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i do not condone or wish to promote the actions of these evil bastards
A serial killer is typically defined as an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time (a "cooling off period") between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is largely based on psychological gratification. Other sources define the term as "a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone" or, including the vital characteristics, a minimum of at least two murders. Often, a sexual element is involved with the killings, but the FBI states that motives for serial murder include "anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking." The murders may have been attempted or completed in a similar fashion and the victims may have had something in common; for example, occupation, race, appearance, sex, or age group.
Serial killers are not the same as mass murderers, who commit multiple murders at one time; nor are they spree killers, who commit murders in two or more locations with virtually no break in between.
The full extent of Brady and Hindley's killing spree did not come to light until their confessions in 1985, as both had until then maintained their innocence. Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a neighbour of Hindley's who disappeared on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton on 12 July 1963. That evening, Brady told Hindley that he wanted to "commit his perfect murder". He told her to drive her van around the local area while he followed behind on his motorcycle; when he spotted a likely victim he would flash his headlight, and Hindley was to stop and offer that person a lift.
Driving down Gorton Lane, Brady saw a young girl walking towards them, and signalled Hindley to stop, which she did not do until she had passed the girl. Brady drew up alongside on his motorbike, demanding to know why she had not offered the girl a lift, to which Hindley replied that she recognised her as Marie Ruck, a near neighbour of her mother. Shortly after 8:00 pm, continuing down Froxmer Street, Brady spotted a girl wearing a pale blue coat and white high-heeled shoes walking away from them, and once again signalled for the van to stop. Hindley recognised the girl as Pauline Reade, a friend of her younger sister, Maureen. Reade got into the van with Hindley, who then asked if she would mind helping to search for an expensive glove she had lost on Saddleworth Moor. Reade said she was in no great hurry, and agreed. At 16, Pauline Reade was older than Marie Ruck, and Hindley realised that there would be less of a hue and cry over the disappearance of a teenager than there would over a seven or eight-year-old child. When the van reached the moor, Hindley stopped and Brady arrived shortly afterwards on his motorcycle. She introduced him to Reade as her boyfriend, and said that he had also come to help find the missing glove. Brady took Reade onto the moor while Hindley waited in the van. After about 30 minutes Brady returned alone, and took Hindley to the spot where Reade lay dying, her throat cut. He told her to stay with Reade while he fetched a spade he had hidden nearby on a previous visit to the moor, to bury the body. Hindley noticed that "Pauline's coat was undone and her clothes were in disarray ... She had guessed from the time he had taken that Brady had sexually assaulted her." Returning home from the moor in the van—they had loaded the motorcycle into the back—Brady and Hindley passed Reade's mother, Joan, accompanied by her son, Paul, searching the streets for Pauline.
Accompanied by Brady, Hindley approached twelve-year-old John Kilbride in the early evening of 23 November 1963 at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne, and offered him a lift home on the pretext that his parents would be worried about him being out so late. With the added inducement of a proffered bottle of sherry, Kilbride readily agreed to get into the Ford Anglia car that Hindley had hired. Brady told Kilbride that the sherry was at their home, and they would have to make a detour to collect it. On the way he suggested that they take another detour, to search for a glove he said that Hindley had lost on the moor. When they reached the moor Brady took the child with him while Hindley waited in the car. Brady sexually assaulted Kilbride and attempted to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade before fatally strangling him with a piece of string, possibly a shoelace.
Twelve-year-old Keith Bennett vanished on his way to his grandmother's house in Longsight during the early evening of 16 June 1964, four days after his birthday. Hindley lured him into her Mini pick-up—which Brady was sitting in the back of—by asking for the boy's help in loading some boxes, after which she said she would drive him home. She drove to a lay-by on Saddleworth Moor as she and Brady had previously arranged, and Brady went off with Bennett, supposedly looking for a lost glove. Hindley kept watch, and after about 30 minutes or so Brady reappeared, alone and carrying a spade that he had hidden there earlier. When Hindley asked how he had killed Bennett, Brady said that he had sexually assaulted the boy and strangled him with a piece of string.
Brady and Hindley visited a fairground on 26 December 1964 in search of another victim, and noticed 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey standing beside one of the rides. When it became apparent that she was on her own, they approached her and deliberately dropped some of the shopping they were carrying close to her, before asking for the girl's help to carry some of the packages to their car, and then to their home. Once inside the house Downey was undressed, gagged, and forced to pose for photographs before being raped and killed, perhaps strangled with a piece of string. Hindley maintained that she went to draw a bath for the child and found the girl dead (presumably killed by Brady) when she returned. In Dr. Chris Cowley's book "Face to Face with Evil: Conversations with Ian Brady", Brady states that it was Hindley who killed Lesley Ann Downey. The following morning Brady and Hindley drove with Downey's body to Saddleworth Moor, where she was buried, naked with her clothes at her feet, in a shallow grave.
On 6 October 1965 Brady met 17-year-old apprentice engineer Edward Evans at Manchester Central railway station and invited him to his home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, where Brady beat him to death with an axe.
The Lost World (20th Century Fox, 1960).
youtu.be/h1CLA-gJbmA?t=5s Trailer
Irwin Allen, the producer who would go on to make the disaster film a huge success in the seventies, brought us this Saturday afternoon fodder with giant lizards posing as dinosaurs. Starring Michael Rennie, David Hedison, Claude Rains and Jill St. John.
Intended as a grand sci-fi/fantasy epic remake of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel. The first film adaptation, shot in 1925, was a milestone in many ways, but movie making and special effects had come a long way in 35 years. Irwin Allen's Lost World (LW) & 20th Century Fox version was derailed on the way to greatness, but managed to still be a respectable, (if more modest) A-film. Allen's screenplay followed the book fairly well, telling of Professor Challenger's expedition to a remote plateau in the Amazon upon which dinosaurs still lived. Aside from the paleontological presumptions in the premise, there is little "science" in The Lost World. Nonetheless, dinosaur movies have traditionally been lumped into the sci-fi genre.
Synopsis
When his plane lands in London, crusty old professor George Edward Challenger is besieged by reporters questioning him about his latest expedition to the headwaters of the Amazon River. After the irascible Challenger strikes reporter Ed Malone on the head with his umbrella, Jennifer Holmes, the daughter of Ed's employer, Stuart Holmes, offers the injured reporter a ride into town. That evening, Jenny is escorted by Lord John Roxton, an adventurer and big game hunter, to Challenger's lecture at the Zoological Institute, and Ed invites them to sit with him. When Challenger claims to have seen live dinosaurs, his colleague Professor Summerlee scoffs and asks for evidence. Explaining that his photographs of the creatures were lost when his boat overturned, Challenger invites Summerlee to accompany him on a new expedition to the "lost world," and asks for volunteers. When Roxton raises his hand, Jenny insists on going with him, but she is rejected by Challenger because she is a woman. Ed is given a spot after Holmes offers to fund the expedition if the reporter is included. The four then fly to the Amazon, where they are met by Costa, their guide and Manuel Gomez, their helicopter pilot. Arriving unexpectedly, Jenny and her younger brother David insist on joining them. Unable to arrange transportation back to the United States, Challenger reluctantly agrees to take them along. The next day, they take off for the lost world and land on an isolated plateau inhabited by dinosaurs. That evening, a dinosaur stomps out of the jungle, sending them scurrying for cover. After the beast destroys the helicopter and radio, the group ventures inland. When one of the creatures bellows threateningly, they flee, and in their haste, Challenger and Ed slip and tumble down a hillside, where they encounter a native girl. The girl runs into the jungle, but Ed follows and captures her. They then all take refuge in a cave, where Roxton, who has been making disparaging remarks about Jenny's desire to marry him solely for his title, angers Ed. Ed lunges at Roxton, pushing him to the ground, where he finds a diary written by Burton White, an adventurer who hired Roxton three years earlier to lead him to the lost diamonds of Eldorado. Roxton then admits that he never met White and his party because he was delayed by a dalliance with a woman, thus abandoning them to certain death. Gomez angrily snaps that his good friend Santiago perished in the expedition. That night, Costa tries to molest the native girl, and David comes to her rescue and begins to communicate with her through sign language. After Gomez goes to investigate some movement he spotted in the vegetation, he calls for help, and when Roxton runs out of the cave, a gunshot from an unseen assailant is fired, nearly wounding Roxton and sending the girl scurrying into the jungle. Soon after, Ed and Jenny stray from camp and are pursued by a dinosaur, and after taking refuge on some cliffs, watch in horror as their stalker becomes locked in combat with another prehistoric creature and tumbles over the cliffs into the waters below. Upon returning to camp, they discover it deserted, their belongings in disarray. As David stumbles out from some rocks to report they were attacked by a tribe of natives, the cannibals return and imprison them in a cave with the others. As the drums beat relentlessly, signaling their deaths, the native girl reappears and motions for them to follow her through a secret passageway that leads to the cave in which Burton White lives, completely sightless. After confirming that all in his expedition perished, White tells them of a volcanic passageway that will lead them off the plateau, but warns that they must first pass through the cave of fire. Cautioning them that the natives plan to sacrifice them, White declares that their only chance of survival is to slip through the cave and then seal it with a boulder. After giving them directions to the cave, White asks them to take the girl along. As the earth, on the verge of a volcanic eruption, quakes, they set off through the Graveyard of the Damned, a vast cavern littered with dinosaur skeletons, the victims of the deadly sulfurous gases below. Pursued by the ferocious natives, Roxton takes the lead as they inch their way across a narrow ledge above the molten lava. After escaping the natives, they jam the cave shut with a boulder and, passing a dam of molten lava, finally reach the escape passage. At its mouth is a pile of giant diamonds and a dinosaur egg. As Costa heaps the diamonds into his hat, Challenger fondles the egg and Gomez pulls a gun and announces that Roxton must die in exchange for the death of Santiago, Gomez' brother. Acting quickly, Ed hurls the diamonds at Gomez, throwing him off balance and discharging his gun. The gunshot awakens a creature slumbering in the roiling waters below. After the beast snatches Costa and eats him alive, Ed tries to dislodge the dam, sending a few scorching rocks tumbling down onto the monster. Feeling responsible for the peril of the group, Gomez sacrifices his life by using his body as a lever to dislodge the dam, covering the creature with oozing lava. As the cave begins to crumble from the impending eruption, the group hurries to safety. Just then, the volcano explodes, destroying the lost world. After Roxton hands Ed a handful of diamonds he has saved as a wedding gift for him and Jenny, Challenger proudly displays his egg, which then hatches, revealing a baby dinosaur. The End.
The 50s had seen several examples of the dinosaur sub-genre. LW is one of the more lavish ones, owing to color by DeLuxe and CinemaScope. The A-level actors help too. Claude Rains plays the flamboyant Challenger. Michael Rennie plays Roxton, perhaps a bit too cooly. Jill St. John and Vitina Marcus do well as the customary eye candy. David Hedison as Malone and Fernando Lamas as Gomez round out the bill.
The first film version of LW was a silent movie shot in 1925: screenplay by Marion Fairfax. The film featured stop-motion animated dinosaurs by a young Willis O'Brien. Fairfax followed Doyle's text, but Fairfax added a young woman to the team, Paula White. Ostensibly trying to find her father from the first failed expedition, she provided the love triangle interest between Malone and Roxton.
Allen's screenplay tried to stick to Doyle's text as much as Hollywood would allow. It carried on Fairfax's invention of the young woman member of the group as triangle fodder. Fairfax had Doyle's ape men (ape man) but omitted the native humans. Allen had the natives, but no ape men. Allen revived the Gomez/revenge subplot, which Fairfax skipped. Doyle's story had Challenger bringing back a pterodactyl. Fairfax made it a brontosaur who rampaged through London streets (spawning a popular trope). Allen suggested the baby dinosaur traveling to London.
Willis O'Brien pitched 20th Century Fox in the late 50s, to do a quality remake of LW. He had gained much experience in the intervening 35 years, so his stop-motion dinosaurs were to be the real stars. Fox bass liked the idea, but by the time the ball started rolling, there was trouble in studioland. Fox's grand epic Cleopatra was underway, but was already 5 million dollars over budget. Cleo would nearly sink 20th Century Fox when it was finally released in 1963. To stay afloat, all other Fox films' budgets were slashed. Allen could no longer afford the grand O'Brien stop-motion.
Allen's production is often criticized for its "cheap" dinosaurs, which were live monitor lizards and alligators with fins and plates and horns glue onto them. (more on that below) These were already a bit cheesy when used in the 1940 film One Million B.C.. O'Brien is still listed on the credits as "Effects Technician," but all Allen could afford was lizards with glued on extras. Somewhat amusingly, the script still refers to them as brontosaurs and T-Rexes.
The character of Jennifer Holmes starts out promising. She's a self-assured to the edges of pushy, and is said to be able to out shoot and out ride any man. Yet, when she gets to the Amazon jungle, she's little more than Jungle Barbie, dressed in girlie clothes and screaming frequently. She even does the typical Hollywood trip-and-fall when chased by the dinosaur, so that a man must save her.
Bottom line? FW is a finer example of the not-quite-sci-fi dinosaur sub-genre. The actors are top drawer, even if some of their acting is a bit flat. Nonetheless, FW is a fair adaptation of Doyle's
classic adventure novel, given the constraints of Hollywood culture.
The Movie Club Annals … Review
The Lost World 1960
Introduction
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Irwin Allen's 1960 production of The Lost World. Nothing. It was perfect in every way. I therefore find myself in the unique and unfamiliar position of having to write a rave review about a Movie Club movie that was entirely devoid of flaws.
Faced with such a confounding task, I half-heartedly considered faking a bad review, then praying my obvious deceptions would go unnoticed. But the patent transparency of my scheme convinced me to abandon it posthaste. After all, leveling concocted criticisms at such an unassailable masterpiece would be a futile and tiresome exercise, the pretense of which would escape nary a semi-cognizant soul.
Thus, having retreated from my would-be descent into literary intrigue, I start this review in earnest by borrowing a quote from the legendary Shelly Winters, spoken during the 1972 filming of Irwin Allen's The Poseidon Adventure:
"I'm ready for my close up now, Mr. Allen.” Shelly Winters, 1972
Review
A bit of research into the casting choices of Irwin Allen, who wrote, produced, and directed The Lost World, begins to reveal the genius behind the virtuosity.
The first accolades go to Irwin for his casting of Vitina Marcus, the immaculately groomed Saks 5th Avenue cave girl with exquisite taste in makeup, jewelry, and cave-wear. No finer cave girl ever graced a feature film.
Vitina Marcus, as The Cave Girl
She was the picture of prehistoric glamour, gliding across the silver screen in her designer bearskin mini-pelt, her flawless coiffure showing no signs of muss from the traditional courting rituals of the day, her perfect teeth the envy of even the most prototypical Osmond. Even her nouveau-opposable thumbs retained their manicure, in spite of the oft-disagreeable duties that frequently befell her as an effete member of the tribal gentry.
By no means just another Neanderthal harlot, Vitina had a wealth of talent to augment her exterior virtues. Her virtuoso interpretation of a comely cave girl in The Lost World certainly didn't escape the attention Irwin Allen. In fact, he was so taken with her performance that he later engaged her services again, casting her as the Native Girl in episode 2.26 of his Voyage to The Bottom of The Sea TV series.
Leery of potential typecasting, Vitina went on to obtain roles with greater depth and more sophisticated dialogue. This is evidenced by the great departure she took from her previous roles when she next portrayed the part of Sarit, a female barbarian, in episode 1.24 of Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel TV series.
Vitina, as Sarit
Vitina's efforts to avoid typecasting paid off in spades, as she was soon rewarded with the distinctive role of Girl, a female Tarzanesque she-beast character, in episode 3.14 of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series.
Lured back from the U.N.C.L.E. set by Irwin Allen, Vitina was next cast in the role of Athena (a.k.a. Lorelei), the green space girl with the inverted lucite salad bowl hat, in episodes 2.2 and 2.16 of the revered Lost in Space TV series.
And with this, Vitina reached the pinnacle of her career. For her many unparalleled displays of thespian pageantry, she leaves us forever in her debt as she exits the stage.
For those who would still question the genius of Irwin Allen, I defy you to find a better casting choice for the character of Lord John Roxton than that of Michael Rennie. Mr. Rennie, who earlier starred as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still, went on to even greater heights, starring as The Keeper in episodes 1.16 and 1.17 of the revered Lost in Space TV series. Throughout his distinguished career, Mr. Rennie often played highly cerebral characters with
unique names, such as Garth A7, Tribolet, Hasani, Rama Kahn, Hertz, and Dirk. How befitting that his most prolific roles came to him through a man named Irwin, a highly cerebral character with a unique name.
The selection of David Hedison to play Ed Malone was yet another example of Irwin's uncanny foresight. Soon after casting him in The Lost World, Irwin paved Mr. Hedison's path to immortality by casting him as a lead character in his Voyage to The Bottom of The Sea TV series. Although Voyage ended in 1968, Mr. Hedison departed the show with a solid resume and a bright future.
In the decades following Voyage, Mr. Hedison has been a veritable fixture on the small screen, appearing in such socially influential programs as The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Knight Rider, The Fall Guy and The A Team. Mr. Hedison's early collaborations with Irwin Allen have left him never wanting for a day's work in Hollywood, a boon to the legions of discerning fans who continue to savor his inspiring prime time depictions.
Irwin selected Fernando Lamas to play Manuel Gomez, the honorable and tortured soul of The Lost World who needlessly sacrificed himself at the end of the movie to save all the others. To get a feel for how important a casting decision he was to Irwin, just look at the pertinent experience Mr. Lamas brought to the table:
Irwin knew that such credentials could cause him to lose the services of Mr. Lamas to another project, and he took great pains to woo him onto the set of The Lost World. And even though Mr. Lamas never appeared in the revered Lost in Space TV series, his talent is not lost on us.
Jay Novello was selected by Irwin Allen to play Costa, the consummate Cuban coward who perpetually betrays everyone around him in the name of greed. In pursuing his craven calling, Mr. Novello went on to play Xandros, the Greek Slave in Atlantis, The Lost Continent, as well as countless other roles as a coward.
Although Mr. Novella never appeared in the revered Lost in Space TV series, his already long and distinguished career as a coward made him the obvious choice for Irwin when the need for an experienced malingerer arose.
Jill St. John was Irwin's pick to play Jennifer Holmes, the "other" glamour girl in The Lost World. Not to be upstaged by glamour-cave-girl Vitina Marcus, Jill played the trump card and broke out the pink go-go boots and skin-tight Capri pants, the perfect Amazonian summertime jungle wear.
Complete with a perfect hairdo, a killer wardrobe, a little yip-yip dog named Frosty, and all the other trappings of a wealthy and pampered prehistoric society, Jill's sensational allure rivaled even that of a certain cave girl appearing in the same film.
With the atmosphere rife for an on-set rivalry between Jill and Vitina, Irwin still managed to keep the peace, proving that he was as skilled a diplomat as he was a director.
Claude Rains, as Professor George Edward Challenger
And our cup runneth over, as Irwin cast Claude Rains to portray Professor George Edward Challenger. His eminence, Mr. Rains is an entity of such immeasurable virtue that he is not in need of monotonous praise from the likes of me.
I respectfully acknowledge the appearance of Mr. Rains because failure to do so would be an unforgivable travesty. But I say nothing more on the subject, lest I state something so obvious and uninspiring as to insult the intelligence of enlightened reader.
Irwin's casting of the cavemen mustn't be overlooked, for their infallibly realistic portrayals are unmatched within the Pleistocene Epoch genre of film. Such meticulous attention to detail is what separates Irwin Allen from lesser filmmakers, whose pale imitations of his work only further to underscore the point.
To be sure, it is possible to come away with the unfounded suspicion that the cavemen are really just a bunch of old white guys from the bar at the local Elks lodge. But Irwin was an absolute stickler for authenticity, and would never have allowed the use of such tawdry measures to taint his prehistoric magnum opus.
In truth, Irwin's on-screen cavemen were borne of many grueling years of anthropological research, so the explanation for their somewhat modern, pseudo-caucasian appearance lies obviously elsewhere. And in keeping with true Irwin Allen tradition, that explanation will not be offered here.
1964 - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Season One, Episode 7 - "Turn Back the Clock", featuring Vitina Marcus as The Native Girl. Produced by Irwin Allen.
And then there was Irwin Allen's masterful handling of the reptilian facets of The Lost World, most notably his inimitable casting of the dinosaurs. His dinosaurs were so realistic, so eerily lifelike, that they almost looked like living, breathing garden variety lizards with dinosaur fins and horns glued to their backs and heads.
The less enlightened viewer might even suppose this to be true, that Irwin's dinosaurs were indeed merely live specimens of lizards, donned in Jurassic-era finery, vastly magnified, and retro-fitted into The Lost World via some penny-wise means of cinematic trickery.
But those of us in the know certainly know better than that, as we are privy to some otherwise unpublished information about The Lost World. The lifelike appearance of the Irwin's dinosaurs can be attributed to a wholly overlooked and fiendishly cunning approach to the art of delusion, which is that the dinosaurs didn't just look real, they were real.
While the world abounds with middling minds who cannot fathom such a reality, we must follow Irwin's benevolent leanings and temper our natural feelings of contempt for this unfortunate assemblage of pedestrian lowbrows. In spite of Irwin's superior intellect, he never felt disdain toward the masses that constituted his audiences. He simply capitalized on their unaffectedness, and in the process recounted the benefits of exploiting the intellectually bereft for personal gain.
The purpose of all this analysis, of course, is to place an exclamation point on the genius of Irwin Allen, the formation of his dinosaur exposé being a premier example. Note how he mindfully manipulates the expectations of his unsuspecting audience, compelling them to probe the dinosaurs for any signs of man-made chicanery. Then, at the palatial moment when the dinosaurs make their entry, he guilefully supplants the anticipated display of faux reptilia with that of the bona fide article.
Upon first witnessing the de facto dinosaurs, some in the audience think they've been had, and indeed they have. Irwin, in engineering his masterful ruse, had used reality as his medium to convey the illusion of artifice. His audience, in essence, was blinded by the truth. It was the immaculate deception, and none but Irwin Allen could have conceived it.
Indeed, the matter of where the live dinosaurs came from has been conspicuously absent from this discussion, as the Irwinian technique of fine film making strongly discourages the practice of squandering time on extraneous justifications and other such trite means of redundant apologia. For the benefit of the incessantly curious, however, just keep in mind that Irwin Allen wrote and produced The Time Tunnel TV Series, a fact that should provide some fair insight into his modis operandi.
Carl R.
It is not only the remoteness that affects indigenous communities. There is a long history of their rights being neglected and them being considered second-class citizens throughout Latin America.
In the Amazonas, there is a widespread lack of access to clean water. Local sanitation infrastructure are laid in disarray, are outdated and lack basic maintenance.
