STOLEN APPLES - Arts Blog & Bog

Jaime Gil de Biedma: To Gabriel Ferrater

2013-03-16T03:08:00.002-07:00

A GABRIEL FERRATER

Dedicándole un ejemplar de Moralidades

More than nine years ago, —a hell of a lot of time—
In an old country manor while the lingering chime
Of rain was heard outdoors, by the fire we sat.
Lazy, well fed, indoorish, each other’s best liked cat,
For both of us were in very high spirits,—
Chinchón if I remember— we kept playing old lyrics
Sung by Judy Garland, thought the world was a friend
And talked ourselves to drunkenness for hours without end.
Let them now do the talking, those sons-of-what-we-spoke,
— Your poems and my poems, our old own private joke!

Vladimir Nabokov: Breitensträter – Paolino, an essay (December 1925; with actual photographs of the two boxers)

2013-03-13T11:22:00.001-07:00

Breitensträter – Paolino

Everything in the world plays: the blood in the veins of a lover, the sun on the water, and the musician on a violin.

Everything good in life – love, nature, the arts, and family jests – is play. And when we actually play – whether we’re knocking down a tin battalion with a pea or drawing together across the net barrier in tennis – what we feel in our very muscles is the essence of that play which possesses the marvellous juggler, who tosses from hand to hand in an unbroken sparkling parabola . . . the planets of the universe.

Man has played as long as he has existed. There are ages – holidays of humanity – when man is especially impassioned by games. So it was in bygone Greece, in bygone Rome, and so it is in our own Europe of today.

A child knows, that in order to play to his heart’s content, he must play with someone else or at least imagine somebody, he must become two. Or to put it another way, there is no play without competition; which is why some kinds of play, such as those gymnastic festivals in which fifty-odd men or women, moving as one, form into patterns across a parade ground, seem insipid, since they lack the very thing which gives play its entrancing, exciting charm. Which is why the Communist system is so ridiculous, since it condemns everyone to doing the same tedious exercises, not allowing that anyone be fitter than his neighbour.

Not for nothing did Nelson say that the Battle of Trafalgar was won on the tennis and football fields of Eton. [Sic.] And the Germans too have lately realized that the goose step can only take you so far, and that boxing, football and hockey are more valuable than military or any other exercises. Boxing is especially valuable, and there are few spectacles as healthy and beautiful as a boxing-match. An uptight gentleman, who does not like washing naked in the mornings, and who is inclined to express surprise that a poet who works for two and a half connoisseurs earns less money than a boxer who works for a crowd of many thousands (a crowd which, by the way, has nothing in common with the so-called masses and is possessed of a rapture far purer, more sincere, and goodnatured than that of the crowd welcoming home its national heroes), this same uptight gentleman will feel indignation and disgust towards a fist fight, just as in Rome, most likely, there were people who frowned at the sight of two huge gladiators demonstrating the very best in the gladiatorial arts, slugging each other with such iron blows that not even the “pollice verso”¹ was necessary, they’d finish each other off anyway.

Breitensträter

What matters, of course, is not really that a heavyweight boxer is a little bloodied after two or three rounds, or that the white vest of the referee looks as though red ink has leaked out of a fountain pen. What matters is, first, the beauty of the art of boxing, the perfect accuracy of the lunges, the side jumps, the dives, the range of blows – hooks, straights, swipes – and, secondly, the wonderful manly excitement which this art arouses. Many writers have depicted the beauty, the romance of boxing. Bernard Shaw has a whole novel about a professional boxer. Jack London, Conan Doyle, and Kuprin have all written on the subject. Byron – the darling of all Europe, except fastidious England – was a great friend of boxers and loved to watch their fights, just as Pushkin and Lermontov would have loved it, had they lived in England. Portraits have survived of the professional boxers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The famous Figg, Corbett, Cribb fought without gloves and fought masterfully, honourably, tenaciously – more often to the point of utter exhaustion, than to a knockout.

Nor was it commonplace humanity that led to the appearance of boxing gloves in the middle of the last century, but rather a desire to protect the fist, which could otherwise be too easily broken in the course of a two-hour bout. All of them have long since stepped down from the ring – those great, legendary pugilists – having won their supporters quite a few pounds sterling. They lived to a ripe old age, and in the evenings, in taverns, over a pint of beer, they would talk with pride of their former exploits. They were followed by others, the teachers of today’s boxers: the massive Sullivan, Burns, who looked like a London dandy, and Jeffries, the son of a blacksmith – “the white hope”, as they called him, a hint that black boxers were already becoming unbeatable.

