The Beauty of Crying

Crying is a natural emotional response to certain feelings, usually sadness and hurt. But then people also cry under other circumstances and occasions, for instance, people cry in response to something of beauty. Stephen Sideroff

The place was the Los Angeles County Museum, the time was the fall of 1990. The exhibit was The Masters of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: The Annenberg Collection. Jimmy, Audrey and I entered together but soon drifted in different directions. Nearly half an hour later I noticed Audrey at the far end of a small display hall, I was at the other end, inevitably we would meet near the group at the center of the room. As we got closer the group dispersed leaving Jimmy standing alone in front of a shimmering Monet. Reaching him at the same time, we noticed his tears. We embraced him, Audrey at his waist, I around his shoulders. "There's a word beyond beauty," he said.

Some time later Jimmy and I met in front of one of the early impressionistic works and were marveling at the techniques that were simply invented by those artists. We walked together into the next room and found Audrey standing alone in front of a huge Renoir. Tears streamed down her cheeks, followed by another embrace.

Late in the day, I was standing in front of a very pointillistic work by Camille Pissarro. I was transfixed by the movement created on flat surface and the shifting of light with just a infinitesimal movement from me. I remember the scene so clearly, the picture was on a short wall section next to the opening to the next gallery. At some point I looked just slightly to the right through that opening to see Jimmy and Audrey coming towards me. I had to blink the tears from my eyes to see their smiles.

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Rhinoceros

Salvador Dali & Rhinoceros

The rhino is a homely beast

For human eyes he's not a feast

Farewell, farewell you old rhinoceros

I'll stare at something less prepoceros

--Ogden Nash

Albrecht Durer's Rhino

FreakingArt.com's take on Durer's Rhino

Rhinoceros come in five different species: Black, White, Indian, Javan, Samatran. Two native to Africa and three to Southeast Asia. Indian and Javan varieties have one horn the Black, White and Samatran have two. All are herbivores and even the smallest can reach well over a ton in weight.

William Scheele

Maria Ryan

Xavier Cordata

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Saturation Saturday: Chartreuse

the color half way between yellow and green

illustrating an article - 

"Chartreuse plants to make your garden memorable"

name any food that would look good on these?

most often described as "an acquired taste"

but it looks so much like absinthe

a chartreuse creek

Vanessa in a Chartreuse Dress

by Mickey Cunningham

halfway between yellow and green

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Saturation Saturday: Red

a Japanese Red Maple

that would be a redhead

Yes you vegans and vagans - Red Meat!

Mmm, red hair.

Amsterdam's famed Red Light District

Red Candles - Valentin Popov

a very red cardinal

a flock of red cardinals

I know, I know!

I can't help it.

probably has red hair too . . .

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Saturation Saturday: Rainbow

Today seek no deeper meaning than pretty colors

from the lips of a babe - no deeper meaning

pictures, pretty pictures

they say they do this with food coloring in the water

I get that for blue roses or purple roses

but this?

can you say photoshop...

this one has been in the pic file for a couple of years

this one too

 a rainbow seemed mandatory

this is a diffuse rainbow

also called a fire rainbow

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M&M Monday - The End

Today marks the 11th and final installment of M&M Monday. My sugary artistry has run its course and quite frankly I have had enough candy treats to last the year. I have considered the potential for ice cream sculpture but decided instead to turn back to gazing out my window.

I make this decision only after experiencing one rather bizarre delusion the other morning when I sat down to my computer.

You just know that is going to melt in your hand.

I do want to provide you with a factoid of useful information you can take away from my chocolate revelries. How about this: The estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250.

--

Art is web unsourced material

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M&M Monday - Elections

It's one state, two state; red state, blue state for the 2008 Obama-McCain election above.

For any ardent red-staters, this is the 1984 Reagan-Mondale election. Only Minnesota and Washington D.C. marred your boy's sweep.

And for the blue-state crowd, the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election map. Back in the days when labeling someone an 'extremist' actually was a bad thing. (Apparently they was a problem with Florida voting back then as well.)

And finally, my personal peering into the future to the 2012 confrontation between horses of an only slightly different color.

--

M&M Election Graphics by me

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M&M Monday - Skandhas

In Buddhism, the skandhas are any of five types of phenomena that serve as objects of clinging, grasping and craving. These lead to "attachments" which are the root of "suffering" in the buddhist philosophy. The skandhas are often referred to as the "five heaps" or the "five piles".

Depending on which Buddhist tradition one follows the path of enlightenment is either found by releasing all attachments to the skandhas or in the full and complete exploration of the nature of each of the five aggregates.

The five are:

1) form or matter; "rupa" or the external material world and the internal material body and sense organs;

2) sensation or feeling, including the labels pleasant, unpleasant or neutral;

3) perception or cognition; simply whether or not we recognize a sense object;

4) mental formations; thoughts, ideas, opinions that arise from interaction with objects;

5) consciousness; the condition of mind;

I have been scouring buddhist literature but have yet to find any references to devouring the skandhas.