“The structural lack of investment in basic social services and infrastructure has led to a catastrophic situation, right at the peak of the outbreak. Our response has been instrumental in mobilizing both a national and international response,” says Thomas Dehermann-Roy, head of EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations in Colombia and South America.
© European Union, 2020 (photographer: N. Mazars)
My studio has been in disarray for a few months now. I finally had time to redress most of my pullips and rearrange things so I could display the new additions I got over the holidays.
This is the latest and greatest hi-line town sign on the hi-line! Joplin and Chester have signs like this as well.
Here is some very interesting history courtesy of wikipediea about Hingham, MT:
"Hingham is a small agricultural community on the Hi-line of northern Montana. The town was founded on February 11, 1910 and developed as a grain storage and shipping center along the Great Northern Railway. In 1909 M.A. Johnson and P.A. Peterson came to the area to homestead, they purchased a relinquishment for the townsite. A year later they had the 22-block town platted with a central square as its dominant feature, hence the nickname "The Town on the Square". Hingham was incorporated in 1917 and has since been governed by a mayor and town council. Through local efforts Hingham has developed the square into one of the best parks on the Hi-line with lush grass, mature trees and a picnic shelter. A landmark of the town is the water tower built in 1958 it towers 100 feet tall and can be seen for miles. In its early years Hingham had several hotels, saloons, restaurants, two banks, lumber yards, butcher shop, blacksmith shop, barber shop, trading company, grocery store, opera house, three churches and more. Most of which surrounded the square. Hingham had a state of the art hospital in its early years know as the Hingham Sanitarium. Built in 1913 by Dr. A.A. Husser it later burned down in 1919 dealing a severe blow to the community. Plans were made to replace the hospital with a more substantial structure but never materialized. Hingham Union Cemetery is the second largest cemetery in Hill County with over 355 graves. During the flu epidemic, the local undertaker left town in the middle of the night taking the cemetery records with him and leaving the cemetery in disarray. Citizens later remember digging graves and hitting the wood of coffins buried in supposedly vacant plots. There are a number of graves that are unknown and unmarked. Hingham cemetery is unique in that it once had an area known as potters field where people that commited suicide or couldn't afford to buy a plot were placed. Hingham's cemetery was the unofficial catholic cemetery of the hi-line in its early years. Students in Hingham met in several buildings around town until a school was built in 1914. The building was known to sway in the bad wind storms. In 1930 a new school building was constructed with a gymnasium added in 1936 several additions were made in later years including a indoor swimming pool. The school mascot was the Hingham Rangers with red, black and white as their colors. Due to shrinking enrollment the schools have consolidated to maintain a school in the area. Hingham and Rudyard consolidated schools in 1981 creating Blue Sky schools with Eagles as their mascot and blue and white as their colors. Another consolidation occurred in 2005 creating North Star Schools which is a merger of Rudyard and Hingham(Blue Sky), Gildford and Kremlin(KG)schools. Their mascot is the Knights with blue and black as their colors. Hingham hosted an school reunion on July 9th, 2010. On July 10th, 2010 Hingham celebrated its Centennial with a fun run/walk, food and craft vendors, military displays, local history displays, live entertainment, kids and adult games, barbecue, dance and fireworks."
For more information go to this link:
(Read the entire text it the 'note' section). The playwright based “Dear Madam City Attorney McLean”upon his experiences/discussions with City of Santee, California, City Attorney Don McLean. The play examines the consequences of unethical conduct bygovernment lawyers. The play is available to anyone gratis!
TITLE: Dear Madam City Attorney McLean
! &n bsp; by Richard W. White
Copyright 1997; Edited, 2000.
CLASSIFICATION:Three-act, contemporary political drama
RATING: G
CAST: RICK - male, near fifty; thin; worn;
McLEAN – male, used to giving orders.
TAX LADY - female; self-assured; over bearing;
Ms. HOWARD - female; handsome; well dressed.
GEORGE - friendly; city cowboy; well fed.
LENGTH:50 minutes, plus or minus.
REQUIREMENTS: Permission to produce “Dear MadamCity Attorney McLean” is granted to any public or private school or theater.The playwright asks to be informed on any production of this work.
“Dear Madam City Attorney McLean” was written for the classroom or community theater setting, with minimal set requirements or rehearsal. Thecharacter McLEAN may be entirely read from the script, since the player is never seen. The character RICK may read much of his dialogue “from the computer monitor” (since he is writing it as he is speaking it). The glowing light (the McLEAN effect) maybe a flashlight or a small spotlight.
CONTACTING THE PLAYWRIGHT OR THE MAYOR:
The playwright may be contacted through by email firecat2@sbcglobal.net
NOTES: The playwright based “Dear Madam CityAttorney McLean” upon his experiences/discussions with Santee City Attorney DonMcLean. The play examines the consequences of unethical conduct by government lawyers. The characters of the play examine the political drama genre in contemporary America.
DEAR MADAM CITYATTORNEY McLEAN
A political drama
by RICHARD W.WHITE
based upondiscussions with
Donald McLean,City Attorney
City of Santee,California
© 1997 by Richard W. White
Theauthor hereby grants to everyone the right to use this play gratis!
DEARMADAM CITY ATTORNEY McLEAN
APolitical Drama by RICHARD W. WHITE
Based upondiscussions with
Don McLean,City Attorney,
City of Santee,California
CHARACTERS
RICK TAX LADY
McLEAN DIRECTOR
! Ms. HOWARD
GEORGE
UNNAMED COUNCILMAN
MRS. McLEAN
With the curtain closed, RICK, a thin, cleanbut worn man near fifty, hurrying toward old age, appears at the center of thestage.
RICK: I’m going to start byreading the first two pages of the letter I read to the Santee City Council inApril 1995. Then, I’ll get on with the play.
Rick walks to the side of the stage andtakes his place behind a small podium.
RICK: Good evening, Mr. Mayorand Santee City Council. My name is Rick: I’m a former twenty yearresident and business owner. And I came here this evening to tell you straightout, the City of Santee cheated me on the Prospect Avenue bridge project.
The City engineer, Cary Stewart, concealed survey error from me and heconcealed plan error from the surveyors. And the result was chaos. Piles weren't centered under the footings. Footings weren't aligned underthe abutments. The bridge deck had to be lowered and reduced inthickness. Some alignments were off as much as two (2) foot.
City Engineer Cary Stewart concealed the survey error because he didn't want topay for fixing his mistakes. They were his mistakes because his planswere wrong and I should have been paid for fixing the accumulated errors. But I wasn't paid. I was cheated and Cary couldn't have cheated mewithout the help of City Attorney McLean. Period.
Cary also requested extra work, which he didn't pay for. The asphaltbikeway; lowering the bridge deck and cutting off the rebar; extra rip rap; changesin the manholes. Cary kept a 'log of extras', but when the project wasfinished, Cary wouldn't pay for any of it and he wouldn't give us any reasonfor not paying.
Nearly a year after we finished the work, we demanded arbitration before theState Board. In answer to our demand, City Attorney McLean sued claiming theState didn’t have authority to hear it.
But Cary and Attorney McLean weren't satisfied to see me cheated. Andthey weren't satisfied to see me wasting my! time an d money playing lawyergames. They decided to destroy my business with a bogus defaultresolution voted on by this city council without advance notice to me. The State found 100% in my favor two months after Santee defaulted me. It’s been years: Why hasn't the Santee rescinded the default resolution? Why haven’t I been paid? Why was I cheated? Why is it okay for Santee tocheat?
Good evening.
As Rick begins to walk behind the curtain,councilwoman Lori Howard blocks his path.
RICK: If you don’t mind, we’lldo this scene here, instead of in your coffee shop, to save on set cost.
LORI: Rick, you can’t do thisplay. The council has talked about it in closed session. You can’t do it,in my coffee shop or anywhere else.”
A rotund city cowboy, George Tockstein, CityManager enters.
RICK: Hi ya,George. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.
GEORGE: (Smiling andfriendly)Rick, we, I mean the council, we, the city, would rather just rely on thefinding of the court.
RICK: George, there has neverbeen a hearing on the merits. There has never been a finding by anycourt, except the one that decided Cary’s labor complaint was bogus. Whydon’t you just ask Cary Stewart why he didn’t pay me?
LORI: You can’t do thisplay! We aren’t asking or answering anything. Come on, George,let’s get out of this play.
UnnamedCouncilman steps into Rick’ path.
MRS. McLEAN: “I don’tcare if you use my name, in this play. It’s my married nameanyway.”
UNNAMED COUCILMAN: “Rick, you can’t do this play. On the phone or anywhere else.”
RICK: I won’t say yourname, or try to describe your peculiar voice or overly long sideburns. Iwill only work with your voice and the threat that you made to me. I tookit as a threat when you told me on the phone ‘this time you have gone too far,’in response, I thought, you’d said that to me for the barbeque I had thrown forthat intercity pop-Warner football team I sponsored. I gave the barbeque as aprize for the team having won the league championship. And I won’t saynothing about seeing you at five o’clock in the morning stuffing Jack Doylecampaign signs in the truck of your late model Japanese make sedan. Ihave already decided to keep the Mayor’s name out of this by referencing themayor of La Mesa, Art Madrid, who, I ran into in the parking lot of La MesaCity Hall.”
Nameless Councilmanleaves in a huff, as Lori and George walk from the stage. The curtainopens to reveal an early morning scene. Rick takes his seat, a foldingsteel chair at a folding table, which serves as his desk, facing theaudience. He is under the glow of a desk lamp, typing at the green hazeof his small computer monitor. Books are stacked on the d! esk, whi ch is setbetween two (tall) old steel filing cabinets. The walls of the room behindthe desk are primarily old scaffolding and two-by-four wall studs with noplaster covering. The house has been gutted by reconstruction. Framed pictures hang about on open-wall studs. A door is at the back ofthe stage. A wooden plank on saw horses serves as a counter top on stageright. An electric coffee pot is set upon the plank, together with coffeecup, a jar of instant coffee, a pill bottle and a grocery bag. Twocardboard boxes, stuffed with clothing, covered with plastic trash bags, are onthe floor at the back of the stage and a sleeping bag. Drying laundryhangs about. Old books, under plastic sheets, are stacked about on thefloor.
RICK: (Reading aloudin monotone from his computer monitor.) Opening scene. At his desk in his sparsepremises, Rick is reading from his computer screen, making a sternpronouncement: (Announcing, narrative style, still reading from thecomputer screen.) Since the beginning of history, productive people have organized themselves …
(The green glow of t! he compu ter screenbecomes tinged with orange, causing RICK to stop reading.)
RICK: McLean, move offmy monitor. I can’t see to read.
McLEAN: (A demanding, butdistant sounding man who is used to giving orders, speaking from high offstage.) It’s cold over here. The warmth feels good.
RICK: (Grinning.) Then go to hell.
(The orange glow fades from the computerscreen as a glow of light appears on the small gray cloth screen that is aboveand in front of R! ick.)&nb sp;
McLEAN: That little exercisebefore the city council last night was a waste of time.
RICK: The necessity of it goesbeyond what we can see or understand just now.
McLEAN: So why did you bother?
RICK: This experience needs tobe shared. The helplessness of one man’s humanity, the richness ofpoverty, the peace I am feeling: all of this deserves to be celebrated. But more importantly, you’re not the only crooked government lawyer: peopleneed to shown what happens when the government cheats.
McLEAN: What people? Idon't understand. Who are you are talking about? You should beworking.
RICK: Michaelanglo once toldthe Pope, ‘A man doesn't work with his hands alone.’ My heart is tootroubled to work.
McLEAN: Your soul is troubled.
RICK: Look who'stalking.
McLEAN: I was surprised howgood you looked last night.
RICK: Appearances is thecheapest of modern lifes’ necessities. It’s the one perk I allow mypride.
McLEAN: Pride? You don't evenown a bed.
RICK: When all my bills arepaid, I’ll buy a bed. (Softly speaking to McLean) Now please, I’m tryingto work. (After a slight pause, starting again with the narratorvoice.) Sincethe beginning, productive people have organized themselves into governments forthe purpose of mutual benefit. Where government is honest and withoutcorruption, society prospers. Where government is dishonest, societyfails to thrive.
For thoseliving it, the correlation between the ethics of government and quality of lifeis obscure, but it is observable, by a stroke as brief and brilliant as theflash of lighting, which unites the earth and sky in the night. I haveseen this coruscation as its power passed through my existence, vaporizing mylife’s work. And I come before you as a witness, for having lived throughit, (a pause, then the dialogue flows quickly) I know that the great unseendanger that America faces today, (slowly) is the ethical depravity which is creepinginto the ranks of our government lawyers.
McLEAN: That indictment is alittle enthusiastic.
RICK: (Quietly to McLEAN): I am still editing. Nowhush, I want to finish this. (! Narratin g) For America to prosper,we need to publicly condemn the crooked government lawyer.
McLEAN: What is allthis?
RICK: I’m writing a play aboutus.
McLEAN: Us? Doesn’t seem very productive.
(RICK types during thefollowing dialogue, reading it as he types it.)
RICK: (Speaking offhand): Realistically, my options arevery limited. My only asset is experience, which would count a negativein any other enterprise, but in this play writing business, it may be anadvantage. And the risk in this undertaking is minimal, which makes itattractive. (Rick stops typing) McLean, read this, please.
McLEAN (Poetically): In search of understanding,you trespassed into timeless contemplation, and for this offense, fate has castyou adrift upon a cosmic tide, where the jetsam of humanity twines with dybbuksand bobbing ossuaries in a slick of black ink on a windless white page, toawait Dies Irae. (Plainly): This play is crap.
RICK: What should I do tocontribute to America? Go door to door, to collect secondhand integrityand slightly worn ethics for you and your law partner wife?
McLEAN: Where do you get theseideas?
RICK: I asked you thatquestion while you were still living and you did the same thing: Why don’t youanswer me? I’m trying to do some good here: or should I write Mrs. McLeana letter, setting out my concerns for America’s future?
McLEAN: Reading oldbooks?
RICK: My experience is asomber treasure. For it to have value, it must be cast into the pool ofliterature, where in the ageless waters of humanly acceptable conclusions, allthe obtuse, precisely objective, impersonal phenomenon of science and law blendtogether … to become understanding … eventually.
(RICK types the words that McLEAN isspeaking.)
McLEAN: (Conciliatory,condescending): It’s these old books, isn’t it? These used up, very old books.
RICK: (RICK stops histyping and looks at McLEAN): George Bernard Shaw was self-taught.
McLEAN: And he to was afailure, painting his ideological graffiti in other peoples’ minds. (Apause) This idea is lunacy. Why don’t you get back into business?
RICK: (Looking to McLEAN): Lunacy is inspiration indisguise, since a man with many more brains than his fellows, necessarilyappears as mad to them as one who has less.
McLEAN: And cynicism is thelast refuge of a quitter.
RICK: ‘No man is abovethe law’. Did you ever read my letters?
McLEAN: Your little ethicslessons were misdirected: I was the law.
RICK: And that is preciselythe problem: You were the government of my part of America, functioning withthe ethics of an open pit toilet, a putrid, infected zit on the economic hullof America.
McLEAN: If America has aproblem, it’s people like you, failing to contribute their talents.
RICK: One more man on the oarswon’t save a leaky boat.
McLEAN: You’re pumping bilgewater onto the deck of the sturdiest democracy ever to set sail.
RICK: I’m simply plugging thelegal rot below the waterline.
McLEAN: If this country sinks,the fatal damage will more likely spring from the infectious negative mentalityof your ilk, rather than from structural damage, legal or otherwise.
RICK: The economic hull ofAmerica is taking on water, but you are still loading lawyer ballast. Don’t you realize each business lost in a free enterprise system is anotherhole in the ship of state?
McLEAN: What ken yourintellect brings to the American political discussion is as shallow as thisso-called play.
RICK: Allowing government lawyerslike you to smash small businessmen like me, with impunity, brings this countryto a potentially dangerous crossroads. The greatness of America comesfrom the diversity of its entrepreneurs sailing in the shallows; theinnovators; the small shops; individuals working alone who aren’t swimming withthe main stream. Ben Franklin with his kite; the Wright brothers in theirbicycle shop; Ford, with his first gasoline motor on his kitchen sink onChristmas eve.
McLEAN: (Enunciatingsternly) Isee the problem here: you imagine yourself a sort of mental ventriloquist whocan cleverly project his thoughts into other people’s minds. That’s whatyou used to do with your letters to me, wasn’t it? Well, you should know,your constant little lessons in good citizenship were a waste of postagestamps.
RICK: The drama of life isn’tplayed out with thoughts alone, lawyer McLean. (The telephone ringsand RICK answers it.) Hello. (He smiles proudly.) Yeah, this is Grandpa. (Helistens carefully for a moment.) No, I didn’t die. It’s just hard for me tocome and visit. (Listening, then gently) Mommy is driving on thelittle tire? (A pause.) Oh, gee. We’ll have to do something aboutthat. (Pause a beat) Is Mommy at work? (Pause) Okay. Grampa willthink of something. You better get ready for school. Grampa lovesyou. Bye-bye.
(RICK hangs up the telephone and typesMcLEAN’s dialogue as he speaks it.)
McLEAN: A rational manacting in the real world will strike a balance between what he desires and whatcan be done. It is only in imaginary worlds that we can do whatever wewish.
RICK: (Looking at McLean) (Typing the next line ofdialogue):This is my play and I imagine you gone. Go away. I don’t need thephilosophical counsel of a crooked government lawyer.
(RICK dials the telephone while McLeanreads.)
McLEAN: Choose your friends onmoral principles and you’ll soon have less company then you have now.
RICK: (Speaking tothe telephone) Isthe boss there?
McLEAN: I am here as the voiceof reality. You can’t continue to subsist like a Brahmanistictramp.
(A noisy jet passes low, shaking the house.)
RICK: (Speaking to McLean,offhand.) Reality in practical affairs is simply a series of tradeoffs. I choose tosurvive without material flourish. (Speaking into the telephone.) Hello, John. Hey,do you still want a structural slab behind the shop? (A pause.) I’ll make you a trade: fourtires for the slab. You buy the mud. (A pause.) Thanks. (Hehangs up the handset.)
McLEAN: You have turned yourlife into a lonely tragedy.
RICK: (Typing as hespeaks): This solitude is a thing of beauty.
McLEAN: It’s been years. Have you lost all sense of time?
RICK: Contemplation is thetimeless sense and best practiced in isolation, for as Emerson said, ‘alone iswisdom’. Leave me.
McLEAN: You are not happy inthis state.
RICK: Emerson said, ‘alone ishappiness’. Leave me.
McLEAN: You need to get outamong normal people.
RICK: Emerson said, ‘the crowdthat you are obstructs my contentment’. Leave me.
McLEAN: Emerson also said,‘Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day.’
(A moment of silence.)
McLEAN: You’re a talentedfellow. You should contribute.
RICK: This is mycontribution. You were the government: why did you cheat me?
McLEAN: For me to discussparticulars of the matter would violate the attorney/client privilege. Itwould be unethical.
RICK: (Looking to McLEAN,sans typing):So tell me of your ethics.
McLEAN: You should be doingsomething.
RICK: This play issomething. Help me with it or leave me alone.
McLEAN: You don’t really wantme to leave. Without me, you would have nothing at all and you reallywould be all alone.
RICK: Why did you cheatme?
McLEAN: I was protecting myclient.
RICK: Your client was thetaxpayer, not City engineer Cary Stewart. Your duty was to the law, notyour fat wallet. ABA Rule one point two D: ‘A lawyer shall not … assist aclient in conduct that … is … fraudulent.’
McLEAN: I will not respond toyour egregious slander. I assert it was my job to protect the City.
RICK: Your engineer CaryStewart ordered the work and then wouldn’t pay for it. When I demanded Statearbitration, you sued the State, claiming it had no authority to settle thematter. It was all legal baloney, to fatten your own wallet.
McLEAN: I love the law; I wastop of my class at Cal Western in sixty-two; but I’m not being paid to argueand I won’t do it.
RICK: So then leave.
McLEAN: I see you better thanyou realize. You turned your anger inside and now it is coming fullcircle, inside out, until it’s directed against those who would help you.
RICK: You are not helpingme.
McLEAN: You’re bulliedby your own ego; you’re trying to undo what happened with shear will power. It can’t be done. You can’t shift a single grain of sand with willpower. You should start a new business. You have the ability tocreate jobs.
RICK: (Typing as hespeaks): Ihave created a new job: I am a prospector, panning the sands of my experience, (gesturingto the books)exploring the veins of these old pages, in search of understanding.
McLEAN: (Laughs): Look around you. You made a better brick layer.
RIC! K: Brick s were a hobby,something for me to love: nothing more.
McLEAN: Your hobby made asplash at City Hall when they featured your home in the newspaper homesection.
RICK: Cary used to walk hisdog by every night, to make a splash on my bricks, after Santee defaulted me.
McLEAN: I’m notsurprised. You put him on the defensive. He needed to do somethingto assuage his ego.
RICK: Your loyalty wasmisplaced in Cary. Shielding him from the Engineer’s Board investigationwas a disservice to the community and a breach of your professionaleth! ics.&nbs p;
McLEAN: For me to commentwould be a breach of the attorney client privilege.
RICK: Cary wasn’t yourclient. It was a professional breach to stonewall the engineer’s boardinvestigation for five years.
McLEAN: What’s thepoint? It’s been eight years.
RICK: (RICK puts his handsto his forehead and looks to McLean through his fingers) Eight years and I am stillunable to make any sense of it. Eight years of document searches,depositions, motions, law! yer game s. Eight years with my spirit frustrated,my aspirations chained, my family in disarray. Eight years since I spentthe last of my pride, since I could afford self respect.
McLEAN: Forget it.
RICK: All I have is my memory:it is the most of me; and it needs healing: it must be healed, because ourfuture rests on our memories; memories are the foundation of our spirit - butto be healed, they must be exposed to the light.
McLEAN: (After a long pause.) Have you read this allthe way through? You sound stilted, on artificial wooden words that willalways be too long for your social stature. Believe me, you need to getback into business.
RICK: (Tinged with irony,his hands over his lowered head): The business I know has no sense to it, ifgovernment can cheat with impunity.
McLEAN: Government must putits own interest, the good of all, before that of any individual citizen.
(Rick rises and pours himself a cup ofcoffee while speaking the following dialogue.)
RICK: ‘Injusticeanywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Whatever affects one directly,affects all indirectly’. Dr. King wrote that in his letter fromBirmingham jail.
McLEAN: And what did itget him? He was dead within six months.
RICK: What hope do any of ushave, if our government cheats?
The Pollyanna principle is the tendency for people to remember pleasant items better than they can recall unpleasant things; not however that it's wise to put your head ostrich style into the sand, and ignore things around you that are in chaos and apparent disarray! :-):-)
Here, Claudia is Lady Mary Crawley of "Downton Abbey." Mary certainly had many reasons to cry, but she mostly seemed to be stoic or sullen in the face of many misfortunes.
