quinta-feira, 30 de outubro de 2014

Cidades, flores e jardins

Yevgeniya Yeretskaya (link)
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«In the big city it was so crowded with houses and people that few found room for even a small garden and most people had to be content with a flowerpot, but two poor children who lived there managed to have a garden that was a little bigger than a flowerpot. These children were not brother and sister, but they loved each other just as much as if they had been. Their parents lived close to one another in the garrets of two adjoining houses. Where the roofs met and where the rain gutter ran between the two houses, their two small windows faced each other. One had only to step across the rain gutter to go from window to window.»
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Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen.

quarta-feira, 29 de outubro de 2014

Permanecer

Harriet Backer, By Lamp Light (1890, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo)
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«And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain quintessentially ourselves.»
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Richard Linklater, Waking life (2001)
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Harriet Backer, Ved lampelys (1890, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo)

terça-feira, 28 de outubro de 2014

Medo de falhar?

Wassily Kandinsky, A floating figure (1942, Musée Zervos, maison Romain Rolland, Vézelay)
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«You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling.»
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Cameron Crowe, Elizabethtown (2005)
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segunda-feira, 27 de outubro de 2014

Inventar vs. acelerar

Man Ray, Invention (1916)
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«(…) When the whole environment is one in which inventiveness is being encouraged and paid for, there will be a great sense of shortage of time. It is not just a matter of rushing to catch and use a particular form of marking, while the season for it is on, though that may matter, too. In the top consumption class the attempts of some to control the information scene are being foiled by others who stand to gain by changing it. But since this is the class that both uses and fabricates the information, naturally they cannot help but outbid each other and speed up the game, turning the society into a more and more individualistic and competitive scene. (…)»
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Mary Douglas, Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods, Towards an Anthropology of Consumption, London, New York, Routledge, 1996 (1.ª ed. 1979), pp. 149-150

domingo, 26 de outubro de 2014

Tempo

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«Now, what you've seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here -- two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it -- you're beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. You're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation.»
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Richard Linklater, Waking life (2001)

sexta-feira, 24 de outubro de 2014

Paisagem

Matthäus Schiestl, Landschaft mit Kirche (1939)
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«(...) we can now formulate the principal task of landscape painting more precisely as follows:
"It is the representation of a certain mood of our affective life (a certain sense) through the representation of a corresponding mood in the life of nature (truth)."»
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Carl Gustav Carus,
in Art in Theory (1815-1900), Blackwell Publishers, p. 106.

quarta-feira, 22 de outubro de 2014

Fazer

Pierre Dumonstier, Right Hand of Artemisia Gentileschi Holding a Brush (1625, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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«Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example.»
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Richard Linklater, Waking life (2001)

terça-feira, 21 de outubro de 2014

Caixa de tintas

Kitty Lange Kielland, Landskap fra Cernay-la-Ville (1885-1887)
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«It's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now, you may get the 8-pack, you may get the 16-pack. But it's all in what you do with the crayons, the colors that you're given. And don't worry about drawing within the lines or coloring outside the lines.»
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Richard Linklater, Waking life (2001)

segunda-feira, 20 de outubro de 2014

Casa(s)

Sergey Ivanovich Svetoslavskiy, Autumn (1892)
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“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”
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sábado, 18 de outubro de 2014

Roque Gameiro - Exposição na Amadora

Alfredo Roque Gameiro, Onda
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«A aguarela, examinada no verdadeiro rigor do processo, é das formas mais difíceis de pintar. Na sua técnica não há, ou não devem existir emendas (…). Contudo, para Roque Gameiro não havia impossíveis.»
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Armando de Lucena (1964).
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Alfredo Roque Gameiro, Leipzig (1884)
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Alfredo Roque Gameiro, Rocha Sul da Praia Grande
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Alfredo Roque Gameiro (1921)

Ainda do Dia Internacional para a Erradicação da Pobreza

Henry Herbert La Thangue, Some Poor People
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«(…) the problem of getting people out of poverty is not how to get them enough to eat and drink; this is the condition for sustaining people in poverty. (…)»
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Mary Douglas, Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods, Towards an Anthropology of Consumption, London, New York, Routledge, 1996 (1.ª ed. 1979), p. 114.

sexta-feira, 17 de outubro de 2014

Edifícios...

