Tarnport

Tarnport, 6 days ago to random

My region changes seasons exactly 3 weeks before each equinox/solstice. It's uncanny. So summer started with a bang this week and now the race is to clean up the mess left by spring before all these seeds and young creatures and sprawling vines push us off the farm. The purgative, minimalizing mood has me spending time with linocuts and Hard-Edge lately. There's a comfort in the goal of clarity achieved, even long ago and far away.

June Harwood. Hard Edge Painting, 1974.

#painting

Tarnport, 7 days ago to random

Balcomb Greene. Way Down Blue, 1945.

#painting

Tarnport, 7 days ago to random

Garden 2

Arugula in bloom
Yellow phlomis in bloom
Artichoke bloom first opening, purple with a green bug

Tarnport, 7 days ago to random

As a Southerner just let me say Amen. And again I say, Amen!

Reminds me of one of my favorite opening volleys in this argument: How old was Birmingham at the outbreak of the Civil War? 9 years old. 9! There were no ancient live-oaks draped in graceful moss lining the driveways of Southern plantations back when. They were brand new bustling factories of forced labor. Death camps with mcmansions. Generations did not pass them down. They didn't last long enough. You're thinking of the racism.

Tarnport, 7 days ago to random

Mark Rothko. Entrance to Subway, 1938.

It's been one of the hardest years of my life, but I cling to the idea that how far we will go we cannot yet imagine. It may not be much farther, or it might be like the already-verging-middle-age Mark Rothko here, staring at the interlocking grids of an underground structure and finding them strangely compelling, reason enough to go on experimenting... taking a few blind steps that will suddenly result in the unimaginable.

#painting

Tarnport, 7 days ago to random

Ben Nicholson. Painting, 1934.

Take yourself back to 1934 and imagine what a clean new world they were building. We take it for granted now, and have some perspective on the more unfortunate side effects too, but we stand on their shoulders for our vision. I'm amazed at the break achieved by this whole generation, born to bloomers and carriages and then creating space-age minimalism, scraping the world down to its essence. Also, he was married to Barbara Hepworth for a time!

#painting

Tarnport, 9 days ago to random

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Nude in Orange and Yellow, 1929.

See alt-text. In these waning days of our own freedoms and late Empire, I'm thinking often of people like Kirchner, whose sensibilities were so like ours now, and then they were suddenly swept away.

#painting

Tarnport, 13 days ago to random

Carl Joseph Begas. Portrait of the Chamber Singer Karoline Seidler-Wranitzky, 1825.

As you saw in the Joan Mitchell post earlier, these are my colors this spring. I'm obsessed. I have an embarrassingly large file of otherwise unrelated and unlikely images, collected only for the colors. Go Karoline!

#painting

Tarnport, 13 days ago to random

Talking Heads: The Great Curve.

Imo churches sing the wrong hymns.

https://open.spotify.com/track/5N73ncX9gjmRv9lIpZ85nS?si=2JhT8UQJT-iIwLydJOFlRQ

"She
(night must fall, now!)
(She has got to move the world)
Is moving to describe the world
(Darker! Darker!)
(To move the world, to move the world)
She
(night must fall, now!)
(She has got to move the world)
Has messages for everyone
(Darker! Darker!)
(To move the world, to move the world)"

Tarnport, 13 days ago to random

Joan Mitchell. Rhubarb, 1962.

She's so good I just can't stand it.

#painting

Tarnport, 13 days ago to Bloomscrolling

The lizard orchids, Himantoglossum hircinum, are in full bloom along the bike trail. All the wild orchids seem to be. SW France.

#Bloomscrolling

Two lizard orchid flower-spike inflorescences in full bloom.

Tarnport, 14 days ago to random

Ingres. Portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, 1814.
This is Napoléon's sister, a propaganda piece just before the Battle of Waterloo. Note her Athena-like helmet of ostrich feathers, the strikingly modern grid of the window, and the volcano which turned out to be prophetic in another sense entirely than intended. She also commissioned Ingres' famous Odelisque, and he had painted her brother in a similar pose 10 years previously. The work was lost for 172 years until its surfaced in 1987.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Hernan Bas. How to Best Suffer Swamp Life at Dusk, 2020.

Y'all know I am a huge fan of this gay Miami artist. He is always so much more clever than the critical reviews suggest. This is a case in point. I've not read one thing touching on some rather obvious points here.

#Painting

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Florida immigrant realizes with a start after 14 whole years that he probably likes acanthus so much because it looks like splitleaf philodendron.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Bonjour.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to AirBNB

The gig is up! We need to go back to basic consumer protections.

#Airbnb host, rated perfect 5.0 on the site, delayed check-in time 8 hours after receiving payment (among other things, like changing the household sharing arrangements and saying he wasn't the sole admin of the account and so wasn't responsible - clear deal-breakers), and then he refused to cancel the reservation at his end so I could get a refund. I escalated through Airbnb and the initial help was sympathetic but nothing since.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

André Masson. L'Origine du Monde after Courbet, ~1956.

Jacques Lacan (yes, that one) was Masson's brother-in-law and he also bought Courbet's L'Origine du Monde in 1955. Soon after he asked Masson to paint a "surrealist" version of it to paper over the original (!), which even today, to Courbet's great credit imo, is considered shocking and controversial. The result is the picture below, a mixture of pornography and japonaiserie. I include 2 Japanese pieces for comparison.

#Painting

A fantastical Japanese inlay dragon of vegetable motifs, from an opium tray. The overall feel is similar to Masson's interpretation of Courbet above.
A decorative Japanese iron plaque of puppies playing with flowers. The overall feel is similar to Masson's interpretation of Courbet above.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Henri Martin (1860-1943).
Peupliers au Printemps au Bord du Vert.

He was Toulousain, and it feels just like this here today. This glittering neo-Impressionist work was probably executed very close in time to the huge murals of the Toulouse Capitole, in the first decade of the 20th c.

#Painting

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Block Threads.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

It's not yet open hunting season for escargots de Bourgogne and that may be because they are mating and particularly vulnerable right now. In the woods foraging for greens this morning we had to be careful not to step on them, there were so many in places. The French were drooling and so tempted to break the law and sack up a few hundred, but no one did, of course. Probably less because of the law than how much work it is to purge them.

Two huge wild woodland snails in France.
A huge wild woodland snail in France.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Regimental formation. 1-6-1

#Chickens

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Disked. I'll make one more pass tomorrow and then we're ready for blastoff!

Cherry blossoms were a nice view for the work.

A finely tilled allée vegetable plot ready to plant. What we call the little garden is in much better shape than the big one: longer use, better soil amendments over years, and I did it all in first gear.
Close-up of Kwanzan double pink cherry blossoms in full bloom.
Close-up of Kwanzan double pink cherry blossoms in full bloom.

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

Vasyl Yermylov. On the Beach, Morning, Evening. 1936.

Art of the avant-garde in Ukraine.

#Painting

Tarnport, 2 months ago to random

In my native accent y'all rhymes with oil. Even in my 50s, with decades of learned compensation, this leads to some rather exotic misunderstandings, often when instructing someone to boil something. (Also my rice and ice sound like a British pron. of "ass")