First, there was the fact that she could not inherit the estate--only a male heir could and thus she was put into a position of needing to find a suitable husband and have a male child.
When she FINALLY married Matthew (after what seemed like the most bedeviled courtship in TV history), the actor playing Matthew was leaving the show and thus was killed off--right after their baby--the prized male heir--was born.
Mary had several problems before and after this. I would have cried if I had a father who was such a financial doofus that even though he married my (rich American) mother in large part for her money, he did/said things like speaking admiringly of a man named Ponzi!!!
My Predictions: More Reasons to Cry:
I predict that Mary would have had reason to cry--but wouldn't--if fate had brought the estate to the conclusion I foresaw: her baby, George, was born just in time to fight--and, I predict, die--in WWII; then, there would have been no male heir. The estate would have fallen into disarray.
The Crawleys would have been living (barely) off of former glory though no one would have even cared that they existed unless one of them eventually became a Kardashian-clone and had a reality TV series.
In better news, Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck or Keith Richards would have bought the estate, repaired it, and had some great Rock 'n Roll parties.
Now, the Ancient Egypt connection: many scenes were shot at Highclere Castle, centuries old home of Carnarvon Family. Lord Carnarvon financed the search for and excavation of King Tut's tomb.
For a bit more very intriguing info below, an excerpt from Highclere Castle - Official Site, Lady Carnarvon's blog:
"The 20th Century"
"In many ways Highclere Castle epitomised the confidence and glamour of the Edwardian period in the first few years of the twentieth century. Visitor books record the house parties full of politicians, technological innovators, Egyptologists, aviators and soldiers.
During the First World War, Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon, transformed the Castle into a hospital, and patients began to arrive from Flanders in September 1914. She became an adept nurse and a skilled healer and hundreds of letters from patients and their families bear testament to her untiring work and spirit of generosity.
The Castle returned to a private home and in 1922 the 5th Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, the first global world media event...."
--https://www.highclerecastle.co.uk
Julian Schnabel (American artist and film maker) talking with the press amongst his art, Schnabel AGO © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com 2010, The press were offered an exclusive "sneak peek" of the show and an opportunity to meet the artist, Julian Schnabel whose upcoming exhibition, "Julian Schnabel: Art and Film " runs from September 1, 2010 through January 2, 2011 and takes up the entire fifth floor of the Art Gallery of Ontario. His newest film, "MIRAL" screened at TIFF 2010. Toronto, August 26, 2010.
"Julian Schnabel: Art and Film” poster at the AGO
All photos and text - Julian Schnabel at the AGO © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com 2010, Toronto, August 26, 2010.
PUBLISHED ARTICLE in "Magic Carpet'
"Julian Schnabel: Art and Film” at the AGO
Text and selected photos © Linda Dawn Hammond, with additional photos courtesy of the artist and AGO
Waiting for Julian Schnabel. Who is tardy but that's OK because I hate getting up early, was also late, and frankly can't fathom why any artist would schedule a press conference before noon. We're all there to attend a "sneak peek' offered by the AGO in Toronto- an exclusive advance glance of their upcoming exhibition, "Julian Schnabel: Art and Film," and an opportunity to meet the famed American artist and filmmaker in person.
Journalists warn each other not to ask any questions which could set him off, as he will undoubtedly leave, thus ruining it for everyone. No criticisms or "stupid comments" , only fawning permitted. No-one wants to become the next "Robert Hughes", a well-known critic, whom the mere mention of his name to Schnabel will spark the afore mentioned crisis, or another "Jake Chapman", who was infamously challenged to a fistfight following disrespectful comments about the artist. It is actually appalling to watch the majority of press comply, all smiles and glazed eyes fixed on Schnabel, effecting looks of studied intensity as they lap up every proffered word. All it takes to command such adulation is super star status, and Schnabel has managed to achieve this successfully on two fronts- first, Art in the 80s, then as an award winning film director for the past 15 years. I suspect that by now he finds all the deference annoying as well as flattering, and one can understand why he chooses his close friends amongst the similarly rich and famous. The man is known to be enormously wealthy, enormously egotistical, and creates works of art on an increasingly enormous scale in an enormous pink palace he personally designed and decorated. The 170-foot-tall Palazzo Chupi was placed atop an industrial building, much to the initial consternation of his West Village neighbours in NYC. It is magnificent, if you like all things Venetian and Gaudi-esque, and I confess I do!
With the 45 minute delay, the anticipation in the room mounts. The buzz includes such lofty musings as- What will he wear? In spite of his wealth, the corpulent, middle-aged Schnabel (59) now eschews the elegant yet edgy clothing of his youth for the comfort of pajamas (worn in public like Hefner) and sarongs. A startling effect nicely offset with the inevitable beautiful woman dangling off an arm. Men shake their heads- how does a guy dress like that and yet score such babes, they ask, as if the answer isn't glaringly obvious. Money, position and power win the girl every time- or at least, some girls, with lots of lookers to choose from in that pool, and evidently intelligent ones too. Fashion TV was there, presumably for the art, but when Schnabel eventually meandered in they weren't disappointed. He was a study in contrived yet casual disarray - buttoned up plaid shirt, mismatched plaid shorts and drooping 2 toned socks which came up too high over his low-rise "Vans" sneakers. You couldn't help but think- Oh, come on... you have money, and probably a stylist- you didn't just throw this on, you chose this outfit for us! But it worked. We're all talking about it, unlike the more conventional suits worn by the 2 men who introduced him, AGO board member Jay Smith, and David Moos, AGO curator of modern and contemporary art. A catalogue, Julian Schnabel: Art and Film, has been published in conjunction with the exhibition. David Moos wrote the introduction and will also conduct a dialogue with Schnabel about the relationship between painting and film in his practice.
After speeches which established Julian Schnabel's position as “one of the most famous artists in the world today,” (Jay Smith), and emphasized the importance film has always played in Schnabel's work, long before he ventured into that particular medium himself (David Moos), we were taken on a tour of the show, which was still in the process of being mounted. We were escorted by Schnabel, who fielded cameras graciously and avoided questions about any intended meanings deftly, and even read quotes from his catalogue to the rapt audience. At one point the press were abandoned, when Schnabel went “hands-on” and climbing on a scissor lift, began to place his movie posters on the wall with a staple gun, a "moment' that seemed contrived but could be symptomatic of an artist who likes to control all aspects of his creative output.
The exhibit reflects an eclectic range of styles, materials and intentions, understandable as it does represent a professional career spanning 3 decades. In a 2003 interview with Art Forum, he addressed this aspect of his work. "It worried me at first, because it seemed like the works didn't go together, but later I discovered it was a good thing. It wasn't that I couldn't make up my mind. It was just that I was attracted to different things. I wanted to expand what art materials were." Schnabel continued the thread in a “60 Minute” TV interview in 2008, saying, "I probably paint like a jazz musician. I know where to begin but I don't really have necessarily an idea of how the thing's going to turn out..." The AGO exhibition covers Schnabel's work as a painter from the mid-1970s to the present, and features more than 25 key works in various mediums. These include several of the 1979 neo-impressionist broken "plate paintings’, the series which brought him world wide recognition, paintings on velvet (Portrait of Andy Warhol, 1982) and sailcloth (Jane Birkin #2, 1990); monumental 22-by-22-foot canvasses (Anno Domini, 1990); photography and recent gesso-and-ink paintings on polyester. Some pieces are political in nature, such as the 1988 "Jerusalem Gate" and "Palestine Gate", also on display at the AGO.
In one small room, 4 paintings face-off on 4 planes, reflecting upon each other in a convoluted series of connections. On one wall is a self-portrait of the artist. On another, a portrait of his current partner and muse, Rula Jebreal. A third wall contains a painting of actor Gary Oldman, who played a character based on Schnabel in the artist’s first foray into film,"Basquiat". He is depicted in a matador outfit, which references Picasso- an important influence for Schnabel, and whom he once famously and grandiosely compared himself with, saying, “I’m as close to Picasso as you’re going to get in this f------ life,” though I believe at the time Picasso himself was still around. Andy Warhol is on the fourth wall- another mentor, not only artistically, but possibly as an inspiration of art business acumen. He is revealing his wounds, and I thought I saw the figure of a reclining woman within them- possibly his mother, or would be assassin who shot him, or one of the doomed girls from the scene he inhabited? According to Schnabel- none of the above and just my own projections, but I'm not convinced, and besides, art is in the eye of the beholder, as is its inherent meaning.
The scale of the work is often cinematic in scope, as befitting an exhibit which to some degree dwells upon the biggest names in cinema today, either titular, in homage to their style of oeuvre (as example, the 2006 Surfing Paintings series dedicated to Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci) or as representations of movie personalities such as Marlon Brando, Albert Finney, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken and Jane Birkin.
"The show traces a personal connection to these people who worked in another practice than painting, often on both sides of the camera," says Schnabel. "Film is like a world outside of this world. Painting is like that too. When we are attracted to the imagination of a work, we pick a world that we prefer to live in."
"It has become abundantly clear, as Julian Schnabel's painterly vision has evolved, that cinema has served to germinate his pictorial imagination, inspiring his paintings in diverse and dynamic ways," says AGO curator of modern and contemporary art, David Moos. "Julian Schnabel: Art and Film poses cinema as a connective force, coiling through his entire oeuvre and serving to link together formally disparate work via this shared theme."
Schnabel will appear in conversation with Moos at a public talk on September 15, at 7:15- 8:30 PM in the AGO's Baillie Court. Four of Schnabel's films - Basquiat (1996), Before Night Falls (2001), Lou Reed: Berlin (2007) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) will screen throughout the exhibition's run. All screenings take place in the AGO's Jackman Hall.
The exhibit is brilliantly timed to coincide with the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, where Schnabel’s latest movie, “Miral”, will have its North American premiere in mid September. It stars actors Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), Willem Dafoe (Antichrist), Hiam Abbass (The Limits of Control) and Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement). North American theatrical rights were recently acquired by The Weinstein Company, with release scheduled for later this year. “I am thrilled to be back in business with Julian Schnabel,” stated Harvey Weinstein, Co-Chairman. “This film is truly a challenge for me to take on personally and professionally. It is the first film I am involved in that shows the ‘other side’ of the Israeli / Palestine conflict. As a staunch supporter of Israel I thought this would be a movie I would have a hard time wrapping my head around. However, meeting Rula moved me to open my heart and mind and I hope we can do the same with audiences worldwide.”
“Miral” is based on the novel by Israeli Palestinian writer Rula Jebreal, Schnabel’s current partner. She also wrote the screenplay for the film, which revolves around a real-life orphanage established by a Palestinian woman (played by Abbass) following the 1948 creation of the Israeli state. In an interview with an Israeli journalist in 2008, Schnabel explained, "… it's about Palestinian women under the Israeli state. It's about Hind Husseini who started the Dar El-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem. It's about a lot of things. It's about peace." The story is set in Jerusalem, in 1948. On her way to work, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) finds 55 orphaned children in the street. She takes them home and gives them food and shelter. Within six months, 55 have expanded to almost 2000, and the Dar Al-Tifel Institute is born. In 1978, at the age of 5, Miral (Pinto) is sent to the Institute by her father following her mother's death. Brought up safely inside the Institute's walls, she is naïve to the troubles that surround her. At the age of 17, she is assigned to teach at a refugee camp, where she is awakened to the reality of her people's struggle. When she falls for political activist, she finds herself torn between the fight for the future of her people and Mama Hind's belief that education is the road to peace. "Miral" was filmed in Israel and Schnabel hopes to use the film as a vehicle for just that. "We need to fix things over there," he told the Israeli reporter before filming. "I'm going to work on it. That will be my next thing. Yes, I'm going to devote myself to try and make things better over there."
One French reporter will be fortunate if she doesn’t end up on Schnabel’s infamous blacklist. I heard from a source that she essentially asked him in a private interview how “his people’ would respond to a film which depicts the Palestinians in a positive light. Schnabel chose not to understand the question. As “his people” now includes his Palestinian partner as well as those who share his particular ethnic background, the question illustrates the barriers of ignorance yet to be overcome. I hope that Schnabel succeeds in his goal- an effort which all people who desire peace and justice in the Middle East can support.
The AGO show runs from September 1, 2010 through January 2, 2011 and takes up the entire fifth floor of the Art Gallery of Ontario's Vivian & David Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art.
Links
Art Gallery of Ontario site, for admission prices and further information. Note that on Wednesday evenings after 6pm, admission to the AGO is free to the general public.
“Miral”- Julian Schnabel's film (Trailer)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck96h97y9Vs
Toronto International Film Festival
tiff.net/
The Lost World (20th Century Fox, 1960).
youtu.be/h1CLA-gJbmA?t=5s Trailer
Irwin Allen, the producer who would go on to make the disaster film a huge success in the seventies, brought us this Saturday afternoon fodder with giant lizards posing as dinosaurs. Starring Michael Rennie, David Hedison, Claude Rains and Jill St. John.
Intended as a grand sci-fi/fantasy epic remake of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel. The first film adaptation, shot in 1925, was a milestone in many ways, but movie making and special effects had come a long way in 35 years. Irwin Allen's Lost World (LW) & 20th Century Fox version was derailed on the way to greatness, but managed to still be a respectable, (if more modest) A-film. Allen's screenplay followed the book fairly well, telling of Professor Challenger's expedition to a remote plateau in the Amazon upon which dinosaurs still lived. Aside from the paleontological presumptions in the premise, there is little "science" in The Lost World. Nonetheless, dinosaur movies have traditionally been lumped into the sci-fi genre.
Synopsis
When his plane lands in London, crusty old professor George Edward Challenger is besieged by reporters questioning him about his latest expedition to the headwaters of the Amazon River. After the irascible Challenger strikes reporter Ed Malone on the head with his umbrella, Jennifer Holmes, the daughter of Ed's employer, Stuart Holmes, offers the injured reporter a ride into town. That evening, Jenny is escorted by Lord John Roxton, an adventurer and big game hunter, to Challenger's lecture at the Zoological Institute, and Ed invites them to sit with him. When Challenger claims to have seen live dinosaurs, his colleague Professor Summerlee scoffs and asks for evidence. Explaining that his photographs of the creatures were lost when his boat overturned, Challenger invites Summerlee to accompany him on a new expedition to the "lost world," and asks for volunteers. When Roxton raises his hand, Jenny insists on going with him, but she is rejected by Challenger because she is a woman. Ed is given a spot after Holmes offers to fund the expedition if the reporter is included. The four then fly to the Amazon, where they are met by Costa, their guide and Manuel Gomez, their helicopter pilot. Arriving unexpectedly, Jenny and her younger brother David insist on joining them. Unable to arrange transportation back to the United States, Challenger reluctantly agrees to take them along. The next day, they take off for the lost world and land on an isolated plateau inhabited by dinosaurs. That evening, a dinosaur stomps out of the jungle, sending them scurrying for cover. After the beast destroys the helicopter and radio, the group ventures inland. When one of the creatures bellows threateningly, they flee, and in their haste, Challenger and Ed slip and tumble down a hillside, where they encounter a native girl. The girl runs into the jungle, but Ed follows and captures her. They then all take refuge in a cave, where Roxton, who has been making disparaging remarks about Jenny's desire to marry him solely for his title, angers Ed. Ed lunges at Roxton, pushing him to the ground, where he finds a diary written by Burton White, an adventurer who hired Roxton three years earlier to lead him to the lost diamonds of Eldorado. Roxton then admits that he never met White and his party because he was delayed by a dalliance with a woman, thus abandoning them to certain death. Gomez angrily snaps that his good friend Santiago perished in the expedition. That night, Costa tries to molest the native girl, and David comes to her rescue and begins to communicate with her through sign language. After Gomez goes to investigate some movement he spotted in the vegetation, he calls for help, and when Roxton runs out of the cave, a gunshot from an unseen assailant is fired, nearly wounding Roxton and sending the girl scurrying into the jungle. Soon after, Ed and Jenny stray from camp and are pursued by a dinosaur, and after taking refuge on some cliffs, watch in horror as their stalker becomes locked in combat with another prehistoric creature and tumbles over the cliffs into the waters below. Upon returning to camp, they discover it deserted, their belongings in disarray. As David stumbles out from some rocks to report they were attacked by a tribe of natives, the cannibals return and imprison them in a cave with the others. As the drums beat relentlessly, signaling their deaths, the native girl reappears and motions for them to follow her through a secret passageway that leads to the cave in which Burton White lives, completely sightless. After confirming that all in his expedition perished, White tells them of a volcanic passageway that will lead them off the plateau, but warns that they must first pass through the cave of fire. Cautioning them that the natives plan to sacrifice them, White declares that their only chance of survival is to slip through the cave and then seal it with a boulder. After giving them directions to the cave, White asks them to take the girl along. As the earth, on the verge of a volcanic eruption, quakes, they set off through the Graveyard of the Damned, a vast cavern littered with dinosaur skeletons, the victims of the deadly sulfurous gases below. Pursued by the ferocious natives, Roxton takes the lead as they inch their way across a narrow ledge above the molten lava. After escaping the natives, they jam the cave shut with a boulder and, passing a dam of molten lava, finally reach the escape passage. At its mouth is a pile of giant diamonds and a dinosaur egg. As Costa heaps the diamonds into his hat, Challenger fondles the egg and Gomez pulls a gun and announces that Roxton must die in exchange for the death of Santiago, Gomez' brother. Acting quickly, Ed hurls the diamonds at Gomez, throwing him off balance and discharging his gun. The gunshot awakens a creature slumbering in the roiling waters below. After the beast snatches Costa and eats him alive, Ed tries to dislodge the dam, sending a few scorching rocks tumbling down onto the monster. Feeling responsible for the peril of the group, Gomez sacrifices his life by using his body as a lever to dislodge the dam, covering the creature with oozing lava. As the cave begins to crumble from the impending eruption, the group hurries to safety. Just then, the volcano explodes, destroying the lost world. After Roxton hands Ed a handful of diamonds he has saved as a wedding gift for him and Jenny, Challenger proudly displays his egg, which then hatches, revealing a baby dinosaur. The End.
The 50s had seen several examples of the dinosaur sub-genre. LW is one of the more lavish ones, owing to color by DeLuxe and CinemaScope. The A-level actors help too. Claude Rains plays the flamboyant Challenger. Michael Rennie plays Roxton, perhaps a bit too cooly. Jill St. John and Vitina Marcus do well as the customary eye candy. David Hedison as Malone and Fernando Lamas as Gomez round out the bill.
The first film version of LW was a silent movie shot in 1925: screenplay by Marion Fairfax. The film featured stop-motion animated dinosaurs by a young Willis O'Brien. Fairfax followed Doyle's text, but Fairfax added a young woman to the team, Paula White. Ostensibly trying to find her father from the first failed expedition, she provided the love triangle interest between Malone and Roxton.
Allen's screenplay tried to stick to Doyle's text as much as Hollywood would allow. It carried on Fairfax's invention of the young woman member of the group as triangle fodder. Fairfax had Doyle's ape men (ape man) but omitted the native humans. Allen had the natives, but no ape men. Allen revived the Gomez/revenge subplot, which Fairfax skipped. Doyle's story had Challenger bringing back a pterodactyl. Fairfax made it a brontosaur who rampaged through London streets (spawning a popular trope). Allen suggested the baby dinosaur traveling to London.
Willis O'Brien pitched 20th Century Fox in the late 50s, to do a quality remake of LW. He had gained much experience in the intervening 35 years, so his stop-motion dinosaurs were to be the real stars. Fox bass liked the idea, but by the time the ball started rolling, there was trouble in studioland. Fox's grand epic Cleopatra was underway, but was already 5 million dollars over budget. Cleo would nearly sink 20th Century Fox when it was finally released in 1963. To stay afloat, all other Fox films' budgets were slashed. Allen could no longer afford the grand O'Brien stop-motion.
Allen's production is often criticized for its "cheap" dinosaurs, which were live monitor lizards and alligators with fins and plates and horns glue onto them. (more on that below) These were already a bit cheesy when used in the 1940 film One Million B.C.. O'Brien is still listed on the credits as "Effects Technician," but all Allen could afford was lizards with glued on extras. Somewhat amusingly, the script still refers to them as brontosaurs and T-Rexes.
The character of Jennifer Holmes starts out promising. She's a self-assured to the edges of pushy, and is said to be able to out shoot and out ride any man. Yet, when she gets to the Amazon jungle, she's little more than Jungle Barbie, dressed in girlie clothes and screaming frequently. She even does the typical Hollywood trip-and-fall when chased by the dinosaur, so that a man must save her.
Bottom line? FW is a finer example of the not-quite-sci-fi dinosaur sub-genre. The actors are top drawer, even if some of their acting is a bit flat. Nonetheless, FW is a fair adaptation of Doyle's
classic adventure novel, given the constraints of Hollywood culture.
The Movie Club Annals … Review
The Lost World 1960
Introduction
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Irwin Allen's 1960 production of The Lost World. Nothing. It was perfect in every way. I therefore find myself in the unique and unfamiliar position of having to write a rave review about a Movie Club movie that was entirely devoid of flaws.
Faced with such a confounding task, I half-heartedly considered faking a bad review, then praying my obvious deceptions would go unnoticed. But the patent transparency of my scheme convinced me to abandon it posthaste. After all, leveling concocted criticisms at such an unassailable masterpiece would be a futile and tiresome exercise, the pretense of which would escape nary a semi-cognizant soul.
Thus, having retreated from my would-be descent into literary intrigue, I start this review in earnest by borrowing a quote from the legendary Shelly Winters, spoken during the 1972 filming of Irwin Allen's The Poseidon Adventure:
"I'm ready for my close up now, Mr. Allen.” Shelly Winters, 1972
Review
A bit of research into the casting choices of Irwin Allen, who wrote, produced, and directed The Lost World, begins to reveal the genius behind the virtuosity.
The first accolades go to Irwin for his casting of Vitina Marcus, the immaculately groomed Saks 5th Avenue cave girl with exquisite taste in makeup, jewelry, and cave-wear. No finer cave girl ever graced a feature film.
Vitina Marcus, as The Cave Girl
She was the picture of prehistoric glamour, gliding across the silver screen in her designer bearskin mini-pelt, her flawless coiffure showing no signs of muss from the traditional courting rituals of the day, her perfect teeth the envy of even the most prototypical Osmond. Even her nouveau-opposable thumbs retained their manicure, in spite of the oft-disagreeable duties that frequently befell her as an effete member of the tribal gentry.
By no means just another Neanderthal harlot, Vitina had a wealth of talent to augment her exterior virtues. Her virtuoso interpretation of a comely cave girl in The Lost World certainly didn't escape the attention Irwin Allen. In fact, he was so taken with her performance that he later engaged her services again, casting her as the Native Girl in episode 2.26 of his Voyage to The Bottom of The Sea TV series.