Raul Lino, Casa de Francisco Costa (1926).
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«...há edifícios como certos homens: a sua apresentação discreta, a modéstia da sua aparência, servem só, às vezes, para neles velar o que possuem de superior.»
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Fucanelli,
citado in Cátia Mourão, A Mansão Filosofal da Rua de Alcolena, Um Conceito de Obra Total, Chiado Editora, 2013, pp. 43-44.

quarta-feira, 15 de outubro de 2014

Da sabedoria - e das suas limitações

Briton Rivière, Naughty Boy - Compulsory Education (1887)
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"Para sabermos bem as coisas, é preciso sabermos os pormenores, e como estes são quase infinitos, os nossos conhecimentos são sempre superficiais e imperfeitos."
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ou

"Uma vez que não podemos ser universais e saber tudo quanto se pode saber acerca de tudo, é preciso saber-se um pouco de tudo, pois é muito melhor saber-se alguma coisa de tudo do que saber-se tudo apenas de uma coisa."
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terça-feira, 14 de outubro de 2014

Pássaros

William Adolphe Bouguereau, L'Oiseau Chéri (1867)
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«Saber tudo de tudo. Ou tudo de algum saber. Decerto é impossível e mesmo indesejável. Mas que tu sintas que é bela a luz ou ouvir um pássaro cantar e terás sido absolutamente original. Porque ninguém pode sentir por ti.»
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segunda-feira, 13 de outubro de 2014

Florestas

Ivan Shishkin, Morning in a Pine Forest (1889, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscovo)
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«A floresta continua a ser um conto de fadas, um antro de mistérios.»
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Jorge Calado, 1993.

«Documentos para artistas – As relações entre a fotografia e a pintura», in Henriques, Ana de Castro, Castro, Catarina Maia e (coord.). Silva Porto 1850-1893: exposição comemorativa do centenário da sua morte. Lisboa: I.P.M., p. 33.

sábado, 11 de outubro de 2014

Sobre cardos, um conto de Andersen

Kevin Menck, Thistles (2011)
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No blogue (In)Cultura vi uma bela fotografia que me lembrou este conto de Andersen, que li recentemente:
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The Thistle’s Experiences

Belonging to the lordly manor-house was beautiful, well-kept garden, with rare trees and flowers; the guests of the proprietor declared their admiration of it; the people of the neighborhood, from town and country, came on Sundays and holidays, and asked permission to see the garden; indeed, whole schools used to pay visits to it.
Outside the garden, by the palings at the road-side, stood a great mighty Thistle, which spread out in many directions from the root, so that it might have been called a thistle bush. Nobody looked at it, except the old Ass which drew the milk-maid’s cart. This Ass used to stretch out his neck towards the Thistle, and say, “You are beautiful; I should like to eat you!” But his halter was not long enough to let him reach it and eat it.
There was great company at the manor-house — some very noble people from the capital; young pretty girls, and among them a young lady who came from a long distance. She had come from Scotland, and was of high birth, and was rich in land and in gold — a bride worth winning, said more than one of the young gentlemen; and their lady mothers said the same thing.
The young people amused themselves on the lawn, and played at ball; they wandered among the flowers, and each of the young girls broke off a flower, and fastened it in a young gentleman’s buttonhole. But the young Scotch lady looked round, for a long time, in an undecided way. None of the flowers seemed to suit her taste. Then her eye glanced across the paling—outside stood the great thistle bush, with the reddish-blue, sturdy flowers; she saw them, she smiled, and asked the son of the house to pluck one for her.
“It is the flower of Scotland,” she said. “It blooms in the scutcheon of my country. Give me yonder flower.”
And he brought the fairest blossom, and pricked his fingers as completely as if it had grown on the sharpest rose bush.
She placed the thistle-flower in the buttonhole of the young man, and he felt himself highly honored. (...).
“I am something more than I knew of,” said the Thistle to itself. “I suppose my right place is really inside the palings, and not outside. One is often strangely placed in this world; but now I have at least managed to get one of my people within the pale, and indeed into a buttonhole!”
The Thistle told this event to every blossom that unfolded itself, and not many days had gone by before the Thistle heard, not from men, not from the twittering of the birds, but from the air itself, which stores up the sounds, and carries them far around — out of the most retired walks of the garden, and out of the rooms of the house, in which doors and windows stood open, that the young gentleman who had received the thistle-flower from the hand of the fair Scottish maiden had also now received the heart and hand of the lady in question. They were a handsome pair — it was a good match.
“That match I made up!” said the Thistle; and he thought of the flower he had given for the buttonhole. Every flower that opened heard of this occurrence.
“I shall certainly be transplanted into the garden,” thought the Thistle, and perhaps put into a pot, which crowds one in. “That is said to be the greatest of all honors.”
And the Thistle pictured this to himself in such a lively manner, that at last he said, with full conviction, “I am to be transplanted into a pot.”
(...)
And the Thistle thought so long of the thistle of Scotland, to whose family he said he belonged, that he fancied at last that he had come from Scotland, and that his parents had been put into the national escutcheon. That was a great thought; but, you see, a great thistle has a right to a great thought.
(...)
And the summer went by, and the autumn went by. The leaves fell from the trees, and the few flowers left had deeper colors and less scent. The gardener’s boy sang in the garden, across the palings:

“Up the hill, down the dale we wend,
That is life, from beginning to end.”

