Monthly Archives: July 2006

a Web site called Silence of the City, where stories rejected from the The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town get published online

The future of paintings? i.e. visual material to jazz up one’s walls—
Brian Eno put images onto a computer and programmed them
to generate images—he says 77 million combinations result—
As the Buyer, I would want to purchase a panel or a few
panels for my house on the guarantee that all 77 million images
would continuously cycle across them randomly for the rest
of . . . eternity? or at least the life of the house? 

http://multimedia.repubblica.it/ricerca/337193

Three pilgrims in early June, visiting one of Valle-Inclán’s two birthplaces, this one in

La Tierra Océanos Continentes Todos los países (A-Z) Capitales del Mundo Localizaciones Océanos Bajo el Mar Calcular distancias ¿Que hora es? Mapa Google Callejeros España El Tiempo Tiempo en el Mundo Tiempo Europa Tiempo España Clima Clima Mundial Clima Europa Clima España Fotos Fotos del Mundo Fotos Europa Fotos España Hoteles Hoteles del Mundo Hoteles España

Villagarcía de Arosa

Kirsten told us about this neat project

here’s a link to a project heard about from an australian woman met at
a cafe in istanbul. feel like spinning a tale in a few hours
and then watching it performed online? i don’t know how she’s going to
keep it up for 1001 nights!

 

http://1001.net.au/about/

Pedro, left, his foot in a cast, his dad, Pedro, and us, in his new office in Madrid, early June.  The fledgling company is developing villas in the Grand Canaries, among other projects. 

Click on any photo to see larger image.  Scale  again, this time how Lichtenstein’s sculpture shows off the massiveness of the 18th century stone building, which in Goya’s time served as the nation’s madhouse.  He has a number of  famous etchings and drawings of the crowds of  poor souls who  were kept here.   The whites, grays and blacks of the stone building provide a  fine background for  the stroke,  its human playfulness  set against the grid of classical structure.    For more on Lichtenstein’s  work see  www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/corcshow59.htm

The man in the doorway, white shirt, down in the righthand corner of this photo (behind the time and date red label) gives you the scale necessary to generate the "wow" this image wants to evoke from you.  I’m standing in the new courtyard created at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid by Jean Nouvel’s addition to the original 18th century building by Sabatini.  I know all these names because yesterday I caught an article on this building in the latest issue of Architectural Record.  We were in Concord, browsing magazines at Borders and sipping lattes.  But a month ago there we were, standing in the monumental courtyard, exploring both the old and new buildings, gliding through the galleries to visit mostly old-friend paintings.  Nouvel is the celebrated French architect and this is his first work in Spain.  He won a competition with this design.  One stipulation was that the original building could not be touched—no architectural intervention of any sort.  I had not known that when we were there and I had wondered why the new bulding was placed so carefully next to the old but not connected, except by a slender bridge-hallway segment.  The success of Nouvel’s addition is the way it plays all the "differences" it can against the 18th century massive stone building in every way possible—forms, materials, and most importantly color.  The huge, sweeping red ceiling of the restaurant suggests lots of Spanish things just by being so red—-bullfighters capes, gypsy dancers’ skirts, all the typical emblems.  Architecturally I wonder if we’re allowed to wonder if the form does not echo the famous chapel by Corbusier at Ronchamp, with its huge sweeping curved roof drawn from the headgear of the Sisters of Mercy, their old habits.  Anyway, Lichtenstein’s wonderful sculpture of a huge black & white brushstroke just seems to make the whole effect perfect.  The courtyard would be terribly blank without it.  And the massive scale would be too inhuman.

http://museoreinasofia.mcu.es/portada/portada_ING.php

http://www.architecturalrecord.com/projects/portfolio/archives/0607ReinaSofia.asp

Two views of Sacre Coeur through the magical-mysterious distortions of the little telephoto device on the Sony camera.  Looking out over the rooftops of Paris both north and south each day made me think often of the mediteranean for some reason.  the roofs are all the same color, light gray, the buildings are also usually very closely the same shades of white, beige, champagne, pale sand.  Being up above the scene felt like looking out over a great ocean or sea.   http://www.sacre-coeur-montmartre.com/us/index.html

Enough with the headlines, back to celebrating the glories of France.  Who knows if we will ever go back, but meanwhile we’re now on an email list for a newsletter from "our" Arrondissement, the 9th.  Our street is Tour D’Auvergne, horizontal on the map, to the right of the green marker (the sponsoring bank I think).  You can see how close to Pigalle we were, and above the Boulevard, off the map, is Montmartre, just a few blocks up the hill to Sacre Coeur.  It is a great neighborhood, much better than the one we had originally chosen (this time last year, actually), the 5th around the Sorbonne.  When we went there a few times we realized that it would have been too touristy, too empty and too pricey for daily living

http://www.e-quartier.com/lettres/313/lettre_313.html   gives you the whole
newsletter