Those who had hoped that Jeffries would beat the black giant Johnson lost their money. The two races followed this fight closely. But despite the furious enmity between the white and black camps (the event took place in America twenty-five or more years ago), not a single boxing rule was broken, even though Jeffries, with every one of his blows, kept repeating: “Yellow dog . . . yellow dog”. Finally, after a long, splendid fight, the enormous negro struck his opponent so hard that Jeffries flew backwards from the platform, over the encircling rope and, as they say, “fell asleep”.

Churchman Boxing Personalities, Card 36: Paolino Uzcudun

Poor Johnson! He rested on his laurels, gained weight, took a beautiful white woman for his wife, began appearing as a living advertisement on the music-hall stage, and then, I think, ended up in jail, and only briefly did his black face and white smile flash out from the illustrated magazines.

I have had the luck to see Smith, and Bombardier Wells, and Goddard, and Wilde, and Beckett, and the miraculous Carpentier who beat Beckett. That fight, which paid the winner five thousand, and the runner-up three thousand pounds, lasted exactly fifty-six seconds, so that someone who had paid twenty pounds for their seat had only enough time to light a cigarette, and when he looked up at the ring, Beckett was already lying on the boards in the touching pose of a sleeping baby.

I hasten to add that in such a blow, which brings on an instantaneous black-out, there is nothing grave. On the contrary. I have experienced it myself, and can attest that such a sleep is rather pleasant. At the very tip of the chin there is a bone, like the one in the elbow which in English is called “the funny-bone”, and in German “the musical-bone”. As everyone knows, if you hit the corner of your elbow hard, you immediately feel a faint ringing in the hand and a momentary deadening of the muscles. The same thing happens if you are hit very hard on the end of the chin.

There is no pain. Only the peal of a faint ringing and then an instantaneous pleasant sleep (the so-called “knock-out”), lasting anywhere between ten seconds and half an hour. A blow to the solar plexus is less pleasant, but a good boxer knows just how to tense his abdomen, so that he won’t flinch even if a horse kicks him in the pit of the stomach.
I saw Carpentier this week, on Tuesday evening. He was there as trainer to the heavyweight Paolino, and it was as though the spectators did not immediately recognize the recent world champion in that modest, fair-haired young man. His glory is now dimmed. They say that after his fearsome fight with Dempsey he sobbed like a woman.

Breitensträter

Paolino appeared in the ring first and, as is customary, sat down on a stool in the corner. Huge, with a dark square head, and wearing a splendid robe down to his heels, the Basque resembled an Eastern idol. Only the ring itself was lit, and in the white cone of light falling from above, the platform looked like silver. This silvered cube, which was in the middle of a gigantic dark oval, where the dense rows of countless human faces called to mind kernels of ripe corn strewn across a black background, – this silvered cube seemed lit up not by electricity, but by the concentrated force of all the gazes fixed upon it out of the darkness. And when the Basque’s opponent, the German champion Breitensträter, stepped onto the platform, fair-haired, in a mouse-coloured robe (and for some reason in grey trousers, which he immediately proceeded to pull off), the enormous darkness trembled with a joyful roar. The roar did not die down when the photographers, jumping onto the edge of the platform, pointed their “monkey-boxes” (as my German neighbour called them) at the fighters, at the referee, at the seconds, nor when the champions “pulled on their boxing gloves” (which makes me recall “the young oprichnik and the valiant merchant”²). And when both opponents threw off their robes (and not “velvet furs”) from their mighty shoulders and rushed towards each other in the white shimmer of the ring, a light moan passed through the dark abyss, through the rows of corn-kernels and the misty upper tiers – for everyone saw that the Basque was much bigger and bulkier than their favourite.

Breitensträter was first to attack, and the moan turned into an ecstatic rumble. But Paolino, hunching his head into his shoulders, answered him with short hooks from below, and from almost the first minute the German’s face glistened with blood.

With every blow that Breitensträter took, my neighbour sucked in his breath with a whistle, as if he himself were taking the blows – and all the darkness, all the tiers croaked a kind of enormous supernatural croak. By the third round it became noticeable that the German had weakened, that his punches could not push off the hunched orange mountain that was moving towards him. But he fought with extraordinary courage, trying to make up, with his speed, for the fifteen pounds by which the Basque outweighed him.

