Mario Chalmers, Mario Chalmers (p.s. Sherron Collins, Brandon Rush and Darrell Arthur), Mario Chalmers.
Lawrence, Kansas is the place to be right now, and will be for a few weeks.
The Lost Painting
I'm currently reading this book, given to me by my lovely wife for my 38th birthday. She knows that Carrivagio is my best. Painter. Evar.
This is only partially due to his technique; in fact, I probably prefer Diego Velazquez or Rembrant (or recently, Antonio Mancini) for skill and vision. You see, I like Carrivago for the fact that he was as deadly as Count Dante (although his weapon of choice was a sword, not his fingertips).
Michelangelo Merisi de Carrivagio was a duelist; a scofflaw murderer and a pugnacious street-tough who rendered his subjects with an uncompromising naturalism that would make him the most hated and influential Italian painter of his day. Carrivagio was larger than life. He had talent, he had vision, he had severe mental health problems, and he had enemies.
If you decide to pick up The Lost Painting, you'll get a portrait of the life of Carrivagio, as well as a more detailed picture of the lives of the historians who are trying to peer through the fog of 400 years in order to better understand his work and his life.
Highly reccomended.
As a side note; USC over K-State, Kansas vs. North Carolina in the Final Four, Kansas by 8, Kansas vs. Memphis for the National Championship, Kansas by 13.
"Steppa right up, folks . . . get yer FREE BALOONS here! FREE BALOOOOONS! Sorry, folks no exit! Enjoy the Promenade of Baloons! Wait for it, folks . . . waaaaait for it . . ."
I think I might have a new favorite painter, and I don't say that lightly.
I stumbled across this slide-show of some of Mancini's works, and . . . I think I'm in love.
This guy paints like I wish I could, seriously. I'm particularly enamored with his older stuff before he went (more) insane. I certainly need to see some of these paintings live, but even on my computer screen, woah.
Brushwork like woah. Color and spatial composition like woah. That ephemeral sense of humanness* so absent from most paintings like woah.
Based on a few HTML pages and .jpgs, I've already put him up there in my Personal Pantheon with Diego Velazquez, Rembrandt, Caravaggio (the worst painter, but the deadliest sword-fighter of the lot) and Vermeer.
"After the Duel" 1872
^ This painting floors me. It has such a compelling narrative, the figure painting is immaculate, the subject is treated with so much empathy and like a lot of his works, the color and value composition is sublime.
"Self-Portrait" (circa 1880)
^ First off, I'm a portraitist at heart. I get post-modern art, and I generally like post-modern art, but I also believe two things regarding portraiture: that it is the most demanding painting task, and that portraits that allow us to empathize with the subject are the highest expression of that task.
Mancini's paintings are full of life and heart, and seem *there* in that way that a poor-to-average portrait artist can never reproduce. But at the same time, he's taking liberty with the painterly traditions, adding nonsensical brushwork and using expressive non-representational markmaking without ever letting go of the image's core mission; to show us this person, and invite us to tell stories about him, or put him in our story.
Quite clearly, Mancini is also crazy, degenerating toward bona-fide bat-shit crazy as he ages.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
_-
*I bet the Japanese have a word for this concept.
From the BBC:
'Human-animal' embryo green light
Regulators have agreed in principle to allow human-animal embryos to be created and used for research.
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Human scientists are growing ever closer to my secret. Perhaps the time is ripe for my Doomsday Robot after all.
You know, in all seriousness, when they cross animals and humans it'll be the animals that get the shaft.
Yeah, I *could* pounce that other kitten, but *why*? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
Really, I'm not sure how even to contextualize this video except to say that Dragonforce (the band) is a half-mocking, three-quarters serious* throwback to Epic Speed Metal of the late 80's, and that the fan-created video below proves that they should make all of their videos out of Final Fantasy game cutscenes.
It's like . . . everything epic and strange about American Suburbia making out in a Comic Book convention bathroom with everything epic and stragne about Japanese videogame fandom. The only missing ingredient here is a 50-year old company man masturbating to it in Kyoto.
. . . not that we know that *isn't* happening.
*DC2020 insists that there is no irony whatsoever with Dragonforce. On one hand, I can admire their sincerity (i.e. at the level of being a acutal iconoclasts among a fantastically conformist subculture that thinks of itself as iconoclastic), but on the other I just can't help but feel kind of embarassed for how un-ironically *corny* they are.
That said, Dragonforce are so fucking adept and technical, though, that their skill and effort renders critics venomless. We can laugh at them all we want, but we could never do what they do.
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