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."

Sunday, March 08, 2020

Dogs Are Men!

#InternationalWomen'sDay

Artist: Bruce Eric Kaplan, The New Yorker, January 2018

Wednesday, March 04, 2020

आम्ही वानरांच्या फौजा...Fàbula by El Greco

मला अतिशय भारावून टाकलेल एक छोट लोकगीत श्रीनिवास विनायक कुलकर्णी यांच्या १९६५च्या एका लेखात आले होते:

"तुम्ही अवतरले गोकुळी आम्ही गोपाळांच्या मेळी

तुम्ही होते रामराजा आम्ही वानरांच्या फौजा"

त्याची आठवण मला खालील चित्र आणि त्यावरील टिप्पणी वाचून झाली...

An Allegory (Fàbula) 1580-85

Artist: El Greco

courtesy: Wikipedia

Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, July 2018:

"Three faces are lit by a silvery flame. As they gather around its pale yet intense glow, all are held equally transfixed. A boy and man are fascinated by the light. So is a monkey, whose features are portrayed with great empathy. How does its mind compare with those of its human companions? More to the point for El Greco, perhaps, has it got a soul? For it is the light of divine revelation that fills them with awe. El Greco, born Doménikos Theotokópoulos in Crete in 1541, trained as an icon painter before travelling west and learning Renaissance techniques in Italy, settling eventually in Spain. This painting blazes with the mysticism of his Byzantine beginnings."

Tuesday, March 03, 2020

Saul Steinberg->Ronald Searle ->Mario Miranda...Searle@100

(Based on my post dated December 24 2011)

Mario Miranda:"I’m a keen observer of people. They are generally doing something they should not be doing.”

Wikipedia claims MM considered Ronald Searle (b 1920) his mentor.

Matt J's classy blog dedicated to Mr. Searle's art says:

"a Searle picture is certainly unmistakeable. The human figures are bird-like – stork legs, beaky noses, and pop-eyes that are often shifty or bewildered – their distortions and wispy lines suiting the mood of feverish anarchy. They are drawings whose skill is perhaps concealed in a feeling of rapidity, an impression that they were quickly set down."

Mr. Searle himself has been influenced by great Saul Steinberg (who isn't?).

Look at the following classic:

'Homage au Steinberg'

on the left is Saul Steinberg on a pedestal, standing like Napoleon Bonaparte, and on the right a figure with "bird-like – stork legs, beaky noses, and pop-eyes"!

Do you see figures that are "bird-like – stork legs, beaky noses, and pop-eyes" in MM's picture above?

Sunday, March 01, 2020

...तेव्हां बिंब कें सांगे...Three Reflections

ज्ञानेश्वरी:

"जें जाळ जळीं पांगिलें । तेथ चंद्रबिंब दिसे आंतुडलें ।

परि थडिये काढूनि झाडिलें । तेव्हां बिंब कें सांगे ॥ १३८ ॥"

(Dnyaneshwari: The moon's reflection appears to be caught in a fisherman's net in the sea, but when the net is brought to the shore and shaken, where is the reflection?)

Artist: Saul Steinberg, The New Yorker, October 1977

Artist: David Sipress, The New Yorker, July 2015