Leery of potential typecasting, Vitina went on to obtain roles with greater depth and more sophisticated dialogue. This is evidenced by the great departure she took from her previous roles when she next portrayed the part of Sarit, a female barbarian, in episode 1.24 of Irwin Allen's The Time Tunnel TV series.
Vitina, as Sarit
Vitina's efforts to avoid typecasting paid off in spades, as she was soon rewarded with the distinctive role of Girl, a female Tarzanesque she-beast character, in episode 3.14 of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV series.
Lured back from the U.N.C.L.E. set by Irwin Allen, Vitina was next cast in the role of Athena (a.k.a. Lorelei), the green space girl with the inverted lucite salad bowl hat, in episodes 2.2 and 2.16 of the revered Lost in Space TV series.
And with this, Vitina reached the pinnacle of her career. For her many unparalleled displays of thespian pageantry, she leaves us forever in her debt as she exits the stage.
For those who would still question the genius of Irwin Allen, I defy you to find a better casting choice for the character of Lord John Roxton than that of Michael Rennie. Mr. Rennie, who earlier starred as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still, went on to even greater heights, starring as The Keeper in episodes 1.16 and 1.17 of the revered Lost in Space TV series. Throughout his distinguished career, Mr. Rennie often played highly cerebral characters with
unique names, such as Garth A7, Tribolet, Hasani, Rama Kahn, Hertz, and Dirk. How befitting that his most prolific roles came to him through a man named Irwin, a highly cerebral character with a unique name.
The selection of David Hedison to play Ed Malone was yet another example of Irwin's uncanny foresight. Soon after casting him in The Lost World, Irwin paved Mr. Hedison's path to immortality by casting him as a lead character in his Voyage to The Bottom of The Sea TV series. Although Voyage ended in 1968, Mr. Hedison departed the show with a solid resume and a bright future.
In the decades following Voyage, Mr. Hedison has been a veritable fixture on the small screen, appearing in such socially influential programs as The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Knight Rider, The Fall Guy and The A Team. Mr. Hedison's early collaborations with Irwin Allen have left him never wanting for a day's work in Hollywood, a boon to the legions of discerning fans who continue to savor his inspiring prime time depictions.
Irwin selected Fernando Lamas to play Manuel Gomez, the honorable and tortured soul of The Lost World who needlessly sacrificed himself at the end of the movie to save all the others. To get a feel for how important a casting decision he was to Irwin, just look at the pertinent experience Mr. Lamas brought to the table:
Irwin knew that such credentials could cause him to lose the services of Mr. Lamas to another project, and he took great pains to woo him onto the set of The Lost World. And even though Mr. Lamas never appeared in the revered Lost in Space TV series, his talent is not lost on us.
Jay Novello was selected by Irwin Allen to play Costa, the consummate Cuban coward who perpetually betrays everyone around him in the name of greed. In pursuing his craven calling, Mr. Novello went on to play Xandros, the Greek Slave in Atlantis, The Lost Continent, as well as countless other roles as a coward.
Although Mr. Novella never appeared in the revered Lost in Space TV series, his already long and distinguished career as a coward made him the obvious choice for Irwin when the need for an experienced malingerer arose.
Jill St. John was Irwin's pick to play Jennifer Holmes, the "other" glamour girl in The Lost World. Not to be upstaged by glamour-cave-girl Vitina Marcus, Jill played the trump card and broke out the pink go-go boots and skin-tight Capri pants, the perfect Amazonian summertime jungle wear.
Complete with a perfect hairdo, a killer wardrobe, a little yip-yip dog named Frosty, and all the other trappings of a wealthy and pampered prehistoric society, Jill's sensational allure rivaled even that of a certain cave girl appearing in the same film.
With the atmosphere rife for an on-set rivalry between Jill and Vitina, Irwin still managed to keep the peace, proving that he was as skilled a diplomat as he was a director.
Claude Rains, as Professor George Edward Challenger
And our cup runneth over, as Irwin cast Claude Rains to portray Professor George Edward Challenger. His eminence, Mr. Rains is an entity of such immeasurable virtue that he is not in need of monotonous praise from the likes of me.
I respectfully acknowledge the appearance of Mr. Rains because failure to do so would be an unforgivable travesty. But I say nothing more on the subject, lest I state something so obvious and uninspiring as to insult the intelligence of enlightened reader.
Irwin's casting of the cavemen mustn't be overlooked, for their infallibly realistic portrayals are unmatched within the Pleistocene Epoch genre of film. Such meticulous attention to detail is what separates Irwin Allen from lesser filmmakers, whose pale imitations of his work only further to underscore the point.
To be sure, it is possible to come away with the unfounded suspicion that the cavemen are really just a bunch of old white guys from the bar at the local Elks lodge. But Irwin was an absolute stickler for authenticity, and would never have allowed the use of such tawdry measures to taint his prehistoric magnum opus.
In truth, Irwin's on-screen cavemen were borne of many grueling years of anthropological research, so the explanation for their somewhat modern, pseudo-caucasian appearance lies obviously elsewhere. And in keeping with true Irwin Allen tradition, that explanation will not be offered here.
1964 - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Season One, Episode 7 - "Turn Back the Clock", featuring Vitina Marcus as The Native Girl. Produced by Irwin Allen.
And then there was Irwin Allen's masterful handling of the reptilian facets of The Lost World, most notably his inimitable casting of the dinosaurs. His dinosaurs were so realistic, so eerily lifelike, that they almost looked like living, breathing garden variety lizards with dinosaur fins and horns glued to their backs and heads.
The less enlightened viewer might even suppose this to be true, that Irwin's dinosaurs were indeed merely live specimens of lizards, donned in Jurassic-era finery, vastly magnified, and retro-fitted into The Lost World via some penny-wise means of cinematic trickery.
But those of us in the know certainly know better than that, as we are privy to some otherwise unpublished information about The Lost World. The lifelike appearance of the Irwin's dinosaurs can be attributed to a wholly overlooked and fiendishly cunning approach to the art of delusion, which is that the dinosaurs didn't just look real, they were real.
While the world abounds with middling minds who cannot fathom such a reality, we must follow Irwin's benevolent leanings and temper our natural feelings of contempt for this unfortunate assemblage of pedestrian lowbrows. In spite of Irwin's superior intellect, he never felt disdain toward the masses that constituted his audiences. He simply capitalized on their unaffectedness, and in the process recounted the benefits of exploiting the intellectually bereft for personal gain.
The purpose of all this analysis, of course, is to place an exclamation point on the genius of Irwin Allen, the formation of his dinosaur exposé being a premier example. Note how he mindfully manipulates the expectations of his unsuspecting audience, compelling them to probe the dinosaurs for any signs of man-made chicanery. Then, at the palatial moment when the dinosaurs make their entry, he guilefully supplants the anticipated display of faux reptilia with that of the bona fide article.
Upon first witnessing the de facto dinosaurs, some in the audience think they've been had, and indeed they have. Irwin, in engineering his masterful ruse, had used reality as his medium to convey the illusion of artifice. His audience, in essence, was blinded by the truth. It was the immaculate deception, and none but Irwin Allen could have conceived it.
Indeed, the matter of where the live dinosaurs came from has been conspicuously absent from this discussion, as the Irwinian technique of fine film making strongly discourages the practice of squandering time on extraneous justifications and other such trite means of redundant apologia. For the benefit of the incessantly curious, however, just keep in mind that Irwin Allen wrote and produced The Time Tunnel TV Series, a fact that should provide some fair insight into his modis operandi.
Carl R.
The inside of the building has various spray paint cans and fuel drums lay about in a carefully-constructed illusion of disarray, as the entire facility is booby-trapped. For example, the sign on top of the building is actually a weapons launcher with a number of radar-guided dark-matter missiles, while the entire asteroid is equipped with a red-matter bomb at it's core, ready to destroy the base with a instant black hole just in case of a overwhelming attack as a desperate last resort... luckily, that hasn't happened, and the SPIV are oblivious to the robin hood-like second life of the Smokey's Space Garage and it's crew.
Here is the fateful picture of Meldreth Lostmahauser, which finally exposed him as a fake theoretical physicist.
Born in 1938, Lostmahauser grew up in an era of quantum mechanics that was in disarray. No really significant advances had been made in the field since the 1920s, and the physics world was metaphorically twiddling its thumbs, waiting for someone to come up with something.
Anything really.
One day at school, Lostmahauser drew a game of tic-tac-toe on the blackboard. His illegibility and the myopia of the incoming science teacher, who proclaimed it as a significant work, gave Lostmahauser an idea. In a field of work already full of terms such "charm", "strangeness" and "truth" and beauty", he thought he could put a new spin on it.
Over the years, he found that by taking a block of equations from different photographs of leading pioneers, and assembling them in a hodge-podge way using his inimitable illegible style for his own photos, his reputation grew.
It wasn't long before he made up a few words to use, such as "nervayance", "consanguinity" and "polt", and these came into common parlance, often used in theoretical physics today.
This photo, however, was his undoing, when it was shown at a conference of world leading physicists in Berne, 1994.
All eyes were on the equations on the blackboard, trying to decipher the great man's latest work, when a voice from the back said,
"Hang on. That's that nerdy little guy with the specs we all beat up at school."
The jig was up, and Lostmahauser's reputation was in ruins.
But various physicists still look ruefully at his "equations" to this day. There must be SOMETHING in there, right?
Meldreth Lastmahauser now has a new job as a geneticist.
FINALLY! The dolls have a new dresser to stand on, one that is twice as wide and not as tall as the old one. My SO and I were also able to consolidate our doll stuff into this dresser. Before it was kind of everywhere and in great disarray. Now with 8 drawers rather than 3 (where two didn't have any doll things in it) everything is organized by size! I also love that Mort and Liam can finally stand and don't have to sit anymore.
This will get rearranged a little again after christmas and in roughly 6 months when 2 more SD boys will be joining us, 1 YoSD and 3 tinies.
Oh man... this is a lot of dolls. It took me half an hour to set them all up and I almost got hit in the face by Mort when he decided to try and flop forward. He is called Captain FloppyButt for a reason though.
Dolls in this picture:
Angell-Studio Dina, Dollzone April, Dollzone Chen, Dollzone Shoyo, Dollzone Stramonium, Dollzone Chinese Dragon Girl/Miss Kitty hybrid, Dollzone Sheep/Daisy Dayes hybrid, Dollzone Miss Kitty/Doll Chateau hybrid, Dragondoll Cheng, Eve Studios Oriental Cat, Fairyland LTF Chiwoo Elf Girl, Fairyland LTF Dark Elf Soo, tan Fairyland LTF Dark Elf Soo, Fairyland MNF Ryeon, Fairyland MNF Vampire Woosoo, Limhwa Lily, Mystic Kids Miri, Resinsoul Ai/Doll Family-A/Soom Beryl hybrid, Soom FC Chrom, Soom MD Shale/Doll Chateau hybrid, Soom SO Shale/Luts Pegasus Yamong hybrid, Soom Beyla/Fairyland LTF/Daisy Dayes hybrid.
I cleaned the worktable just for this shot. It just doesn't get any cleaner than this ever, and usually is in a terrible state of disarray.
The Best of Yazoo
Only You
Ode To Boy
Nobody's Diary
Midnight
Goodbye 70s
Anyone
Don't Go
Mr Blue
Tuesday
Winter Kills
State Farm
Situation (Us 12" Mix)
Don't Go (Tee's Freeze Mix)
Situation (Club 69 Future Phunk Mix)
Only You (Richard Stannard 1999 Remix)
The Debt Collection - The Shortwave Set
Slingshot
Sven Rokk
Is It Any Wonder
Better Than Bad
Repeat To Fade
Heap Of Other
Roadside
Head To Fill
Figures Of '62
Just Goes To Show
In Your Debt
Yr Room
Double Negative - Low
Quorum
Dancing And Blood
Fly
Tempest
Always Up
Always Trying To Work It Out
The Son, The Sun
Dancing And Fire
Poor Sucker
Rome (Always In The Dark)
Disarray
A Fever You Can't Sweat Out - Panic At The Disco
Introduction
The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage
London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines
Nails For Breakfast, Tacks For Snacks
Camisado
Time To Dance
Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off
Intermission
But It's Better If You Do
I Write Sins Not Tragedies
I Constantly Thank God For Esteban
There's A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet
Build God, Then We'll Talk
His 'N' Hers - Pulp
Joyriders
Lipgloss
Acrylic Afternoons
Have You Seen Her Lately?
Babies
She's A Lady
Happy Endings
Do You Remember The First Time?
Pink Glove
Someone Like The Moon
David's Last Summer
The Hissing Of Summer Lawns - Joni Mitchell
In France They Kiss On Main Street
The Jungle Line
Edith And The Kingpin
Don't Interrupt The Sorrow
Shades Of Scarlet Conquering
The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
The Boho Dance
Harry's House / Centerpiece
Sweet Bird
Shadows And Light
Live At The 40 Watt - Vigilantes Of Love
It Could Be A Lot Worse (live)
But Not For Long (live)
Taking On Water (live)
Blister Soul (live)
Locust Years (live)
Run Through My Veins (live)
To The Roof Of The Sky (live)
Avalanche (live)
Doin' Time (live)
The Glory And The Dream (live)
Offer (live)
The Opposite's True (live)
Double Cure (live)
The Ballad Of Russell Perry (live)
Lover - Taylor Swift
Lover
The Archer
You Need To Calm Down
ME! (feat. Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco)
I Forgot That You Existed
Cruel Summer
The Man
I Think He Knows
Miss Americana
Paper Hearts
Cornelia Street
Death By A Thousand Cuts
London Boy
Soon You'll Get Better
False God
Afterglow
It's Nice To Have A Friend
Daylight
Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, DC
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Charlecote Park is undergoing a full electrical re-wiring so many of the rooms are being re-arranged-quite a task on such a scale
cup
www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collecti...
Object typecup
Museum number1848,0619.7
DescriptionPottery: red-figured cup.
INTERIOR: symposiast and girl dancer. A youth reclines against a large striped cushion on a couch (only the horizontal board shown) to the left. He is named ΠΙLΙΠΟΣ (retr.; for Philippos). He wears a dotted himation with a black border on his left shoulder and over his lower body and has a red wreath in his hair. He grips a pair of pipes in his left hand and holds his right arm out straight to the left in what might be a gesture to stop. His mouth is open. In front of the couch, to the left, dances a very young girl, named ΚΑLLIΣΤΟ, who has straight short-cut hair and wears a transparent chiton and a red wreath in her hair. She lifts up her chiton with both hands so that it is slightly raised, either to facilitate her dance or to reveal her ankles. Her left foot is off the ground and she looks downwards. To the right the narrow end of a three-legged table is shown (the rest being cut off by the tondo frame) on which are a skyphos (black handle outwards) and four red garlands. In the background behind the youth his spotted flute-case {sybene) is suspended and his knotty stick leans against the border.
Border: groups of three units of stopt maeander (four-stroke, anticlockwise) alternating with dotted cross-squares.
EXTERIOR: symposium.
Side A (upper): two symposiasts accompanied by two hetairai and a youth with a barbiton.
On the left a youth dressed in a himation (black border) and shoes leans against a fluted column with a plain block base and a Doric capital over a collar of ovolos. He has a red wreath in his blond hair (dilute glaze used) and holds out a barbiton (seven strings done in relief line) with both hands: a plektron (reserved handle; red end) is attached to its frame by a red cord (his chest and upper arms are lost). At the foot of the first couch sits a blond-haired hetaira wearing chiton, dotted himation with a battlement border, plain sakkos and disc earring, her feet resting on a plain block. She has a red wreath around her head and holds a large cup by the stem and one handle: on it is written KALE. She seems to look at the full cup with great concentration and her mouth is slightly open. Over the girl is written ΠILΟΝ KALΟΣ (for Philon). On the couch a youth reclines to the left, but turns his head back to the right, his mouth open. He wears a himation (battlement border at waist) and a thick reserved fillet, the tail of which he holds in his right hand. He leans against a striped cushion, his elbow actually on the turned post of the couch (all the couches on the exterior have dilute glaze strokes to indicate the grain of the wood). In front of his couch is a three-legged table. On the wall above his knee a footed food basket with red ties is suspended by a red loop. Over his head is written: ΔΕΜΟΝΙΚΟΣ. On the right stands a blond-haired woman wearing a chiton (dilute glaze folds on sleeves), a sakkos decorated with zigzags, a disc earring and a red wreath. She plays the pipes, a relief line to show that her cheeks are puffed. On the far right a bearded man reclines to the left. He wears a dotted himation and a red wreath. His left arm dangles down but his right holds a skyphos out to the right: his little finger juts out stiffly. In front of the couch is a three-legged table. Behind the pipe-player a knotty stick rests against the cushion of the first symposiast. Above his companion a footed food basket with red ties is hung from a red loop. Above him is written: ΑΡΙΣΤΟΚΡΑΤΕΣ.
Side Β (lower): two symposiasts accompanied by two hetairai and a youth with a dipper and a strainer. On the extreme left is a fluted column with a plain block base and a Doric capital over an ovolo collar. A naked boy with a red wreath in his hair leans against it, his right leg flexed, his weight on his frontal left leg. He looks to the left, but his torso and left leg are frontal; his right leg is flexed behind so that it rests only on the toes. He holds a dipper with a long handle terminating in a duck's head and a strainer (the holes in the central perforated disc are done with dilute glaze). There is an accidental splash of added red on his left shoulder. Up on the right a food basket with red ties is suspended by a red loop and above it is written ΗΟΠΑΙΣΚΑLΟΣ. At the foot of the left-hand couch a woman sits on a plain stool with a plain cushion, playing the pipes. She is dressed in chiton (dilute glaze folds on the sleeves) and himation (black border) and has a red wreath around her short cut blond hair (dilute glaze). On the couch a bearded man reclines to the left. He has twisted his head and torso round to the right and holds out a skyphos in his right hand (little finger extended). He wears a dotted himation with a black border and has a red wreath in his hair. He leans against a striped cushion. Over his knee is hung a chelys lyre and under his couch rests a pair of boots (one in profile, one back view). Over his head is written his name: ΔΙΠΙLΟΣ (for Diphilos). Further to the right, beyond a spotted flute-case hanging in the field is written ΚΑLΟΣ. On the right hand couch are a hetaira and a youth. On the right is the youth, his dotted himation in disarray and his right foot raised. He has grasped the hetaira by her left wrist and has put his right hand on her left shoulder. He has a red wreath in his hair and leans against a striped cushion. His mouth is slightly open. The hetaira, who wears a chiton, girt at the waist with a black girdle, has her right hand under the youth's right elbow. Her right heel rests on the end of the couch; her left foot dangles beside it. Her hair has two wavy dilute lines below the main mass. Above and behind their legs a food basket with red ties hangs from a red loop; on the floor under the couch is an animal-legged footstool decorated with two stars — against it rests a pair of sandals (that in the centre seen from under the sole, that at the right hand end seen edge-on). Over their two heads is the inscription: ΝΙΚΟΠΙLΕ KALE (for Nikophile).
Ground line: double reserved line.
Relief line contour throughout (except hair); dilute glaze for minor interior markings; thick reserved line inside lip, thin outside; added red for inscriptions.
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Producer nameAttributed to: The Brygos Painter biography
Culture/periodAttic term details
Date490BC-480BC
Production placeMade in: Attica(Europe,Greece,Attica (Greece))
FindspotExcavated/Findspot: Vulci(Europe,Italy,Lazio,Viterbo (province),Vulci)
Materialspottery term details
WareRed figure term details
Techniquepainted term details
DimensionsWidth: 39.7 centimetresDiameter: 31.9 centimetresDiameter: 17.3 centimetres (of tondo)Height: 12.7 centimetresDiameter: 13.9 centimetres (of exterior ground line)Diameter: 12 centimetres (of foot)
Inscriptions
Inscription Type
inscription
Curator's commentsCVA British Museum 9Bibliography: S. Birch, AZ 1851, 367; Hartwig Μ 319-24, 687 no. 14, pls. 35, I (I) and 34 (A-B); Murray DGV no. 46, with p. 16; VA 93 fig. 61 (detail of A); Hoppin i, 132 no. 62; AV 177, 18; Tonks Brygos 108 no. 18; ARV 147, 21; Bloesch FAS 85 no. 22, pl. 23, 4; ARV2 371, 24; Cambitoglou Brygos Painter 10-11, pl. 2, figs. 1 and 3-4; Para 365 and 367; Wegner Brygosmaler 119-24, pls. 8 (I and B), 27c (detail I) and 36e (detail I); Peschel HSK figs. 62 (I), 60 (A) and 61 (B) with p. 101-4; Sweet Sport and Recreation 207 fig. 79 (A);Open Univ. ii fig. 5 (A); Beazley Add2 225; Immerwahr Attic Script 88 no. 548; Sympotica pl. 11 a-b (A-B); Robertson Art of Vasepainting 96-7, fig. 91.Attributed by K. Wernicke (Die griechischen Vasen mit Lieblingsnamen [Berlin 1890] 15) to Hieron, by F. Dümmler (Berlinerphilologische Wochenschrift 8 [1888] 20) to Brygos. Dümmler was followed by Hartwig and Hoppin; Beazley gave it to his Brygos Painter. It is an early mature work of the Brygos Painter and may be compared with pieces like the Louvre Iliupersis cup and the Würzburg komos cup (ARV2 369, 1; 372, 32). The potting has been attributed by Bloesch to Brygos.
Relatively few straightforward symposium scenes by the Brygos Painter have survived (AKV2 372, 25, 26 and 28): on a Louvre fragment the symposium merges into love-making (ARV2 372, 30) and on the other London cup it devolves into a komos (Vase Ε71), while on a Cabinet des Medailles piece Herakles makes an entrance (ARV2 370, 8). The figure of the boy with dipper and strainer next to the column on side Β closely recalls the figure of a boy on a cup by the Foundry Painter (ARV2 401, 11: see VA 93). It also recalls the servant of Achilles on the Vienna skyphos (ARV2 380, 171) and the servant at the symposium on a cup by Makron (ARV2 478, 316).
For the barbiton and the chelys lyre see Maas and Mcintosh Snyder 79-112 and 113-38. For the plektron see most recently F. Jurgeit in Dohrn Festschrift 53-62. For the head-post of the couches on the exterior cf. the Chiusi cup (ARV2 389, 24), which may well be a work of the Brygos Painter himself. For food baskets with a small flat base see E.R. Knauer in Getty Vases 3, p. 95 fn. 12.
For Kallisto as a hetaira's name cf. Aelian Var. Hist. 13, 32; see further Peschel HSK 183-4. Diphilos kalos and Nikophile kale are so-called tag-kaloi (cf. Beazley ARV2 1574 and 1614; Peschel 396 note 245). For the name Nikophile see Peschel 184.
