Necessary Looking

Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,500+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"... श्रीमंत बाळासाहेब पंतप्रतिनिधी : "बहुश्रुतता असल्याशिवाय सुसंस्कृतता नाही"

मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Quietly Sensual Images : Dinanath Dalal and Henri Cartier-Bresson

Martine Franck's long, stockinged legs resting on a sofa, 1967

Photographer: Henri Cartier-Bresson

courtesy:Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos/Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Artist: Dinanath Dalal, Satyakatha, December 1954

Saturday, August 20, 2022

No Wonder You Could Get Tickets: One Caption, Three Cartoons

तुम्ही कधी रेल्वेच्या टपावरून, विमानाच्या लगेज कंपार्टमेंट मधून, बसमध्ये पूर्ण वेळ उभारून प्रवास केलाय? कधी क्रिकेट सामना, नाटक, सिनेमा बहुतांशी रिकाम्या प्रेक्षागृहातून पाहिलय ?

तस असेल तर लक्षात ठेवा: No wonder you could get tickets

Artist: Frank Cotham, The New Yorker, Nov 28 2005

Artist: Leo Cullum (1942-2010), The New Yorker, Nov 28 2005

Artist: Mick Stevens, The New Yorker, Nov 28 2005

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Dali's Beach....Are We There Yet?

The late J G Ballard:
"...Dalí's masterpiece and, I believe, the greatest painting of the 20th century is The Persistence of Memory, a tiny painting not much larger than the postcard version, containing the age of Freud, Kafka and Einstein in its image of soft watches, an embryo and a beach of fused sand. The ghost of Freud presides over the uterine fantasies that set the stage for the adult traumas to come, while insects incarnate the self-loathing of Kafka's Metamorphosis and its hero turned into a beetle. The soft watches belong to a realm where clock time is no longer valid and relativity rules in Einstein's self-warping continuum.
What monster would grow from this sleeping embryo? It may be the long eyelashes, but there is something feminine and almost coquettish about this little figure, and I see the painting as the 20th century's Mona Lisa, a psychoanalytic take on the mysterious Gioconda smile. If the Mona Lisa, as someone said, looks as if she has just dined on her husband, then Dalí's embryo looks as if she dreams of feasting on her mother..."

Artist: Salvador Dali, 'The Persistence of Memory', 1931 & David Sipress, The New Yorker, 2007

Also see my earlier post dated Sept 26 2010.

Sunday, August 14, 2022

Do They Come to Buy Vegetables?...17th Century Painting

'Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit', c.1620–5

Artist: Sir Nathaniel Bacon (1585- 1627)

Friday, August 12, 2022

Behind The Stacks of Books!

Today August 12 2022 is National Library Day in India

Artist: Not known to me

Tuesday, August 09, 2022

"The ultimate joy is to be alive in the flesh."...Philip Larkin@100

"The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true."

A Man of Brass...The Arabian Nights

"...Then the sea grew troubled and rose till it reached the top of the mountain; nor had I long to wait before I saw a boat in the midst of the sea coming towards me. So I gave thanks to God: and when the boat came up to me, I saw in it a man of brass, with a tablet of lead on his breast, inscribed with names and talismans; and I embarked without saying a word. The boatman rowed on with me for ten whole days, till I caught sight of islands and mountains and signs of safety; whereat I was beyond measure rejoiced and in the excess of my gladness, I called upon the name of the Almighty and exclaimed, “There is no god but God! God is most great!” When behold, the boat turned over and cast me out into the sea, then righted and sank beneath the water. Now, I knew how to swim, so I swam the whole day till nightfall, when my arms and shoulders failed me for fatigue, and I abode in mortal peril and made the profession of the Faith, looking for nothing but death. Presently, the sea rose, for the greatness of the wind, and a wave like a great rampart took me and bearing me forward, cast me up on the land, that the will of God might be done. I clambered up the beach and, putting off my clothes, wrung them and spread them out to dry, then lay down and slept all night...."

('Story of the Third Calender', 'One Thousand and One Nights -The Complete Collection', Delphi Classics')

Artist: Maxfield Parrish (1870- 1966), "The Arabian nights", 1909

Sunday, August 07, 2022

Why Can't We Be More Like Dogs?

#Friendshipday

Artist: Lisa Rothstein, The New Yorker, August 2019

Friday, August 05, 2022

मेरिलिनचे महत्व.... Marilyn Monroe, 60 Years After Her Death

#MarilynMonroe

June 1 1926 - August 5, 1962

courtesy: Marilyn Monroe

Wednesday, August 03, 2022

If You're a Worm, Sleep Late....Shel Silverstein

courtesy: Brightdrops.com