art painting painter america still_life life death representation fruit bone object light anatomy apple bruce_kurland
✖ Via Smithsonian American Art Museum: “Bone, Cup and Crab Apple” by Bruce Kurland, oil on fiberboard, 8 1/8 x 10 in 1972.
Bruce Kurland painted this still life while he was living in the town of Curriers in Wyoming County, New York. He felt that the city offered dismal prospects for a representational painter and moved to the countryside, where he painted images that focused on simple objects “being revealed by light.” Here, the dried bone, shriveled crab apple, and rusty cup emphasize the transformation of both natural and manmade materials over time. The dark, empty background highlights the delicacy and transitory nature of these strange objects. (more over at the Lucie Foundation Center for American Art)

About Bruce Kurland:

Bruce Kurland began painting in the late 1950s and studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy School of Fine Arts in New York. He spent almost twenty years living a “nineteenth-century life” in Wyoming County, New York, where he was inspired by the dramatic open vistas of the countryside. His small paintings show still lifes in miniature and often include unconventional items, from wilting flowers to old bones and dead mice. (more)

First spotted via On the Sunny Side of the Sunny Side up



• Sep 26, 2010 link notes  [via] tagged: art  painting  painter  America  still life  life  death  representation  fruit  bone  object  light  anatomy  apple  Bruce Kurland 

Sad afternoon. Shopping. Purchase (frivolity) of a tea cake at the bakery. Taking care of the customer ahead of me, the girl behind the counter says Voilà. The expression I used when I brought maman something, when I was taking care of her. Once, toward the end, half-conscious, she repeated faintly, Voilà (“I’m here,” a word we used with each other all our lives). The word spoken by the girl at the bakery brought tears to my eyes. I kept on crying quite a while back in the silent apartment. That’s how I can grasp my mourning. Not directly in solitude, empirically, etc.; I seem to have a kind of ease, of control that makes people think I’m suffering less than they would have imagined. But it comes over me when our love for each other is torn apart again. The most painful point at the most abstract moment…
✖ Via Journal de deuil by Roland Barthes, Seuil, 2009

The excerpt above was translated from French by Richard Howard and published in the latest edition of The New Yorker (September 13, 2010, p. 27).

• Sep 12, 2010 link notes tagged: art  life  death  mother  author  Barthes  mourning  abstraction  suffering  lost  pain  Kalo 

Like so many others in this day and age, they fought against the pressures of modern society to maintain a happy, respectable and responsible family life. Andy … was a model employee, hard working, personable and well liked.
✖ Via Guardian.co.uk: “Family found dead in Hampshire home were deeply in debt” by Matthew Taylor, July 27th, 2010

The quote above is a statement by John Underhill, former managing director at the firm where Andy Case used to work, before he killed his two daughters, his wife and himself.

• Sep 10, 2010 link notes tagged: communication  mass murder  family  debt  nexus  nexum  slave  critic  insurrection  news  UK  violence  death  modernity  society  life  potentiality  stress  pressure  happiness  economy 

― How come suddenly you’re an expert on women?
― I’ve got seven wives. How many you’ve got?
― So why aren’t you at home with your seven wives?
― I know how to marry them. Nobody knows how to live with them.
― So why did you marry them for?
― Shee-shee… someday I have to tell you the facts of life.
✖ Via The Gods Must Be Crazy by Jamie Uys, 1980.

• Sep 02, 2010 link notes tagged: art  movie  film  cinema  fact  life  women  marriage  humor 
art comic illustration illustrator peanuts dog animal life good farniente
✖ Via Comics: Peanuts by Charles M. Shultz, first published on August 14th, 1963

Previously on Skandalon



• Aug 17, 2010 link notes tagged: art  comic  illustration  illustrator  Peanuts  dog  animal  life  good  farniente 
art film movie nouvelle_vague bw truffaut ressource love couple boyfriend girlfriend girl life cahiers_du_cin_ma
✖ Via

Jules et Jim, François Truffaut, 1962



• Aug 08, 2010 link notes tagged: art  film  movie  Nouvelle Vague  BW  Truffaut  ressource  love  couple  boyfriend  girlfriend  girl  life  Cahiers du Cinéma 

We never know anything about anyone. I used to think the same think about your marriage, and look what happened to you and Delia. It’s hard enough keeping track of ourselves. Once it comes to other people, we don’t have a clue.
✖ Via Leviathan by Paul Auster, New York: Penguin Books, 1992, p. 107

It reminds me of a line of dialogue in Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) (I’ll quote from memory):

On croit savoir, et puis non, jamais.