For the lack of aspiration (P for PH) on this cup see Hartwig Μ 319-21; P. Kretschmer, Die griechischen Vaseninschriften ihrer Sprache nach untersucht (Gütersloh 1894) 81; Cambitoglou Brygos Painter 11 with note 37; Immerwahr Attic Script 88. Immerwahr's suggestion that the lack of aspiration may have been intended to indicate that the symposiasts were drunk (more clearly on ARV2 376, 90) is to be preferred to the idea that the painter was a foreigner. On the status and origins of potters and painters see most recently D. Williams in A. Verbanck-Pierard and D. Vivier (eds.), Culture et Cité. L'avènement d’Athenes a l'époque archaique (Brussels 1995).
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BibliographyCVA British Museum 9 43 bibliographic detailsOld Catalogue 852* bibliographic detailsVase E68 bibliographic details
LocationOn display: G15/dc4
Condition Made up from fragments; one wall fragment missing, together with some chips.
Subjectssymposium term detailshetairadance
Acquisition namePurchased from: Basseggio biography
Acquisition date1848
DepartmentGreek & Roman Antiquities
Registration number1848,0619.7
Julian Schnabel (American artist and film maker) in center on lift, sans harness, stapling up his movie posters, including the newest, "Miral" which screened at TIFF 2010. Schnabel AGO © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com 2010, The press were offered an exclusive "sneak peek" of the show and an opportunity to meet the artist, Julian Schnabel whose upcoming exhibition, "Julian Schnabel: Art and Film " runs from September 1, 2010 through January 2, 2011 and takes up the entire fifth floor of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Toronto, August 26, 2010.
"Julian Schnabel: Art and Film” poster at the AGO
All photos and text - Julian Schnabel at the AGO © Linda Dawn Hammond / IndyFoto.com 2010, Toronto, August 26, 2010.
PUBLISHED ARTICLE in "Magic Carpet'
"Julian Schnabel: Art and Film” at the AGO
Text and selected photos © Linda Dawn Hammond, with additional photos courtesy of the artist and AGO
Waiting for Julian Schnabel. Who is tardy but that's OK because I hate getting up early, was also late, and frankly can't fathom why any artist would schedule a press conference before noon. We're all there to attend a "sneak peek' offered by the AGO in Toronto- an exclusive advance glance of their upcoming exhibition, "Julian Schnabel: Art and Film," and an opportunity to meet the famed American artist and filmmaker in person.
Journalists warn each other not to ask any questions which could set him off, as he will undoubtedly leave, thus ruining it for everyone. No criticisms or "stupid comments" , only fawning permitted. No-one wants to become the next "Robert Hughes", a well-known critic, whom the mere mention of his name to Schnabel will spark the afore mentioned crisis, or another "Jake Chapman", who was infamously challenged to a fistfight following disrespectful comments about the artist. It is actually appalling to watch the majority of press comply, all smiles and glazed eyes fixed on Schnabel, effecting looks of studied intensity as they lap up every proffered word. All it takes to command such adulation is super star status, and Schnabel has managed to achieve this successfully on two fronts- first, Art in the 80s, then as an award winning film director for the past 15 years. I suspect that by now he finds all the deference annoying as well as flattering, and one can understand why he chooses his close friends amongst the similarly rich and famous. The man is known to be enormously wealthy, enormously egotistical, and creates works of art on an increasingly enormous scale in an enormous pink palace he personally designed and decorated. The 170-foot-tall Palazzo Chupi was placed atop an industrial building, much to the initial consternation of his West Village neighbours in NYC. It is magnificent, if you like all things Venetian and Gaudi-esque, and I confess I do!
With the 45 minute delay, the anticipation in the room mounts. The buzz includes such lofty musings as- What will he wear? In spite of his wealth, the corpulent, middle-aged Schnabel (59) now eschews the elegant yet edgy clothing of his youth for the comfort of pajamas (worn in public like Hefner) and sarongs. A startling effect nicely offset with the inevitable beautiful woman dangling off an arm. Men shake their heads- how does a guy dress like that and yet score such babes, they ask, as if the answer isn't glaringly obvious. Money, position and power win the girl every time- or at least, some girls, with lots of lookers to choose from in that pool, and evidently intelligent ones too. Fashion TV was there, presumably for the art, but when Schnabel eventually meandered in they weren't disappointed. He was a study in contrived yet casual disarray - buttoned up plaid shirt, mismatched plaid shorts and drooping 2 toned socks which came up too high over his low-rise "Vans" sneakers. You couldn't help but think- Oh, come on... you have money, and probably a stylist- you didn't just throw this on, you chose this outfit for us! But it worked. We're all talking about it, unlike the more conventional suits worn by the 2 men who introduced him, AGO board member Jay Smith, and David Moos, AGO curator of modern and contemporary art. A catalogue, Julian Schnabel: Art and Film, has been published in conjunction with the exhibition. David Moos wrote the introduction and will also conduct a dialogue with Schnabel about the relationship between painting and film in his practice.
After speeches which established Julian Schnabel's position as “one of the most famous artists in the world today,” (Jay Smith), and emphasized the importance film has always played in Schnabel's work, long before he ventured into that particular medium himself (David Moos), we were taken on a tour of the show, which was still in the process of being mounted. We were escorted by Schnabel, who fielded cameras graciously and avoided questions about any intended meanings deftly, and even read quotes from his catalogue to the rapt audience. At one point the press were abandoned, when Schnabel went “hands-on” and climbing on a scissor lift, began to place his movie posters on the wall with a staple gun, a "moment' that seemed contrived but could be symptomatic of an artist who likes to control all aspects of his creative output.
The exhibit reflects an eclectic range of styles, materials and intentions, understandable as it does represent a professional career spanning 3 decades. In a 2003 interview with Art Forum, he addressed this aspect of his work. "It worried me at first, because it seemed like the works didn't go together, but later I discovered it was a good thing. It wasn't that I couldn't make up my mind. It was just that I was attracted to different things. I wanted to expand what art materials were." Schnabel continued the thread in a “60 Minute” TV interview in 2008, saying, "I probably paint like a jazz musician. I know where to begin but I don't really have necessarily an idea of how the thing's going to turn out..." The AGO exhibition covers Schnabel's work as a painter from the mid-1970s to the present, and features more than 25 key works in various mediums. These include several of the 1979 neo-impressionist broken "plate paintings’, the series which brought him world wide recognition, paintings on velvet (Portrait of Andy Warhol, 1982) and sailcloth (Jane Birkin #2, 1990); monumental 22-by-22-foot canvasses (Anno Domini, 1990); photography and recent gesso-and-ink paintings on polyester. Some pieces are political in nature, such as the 1988 "Jerusalem Gate" and "Palestine Gate", also on display at the AGO.
In one small room, 4 paintings face-off on 4 planes, reflecting upon each other in a convoluted series of connections. On one wall is a self-portrait of the artist. On another, a portrait of his current partner and muse, Rula Jebreal. A third wall contains a painting of actor Gary Oldman, who played a character based on Schnabel in the artist’s first foray into film,"Basquiat". He is depicted in a matador outfit, which references Picasso- an important influence for Schnabel, and whom he once famously and grandiosely compared himself with, saying, “I’m as close to Picasso as you’re going to get in this f------ life,” though I believe at the time Picasso himself was still around. Andy Warhol is on the fourth wall- another mentor, not only artistically, but possibly as an inspiration of art business acumen. He is revealing his wounds, and I thought I saw the figure of a reclining woman within them- possibly his mother, or would be assassin who shot him, or one of the doomed girls from the scene he inhabited? According to Schnabel- none of the above and just my own projections, but I'm not convinced, and besides, art is in the eye of the beholder, as is its inherent meaning.
The scale of the work is often cinematic in scope, as befitting an exhibit which to some degree dwells upon the biggest names in cinema today, either titular, in homage to their style of oeuvre (as example, the 2006 Surfing Paintings series dedicated to Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci) or as representations of movie personalities such as Marlon Brando, Albert Finney, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken and Jane Birkin.
"The show traces a personal connection to these people who worked in another practice than painting, often on both sides of the camera," says Schnabel. "Film is like a world outside of this world. Painting is like that too. When we are attracted to the imagination of a work, we pick a world that we prefer to live in."
"It has become abundantly clear, as Julian Schnabel's painterly vision has evolved, that cinema has served to germinate his pictorial imagination, inspiring his paintings in diverse and dynamic ways," says AGO curator of modern and contemporary art, David Moos. "Julian Schnabel: Art and Film poses cinema as a connective force, coiling through his entire oeuvre and serving to link together formally disparate work via this shared theme."
Schnabel will appear in conversation with Moos at a public talk on September 15, at 7:15- 8:30 PM in the AGO's Baillie Court. Four of Schnabel's films - Basquiat (1996), Before Night Falls (2001), Lou Reed: Berlin (2007) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) will screen throughout the exhibition's run. All screenings take place in the AGO's Jackman Hall.
The exhibit is brilliantly timed to coincide with the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, where Schnabel’s latest movie, “Miral”, will have its North American premiere in mid September. It stars actors Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), Willem Dafoe (Antichrist), Hiam Abbass (The Limits of Control) and Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement). North American theatrical rights were recently acquired by The Weinstein Company, with release scheduled for later this year. “I am thrilled to be back in business with Julian Schnabel,” stated Harvey Weinstein, Co-Chairman. “This film is truly a challenge for me to take on personally and professionally. It is the first film I am involved in that shows the ‘other side’ of the Israeli / Palestine conflict. As a staunch supporter of Israel I thought this would be a movie I would have a hard time wrapping my head around. However, meeting Rula moved me to open my heart and mind and I hope we can do the same with audiences worldwide.”
“Miral” is based on the novel by Israeli Palestinian writer Rula Jebreal, Schnabel’s current partner. She also wrote the screenplay for the film, which revolves around a real-life orphanage established by a Palestinian woman (played by Abbass) following the 1948 creation of the Israeli state. In an interview with an Israeli journalist in 2008, Schnabel explained, "… it's about Palestinian women under the Israeli state. It's about Hind Husseini who started the Dar El-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem. It's about a lot of things. It's about peace." The story is set in Jerusalem, in 1948. On her way to work, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) finds 55 orphaned children in the street. She takes them home and gives them food and shelter. Within six months, 55 have expanded to almost 2000, and the Dar Al-Tifel Institute is born. In 1978, at the age of 5, Miral (Pinto) is sent to the Institute by her father following her mother's death. Brought up safely inside the Institute's walls, she is naïve to the troubles that surround her. At the age of 17, she is assigned to teach at a refugee camp, where she is awakened to the reality of her people's struggle. When she falls for political activist, she finds herself torn between the fight for the future of her people and Mama Hind's belief that education is the road to peace. "Miral" was filmed in Israel and Schnabel hopes to use the film as a vehicle for just that. "We need to fix things over there," he told the Israeli reporter before filming. "I'm going to work on it. That will be my next thing. Yes, I'm going to devote myself to try and make things better over there."
One French reporter will be fortunate if she doesn’t end up on Schnabel’s infamous blacklist. I heard from a source that she essentially asked him in a private interview how “his people’ would respond to a film which depicts the Palestinians in a positive light. Schnabel chose not to understand the question. As “his people” now includes his Palestinian partner as well as those who share his particular ethnic background, the question illustrates the barriers of ignorance yet to be overcome. I hope that Schnabel succeeds in his goal- an effort which all people who desire peace and justice in the Middle East can support.
The AGO show runs from September 1, 2010 through January 2, 2011 and takes up the entire fifth floor of the Art Gallery of Ontario's Vivian & David Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art.
Links
Art Gallery of Ontario site, for admission prices and further information. Note that on Wednesday evenings after 6pm, admission to the AGO is free to the general public.
“Miral”- Julian Schnabel's film (Trailer)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck96h97y9Vs
Toronto International Film Festival
tiff.net/
UNSOLVED RIDDLE OF SHOCKING TRAGEDY IN SUBURBAN COTTAGE
WHAT MOTIVE PROVOKED CRIME?
Life-long Friend of Family Kills Wife and Then Commits Suicide
HUSBAND BELIEVES "POTTER WENT MAD"
(From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Auckland Representative)
Cheered with the prospects of work after a long period of bad luck, John Frederick Beesley returned to his home in Foch Avenue, Dominion Road, Auckland, to meet his wife and three children at the end of his day's toil.
Fate, with grim irony, had in the interval since he left that morning played one, of its cruellest jests, on the unsuspecting husband.
In the place of a smiling, plucky wife to greet him at the door, he found a locked house, and inside, when he had entered through a window, still unsuspecting, his horrified eyes discovered the body of his wife lying in a pool of blood, murdered by his best friend.
And the friend? William Potter, aged 55, Beesley's friend for twenty-five years, lay on the floor of his room with his throat cut and chest, terribly lacerated. He died later in the Auckland Hospital.
GRIEF-STRICKEN, and bereft, his home a shambles the agonised husband rushed away for help. Meanwhile in the warm summer evening the motherless children played happily m the garden, unaware of the terrible tragedy which had stricken their devoted mother. And yet such is the kindly disposition of the unfortunate husband that even faced with such harsh fate he does not find it in his heart to abuse his friend.
"There can be no other explanation than that he went mad. I can't think of him but as he was, an old friend," said Beesley.
Potter made the acquaintance of the Beesley family in Dunedin when he arrived from the Old Country, having an introduction from people in England.
While in Dunedin he acted as night porter at the Grand and City Hotels. Ill-luck had dogged the footsteps of John Frederick Beesley, a returned soldier who had seen service at Gallipoli and in France, for some time past but it reached a tragic climax when, he returned home on the evening of the tragedy.
Little did he dream as he left the Dominion Road tramcar and turned into the comparative peace of Foch Avenue that by the demented act of his friend he had been made a widower, and that his wife lay dead while his friend, horribly cut about, was lying In another room with death about to claim him.
Outwardly all was as usual. Mr. Beesley's three children were playing near the house and having greeted their father they told him in response to his question: "Mummie is not home." Inside the house all was silent and the doors were locked. It may be imagined that the unsuspecting hus- ….(missing).... made a sidelong and upward slash with the deadly weapon.
Some little warning she must have had for both her hands were cut and a small portion of Potter's broken watch-chain was found near her body. Near her on the floor were some articles of clothing she had been sewing, her thimble, and some thread.
The razor with which Potter murdered Mrs. Beesley was broken during the murder or when he inflicted injuries upon himself. A considerable portion of the blade near the tip had been broken off and was not found.
WAS SHE WARNED?
What happened before he killed Mrs. Beesley cannot be said with any certainty, but when her face was washed at the morgue it was found that she must have been hit or smashed over the face for it was bruised and her lips swollen. Her glasses were found almost hidden, under the mat before the fireplace.
This indicates that she was warned of what was to happen and the reason that her screams — if scream she could — were not heard is due to the fact that her neighbors on the western side of the house were out all the afternoon.
They heard nothing in the morning. Having carried out his horrible purpose Potter had apparently gone to his own room and discarded his clothing, which may have become bloodstained, and then slashed his chest several times, so as to practically expose his heart in one place, and his throat.
Meanwhile Mrs. Beesley lay where she had fallen, her head towards the ottoman. There were bloodstains on the walls and the ottoman. The only signs of struggle, if signs they could be called, were that the …. (missing) ….
steady man, always, willing to oblige, and more anxious to do a good turn than a bad one. Rarely did a woman employee leave the hotel to be married but that "Old Bill" would make her some wedding present by no means trivial if he had been overlooked when the subscription list had been passed around and, he had not been invited to subscribe owing to his being on night duty.
Little peculiarities he certainly had so "Truth's" investigators were informed. He took offence rather easily for one thing, and had a habit of chuckling to himself over little jokes apparently which he did not confide In his fellow workers.
But "Old Bill" was a most methodical and abstemious man. He mapped his duties out by a schedule and it was almost possible to tell the time of night by the work he would be doing. About Christmas time he left his employment as some small matter had displeased him, and since then he had been out of a job.
Accustomed to a regular routine of life it is thought by those who knew him best that this may have worried him unduly. Members of the Beesley family were not able to say that he had displayed any outward signs of extreme worry. He still continued to be the same very kindly man they had known for a decade. They had always looked upon him as a dear friend and there was no question of him being in want or homeless.
FRIEND OF FAMILY
The Beesleys had first known "Old Bill" when he arrived from the Old Country. They were then living in the South Island. Despite the shocking tragedy which has terminated the life of Mrs. Beesley, and that of their old friend, members of the family were unable to speak harshly of him.
"He has been a friend of the family for 25 years," they said. "We can't even now think hardly of him in spite of this. He was a very good living man, most sober in his habits; no one could have been kinder to the children than he was — he has taken them on trips even as far as Rotorua.
"He was fond of Ag. (Mrs. Beesley), but he was always the same and he was the soul of honor."
It is only reasonable to assume that he suddenly went mad, and as is often the case when a person goes mad the victim is often one whom the madman has most regard for. There seems to be no other explanation.
As indicating the regard in which the Beesley family held the dead man one said when asked for the use of a photograph by the reporter: "I couldn't let that be used again. Whatever has happened he was a friend and that photo makes him look a blackguard and he was not that in any way. We cant think of him like that. No one could have been kindlier or more honorable."
Mr. J. F. Beesley, upon whom falls the brunt of this cruel blow of fate, was one of the first to leave New Zealand for the war and was bandmaster of the Ist. Battalion. When the war ended he had gained the rank of first-class warrant officer. He was well- …. (missing) ….
band, who had returned from the first day's work he had had for many a long day, and was therefore in a more hopeful frame of mind than he had known for a while, thought that the only thing to do was to gain an entrance and see what was in preparation for the evening meal.
Through a back window he made his entrance, but the silence he had met with outside his home was not the silence of peace, but that of death.
On the floor of the living room in disarray in the midst of a great pool of blood lay his murdered wife.
Such a horrible shock must be left to the imagination, but sensing that this might not be the worst Mr. Beesley hurried to the other rooms and there in the front room, that occupied by his trusted friend, William Potter, he found his friend's form stretched out on the floor his throat cut and his chest gashed in a shocking manner.
Potter still lived. Speech was beyond him, but sounds came from his throat and he tried feebly to make signs with his hands.
SUDDEN ATTACK
"Come quick, something has happened," was the greeting which alarmed Mr. Beesley's neighbor, Mr. T. H. Nicholls, when the stricken husband came rushing over to him.
Within a little while, in answer to a telephone ring, Dr. M.B. Gunn was on the scene. Mrs. Beesley was long since past help, but the medical man did all that was possible for Potter, who was hurried off in the ambulance to the hospital.
Constable Belcher, of Mount Roskill, was the first constable on the scene; he could do nothing but note the details of the ghastly crime.
In the opinion of the doctor the murdered woman had been dead for about two hours when the discovery was made.
Before an hour had elapsed quite a posse of police were on the spot acting under the direction of Chief-detective Hammond. Inspectors Hollis and McIlveney arrived after 8 p.m.
It was reported that a desperate struggle had taken place which would lead to the belief that Mrs. Beesley had had at least a forlorn chance to fight for her life and raise the alarm.
This, however, is not borne out by facts, and an interview with the coroner, Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., does not bear out the statement.
So far as can be gathered it would seem that Mrs. Beesley must have been in the act of doing some sewing, and was sitting on an ottoman couch beside the western back window.
Whether Potter stole in on her, or was in the act of conversing with her, the razor hidden from her gaze, cannot be said, but the wound in the unhappy woman's throat indicates that Potter suddenly seized her from behind and …. (missing) ….
dining-room table was slightly out of alignment, and there was a little ruck in the carpet mat before the fireplace.
No letter, no scribbled note, has, so far as is known, been found which might throw any light on the motive for the tragedy, which is shrouded m mystery.
In the neighborhood Mrs. Agnes Beesley was liked and respected. Storekeepers and others who knew the dead woman, and the family, speak in the highest terms of them.
In spite of a very adverse run of luck and Mr. Beesley's unemployment Mrs. Beesley had always kept her children with, it is said, the help of relatives, neatly dressed, and well cared for.
The Beesleys were looked upon as good payers and faced their run of ill-luck with cheerfulness and fortitude.
It was a grim irony of fate that on that very day Beesley had commenced his first job for a long time and was more cheerful over the fact.
Potter, whom it was learnt was generally known as "Old Bill," had known Mr. Beesley, his brother and relations for about twenty-five years; in fact, he had been his friend before the bereaved man had married eleven years ago, and had lived with them as a boarder for three years.
For twenty years or so Potter, who was a railwayman at Home, had been employed as a night porter at two of Auckland's leading hotels. For the last twelve years or more he had held this position at the Star Hotel, Albert Street.
There he was known as a kindly, liked and respected in the army, and has a high reputation among those who know him. Like many another returned soldier life has not treated him kindly since the palmy days of peace arrived.
On Thursday morning the inquest on Agnes Beesley was formally opened by Mr. F. K. Hunt, coroner.
Brief evidence was given by the bereaved husband as to how he had left for his new job about 8.30 a.m. on the Wednesday morning when all was well, and his wife was m the best of health and spirits.
The inquest was then adjourned sine die.
It can only be concluded from the meagre evidence offering that Potter was the victim of a form of sudden dementia which may have been brought about by worry or his failure to secure employment.
MOTIVE A MYSTERY
He may have concealed his anxiety, it is true, and have brooded over things. It Is known that he left the house of the Beesleys in Foch Avenue on Wednesday morning for a while, but what took place in that brief space of time is so far unrecorded.
Whether the terrible deed took place after the midday meal or not cannot he stated with certainty, but the house was in perfect order, the beds made, and the dishes washed and put away.
Considered in all its aspects there can be no other conclusion arrived at than that something suddenly broke in the mind of the apparently sane man and becoming literally "possessed of a devil" he ran amok.
The very nature of his self-inflicted wounds points to this.
Whatever the incentive the real facts of the tragedy will never be known. Death has removed both victim and slayer and the secret lies buried with them.
Mrs. Beesley was born at Milton, Otago, 43 years ago.
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTR19300227.2.25
Plot 42: Agnes Beesley (43) 19/2/1930 – Mrs – Manslaughter
Raymond Phillip Sampson (8 days) 1938
Graham David Sampson (20) 1964 – Carpenter (ashes)
Philip Harold Sampson (77) 1993 – Rtd Bus Driver (ashes)
In Loving Memory Of
AGNES BEASLEY
died 19/2/1930
RAYMOND PHILIP SAMPSON
died 6-4-1938
GRAHAM DAVID SAMPSON
died 31-12-1963
plaque
In Loving Memory Of
PHILIP
HAROLD
SAMPSON
10. 6. 1916 -
24. 6. 1993.
OLIVE
CONSTANCE
SAMPSON
18. 3. 1920 -
20. 7. 2011.
DEATHS
BEESLEY.—On February 19, at her late residence, Foch Avenue, Mount Roskill, Agnes, dearly-beloved wife of John Frederick Beesley; aged 43 years. Private interment. Funeral will leave Mclvor's Mortuary at 3 p.m. to-day (Friday).
