Monday, May 30, 2011

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011)


Green Tea, or La Dame Ovale (1942). Oh, timing. Leonora Carrington died on 25 May 2011.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Current Favourite Sentence

"To the best of our knowledge, with the experimental precision we have, the electron appears to be round," Hudson said.

Leonora Carrington (1917- )


The Inn of the Dawn Horse (1936-37). More information about Leonora Carrington here.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Francisco de Quiñones (c.1482-1540)


We are about to move house, and I suddenly realised that I didn't know anything about the person after whom our current street was named. Calle Quiñones? I don't think it's honouring Denise Quiñones (1980- ), the Puerto Rican actress and winner of the 2001 Miss Universe competition: I'm sure she will have streets named after her, but probably not this one.

More likely is Francisco de Quiñones, whose major claim to fame is his reform of the breviary in 1535-6 (unfortunately, its disregard for tradition led to its being proscribed by Paul IV in 1558). Sadly, I can't find a photo of the campaigning cardinal on the internet, so you'll have to make do with the charming Ms. Quiñones instead. More info on the religious here.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Flowers of Waste Places


Top to bottom; left to right: goutweed; stinking mayweed; tansy; groundsel; burdock; musk thistle.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Simón del desierto (Luis Buñuel, 1965)


Also wonderful, and by far the best forty-five minute film you'll ever see about a man standing on top of a pole in the desert. More information here.

Partie de Campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936)


I saw this for the first, and second, times yesterday. It's only forty minutes long, so that's not such an investment of time as it might sound. It's wonderful. More information here.

Jean Lurçat (1892-1966)


Radical tapestry artist. More information here.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Moving Time


So, the important stuff's in boxes...

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Travellin' Man

We have been busy these last few days. On Saturday I caught the train up from Madrid to Gijón, and then to Avilés, which is a port town that was (according to a doctor friend of ours) known in the sixties for being a focal point of 'black placenta' syndrome (which I have just looked up in the internet and which people claim is an urban myth, but I trust doctors more than the internet, so in it stays). Marian had gone on Thursday, and I met her at the SELIN, the independent publishing book fair.
As with last year, we were sharing a hutch with Salto de Página, and now with the great and friendly Sajalín.
This is the view from inside our little love-nest.
This is the view from inside our little love-nest if I squat and pretend to be arty.
This is Julio from Sajalín (background) and Ismael Martínez Biurrun who is one of Salto de Página's authors. I always addressed him by his full name in the hope that he'd say 'no, no, no, call me Ismael', but nothing doing. I'm sure he'd never heard that one before.
The saturnine Pablo Mazo of Salto de Página talking to Marian.
He has hollow legs.
The morning after (urgh...) was wet and still quite pretty.
This was as close as I got or wanted to get to the royal wedding.
Friends: David, Patricia, Jesús, Miguel.
Cabin-fever set in by Sunday morning.
This is Marian and Julio and yr. humble servant just about to catch the bus to Gijón.
Avilés seems nice, although we only saw it from inside a box.
Gijón on the other hand definitely is nice, misty and how I imagine Whitby to be, but probably erroneously.
Miguel, Audrey, Marian.
Jesús, Tao, Miguel, Audrey (invisible for moving so fast), Marian.
The train to Pamplona: industrial and post-industrial landscapes.



Pamplona.

The Gothic cross.

Space-age architecture.
¿Runes?

Jesus in a shop window.

Street art.

A city that is proud of its gigantic civic monument of men being trampled by bulls certainly has some cojones.

And this is the train station on the way home.

San Jordi

I went to Barcelona for San Jordi on Easter Saturday, 23 April. It was foggy and Impressionistic from the train.

This is David Martín Copé, one of Marian's many editors, talking to Marian on the phone.

Our good friend and collaborator, the Sinister Sergi Bellver.

It was enough to make you come over all Ernest Thesiger.

But there were some pleasant juxtapositions...

My Photogenic Brothers



Photos taken during our recent trip to the UK (9-13 April)