Previously on Skandalon: Paul Auster’s Leviathan



• Aug 02, 2010 link notes tagged: art  novel  book  Auster  couple  life  knowledge  other  ignorance  understanding  stand 
communication commune community hippies united_states life together vintage politic economy family value
✖ Via

LIFE – Hosted by Google: “The Youth Communes; New way of living confronts the U.S.” July 18th, 1969. Photo by John Olson



• Jul 26, 2010 link notes tagged: communication  commune  community  hippies  United-States  life  together  vintage  politic  economy  family  value 
art obituary comic film movie life death loner loser lost representation biography autobiography order anxiety parano_a
✖ Via

The New York Times: Harvey Pekar with a copy of “American Splendor” in 1986, photo by Mark Duncan for the Associated Press

Harvey Pekar, whose autobiographical comic book “American Splendor” attracted a cult following for its unvarnished stories of a depressed, aggrieved Everyman negotiating daily life in Cleveland and became the basis for a critically acclaimed 2003 film, died on Monday at his home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He was 70. […] Mr. Pekar (pronounced PEE-kar), who toiled for nearly 40 years as a file clerk in a Veterans Administration hospital, applied the brutally frank autobiographical style of Henry Miller to the comic-book format, creating a distinctive series of dispatches from an all-too-ordinary life. His alter ego, introduced in 1976, trudged on from episode to episode, quarreling with co-workers, dealing with car problems, addressing family crises and fretting over money matters and health problems.(“Harvey Pekar, ‘American Splendor’ Creator, Dies at 70” by William Grimes, July 12th, 2010)



• Jul 13, 2010 link notes tagged: art  obituary  comic  film  movie  life  death  loner  loser  lost  representation  biography  autobiography  order  anxiety  paranoïa 

One day the expelled brothers joined forces, slew and ate the father, and thus put an end to the father horde. Together they dared and accomplished what would have remained impossible for them singly. Perhaps some advance in culture, like the use of a new weapon, had given them the feeling of superiority. Of course these cannibalistic savages ate their victim. This violent primal father had surely been the envied and feared model for each of the brothers. Now they accomplished their identification with him by devouring him and each acquired a part of his strength. The totem feast, which is perhaps mankind’s first celebration, would be the repetition and commemoration of this memorable, criminal act with which so many things began, social organization, moral restrictions and religion.
✖ Via Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud, tr. Abraham Arden Brill, New York, Moffat, Yard and company, [1913]1919.

Previously on Skandalon: Freud

• Jul 09, 2010 link notes tagged: communication  community  hord  father  son  parricide  murder  sacrifice  death  destruction  life  sacred  violence  society  Freud  psychoanalysis  book  author  moral  religion  art  totem  taboo 

He stood in the street. There was nothing to do. He hadn’t realized this could happen to him. The moment was empty of urgency and purpose. He hadn’t planned on this. Where was the life he’d always led? There was nowhere he wanted to go, nothing to think about, no one waiting. How could he take a step in any direction if all direction were the same?
✖ Via Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, New York: Scribner, 2003, p. 180

Previously on Skandalon: Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo

• Jun 25, 2010 link notes tagged: art  novel  book  author  DeLillo  Cosmopolis  lost  space  gnomon  direction  sense  orientation  lost  loser  life 

The things that made him who he was could hardly be identified much less converted to data, the things that lived and milled in his body, everywhere, random, riotous, billions of trillions, in the neurons and peptides, the throbbing temple vein, in the veer of his libidinous intellect. So much come and gone, this is who he was, the lost taste of milk licked from his mother’s breast, the stuff he sneezes when he sneezes, this is him, and how a person becomes the reflections he sees in a dusty window when he walks by. He’d come to know himself, untranslatably, through his pain. He felt so tired now. His hard-gotten grip on the world, material things, great things, his memories true and false, the vague malaise of winter twilights, untransferable, the pale nights when his identity flattens for lack of sleep, the small wart he feels on his thigh every time he showers, all him, and how the soap he uses, the smell and feel of the concave bar make him who he is because he names the fragrance, amandine, and the hang of his cock, untransferable, and his strangely achy knee, the click in his knee when he bends it, all him, and so much else that’s not convertible to some high sublime, the technology of mind-without-end.
✖ Via Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, New York: Scribner, 2003, p. 207-208

