Natal III: Estrela

(link)

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«Então uma noite, entre as estrelas do céu, aparecia uma que brilhava mais que todas.

- Esta é a estrela, dizia a avó.

E era uma estrela que nos guiava. (...)»

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Manuel Alegre, Uma Estrela (link para o conto completo)

Natal I: Rosas

George Sloane, The Story of the Rose (1902)

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«That summer the roses bloomed their splendid best. The little girl had learned a hymn in which there was a line about roses that reminded her of their own flowers. She sang it to the little boy, and he sang it with her: 

"Where roses bloom so sweetly in the vale,

There shall you find the Christ Child, without fail."»

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Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen.

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(link)

Imaginário

Annibale Carracci, Virgin and Unicorn (A Virgin with a Unicorn) (1605, Palácio Farnese)

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"This is a child!" Haigha replied eagerly, coming: in front of Alice to introduce her, and spreading out both his hands towards her in an Anglo-Saxon attitude. "We only found it to-day. It's as large as life, and twice as natural!"

"I always thought they were fabulous monsters!" said the Unicorn. "Is it alive?"

"It can talk," said Haigha, solemnly.

The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said "Talk, child."

Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: "Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!"

"Well, now that we have seen each other," said the Unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?"

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Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

Fantasia

Paul Klee, Miraculous Landing (1920)

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“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”

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Dr. Seuss

Arcádia

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State (1834, New-York Historical Society)

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What, know you not, old man (quoth he)—

Your hair is white, your face is wise—

That Love must kiss that Mortal's eyes

Who hopes to see fair Arcady?

No gold can buy you entrance there;

But beggared Love may go all bare—

No wisdom won with weariness;

But love goes in with Folly's dress—

No fame that wit could ever win;

But only Love may lead Love in.

To Arcady, to Arcady.

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H. C. Bunner

...To retain the spirit-world of childhood

Beatrix Potter, ‘The Rabbits’ Christmas Party’ (c. 1890)

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"I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense."

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Beatrix Potter (via Myth & Moor).

Da esperança

Ernest Biéler (via Pinterest)

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«The transformation of despair into hope is alchemical work, creative work. And what all transformations have in common, writes Rebecca Solnit, is that they begin in the imagination.

"To hope is to gamble," she says. "It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty are better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk. I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope."»

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Via Myth & Moor (os "negritos" são meus)

Resiliência

Wassily Kandinsky, Fragile (1931, Musée des Beaux Arts, Nantes)

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«The greatest glory in living

lies not in never falling,

but in rising every time we fall.»

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Nelson Mandela

Neve

Toshi Yoshida, Aspen (1973)

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«"Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about - whenever the wind blows - oh, that's very pretty!" cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. "And I do so wish it was true! I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown."»

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Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Branco? Frio... mas quase no Natal

Pyotr Konchalovsky, The tree in frost (1933)

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Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry.

Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition.

Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor.

In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . . But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.

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Vera Nazarian (via The Dutchess)

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Caminhando...

Michael Sowa, On The Road

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«The distance is nothing when one has a motive.»

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Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

Natureza

Jacob van Ruisdael, Road through Fields of Corn near the Zuider Zee (c. 1660-1662, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)

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«O que é fascinante na natureza é a correspondência entre a ordem microscópica e a desordem global, o contraste entre a organização, com as suas simetrias bem definidas, duma folha ou duma flor, e o desenvolvimento competitivo e aleatório dum campo de erva ou duma floresta. O crescimento orgânico da natureza é uma competição entre estas duas tendências, entre a regularidade da poupança de energia e a generalização da confusão ou caos entrópico (primeira e segunda lei da termodinâmica). Mas a percepção destas ordens e desordens depende da distância a que se coloca o observador (…). Vista de longe, a floresta exibe uma certa arquitectura de conjunto, mas com a aproximação a desordem instala-se para finalmente a ordem voltar a ser recuperada na intimidade do close-up».

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Jorge Calado, «Documentos para artistas – As relações entre a fotografia e a pintura», p. 33, in Henriques, Ana de Castro, Castro, Catarina Maia e (coord.). 1993. Silva Porto 1850-1893: exposição comemorativa do centenário da sua morte. Lisboa: I.P.M..

