flat fringe.

i dreamed about a flat fringe of you, as usual without any expression on face. i think this is connected node, he said. but this node just a insignificant one in our life, both you and I. 

Ödland

Charles John Huffam Dickens

Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, Boccaccio's house, old villas and retreats; innumerable spots of interest, all glowing in a landscape of surpassing beauty steeped in the richest light; are spread before us. 


Returning from so much brightness, how solemn and how grand the streets again, with their great, dark, mournful palaces, and many legends: not of siege, and war, and might, and Iron Hand alone, but of the triumphant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences.


What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from amidst these rugged Palaces of Florence! Here, open to all comers, in their beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculptors are immortal, side by side with Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Poets, Historians, Philosophers - those illustrious men of history, beside whom its crowned heads and harnessed warriors show so poor and small, and are so soon forgotten. 


Here, the imperishable part of noble minds survives, placid and equal, when strongholds of assault and defence are overthrown; when the tyranny of the many, or the few, or both, is but a tale; when Pride and Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire within the stern streets, and among the massive Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flickering of war is extinguished and the household fires of generations have decayed; as thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife and passion of the hour, have faded out of the old Squares and public haunts, while the nameless Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in enduring grace and youth.


Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful Tuscany, with a bright remembrance of it; for Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. The summer-time being come: and Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake of Como lying far behind us: and we resting at Faido, a Swiss village, near the awful rocks and mountains, theeverlasting snows and roaring cataracts, of the Great Saint Gothard: hearing the Italian tongue for the last time on this journey: let us part from Italy, with all its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration of the beauties, natural and artificial, of which it is full to overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a people, naturally well-disposed, and patient, and sweet-tempered. 



Years of neglect, oppression, and misrule,have been at work, to change their nature and reduce their spirit; miserable jealousies, fomented by petty Princes to whom union was destruction, and division strength, have been a canker at their root of nationality, and have barbarized their language; but the good that was in them ever, is in them yet, and a noble people may be, one day, raised up from these ashes. Let us entertain that hope! And let us not remember Italy the less regardfully, because, in every fragment of her fallen Temples, and every stone of her deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end, and that the world is, in all great essentials, better, gentler, more forbearing, and more hopeful, as it rolls!

Art for art's sake

while there were no major political conflicts in Europe between 1872 and 1914, artistic and intellectual battles were waged which generated the new era of modernism in which art began to explore the subtleties of individual perception and ultimately, explored itself. / so what should i dream of being studying art abroad? really, really ridiculous : )  


subject matter underwent a great change as artists began to respond to the external influences of foreign cultures and the internal influence of their own subconscious. some artists were absorbed with the idea of returning through art to a pre0industrialized, non-scientific order.  


1854: Japanese government signed a treaty with Commodore Perry of the united states Navy agreeing to export to the open market of the west.
the exquisiteness and handcrafted perfection of the Japanese objects contracted strongly with the cheap, mass-produced articles being turned out in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Japan, so long hidden and remote, offered a new sensibility to artists rebelling against their Industrialized circumstances.


the influence from Japan on this surge of printmaking was twofold. for not only did it change the way art looked. it changed what was expressed. Japanese ukiyo-e prints, by their very definition, altered the Western consciousness of art. Ukiyo-e "the floating world." the world of actors, the theater, pleasures. sex.a world rarely depicted seriously in the West.


from his earliest years Riviére had the desire to become an artist."I spent my days drawing and paiting,seeing my little store of money gradually disappearing, without hope of renewing it. Fortunately, an important change was going to allow me to provide more for my maintenance and let me know about a whole world of which i knew nothing": Chat Noir. 


" the epileptic, baudelarian, and anti-philistine red herrings "


documents d'art chinois de la collection osvald siren (1925)

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