Around the luminous cube, across which the boxers danced with the referee twisting between them, the black darkness froze, and in the silence the glove, shiny with sweat, slapped juicily against the live naked body. At the beginning of the seventh round Breitensträter fell, but after five-six seconds, jerking forwards like a horse on black ice, he stood up. The Basque fell upon him immediately, knowing that in such situations you must act swiftly and decisively, and put all your strength into your punches, for sometimes a blow that is stinging but not firm will, instead of finishing off your weakened opponent, enliven him, wake him up. The German bent away, clinging onto the Basque, trying to win time, to make it to the end of the round. And when once more he went down, the gong did in fact save him: on the eighth second, he got up with great difficulty, and lugged himself to his stool. By some kind of miracle he had survived the eighth round, to mounting peals of applause. But at the start of the ninth round Paolino, striking him beneath the jaw, hit him just as he had wanted. Breitensträter collapsed. In frenzy and discord, the darkness roared. Breitensträter lay twisted like a pretzel. The referee counted down the fateful seconds. Still he lay.

And so the match came to an end, and when we had all emptied out onto the street, into the frosty blueness of a snowy night, I was certain, that in the flabbiest family man, in the humblest youth, in the souls and muscles of all the crowd, which tomorrow, early in the morning, would disperse to offices, to shops, to factories, there existed one and the same beautiful feeling, for the sake of which it was worth bringing together two great boxers, – a feeling of dauntless, flaring strength, vitality, manliness, inspired by the play in boxing. And this playful feeling is, perhaps, more valuable and purer than many so-called “elevated pleasures”.

Translated by Anastasia Tolstoy and Thomas Karshan.

Paintings at The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

2013-03-12T13:05:00.001-07:00

Henry Smith (c.1775/1778–1840) by unknown artist

Oil on canvas, 39.5 x 31.5 cm

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Allfaire Benevolent Society

by Brian Percy Mann

Date painted: 1863

Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 100 cm

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

First Degree Tracing Board

by unknown artist

Oil on canvas, 90 x 44.5 cm

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

HRH Edward (b.1935), Duke of Kent

by Derek Hill

Date painted: 1975

Oil on canvas, 149.5 x 120 cm

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Edward (b.1935), Duke of Kent, is the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, the governing body of Freemasonry in England and Wales. He has held the position since 1967.

Right Honourable Henry George Charles (1882–1947), 6th Earl Harewood

by William Nicholson

Date painted: 1937

Oil on canvas, 239 x 147.5 cm

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

HRH George (1762–1830), Prince of Wales, KG

by Barnett Samuel Marks

Date painted: 1885

Oil on canvas, 238.5 x 147.5 cm

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Brother Robert Burns (1759–1796)

by unknown artist

Oil on canvas, 68 x 55 cm

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

George Washington (1732–1799), President of the United States of America

by Robert Gordon Hardie

Date painted: 1900

Oil on canvas, 239 x 148 cm (estimated)

Collection: The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

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This location is open to the public

Freemasons' Hall 60 Great Queen Street, London, Greater London, England, WC2B 5AZ

Contact details

Tel: 0207 395 9257

Email: libmus@ugle.org.uk

Website: http://www.freemasonry.london.museum/

This location is part of The Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Charles Mingus - Live in Belgium, Norway and Sweden (1964; 120Min.)

2013-03-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

Belgium

Intro

So Long Eric

Peggy's Blue Skylight

Meditations On Integration

Norway

So Long Eric
Orange Was The Colour Of Her Dress,Then Blue Silk

Parkeriana

Take The "A" Train

Sweden

So Long Eric

Meditations On Integration

Magazine 391 - No. 19 (Edited by Francis Picabia; Paris, Oct. 1924)

2013-03-12T11:01:00.001-07:00

391 was the magazine which Picabia edited to diffuse his poems, notes, and drawings.

The Velvet Undergound: Live at the Boston Tea Party (1969; 1h30m)

2013-03-10T04:01:00.003-07:00

Bootleg tape made in 1969 at the Boston Tea Party

1. Heroin (0:00) 2. Move Right In (8:26) 3. I'm Set Free (13:12) 4. Run Run Run (17:49) 5. I'm Waiting For The Man (25:39) 6. What Goes On (34:35) 7. I Can't Stand It (39:05) 8. Candy Says (45:23) 9. Beginning To See The Light (50:10) 10. White Light/White Heat (56:00) 11. Pale Blue Eyes (61:42) 12. Sister Ray (68:10)

Thelonious Monk Quartet in Denmark (1966; 27min.)

