One of Toyen's many remarkable friends was the somewhat unclassifiable Czech surrealist Bohuslav Brouk. As he was neither an artist nor a poet, his surrealist early work is not well known in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that he spent much of his life in Australia and Great Britain. For those who read Czech, however, the site Bohuslav Brouk: Zde trapno existovat offers a great wealth of information relating to Brouk, including PDF copies of several of his books.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Brouk wrote extensively about sex, psychoanalysis, marxism, and aspects of linguistics and semiotics. He was quite the controversial figure in the 1930s and a subject of satirical cartoons (several of which I plan to include in Magnetic Woman) but he fled Czechoslovakia around the time of the Communist takeover and pursued a quieter but nonetheless busy scientific career.
Monday, April 9, 2018
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Japanese Woodblock Prints at Library of Congress
The Library of Congress does, in fact, have thousands upon thousands of freely downloadable images of many different kinds; while they do try to provide good finding aids, the level of detail varies. This particular collection looks very well organized, so that there are numerous ways for the searcher to locate items. You can narrow things down by artist, period, location shown, and so on. When you find one you want to download, make sure you choose the right file for your purposes; you have the option of several sizes of JPG, a GIF, or a TIF.
The print shown here is a color woodcut by Harunobu Suzuki from 1765 entitled "Semitori" and it shows a woman and a child catching crickets. I chose the 50.7 KB version for this post.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Yugoslav World War II Memorials
Another person whose project deserves note is Vladimir Kulić, whose book Bogdanović by Bogdanović: Yugoslav Memorials through the Eyes of their Architect,on Bogdan Bogdanović's photographs of his Yugoslav World War II memorials has received a Graham Foundation grant.
The Graham Foundation states:
Vladimir's book is due out this year. And go see the exhibition at MOMA!
The Graham Foundation states:
The project is an extension of Vladimir Kulić’s previous research on Bogdanović funded by a 2014 Graham Foundation grant, which supported the digitization of Bogdanović‘s personal slide collection. The book will be published by The Museum of Modern Art in New York in conjunction with the forthcoming exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980. In addition to Bogdanović's photos, the book will feature a preface by Martino Stierli, an introductory essay situating the architect's work in the cultural context of postwar Yugoslavia, as well as excerpts from an unpublished interview conducted in 2005–06.I had not previously been aware of the Graham Foundation, as my work doesn't focus on architectural history. "Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Graham realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications."
Vladimir's book is due out this year. And go see the exhibition at MOMA!
Friday, April 6, 2018
No Screaming Jelly Beans?
One of the nice things about having a blog is that it provides a way to salute people and projects I admire. "Nancy's Bookshelf" at North State Public Radio in California has two interviews with my friend Denise Minor about her two books--first, one about her scholarly book on being a language teacher, and about 25 minutes forward, a later interview about her memoir No Screaming Jelly Beans: Trying to Pursue a Career while Raising a Son with Autism.
Denise is an inspiring person. She was a journalist and Spanish teacher when we met through a mutual friend, and we were members of the same writing group for many years. Meanwhile, she got married, had two boys, began her PhD studies at UC Davis, and discovered that her younger son was autistic.
Denise and her husband have put tremendous effort into their parenting of both boys, but even so she managed to complete her PhD in Spanish Linguistics and is now a professor at Chico State.
Whenever people tell me I accomplish a lot, I'm very much aware that it is people like Denise who are really much more impressive as regards productivity.
Denise is an inspiring person. She was a journalist and Spanish teacher when we met through a mutual friend, and we were members of the same writing group for many years. Meanwhile, she got married, had two boys, began her PhD studies at UC Davis, and discovered that her younger son was autistic.
Denise and her husband have put tremendous effort into their parenting of both boys, but even so she managed to complete her PhD in Spanish Linguistics and is now a professor at Chico State.
Whenever people tell me I accomplish a lot, I'm very much aware that it is people like Denise who are really much more impressive as regards productivity.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Forthcoming in Opossum!
It was a good move to attend the AWP conference a few weeks ago. (Can it already be a month ago? Shocking but true!) The benefits were many--getting back up to speed on the literary world after quite a few years of focus on art history; learning some new tips that will help me promote Magnetic Woman when it appears; buying and being given various journals, novels, and story collections; meeting and chatting with the staff of a long list of journals and presses. (Actually, I am still sorting the materials I brought home, which take up half the dining room table.)
AWP re-energized me about sending out my fiction. Long ago, I was extremely diligent about sending out my work, and always had at least ten stories out in the mail. It was important to be that diligent, because the sort of thing I wrote wasn't much in fashion then and it usually took a long time for any given piece to find a home. Friends suggested that I might have better luck if I adopted a Spanish pseudonym, as magic realism did get published in English translation. I did not, however, think it fitting to pretend I hailed from a completely different culture. Like Günter Grass, I have Germans from Poland in my family tree.
Anyhow, the first good news has come in on a story submitted after AWP! A relatively new journal called Opossum likes what I sent and hopes to publish the tale in either the spring or fall issue. I can't tell you the title of the piece, as it sounds as though the title is the main thing the editors want to change, so I'll have to think about that. But this is pretty exciting news.
