20 Friday Apr 2018
Posted in Art
By far too grand a piece to fit in a suitcase:
But there’s always room if you linger long enough.
17 Tuesday Apr 2018
16 Monday Apr 2018
Last week was a treasure for the eye;
And this week, a whirlwind for the ear.
Less demanding than Tra il grano e il cielo (the film portrait of Van Gogh), Maria by Callas tells the diva’s story in her own words, enough of them English to keep us well entertained.
Translation and subtitles also play a role, as the international jet-set moves effortlessly between French, Italian, and whatever the language that carries her voice into unknown territory.
And familiarity breeds comprehension, with cameos by enough celebrities to keep the pages of People filled to the brim. They break fast out of the Box Office gate, just like the thunderous downpour that struck us as we left Pegasus.
10 Tuesday Apr 2018
09 Monday Apr 2018
Posted in Art
What better way to spend another rainy day
Than on a Van Gogh date at Sala Pegasus?
With the production values of the foreign film,
All the art talk was kept in a manageable place.
08 Sunday Apr 2018
They can find out what’s going on behind the scene
Simply by asking a countryman an obvious question.
Likewise they encourage us to revisit an old haunt, Just as they insist we overeat just for starters.
07 Saturday Apr 2018
When Christo was invited to drape the Spoleto Festival in 1968,
His wife chose the sites, while he wrapped up another one tight.
Here in this Time Life photograph, two native Italians are caught unawares by the lens of Carlo Bavagnoli.
When a couple of unknowns returned uninvited, they were far less invested
In the disruption to business than they were in the uncanny resemblance.
06 Friday Apr 2018
So easy to blog when
You pull out a phone;
Much harder to paint
Where your tools ain’t.
04 Wednesday Apr 2018
Posted in Art
The standing idea of the creative arts
Is twice retailed in a poster photo op:
Once by the damages of time’s translation;
Once through the optics of the iPhone’s lens.
04 Wednesday Apr 2018
With collage a tradition is well established,
Dating as far back as the invention of paper.
The technique grew when calligraphers in Japan
Began gluing paper to the surface of their poems.
On 6 Sept. 1954, Le Figaro printed the word décollage,
Which was used to describe the ‘take-off crash’ of a plane.
Adapted at a known point to the stage, the use was then
Applied to the advent of our modern towering billboard ad.
Here I switch from verse, because I have left behind my trusted source. Early in our visits to Spoleto, I was drawn to a half-formed and as yet unexpressed idea of “art in the making.” Looking back to my iPad, I should be able to recover from the archive the origin of a photographic interest. The way I recall it, though, the inspiration hit me full force on our first shopping spree in Foligno. Outside the Information Center, on a faded chalk board, what looked like a torn poster stood waiting to be seen. For that reason, if no other, I enter into the rotation the first of this year’s photo crop:
