Election Fever

This one is for my English Readers, many of whom have probably had enough of the month-long electioneering that finished yesterday in advance of today's voting.

Despite being an ex-pat, I do like to follow news from England, and the UK and for political information Guy Fawkes's blog is excellent and often very amusing.

Having a look today I found a couple of videos that I would like to share.

First some mayhem on an underground train - apparently with Guido himself in attendance:

And next some rather powerful Conservative propaganda...



The pundits are predicting a hung parliament, so I suppose very soon there'll be the whole thing to be gone through again!

Best of luck, and of course,

Until the next time

People Using Telephones

Hello again.

Today I found a truly bizarre, but fascinating item in YouTube: People Using Telephones:



It comes from the Huntley Film Archive, is 28 minutes in length, surely a record for YouTube, and is the worst piece of editing I have ever come across - by a large margin.

Nevertheless I found it irresistible and I hope that you do too.

After I got about halfway through I found myself regarding the telephone, an instrument usually taken for granted, in a detached way. An interesting experience indeed.

Until the next time.

"Malcolm the Red"

Apparently the T-shirt reads "Cash from Chaos"

Malcolm McLaren, described once upon a time as "pop Svengali" has died, apparently from a rare cancer.

There is a good article in the "Telegraph" written by Mick Brown, here which gives a pretty good outline of the man's achievements, amongst which was the organising in May 1968, of a "sit-in" at Croydon Art College.

And this is the reason I chose to write about Mr McLaren's demise: I was actually at the sit-in despite not being an art student. At the time I was in that most dingy of occupations: I was an accounts clerk. Coming home one day from the office, I met a bloke on the bus who had a collection of Elmore James records under his arm. Being a guitarist myself I got into conversation with him and ended up finding myself invited to join in a jam session at the college. I stayed the whole weekend and had a wonderful time: after hours of blues, massive fry-ups in the middle of the night, and on Sunday morning an hilarious reading of some play, the name of which has escaped me. Monday morning was not so good after all the excitement.

There was a coda though: another central character at the sit-in was one Robin Scott (slogan "education, not indoctrination"). A year later I bumped into him on the steps leading into the Roundhouse, and the result was we (me Robin and his girlfriend) spent a week in Cornwall busking and drawing and hanging out... Another ten years passed and Robin made his fortune as the face of M, selling over five million records - "Pop Muzik"

Somehow all the success eluded me, but I can say that at least I rubbed shoulders and I suppose that's how things were meant to work in the 1960s!

The "Telegraph" article reports that McLaren's website reads "Malcolm will be back."

I doubt it!

Until the next time.

Screen Toaster

"What?" you might ask!

Here's a very good idea which I have discovered courtesy of CM's excellent blog, Jour Après Jour

Screen Toaster ("Toast Your Screen") describes itself as "a free online screen recorder" And indeed it does what it says on the tin. Go to Screen Toaster's home page and you will find a few demonstration examples. You can record anything that's happening on your screen, which must have many, many applications.

Once again CM has come up with the goods. Keep an eye on her blog - you'll need to be able to read French of course.

Until the next time

Sylvia von Harden and Otto Dix

Sorry, forgotten the source, but it's everywhere on the 'net!

This famous portrait of journalist Sylvia von Harden is amongst the best-known work of the German expressionist Otto Dix; there are many reproductions of the painting on numerous websites.

Von Harden herself related the background to the portrait following Dix spotting her in the street:

'I must paint you! I simply must! ... You are representative of an entire epoch!'
'So, you want to paint my lacklustre eyes, my ornate ears, my long nose, my thin lips; you want to paint my long hands, my short legs, my big feet—things which can only scare people off and delight no-one?'
'You have brilliantly characterized yourself, and all that will lead to a portrait representative of an epoch concerned not with the outward beauty of a woman but rather with her psychological condition.'

I have always loved the picture every since a former girlfriend introduced me to Dix's work at an exhibition at the Tate Gallery; to me it is utterly redolent of Weimar Berlin rather as Dix observed himself.

Here's a photograph of her:

Sylvia von Harden
Source

There are parodies too.

First this one. I do not know who painted it since despite the fact I have lived in France for five years, I cannot understand fully the long French text that accompanies the picture on this site. If someone could explain what it's all about, I'd be most grateful. If I were putting up a picture it would say underneath: Portrait of Madame Helga Dubuc by XXXXX!

Edit: I revisited the source of the picture above, and it seems to me from attempting to plough through the gross verbiage that accompanies the image, that the portrait was made but Mme Dubuc's husband. I might be wrong of course, but then there's nobody like the French for dramatising the dramatic!

Whilst the above portrait was obviously inspired by Dix's, the next one is a straightforward parody. I love the pout!

From "Forbidden Fruit" by Larry Fink
Source

Finally I really cannot say much about this one!

Source

Interesting to notice the positions of the hands.

Talking of hands, I'll finish with another favourite portrait: Edith Sitwell painted by Vorticist Wyndham Lewis. According to a biography of Sitwell I read, the sittings were cancelled after the painter developed a romantic interest in his subject and so the hands never appeared!

Until the next time.

A Quick Question

Please can someone point me to a "classical" music radio station, available on-line, that does NOT play bloody opera every Saturday evening?

Thanks in advance, and,

Until the next time