Folio as ‘objet d’art’: “Death in Marseille” by Carl Weissner. Translated and edited from the German by Keith Seward & Jan Herman. Designed and printed by Gerard Bellaart on Handmade Barcham’s Greenpaper. Trim size: 328×220 mm. Edition limited to 12 copies.
Collage by Late Cubist, Age 8, Bored in Lockdown
Boredom sometimes works wonders . . . with teacher’s help.
Latest Find Thrills Collector of Rare Burroughs/Gysin Books
Jeff Ball’s latest acquisition—a first-edition copy of “The Exterminator”— is not only signed by both William Burroughs and Brion Gysin but has original artwork that Gysin drew and signed on an inside page. “I’m giddy!” says Ball, whose collection of rare first editions by Burroughs and associated writers, includes some of the most hard-to-find materials anywhere.
GC CUNY Keeps the Conversation Going:
LGBTQ Pride Month Conversation with Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter
Artist, organizer, and co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors is the co-author of the best seller “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.” At the age of 16, Cullors discovered her passion for helping young queer women facing the challenges of poverty, prejudice, and violence. In 2013, she co-founded the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has grown into an international organization fighting anti-Black racism. She spoke with Justin T. Brown, executive director of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies.
Lilliane Lijn’s ‘Power Hanky’
Makes me think of … “Summertime.”
Moloko+ Releases Maher’s New Poems in Bilingual Edition
“This is a partial autobiography. The important things are missing.” — William Cody Maher
The collection includes photographs by Signe Mähler. The German translations are by Walter Hartmann.
The poet reads an excerpt from his poem, “Pornography.”
Clayton With a Period, Full Stop
Over the years two dozen items about or related to Clayton Patterson have appeared on this blog. It’s an indication of the staff’s interest in his cultural significance. Patterson’s importance in general, but especially on the Lower East Side of New York City, comes from his commitment to social and political values for the good of his community. He has put his life on the line to document and preserve it in a way that few are brave enough to do. Now his role as both activist and outsider artist in his own right is the subject of a new book, titled simply Clayton.—yes, with a period—full stop. For those who know him, or of him, his name alone is sufficient to tell the story. For those who don’t, Permuted Press has gathered a group of remarkable graphic artists to tell it.
Jürgen Ploog, R.I.P.
He died at home in Frankfurt, peacefully, surrounded by family. Jürgen Ploog was 85. “Jay,” the name he went by among close friends, was widely regarded as one of Germany’s premiere second-generation Beat writers. But his narrative fiction—like that of William S. Burroughs, a mentor with whom he was associated—was more experimental and closer to Brion Gysin’s or J.G. Ballard’s than to Jack Kerouac’s or Allen Ginsberg’s.
Jay called his style “cut prose,” an adventurous collage technique developed from the cut-up methods formulated by Burroughs and Gysin back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was a gifted visual collagist as well, producing hybrid works in recent years such as Flesh Film, a fever dream of a novella originally published in a digital prose-only edition by realitystudio.org, and subsequently perfected in print by Moloko+.
GC CUNY Keeps the Conversation Going:
Six Fast-Paced Doctoral Presentations on Diverse Topics from Solar Energy to Anti-Corruption Laws
Tune in today—Tuesday @ 7:30 p.m.—for a 30-minute online showcase in TED-style talks.
Borges: ‘To Whoever Is Reading Me’
You are invulnerable. Have they not granted you,
those powers that preordain your destiny,
the certainty of dust? [. . .]
Dark, you will enter the darkness that awaits you,
doomed to the limits of your traveled time.
Know that in some sense you are already dead.
Bill Murray Takes a Cue from Nancy
He masks up in his bathtub too.
Borges: ‘The Thing I Am’
‘I have forgotten my name. I am not Borges
(Borges died at La Verde, under fire)
Nor am I Acevedo, dreaming of battle . . .
Nancy Masks Up in Her Bathtub
She’s taking no chances. Gary Lee-Nova has been exploring Bushmiller’s work for many years. This particular effort originated in an email exchange with Denis Kitchen who founded Kitchen Sink Press. Kitchen Sink published five volumes of Bushmiller’s work during the 1980s and ’90s. “We’ve been internet pals for several years,” Lee-Nova says. During the early […]
GC CUNY Keeps the Conversation Going:
‘The Future of Health Care’ featuring Margot Sanger-Katz, Jonathan Gruber, Avik Roy, and Dana Singiser; also the Eminent Author Anne Carson on Greek Tragedy
While events are postponed at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in the heart of Manhattan, videos of recent public programs from its archive will be featured here for your enjoyment. The videos offer illuminating discussions in two main categories: insights into current events and conversations with leading writers and artists.
A Lesson in the Art of Drawing: ‘Taking the Line for a Walk’
The point of the exercise is to wean the young artist off result-oriented copying from photos. ‘Taking the line for a walk’ lets the drawing come about in the process of drawing. The idea is to reduce line to tonal value as opposed to a fixed continuous outline that wraps around the form like a piece of copper wire. The reason is that light on any object will obviously break the outline (contour). The exercise of copying a Daumier sketch is to work with different values of ink and proceed as one would with a sketch.
Postscript to ‘The Art of Drawing’
By a blindfolded painter in his Chekhovian hat who chooses to remain nameless.
The Art of Drawing
For David Hockney “drawing by other means” included the use of lenses and other optical devices as long ago as the Renaissance, and now more recent innovations like photography and digital collage. But drawing by hand still has infinite charms.