January
The American

February
Double Indemnity
The Virgin Suicides
Brazil
Force of Evil

March
High Noon
Chinatown
Winter’s Bone

April
Some Like It Hot
The Social Network

May
Shotgun Stories
ATL
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

June
127 Hours, by default.

July
Days of Heaven

August
3:10 to Yuma
The Last Days of Disco

September
Apocalypto
The Seventh Seal
Ivan’s Childhood

October
Drive
Mystic River
Scarface (1932)

November
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Badlands

December
D.O.A.
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Artist

National Museum of Western Art
Bonus anecdote: on the walk through Ueno Park on the way to the National Museum of Western Art, there was a contact juggler busking outside. His soundtrack was a jazz-lite Japanese flute cover of John Denver’s “Country Roads”. On my first morning in town, this was a welcome dose of home.

Orpheus and the Maenads – Auguste Rodin

Fugit Amor – Auguste Rodin

Diptych: Christ Crowned with Thorns/Mater Dolorosa – (workshop of) Dirk Bouts

Gypsy in Reflection – Gustave Courbet

Beach of Trouville – Eugène Boudin

Tokyo National Museum
I couldn’t take (decent) photos of some of these, and the website is fairly useless for finding images. In any case, I’d never been much for the whispy suggestive evanescent Japanese tapestry “thing”, but these went a long way to changing my mind. There really is no substitute for standing in front of a piece of art.

I really liked this one landscape by Unkoku Togan:

There was also an amazingly simple watercolor of an Ox by Maruyama Okyo. Kind of like ensō in its simplicity.

In the town of Kamakura
The Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in Temple was so much better than I expected. Wow.

In the Odawara Castle museum I got caught with my camera out. Ach! I really, really, really wish I’d gotten a picture of this one incredible painting by Okamoto Shuki. It had a peacock and some fish painted on four large cedar panels slightly smaller than doors. Incredible stuff:

In the Hakone Open-air Museum
Besides the landscaping, gardens, and outdoor sculpture, there’s also a whole building dedicated to stuff by Picasso. Who knew he did pottery?

I haven’t seen them anywhere online, but he did a series of 18 portraits of his wife Jacqueline, each slightly different in medium and execution. Awesome to see them lined up side by side on the gallery walls. I also liked his “Man with the Striped Shirt”:

Another nice surprise in the Picasso wing was a ton of photography of Picasso taken by David Douglas Duncan. You can see a bunch of Duncan’s Picasso photos at the Harry Ransom Center (where else?). Well worth your time.

Lastly, Kyoji Takubo made a really cool obelisk, presumably one of more than one, that I haven’t been able to find anywhere. If I drew it it would just look like a stick, but rest assured it was cool.

Lesson Learned
I went to a handful of other galleries and museums besides these. The lasting lesson of seeing so much good stuff is that it made me want to acquire more of my own. I’ve already gotten started. What I’d really love is to have a giant chunk of marble or metal sculpture in my house… One fine day.

I made my way inside for a better camera and a better view of its labeled glory.

The envelope, constructed of a firm cardboard, features a well-designed exhortation to avoid bending it. One can open it by pulling a strip along the top edge of the reverse side.

Inside, in between two protective boards is a plastic sleeve containing 1) a certificate of authenticity with the artist’s signature and 2) a short document with bio, statement, and information about the print and 3) the print in question.

Aforementioned print uses archival pigment inks on 100% cotton rag paper with a matte finish, and will look rather fetching when I find a frame (Austin recommends this one):

Anyway, two cool things this brings to mind. One, I like this idea of bubbles in culture. Reminds me of the vast difference in New York Times coverage of conflicts in Darfur vs. the Congo, though one area has been about 10 times as deadly. There are all kinds of interesting feedback loops that affect how we perceive and respond to our world. And two, realizing that there’s so much rough-and-ready data out there that we’ve unwittingly created, just waiting to be mined.

The AJC has some really nice photos from the premiere of Gone with the Wind. I never knew there was a motorcade, teeming crowds, etc. Even has a nice playbill.

There isn’t much of a difference in the experience of painting a picture, writing a novel, making a comic strip, reading a poem or listening to a song. The containers are different, but the lively thing at the center is what I’m interested in.

[via austin kleon]

Renoir: Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre

A common criticism of video games made by non-gamers is that they are pointless and escapist, but a more valid observation might be that the bulk of games are nowhere near escapist enough. A persuasive recent essay by the games theorist Steven Poole made the strong argument that the majority of games offer a model of play which is oppressively close to work.