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19300221.2.2.5
BEESLEY.— In loving memory of our dear wife and mother, Agnes, who passed away February 19, 1930. Ever remembered by her loving husband and children, Olive, Ronald and Eileen.
BEESLEY.—In fondest memory of dear Aggie, who passed away February 19, 1930. Some time we'll understand. Inserted by Her loving sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Ethel and Arthur May.
BEESLEY.—In loving memory of our dear sister, Agnes, who passed away February 19, 1930. Sadly missed. Inserted by her sister and brother-in-law, Bell and Garnett.
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19310219.2.5
If you are worried about your or someone else's mental health, the best place to get help is your GP or local mental health provider. However, if you or someone else is in danger or endangering others, call police immediately on 111.
Or if you need to talk to someone else:
• LIFELINE: 0800 543 354 (available 24/7)
• SUICIDE CRISIS HELPLINE: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)
• YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633
• NEED TO TALK? Free call or text 1737 (available 24/7)
• KIDSLINE: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)
• WHATSUP: 0800 942 8787 (1pm to 11pm)
• DEPRESSION HELPLINE: 0800 111 757
today, takes everything you got... wouldn't you like to get away? Sometimes you wanna go...True Story about a snapping turtle's journey. He tried to make his way to the canoe pond. I thwarted his efforts and instead gave him a more suitable spot in the backyard pond. The pond is in disarray but I believe the turtle prefers it that way. Cheers!
Charleston, Meeting Street, near its intersection with George Street. The rear of the old College of Charleston Gymnasium, c.1939 meets the new College of Charleston Arena, c.2008. Photo taken in early December, 2008.
The old gym, now known as the Silcox Gymnasium, was designed by Albert Simons as one of several large projects funded by the WPA. The goal of this make-work federal project was designed to put the unemployed construction workers of the region to work and to give the city's public college its first indoor athletic facility.
The gym was built to replace the recently demolished Radcliffe-King mansion, c.1799, allowing the new gym to incorporate the perimeter fence and walls of the massive urban estate. Architecturally significant interior finishes were salvaged when the Radcliffe-King Mansion was pulled down. Much of this important historic fabric was later incorporated into the interior of another WPA project also designed by Albert Simons. The interiors of the public rooms of the Dock Street Theatre were once part of the drawing rooms this great house. It is this open and egalitarian access to what anywhere else would be a closed elitist enclave that makes Charleston unique. Where else would a palace designed to show off the wealth of a private individual so seamlessly be transformed into a public high school? Charleston's high style has always been supported by its elite classes while almost limitless access has been guaranteed to everyone else.
The large Adam style residence built for one of the city's wealthiest planters, Thomas Radcliffe. It joined others along a stretch of upper Meeting Street that for the years between the late 1700's and 1865 could have been called Charleston's Golden Mile. The city's most prominent families and cultural benefactors were represented within a few blocks of this house.
The Radcliffe estate, for most of the first half of the 19th century, became the home of a prominent member of the bar and a leading South Carolina jurist, Judge Mitchell King. Judge King's son studied medicine in Germany where he was a university student at the time of the student riots and the failed democratic uprisings of 1848. He developed a close friendship with classmates who were leaders in the reform movement and subsequent revolts. Among his personal friends was the young Otto Von Bismarck with whom he maintained correspondence for many decades, as the political fortunes of one rose to great heights and the other fell.
After the American Civil War, with the family fortunes in disarray, Dr. King moved to Asheville where he practiced his profession in the foothills of Appalachia. He leased and later sold his family's famous palatial home to the city to house its overcrowded boy’s high school. At nearly 50 years old in the 1880's, the High School was already the 3rd oldest institution of its kind in the US. With public schools on the rise throughout the country, especially in the urban South after the Civil War, the old 12 room Greek revival high school on Society Street was too small. Competition for admission to the city's only boy's public high school had taken off after the region's economic and political collapse in 1865. The economy and many of its buildings were in ruins, but its institutions were intact. It was that fact that allowed sons of the first and second generation immigrants and the city's new middle class to rapidly fill the void left by the casualties of the recently ended war.
For nearly fifty years the Radcliffe-King Mansion served as a well suited home for the classical education offered by the High School of Charleston. When the city's YMCA, one of the nation's oldest, chose to expand its facilities, it logically chose a site just west of the city's growing high school, then a block and a half east of the College of Charleston. With its indoor basketball court, a move supported by the father of basketball himself, the Charleston "Y" set the pattern for joint use of public facilities in the area as its mansions became homes to large public institutions. The King family's legacy was just one of many to follow.
James Gibbes home across Meeting Street from the King Mansion was given to the Carolina Art Association first to be its public art gallery and later to be sold for funds that built the Gibbes Museum we now know. The Pinckney-Middleton Mansion just east of that became the city's water works within another grand Adam style palace while its backyard became the city's Olympic sized public swimming pool. Again these public facilities were all used for organized programs designed for nearby high school and college students.
It wasn't until the 1930's that this Cinergy of public uses of so many grand private homes began to give way to urban decay. Gabriel Manigault's home was demolished to become a gas station. The Gibbes house was torn down to become a parking lot. The YWCA, across from the YMCA, demolished their house to become more "like" the YMCA. The High School of Charleston had already moved to modern and larger quarters on Rutledge Avenue leaving the huge Radcliffe-King Mansion empty for almost a decade before it finally joined the fate of other great houses torn down and sold for their parts.
When the end finally came for the last great house at this intersection, the architect for the WPA project had an eye for the details. Most went to the Dock Street Theatre project. The grand entry door went to a private home on Murray Blvd. A few flourishes went to adorn the otherwise plain entry hall outside the auditorium of the new High School on Rutledge Avenue. Everything else went the way of old brick and memory.
In its place, the classically trained architect, Albert Simons, oversaw the design and construction of a very handsome yet functional college gymnasium that any urban university in the Northeast would have been glad to have when it was built. Without the support of the Federal WPA program of FDR's New Deal, the College of Charleston and its steward, the City of Charleston, never would have afforded such a multi-use facility that would have been a basic necessity for a municipal college anywhere else. To Charlestonians, such a gym in the 1930's was a luxury beyond their dreams. The Great Depression had sent reeling backwards whatever recovery the city had seen following the Civil War which ended with the surrender in 1865 and the Earthquake which had followed that in 1886.
The new gym as the old gym was once called, respected the city's classical form and to a degree followed the general lines of the Radcliffe-King Mansion which it replaced. It certainly respected the perimeter walls and ironwork long associated with these private palaces that lined the city's streets in the upper wards near the College of Charleston which itself was walled and gated.
The new gym as presented follows none of these stylistic rules. An irony was presented when at the proposed design's initial presentation to the city's Board of Architectural Review, a team of modern architects referred to the height, scale and mass of several buildings in the area which the new design would follow and respect. All were buildings constructed since 1990 and at no time did the developers of the new barrel roofed area attempt to make reference to either the classical design used in the old gym which the new area would join, nor was there any reference to the massive buildings that once surrounded this site, such as the Pinckney-Middleton Mansion, which still stands, or any of the structures that were torn down, some as recently as the five story Beaus Arts style YMCA building which was lost in the early 1980's.
A Board of Architectural Review with no knowledge of reference points is just as dangerous and useless as a preservation movement with no memory. Without having direct experience of what makes a successful city work, it is almost impossible to reconstruct the mechanics of good urban design that came so naturally to a previous generation. How else could a city with an international reputation for its wealth and elitist tastes built on a slave and cash crop agrarian plantation economy also support social reform through a series of civic firsts?
Against this exotic post card view of a nostalgic past Gone with the Wind, the record shows the same Charleston encouraged public education at all levels starting in the 1830’s. A girls high and normal school showed its support for the higher education of women leading to professions. In the midst of this old order it supported a YMCA in the 1850’s, a system of public transportation, a public teaching hospital, an orphanage with no peer in the western hemisphere and its business community allowed, if not encouraged, organized labor...among free black teamsters, no less. Far from the predictable balance and classical harmony of its architectural style, historically the city's institutions managed to reflect a full spectrum of ethnic and social diversity with equal access to the common style of the city.
Today, our city is doing the reverse. Its architecture is no longer is balanced, predictable or harmonious. As a result, access is denied to many of its residents. The institutions are no longer identified by the buildings or as anchors of the city's neighborhoods. The public institutions are as temporary as its architecture. It is becoming like anywhere else in a throwaway culture. How sad, since this is happening just as everywhere else is beginning to gravitate toward where Charleston once was.
Photo and text posted: 6 December 2008
Revised: 29 March 2011
Copyrights reserved: hdescopeland
With the world of Formula One in disarray, the teams are considering other options if they decide to leave the sport.
barnes Foundation
"The Temptation of St. Anthony," formerly ascribed by the Barnes to Bosch, is now said to be a 16th-century copy by an unknown artist.
August 27, 2005
The Barnes Revises Attributions of Old Masters
By JULIA M. KLEIN
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 26 - A review of the vast collection and archives of the Barnes Foundation is upending attributions of some of its old master paintings and revealing new details of its founder's relationships with painters, collectors and other artistic luminaries of the 20th century, administrators say.
Among the 22 paintings whose attributions are changing in a continuing assessment project, now four years old, are works formerly credited to El Greco, Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Giorgione and Bosch.
"I don't think any of it was shocking or surprising," said Emily Croll, the Barnes Foundation's senior administrative officer, who has headed the project at the foundation, in suburban Merion, Pa. "For decades people have been saying some of our old masters weren't what we said they were."
Lending momentum to such stock-taking is an eight-month-old court ruling clearing the way for the financially troubled Barnes to relocate to Philadelphia, where it is expected to draw far bigger crowds. Students affiliated with the Barnes had challenged the move, saying it would violate the terms under which the patent-medicine magnate Albert C. Barnes founded the institution in 1922.
Although a study of the foundation's large holdings of Matisse and Renoir is under way, said Joseph J. Rishel, a senior curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art who is chairman of the assessment committee, none of the 19th- or 20th-century works for which the Barnes is renowned are likely to be reattributed.
"These are very published, very exposed paintings," Mr. Rishel said of the collection's Renoirs, Cézannes, Matisses and Picassos. "When purchased, they were some of the most famous things of their kind."
The de-attributions of old master works were reported on Sunday by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In an interview with The New York Times, Larry Silver, professor of art history at the University of Pennsylvania, said he had known for years that "The Temptation of St. Anthony" ascribed to Bosch (circa 1450-1516) in the Barnes collection was a copy, in part because he has seen the original twice in Lisbon and again at an exhibition in Washington.
Mr. Silver, one of 39 consultants involved in reassessing works owned by the Barnes, said the mid-16th- century copy represents only an excerpt of the original canvas and lacks Bosch's "handling - the way he uses paint in thin, rather loosely brushed layers, and his color harmonies, which are much more delicate in undoubted originals."
On the other hand, Mr. Silver said, his review confirmed the authenticity of other Northern European paintings in the collection, including "a spectacular example" of a late portrait by the 17th-century artist Frans Hals ("Portrait of a Man Holding a Watch") and "The Square Watch-Tower," a landscape by Jan van Goyen that the professor said would be the envy of many museums. The assessment project, which also includes the organization and preservation of the archives, digitizing files and images from the collection, and conservation assessment, is intended to remedy what Ms. Croll described as "80 years" of benign neglect since the foundation was established.
Conservation assessment at the Barnes over the last several years has turned up an array of problems, including Pueblo ceramics in the gallery with "inactive mold," moth-eaten Navajo rugs at the Barnes's Ker-Feal estate in Chester Springs, Pa., and a need for stabilization of paintings and especially works on paper. "We're stopping the damage," said Barbara Buckley, the foundation's chief conservator.
As for authorship, Ms. Croll said, "reattributions are something that every museum does constantly, and we haven't had the opportunity to do it officially till very recently," she said.
Among the other reattributed works are "The Disrobing of Christ" (now considered "School of El Greco") and an "Annunciation" (described as a "possibly 17th-century" copy of an El Greco); "The Holy Family With St. John and an Angel" (ascribed to the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens); "Christ and the Woman of Samaria" (ascribed to a follower of Tintoretto), and "Portrait of a Gentleman and Son" (credited now to an "unidentified artist, Brescian School" rather than Titian).
Ms. Croll said the project has also helped the foundation identify previously unidentified works, confirm the authenticity of others and establish the quality of some of its less-well-known collections of objects. For example, Edwin L. Wade, senior vice president of the Museum of Northern Arizona, described the Barnes's Navajo jewelry as "one of the finest holdings of its kind in the United States."
The Barnes Foundation is celebrated internationally for its multibillion-dollar collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early modern masterpieces. Most hang in ensembles assembled by Barnes himself in his galleries, with sculpture, textiles, ironwork and decorative arts objects.
The move to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in downtown Philadelphia will allow the Barnes to expand its visiting hours and facilities. Rebecca W. Rimel, president and chief executive of the Pew Charitable Trusts, said yesterday that more than $110 million had been pledged toward a $150 million fund-raising goal to pay for the move and an endowment. The Pew is spearheading the drive with the Annenberg and Lenfest Foundations.
Ms. Rimel said that she was hopeful that a new Barnes could open on the parkway by late 2008. "If we beat that, that would be great," she said. The search for an architect has not yet begun, she added.
Ms. Rimel also said that the Barnes board of trustees had named the search firm of Russell Reynolds Associates to find a replacement for Kimberly Camp, the former Barnes president and chief executive who resigned in June. That search should be completed in about four months, Ms. Rimel said.
Mr. Rishel said the assessment project, which has been supported by more than $2.1 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $1 million from Pew and other grants, had yielded significant new information about Barnes's collecting habits. The archives are "a treasure trove," he said. "It's a whole level of documentation that was not known before."
"What's most fascinating is Barnes's own take on what he did and didn't buy," Mr. Rishel said. "Even then, it was clear how shrewd he was in his choices, and how he did have a very broad number of choices. He was a very famous collector and a very rich man. The world's greatest collectors spread a great bounty of temptations before him."
Katy Rawdon-Faucett, the foundation's archivist, said that among "the things that really make me say wow" was correspondence in the 1930's and 40's between Barnes and the American landscape artist Georgia O'Keeffe. "It's really a back and forth between two people who knew each other and had some kind of connection and understanding," Ms. Rawdon-Faucett said.
In a letter dated March 21, 1930, Barnes, who had purchased two paintings from O'Keeffe that he called "Still Life" and "Indian Girl," praises them as "authentic expressions of yourself and therefore, genuine art." But he adds, "Like every other new arrival in our gallery, they will survive or die on what they have in themselves." Ms. Rawdon-Faucett said Barnes later returned the two paintings with apologies, and although O'Keeffe expressed disappointment, their friendship continued.
In a July 17, 1914, letter to Leo Stein, the art collector and brother of the writer Gertrude Stein, Barnes tries to explain his fascination with Renoir, which has mystified some contemporary critics.
"Renoir has been to me the most all-satisfying of any man's work I know," Barnes writes. "Perhaps the thing that most interests me in Renoir, that most strikes a personal response is, what seems to me, his joy in painting the real life of red-blooded people, and his skill in conveying his sensations to my consciousness."
Ms. Rawdon-Faucett said that as far as she knew, that material had not previously been published.
She said that when she first entered the storage room in the Barnes administration building that housed much of the archives, "it was basically like the attic of an old house," with filing cabinets, boxes and other material in disarray.
Along with Barnes's letters and writings, she said, the archives contain blueprints and drawings of foundation buildings and the arboretum, photographs and institutional records, including deeds for the land dating back to the 18th century.
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Despite the severity of our physical problems, our deepest challenge is to overcome an invisible crisis: a lack of collective consensus and cohesion around a compelling sense of story and purpose. What will it take to mobilize humanity’s collective efforts in building a green future? Without the beacon of a compelling sense of a common story and purpose, it seems likely that we will withdraw into smaller, more protected worlds. An overriding challenge is to find a new “common sense”—a new sense of reality, human identity, and social purpose that we can hold in common and that respects our radically changing global circumstances. Finding this new common sense in the middle of the turbulence and disarray of the breakdown of civilizations is likely to be a drawn-out, messy, and ambiguous process of social learning. How effectively we use our tools of local to global communication to achieve a new consensus will be critical in determining the ultimate outcome.
~ Voluntary Simplicity, by Duane Elgin
Today was all about cleaning up. My sewing area and fabric was in complete disarray. All the vintage fabric I picked up needed to be properly folded and organized, as well as all the sheet scraps I accumulated from cutting up sheets!
This shelf now houses about 90% of my vintage fabric collection as well as my vintage sheets. The polaroids have been moved to the bottom shelf!
The Cosmic Hunger.
Legends Galactus lands in the collection at a time when my collection is in complete disarray from Hurricane Ian’s destruction!
Still feels like Christmas morning. Had to pop some champagne and celebrate.
I’ve had scenes ready to shoot with these guys for over a year, may have to wait a little longer as I get a new studio set up.
These 3 generations of Galacti are the cornerstones of my Marvel Universes: ToyBiz, MU, and now Legends!
#HasLabGalactus #LegendsGalactus #Galactus #Galacti #Galan
#CosmicPower #HeraldsOfGalactus #TheDevourerOfWorlds
#marvel #marvelComics #MarvelLegends #actionFigures #toyPhotography #ComicBookToys #MarvelComics #Haslab
In the far reaches of northern Scotland, within a village where time meanders at its own tranquil pace, a series of images unfolds, painting a tableau of life's relentless march amidst the shadows of climate's dismay and the distant rumbles of war that threaten to engulf Europe. It is a Wednesday evening, draped in the quietude of rainfall, a scene reminiscent of an Edward Hopper collection—imbued with solitude, emptiness, yet a profound continuance.
A Poem:
In this hamlet 'neath Scottish skies so wide,
Where the rains whisper and the winds confide,
Looms the spectre of a world in disarray,
Yet within these bounds, life finds its way.
Upon the cusp of night, shadows merge and dance,
In the pub's warm glow, eyes steal a glance.
The hearth's soft crackle, a comforting song,
In this northern retreat, where hearts belong.
The world outside may churn and roar,
With climates wracked and the drums of war.
Yet here we stand, in this time-suspended place,
Where tomorrow's worries are but a trace.
The local pub, our living room, our sphere,
A sanctuary from doubt, from dread, from fear.
We'll return come dusk, as sure as the tide,
In the rhythm of the ordinary, we take pride.
For what are we, but passengers in time,
Through days mundane, through nights sublime?
The question lingers, in the air, it floats,
Is this all there is? In whispers, it denotes.
Yet, as we stand 'neath the gentle pour,
We find beauty in the repeat, in the encore.
For in these moments, life's essence we distill,
In the quiet of the village, in the peace, so still.
A Haiku:
Rain veils the night's face,
Quiet pub bids farewell—
Life's quiet march on.
cup
www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collecti...
Object typecup
Museum number1848,0619.7
DescriptionPottery: red-figured cup.
INTERIOR: symposiast and girl dancer. A youth reclines against a large striped cushion on a couch (only the horizontal board shown) to the left. He is named ΠΙLΙΠΟΣ (retr.; for Philippos). He wears a dotted himation with a black border on his left shoulder and over his lower body and has a red wreath in his hair. He grips a pair of pipes in his left hand and holds his right arm out straight to the left in what might be a gesture to stop. His mouth is open. In front of the couch, to the left, dances a very young girl, named ΚΑLLIΣΤΟ, who has straight short-cut hair and wears a transparent chiton and a red wreath in her hair. She lifts up her chiton with both hands so that it is slightly raised, either to facilitate her dance or to reveal her ankles. Her left foot is off the ground and she looks downwards. To the right the narrow end of a three-legged table is shown (the rest being cut off by the tondo frame) on which are a skyphos (black handle outwards) and four red garlands. In the background behind the youth his spotted flute-case {sybene) is suspended and his knotty stick leans against the border.
Border: groups of three units of stopt maeander (four-stroke, anticlockwise) alternating with dotted cross-squares.
EXTERIOR: symposium.
Side A (upper): two symposiasts accompanied by two hetairai and a youth with a barbiton.
On the left a youth dressed in a himation (black border) and shoes leans against a fluted column with a plain block base and a Doric capital over a collar of ovolos. He has a red wreath in his blond hair (dilute glaze used) and holds out a barbiton (seven strings done in relief line) with both hands: a plektron (reserved handle; red end) is attached to its frame by a red cord (his chest and upper arms are lost). At the foot of the first couch sits a blond-haired hetaira wearing chiton, dotted himation with a battlement border, plain sakkos and disc earring, her feet resting on a plain block. She has a red wreath around her head and holds a large cup by the stem and one handle: on it is written KALE. She seems to look at the full cup with great concentration and her mouth is slightly open. Over the girl is written ΠILΟΝ KALΟΣ (for Philon). On the couch a youth reclines to the left, but turns his head back to the right, his mouth open. He wears a himation (battlement border at waist) and a thick reserved fillet, the tail of which he holds in his right hand. He leans against a striped cushion, his elbow actually on the turned post of the couch (all the couches on the exterior have dilute glaze strokes to indicate the grain of the wood). In front of his couch is a three-legged table. On the wall above his knee a footed food basket with red ties is suspended by a red loop. Over his head is written: ΔΕΜΟΝΙΚΟΣ. On the right stands a blond-haired woman wearing a chiton (dilute glaze folds on sleeves), a sakkos decorated with zigzags, a disc earring and a red wreath. She plays the pipes, a relief line to show that her cheeks are puffed. On the far right a bearded man reclines to the left. He wears a dotted himation and a red wreath. His left arm dangles down but his right holds a skyphos out to the right: his little finger juts out stiffly. In front of the couch is a three-legged table. Behind the pipe-player a knotty stick rests against the cushion of the first symposiast. Above his companion a footed food basket with red ties is hung from a red loop. Above him is written: ΑΡΙΣΤΟΚΡΑΤΕΣ.
Side Β (lower): two symposiasts accompanied by two hetairai and a youth with a dipper and a strainer. On the extreme left is a fluted column with a plain block base and a Doric capital over an ovolo collar. A naked boy with a red wreath in his hair leans against it, his right leg flexed, his weight on his frontal left leg. He looks to the left, but his torso and left leg are frontal; his right leg is flexed behind so that it rests only on the toes. He holds a dipper with a long handle terminating in a duck's head and a strainer (the holes in the central perforated disc are done with dilute glaze). There is an accidental splash of added red on his left shoulder. Up on the right a food basket with red ties is suspended by a red loop and above it is written ΗΟΠΑΙΣΚΑLΟΣ. At the foot of the left-hand couch a woman sits on a plain stool with a plain cushion, playing the pipes. She is dressed in chiton (dilute glaze folds on the sleeves) and himation (black border) and has a red wreath around her short cut blond hair (dilute glaze). On the couch a bearded man reclines to the left. He has twisted his head and torso round to the right and holds out a skyphos in his right hand (little finger extended). He wears a dotted himation with a black border and has a red wreath in his hair. He leans against a striped cushion. Over his knee is hung a chelys lyre and under his couch rests a pair of boots (one in profile, one back view). Over his head is written his name: ΔΙΠΙLΟΣ (for Diphilos). Further to the right, beyond a spotted flute-case hanging in the field is written ΚΑLΟΣ. On the right hand couch are a hetaira and a youth. On the right is the youth, his dotted himation in disarray and his right foot raised. He has grasped the hetaira by her left wrist and has put his right hand on her left shoulder. He has a red wreath in his hair and leans against a striped cushion. His mouth is slightly open. The hetaira, who wears a chiton, girt at the waist with a black girdle, has her right hand under the youth's right elbow. Her right heel rests on the end of the couch; her left foot dangles beside it. Her hair has two wavy dilute lines below the main mass. Above and behind their legs a food basket with red ties hangs from a red loop; on the floor under the couch is an animal-legged footstool decorated with two stars — against it rests a pair of sandals (that in the centre seen from under the sole, that at the right hand end seen edge-on). Over their two heads is the inscription: ΝΙΚΟΠΙLΕ KALE (for Nikophile).