Escrever ao Pai Natal

Wuanita Smith, Girl and Friends Writing Letters, illustration for The Christmas Letter (c. 1905–1907, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

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«Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."»

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Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).

Bom Dezembro

Jacob van Huysum, Twelve months of flowers: December (séc. XVIII, Ftzwilliam Museum)

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Bom Dezembro!

Nuremberga

Alfredo Roque Gameiro, Nuremberga (1885)

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«Nuremberg is a wonderful old city, and looks as if it had been cut out of an old picture-book. The streets seem to have arranged themselves according to their own fancy, and as if the houses objected to stand in rows or rank and file. Gables, with little towers, ornamented columns, and statues, can be seen even to the city gate; and from the singular-shaped roofs, waterspouts, formed like dragons, or long lean dogs, extend far across to the middle of the street. Here, in the market-place, stood Knud, with his knapsack on his back, close to one of the old fountains which are so beautifully adorned with figures, scriptural and historical, and which spring up between the sparkling jets of water. A pretty servant-maid was just filling her pails, and she gave Knud a refreshing draught; she had a handful of roses, and she gave him one, which appeared to him like a good omen for the future. From a neighboring church came the sounds of music, and the familiar tones reminded him of the organ at home at Kjøge; so he passed into the great cathedral. The sunshine streamed through the painted glass windows, and between two lofty slender pillars. His thoughts became prayerful, and calm peace rested on his soul. He next sought and found a good master in Nuremberg, with whom he stayed and learnt the German language.»

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Hans Christian Andersen, Under the Willow-tree (1853).

Chuva...

Hasui Kawase, Rainy season in Ryoshimashi (1931)

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«Any proverbs about weather are doubly true during a storm.»

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Terri Guillemets.

vs. Cultura imaterial

Edward Burne-Jones, Angel

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«For every locomotive they build, I shall paint another angel.»

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Edward Burne-Jones

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E o anjo é dedicado à minha amiga Sandra que faz hoje anos!

Cultura material

Arquitecto Alves de Sousa - Ambiente, Estúdio Mário Navais (FCG - CFT003.024173.ic)

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«Rather than unreflexively adopting a lifestyle, through tradition or habit, the new heroes of consumer culture make lifestyle a life project and display their individuality and sense of style in the particularity of the assemblage of goods, clothes, practices, experiences, appearance and bodily dispositions they design together into a lifestyle. The modern individual within consumer culture is made conscious that he speaks not only with his clothes, but with his home, furnishings, decoration, car and other activities which are to be read in terms of the presence and absence of taste.»

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Featherstone (1991), citado in Woodward, Studying Material Culture. Origins and Premises.

Forma e função

Karin Larsson, cadeira de baloiço.

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«It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.»

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Louis Sullivan (1896).

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Carl Larsson, auto-retrato.

... renovar o homem usando borboletas

Rafael Araujo

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Retrato do artista quando coisa 

A maior riqueza

do homem

é sua incompletude.

Nesse ponto

sou abastado.

Palavras que me aceitam

como sou

— eu não aceito.

Não aguento ser apenas

um sujeito que abre

portas, que puxa

válvulas, que olha o

relógio, que compra pão

às 6 da tarde, que vai

lá fora, que aponta lápis,

que vê a uva etc. etc.

Perdoai. Mas eu

preciso ser Outros.

Eu penso

renovar o homem

usando borboletas.

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Manoel de Barros.

Da esperança

Paul Gauguin, Lane at Alchamps, Arles (Allée des Alyscamps) (1888)

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“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”

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Laini Taylor.

Castanho

Ernest Biéler, The leaf litter picker (Ramasseuse de feuilles mortes) (c. 1909, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Berne)

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Castanho

Já não voam besouros no ar quente.

Foi-se o Verão embora.

É Outono agora,

tudo está diferente.

É castanha a terra

onde a pá se enterra.

É castanha a folha

que a chuva já molha.

O avô Inverno chega das montanhas,

com os bolsos repletos de castanhas,

e vai sentar-se ao lume da lareira,

fumando o seu cachimbo de madeira.

E para o imitar

(vejam o disparate!)

o neto põe-se a trincar

um pau de chocolate.

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António Manuel Couto Viana, Versos de Cacaracá, Litexa Portugal, 1984.

Ainda a tranquilidade

Vasile Dobrian, Look How the Moon Steps on the White Lonely Hills (Autumn series)

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«It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.»