2013-03-08T10:29:00.002-08:00

Lulu's Back In Town (Warren & Dubin) 0:00 Don't Blame Me (McHugh & Fields) 17:44 Epistrophy (Monk) 23:11

Thelonious Monk - Piano Charlie Rouse - Tenor Sax Larry Gales - Bass Ben Riley - Drums

Charles Mingus: Jazz Pour Tous In Belgium (1964; 32min.)

2013-03-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

So Long Eric (Mingus) 0:30 Peggy's Blue Skylight (Mingus) 5:19 Meditations On Integration (Mingus) 11:09

Charles Mingus - Bass Jaki Byard - Piano Eric Dolphy - Alto Sax, Flute & Bass Clarinet Clifford Jordan - Tenor Sax Dannie Richmond - Drums

William Burroughs’s letter to Truman Capote (1970)

2013-03-07T07:33:00.001-08:00

July 23, 1970

My Dear Mr. Truman Capote,

This is not a fan letter in the usual sense — unless you refer to ceiling fans in Panama. Rather call this a letter from “the reader” — vital statistics are not in capital letters — a selection from marginal notes on material submitted as all “writing” is submitted to this department. I have followed your literary development from its inception, conducting on behalf of the department I represent a series of inquiries as exhaustive as your own recent investigations in the sun flower state. I have interviewed all your characters beginning with Miriam — in her case withholding sugar over a period of several days proved sufficient inducement to render her quite communicative — I prefer to have all the facts at my disposal before taking action. Needless to say, I have read the recent exchange of genialities between Mr Kenneth Tynan and yourself. I feel that he was much too lenient. Your recent appearance before a senatorial committee on which occasion you spoke in favor of continuing the present police practice of extracting confessions by denying the accused the right of consulting consul prior to making a statement also came to my attention. In effect you were speaking in approval of standard police procedure: obtaining statements through brutality and duress, whereas an intelligent police force would rely on evidence rather than enforced confessions. You further cheapened yourself by reiterating the banal argument that echoes through letters to the editor whenever the issue of capital punishment is raised: “Why all this sympathy for the murderer and none for his innocent victims?” I have in line of duty read all your published work. The early work was in some respects promising — I refer particularly to the short stories. You were granted an area for psychic development. It seemed for a while as if you would make good use of this grant. You choose instead to sell out a talent that is not yours to sell. You have written a dull unreadable book which could have been written by any staff writer on the New Yorker — (an undercover reactionary periodical dedicated to the interests of vested American wealth). You have placed your services at the disposal of interests who are turning America into a police state by the simple device of deliberately fostering the conditions that give rise to criminality and then demanding increased police powers and the retention of capital punishment to deal with the situation they have created. You have betrayed and sold out the talent that was granted you by this department. That talent is now officially withdrawn. Enjoy your dirty money. You will never have anything else. You will never write another sentence above the level of In Cold Blood. As a writer you are finished. Over and out. Are you tracking me? Know who I am? You know me, Truman. You have known me for a long time. This is my last visit.

A biography of Truman Capote

A biography of William Burroughs

Ezra Pound and Pier Paolo Pasolini reading from Pisan Cantos (1967)

2013-03-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

1967, Ezra Pound and Pier Paolo Pasolini discuss the Italian Neovanguardia literary movement. The Italian filmmaker and poet also reads from Pound's Pisan Cantos.

Ai Weiwei - Never Sorry (Documental entero con subtítulos en español)

2013-02-19T07:35:00.004-08:00

Neue Froth Kunsthalle: Art Show (Sat. February 16th, 5 - 8PM)

2013-02-11T01:54:00.004-08:00

Matisse's Etchings for James Joyce's Ulysses (1935)

2013-02-03T10:26:00.002-08:00

Back in the mid-1930s, Matisse was asked how many etchings he could provide for $5,000. He offered 26 full-page illustrations based on six themes from Homer’s Odyssey.

Andy Warhol & Paul Morrissey: Chelsea Girls (1966; 3h 14min.)