Ground line: double reserved line.
Relief line contour throughout (except hair); dilute glaze for minor interior markings; thick reserved line inside lip, thin outside; added red for inscriptions.
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Producer nameAttributed to: The Brygos Painter biography
Culture/periodAttic term details
Date490BC-480BC
Production placeMade in: Attica(Europe,Greece,Attica (Greece))
FindspotExcavated/Findspot: Vulci(Europe,Italy,Lazio,Viterbo (province),Vulci)
Materialspottery term details
WareRed figure term details
Techniquepainted term details
DimensionsWidth: 39.7 centimetresDiameter: 31.9 centimetresDiameter: 17.3 centimetres (of tondo)Height: 12.7 centimetresDiameter: 13.9 centimetres (of exterior ground line)Diameter: 12 centimetres (of foot)
Inscriptions
Inscription Type
inscription
Curator's commentsCVA British Museum 9Bibliography: S. Birch, AZ 1851, 367; Hartwig Μ 319-24, 687 no. 14, pls. 35, I (I) and 34 (A-B); Murray DGV no. 46, with p. 16; VA 93 fig. 61 (detail of A); Hoppin i, 132 no. 62; AV 177, 18; Tonks Brygos 108 no. 18; ARV 147, 21; Bloesch FAS 85 no. 22, pl. 23, 4; ARV2 371, 24; Cambitoglou Brygos Painter 10-11, pl. 2, figs. 1 and 3-4; Para 365 and 367; Wegner Brygosmaler 119-24, pls. 8 (I and B), 27c (detail I) and 36e (detail I); Peschel HSK figs. 62 (I), 60 (A) and 61 (B) with p. 101-4; Sweet Sport and Recreation 207 fig. 79 (A);Open Univ. ii fig. 5 (A); Beazley Add2 225; Immerwahr Attic Script 88 no. 548; Sympotica pl. 11 a-b (A-B); Robertson Art of Vasepainting 96-7, fig. 91.Attributed by K. Wernicke (Die griechischen Vasen mit Lieblingsnamen [Berlin 1890] 15) to Hieron, by F. Dümmler (Berlinerphilologische Wochenschrift 8 [1888] 20) to Brygos. Dümmler was followed by Hartwig and Hoppin; Beazley gave it to his Brygos Painter. It is an early mature work of the Brygos Painter and may be compared with pieces like the Louvre Iliupersis cup and the Würzburg komos cup (ARV2 369, 1; 372, 32). The potting has been attributed by Bloesch to Brygos.
Relatively few straightforward symposium scenes by the Brygos Painter have survived (AKV2 372, 25, 26 and 28): on a Louvre fragment the symposium merges into love-making (ARV2 372, 30) and on the other London cup it devolves into a komos (Vase Ε71), while on a Cabinet des Medailles piece Herakles makes an entrance (ARV2 370, 8). The figure of the boy with dipper and strainer next to the column on side Β closely recalls the figure of a boy on a cup by the Foundry Painter (ARV2 401, 11: see VA 93). It also recalls the servant of Achilles on the Vienna skyphos (ARV2 380, 171) and the servant at the symposium on a cup by Makron (ARV2 478, 316).
For the barbiton and the chelys lyre see Maas and Mcintosh Snyder 79-112 and 113-38. For the plektron see most recently F. Jurgeit in Dohrn Festschrift 53-62. For the head-post of the couches on the exterior cf. the Chiusi cup (ARV2 389, 24), which may well be a work of the Brygos Painter himself. For food baskets with a small flat base see E.R. Knauer in Getty Vases 3, p. 95 fn. 12.
For Kallisto as a hetaira's name cf. Aelian Var. Hist. 13, 32; see further Peschel HSK 183-4. Diphilos kalos and Nikophile kale are so-called tag-kaloi (cf. Beazley ARV2 1574 and 1614; Peschel 396 note 245). For the name Nikophile see Peschel 184.
For the lack of aspiration (P for PH) on this cup see Hartwig Μ 319-21; P. Kretschmer, Die griechischen Vaseninschriften ihrer Sprache nach untersucht (Gütersloh 1894) 81; Cambitoglou Brygos Painter 11 with note 37; Immerwahr Attic Script 88. Immerwahr's suggestion that the lack of aspiration may have been intended to indicate that the symposiasts were drunk (more clearly on ARV2 376, 90) is to be preferred to the idea that the painter was a foreigner. On the status and origins of potters and painters see most recently D. Williams in A. Verbanck-Pierard and D. Vivier (eds.), Culture et Cité. L'avènement d’Athenes a l'époque archaique (Brussels 1995).
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BibliographyCVA British Museum 9 43 bibliographic detailsOld Catalogue 852* bibliographic detailsVase E68 bibliographic details
LocationOn display: G15/dc4
Condition Made up from fragments; one wall fragment missing, together with some chips.
Subjectssymposium term detailshetairadance
Acquisition namePurchased from: Basseggio biography
Acquisition date1848
DepartmentGreek & Roman Antiquities
Registration number1848,0619.7
cup
www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collecti...
Object typecup
Museum number1848,0619.7
DescriptionPottery: red-figured cup.
INTERIOR: symposiast and girl dancer. A youth reclines against a large striped cushion on a couch (only the horizontal board shown) to the left. He is named ΠΙLΙΠΟΣ (retr.; for Philippos). He wears a dotted himation with a black border on his left shoulder and over his lower body and has a red wreath in his hair. He grips a pair of pipes in his left hand and holds his right arm out straight to the left in what might be a gesture to stop. His mouth is open. In front of the couch, to the left, dances a very young girl, named ΚΑLLIΣΤΟ, who has straight short-cut hair and wears a transparent chiton and a red wreath in her hair. She lifts up her chiton with both hands so that it is slightly raised, either to facilitate her dance or to reveal her ankles. Her left foot is off the ground and she looks downwards. To the right the narrow end of a three-legged table is shown (the rest being cut off by the tondo frame) on which are a skyphos (black handle outwards) and four red garlands. In the background behind the youth his spotted flute-case {sybene) is suspended and his knotty stick leans against the border.
Border: groups of three units of stopt maeander (four-stroke, anticlockwise) alternating with dotted cross-squares.
EXTERIOR: symposium.
Side A (upper): two symposiasts accompanied by two hetairai and a youth with a barbiton.
On the left a youth dressed in a himation (black border) and shoes leans against a fluted column with a plain block base and a Doric capital over a collar of ovolos. He has a red wreath in his blond hair (dilute glaze used) and holds out a barbiton (seven strings done in relief line) with both hands: a plektron (reserved handle; red end) is attached to its frame by a red cord (his chest and upper arms are lost). At the foot of the first couch sits a blond-haired hetaira wearing chiton, dotted himation with a battlement border, plain sakkos and disc earring, her feet resting on a plain block. She has a red wreath around her head and holds a large cup by the stem and one handle: on it is written KALE. She seems to look at the full cup with great concentration and her mouth is slightly open. Over the girl is written ΠILΟΝ KALΟΣ (for Philon). On the couch a youth reclines to the left, but turns his head back to the right, his mouth open. He wears a himation (battlement border at waist) and a thick reserved fillet, the tail of which he holds in his right hand. He leans against a striped cushion, his elbow actually on the turned post of the couch (all the couches on the exterior have dilute glaze strokes to indicate the grain of the wood). In front of his couch is a three-legged table. On the wall above his knee a footed food basket with red ties is suspended by a red loop. Over his head is written: ΔΕΜΟΝΙΚΟΣ. On the right stands a blond-haired woman wearing a chiton (dilute glaze folds on sleeves), a sakkos decorated with zigzags, a disc earring and a red wreath. She plays the pipes, a relief line to show that her cheeks are puffed. On the far right a bearded man reclines to the left. He wears a dotted himation and a red wreath. His left arm dangles down but his right holds a skyphos out to the right: his little finger juts out stiffly. In front of the couch is a three-legged table. Behind the pipe-player a knotty stick rests against the cushion of the first symposiast. Above his companion a footed food basket with red ties is hung from a red loop. Above him is written: ΑΡΙΣΤΟΚΡΑΤΕΣ.
Side Β (lower): two symposiasts accompanied by two hetairai and a youth with a dipper and a strainer. On the extreme left is a fluted column with a plain block base and a Doric capital over an ovolo collar. A naked boy with a red wreath in his hair leans against it, his right leg flexed, his weight on his frontal left leg. He looks to the left, but his torso and left leg are frontal; his right leg is flexed behind so that it rests only on the toes. He holds a dipper with a long handle terminating in a duck's head and a strainer (the holes in the central perforated disc are done with dilute glaze). There is an accidental splash of added red on his left shoulder. Up on the right a food basket with red ties is suspended by a red loop and above it is written ΗΟΠΑΙΣΚΑLΟΣ. At the foot of the left-hand couch a woman sits on a plain stool with a plain cushion, playing the pipes. She is dressed in chiton (dilute glaze folds on the sleeves) and himation (black border) and has a red wreath around her short cut blond hair (dilute glaze). On the couch a bearded man reclines to the left. He has twisted his head and torso round to the right and holds out a skyphos in his right hand (little finger extended). He wears a dotted himation with a black border and has a red wreath in his hair. He leans against a striped cushion. Over his knee is hung a chelys lyre and under his couch rests a pair of boots (one in profile, one back view). Over his head is written his name: ΔΙΠΙLΟΣ (for Diphilos). Further to the right, beyond a spotted flute-case hanging in the field is written ΚΑLΟΣ. On the right hand couch are a hetaira and a youth. On the right is the youth, his dotted himation in disarray and his right foot raised. He has grasped the hetaira by her left wrist and has put his right hand on her left shoulder. He has a red wreath in his hair and leans against a striped cushion. His mouth is slightly open. The hetaira, who wears a chiton, girt at the waist with a black girdle, has her right hand under the youth's right elbow. Her right heel rests on the end of the couch; her left foot dangles beside it. Her hair has two wavy dilute lines below the main mass. Above and behind their legs a food basket with red ties hangs from a red loop; on the floor under the couch is an animal-legged footstool decorated with two stars — against it rests a pair of sandals (that in the centre seen from under the sole, that at the right hand end seen edge-on). Over their two heads is the inscription: ΝΙΚΟΠΙLΕ KALE (for Nikophile).
Ground line: double reserved line.
Relief line contour throughout (except hair); dilute glaze for minor interior markings; thick reserved line inside lip, thin outside; added red for inscriptions.
Less
Producer nameAttributed to: The Brygos Painter biography
Culture/periodAttic term details
Date490BC-480BC
Production placeMade in: Attica(Europe,Greece,Attica (Greece))
FindspotExcavated/Findspot: Vulci(Europe,Italy,Lazio,Viterbo (province),Vulci)
Materialspottery term details
WareRed figure term details
Techniquepainted term details
DimensionsWidth: 39.7 centimetresDiameter: 31.9 centimetresDiameter: 17.3 centimetres (of tondo)Height: 12.7 centimetresDiameter: 13.9 centimetres (of exterior ground line)Diameter: 12 centimetres (of foot)
Inscriptions
Inscription Type
inscription
Curator's commentsCVA British Museum 9Bibliography: S. Birch, AZ 1851, 367; Hartwig Μ 319-24, 687 no. 14, pls. 35, I (I) and 34 (A-B); Murray DGV no. 46, with p. 16; VA 93 fig. 61 (detail of A); Hoppin i, 132 no. 62; AV 177, 18; Tonks Brygos 108 no. 18; ARV 147, 21; Bloesch FAS 85 no. 22, pl. 23, 4; ARV2 371, 24; Cambitoglou Brygos Painter 10-11, pl. 2, figs. 1 and 3-4; Para 365 and 367; Wegner Brygosmaler 119-24, pls. 8 (I and B), 27c (detail I) and 36e (detail I); Peschel HSK figs. 62 (I), 60 (A) and 61 (B) with p. 101-4; Sweet Sport and Recreation 207 fig. 79 (A);Open Univ. ii fig. 5 (A); Beazley Add2 225; Immerwahr Attic Script 88 no. 548; Sympotica pl. 11 a-b (A-B); Robertson Art of Vasepainting 96-7, fig. 91.Attributed by K. Wernicke (Die griechischen Vasen mit Lieblingsnamen [Berlin 1890] 15) to Hieron, by F. Dümmler (Berlinerphilologische Wochenschrift 8 [1888] 20) to Brygos. Dümmler was followed by Hartwig and Hoppin; Beazley gave it to his Brygos Painter. It is an early mature work of the Brygos Painter and may be compared with pieces like the Louvre Iliupersis cup and the Würzburg komos cup (ARV2 369, 1; 372, 32). The potting has been attributed by Bloesch to Brygos.
Relatively few straightforward symposium scenes by the Brygos Painter have survived (AKV2 372, 25, 26 and 28): on a Louvre fragment the symposium merges into love-making (ARV2 372, 30) and on the other London cup it devolves into a komos (Vase Ε71), while on a Cabinet des Medailles piece Herakles makes an entrance (ARV2 370, 8). The figure of the boy with dipper and strainer next to the column on side Β closely recalls the figure of a boy on a cup by the Foundry Painter (ARV2 401, 11: see VA 93). It also recalls the servant of Achilles on the Vienna skyphos (ARV2 380, 171) and the servant at the symposium on a cup by Makron (ARV2 478, 316).
For the barbiton and the chelys lyre see Maas and Mcintosh Snyder 79-112 and 113-38. For the plektron see most recently F. Jurgeit in Dohrn Festschrift 53-62. For the head-post of the couches on the exterior cf. the Chiusi cup (ARV2 389, 24), which may well be a work of the Brygos Painter himself. For food baskets with a small flat base see E.R. Knauer in Getty Vases 3, p. 95 fn. 12.
For Kallisto as a hetaira's name cf. Aelian Var. Hist. 13, 32; see further Peschel HSK 183-4. Diphilos kalos and Nikophile kale are so-called tag-kaloi (cf. Beazley ARV2 1574 and 1614; Peschel 396 note 245). For the name Nikophile see Peschel 184.
For the lack of aspiration (P for PH) on this cup see Hartwig Μ 319-21; P. Kretschmer, Die griechischen Vaseninschriften ihrer Sprache nach untersucht (Gütersloh 1894) 81; Cambitoglou Brygos Painter 11 with note 37; Immerwahr Attic Script 88. Immerwahr's suggestion that the lack of aspiration may have been intended to indicate that the symposiasts were drunk (more clearly on ARV2 376, 90) is to be preferred to the idea that the painter was a foreigner. On the status and origins of potters and painters see most recently D. Williams in A. Verbanck-Pierard and D. Vivier (eds.), Culture et Cité. L'avènement d’Athenes a l'époque archaique (Brussels 1995).
Less
BibliographyCVA British Museum 9 43 bibliographic detailsOld Catalogue 852* bibliographic detailsVase E68 bibliographic details
LocationOn display: G15/dc4
Condition Made up from fragments; one wall fragment missing, together with some chips.
Subjectssymposium term detailshetairadance
Acquisition namePurchased from: Basseggio biography
Acquisition date1848
DepartmentGreek & Roman Antiquities
Registration number1848,0619.7
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard published on behalf of Warner Bros. and Vitaphone Pictures. The image is a glossy real photograph. The signature is printed, not real.
Miss Kay Francis
Katherine Edwina "Kay" Francis (née Gibbs, January 13th. 1905 to August 26th. 1968) was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920's, she moved to film, and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest-paid American film actress.
Some of her film-related material and personal papers are available to scholars and researchers in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives.
Kay Francis - The Early Years
Francis was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory (present-day Oklahoma), in 1905. Her parents, Joseph Sprague Gibbs and his actress wife Katharine Clinton Francis, had been married in 1903; however, by the time their daughter was four, Joseph had left the family.
Francis inherited her unusual height from her father, who stood 6 feet 4 inches. She was to become Hollywood's tallest leading lady of the 1930's at 5 ft 9 inches.
She never discouraged the assumption that her mother was the pioneering American businesswoman who established the "Katharine Gibbs" chain of vocational schools.
However Francis was actually raised in the hardscrabble theatrical circuit of the period. In reality, her mother had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, and eventually became a moderately successful actress and singer under the stage name Katharine Clinton.
Francis was often out on the road with her mother, and attended Catholic schools when it was affordable, becoming a student at the Institute of the Holy Angels at the age of five.
After also attending Miss Fuller's School for Young Ladies in Ossining, New York (1919) and the Cathedral School (1920), she enrolled at the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City.
At age 17, Francis became engaged to a well-to-do Pittsfield, Massachusetts man, James Dwight Francis. Their December 1922 marriage at New York's Saint Thomas Church ended in divorce three years later. Although he made an offer of support, Francis refused, instead gaining employment on the stage.
In the spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a divorce. While there, she was courted by a former Harvard athlete and member of the Boston Bar Association, Bill Gaston. They were secretly married in October 1925, and although this marriage was not filled with disagreements as her first had been, it too was short lived.
Francis and Gaston saw each other only on occasion; he was in Boston and Francis had decided to follow her mother's footsteps and go on the stage in New York. She made her Broadway debut as the Player Queen in a modern-dress version of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' in November 1925.
She often "borrowed" wardrobe for nights out in New York as one of the fashionista's reported on by the papers of the day. Francis claimed she got the part by "Lying a lot, to the right people".
One of the "right" people was producer Stuart Walker, who hired Francis to join his Portmanteau Theatre Company, and she soon found herself commuting between Dayton, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, playing wisecracking secretaries, saucy French floozies, walk-ons, bit parts, and heavies.
By February 1927, Francis returned to Broadway in the play 'Crime'. Sylvia Sidney, although a teenager at the time, had the lead in Crime, but would later say that Francis stole the show.
After Francis' divorce from Gaston in September 1927, she became engaged to a society playboy, Alan Ryan Jr. She promised Ryan's family that she would not return to the stage – a promise that lasted only a few months before she was back on Broadway as an aviator in a Rachel Crothers play, 'Venus'.
Francis was to appear in only one other Broadway production, a play called 'Elmer the Great' in 1928. Written by Ring Lardner and produced by George M. Cohan, the play starred Walter Huston. It flopped, and unfortunately for Francis, she was flat broke at the time but she was not willing to ask friends for a loan, instead:
"I vowed to crawl out
of this mess myself."
That's when Huston, who was so impressed by Francis in 'Elmer', recommended and encouraged her to take a screen test for his new studio Paramount Pictures and the film 'Gentlemen of the Press' (1929).
Paramount offered her a starting contract of $300 a week for five weeks. Francis made this film and the Marx Brothers film 'The Cocoanuts' (1929) at Paramount's Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, New York before transitioning to Hollywood.
By that time, major film studios, which had formerly been based in New York, were already well-established in California, and many Broadway actors had been enticed to travel west to Hollywood to make sound films, including Helen Twelvetrees, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, and Leslie Howard.
Francis, now signed to a featured players contract with Paramount Pictures, also made the move, and created an immediate impression. She frequently co-starred with William Powell, and appeared in as many as six to eight movies a year, making a total of 21 films between 1929 and 1931.
Francis's career flourished in spite of a slight, but distinctive, speech impediment (she pronounced the letter "r" as "w") that gave rise to the nickname "Wavishing Kay Fwancis".
Francis' career at Paramount changed gears when Warner Bros. promised her star status at a better salary. She appeared in George Cukor's 'Girls About Town' (1931) and '24 Hours' (1931). After Francis' career skyrocketed at Warner Bros., she returned to Paramount for Ernst Lubitsch's 'Trouble in Paradise' (1932).
In 1932, Warner Bros. persuaded both Francis and Powell to join the ranks of Warners stars. In exchange, Francis was given roles that allowed her a more sympathetic screen persona than had hitherto been the case—in her first three featured roles she had played a villainess. For example, in 'The False Madonna' (1932), she played a jaded society woman nursing a terminally ill child who learns to appreciate the importance of hearth and home.
On the 16th. December 1931, Francis and her co-stars opened the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, with a gala preview screening of 'The False Madonna'.
From 1932 through 1936, Francis was the queen of the Warners lot, and increasingly, her films were developed as star vehicles. By 1935, Francis was one of the highest-paid actors, according to IMDb, earning a yearly salary of $115,000; compared to Bette Davis, who would one day occupy Francis' dressing room, who made $18,000.
From the years 1930 to 1937, Francis appeared on the covers of 38 film magazines, the most for any adult performer, and second only to Shirley Temple, who appeared on 138 covers during that period.
Francis had married writer-director John Meehan in New York, but soon after her arrival in Hollywood, she consummated an affair with actor and producer Kenneth MacKenna, whom she married in January 1931. When MacKenna's Hollywood career foundered, he found himself spending more time in New York, and they divorced in 1934.
Francis frequently played long-suffering heroines, in films such as 'I Found Stella Parish', 'Secrets of an Actress', and 'Comet Over Broadway', displaying to good advantage lavish wardrobes that, in some cases, were more memorable than the characters she played—a fact often emphasised by contemporary film reviewers.
Francis' clotheshorse reputation often led Warners' producers to concentrate resources on lavish sets and costumes, designed to appeal to Depression-era female audiences and capitalise on her reputation as the epitome of chic, rather than on scripts.
Eventually, Francis herself became dissatisfied with these vehicles, and began openly to feud with Warners, even threatening a lawsuit against them for inferior scripts and treatment. This, in turn, led to her demotion to programmers, such as 'Women in the Wind' (1939), and, in the same year, to the termination of her contract.
The Independent Theatre Owners Association paid for an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter in May 1938 that included Francis, along with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, and others, on a list of stars dubbed "Box office poison".
After her release from Warners, Francis was unable to secure another studio contract. Carole Lombard, one of the most popular stars of the late 1930's and early 1940's (and who had previously been a supporting player in Francis' 1931 film, 'Ladies' Man'), tried to bolster Francis' career by insisting Francis be cast in 'In Name Only' (1939).
