Tattooed Critic

Art, Literature, History.

[tattooedcritic]

“Look at this one. What do you see? A hanging vale suspended between two columns? An opening that beckons or denies entrance? A blind window? For me it’s a gateway. If some of those portholes are blocked, others open into the unknown space that Rothko talked about – the place only art can take us, far away from the buzzing static of the moment and towards the music of the spheres. Everything Rothko did to these paintings: the column like forms suggested rather than drawn; the loose staining were all meant to make the surface ambiguous, porous, perhaps softly penetrable; a space that might be where we came from or where we will end up. They’re meant not to keep us out but to embrace, from an artist whose highest compliment was to call you a “human being.” Can anything be less cool than this room in the heart of Tate Modern? Further away from the razzle-dazzle of contemporary art, the frantic hustle of now. This isn’t about now this is about forever. This is a place where you come to sit in the low light and feel the eons rolling by. To be taken towards the gates that open onto the thresholds of eternity, to feel the poignancy of our comings and our goings, our entrances and our exists, our births and our deaths – womb, tomb, and everything between. Can art ever be more complete, more powerful? I don’t think so.” — Simon Sharma, The Power of Art, BBC, 2006. Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals, 1959. Tate Modern.

[tattooedcritic]

Saul Bellow, 'Seize the Day,' 1956. • "What makes all of this so remarkable is not merely Bellow's eye and ear for vital detail. Nor is it his talent for exposing the innards of character in a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase. It is Bellow's vision, his uncanny ability to seize the moment and to see beyond it." •

[tattooedcritic]

Charles Sheeler, American Landscape, 1930, MoMA. While the title 'American Landscape' evokes connotations of a rural scene, Sheeler's subject is the American Ford Company in Michigan, Detroit. Sheeler photographed the site extensively in 1927 and returned to examine the plant in this painting. Sheerler's painting focuses on the transformation and redefinition of what the American Landscape was during America's industrial expansion and process of innovation. The industrial innovation that took place demonstrated how humanity can easily reshape and redefine landscapes as well as the restructuring of the workforce—this could be what Sheeler was hinting at with the absences of any worker on the site. In 1932, five workers were killed during the 'Ford Hunger Marches.' Furthermore, Sheeler precision observes how humanity can restructure landscapes with their own reflection in mind: the river reflecting the site while the smoke blends in with the clouds. #charlessheeler #americanlandscape

[tattooedcritic]

Jasper Johns, 'White Flag,' 1955. (Encaustic, oil, newsprint, and charcoal on canvas, 198.9 x 306.7 cm.) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. #JasperJohns #WhiteFlag #AmericanArt

[tattooedcritic]

📷⛰#threesisters #bluemountains #katoomba #echopoint (at Echo Point Lookout - Three Sisters)

[thequotejournals]

I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away.

Vincent van Gogh, Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (via thequotejournals)

[tattooedcritic]

The Mitchell Library Reading Room is one of the most beautiful reading rooms in the world. The high ceilings provide the room with a magnificent natural light-filled space. The walls are lined with three glorious floors of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stocked with thousands of books. Several stained glass windows impose themselves on the room, and break up the bookshelves on the third floor. The Caxton Window looks down upon the room from the southern wall, while The Sydney Gazette window, celebrating Australia’s first newspaper, first printed in March 1803, looks down from the west wall. The room is pleasingly open, boasting original chairs and tables. It is always a pleasure to study or to read in this beautiful room. The Mitchell Library was named after David Scott Mitchell (1836-1907). Mitchell began collecting books seriously in the 1860s, starting with English literature and in 1866, he had won some repute for scholarship in English literature. By the 1880s, Mitchell turned almost solely to collecting everything on Australia and its surroundings – Australia, the Pacific, the East Indies, and Antarctica. By 1900, Mitchell was the owner of around 10,000 volumes. “The main thing is to get the records. We are too near to our past to view it properly but in a few generations the convict past will take its proper place in the perspective and our historians will pay better attention to the pioneers.” Reserved and modest, he was a good conversationalist with a touch of wit and humour. He remained unmarried and lived meagerly and unostentatiously in a comfortless house, declining honours and any infringement on his privacy. Mitchell died in 1907, bequeathing his collection to the Public Library of NSW – now the State Library of NSW – with an endowment of £70,000 to fund collection additions. Adhearing to the conditions set forth by Mitchell, the building to house the collection was named the Mitchell Library. When it opened on 8 March 1910 it had some 60,000 volumes and much other material. It remains unrivalled in its field and is one of the great national collections in the world. #statelibraryNSW #mitchelllibrary #mitchellreadingroom #davidscottmitchell (at The State Library of New South Wales)

