This Line Greets Us With Every Visit to This Fine Site:
"It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself." -- Salvador Dali"
Now, This Statement Rings a Phone in Me That I Answer, But the Voice on the Other End Keeps Melting My Watch: Just Look at the Time.
The Inevitable Digression: The Persistence of Memory. I Remember Seeing it in New York and Being Surprised at How Small it Was: 9.5 in × 13 in. I Had Imagined Something More Grandiose in Scale: Closer to Picasso's Guernica (138 in x 307 in) than Something Akin to a Sheet of Typing Paper.
So: First Question. in Art, Does Size Matter at First Impression? Does the Scale Come into Play in Your Initial Assessment? Note: Innuendo is Always Welcome.
Related: Did "War and Peace" Have to Be Precisely That Long? Wagner's Ring Cycle?
- Old Yeller – 35,968 Words
- The Great Gatsby – 47,094 Words
- War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy – 587,287 Words
"My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect."
Second Question: What is Your Take on Lem's Salvador Dali Quote? Is There a Point Where Self-Awareness Becomes Paralyzing, or Is It All Enlightenment Cupcakes? How Do We Know When We Are Deceiving Ourselves With Too Many Notes?
To Quote Falco: Rock Me, Amadeus...
45 comments:
Second Question: What is Your Take on Lem's Salvador Dali Quote?
I think it's nice but such things should change from time-to-time.
Suggested alternative. "If people can't control themselves, the blog will; If the blog can't control itself, another blog will."
This is why we can't have nice things.
Is There a Point Where Self-Awareness Becomes Paralyzing
Yes. Especially in art.
Yes self awarness can be paralyzing if you don't ultimately trust yourself to do the right thing eventually. If we are aware we make mistakes and trust ourselves to figure it out after some self reflection and make it right or at least move on, then we can rest easy in the knowledge we are at least in motion and not mired down by life.
The etymology of llama is confusing: link
Discuss!
Llama could be a flame or a call.
Depending on the context.
There is Only So Far You Can Stick a Finger Up the Etymology of a Llama Before They Move From Confusion to Anger.
This Also Applies to the Homeless. And Koalas.
Scale in art does matter, when I read your surprise about the small size of the Dali painting, I shared your surprise, and it clanged a klaxon inside my brain that resonated within the walls of the containing cranium with a prolonged disturbing resonance that set off a cascade of regressive art-scale-surprise-related memories flap flap flap flap flap flap flap that has left me a bit shaken."
*dusts self off*
The Egyptian steles. Read about them my whole life. Some are boundary markers so they must be large, no? Some are tributes. Some just brag for eternity.
They are a lot smaller than I thought.
Conversely, vases I thought were regular size, on account of being alabaster and elaborate, turn out to be huge.
The gold burial mask of Psusennes looks like it cannot fit on an adult head much less a mummified adult head. And so thin it look like heavy-duty aluminum foil except gold. Drop it, and it would definitely dent.
I think the quote is perfect.
Oh, the visual!
Although Chickie's suggestion, despite his own familiarity with it, has a nice ring to it in this instance. ;-)
Si, como mentiroso mentiroso sus pantalones en llamas.
That means you have llamas running all around your pant legs, and just try to get anything done.
Llamas are drama dairies.
Big Papi struck out an inning ago, with among two other bad pitches, a high call strike.
He lit up in the dug out violently smashing the bull pen phone with his bat.
A bad call, lit him up, and he took it out on the means to communicate with his own team relievers. that's 3 llamas.
3 llamas mamayamas.
my llama
I have a little friendly llama
I like to call him Fred
When he tries to spit at me
I kicked him in the head
I have a little stupid lamma
Who likes to bite me a lot
I dont think he will do it again
Cuz last time he got shot
I have a little wise llama
Yes he is smartening up
Cuz when i tried to kick him there
I only hit his cup
I have a little injured llama
Because he got too cocky
He took a swing at me
So i jabbed him like i was rocky
I have a little evil llama
He has gotten too smart
He tried to blow me up
With a lighter and a fart
I now have a little dead llama
Cuz he ate all my grass
I was so frustrated with everything
That i smoked his llama a$$
Author Notes
Written August 11th, 2002
© Umpa Lumpa Boy. All rights reserved
------------
I hope I haven't violated any copyright laws.
I'm full of uninformed art opinions
Surprised at how small many of the impressionist paintings in the Orsay were - and disappointed.
War and Peace too long? No. OTH, you could cut out 1/4 of Joyce's Ulysses and not lose much.
Hemingway's "Across the River and Into the Trees" if cut down would've been a great novella instead of a mediocre novel.
Llamas are drama dairies.
Ya think ya know a guy and then WHAM!
He tried to blow me up
With a lighter and a fart
Gaslight! (again)
Regarding Art and Scale: Julian Schnabel.
As Always, First the Digression: Basquiat, the Film He made About the Artist. Questions of the Revelancy of Scale Apply to Basquiat Also, But I Also Want to Say Bisquick, Which Fits Conveniently in a Cupboard.
To My Recollection (Might've Been Late, I Might've Been Tipsy) There is a Scene in His Film 'Basquiat' of the Actor portraying Basquiat riding a Bicycle Down a Residential New York Street: the camera Swirls Up to Sunlight in the Leaves of the Trees, Mesmerizing, as the Intro to the Psychedelic Fur's Song "India" Plays.
