Invisible Cinema

Life is a dream

"What is life?  A madness.  What is life?  An illusion, a shadow, a story . . . for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams."   -Pedro Calderon de la Barca

A memory from 1968 . . . Jackie Raynal, Deux Fois 

What is poetry? Part 5

The poet is like a seismograph that vibrates from every quake, even if it is thousands of miles away.  It's not that he thinks incessantly of all things in the world.  But they think of him.  They are in him,  and thus do they rule over him.  Even his dull hours, his depressions, his confusions are impersonal states; they are like the spasms of the seismograph, and a deep enough gaze could read more mysterious things in them than in his poems. -- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, "The Poet and the Present Time," 1907.

"From this passage Warburg's art history seems to have retained two points: the 'despecification' of discourse ('indeed, this precise separation between the poet and the non-poet does not seem at all possible to me'), which makes it possible to recharacterize the discourse of the historian or the philosopher as a form of authentic poetic expression; and an implicit critique of the philosophy of the subject: the author is less the master of his words than he is a receptive surface, a photosensitive plate on which texts or images surging up from the past reveal themselves."

- Philippe-Alain Michaud:  Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion

leaves of silver turning to green . . .

"A yellow sky with yellow sun

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a reddish cap and orange bricks

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twelve flowers that are light on light

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trees gray-green with a pink sky

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cypresses of bottle-green hue

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some very yellow buttercups

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and all the ground is yellow, too

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roses in a green vase

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a window with a green shutter

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a lady's clothes in black, black, black

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two chairs the yellow of fresh butter

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leaves of silver turning to green

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stars sparkling, greenish, yellow, white

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a big bunch of violet irises

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and in my head a starry night"

- Vincent van Gogh

Text taken from Vincent's Colors (c) The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  (For my niece, Charlotte)

Vincent van Gogh, Olive Orchard, 1889.

Claude Monet

A friend at work watched the BBC series, The Impressionists, and she mentioned that Claude Monet reminded her of me!  :)  Actually, she was referring to the artist's indignance with the Salon, and how Monet, along with Renoir, Degas, and Cezanne created their own exhibition in Paris, 1874. ("I will never show at the Salon!") 

Impressionism was initially perceived as "scandalous and heretical" (that is so great!) & so regarded with contempt that one critic proclaimed, "They have declared war on beauty." 

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Like the 1874 exhibition, my cinema program, The Invisible Film Series, was DIY!  My films were rejected from festivals, and I really had no other choice but to exhibit them myself.  Mike Park & I curated a show at the beginning of May for 5 years, and I kind of miss it right now.  Although, this endeavor took me to the beautiful world I live in, and I really cannot go back . . . Cinema is a journey! 

After seeing "The Impressionists," I realized that Monet is a guide for me.  (Finally, someone else who really loves flowers!  :)  But it's not just that Monet also was drawn to the ephemerality of nature and light, à la experimental cinema!  He seemed to know and search for the infinity in the subject of nature specifically, always changing, always new . . .

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."

--Claude Monet

Monet, Claude. Water Lilies, c. 1914.

P.S.  Happy Spring!