--

M&M Buddhist Art by me

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Imported From Detroit (III)

Ruin Porn brings out some strong responses from both sides of the story. Those who believe that "the city shall rise from the ashes" often feel that those who shoot and publish ruin porn are praying on the city and the citizens at their lowest. The advocates, of course, speak to the art and the documentation of the decline. They aren't anti-renewal but only making visual commentary on the current state of the city. 


The central focus of ruin porn for at least two decades if not more has been Detroit. Sure Cleveland has some crumbling infrastructure and Flint was abandoned by GM as documented by Michael Moore. Anywhere in the country you can get a shot of a decrepit bridge or a dam that will fail in the "next ten years" or so. As a nation we have been woefully negligent of infrastructure and just plain normal maintenance. 


But only in Detroit has ruin porn been taken to the level of high art. And why not, Detroit has been in decline long before the auto industry disappeared. Remember the riots of 1967? White Flight equaled Detroit well before then. The city has been a canvas for decay and abandonment for decades.

The entire range of ruin porn advocates and dissenters is covered with some truly in-depth reporting from Guernica magazine last month in an article titled Detroitism. Not surprisingly there are those who believe Detroit is beginning an urban renaissance; though they don't used that term as it would be harshly contrasted with the Renaissance Center build on Detroit's waterfront in 1977. Others believe that Detroit is in fact that old, grey canary in the mine of industrial collapse of the rust belt. A canary, which by the way, has been lying on the bottom of its cage for decades.


The Guernica article lays out the dichotomy: "Detroit figures as either a nightmare image of the American Dream, where equal opportunity and abundance came to die, or as an updated version of it, where bohemians from expensive coastal cities can the the one-hundred dollar house and community garden of their dreams."


Community gardens indeed, there are serious conversations and even pilot projects to turn vast areas of Detroit into urban farms. Not those vacant lot gardens that dot many urban landscapes but wide fields of urban vegetation to sustain the survivors of the post-industrial wasteland.

There is another article that seeks to attack the purveyors of ruin porn from Vice magazine. It's subtitled: Lazy Journalists Love Pictures of Abandoned Stuff. Nevermind that they use some of the photographs from those lazy journalists to illustrate their story quite effectively, the piece ends with a quote from one of those ruin porn artists they are criticizing: "It's a problem with the culture. I don't know why you'd want to be in China or Russia, because it's happening here. We're in the center of the empire now, and here's where you can see the collapse of the empire starting."


For those who do not fear the photography police finding your ruin porn links. Here are some of the best and most vilified offerings.


Forgotten Detroit is perhaps more of a nostalgia website for those who may actually remember some of these old buildings from their glory days. The photographer is a local and provides interesting historical tidbits.

Detroit Disassembled by Andrew Moore may be the most well known of the ruin porn books. There is also a streaming PBS piece on his work. This from a positive review:

"Photographer Andrew Moore takes us beyond the individual toll of a failed economy to something more Pompeiian in scope. To an empty city falling in upon itself, in unspeakable tragic beauty. Andrew writes in the book of his own excavations: of a grove of birch trees literally growing from rotting books, of a homeless man frozen head first at the bottom of a flooded elevator shaft, of pheasants with entire city blocks to themselves to roost and nest, of the surreal re-ruralization of what was once America's fourth largest city, now covered in ivy and moss. Moore's spectacular photographs take us to places where the outside has come in and where the inside, quiet and soaring as a cathedral, has become sacred in its desolation."


The other book I must mention is the Ruins of Detroit. A five year collaboration resulted in an at times visually stunning collection of images. This is, if nothing else, the height of ruin porn as seen in the decline of Detroit. From their website:


"Detroit, industrial capital of the XXth Century, played a fundamental role shaping the modern world. The logic that created the city also destroyed it. Nowadays, unlike anywhere else, the city's ruins are not isolated details in the urban environment. They have become a natural component of the landscape. Detroit presents all archetypal buildings of an American city in a state of mummification. Its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great Empire."


And finally, for those who see differently, there is Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City. Here Detroit is seen as a smaller but better city.

"Though the book focuses on Detroit, the challenges outlined here are readily applicable to other, post-industrial cities that are struggling to reimagine themselves in the 21st century. For those interested in cities, particularly in how to turn them around and re-imagine them, there is no better lab than Detroit.

More on the Motor City soon, I have yet to express my own thoughts on the future of Detroit.

Imported from Detroit: Part II
Imported from Detroit: Part I

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M&M Monday - Clothing

You know someone is going to say something about "melts in your mouth not in your hands" . .

. . . but that would clearly be wrong;

because that line obviously goes with this picture.

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