasp.

Caspar David Friedrich

Musique Du Jour: String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op.131 - Adagio, Beethoven

The Paris Papers: Part Four

Vale, Yves Saint-Laurent (1936-2008)

Raoul Dufy (1887-1953) - The Eiffel Tower, 1935


Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicoloured lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and think they were happy, that time.

Italo Calvino ('Cities & Memory', Invisible Cities)

Musique Du Jour: La Vie en Rose, Grace Jones

The (Dis)enchantments Of Love

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) - Untitled (under the skin, thin skin, skin deep, thick skin, skin tight, skinned alive), 2003

1. Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

2. Discredited by modern opinion, love's sentimentality must be assumed by the amorous subject as a powerful transgression which leaves him alone and exposed; by a reversal of values, then, it is this sentimentality which today constitutes love's obscenity.

Roland Barthes

Musique Du Jour: I've Got You Under My Skin, The Sun Spots and This Is Not A Love Song, Nouvelle Vague

Addendum XI

Cruel, But Not To Be Kind

Olivia de Havilland (Catherine Soper) and Montgomery Clift (Morris Townsend) in The Heiress, 1949 (d. William Wyler)

Art Is Creation's Unfinished Business

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906): How To Remake A Mountain In 12 Easy Steps

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Chemin de Valcros, 1878-1879

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Montbriand, c. 1882

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Montbriand, 1882-1885

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, c. 1885-1890

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, near Gardanne, c. 1887

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, c. 1887

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1888-1890

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, c. 1890-1895

Montagne Sainte-Victoire above the Route du Tholonet, 1896-1898

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves, 1902-06

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Château Noir, 1904

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Château Noir, 1904

I remain in the grip of sense-perceptions and, in spite of my age, riveted to painting.

Paul Cézanne (Aix, 27th June, 1904)

Musique Du Jour: Itaipu, Philip Glass