Kissed a night watchman

Kissed a night watchman; 
cold lips.

© The dishonest woman

 Rembrandt and the sculpture of the Night Watch, Rembrandtplein Amsterdam

The Night Watch, Rembrandt van Rijn, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frans Banning Cocq, heer van purmerlant en Ilpendam, Capiteijn Willem van Ruijtenburch van Vlaerdingen, heer van Vlaerdingen, Luijtenant, Jan Visscher Cornelisen Vaendrich, Rombout Kemp Sergeant, Reijnier Engelen Sergeant, Barent Harmansen, Jan Adriaensen Keyser, Elbert Willemsen, Musketier Jan Clasen Leydeckers (behind the Lieutenant in Yellow blowing into the powder pan of a musket which once belonged to Jan Snedeker), Jan Ockersen, Jan Pietersen bronchorst, Harman Iacobsen wormskerck, Jacob Dirksen de Roy (the Governor on far left of the cut off section of the painting), Jan vander heede, Walich Schellingwou, Jan brugman, Claes van Cruysbergen, Paulus Schoonhoven

A True Story?

A film about lies and with the contradicting title of 'True Story' - how could the dishonest woman resist?

So the story begins with Michael Finkel - a well respected New York Times journalist - making the career destroying decision to play with the facts of one of his articles. He's at the top of his game, the pressure is on. He becomes a dishonest man, gets uncovered, and no newspaper will touch him. 

And then Christian Longo, in prison for allegedly murdering his family, starts uses Finkel's name. The two meet and a cat and mouse game begin - who's telling the truth? who can be trusted? what are lies and what are facts? And what are the implications of getting to the true story?

Finkel's compulsion to know the truth is fascinating. A drive, not necessarily to want to believe - especially when faced with the dilemma of can we believe what is before us - is everything as it seems? Is it more a fear that our own instinct might betray us? And to know the truth - at what cost?

Which comes back to my contemplations over dishonestly - and is there such thing as being dishonest to be honest...

I won't spoil the film - that would be a shame.

 

Fernando Botero - Larger than Life

“Many people know me as the painter of the ‘fat ladies,' and it doesn't disturb me,” said the Colombian artist Fernando Botero (b. 1932) in an article for WMagazine.

Botero is a painter, sculptor and draftsman renowned for his extravagantly rounded figures. His humorous exaggeration has a carnivalisque tone that belies the more serious content of Botero's work-commentary on colonialism, political instability in Latin America, and the vernacular artistic traditions of the region, as well as European art history. 
 

 

I find the characters in his paintings rather appealing - they are larger than life - but for me it is the 'personalities' coming through rather than the physical sizes. 

They remind me of Dog-Woman in Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry. She weighs more than an elephant and, as a child, broke both her father's legs when she sat on his knees. She had smallpox which left behind caves on her face that were home enough for fleas. Her nose flat, eyebrows heavy,  she has only a few teeth that are blackened and broken. And she is not adverse to committing the odd crime. Yet the love she shows her son and those around her - well, I couldn't help but warm to her.

Image by Albert Robida

And there is Rabelais' Gargantua. As a baby he required 17,913 cows each day to supply his milk. At a year and 10 months he is described as having a fine face and almost 18 chins, but shat himself every hour. When he turned 18 his father ordered new clothes to be made, requiring 1350 yards of Chatelleraut linen, his codpiece 25 yards and his shoes 609 yards of purple velvet.

Such a grotesque figure yet something charming about him, especially when he learns the errors of his ways.

Bourdieu and a Hasselblad

Photograph by William Anders, NASA, 1968

"It was the first time that people actually knew what the Earth looked like."

William Anders

Bourdieu refers to the "opposition" between subjectivisim and objectivism as dividing the social sciences and as being "the most fundamental, and the most ruinous." He goes on to say that both are essential, yet both offer only one side of an epistemology necessary to understand the social world.

I used a Hasselblad camera once - given to me on loan for 5 days and with one roll of film. It was an older model, heavy, and back when you used proper film and had to make each shot work. I loved it... the smell, the shape, the squareness of it. One of the pictures I took still hangs on my wall today. Mostly because of the special little person sitting on a picnic basket grasping a bear, giving me that look that I had grown accustomed to - oh do stop photographing me! But also because I can see the beauty of the Hasselblad lens coming through in the depth of the colours, the softness of the light... alas I didn't get the job - the photographer didn't even look at my photos - so to this day I don't know why. He did take his Hasselblad camera back though.

