Àngels Santos Toroella (1911- )

Un mundo (1929). More information here.

A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949)

They do not, I am as sure as I am sorry, make them like this any more. A great great film.

As a bonus, the French poster. They order this matter better in... &c. &c. &c.

Marcel Millet (c.1895-c.1950)

More information (in French, from - sacré bleu - the Militant Anarchists website) içi.

Jean Lurçat (1892-1966)

Radical tapestry artist. More information here.

Chinchón

As promised, photos of Chinchón. We were there on a bleak bleak January day with Laurie and Alex and Hazel, and ate steak and stroked donkeys. A few photos of Alex and Hazel and Laurie in what for the time being is their natural habitat to begin with, then donkeys and bleak bleak ploughed fields with little white boundary markers like graves.

Alex, Hazel, Laurie

We made one of our increasingly rare forays out of the house to go and see the Potts-Healy child and drink gin on their terraza. It was a bit colonial, but most enjoyable, what with the swifts and the sunset and the child and the gin and all.

La Hiruela; or, Change of Plans

We were going to go on holiday to Belgium, but research into how to get there (given the fact that allowing customs officials to take röntgen photographs of my testicles is not a vote-winner in this family) led to us discovering that we should have booked our train tickets much earlier. So we went away for the weekend to the Sierra del Rincón, in particular the touristic village of La Hiruela. Human population: about 50, including tourists. Staggeringly incestuous cat population (all with the same sweet little pink nose and pronounced limp in their left hind leg): about the same. Long healthy walks: three. Woodfires: two (would have been three, but we had to light the matchbox to get woodfire no. 2 to catch). Michelin starred restaurants: one. All in all, a relaxing weekend. And I've got the rest of the week off as well.

Codex Seraphinianus

Info., here. The whole thing, here. Worth an hour or so of anyone's time.

Franz von Stuck (1863-1928)

I was wondering just how fin-de-siècle-ish you could get, and I don't think you can get fin-de-sièclier than Franz von Stuck.





More info here and here.

Aw heck, why not?

You can never have too much Shimabuku.

Vasily Vasilevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904)

Апофеоз войны (The Apotheosis of War, 1871). More here.

Eric Rohmer (Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, 1920-2010)

This

turned into this,

which ended up as this. One of Hollywood's weirder ideas of the last few years.

Current Favourite Sentences

After the lengthy course of our days the sight of weakened eyes grows dull. The faded sense no longer presents what nature and art show in all their intricacy. To be deprived of the reading of books is a deep sorrow to the heart, more tedious than eternal darkness, weightier than chains! Then day is hostile, annoyance pleasure! Glass alone is a consolation to us in this misfortune. By the skill of trained hands it can restore our sight with spectacles! Do we not have a divine gift in Glass that we are slow to give deserving praise unto it?

Sergei Alimov (1938- )

My new favourite Soviet animator and illustrator. There's an article about him (in Russian) here, and some more pictures up on the Nevsky blog here and here.

Syracuse

The website for the Syracuse University Madrid Campus begins as follows:

'Imagine life where the days are long on sunshine, and the evenings are full of the colors and sounds of people who enjoy life to its fullest.'

The first entry on the list of available courses?

Accountancy.

"Better Than 'The Bat'"

But how could it be better than The Bat, which looks just fine to me?

Ferdinand Keller (1842-1922)

More here.

Sunset

Because it was traditionally impressive. And I like the slightly darker cloud in the middle of the picture. Almost as if - ha ha ha - we might be going to have rain.

Harry: 13.7.93 - 10.8.6