21 Bites of the World

Le Monde-Tarot Deck c 19th century

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I never denied the beauty:

Imperial pomp of sunrise,
The seductive glamour of sunset.

The snaking voluptuous river,
Swollen with incessant downpours,

The glitter of rare raw minerals,
A glimmer waiting in the depths.

Beyond the mist in the distance,
The harrowing sublimity of mountains.

The perceived chant of the angels,
Drifting across the aether.

The vertiginous descent of the eagle,
Intent upon the sighted prey.

The patient strength of the ox,
Harnessed for growth and generation.

The gilded and haloed lion,
Surveying the buffet of the savannah.

The shining lights of the city,
On the snow capped hilltop.

The voluminous text of flesh
Awaiting to be read in the dark.
 
The beauty of the world is undoubted:
But I suspected treachery
A beauty that bites after caressing
Wanting to leave its mark
Because it too is just passing
A floating world of samsara,
Always changing; never 
Still: completes a cycles,
 Pauses briefly before transformation
Then same as it ever was,
Is or will be.

Chance would be

I-Ching

Chance would be
a beautiful thing
make it reign fall
downpour a deluge
and after the storm
a reverent silence
before starting up
and over again
to begin afresh
chance encounters
revelatory rituals
random sequences
casting of die
turning of cards
flipping of coins
drawing of straws
moving of pieces
intertwining-locking
heavenly combinations
hieratic poses
together you-I
swayed by chance.

Dreams of Desire 63 (Utamaro)

Kitagawa Utamaro-Lovers in the Upstairs Room of a Teahouse 1788

The Meiji Restoration in 1868 opened Japan’s ports again to foreign trade after 200 years of international isolation. Soon Japanese art and artefacts found their way to Paris and London which resulted in a craze known as Japonisme. Ukiyo-e, particularly the works of the masters, Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kitagawa Utamaro, would have a profound effect upon the first of all modern art movements, Impressionism.

Utamaro was renowned for his psychologically astute portraits of courtesans. Employing sophisticated compositional techniques of partial views, striking mannerism and subtle gradients of light and shade, Utamaro was collected by many luminaries of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, notably Degas, Gaugain and Toulouse-Lautrec. The serenity of his female studies were clearly a major influence on the ground-breaking female artist Mary Cassett.

Utamaro, like every ukiyo-e artist produced a large body of shunga. His sensitivity to female beauty combined with the intimacy and tenderness of many of the scenes portrayed rank among the finest examples of erotic art.

Utamaro-Three Beauties of the Present Day

Utamaro

Utamaro

Utamaro-Woodcut

Takashima Ohisa using two mirrors to observe her coiffure night of the Asakusa Marketing Festival

Utamaro-

Utamaro-Hairdresser

Utamaro

Yva

Yva

Else Ernestine Neulander-Simon, known simply by her professional pseudonym, Yva, was a pioneering female photographer of  the Weimar Republic. She set up her first studio  in 1925 and briefly collaborated with the experimental photographer Heinz Hajek-Halke (see Dreams of Desire 54 (Written on the Body) before a copyright dispute led them to part ways. Initially focused on nude, portrait and fashion photography, Yva was one of the first photographers to fully realise the commercial application of the field to advertising. Her Berlin atelier was one of the most successful of its days and employed 10 assistants by the time Hitler came to power.

Yva and her husband Alfred Simon, who managed the financial affair of the studio, were both Jewish and considered for some time whether to emigrate from Germany, especially when she was forced to ‘Aryanize’ the business in 1936 (a law had come into effect that forbade Jews from owning businesses, necessitating the transfer of the company to her friend, the art historian Charlotte Weider). There was the possibility of a fresh start as Life magazine  had informed her that a job was waiting for her when she came to America. However Alfred was unwilling to start over again in a country where they didn’t even speak the language and thought maybe the situation in Germany would improve. Things certainly didn’t and the business was closed for good by 1938. Yva went to work as a radiographer in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin until 1942 when she was arrested, along with her husband, by the Gestapo and deported to Majdanek concentration camp where they were murdered shortly after.

As an interesting aside one of Yva’s apprentice’s from 1936 to 1938 was a young Jewish boy named Helmut Neustädter, who after escaping Germany would later change his name to Helmut Newton, creator of some of the most iconic fashion photography and celebrity portraits of the twentieth century.

Fotograf: Yva
Aufnahmedatum: 1920er Jahre
Inventar-Nr.: 14131689
Systematik:
Kulturgeschichte / Fotografinnen / Yva

Dreams of Desire 45 (Leebra)

Man Ray-Portrait of Lee Miller (Leebra) 1930

As regulars visitors will know, I have an unending fascination with the romance and creative collaboration between Man Ray and Lee Miller. I recently discovered this wonderful and wittily titled photograph of Lee taken by Man Ray in The Lives of Lee Miller written by her son Antony Penrose.

Man Ray work frequently featured the technique of light patterns upon the body and face, a striking way to render the familiar unfamiliar and by doing so adding an extra erotic allure, which was the essence of the Surrealist attitude to desire.