One day backstage in the ’30s, Larry, Shemp, and Moe were playing cards. Shemp accused Larry of cheating. After a heated argument, Shemp reached over and stuck his fingers in Larry’s eyes. Moe, watching, thought it was hilarious … and that’s how the famous poke-in-the-eyes routine was born.

The origin of the Three Stooges. [via marginal revolution]

Illustrations of Gustav Mahler conducting, by Hans Schliessmann.

An artist must regulate his life.

Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of inspiration from 3.12 to 4.7 pm. From 5 to 6.47 pm various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, natation, etc.)

Dinner is served at 7.16 and finished at 7.20 pm. From 8.9 to 9.59 pm symphonic readings (out loud). I go to bed regularly at 10.37 pm. Once a week (on Tuesdays) I awake with a start at 3.14 am.

If it���s not broken, break it. One way of coming to terms with the prevailing language of a cultural orthodoxy is to reject it. It may be necessary to invent tools and methods about which you know nothing, to act in ways that allow you to utilize the content of your personal experience, to form an obsession and to cut through the weight of your education. Obsession is what it comes down to. It is difficult to think without obsession, and it is impossible to create something without a foundation that is rigorous, incontrovertible, and, in fact, to some degree repetitive. Repetition is the ritual of obsession. Don���t confuse the obsession of repetition with learning by rote. I am suggesting a form of inquiry, a procedure to jumpstart the indecision of beginning.

The solution to a given problem often occurs through repetition, a continual probing. The accumulation of solutions invariably alters the original problem demanding new solutions to a different set of problems. In effect, as solutions evolve, new problems emerge. To persevere and to begin over and over again is to continue the obsession with work. Work comes out of work.

But solutions need not only be the result of constant repetition. There is another route, not so structured but rather free-floating and more experimental but no less obsessive. It is to be found in the activity of play. I cannot overemphasize the importance of play. The freedom of play and its transitional character encourage the suspension of beliefs whereby a shift in direction is possible; play ought to be part of the working process. Free from skepticism and self-criticism play allows you to relinquish control. Playful activity provides an alternative way to see, to imagine, to do, to make, to think otherwise. In play there are no ends, there are only means, however, means inadvertently can lead to ends. Rules can be made up as you go along or even in hindsight.

[via michael surtees]

I’ve been flipping through The Collected Prose of Robert Frost and came across this marvelous bit:

No one given to looking under-ground in spring can have failed to notice how a bean starts its growth from the seed. Now the manner of a poet’s germination is less like that of a bean in the ground than of a waterspout at sea. He has to begin as a cloud of all the other poets he ever read. That can’t be helped. And first the cloud reaches down toward the water from above and then the water reaches up toward the cloud from below and finally cloud and water join together to roll as one pillar between heaven and earth. The base of water he picks up from below is of course all the life he ever lived outside of books.

Frost speaks elsewhere of “the person who writes out of the eddy in his mind.” Great images.

As an aside, not only is this a really great metaphor, but it also strikes me as a killer opening paragraph. It starts with a kind of odd idea, but not too uncomfortable (I mean, I know what a bean is, but I haven’t looked at one in the ground in decades). Then the contrast of beans with what he really wants to talk about, poets. And waterspouts. What? Then a couple short prep sentences. Then the rolling polysyndetonic waterspout of a sentence to flesh out the metaphor and to be a sort of pillar in itself connecting the odd ideas at the opening with real-world experience down at the bottom of the paragraph. The language here mirrors the concepts in a very cool way.

When you are outside drawing a tree, YOU are choosing what is in focus, what is not—there is an exchange between subject and viewer. That is the art. To be present in that moment.

[thanks, austin]

Public sculpture can be hit or miss, but I think the Sibelius Monument is pretty sweet.

Really impressive linocuts + lithographs. See more of Edward Bawden’s artwork at BiblioOdyssey.

“I lied in my ad. I hate Wallace Stevens.” Mike Twohy, New Yorker, 1995.

The Brooklyn Museum has some great photos on Flickr. Currently in the commons are a great set of old lantern slides in Egypt, and a lot of images from the 1900 Paris Exposition.

In the Paris set, it’s cool how the primitive coloring job kind of flattens the images. They look almost like paper cut-outs or watercolor: