Thursday, September 30, 2010

Hans Christian Andersen's Paper Cuts...SCISSOR WRITING...





Things that quicken the heart...The magical paper cuts of Hans Christian Andersen


I had the pleasure of seeing some of these wonders at an exhibition shown here in Dublin= Cut-Outs and Cut-Ups: Hans Christian Andersen and William Seward Burroughs.


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”Det hele er Andersens poesi
i klipperi!
Broget, løjerligt alleslags,
alt med en saks!”

(In Andersen's paper-cuts you see
His poetry!
A medley of diverting treasures
All done with scissors.) 



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The fact that Andersen could create such delicate patterns and gossamery, graceful dancers out of a thickly folded piece of paper with the help of a crude, heavy pair of scissors was pure magic in the eyes of children. The eldest of the daughters at Holsteinsborg Manor remembered in particular, later in life as a grown-up baroness, the light, delicate dolls Andersen had cut for her out of white paper and which she afterwards had placed on the table and blown at carefully so that they fluttered back and forth: “He always cut with an enormous pair of paper scissors, and I simply couldn’t understand how he could cut such pretty, delicate things with his big hands and this enormous pair of scissors.”
This was Hans Christian Andersen’s own explanation of a highly spectacular page in Astrid Stampes Billedbog from 1853, where seven or eight little cuttings from twice as many pieces of paper in all sorts of colours and patterns merge into one big picture. And this is also how we must regard Andersen’s paper art: as something colourful, diverting and poetic that is extremely closely linked to his lyric poetry, drama, fairy-tales, novels and travel books. Andersen’s paper-cuts cannot just be separated from his written oeuvre and placed beside it.
About 1,000 paper-cuts of all sizes still exist to this day – primitive figures and simple tableaux as well as more ornamental, sophisticated cuttings. They belong to a world of their own, but they all have their roots in precisely the same rich, widely embracing creative imagination which in the nineteenth century revolutionized world literature with a long series of fairy-tales told for children and for the child in every adult. This is why Andersen’s many paper-cuts cannot be dismissed, as they often have been in Andersen research, as mere diversions and little games or just be regarded as funny, entertaining illustrations of what is really at stake and essential: Andersen’s fairy-tale world in writing.



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more papercuts at the Royal Library




Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Early Manuscripts... Latin Gospels...





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Latin Gospels with beast-headed evangelist portraits made at Landévennec, Brittany, late 9th or early 10th century





Saturday, September 25, 2010

La Niña Solita....



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Dolorosa 2007 - La Niña Solita - Scratchboard

Friday, September 24, 2010

The graphics works of Arthur Boyd (4 Jul 1920–24 Apr 1999) part 2



Arthur Boyd was one of Australia’s most widely respected and prolific artists. He was born in 1920 in Melbourne, Victoria and was part of a dynamic generation of artists and thinkers, which included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, and Joy Hester. Boyd was brought up in a lively family of practicing artists, with whom he studied and developed his painting and printmaking.
My favourite of his pieces are collaborations with one of my favourite poets fellow Australian Peter Porter, whom he collaborated with on 4 books during 70s and 80s.
Jonah 1973, The Lady and the Unicorn 1975, Mars 1988 and 
Narcissus 1984 ( images shown below)


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Narcissus, Seckers & Warburg London 1984


"But what Arthur & I was trying to do in Narcissus was sort of turn upside & like the rest of us when you look in the water we are turned upside down. that we wanted to produce, of really really how the Natural world doesn't . . . we don't see ourselves in the Natural world. The Natural world, in fact, enters us and becomes ,well, becomes really a kind of life, it has a pilgrimage through us. "
Peter Porter




A wonderful collection of drawings and prints



The graphics works of Arthur Boyd (4 Jul 1920–24 Apr 1999) part 1...





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Lady and the Unicorn


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Dream of an Intelligent Woman




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Poem illustration Peter Porters Postlude


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Poem illustration Peter Porters Echos half moon calf




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Peter Porter's poem 'The unicorn's prison song'

 





Saturday, September 18, 2010

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Monday, September 13, 2010

Austin Osman Spare... drawings & paintings





in the anticipation of attending the exhibition of the year
at the Cuming Museum in London, here are a few Spare treats!
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 Idiocy - Automatic Drawing


As above so below, this is never sufficiently realized. . . . Remorse? Nay, do unto thyself all things, fearlessly. Finality is reached when ye have learned to digest everything. What is all man-slaughter but what ye have done unto yourself? Only where there is necessity is ther death. Dispense with all 'means' to an end. There is nothing higher than joyous sensation. Eternal Self! these millions of bodies I have outworn! Oh, sinister ecstasy. I am thy vicious self pleasure that destroyeth all things. Distrust thy teacher, for 'divine truth' has prevented better men from wisdom. In such revelation there is no suggestion. Do thy utmost unto others: But be surely what thou wilt: and keep thy belief free of morality. Observe thyself by sensation: thus know the finer perturbations and vibrations. This much shalt thou learn: To love all men, for there will be compulsion.

from The Focus of Life ~ AOS


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previous  AOS POSTS



Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven...poems...





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The Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Dec. 1915


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"Kindly" in a letter to Djuna Barnes undated



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"Ejaculation" undated

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven -wiki

Baroness Elsa > more poems




Sunday, September 5, 2010

Rose O'Neill...drawing...Sweet monsters...




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“I am in love with magic and monsters,
and the drama of form emerging from the formless.”