[tattooedcritic]

A Room With A View. #sunsets

[tattooedcritic]

Horizons. #sunrise (at Penrith, New South Wales)

[tattooedcritic]

#artgallerysa (at Art Gallery of South Australia)

[tattooedcritic]

#artgallerysa (at Art Gallery of South Australia)

[tattooedcritic]

Sir Walter Watson Hughes, Adelaide University. #adelaide (at Adelaide, South Australia)

[tattooedcritic]

Sir Walter Watson Hughes #adelaide (at Adelaide, South Australia)

[tattooedcritic]

"We finish where modernism began at the foot of the Eiffel tower, and perhaps the etiquette now demands that I should try and prognosticate about what is coming next. But I won't because I don't know. History teaches us one thing: that crisis, when they fish out from the crystal ball and start trying to guess what the future will be, are almost invariably wrong. I don't think there's ever been such a rush towards insignificance in the name of historical future as we've seen in the last fifteen years. The famous radicalism of sixties and seventies art turns out to have been a kind of dumbshow, a charade of toughness, a way of avoiding feeling. And I don't think we are ever again obliged to look at a plywood box, or a row of bricks on the floor, or a video tape of some twit from the University of Central Paranoia sticking pins in himself and think: 'this is the real thing, this is the necessary art of out time, this needs respect.' Because it isn't, and it doesn't, and nobody cares. The fact is that everyone except a child can make such things because children have the kind of direct, sensuous, and complex relationship with the world around them that modernism, in its declining years, was trying to deny. That relationship is the lost paradise that art wants to give back to us - not as children, but as adults. It's also what the modern and the old have in common: Pollock with Turner, Matise with Rubens, or Braque with Poussin. And the basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling. And then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way to pass from feeling to meaning. It is not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world. This task is literally endless; and so, although we don't have an avant-garde anymore, we're always going to have art." — Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New, BBC 1980. #modernism #shockofthenew #RobertHughes (at The Eiffel Tower)

[tattooedcritic]

@statelibrarysa #statelibrarysa (at State Library of South Australia)

[bookriot]

Are you familiar with bullet journals? It’s a style of journaling that organizes a journal into a hybrid diary/planner/to-do list for paper and pen lovers, but gives users flexibility to personalize according to their needs. I was intrigued when I first learned about bullet journaling (#bujo), and I even started one myself. I quickly went rogue on the organizational system (so many rules!), but I enjoy certain aspects of how it’s put together—modules, page-numbering, and an index to keep track of it all.

It also appealed to my compulsion to make bookish lists. At any given time, I have about fifteen lists of books—to-read, to-buy, to-write about, etc.–fluttering around my house and stuffed into notebooks. I also keep a small journal of all of the books I’ve read since 2010 (it’s almost full!) with nothing more than title and date finished, but I don’t love how my lists aren’t all in one place. Surely there was a way to apply the #bujo organization magic on this madness! So I went looking for inspiration:

Keep to-read lists, with little handy boxes to shade in when you’ve read a book so you can track your progress at a glance! Perfect for working your way through a set list.

http://bookriot.com/2016/08/11/cool-bookish-ideas-bullet-journal/

[permanentluxury]

Half way there, from Saturday @greatlakestattoo (at Great Lakes Tattoo)