In this film, Francis had a supporting role to Lombard and Cary Grant, but recognized that the film offered her an opportunity to engage in some serious acting. After this, she moved to character and supporting parts, playing catty professional women – holding her own against Rosalind Russell in 'The Feminine Touch', for example – and mothers opposite rising young stars such as Deanna Durbin. Francis did have a lead role in the Bogart gangster film 'King of the Underworld', released in 1939.
Miss Kay Francis - The Later Years
With the start of World War II, Francis joined the war effort doing volunteer work, including extensive war-zone touring, which was first chronicled in the book attributed to fellow volunteer Carole Landis, 'Four Jills in a Jeep'. It became a popular 1944 film of the same name.
Despite the success of 'Four Jills', the end of the war found Francis virtually unemployable in Hollywood. She signed a three-film contract with Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures that gave her production credit as well as star billing.
The resulting films 'Divorce', 'Wife Wanted', and 'Allotment Wives' had limited releases in 1945 and 1946. Francis spent the remainder of the 1940's on the stage, appearing with some success in 'State of the Union' and touring in various productions of plays old and new, including one, 'Windy Hill', backed by former Warners colleague Ruth Chatterton.
Declining health, aggravated by an accident in Columbus, Ohio during a tour of 'State of the Union' in 1948 when she was badly burned by a radiator, hastened her retirement from show business.
This incident was reported as a fainting spell brought on by accidental overdose from pills, causing a respiratory infection. When her manager and travelling companion arrived at Francis' hotel room, in an attempt to get her fresh air, he burned her legs on the radiator near the window. She recovered in an oxygen tent at the local hospital; soon retiring from acting and then public life.
Kay stated in her private diaries in 1938:
"My life? Well, I get up at a quarter to six
in the morning if I'm going to wear an
evening dress on camera.
That sentence sounds a little ga-ga,
doesn't it? But never mind, that's my life ...
As long as they pay me my salary, they
can give me a broom and I'll sweep the
stage.
I don't give a damn. I want the money ...
When I die, I want to be cremated so that
no sign of my existence is left on this earth.
I can't wait to be forgotten".
Personal Life of Kay Francis
Francis married five times. Her diaries, preserved in an academic collection at Wesleyan University, paint a picture of a woman whose personal life was often in disarray. She regularly socialised with homosexual men, one of whom, Anderson Lawler, was reportedly paid $10,000 by Warner Bros. to accompany her to Europe in 1934.
Death of Kay Francis
In 1966, Francis was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, but the cancer had spread and proved fatal.
Having no living immediate family members, Francis left more than $1,000,000 to The Seeing Eye, which trains guide dogs for the blind. She died in 1968, aged 63, and her body was immediately cremated; her ashes were disposed of according to her will:
"How the undertaker sees fit."
She wanted no services or grave marker.
As my last photo was taken at the entrance to Calke Abbey, I thought that you might like to see some photos of our visit there in the summer of 2011.
A bit of history:
When the last reclusive owner Charles Harpur Crewe died in 1981, he did not have any children to inherit his home, so it was left to his brother Henry. Unfortunately Henry was presented with a death duty bill of £8 million, so he had no choice but to hand the house over to the nation.
Owned by the same family for 360 years little had been known about the lifestyle of the Harpur Crewes especially during the 20th century, but once the National Trust moved in they discovered a time capsule. The eccentric owners had kept everything, a lot of it being in disarray, and had many collections of stuffed animals and birds, shells, butterflies and minerals, Chinese silks etc... Little had changed since the mid 1800s.
In 1989 the house was opened to the public in the state in which it was found, with very few changes.
After 4-6 hours of 2 people scraping.
scraping.
house maintenance, living room window, peeling paint.
side yard, Clint and Carolyn's house, Alexandria, Virginia.
May 27, 2011.
... Read my blog at ClintJCL.wordpress.com
... Read Carolyn's blog at CarolynCASL.wordpress.com
BACKSTORY: So our homeowners insurance (Farmers) got dropped due to having peeling paint on our window sills (among other things). Weak. It was a LOT of work AND money for us to repaint all our sills. Wood windows SUCK!! Modern vinyl windows are MAINTANENCE-FREE!! Wood windows... You gotta re-glaze the panes when they fall out, and then the wood itself is always going to slowly rot away. We already had our cats knock a pane out, so we already had glazing compound for pane repairs. This came in handy when we painted our various window sills, as some also needed glazing compound.
So the largest window in our house -- actually 3 windows -- was a major pain, and one of the few single-pane windows in the house. It would leak heat/cold in the summer/winter, and looked really bad compared to the new siding we had installed 6 or so years ago. So we decided to go ahead and replace just this window (actually 3 separate windows). Man was it expensive! $2,350! Thompson Creek had the best pitch and data, whereas Home Depot required $30 up front for an appointment they never showed up for and a list of 4 phone numbers to escalate (all 4 failed). So we had Thompson Creek do it of course! They did it, said they did it wrong, made us wait a month while making a new window (pro: they are all custom-made just for you; con: they are all custom-made, so a screw-up requires waiting for a new one to be made), then installed the new window, and finally everything was good and we were satisfied.
It was just kind of a pain because it cost so much money and had our living room in disarray for so many months, and the whole insurance basis for the situation was pretty bullshitty in the first place. We're not going to make a property damage claim due to moisture that occurs because our paint was peeling! Ridiculous...
The time between us has not yet been long,
But it's in those eyes so true;
Staring into my soul, with words so strong,
Passion brewing comes into view.
Mind full of chaos and disarray,
Heart now has been swept away.
My studio has been in disarray for a few months now. I finally had time to redress most of my pullips and rearrange things so I could display the new additions I got over the holidays.
Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum
On 1 August 1943 a force consisting of five groups flying B-24D Liberators, totaling 178 aircraft, was launched from airfields around Benghazi, Libya. Their mission was to execute a low-level attack on the German-held oil refinery complex at Ploesti, Rumania. The Ploesti complex was supplying one third of the oil requirements of the Nazi war machine. The mission was code named TIDAL WAVE. Precise timing and navigation were essential to the success of this long, arduous, and extremely hazardous mission.
Difficulties began when the force encountered foul weather over Albania and Yugoslavia. The two lead groups, the 376th with mission commander Brigadier General Uzal Ent and the 93rd, became separated from the 98th, 44th, and 389th Bomb Groups that followed. This precarious gap in the bomber stream became critical when the 376th's lead aircraft misidentified the Initial Point of the bomb run and turned too early. The leading bombers were on a course that took them toward Bucharest, the Rumanian capitol, and away from Ploesti. Discovering their mistake as they approached Bucharest, they made a turn back toward Ploesti. The confused, unplanned turns threw the formation integrity and attack plans for the two lead groups into disarray. General Ent broke radio silence and ordered the two groups to bomb any target at will.
The 93rd Bomb Group's formation broke up. Part of the unit flew to the north of Ploesti, while the remainder turned southwest. This portion of the 93rd headed for the Columbia Aquila refinery, known as Target White V in the TIDAL WAVE plan. This was the target assigned to the 44th Bomb Group, known as the Flying Eight Balls, but the 93rd bore in on the refinery on a course nearly perpendicular to the 44th's attack route. The 93rd's B-24s arrived over White V just ahead of the 44th and released their loads of short-fused 1000 lb. bombs.
The diorama before you depicts the arrival of the 44th Bomb Group's first four B-24s over Target White Five. In the lead is "Suzy- Q." flown by Major William Brandon with group commander Colonel Leon Johnson flying in the co-pilot's position. Off the left wing is "Bewitching Witch," borrowed from the 376th for the Ploesti raid and flown by 1st Lieutenant Reginald Carpenter. On the right flank is 1st Lieutenant Edward R. Mitchell's "Horse Fly." Bringing up the rear is the lead ship of the 44th's second element, "Buzzin Bear," flown by Captain William R. Cameron.
The Flying Eight Balls, leading the last wave of the attack force, arrived on time and on course to their assigned target. Colonel Johnson led his group into the inferno to deliver its bombs as planned, miraculously avoiding collisions with the 93rd aircraft coming off of the target ahead of the 44th.
All of the thirty-seven aircraft launched by the 44th reached the target. Seven were lost to anti-aircraft fire in the target area or to enemy fighters during the flight out. Four more were lost on the flight home, ditching or bailing out due to battle damage. The 44th claimed 13 enemy aircraft destroyed. It was estimated that the refinery lost 100% of its production capacity for six months after the raid. For his intrepidity and courage in leading the 44th Bomb Group in its determined attack in the face of the unknown dangers of a refinery already afire and exploding, Colonel Leon W. Johnson was awarded our nation's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor.
Bit sketchy but its a good idea, its on the bridge in Victoria Park, Stafford.
I shot this on our little relaxing day :)
Be Safe - The Cribs
One of those fucking awful black days
When nothing is pleasing and everything that happens
is an excuse for anger
An outlet for emotions stockpiled, an arsenal, an armour
These are the days when I hate the world
Hate the rich, hate the happy, hate the complacent, the TV watchers,
beer drinkers, the satisfied ones
Because I know I can be all of those little hateful things
And then I hate myself for realising that
There's no preventative, directive or safe approach for living.
We each know our own fate
We know from our youth how to be treated,
how we'll be received, how we shall end
These things don't change
You can change your clothes,
change your hairstyle, your friends, cities, continents
But sooner or later your own self will always catch up.
Always it waits in the wings
Ideas swirl but don't stick.
They appear but then run off like rain on the windshield
One of those rainy day car rides my head implodes,
the atmosphere in this car a mirror of my skull
Wet, damp, windows dripping and misted with cold
Walls of grey
Nothing good on the radio
Not a thought in my head
Lets take life and slow it down incredibly slow
Frame by frame
With two minutes that take ten years to live *out*
Yeah, lets do that.
Telephone poles like praying mantis against the sky
Metal arms outstretched
So much land travelled so little sense made of it
It doesn't mean a thing all this land laid out behind us
I'd like to take off into these woods and get good and lost for a while
I'm disgusted with petty concerns; parking tickets, breakfast specials
Does someone just have to carry this weight?
Abstract typography, methane covenant, linear gospel,
Nashville sales lady,*stygian emissary* ,torturous lice, mad Elizabeth
Chemotherapy bullshit
The light within you shines like a diamond mine
Like an unarmed walrus
Like a dead man face down on the highway
Like a snake eating its own tail, steam turbine, frog pond,
two full closets burst open in disarray
Soap bubbles in the sun, hospital death bed, red convertible,
shopping list, blowjob, deaths head, devils dancing,
bleached white buildings, memories, movements
The movie unpeeling, unreeling, about to begin
I've seen your hallway, you're a darn call away
I've hear your stairs creak
I can fix my mind on your yes, and on your no
I'll film your face today in the sparkling canals
All red, yellow, blue, green brilliance and silver Dutch reflection
Racing thoughts, racing thoughts
All too real, you're moving so fast now I cant hold your image
This image I have of your face by the window,
me standing beside you arm on your shoulder
A catalogue of images, flashing glimpses then gone again
*I’m tethered to this post you’ve sunk in me and*
Every clear afternoon now I'll think of you up in the air twisting your heel,
Your knees up around me, my face in your hair
You scream so well, your smile so loud it still rings in my ears
Inhibition
Distant, tired of longing
Clean *my* teeth
Stay the course.
Hold the wheel
Steer on to freedom
Open all the boxes
Open all the boxes
Open all the boxes
Open all the boxes
Times Square midday
Newspaper buildings, news headlines going around
You watch as they go, *and hope for some good ones*
Those tree shadows in the park they're all whispering chasing leaves
Around six pm, shadows across the cobblestones
Girl in front of bathroom mirror as
she slowly and carefully and paints her face green *mask like Matisse ‘Portrait with Green Stripe’*
Long shot through apartment window, a monologue on top but no girl in shot
The light within me shines like a diamond mine
like an unarmed walrus
like a dead man face down on the highway
Like a snake eating its own tail
A steam turbine, frog farm, two full closets burst open in disarray,
soap bubbles in the sun, hospital death bed, red convertible, shopping list,
blowjob, deaths head, devils dancing,
bleached white buildings, *memory*, movements
The movie unreeling, about to begin
That was great
Yeah? Mine were alright. Weren't my best one but who cares?
That's the spirit...
My studio has been in disarray for a few months now. I finally had time to redress most of my pullips and rearrange things so I could display the new additions I got over the holidays.
DENT, JOHN CHARLES, lawyer, journalist, author, and historian; b. 8 Nov. 1841 at Kendal, England, son of John Dent and Catherine Mawson; m. 17 Oct. 1866 Elsie McIntosh, and they had two sons and three daughters; d. 27 Sept. 1888 in Toronto, Ont.
John Charles Dent immigrated with his family to Canada West as a small child. He studied law in the Brantford office of Edmund Burke Wood, later treasurer of Ontario and chief justice of Manitoba. Dent was called to the bar in 1865 but, disliking the practice of law, he returned to England to embark on a new career in journalism.
Dent learned his trade working for the Daily Telegraph in London. At this time the extension of the franchise, the advance of literacy, and technological innovations were transforming part of the British press into media of mass communications, creating a new and larger reading public, and altering reportorial style. The Telegraph, founded in 1855 and taking its name from the invention which had recently accelerated the transmission of news, was priced at 1d. when competitors were selling at 4d. In search of a mass public, it was pioneering the field of “sensational journalism.” Dent is also reported to have contributed “a series of articles on interesting topics” to Once a Week, an intellectually undemanding periodical catering to the interests of the lower middle class. Dent’s contributions cannot be identified, but his later fiction is of the sort favoured by this magazine. In 1867 he moved to the United States. He is said to have been employed on the Boston Globe, founded in 1872 as a “commercial and business journal of the first class,” but driven to sensationalism when it neared bankruptcy in the competitive Boston market.
In 1876 Dent’s experience as a popular writer was of interest to Goldwin Smith* who, with John Ross Robertson* as proprietor, was about to found the Toronto Evening Telegram, an organ intended to support Edward Blake* and the Liberal party. This was Smith’s only venture with a journal catering to popular taste, and he himself did not intend to direct editorial policy. He did, however, reserve the right of appointing the first editor, who was Dent. The Telegram soon departed from the liberal convictions of Smith to pursue the imperialist and conservative enthusiasms of Robertson; within a year Dent resigned his position to become editor of the reform-minded Weekly Globe. Whether these facts were related is unknown but Dent’s later political views certainly coincided with those of the Globe and its owner George Brown* rather than with the Telegram’s. Dent remained with the Globe until shortly after Brown’s death in 1880, when he became a freelance writer of popular history.
Within a year he began two major undertakings. The first was The Canadian portrait gallery in four volumes containing biographical sketches of 204 leading figures in Canadian history. Some had already been written for the Weekly Globe and a few were written by other contributors; Dent’s own work amounted to 185 biographies or some 888 pages. Also in 1881, he began publishing The last forty years: Canada since the union of 1841, which, like the Portrait gallery, was issued serially. Consisting of 735 pages of text in two volumes, it long remained the leading account of the period in English.
In achieving so much so quickly, Dent owed a great deal to Sir Francis Hincks who, as he acknowledged, possessed an invaluable knowledge of the past, being the last leading politician of the 1840s still alive. Hincks, moreover, had a keen interest in history, particularly with regard to the role he and other “Baldwinite” Reformers had played in it. In 1877 he had published a short Political history of Canada between 1840 and 1855 and he was then at work on his more lengthy Reminiscences of his public life which appeared in 1884. Both books were highly tendentious, aimed at correcting errors of fact and interpretation being made by historians, at assailing what were taken to be mistaken views of old political opponents, and at establishing Hincks’s own view of the past. At one time he had hoped to assist Louis-Philippe Turcotte* in bringing out a “corrected” edition of Le Canada sous l’Union, 1841–1867 (1871–72) which he himself had intended to translate into English. Turcotte, however, died before this project could be accomplished. Dent’s undertakings therefore provided the old man with just the sort of opportunity for which he had long been waiting. He now advised Dent closely as to factual detail, and even contributed an article on an old enemy, Sir Dominick Daly*, to The Canadian Portrait gallery. His most important contribution, however, probably lay in providing the basic conceptual framework of The last forty years.
Donald Swainson, a close student of the latter book, has remarked that while the chapters on the 1840s seem carefully researched and well organized, Dent’s treatment of the period from 1850 to the 1870s resembles “a hasty and annalistic ‘history of his own times.’” It appears more than coincidental that the good work corresponds with a period in which Dent’s mentor was active in politics and, more especially, with the period covered in Hincks’s Political history. Up until the 1880s, moreover, most historians believed that “responsible government” had been achieved not in 1848 (the date now generally, if misleadingly, accepted) but in 1840, a conviction which corresponds with that of old opponents of Hincks such as Egerton Ryerson; Hincks was still seeking to undermine that belief. In this regard, Dent employed Hincks’s “Baldwinite” concept, and it governed his understanding of early Canadian politics to a truly remarkable extent. As Swainson observes, he “was obsessed with the issue of responsible government and in The Last Forty Years devoted considerable space and great passion to it. It is the book’s major preoccupation.” Yet the “struggle for responsible government” was more than a preoccupation; it is the book’s single unifying theme, in the absence of which the later chapters fall into conceptual disarray.
Dent returned to this theme, to project it into a more distant past, in his last major work, The story of the Upper Canadian rebellion, published in two volumes in 1885. The second volume, which deals with the immediate causes and events of the rising, is of some enduring value in that it contains information which does not survive elsewhere, and because its author displayed a more reasonable regard for evidence here than elsewhere in his text. The first volume, which in treating long term causes deals with almost the whole of the colony’s political history, is a mixture of fact and fantasy amounting to historical myth.
Partly inspired by models derived from English “Whig” history, this volume contains the story of a “struggle for liberty” which partakes of melodrama. Its heroes are moderate Reformers standing in the evolutionary tradition of “responsible government”; its villains are British officials and local Tories opposed to this tradition and radicals who departed from it by embracing republicanism and taking up arms in 1837. Dent’s many critics early took note of his simplistic, black and white presentation of the politics of the period and, more especially, of his savage characterizations of those he saw as villains. John King*, son-in-law of William Lyon Mackenzie*, in his rancorous rebuttal of Dent, The other side of the “Story”, observed: “In one chapter we find the late Chief Justice [Sir John Beverley Robinson*], and the late Bishop [John Strachan*], compared to ‘half famished tigers of the jungle.’ In another [Robert Fleming Gourlay*’s] description of the Bishop as ‘a lying little fool of a renegade Presbyterian’ is approvingly quoted. Here, there and everywhere the most offensive epithets are applied to William Lyon Mackenzie, while [John Rolph*] is little short of an angel of light.” Dent’s critics, and Dent himself, however, seem not to have realized that they were dealing less with a product of historical research than with symbols, or dramatis personae, which emerged from, and reinforced, a preconceived thesis treated as a plot.
It is therefore instructive to compare Dent’s historical writing with some of his purely imaginative work which was published posthumously in 1888 in The Gerrard Street mystery and other weird tales. As with The story of the Upper Canadian rebellion, these tales contain symbols which, within the context of particular plots, give expression to a noteworthy historical point of view. In the 1880s Dent was caught up in the emotively charged debate as to “the political destiny of Canada”: whether it would become federated with the British empire, be annexed to the United States, or develop into an independent nation. He did not pretend to know what the outcome would be, but he had a marked preference for independence. This bias, which was related to his pervasive concern for “responsible government,” is also apparent in his fiction, most notably with respect to his use of English, Canadian, and American symbols.
“The haunted house on Duchess Street” is a tale of Gothic horror in which the Horsfalls, a terrorized family of Americans, including a George Washington Horsfall, are driven from an ancient Canadian house, associated with old compact Tories, by the ghost of the autocratic Captain Bywater, an Englishman as the name was intended to suggest, who had perished there of his own immoral excesses. The symbolic implications of the plot and the curiously evocative names Dent tended to assign to his characters are even more apparent in “Sovereen’s disappearance.” Callously abandoned by a dissolute English husband called Sovereen, a Canadian heroine is befriended by an upright American, Thomas Jefferson Haskins. When the husband, broken and ruined, returns, he is tenderly nursed on his deathbed by Mrs Sovereen who resolves to live out the rest of her life in virtuous widowhood. And of the same order is “Gagtooth’s image,” wherein a central image, representing disappointed hopes for the future in the United States, is transferred from an American to a Canadian context, there to be cherished by the narrator.
The symbolic content of these stories is similar to that of Dent’s histories. They are also suggestive of how literature functioned in relation to history in the mind of their author. As a popularizer Dent sought to make dry-as-dust history interesting by means of literary techniques. In the introduction to his posthumously published short stories we are told that, like Macaulay, he believed “the incidents of real life, whether political or domestic, admit of being so arranged, without detriment to accuracy, to command all the interest of an artificial series of facts; that the chain of circumstances which constitute history may be as finely and as gracefully woven as any tale of fancy.” Yet Dent’s powers of fancy, even unfettered by historical fact, were governed by borrowed stereotypes. In his short stories, however, he did manage to manipulate his own symbols, whereas in his imaginative projections upon the screen of history he appears rather to have been manipulated by them, to have become, in effect, symbol-bound.
In 1884 Dent edited and introduced the collected speeches of Alexander Morris in Nova Britannia; or, our new Canadian dominion foreshadowed, which, as the title suggests, reflected a nationalist point of view he fully shared. That same year he published some largely rehashed material in Toronto, past and present, which he wrote in collaboration with Henry Scadding*. In 1887 he founded and edited Arcturus: a Canadian Journal of Literature and Life where he published some of his fiction and gave expression to the dim view he had come to take of national politics. Addressed to “a wide circle of readers . . . [to] deal with questions of general interest in a readable and popular manner,” this weekly collapsed within half a year of its founding.
Dent was honoured for his contributions to Canadian letters by election to the Royal Society of Canada in 1887. This election was bitterly resented by certain Conservatives who remembered him as having written in 1883 “foul libels on [Sir Charles Tupper*] and on Goldwin Smith in the Toronto News”; nor can it have been any more to the taste of Liberals who yet regarded themselves as standing in the tradition of William Lyon Mackenzie; nor to French Canadian historians such as Henri-Raymond Casgrain* who, reacting against Dent’s Anglo-Protestant biases, had delivered a stinging critique of The last forty years before the Royal Society in 1884. Oddly enough, he seems to have owed his election to the support of Colonel George Taylor Denison* III, a prominent imperialist. While sharing some of Dent’s nationalist fervour Denison must have been completely out of sympathy with his hankerings after independence. It was perhaps in the hope of wooing Dent from these that he acted as sponsor. In any event nothing came of it for Dent died of a heart attack in the following year.
In his time Dent was assailed by critics of all political stripes who were far from accepting his interpretation of Canadian history and whose criticisms, on the whole, were quite well taken. Dent, however, published several stout volumes, as they did not, and over the years his views tended to win out. Thus as a popularizer of a point of view, his achievement was a great one.