The Plain Sense of Things

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as a necessity requires

Wallace Stevens

Humanness Always Comes First

Robert Alexander (right) officiating a hot tub wedding ceremony in Venice, 1978. Photo: Lyle Mayer



Alexander's former residence at 1439 Cabrillo Avenue, Venice, California, photographed in 1996. Courtesy of Anthony Pearson.




Charles Brittin, Robert Alexander, ca. 1960. Courtesy of the Charles Brittin Archive, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. (2005.M.11)



Exterior of the Gas House, Venice, CA, 1962. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.



Bob Alexander, Skater of the Week. From The Ocean Front Weekly, December 27, 1978.



Humanness Always Comes First (East of Borneo): In all this, persons come first. None of the above is to be construed as a rule or regulation. Humanness always comes first!—Robert Alexander, Bulletin to Temple of Man Ministry 1    Call it a sign of the times: In July 1979, as American divorce...


Text by Kate Wolf

Communists Adore Public Art

North Korea's Arirang "Mass Games" or the subjugation of the individual to the collective. 2008

Παρνασσός

Ο τίτλος της έκθεσης «Παρνασσός», έχει διττή σημασία, καθώς δόθηκε για να τιμήσει αφενός τον Φιλολογικό Σύλλογο, που σε τρία χρόνια γιορτάζει τα 150 χρόνια λειτουργίας του, και παράλληλα αναφέρεται έμμεσα στην μεταφορική έννοια της λέξης «βουνό», που χρησιμοποιείται για να δηλώσει τις δυσκολίες που αντιμετωπίζει, και την προσπάθεια που καταβάλλει ο δημιουργικός άνθρωπος προκειμένου να πετύχει τους στόχους του.
Στην έκθεση «Παρνασσός» συμμετέχουν κυρίως νέοι Ελληνες καλλιτέχνες με διεθνή καριέρα, αλλά και ξένοι εικαστικοί που ζουν και εργάζονται στην Αθήνα. Οπως σημειώνει ο Αυστριακός επιμελητής Stefan Bidner, που υπογράφει την επιμέλεια της έκθεσης, «...με ενδιαφέρει πολύ να γνωρίσω την αθηναϊκή εικαστική σκηνή, ειδικά τώρα με όλα αυτά που συμβαίνουν στην Ελλάδα και τα οποία έχουν παγκόσμια απήχηση. Θα ήθελα λοιπόν να παρουσιάσω ορισμένους εκπροσώπους της ελληνικής καλλιτεχνικής κοινότητας σε αυτό τον γεμάτο με ιστορία χώρο. Είναι κάτι σαν ένα εικαστικό-ιστορικό catch up το οποίο βρίσκω εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον».


The Shape of Things to Come,2010
111 x 23 x 22 cm
Wood, acrylic

Στην έκθεση συμμετέχουν οι: Φαίδων Αναστασιάδης, Νίκος Αρβανίτης, Νάνος Βαλαωρίτης, Γιάννης Βαρελάς, Κωστής Βελώνης, Γιώργος Γεωργακόπουλος, Αρης και Λάκης Ιωνάς/The Callas, Βάσω Γκαβαϊσέ, Διονύσης Καβαλλιεράτος, Βασίλης Καρούκ, Em Kei & Nicolaich, Πάνος Κουτρουμπούσης, Τjorg Douglas Beer, Μαργαρίτα Μποφιλίου, Ραλλού Παναγιώτου, Πάνος Παπαδόπουλος, Αλέξανδρος Τζάννης, Πέτρος Τουλούδης, Edy Ferguson.

7- 31 Μαΐου 2012
Φιλολογικός Σύλλογος Παρνασσός
Παραγωγή: DaDa Da Academy & Wiener Art Foundation
Επιμέλεια: Stefan Bidner
Συντονισμός: Πάνος Παπαδόπουλος

Ness

I went back to my hometown
and saw a girl who I’d been
told had drowned in the
ocean many years ago. Her
pleasant eyes were climates
crossed soft, and meaningless.


I told her that there were still
heights and that the carrier
wave weakens with what it
carries but she just lulled and
said every human is bound to
die but we can’t leave things
that engage our bodies.”

Katy Chrisler
Tin House volume 13, number 3, 2012

Left Behind

Left Behind, 2012
wodd, paint color, acrylic, cloth
75 x 33 x 34 cm

Incense Smoke

One stick I lit in the bronzen image.
The smoke curls upward—lazily—between his lips;
Ivory, and the frail blue of shadows.

The image is speaking—
Words of lazy dream-blue smoke
Carved like ivory:
“Do you remember?—
The priests wore dragons, great jeweled dragons on their robes.
They sang dreamily
To the god of the dim temple—
Chanting, chanting
Through the twisted smoke of incense.
But the god did not stir.
His eyes were like opals, veiled with lost mystery!”
The smoke curls upward—drowsily—
Between his lips;
Mist-gray, and the amber of shadows.

The image is speaking.
Words of dim gray-gold smoke
Graven like amber:
“Do you remember
The offering you burned alone at dawn
To one who did not answer?
Across the ashes
You saw the sea-mist rising—rising—
Like the smoke of incense,
And cried out with the pain in your heart.”

The smoke curls upward—dreamily—
Between his lips;
Ivory, and the lost blue of shadows.


Ellen Margaret Janson, 1922

L’infinito

I always loved this solitary hill,
This hedge as well, which takes so large a share
Of the far-flung horizon from my view;
But seated here, in contemplation lost,
My thought discovers vaster space beyond,
Supernal silence and unfathomed peace;
Almost I am afraid; then, since I hear
The murmur of the wind among the leaves,
I match that infinite calm unto this sound
And with my mind embrace eternity,
The vivid, speaking present and dead past;
In such immensity my spirit drowns,
And sweet to me is shipwreck in this sea


Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
Dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete
Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e il suon di lei. Cosi tra questa
Immensita s'annega il pensier mio:
E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

Giacomo Leopardi , L’infinito, 1819

Voyage autour du monde

George Anson ( 1697 –1762) “Illustrations de Voyage autour du monde”, Henri-Albert Gosse et Compagnie, Genève, 1750 .