The young fir trees in the forest began to long for Christmas, but it was a long time to Christmas yet.
“Here I am standing yet!” said the Thistle. “It is as if nobody thought of me, and yet I managed the match. They were betrothed, and they have had their wedding; it is now a week ago. I won’t take a single step-because I can’t.”
A few more weeks went by. The Thistle stood there with his last single flower large and full. This flower had shot up from near the roots; the wind blew cold over it, and the colors vanished, and the flower grew in size, and looked like a silvered sunflower.
One day the young pair, now man and wife, came into the garden. They went along by the paling, and the young wife looked across it.
“There’s the great thistle still growing,” she said. “It has no flowers now.”
“Oh, yes, the ghost of the last one is there still,” said he. And he pointed to the silvery remains of the flower, which looked like a flower themselves.
“It is pretty, certainly,” she said. “Such an one must be carved on the frame of our picture.”
And the young man had to climb across the palings again, and to break off the calyx of the thistle. It pricked his fingers, but then he had called it a ghost. And this thistle-calyx came into the garden, and into the house, and into the drawing-room. There stood a picture — “Young Couple.” A thistle-flower was painted in the buttonhole of the bridegroom. They spoke about this, and also about the thistle-flower they brought, the last thistle-flower, now gleaming like silver, whose picture was carved on the frame.
And the breeze carried what was spoken away, far away.
“What one can experience!” said the Thistle Bush. “My first born was put into a buttonhole, and my youngest has been put in a frame. Where shall I go?”
And the Ass stood by the road-side, and looked across at the Thistle.
“Come to me, my nibble darling!” said he. “I can’t get across to you.”
But the Thistle did not answer. He became more and more thoughtful — kept on thinking and thinking till near Christmas, and then a flower of thought came forth.
“If the children are only good, the parents do not mind standing outside the garden pale.”
“That’s an honorable thought,” said the Sunbeam. “You shall also have a good place.”
“In a pot or in a frame?” asked the Thistle.
“In a story,” replied the Sunbeam.
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quinta-feira, 9 de outubro de 2014

Natureza

Jamie Wyeth, Steps (aguarela, 1972)
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«A grande natureza preservará o mundo.»
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Henry David Thoreau,

citado por Iria de Fátima Rodrigues Amado Vaz, As Origens do Ambientalismo em Portugal. A Liga para a Protecção da Natureza. 1948-1974, Lisboa, 2000. Dissertação de Mestrado, FCT-UNL., p. 38.

quarta-feira, 8 de outubro de 2014

Arte e Técnica

Norman Rockwell, Artist Facing Blank Canvas
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«We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.»
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terça-feira, 7 de outubro de 2014

Arte e Moral

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«Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.»
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segunda-feira, 6 de outubro de 2014

Humanidade vs. Natureza

Harriet Backer, To barn og tregruppe (1885)
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Não há ser mais maravilhoso do que o homem...
O poder do seu engenho está para além de tudo, 
Mas pode levá-lo para o bem ou para o mal.
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Sófocles, Antígona,
Citado in I. G. Simmons, História do Ambiente, Lisboa, Teorema, 2007, p. 249

domingo, 5 de outubro de 2014

sexta-feira, 3 de outubro de 2014

Ler...

Georgios Jakobides, Girl reading (c. 1882)
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«If we have thus desecrated ourselves, — as who has not? — the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. (...)»
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quarta-feira, 1 de outubro de 2014

«Le chant des oiseaux en automne»

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No dia mundial da música, lembro os sons da natureza...
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«Nós somos da natureza e estamos na natureza. A ecologia não pode, pois, furtar-se ao desafio de constituir um saber sobre uma natureza em que os homens se reconheçam como parte integrante e não como uma instância de dominação, estrangeira e hostil. Tal é a aposta.»
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Jean-Paul Deléage. 1993. História da Ecologia, Uma Ciência do Homem e da Natureza. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote. p. 255.