Month: June 2018

The Span of His Fingers

Photographer Unknown, (The Span of His Fingers)

The span was used as a fixed measurement in ancient Greece since at least the Archaic period, which lasted from the eighth century BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC. The word trispithamos, meaning three spans long, occurs as early as the eighth century BC in the Greek poet Hesiod’s work. The word spithame, meaning span, is verified in the work of Greek historian Herodotus of the 5th century BC.

A span is the distance measured by a human hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. This measurement in ancient times was considered to be half a cubit. In English usage a span is equal to nine inches or  0.2286 meters. The old Portuguese customary unit referring to a span was the palm de craver, equivalent to eight polegadas or Portuguese inches.

 

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico, “Self-Portrait”, 1911, Oil on Canvas, 75 x58 cm

Giorgio di Chirico was one of the most innovative and controversial artists of the twentieth century. His enigmatic paintings, with their dream-like imagery of deserted city squares filled with mysterious shadows, stopped clocks and sleeping statues, had a profound influence on modern art.

Calendar: June 26

A Year: Day to Day Men: 26th of June

The Art of Concentration

June 26, 1925 marks the release of the Charlie Chaplin film “The Gold Rush”.

The 1925 American comedy “The Gold Rush” was in every respect the most elaborate undertaking of Charlie Chaplin¹s career. For two weeks the unit shot on location at Truckee in the snow country of the Sierra Nevada. Here Chaplin faithfully recreated the historic image of the prospectors struggling up the Chilkoot Pass. Six hundred extras, many drawn from the vagrants and derelicts of Sacramento, were brought by train, to clamber up the 2300-feet pass dug through the mountain snow.

For the main shooting the unit returned to the Hollywood studio, where a remarkably convincing miniature mountain range was created out of timber (a quarter of a million feet, it was reported), chicken wire, burlap, plaster, salt and flour. The spectacle of this Alaskan snowscape improbably glistening under the baking Californian summer sun drew crowds of sightseers

In addition, the studio technicians devised exquisite models to produce the special effects which Chaplin demanded, like the miners’ hut which is blown by the tempest to teeter on the edge of a precipice, for one of the cinema’s most sustained sequences of comic suspense. Often it is impossible to detect the shift from model to full-size set.

“The Gold Rush” abounds with now-classic comedy scenes. The historic horrors of the starving 19th century pioneers inspired the sequence in which Charlie and his partner Big Jim  are snowbound and ravenous. Charlie cooks and eats his boot, with all the airs of a gourmet. In the eyes of the delirious Big Jim, he is transformed into a chicken – a triumph both for the cameramen who had to effect the elaborate trick work entirely in the camera; and for Chaplin who magically becomes a bird.

The lone prospector’s dream of hosting a New Year dinner for the beautiful dance-hall girl provides the opportunity for another famous Chaplin set-piece: the dance of the rolls. The gag had been done before, by Chaplin’s one-time co-star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; but Chaplin gave unique personality to the dancing legs created out of forks and rolls. When the film was first shown audiences were so thrilled by the scene that some theaters were obliged to stop the film, roll it back and perform an encore.

“The Gold Rush” was the first of his silent films which Chaplin revived, with the addition of sound, for new audiences. For the 1942 reissue he composed an orchestral score, and replaced the inter-titles with a commentary which he spoke himself. The film today is accepted to be one of Chaplin’s most perfectly accomplished films and declared by him to be the one by which he wanted to be remembered.

The Glass Insulator

Blue Colored Hemingray CD257 “Mickey Mouse Ears” Glass Insulator

The Hemingray Glass Company operated between 1848-1972 and was the largest manufacturer of glass insulators in the world. This five inch high cable-style insulator by Hemingray was produced from 1910 to 1940. It was used in secondary power distribution and had a voltage rating of  6,600 volts. They were produced in two versions: a regular saddle groove (as shown) and a wide saddle groove for heavier gauge wire. It was patented on June 17, 1890.

Tinariwen, “Sastanàqqàm”

Tinariwen (10:1), “Sastanàqqàm ( I Question You )“, from the Album “Elwan”, 2017

A thousand miles from their homeland in northern Mali, across a vast expanse of desert, the music of Tinariwen has found shelter in the hearts of six young musicians from M’hamid el Ghizlane. They were only boys when the desert rockers first visited their home, back in 2006, but they saw an immediate reflection of their own dreams and aspirations in the music they heard. In the years that followed they learned the Tinariwen songbook note for note, word for word, even though they couldn’t speak a word of Tamashek, the language of the Touareg.

“Ténéré, can you tell me of anything better
Than to have your friends and your mount,
And a brand new goatskin, watertight,
To find your way by the light
Of the four bright stars of heaven.”

Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet, “Casino la Colle”, November 1955, Oil on Canvas Collage on Canvas, 23 x 28 Inches, Private Collection

Jean Dubuffet was an integral French artist known for his primal paintings and sculptures of vernacular subjects. His adoption of the term Art Brut or raw art, referred to the art of children, prisoners, and the mentally ill, was a reaction to what he called art culturel or refined art. It was his desire to break from tradition by implementing rudimentary mark making and emulsions made from sand, tar, and trash.

“A work of art is only of interest, in my opinion, when it is an immediate and direct projection of what is happening in the depth of a person’s being. It is my belief that only in this Art Brut can we find the natural and normal processes of artistic creation in their pure and elementary state.” – Jean Dubuffet