Secondary Digression: the Intro of that Song -- Circular Watery Guitars Bobbing and Swaying About in a Placid Melody -- Was Mixed Purposefully Low, So That When The 'True' Song Kicked In at Full Volume You Would Be Blown Out of Your Orange Vinyl Bean Bag Chair.
Where Was I?
So: Per Wiki -- "Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates."
Now I Saw Them Years Ago, and Large Scale and broken Pottery Are Indeed Accurate: But, The Paintings Got Smaller the Longer I Looked at Them.
How the llama got its name:
I have been telling visitors that Llamas got there name from an Englishman who asked a native in Peru what the name of the animal was. The native came back with, “Name?”, trying to clarify the question. Of course he used the Spanish word, llama, which means name. The Englishman went away happy that he learned the name of the animal was llama.
Here is my opinion of art and Dr. Schnabel: link
I think Althouse* even blogged about that drawing once.
__________________
*Thus setting off Meade's** alarm
==============
**twice
The Sentence Don't Work
'Cause The Llamas Took The Commas.
Llama music with not too many notes.
Thanks for that Sydney!
Have you heard the one about the origin of nachos?
Hungry now
Who can ever forget Lorenzo Llamas, of Falcon Crest fame.
Wikipedia's LL page, spells out a call Lorenzo has made.
He (Lorenzo Llamas) has told reporters that he will go publicly as Lorenzo Lamas-Craig. His manager, Don Gibble, tells E! News, "He's always thinking outside the box so he decided to become the first celebrity to take his wife's last name." The other reason was because his last wife, former Playboy Playmate Shauna Sand, kept the Lamas name and is legally Shauna Lamas. "His new wife didn't want to be called Shawna Lamas for obvious reasons," explained Gibble.
I don't know what to call it.
Shawna Lamas Pajamas Piranhas. This Kind of Brainstorming is How Sharknado is Made.
So what gets those Llamas to spit?
Q: So what gets those Llamas to spit?
A: Capistrano Swallows.
Llama llama llama llama, llama comedian.....
Boy George did serious time, Inga.
The largest Dali collection in the US is in a museum, dedicated to just him, in St. Petersburg, FL. Initially, the collection was in Cleveland --- must say I'm glad they moved it.
I was surprised by the size of a number of his paintings, e.g. The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, here, is 14' high by 9' wide.
Also surprising were some of the Botticelli's in the Uffizi --- they take up whole walls. For some reason, I had expected him to be more, shall we say, dainty.
@ Basta
I Fully Agree.
In Art Books All Paintings are Depicted in the Same Approximate Size (Whatever Fits the Page) like Boxes of Breakfast Cereal in a Grocery Aisle, Regardless of Artist or Subject or Medium. Then, in Real Life: Captain Crunch is THAT Much Smaller than the Fruit Loops Bird? Really?
Basta! wrote: Initially, the collection was in Cleveland --- must say I'm glad they moved it.
Why Cleveland? I ask because I dated a young woman there back in my R & C days. She had met and hung out with Dali in his last days. I was too interested in her to care about Dali.
What was the Cleveland connection?
Pertaining to Art and Scale...
The Quintessential Art Model's Question:
Does This Painting Make My Ass Look Big?
See: Botticelli, R. Crumb etc etc.
Cleveland got roped into it because this recently married couple named Morse, who lived in Cleveland, went to an exhibit, saw a Dali for the first time, and started to buy his work. They accumulated so many that they turned their house into a de facto museum. Then they bought a warehouse in someplace called (I think) Beachwood, also in OH, and used that for showings. Finally, they said, WTF are we doing, and obviously had enough bucks to have a brand new museum constructed. The question then was: where, and they went for the heat.
What's an R & C. Recreation & Cutting-up? Reckless & bad-word-that-begins-with-a-C chasing? Rootless & Cosmopolitan, yeah, that must be it.
Oh, you know what's shockingly tiny? Some Da Vincis, which I did expect to be large.
There's a vast hall in the Hermitage in St. Pete, Russia, with two little easels set up in the middle, that's it, and on those easels are two dinky Da Vincis. Well, yes, they're amazing, I actually thought I was gonna cry, they hit you somehow, but you have to elbow all the old ladies out the way to be able to view the whole canvas.
“Salvador Dali is really Norman Rockwell’s twin brother kidnapped by Gypsies in babyhood.” --V. Nabokov
Lem's question is reminiscent of Lincoln's answer to the question, "How long should a man's legs be?".
I think those melting clock faces are used to keep accurate time in the subjunctive past. It's very hard to keep appointments in the subjunctive past without such timepieces. Dali is the Timex of the subjunctive past.
I really like that Dalà quote and I think it applies well to Lem and his blog.
I'm curious to know the quote's context. I assume Dalà was referring to both his art, and to his public persona, at the same time.
The idea was to perfectly integrate the two, same as the idea was to perfectly integrate "joking" and "seriousness."
Some bloggers have that same ambition but they lack the temperament to make it happen.
Hostility's a bitch.
Serious is a subgenre of frivolous.
That's why, in serious stuff, cookies crumble.
What's an R & C.
Rake and cynic
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