ho hum
trying to post my way out of the doldrums, so there may be spam for a while.
For nothing is more easeful to the constitution than regularity, and healthful dispersal, or outpouring rather, of whatever stale old humours might otherwise accumulate to our detriment -
(The book in the loo at the moment is Essays of Elia, not that I've any prospect of succeeding in a pastiche of that, very elaborate, language.)
My youngest was 19 on the 17th and my eldest was 27 on the 24th. Which makes me about 307. Plus it hit me on the Sunday, I no longer have anyone to buy a mother's day card for, or even organise the getting of one on behalf of. Hence, doldrums. Also bad temper, which is preferable.
Now St. Patricks Day is no great huge thing here, but an Irish person might buy you a drink in the pub, if they like you. So the kid goes out on the piss on on her birthday and manages to come home without her purse, her bus pass or her provisional license. She did, however have a large plush hat in the shape of a shamrock mutating into three pints of guinness. As her brother said, you've got to get your priorities right.
Where to even start, I'll have to pace myself. Ok, picspam.
Amazon's one-click shopping is a very dangerous activity - like it's virtual money so you may as well spend it, there are no consequences! - but today the result of my rashness was delivered and I'm delighted. Bellocq's Storyville Portaits.
I'm also delighted that it turns out to be the right edition, the one with the essay by Susan Sontag. I had quite a good week for visual reference. Somebody sent me a notice for an exhibition featuring Rotimi Fanikayode's work, with links to several pictures I hadn't seen before. The same email sent me off looking for stuff by Lyle Ashton Harris. And surfing around brought me here. I think I like this picture a lot.
Rotimi Fanikayode. These pictures speak to me. He was my age, though he died when he was 34. I would like to have met him. This is what the exhibition blurb says:
"He wrote: 'On three accounts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for.' Through the medium of photography, and in collaboration with his partner Alex Hirst, Fani-Kayodé produced a body of work in the 1980s that was not only aesthetically seductive but also seminal in terms of his portrayal of black homosexuality. His images are visually and conceptually provocative in their exploration of eroticism, homophobia, traditions and conventions, and ultimately mortality."
Such a lot of ambiguity in these pictures. And that bit about the collaboration, that's something of a can of worms, for many reasons...and basically where the gay community tends to see the artist's family in terms of homophobia - and I believe there may still be conflict and bad feeling about the estate - they're kind of really not acknowledging the strength and complexity of the African concept of family. What do I know, it's just my opinion. But I don't think much of groupthink in any of it's manifestations.
Denis Carney and Essex Hemphill in Brixton
Under the Surplice
Not work safe:Milk Drinker, 1983
I tend not to like glossy pictures, or super-handsome people (with ONE exception.) I tend to find cheesecake male erotica as distasteful as pin-up girlie pictures. Especially those pictures where the model's head is cropped off and the body's sort of super-buffed. *shudders* But I love these because of the textures, the wrinkles, the hints at the untidy compromises of living. I see the guy drinking milk and I wonder what Fanikayode's relationship with Alex Hirst, a white guy, was like; how he felt about his relationship with England, with the States; how he felt about his relationship with his own family and whether that was conflated into the problematic mish-mash of expectation, performance, deep-down needed nurturing and belonging he must have felt with all those entities, along with estrangement; and there is a picture of a man standing there exposed, straining, slaking a desperate thirst, wreathed and decorated with evidence of his need. I like the fact he's got an untidy scrub of hair on his body, and that he has the stringy muscles of a person who does real work, as opposed to the cosmetic muscles of a person who works out. I like the fact that I saw these for the first time last week, and the textures and the frankness and whiff of humanity of the Storyville Portraits, today's purchase, instantly reminded me of them. So, full circle.
For nothing is more easeful to the constitution than regularity, and healthful dispersal, or outpouring rather, of whatever stale old humours might otherwise accumulate to our detriment -
(The book in the loo at the moment is Essays of Elia, not that I've any prospect of succeeding in a pastiche of that, very elaborate, language.)
My youngest was 19 on the 17th and my eldest was 27 on the 24th. Which makes me about 307. Plus it hit me on the Sunday, I no longer have anyone to buy a mother's day card for, or even organise the getting of one on behalf of. Hence, doldrums. Also bad temper, which is preferable.
Now St. Patricks Day is no great huge thing here, but an Irish person might buy you a drink in the pub, if they like you. So the kid goes out on the piss on on her birthday and manages to come home without her purse, her bus pass or her provisional license. She did, however have a large plush hat in the shape of a shamrock mutating into three pints of guinness. As her brother said, you've got to get your priorities right.
Where to even start, I'll have to pace myself. Ok, picspam.
Amazon's one-click shopping is a very dangerous activity - like it's virtual money so you may as well spend it, there are no consequences! - but today the result of my rashness was delivered and I'm delighted. Bellocq's Storyville Portaits.
I'm also delighted that it turns out to be the right edition, the one with the essay by Susan Sontag. I had quite a good week for visual reference. Somebody sent me a notice for an exhibition featuring Rotimi Fanikayode's work, with links to several pictures I hadn't seen before. The same email sent me off looking for stuff by Lyle Ashton Harris. And surfing around brought me here. I think I like this picture a lot.
Rotimi Fanikayode. These pictures speak to me. He was my age, though he died when he was 34. I would like to have met him. This is what the exhibition blurb says:
"He wrote: 'On three accounts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for.' Through the medium of photography, and in collaboration with his partner Alex Hirst, Fani-Kayodé produced a body of work in the 1980s that was not only aesthetically seductive but also seminal in terms of his portrayal of black homosexuality. His images are visually and conceptually provocative in their exploration of eroticism, homophobia, traditions and conventions, and ultimately mortality."
Such a lot of ambiguity in these pictures. And that bit about the collaboration, that's something of a can of worms, for many reasons...and basically where the gay community tends to see the artist's family in terms of homophobia - and I believe there may still be conflict and bad feeling about the estate - they're kind of really not acknowledging the strength and complexity of the African concept of family. What do I know, it's just my opinion. But I don't think much of groupthink in any of it's manifestations.
Denis Carney and Essex Hemphill in Brixton
Under the Surplice
Not work safe:Milk Drinker, 1983
I tend not to like glossy pictures, or super-handsome people (with ONE exception.) I tend to find cheesecake male erotica as distasteful as pin-up girlie pictures. Especially those pictures where the model's head is cropped off and the body's sort of super-buffed. *shudders* But I love these because of the textures, the wrinkles, the hints at the untidy compromises of living. I see the guy drinking milk and I wonder what Fanikayode's relationship with Alex Hirst, a white guy, was like; how he felt about his relationship with England, with the States; how he felt about his relationship with his own family and whether that was conflated into the problematic mish-mash of expectation, performance, deep-down needed nurturing and belonging he must have felt with all those entities, along with estrangement; and there is a picture of a man standing there exposed, straining, slaking a desperate thirst, wreathed and decorated with evidence of his need. I like the fact he's got an untidy scrub of hair on his body, and that he has the stringy muscles of a person who does real work, as opposed to the cosmetic muscles of a person who works out. I like the fact that I saw these for the first time last week, and the textures and the frankness and whiff of humanity of the Storyville Portraits, today's purchase, instantly reminded me of them. So, full circle.