Bookshelf-Staircase

Since my last time at the bookshop, I realized that I had to organize my books somehow. And I know that most of you, art people, do like to read too (as you are reading this), so I thought of sharing this with you. It's one of the nicest solutions I've ever seen for bookkeeping and I wish I could do it at home.
This bookshelf-staircase makes it easier to keep your books, it gives you quick access to any book you'd like and it saves a lot of space from your bedroom or living room. You could also use plastic doors on every shelf (maybe except for the staircase itself) to keep them cleaner, although they'll be safe anyway. The good thing about it being as staircase is that you can reach the books in higher places and, of course, it keeps its original function: to reach another floor.
The bookshelf staircase was created by Levitate Architects, an English company based in London and Bristol. (via)

Jacques Resch

[Les maisons qui volent - Jacques Resch]

Jacques Resch is a surrealist artist born in France in 1945, who now lives in Africa. His paintings have a remarkable resemblance to the styles of Gonsalves, Breughel and Dali combined, although not as straight forward as Gonsalves' works, not as crowded as Breughel's nor as wacky as Dali's. Resch's style is also influenced by Symbolism, especially on paintings like "Les pyramides" and "Le Diabolo".

Resch names his influences in style: "Bosch, Brueghel and Dali", which stand clear in his works. The first of them has Resch's full respect ('Bosch uses dreams to adventure into the interior of the human spirit'). Resch's works are influenced by modern technology and world politics.

Some of his works can be found for preview and sale on http://www.jacquesresch.com/.

RSS Feeding

This is the first non-art post here. And I believe that most art blogs and sites don't talk about it either, which makes this post important.

If you're not web-savvy, you probably don't know what RSS is. Even if you are, there's the slight possibilty of not knowing. I've being using the RSS feature for over three months now (I know) and it really changed my opinion about it. RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary" or like some people like to call it: "Really Simple Syndication". RSS is good for a lot of reasons. Not only for readers but also for webpublishers.

It allows you to get the updates from a site on a small software (like FeedReader) or site (like Google Reader, BlogLines and My Yahoo). It works almost as an e-mail software. The good thing is: you don't have to visit every site you're interested in, because their updates are shown automatically to you. You don't have to provide your e-mail (although there is the possibility to subscribe by email too - here presented on the sidebar), you just have to add the feed url to your software/webbased reader. To do that, just click on the orange icon above.

Happy RSS-reading!

Books, books.

My bookshelf is full. Once again. I did buy 18 new books and I'm not in a reading-mood. I'm reading one of my latest acquisitions now, slowly, crossing references and this research has been consuming a lot of the time I originally set to The Inner Breath.

Good things are: the new art site I've been programming is now coming together. I believe that it will be, at most, a month before it's up. Also, the new books on Symbolism, Absolute Music and What are the arts for, are great!

Here's my latest read: What Good are the Arts? - by John Carey
Great book with insights on modern acceptance of modern art.

Magic Realism: ideas and debates

[Ladies of the Lake - Rob Gonsalves]

Looking around these days, I've found a very interesting page about Magic Realism. It's The Magical Realism Page, organized by Evelyn C. Leeper. There are tons of ideas and comments of what's Magic Realism, what's the difference between MR and Fantasy, vision on MR works. It's definitely a good site to check.

Rob Gonsalves

[Still Waters - Rob Gonsalves]

Reader Oyvind has suggested some artwork in the previous message that reminded me of the art of Rob Gonsalves.

Rob Gonsalves (1959-) is one prolific artist from Toronto, Canada, with a large gallery of paintings and drawings that unite Magic Realism and a bit of Surrealism. During his childhood, Gonsalves was interested in drawing and learned perspective techniques, while starting to painting when he was about twelve years old. When Gonsalves was introduced to Dali, Tanguy, Magritte and Escher, he started painting his surrealist and "magic realist" images. After a great critique response in the 1990s, Rob Gonsalves has dedicated himself to painting full time.

I have found three nice galleries of his works on the web, which also sell them. Here they are:

Rob Gonsalves (official)
Progressive Art
HROSecure

Suggest a reading

For quite some days, I've been searching the internet for sites (blogs or not) that share the same focus that The Inner Breath has. It's quite hard, though. Apart from the sites linked on the right panel, I couldn't find anything relevant. A lot of blogs on art news (as to 'new exhibits') but nothing regarding esthetics, consciousness and art. So, if you know a good site, share it here! Let's build a nice network!

You're all invited to share a reading, be it a blog, a full site, a book, an article, anything. :)

The Thin Ice: the two sides of water symbolism

[Azure Fern - mArta Bevacqua]

For "The Thin Ice" (The Wall movie), Ulrick wrote "What he thought to be a warm, nurturing ocean turned out to be cold and sterile; the loving mother and the embracing life have become frozen and unyielding. The "sea may look warm" but it is, in all actuality, a layer of thin ice covering a frigid, aqueous landscape."

The thin ice that hides a "frigid, aqueous landscape" is a recurring image to the modern personality stereotypes. We all have some sadness hidden, still hurting, but we've still got our daily things to do, there's still rent to pay. Sometimes we think that one is quite happy for one's achievements, but there always is something hidden...

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is a literary tale by Gabriel García Marquéz. The title sums it up. It's a tale about an winged old man that arrives in a town.

William Morris wrote about it in the Motley Vision, in the second part of his Magic Realism analysis.

Magic Realism

So, what the hell is Magic Realism?

Magic Realism is an artistic movement in which supernatural events occur in reality. The main characteristic is that the event itself is not seen as magic in this setting (the characters don't see it as magic), it's just "another event".

The term was coined by art critic Franz Roh to describe imagery of an altered reality, and it was also used by Arturo Uslar-Pietri to describe the literary works of Latin American writers, like Gabriel García Marquéz and José Saramago.

Much of the imagery described as Magic Realism is quite famous, like the works of Salvador Dalí, Rob Gonsalves and René Magritte. Tim Burton (movie director and designer) touches Magic Realism in some of his productions, being Big Fish the most proeminent example.

Why should it matter?

It should matter because Magic Realism usually helps us understand how someone sees (evaluates) something. Much of what we hear about turn into an exagerated stereotype, which leads us to (unfulfilling) expectations about something. Watching Big Fish is a great way to understand how something that we don't believe can be real, taking the "too much" out off it.

Kevin J. Maroney brought up an interesting answer by García Marquéz: that there's no magic in One Hundred Years of Solitude". Maroney also states that "Gabo uses magical imagery to help us rediscover the real world".

I've been editing and publishing a lens on Magic Realism on Squidoo.