Thursday, January 7, 2010

Jack Smith ...The Beautiful Book...



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The only autonomous collection of Jack Smith's photographs to appear during his lifetime, The Beautiful Book
comprises 19 hand-tipped black-and-white contact prints made from the original negatives. The photographs were produced mainly during the course of extended shooting sessions in Smith's Lower East Side apartment. Most date from the winter of 1962, although a few are earlier - including the final'signature' photograph, a portrait of the artist on the steps beneath the Brooklyn Bridge taken by filmmaker Ken Jacobs. Nearly half the photographs feature the artist Marian Zazeela, who provided the design for the book's silk-screened cover. Smith and his associates assembled
the books during the late spring and early summer of 1962, before shooting began on Flaming Creatures. Published and distributed by Piero Heliczer's press, the dead language, The Beautiful Book was advertised with a statement from the filmmaker Ron Rice: 'we studied these photographs with keen eye discovering new & more beautiful images hidden in every dissolve & curve of the draperies & silks which ran through these masterpieces like some long lost mysterious fume from
byzantium.'



Edward Steichen ...1879-1973...



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Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Monday, January 4, 2010

Andrey Bely... poem and drawing...




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VERTIGO

Now I have wandered long years and many,
Have drowned in the haze of the late afternoon
Until my poor feet are bleeding and heavy,
They must give out soon.

As I lounge in the fumes of the charcoal vapors
Questions pop out, like an unpaid debt,
And someone offers- in a tasty little packet -
A cigarette.

And then when I sit with elbows on the table,
Swoonin with awe, merged fearfully
With things not of earth, somebody says
"Here's your tea."

Oh, I am a child of the flame, of the glory,
Visions shine before me all through the night,
But can it be- can it be possible
They will not even know me by sight?