Let’s say for the moment that this quote relate to the general problem of the representation of the self: of the innumerable and diverse experiences I had, in my lifetime, how and under which conditions am I able to elaborate a stable representation of myself. Or, to put it in other words : How did I came up with a sense of my own identity?

Compare it with David Hume’s thoughts on mankind, Derrida’s view on the grammar of dreams (after Freud), who Pablo Neruda think he is (along with an excerpt from Paul Valery’s Mr. Teste), Quadrophenia, and finally the problem of translation from the perspective of media theorist Friedrich A. Kittler.

Previously on Skandalon: Don DeLillo

• Jun 18, 2010 link notes tagged: author  book  novel  art  technology  communication  translation  computer  machine  DeLillo  Cosmopolis  identity  self  network  event  effect  reality  life  subject  subjectivity  apparatus  node 
technology communication video time culture life half_life media youtube death ephemeral
✖ Via The Business Insider | chart of the day: “The Half-Life Of A YouTube Video Is 6 Days” by Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova, May 27, 2010
“A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.

That’s a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it’s probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.

Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. (And there’s probably more video to choose from.)” (more)

Ephemeral culture.



• May 28, 2010 link notes tagged: technology  communication  video  time  culture  life  half-life  media  YouTube  death  ephemeral 

We report the design, synthesis, and assembly of the 1.08-Mbp Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome starting from digitized genome sequence information and its transplantation into a Mycoplasma capricolum recipient cell to create new Mycoplasma mycoides cells that are controlled only by the synthetic chromosome. The only DNA in the cells is the designed synthetic DNA sequence, including “watermark” sequences and other designed gene deletions and polymorphisms, and mutations acquired during the building process. The new cells have expected phenotypic properties and are capable of continuous self-replication.
✖ Via Science Magazine: “Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome” by J Craig Venter and al., May 20th, 2010. [pdf]
“John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biologist and entrepreneur, most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome[1] and for his role in creating the first synthetic cell in 2010.[2] Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute, now working at the latter to create synthetic biological organisms and to document genetic diversity in the world’s oceans. He was listed on Time Magazine’s 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.” (wikipedia)

Just to keep things in perspective:

“Some other scientists said that aside from assembling a large piece of DNA, Dr. Venter has not broken new ground. “To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a geneticist at Caltech. He described the result as “a technical tour de force,” a matter of scale rather than a scientific breakthrough.

“He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said.

Dr. Venter’s approach “is not necessarily on the path” to produce useful microorganisms, said George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, described Dr. Venter’s report as “glitzy” but said lower-level genes and networks had to be understood first before it would be worth trying to design whole organisms from scratch.

In 2002 Eckard Wimmer, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, synthesized the genome of the polio virus. The genome constructed a live polio virus that infected and killed mice. Dr. Venter’s work on the bacterium is similar in principle, except that the polio virus genome is only 7,500 units in length, and the bacteria’s genome is more than 100 times longer.”” (The New York Times)

• May 22, 2010 link notes tagged: technology  human  life  cell  genome  genetic  biology  replication  self-replication  science  news  synthetic 

Not my books, lectures, conversations, none of that. It’s the goddamn hangnail, it’s the dead skin, that’s where I am, my life, there to here. I talk in my sleep, always did, my mother told me back then and I don’t need anyone to tell me now, I know it, hear it, and this is more significant, somebody should make a study of what people say in their sleep and somebody probably has, some paralinguist, because it means more than a thousand personal letters a man writes in his lifetime and it’s literature as well.
✖ Via Point Omega by Don DeLillo, New York: Scribner, 2010, p. 43

Previously on Skandalon: Point Omega

• May 19, 2010 link notes tagged: art  book  novel  author  life  lost  waste  junk  margin  DeLillo 

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