But I digress surely - what on earth (sorry, couldn't resist) does a Hasselblad camera have to do with Bourdieu?

Well, I had beeen pondering for some time Bourdieu's ideas on objective and subjective, and  happened to be reading Julian Barnes, Levels of Life. At the end of part one he refers to William Anders, a pilot on the lunar module, photographing a two-thirds-full Earth using a specially adapted Hasselblad camera. "To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock."

and in that moment, I understood.

Be careful

Of Glass
Not unlike Ida in 
The Girl with Glass Feet*
only Ida is slowly turning, 
painfully, into glass.

Glass, hidden from sight
so you might never know.
Concealed under layers of
skin, 
and a past. 

Glass, transparent yet,
look closely.
Distortions. Imperfections. 
Contradictions.
Cold to touch. Yet burns under 
fingertips.

Glass, fragile. To drop and
shatter, into a thousand pieces.
Treat with care
less cracks appear.
And shards
that never meant to hurt.

© The dishonest woman

*Ali Shaw, The Girl with Glass Feet

 

Rock Strangers

 Rock Strangers on Oostende beach, created by the artist Arne Quinze.

monumental red sculptures challenging urban landscapes

© The dishonest woman

 
"A lot of cities around the globe look the same although they are located on different continents. You can still find identical buildings or the same streets. One can no longer detect any differences, people put up concrete walls around them. Building large-scaled installations makes people feel small as a human being. I hope that they start asking questions about what their function on this planet is. With my monumental sculptures I seek confrontation with my audience. I regard my work as a study about how I experience life and how people in general experience their lives.” Arne Quinze

29th August 1647

From Zaanse Schans museum, Zaandam, The Netherlands

This painting depicts the sad events that befell Jacob Eg and his wife, Trijn Jan, on the 29th August in 1647. Jacob and Trijn were assaulted, beaten and torn by their own red bull, in the pasture behind their house in the Zeeburg district of West Zaandam.
 
Neither husband or wife survived the attack, however Trijn was at the end of her pregnancy and when she was taken by the bull  and thrown to the air, her belly was torn open and the baby landed in a pond - a house length away from his mother.

The child was baptised, by the name of Jacob, but died on the 23th May 1548 and was buried with his parents.

(based on a description in the Reformed Church in West-Zaandam)

Zaandam 2017

Brug van vrouwen

 (bridge of women)
 
After hearing a song recently about building bridges I was reminded of this art installation I came across in Amsterdam - it must have been 8 years ago or more. I hadn't known anything about it, was simply wandering along the canals, turned a corner, and came across this amazing sight. I wish now I'd stopped for longer to find out more about the artist and the idea - sadly I took this photo and moved on.

It's beautiful - as are all the women that make up this magnificent bridge - reminding me that we should celebrate the female form, regardless of age, shape, size etc etc.

As for this song - well, it's just beautiful too - may I be weaved in your hair?

The Theater Tuschinski

A long time ago I was treated to an evening out at The Theater Tuschinski in Amsterdam where I watched a film sitting in a beautiful private box sipping champagne. Alas, going to the cinema has never quite been the same since.

The Theater Tuschinski was the incredible achievement of Abraham Tuschinski who believed that everyone should be treated to a special experience when going to the theatre. In 1921 he set about creating his dream with a mix of styles - Gothic, Jugendstil, Art Nouveau, Art Deco - images of peacocks adorn the walls while the floors are cover in colourful carpets hand-woven from Morrocco. The building has not only a grand hall, but a cabaret-dinner club, a Japanese tea room, a Moorish suite, and elegant foyers. The light on the ceiling represents a peacock's tail. Behind the bar are carnival images.

After the German occupation of The Netherlands in 1940, it was re-named Tivoli Theatre. Abraham Tuschinski and most of his family and other directors of the theater were deported to Auschwitz in July 1942, never to return.

On 29th July 1945 the name Tuschinski went back onto the facade. It was the most popular cinema in Amsterdam of it's day - the stage was brought into use for concerts with stars including Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf, Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Domino. 

The ‘Grote Zaal’ currently seats 784 and anyone can watch the latest movies, seated in the most elaborate setting - just as Abraham Tuschinski envisaged.

So what movie would I most like to watch there? It would have to Fred Astaire, and I could sit back and be swept off my feet...