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Marcus Aurelius.

Tranquilidade (e outro gato)

Thomas Bowman Garvie, Man Feeding his Cat (1891, Castle Morpeth Borough Council)

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“Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.”

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Dalai Lama.

Citação de Rod (para acompanhar um retrato de Biéler)

Ernest Biéler, Portrait de l'Écrivain Edouard Rod (Lausanne Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts)

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“No fundo de cada alma há tesouros escondidos que somente o amor permite descobrir.”

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Édouard Rod

Mulheres artistas

Zinaida Serebriakova, In the studio Braz.France (1905-1906)

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«Perguntam-nos com ironia indulgente quantas grandes mulheres artistas é que existiram. Ah, senhores, existiram algumas, o que é surpreendente tendo em conta as enormes dificuldades com que se depararam.»

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Marie Bashkirtseff (1859-1884), com o pseudónimo de Pauline Orell, «Les femmes artistes», La Citoyenne, n.º 4, 6 de Março de 1881. - Citado in Filipa Lowndes Vicente, A arte sem história. Mulheres e cultura artística (Séculos XVI-XX), Lisboa, Babel, 2012, p. 53.

Jardins

Paul Klee, Magic Garden (Zaubergarten) (Março 1926, Guggenheim)

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«But the first ball was not the last, and Emily could not stand it; it was a good thing, therefore, that summer brought with it rest, and exercise in the open air. The family had been invited by the old Count to visit him at him castle. That was a castle with a garden which was worth seeing. Part of this garden was laid out quite in the style of the old days, with stiff green hedges; you walked as if between green walls with peep-holes in them. Box trees and yew trees stood there trimmed into the form of stars and pyramids, and water sprang from fountains in large grottoes lined with shells. All around stood figures of the most beautiful stone—that could be seen in their clothes as well as in their faces; every flower-bed had a different shape, and represented a fish, or a coat of arms, or a monogram. That was the French part of the garden; and from this part the visitor came into what appeared like the green, fresh forest, where the trees might grow as they chose, and accordingly they were great and glorious. The grass was green, and beautiful to walk on, and it was regularly cut, and rolled, and swept, and tended. That was the English part of the garden.»

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Hans Christian Andersen, The Porter’s Son (1866)

Novembro

Carl Gustav Carus, Autumn Landscape, Hosterwitz

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Novembro

A respiração de Novembro verde e fria

Incha os cedros azuis e as trepadeiras

E o vento inquieta com longínquos desastres

A folhagem cerrada das roseiras

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Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen.

Poesia

Matthäus Schiestl, Der Zaunkönig (Galerie Bassenge)

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How to be a Poet

Make a place to sit down. 

Sit down. Be quiet. 

You must depend upon 

affection, reading, knowledge, 

skill-more of each 

than you have-inspiration 

work, growing older, patience, 

for patience joins time 

to eternity...

Breathe with unconditional breath 

the unconditioned air. 

Shun electric wire. 

Communicate slowly. Live 

a three-dimensional life; 

stay away from screens. 

Stay away from anything 

that obscures the place it is in. 

There are no unsacred places; 

there are only sacred places 

and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence. 

Make the best you can of it. 

Of the little words that come 

out of the silence, like prayers 

prayed back to the one who prays, 

make a poem that does not disturb 

the silence from which it came.

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Wendell Berry

De ontem, da amizade e da esperança

Obrigada Ana!

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"Resta essa faculdade incoercível de sonhar

De transfigurar a realidade, dentro dessa incapacidade 

De aceitá-la tal como é, e essa visão 

Ampla dos acontecimentos, e essa impressionante

E desnecessária presciência, e essa memória anterior

De mundos inexistentes, e esse heroísmo

Estático, e essa pequenina luz indecifrável

A que às vezes os poetas dão o nome de esperança."

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Vinicius de Moraes

Obrigada, Sandra!

Sonhar

Salomon van Ruysdael, River Scene (1632, National Gallery, Londres)

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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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William Butler Yeats (1899)

Bom Novembro!

Jacob van Huysum, Twelve months of flowers: November (séc. XVIII, Fitzwilliam Museum)

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.

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)

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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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

Tempo

João Vaz de Carvalho

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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)

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.

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)

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)

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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Maya Angelou.

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)