Opossum describes itself as "a Literary Marsupial" and "a biannual literary magazine featuring work animated by music." There are two print issues per year, with fabulously beautiful covers. Plus, each issue includes a 7-inch vinyl record of author readings. (Color vinyl, at that! Very snazzy.) After each printing, all contributors’ work trickles onto the website where it is freely available to see and hear. What's more, Opossum pays its contributors! (Yes, it would be nice if all literary journals did, but often that's just not possible.)
What a fine way to start the day!
AWP re-energized me about sending out my fiction. Long ago, I was extremely diligent about sending out my work, and always had at least ten stories out in the mail. It was important to be that diligent, because the sort of thing I wrote wasn't much in fashion then and it usually took a long time for any given piece to find a home. Friends suggested that I might have better luck if I adopted a Spanish pseudonym, as magic realism did get published in English translation. I did not, however, think it fitting to pretend I hailed from a completely different culture. Like Günter Grass, I have Germans from Poland in my family tree.
Anyhow, the first good news has come in on a story submitted after AWP! A relatively new journal called Opossum likes what I sent and hopes to publish the tale in either the spring or fall issue. I can't tell you the title of the piece, as it sounds as though the title is the main thing the editors want to change, so I'll have to think about that. But this is pretty exciting news.
Opossum describes itself as "a Literary Marsupial" and "a biannual literary magazine featuring work animated by music." There are two print issues per year, with fabulously beautiful covers. Plus, each issue includes a 7-inch vinyl record of author readings. (Color vinyl, at that! Very snazzy.) After each printing, all contributors’ work trickles onto the website where it is freely available to see and hear. What's more, Opossum pays its contributors! (Yes, it would be nice if all literary journals did, but often that's just not possible.)
What a fine way to start the day!
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
New Images Received!
Images, images... A major task in putting together almost any art history book is the gathering of the necessary images. Yet, sad to say, this is generally a long and painful process. You may recall reading about some painting or sculpture in an article or book and being annoyed that there was no photo of it--well, that could mean that a) the author couldn't locate a print-quality photo of it; b) the cost of the print-quality photo was prohibitively high; c) it wasn't possible to clear copyright; or d) the publisher put a limit on the number of images in order to keep the cost of printing under control. Yep.
Notice that first possible problem--locating a print-quality photo of the artwork! In the world of digital photography, that means it is not just a faithful photo of the artwork, but that it has a minimum of 300 dpi (versus the 72 dpi normally used for Web images). In other words, trawling the internet for a suitable photo is generally not an option. Nor is it usually possible to scan from a book, due to the existing printed dot pattern. (Think how a photocopy of a photocopy isn't as good as the first photocopy, which isn't as good as the original.)
Where do we find these good-quality photos? Well, we get them from museums, from private collectors, from art galleries, from third-party sources of various kinds, and sometimes we shoot the photos ourselves. All of this takes a lot of time.
I've been lucky in that as much of Toyen's work involved illustration, I could photograph from the books she illustrated. Thank you to the archives, libraries, and private collectors to whom these books belong! I have hundreds of photos of these illustrations, as well as some photos of illustrations by her peers. (Not that I can use hundreds of photos of these book illustrations in my own book, but at least I can use a fair number of them as examples of particular themes and stylistic choices.)
I did not, however, have even all of the book illustrations that I wanted to use, and here a friend of mine who works for a collector has been very helpful. He passed along numerous photos of illustrations and prints by Toyen awhile back, for which I am eternally grateful, and now he has also provided me with many by her artistic partner Jindřich Štyrský as well!
Life is suddenly better and my stress level regarding images has dropped a notch.
Notice that first possible problem--locating a print-quality photo of the artwork! In the world of digital photography, that means it is not just a faithful photo of the artwork, but that it has a minimum of 300 dpi (versus the 72 dpi normally used for Web images). In other words, trawling the internet for a suitable photo is generally not an option. Nor is it usually possible to scan from a book, due to the existing printed dot pattern. (Think how a photocopy of a photocopy isn't as good as the first photocopy, which isn't as good as the original.)
Where do we find these good-quality photos? Well, we get them from museums, from private collectors, from art galleries, from third-party sources of various kinds, and sometimes we shoot the photos ourselves. All of this takes a lot of time.
I've been lucky in that as much of Toyen's work involved illustration, I could photograph from the books she illustrated. Thank you to the archives, libraries, and private collectors to whom these books belong! I have hundreds of photos of these illustrations, as well as some photos of illustrations by her peers. (Not that I can use hundreds of photos of these book illustrations in my own book, but at least I can use a fair number of them as examples of particular themes and stylistic choices.)
I did not, however, have even all of the book illustrations that I wanted to use, and here a friend of mine who works for a collector has been very helpful. He passed along numerous photos of illustrations and prints by Toyen awhile back, for which I am eternally grateful, and now he has also provided me with many by her artistic partner Jindřich Štyrský as well!
Life is suddenly better and my stress level regarding images has dropped a notch.
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