2012-12-29T08:21:00.006-08:00

Andy Warhol & Paul Morrissey: Chelsea Girls

B/W 3 hrs. 15 mins (split screen) (filmed summer 1966) (two segments scripted by Ronald Tavel)

Marie Menken/Mary Woronov/Gerard Malanga/ International Velvet (Susan Bottomly)/Ingrid Superstar/ Angelina "Pepper" Davis/Ondine (Bob Olivio)/ Albert Rene Ricard/Ronna Page/Ed Hood/Patrick Fleming/ Mario Montez/Eric Emerson/Ari Boulogne/Brigid Berlin

Music: The Velvet Underground/Lighting: Paul Morrissey & Billy Name Camera: Andy Warhol/Executive Producer: Paul Morrissey Producer: Andy Warhol/Video Version: Paul Morrissey

Leon Trotsky: My Life (1930; on-line version and PDF)

2012-12-28T08:40:00.001-08:00

My Life (1930)

Contents:

Foreword

Preface to the Norwegian Edition (1935)

I. Yanovka

II. Our Neighbors and My First School

III. Odessa: My Family and My School

IV. Books and Early Conflicts

V. Country and Town

VI. The Break

VII. My First Revolutionary Organization

VIII. My First Prisons

IX. My First Exile

X. My First Escpape

XI. An Immigrant for the First Time

XII. The Party Congress and the Split

XIII. The Return to Russia

XIV. The Year 1905

XV. Trial, Exile, Escape
XVI. My Second Foreign Exile: German Socialism
XVII. Preparing for a New Revolution
XVIII. The Beginning or The War
XIX. Paris and Zimmerwald
XX. My Expulsion From France
XXI. Through Spain

XXII. New York
XXIII. In A Concentration Camp
XXIV. In Petrograd
XXV. Concerning Slanderers
XXVI. From July to October
XXVII. The Deciding Night
XXVIII. “Trotskyism"in 1917

XXIX. In Power
XXX. In Moscow
XXXI. Negotiations at Brest-Litovsk
XXXII. Peace
XXXIII. A Month at Sviyazhsh
XXXIV. The Train
XXXV. The Defense of Petrograd
XXXVI. The Military Opposition
XXXVII. Disagreements Over War Strategy

XXXVIII. The Transition to the New Economic Policy,
and My Relations With Lenin
XXXIX. Lenin’s Illness
XL. The Conspiracy of the Epigones
XLI. Lenin’s Death and the Shift of Power
XLII. The Last Period of Struggle Within the Party
XLIII. The Exile
XLIV. The Deportation
XLV. The Planet Without a Visa

Download PDF of My Life.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: Radiant Child (Tamra Davis, 2010; full documentary, 1h 30min.)

2012-12-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is a 2010 documentary film about Jean-Michel Basquiat. It is based on footage which director Tamra Davis took when they met in 1985. Wikipedia

Release date: January 2010 (initial release)

Director: Tamra Davis

Running time: 93 minutes

Screenplay: Tamra Davis

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (animated film by Piotr Dumala, 30min.)

2012-12-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

Endnotes: David Foster Wallace (BBC Documentary)

2012-12-18T09:29:00.002-08:00

Vladimir Nabokov: On Lolita, life in exile, teaching at university, etc. (American and French TV)

2012-12-12T13:16:00.002-08:00

Vladimir Nabokov discusses his brillant novel "Lolita" on "Close Up", a 1950's CBC program.

OOO

Vladimir Nabokov interviewed by Bernard Pivot on French television, "Apostrophes". The Russian author talks about his life in exile in various nations, his life as a university teacher, his love for butterflies and the novel Lolita. (In French with Spanish subtitles)

Robert J Flaherty: Nanook Of The North (1922; 78min.) & Man of Aran (1934: 73min.)

2012-06-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

Robert J. Flaherty (1884-1951) was an American film-maker and explorer who pioneered the ‘contrived’ documentary, poetic, lyrical and cleverly romanticised accounts of life in the wilds. His main thought was to capture the true, primitive spirit of the far-flung lands to which he travelled, and he was not above taking people backtaking people back to their long-forgotten roots to do it. His documentaries are among the most pictorially beautiful films ever seen. http://www.britmovie.co.uk/directors/Robert-J.-Flaherty

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A Tribute to Roberto Bolaño (The Paris Review)

2012-06-20T03:03:00.000-07:00

"Then Maria came in and I said do you want café or café con leche, and then Bebe came in and I said do you want a café con leche or a mescal. Maria said she wanted a mescal with a fat worm and then Bebe said she wanted a clear tequila, then Maria said Verlaine is a better poet than Rimbaud who turned Verlaine from anapest to pederast, then Luiz came in with a kitchen knife and started cutting his dick right in front of us, but when Maria, who came from Xochimilco and whose father was a tram conductor and whose mother had run a small brothel in Taxco before she saw the light of Jesus and married and had Maria and several other Brats as Maria called them, and Maria said stop cutting that huge magnificent dick of yours or at least don’t do it here in the kitchen, and Luiz said he was going to start a magazine and publish only nuns and queers. Fuck you, I said, fuck you, chinga tu madre!"

