“Fifty years ago this month I dropped into an Oslo cinema while waiting for a midnight train and saw an unforgettable trailer for a French picture. It cut abruptly between a handsome, broken-nosed actor I’d never come across before, giant posters of Humphrey Bogart, and the familiar features of Jean Seberg, whom I knew to be an idol of French cinéastes as the protegee of Otto Preminger. Shot in high contrast monochrome, rapidly edited, interspersed with puzzling statements in white-on-black and black-on-white lettering, it was like no other trailer I’d seen, and I was captivated. Not until my return to London did I discover that the broken-nosed actor was Jean-Paul Belmondo and the film was the debut feature of the Cahiers du Cinéma critic Jean-Luc Godard…”
Read More: Breathless continues to shock and surprise 50 years on
“Just over 10 years ago, Emily Rohr was approached at her Broome gallery by a young indigenous artist named Daniel Walbidi. He told her there were old people in his community who “needed to paint”. Ever since, Ms Rohr has been a vigorous champion of the Yulparitja artists from the northwest community of Bidyadanga, and their colourful work has grown in stature around the world, commanding prices of up to $30,000. But Ms Rohr says the federal government’s resale royalty will have unintended consequences for those artists and her business. “It’s going to have an immediate effect,” she said. “We will stop buying art upfront. Artists will lose sales.”
Read More: Painters will suffer, says art dealer
“Top Australian shearers have come together today to re-enact Shearing the Rams as depicted in Tom Roberts’ famous painting. More than 200 machine and blade shearers from every state and New Zealand are taking part in the event at Tuppal Station, near Tocumwal, in southern New South Wales. Australia’s blade shearing champion, 21-year-old John Della from South Australia, is among them and says it is going to be special to re-enact a painting close to his heart. “My mother did a tapestry of the bloke shearing the ram up the front and that’s hanging above my bed in my bedroom, so I get to see it just about every day and it does, it means a lot to me.” The money raised will sponsor Australian shearers to attend the world championships in Wales in late July.”
Via ABC News: Champion shearers re-enact famous painting
“Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953): Alcohol: The legend that Thomas once returned to the Chelsea Hotel in New York after a drinking bout at his favorite watering hole, The White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, and proclaimed, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that is a record,” might be based in fact. That is, Thomas might well have made that claim. But whether Thomas actually downed anything like 18 whiskies on that November day in 1953 is another matter entirely. Some say he did; others say he didn’t; others seem to wish it were true, but have no proof. Regardless, Thomas was an avid drinker, and one of the 20th century’s most deservedly beloved poets. “Do not go gentle into that good night, / Old age should burn and rave at close of day; / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Read More: Famous Literary Drunks & Addicts
“French archaeologists are currently excavating the remains of a meal that was buried in 1983 by the artist Daniel Spoerri […] It isn’t a joke but a serious exercise by a serious artist. Spoerri’s buried picnic is of a piece with his highly significant artistic life. The preservation of random moments, above all the recording and archiving of meals, has been at the heart of his work since the 1960s. He once published a book that mapped avant-garde Paris through objects left on a hotel table; he has also made a series of “pictures” by fixing the left-overs of meals to table tops…”
“It is not widely known that Tarkovsky, whose films often seem to be composed as a montage of still photos, in a period effectively took photos with a Polaroid camera. These photos, taken at home and in Italy, in spite of all their technical imperfections bear witness to the same way of seeing and visual world as the great films. A selection from these photos was first published in Italy in 2006, and recently a Russian photo blog digitized all the pictures…”
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