Month: April 2018

Svetlin Vassilev

Illustration by Svetlin Vassilev, Unknown Title

Svetlin Vassilev is a painter and book illustrator born in May of 1971 in Rouse, Bulgaria. He studied in the Intermediate Academy of Arts in Plovdiv and then in the National Academy of Arts in Sophia. He has illustrated more than 20 books, using the mediums of watercolor and acrylic paint.

Since 1997 Vassilev has lived in Greece with his wife Ada and their daughters During this time he has illustrated a wide variety of picture books, some of classical stories and some written by modern authors. In 2004, Svetlin Vassilev received the Special National Award for his illustrations of “Don Quizote”.

Moderat, “Reminder”

Moderat, “Reminder”, 2016, From the Album “III”

Electronic music merger Moderat released its third LP (appropriately titled III) on April 1, 2016. Comprised of “The Devil’s Walk’s Apparat” and “Modeselektor”, Moderat’s album comes two years after their last EP “Bad Kingdom” Remixes.

Dark is the shadow filled with prejudice, no pride
Worn out and welcome, his truth birthing lies
A whisper now speaks what words use to say
Fallen from grace
Luster this way

Burning bridges is not my way

Daliah Ammar

Daliah Ammar, “Castor and Pollux (Do Not Choose Sides)”, 2014, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48 Inches

Daliah Lina Ammar is a nineteen-year-old Palestinian-American artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Daliah’s interest in making paintings stemmed from her fascination in the oil painted ‘self’. The purpose of Daliah’s work is to transcend the notion of the self and the physicality of paint as a means of conveying life. Her works evoke confrontation, yet are intimate and personal.

Luciano Borzone

Luciano Borzone, “Samson in the Temple”, Oil on Canvas, 113.5 x 105 cm, Private Collection

In the 17th century in Genoa there were numberless private clients appreciating the work of Luciano Borzone. Thanks to his lively cultural personality and his many interests – it is widely known he loved fencing, playing the theorbo, and composing verses – the painter established tight relations with the outstanding protagonists of the time, namely Gabriello Chiabrera, Battista Marino and Agostino Mascardi, and with prominent clients from Alberico Cybo Malaspina to Gio. Carlo Doria to Giacomo Lomellini. Therefore Luciano Borzone was an authoritative witness and an active member of the intellectual life of Genoa in the first half of the XVII century, as well as an artist relevant for the development of the local painting school.

Calendar: April 5

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of April

Just Out of the Pool

On April 5, 1895, Oscar Wilde loses the libel case against the Marquess of Queensbury who accuse him of homosexual practices.

Oscar Wilde’s experience with the English legal system was calamitous given the judicial nature of his oppression. In Wilde’s case, there were three trials. The Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde’s young lover Bosie, had accused Wilde of ‘posing as a sodomite’. The Marquess of Queensbury had chased around London confronting Wilde at his home and elsewhere until the writer was driven to fight back. The form that Wilde’s retaliation took was disastrous for Wilde. He initiated Queensberry’s prosecution for criminal libel but abandoned the case when evidence incriminating him made defeat certain. It was a humiliating reversal and led to his own prosecution.

Wilde’s own performance as a witness was sparkling at first, but then not truthful. He should never have started legal proceedings, but was essentially forced into it.  He couldn’t live in peace in England without rebutting Queensberry; but he was unable to rebut him. He was indeed a ‘sodomite’, and pretending to be otherwise to defeat his enemy was bound to end in failure. Trapped whichever way he turned, he chose the path of attack and was floored.

In the second and third trials, Wilde resisted charges of gross indecency. He lied about his relations with rent boys, and pleaded not guilty though he knew that he had broken the law. This led to dishonesty of presentation. The second trial ended inconclusively, the jury unable to decide on Wilde’s guilt; at the third trial the jury showed no such uncertainty and convicted him. Wilde was sentenced to two years’ hard labour, ‘hardly sufficient’, according to the judge, ‘given the seriousness of his crime’.

On his release, he went into exile and wrote nothing else of any real value. During the course of the trials, Wilde was cross-examined about his work. Asked to defend it against a charge of immorality, he insisted that art was without any ethical content. Lying about his intimacy with male prostitutes, he also misrepresented literature’s intimacy with moral discourse. His responses first entertained and then provoked, but did not educate the court; his evidence was not a lesson. It backfired, injuring him rather than the prosecution.

Wilde’s trials point to a certain connection between literary censorship and sexual oppression. Sexuality is a form of self-expression and is thus analogous to literary creativity. One might even say that our sexuality makes artists of us all. As defendant, Wilde was thus doubly, and most inclusively, representative of writers, certainly, but more widely, of everyone whose private life the State attempts to regulate.

Henry James: “Every Human Being Has His Shell”

Photographers Unknown, Every Human Being Has His Shell

“When you have lived as long as I, you will see that every human being has his shell, and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There is no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we are each of us made up of a cluster of appurtenances. What do you call one’s self? Where does it begin? Where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us – and then flows back again. (…) One’s self – for other people – is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s clothes, the books one reads, the company one keeps – these things are all expressive.” 

—Henry James, The Portrait of a Lad

Ikebana Basket

Ikebana Basket (Gourd Shaped), Late Meiji Period, Split Bamboo with Tied Bamboo Rope, Japan

The Meiji Period of Japan extended from Ocotber 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. This period corresponded to the reign of Emperor Meiji after 1868 to his death. It was the first half of the Empire of Japan during which Japanese society moved from being an isolated feudal society to its modern form, affecting social structure, politics, economy and foreign relations.

Ikeban is a the Japanese art of floral arrangement. Sculptural art baskets have been used since the inception of ikebana over 500 years ago to be one of the primary ikebana containers for the craft’s practitioners.  They range from randomly woven nested baskets to more formal, tailored pieces.

Calendar: April 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of April

Vik in Soapsuds

April 4, 1932 was the birthdate of the American actor and singer, Anthony Perkins.

Anthony Perkins was born in New York City, the son of stage and film actor Osgood Perkins and his wife Janet Esslstyn.  He was a descendant of a Mayflower passenger John Howland, who was first an indentured servant and later personal secretary to Governor John Carver of the Plymouth Colony.

Anthony Perkins received a lot of attention for his role in the film “Friendly Persuasion”, playing the son of Gary Cooper under the direction of William Wyler. The film was very successful and he received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year-Actor and an Academy Award nomination. A life member of the Actors Studio, Perkins also acted in theater. In 1958 he was nominated for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in “Look Homeward, Angel” on Broadway. He played the role of Eugene Gant.

Perkins in youth had a boyish, earnest quality, reminiscent of the young James Stewart, which Alfred Hitchcock exploited and subverted when the actor starred as Norman Bates in the 1960 film “Psycho”. The film was a critical and commercial success, and gained Perkins international fame for his performance as the homicidal owner of the Bates Motel. His performance gained him the Best Actor Award from the International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers. The role and its multiple sequels affected the remainder of his career.

“Not many people know this, but I was in New York rehearsing for a play when the shower scene was filmed in Hollywood. It is rather strange to go through life being identified with this sequence knowing that it was my double. Actually, the first time I saw Psycho and that shower scene was at the studio. I found it really scary. I was just as frightened as anybody else. Working on the picture, though, was one of the happiest filming experiences of my life. We had fun making it – never realizing the impact it would have.” – Anthony Perkins on playing Norman Bates in “Psycho”