Read the whole homage on The Paris Review

Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz: In Mourning and in Rage (1977)

2012-02-06T06:09:00.000-08:00

http://youtu.be/767U43psfn4 (watch 1977 video sample here)

In 1977, Suzanne Lacy started to collaborate with Leslie Labowitz. Their first collaboration, In Mourning and In Rage, considered a model for media intervention through public art, was performed outside the Los Angeles City hall and brought women together to protest again the media's sensationalised coverage of the spread of violence against women. Both artists founded Ariadne, a Social Network, an organisation aimed at bringing together in the arts, media and government women commited to feminism.

Robert W. Paul: "Whaling Afloat and Ashore" (1908)

2012-02-03T10:45:00.000-08:00

Robert W. Paul was born in London in 1869. At the age of 22 he established an instrument-making company, the Robert W. Paul Instrument Company, and three years alter he would be responsible for the design of the first camera ever made in England, the Paul-Acres Camera. His 'Cinematograph Camera No. 1' (1986), would be the first camera to feature reverse-cranking.

Letter from Pollock Snr to 16-year-old Jackson Pollock (1928)

2012-02-03T02:29:00.001-08:00

Dear Son Jack,

Well it has been some time since I received your fine letter. It makes me a bit proud and swelled up to get letters from five young fellows by the names of Charles, Mart, Frank, Sande, and Jack. The letters are so full of life, interest, ambition, and good fellowship. It fills my old heart with gladness and makes me feel ‘Bully.’ Well Jack I was glad to learn how you felt about your summer’s work & your coming school year. The secret of success is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc. In other words to be fully awake to everything about you & the more you learn the more you can appreciate & get a full measure of joy & happiness out of life. I do not think a young fellow should be too serious, he should be full of the Dickens some times to create a balance.

I think your philosophy on religion is okay. I think every person should think, act & believe according to the dictates of his own conscience without too much pressure from the outside. I too think there is a higher power, a supreme force, a governor, a something that controls the universe. What it is & in what form I do not know. It may be that our intellect or spirit exists in space in some other form after it parts from this body. Nothing is impossible and we know that nothing is destroyed, it only changes chemically. We burn up a house and its contents, we change the form but the same elements exist; gas, vapor, ashes. They are all there just the same.

I had a couple of letters from mother the other day, one written the twelfth and one the fifteenth. Am always glad to get letters from your mother, she is a Dear isn’t she? Your mother and I have been a complete failure financially but if the boys turn out to be good and useful citizens nothing else matters and we know this is happening so why not be jubilant?

The weather up here couldn’t be beat, but I suppose it won’t last always, in fact we are looking forward to some snowstorms and an excuse to come back to the orange belt. I do not know anything about what I will do or if I will have a job when I leave here, but I am not worrying about it because it is no use to worry about what you can’t help, or what you can help, moral ‘don’t worry.’

Write and tell me all about your schoolwork and yourself in general. I will appreciate your confidence.

You no doubt had some hard days on your job at Crestline this summer. I can imagine the steep climbing, the hot weather, etc. But those hard things are what builds character and physic. Well Jack I presume by the time you have read all this you will be mentally fatigued and will need to relax. So goodnight, pleasant dreams and God bless you.

Your affectionate Dad

Jackson Pollock and Ruth Kligman taken by Edith Metzger during the weekend of Jackson and Edith's deaths

Letter courtesy of Lapham’s Quarterly:

Suzanne Avalon: The Blue Room (1923)

2012-01-31T10:31:00.000-08:00

Instead of presenting the female body as a lush surface isolated and controlled by the male gaze, Valadon emphasises the weird gestures of figures apparently in control of their own movements. Valadon often placed her women in specific domestic settings, surrounding them with familiar domestic items.