I saw this a couple of days ago, and let it past, but today I am reminded what a good idea, letting people choose their greeting is and so decided to share it here.
This teacher in Palestine lets the children choose their greeting at the start of the school day. These children live in such dire, oppressive conditions which most of us will thankfully never experience, but their smiling little faces are heart warming. pic.twitter.com/RakPruc9oO
— Rachael Swindon (@Rachael_Swindon) April 26, 2019
I went to the Gemalderie in Berlin’s Kultur Forum. The art was a bit too religious or bit too civic. It made me want to got back to the National Maritime Museum for some seascapes, or the the art gallery at Newmarket. I missed the classic, i.e. Botticelli pictures of Venus which it seems are there but found one by Titian, called Venus & the Organ Player, fortunately painted and titled 425 years or so before Peter Cook’s satirical speech on the Jeremy Thorpe trial summing up. It reminded me a bit of the Jo Brand & Helena Bonam Carter sketch on the objectification and changing fashions of female beauty.
The Gemalderie has a sign saying photography permitted, the staff were wonderfully polite, even when correcting me, and the Cafe had a fabulous salad, but I think I need to go to Musee Insel next time., now over to the Embassy to show solidarity with comrades on the “finalsay” demo. …
I fulfilled an ambition, I ate in the Fernsehtürm Restaurant, creamy coriander & carrot soup, Berlin meatball and potato salad finished with apple tart and cream accompanied by a rather pleasant German pinot noir. The weather and view wasn’t so good, but it’s very high in a low city Here are my pictures as a slide show
and here they are at flickr, for those without flash. …
On my first day in Berlin, I went looking for its future, and decided to visit the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. This has a three part exhibition on, in a beautiful building with an equally beautiful courtyard where the Cafe serves its wares. I spent most time in the rooms displaying David Wojnarowicz’s work. I don’t know if it was the arrangement or just the content, but I found this underwhelming. I am loathe to write too much about my views on art as I don’t wish to expose my philistinism and lack of education but this was not inspiring. Perhaps if I had spent less time getting to the warehouse room, I might have spent more time but most of the work on display was photography although there were a couiple of film pieces. They may even have been titled, but if so I missed them. There was one on the Cold War with a number of clips from US news stories, including stuff on Kennedy’s trip to Berlin. There was a talking head about the value and authenticity of rage which I am beginning to dispute. Political action must come from a sense of solidarity and you can’t find that when you’re angry for yourself. … …
Intellectual property laws have alsways been designed to encourage and reward innovation and invention. When the laws are too strong they become barriers to entry to markets.
This is where we are today!
The most immediate challenge is to #saveourinternet but no matter the results there, the rich and powerful wll lobby for laws that benefit them and not the rest of us. …
I can’t imagine why I am reminded of this scene from Men in Black. Not that I am dealing with, or considering anyone that I want to see die, or even to be killed by aliens from space.
Someone made this! He comes to the conclusion that it did. I am finally working myself through whole series having failed to get beyond Series 2 twice. I am finally on S5 on Amazon, and will probably finish it but this guy seems to pretty much have it. Great premise but a story thrown away by no creative vision, as they fired the original creators half way through S2. The author of this video also suggests that the acting was not always the best.
One thing that is missed in this video, is the Fellowship of the Rings homage, the fighters, cleric, thief and techno-mage. It was one of the things that attracted me to the show in the first place. …
I was playing with picture stylers over the weekend and had used deepart.io. They used to have a phone app, but that seems to have gone although I am trying to find out if it’s still around; anyway, here is my collection, once again from flickr, although it excludes some portraits.
I also found these people, Deep Art Effects, and now have the app. on the phone. …
I found this on a post card at the Berlinische Gallerie, an activity not to be recommended.
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While in Berlin, I visited the Berlinische Gallerie, the modern art gallery, they had a couple of exhibitions and some standing exhibits,the former included Julian Charière’s “As we used to float”, and Freedom by the November Group. I bought some post cards to remind me of the visit.
I looked at the November Gruppe photography exhibits. Some of the propaganda pictures, particularly a magazine front page illustrating two women on the front of the Berlin illustrated times, it could have come from the Soviet Union, showing in my mind the unity of the working class, I dout this was the message hoped for by their authors but there we are.
I have observed before, and I am sure it’s not original that photography changed painting as painting can never meet the realism of photography but the photo exhibits showed the German/Berliner experimentation with photographic techniques as artistic expression, so it moves in a full circle.
In the post war room,they tried to tell the story of a conflict of styles, Abstract vs. Socialist realism; I quite enjoyed the big picture used to illustrate the West’s adoption of abstract, but I couldn’t find a post card; it reminded me of some of Jackson Pollock’s work but with a lot less black. I was underwhelmed by what they chose to illustrate the East’s Socialist Realist art. The picture above, which I don;’t think was exhibited was painted in 1976, and would seem to be an interpretation of Berlin at the time, or at least more like what I expected. (The artist, Karl Horst Hödicke, would seem to have lived and studied in West Berlin.) … …