You guys. I am reading a disturbing book at the moment and feeling a lot of feelings. So is Amelie Segarra in this amazing performance En Puntas. Certainly, it is the point of art to provoke feelings, and to illicit a kind of visceral reaction. But with our level on inundation, how often does that really happen? Rarely. Even for me. And I'm ripe for the picking. I'm basically standing, waving my arms up and down and begging for you to manipulate my emotions!
Which is why it's so nice to see something that actually blows my hair back... or in this case, makes me gasp and clutch at my throat. No reaction I thought I would have from what I assumed was nothing more than a visual statement. OH NO, my friends. That is a sore underestimation.
Watch for yourself Spanish artist Javier Perez's beautiful, arresting video. And his others.
Since reading Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, which is all about visual representations of pain and suffering and the way we experience the suffering of others via the medium of photography, I've wanted to do a series on some of the career-making photographs mentioned.
Robert Capa's "The Falling Soldier" believed to be taken in Cerro Muriano, Spain on September 5, 1936 was first on my list, as I find it absolutely gut wrenching. A soldier, in the exact moment of death from multiple gun shot wounds during the Spanish Civil War. I've massively interested in that period in history and locale (even writing a musical about it) and this really just captures so much emotion to me.
Not only did this photo make Capa's career (he went on to become one of the most celebrated war photographers of all time) but it has since become one of the most controversial photos in history. In 1975, accusations came that photo was in fact staged. These accusations were often politically charged and leveled by Franco supporting Falangists. Critics pointed to landscape points far in the distance and matched them up with other places, proving it couldn't be what Capa claimed. It went back and forth. The man photographed was finally identified. His brother confirmed his death at Cerro Muriano, but in 2009 further evidence in a journal refuted that testimony. People still don't agree.
Fake or not, you can't say the photo isn't striking and moving. The way certain dance can move or haunt because you didn't expect the body to move that way. In its own way, it's utterly authentic. What do you think? You can check out the negatives at the International Center of Photography here in NYC.
Not even my hatred of Nicole Kidman seems to be able to quell my love of asshole man-writers and their stories-- especially as-told by the good folks at HBO. I question many things about Hemingway & Gellhorn: the title, the casting of both the leads, (don't get me wrong, I lovvvve Clive Owen, but not sure about him as Hemingway. I suppose I could be converted...) and the extended trailer appears to give away the entire film. Is that why HBO had it taken down?
Or was it the tone problem? From the trailer, it's hard to pin down. I love couples who drink like fish, share a passion and call each other by their last names too... but what is this movie? Quirky, zany, ditzy?.... or melodrama? (all of these being Kidman's familiar territory). There's a Spanish Civil War, Chinese Communism and WWII to contend with, and yet Kidman's greatest feat here seems to be her ability to drop her voice an octave. If she could get an Oscar for wearing a prosthetic nose, just think what will happen now!
Aside from that, it appears to be fairly well-written (by Jerry Stahl and Barbara Turner, mother of Jennifer Jason Leigh) and it walks right on that line I'm wearing out all day every day about the nature of these competitive artistic relationships. I love it. The more people keep doing these, the more it forces me to write it fresher. Bring it on.
Anyhow, HBO rarely just genuinely drops the ball. So I'm going to go into this with a positive attitude. I mean, they even appear to be using some of Hemingway's best one- liners including my favorite, "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." So relevant. All the time.
These are some pretty revealing photos of the last bullfight held in Plaza Monumental de Barcelona on September 25. Oddly enough, this collection by several photographers came to me via my google alert on David Mora and is actually posted in the Denver Post.
I was saddened to learn when I started to look at the photos that it was Juan Mora and not David Mora in this corrida, but the pictures were moving nonetheless. I have kind of a deal with "the last ever" of anything. That mash-up of emotions that makes the corrida fascinating to me in the first place. Is there a name for that? Something about that last roll of Kodachrome film broke my heart and I think the Indigo Girls song Winthrop is probably the saddest song I've ever heard. "And for someone, there is something, never coming back."
Remember when I said that this guy was something special? To mark my words, he was going to blow up? Well, it turns out that the day after I said that, he did. (Seriously watch that.) It was the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona. The whole day was hailed as a disappointment except for David Mora.
He was gored twice. Once in the thigh and once in the armpit. And it made me genuinely frightened. I actually thought, "What if I lose him!?"-- as though I actually knew him. But that's just the thing: I feel like I do.
Despite my many conflicting emotions about the corrida, ('fight'-- bullfight, bullfighter-- 'fight' has never been the right word and never the word they themselves use) David Mora makes you reconsider the whole thing. Much like Enrique Ponce was for AL Kennedy while she was writing On Bullfighting
, watching David Mora is the closest the corrida gets to a religious experience. (Enrique Ponce, as it turns out, was David Mora's sponsor in his alternativa.) And I think religion is an appropriate way to discuss it. Because I was raised Buddhist, so I don't have an attachment to the deeply ceremonial aspects of, say, Catholicism. But there are some churches, some cathedrals, and some sermons that I have heard by some priests and some reverends that make believe and understand.
David Mora is someone who makes you love something that repelled you, and see something by seeing it the way he sees it.
Without needing to know anything about cape work or rules, you can see-- even I could see!-- from the very first, that he was just plain better than everyone else. Listen to the audiences. Even in the last year or two, he's banished from himself those last flourishes of ego, of strutting. He's all business, and all love. Even with his ass hanging out, even when he went up against the Miura bull, his grace makes everyone else around him look like a hack, like a strutting peacock. Anytime I see a clumsy step or pass, a scurry, I know it's not my David.
Odd, I know. To say "mine." But as soon as I made him Aries Brio, he became mine.
I can't tell you how many videos I've watched, how many websites I've translated. I feel like I could spot his work anywhere. Turns out, matadors are sort of difficult to get in touch with. But I really want to interview him. Like really. I found out his agent is Antonio Tejero, but haven't figured out a way to contact that guy. Anyone know? Can anyone help? (Bernardo Cubria, I mean you!)
Watch for yourselves and see.
If you have to walk around in the rain and cold, even though it's July, I recommend listening to Estrella Morente and pretending you're in Spain. I do this often, and I think it helps. Here's some Tangos de Pepico
for your Monday. Estrella Morente is the daughter of another famous Flamenco singer, Enrique Morente, and as it happens has been married to a pretty famous bullfighter, Javier Conde, since she was 21.
Javier Conde, as it happens, looks more like a movie star than your average bullfighter. In fact, was in Hable Con Ella
, one of my faves. He also participates in the bloodless bullfighting they've been doing in Las Vegas, where the peones stick velcro spears to the back of the bull. That is some crazy dangerous stuff right there.
So the Prado might be my favorite museum I've ever visited. Not just because my favorite painting is there. Everything about the Prado is perfect.
On the way in, we sat and listened to some Spanish guitar and I was curious as to these prints an old man kept slaving away over. They were prints-- just of flamenco dancers and bullfighters-- so I wondered what he was doing to them, as he clearly had an art kit on his table. Then I realized he was stenciling in people's names to the posters. And it was settled: I needed one of those bullfighter ones.
It's going to look really good in my room, but that's not even why I want it. As I walked up, the man pulled out the flamenco girl, and started talking to me about putting my name on it. I let him know I wanted the bullfighter. And I didn't want my name on it. Oh, no. I wanted my bullfighter from my musical, Aries Brio. So now, I have a poster advertising a bullfight with my fictional character. I probably just can't relay to you how cool that is to me, but I'm just a big old nerd and anything that allows my characters to take a step from my head into the real world is pure gold.
Inside the museum, I loved the preparatory sketches Goya did for his huge royal portrait. The Riberas scared me. But the main event for me was the Velazquez rooms. Specifically, Las Meninas. I think I stood in front of Las Meninas for about 30 minutes. I just love the way he uses color. I just love.
Slightly interesting-- The Prado has this tendency to really interpret the art in a way that I haven't seen museums do in a while. What are your thoughts on that? I always go back to Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation and can't help wonder if being told what to think about art or anything else is kind of a Spanish Fascist hangover.
Last thing. The Prado does something so cool I can't stand it. If I had any way of getting the stuff home, I would have done it. The have prints on demand. You scroll through the masterpieces and they print it in any size for you, on a variety of different materials. Matte Finish, Glossy Finish, CANVAS! Really reasonably priced too. I think all museums should be doing this if they're not. Amazing.
I gots wayyyyy more stories from yesterday, but I'll leave you for now. I need to soak up some more sun and head out of town to check out El Escorial.
