Month: May 2018

Hermann Hesse: “A Flowing River of Faces. . .Which All Came and Disappeared”

Photographers Unknown, The Faces of Man: Photo Set Four

“He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha.”

-Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Suspension in Time

Photographer Unknown, (Suspension in Time)

“From the chronology of our time perception we keep garnering fetching and enticing instants of our life story, still abounding in our mind. As they emerge like lucky sparkles of our unyielding awareness, we hold them dearly in the treasury of our remembrance. (“Just for a moment”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

Seiganto-ji & Nachi Falls in Wakayama, Japan

Photographer Unknown, Seiganto-ji & Nachi Falls in Wakayama, Japan

The Seiganto-ji Temple is the oldest structure in Wakayama. It is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site as part of “Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.” Though the year of is establishment is not recorded, there are signs that nature worship has been carried out since ancient times in the area and a legend that the temple was founded during the 4th century.

From the middle period to the early modern period, the temple along with the adjacent Kumano Nachi Taisha Grand Shrine flourished as Shugenjo, a place for ascetic training.

The main highlight is a three-story red pagoda reconstructed in 1972. Its main hall, built in 1590, is designated as Important Cultural Property of Japan and exhibits a waniguchi drum, the largest Buddhist altar drum of its kind in Japan. The enshrined principal image, Nyoirin Kannon, Bodhisattva of Compassion, is said to grant any wish, including wishes for wealth, wisdom, and power.The public may view Nyoirin Kannon only on one day once a year, on August 17th.

This 3-meter high wooden image that was carved by Shobutsu Shonin during the reign of Empress Suiko which was from 592 – 628 AD. Inside the chest cavity, there is a small golden image of Kannon said to be just “1 sun 9 bu”, about six centimeters tall. This tiny golden Kannon was said to be the personal image that Ragyō the hermit enshrined in his hermitage in the 4th century. However, it is more likely to have been the personal image belonging to Empress Suiko.

Sonia Gechtoff

Sonia Gechtoff, Top Image: “Children of Frejus”, 1959, Oil on Canvas, Denver Art Museum    Bottom Image: “Tropics”, 1983, Color Etching with Embrossing, Edition of 50, Antique-White German Etchng Wove

Sonia Gechtoff was a prominent Abstract Expressionist painter who experimented with styles and materials throughout her life. She was born in 1926 in Philadelphia, into a family with art it its genes. Her father was a painter and her mother was a gallery owner. Gechtoff received her BA in Fine Arts from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in 1950. At that time she abandoned figurative art in favor of the abstract.

Sonia Gechtoff also at this time started working with a palette knife to apply her paint on canvas rather than the traditional brush. Sonia refined her palette knife technique, and by the late 1950s, the slashing marks, often applied in a vortexlike way, were a hallmark of her work. In the 1980s, she expanded that technique with increasingly larger and less-controlled acrylic paintings that had elements of realism, architectural and landscape images. She continued to experiment and produce new work in a range of media throughout her life.

Sonia Gectoff, a mainstay of the New York art scene, passed away in February, 2018, at a hospice center in Bronx, New York at the age of 91.

Hermann Hesse: “The Glass Bead Game”

Photographer Unknown, The Game Master

A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the “innermost meaning” would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the “meaning” of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the “meaning” but do not imagine that it can be taught.

—Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

Calendar: May 19

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of May

Marked Encounters

May 19, 1971 marked the death of British-American actor, Alan Young.

Alan Young was born Angus Young on November 19, 1919, in North Shields, Northumberland, England, to Scottish parents. The family moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, when he was a toddler, and to West Vancouver, Canada, when he was six years old. Bedridden as a child because of severe asthma, he came to love listening to the radio. By the time he was in high school, Young already had his own comedy radio series on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network.

After leaving the Canadian armed service, Alan Young moved to Toronto and resumed his Canadian radio career, where he was discovered in 1944 by an American agent who brought him to New York to appear on American radio. He first appeared on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame. This led to his own American radio show, “The Alan Young Show”, a NBC summer replacement for entertainer Eddie Cantor’s show.

Alan Young’s film debut was in the 1946 film “Margie”, a romantic comedy that became a box office hit. Moving to TV, he wrote a pilot for CBS in 1950, resulting in live variety revue “The Alan Young Show” that earned him the 1951 Best Actor Emmy and the nomination for outstanding personality. After that show’s cancellation, Young acted in “Androcles and the Lion”, “Gentlemen Marry Brunettes” and two films produced by George Pal: the 1958 “Tom Thumb” and the 1960 film “The Time Machine” base on the story by H.G. Wells and starring Rod Taylor.

Young was best known, however, for the CBS television show “Mister Ed” which ran from 1961 to 1966. In this series, he starred as Wilbur Post, the owner of Mr. Ed, a talking horse who would not talk to anyone but him, thus causing comic situations for Wilbur Post, with his wife, neighbors, and acquaintances. Young was approached for “Mister Ed” by producer Arthur Lubin, who had created the popular 1950 film “Francis the Talking Mule”. Young initially turned down the part but eventually accepted it. Owning a portion of the show, he made a fortune off the royalties.

During the 1970s he became active in voice acting. He voiced Scrooge McDuck for numerous Disney films, and voiced Haggis McHaggis on “The Ren and Stimpy Show”. With Bill Burt, Young wrote the autobiography “Mr. Ed and Me,” which was published in 1995.

After 1997, Alan Young lived in Woodland Hills, California, at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, a retirement community, where he died of natural causes on May 19, 2016 at the age of 96.

Jussi Pirttioja

Jussi Pirttioja, “The Noonday Demon”, 2015, Oil on Canvas

Born in 1988 in Helsinki, Finland, Jussi Pirttioja studied Art at Saimaa University of Applied Sciences in Imatra, with an emphasis on Painting. He further developed his skills in anatomical drawing and portrait painting as an exchange student in the Repin Saint Petersburgh State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

After graduating in 2016 he has been working and living in Lappeenranta. He has held several solo exhibitions and taken part in group shows and competitions in Finland. Pirttioja’s work is a mixture of traditional portraiture with surreal settings and expressionistic flourishes.