An April Day in Our Garden

Was wandering round the garden - well, as much as you can in an 'in the sky' fourth floor terrace apartment garden, and was yet again compelled to get the camera out ...





.. to catch some of the pretty much unplanned radiant beauty there!

One of the Best Advertisements Ever

This must be one of most surprising and creative ads I've ever seen - the real test for me is do I still like it after the fifth viewing!

No further comment needed.

Like it?

You've probably seen it and loved it already!

Angel Corella - The Hottest Little Thing in Tights

If you don't think Madrid-born Angel Corella is the hottest thing (in tights), I'll wanna know what!

Even in an old creaky war horse like 'La Corsaire'!

Living in China and Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China (1906-1967)

Dragon rondel from a Chao Fu, the most formal court attire (1880) I bought in Hong Kong

I've probably posted before that I lived in China for a year - 1988. Just before the Tiananmen Square incident - so people were interested in and felt okay talking to foreigners. So I made lots of friends and was able to travel freely about the country.

And, as you do when you're living in the capital, I went to The Forbidden City - more than a number of times ...


... not only because of it's obvious historical interest, but because it's one of the few remaining parts of the old city that were not were not raised by the communist regime in the 1950s.

On one visit, workmen were throwing tiles down from the roof of the Hall of Central Harmony ...


... to smash on the stone square below - and be grabbed up by incredulous tourists and expats like myself ...


... who didn't understand the Chinese concept of preservation being to keep the exact form of things, rather than necessarily maintain the fabric itself.

About half way through my stay, an American friend, who also worked at Peking University (Beda), asked me if I wanted to join a group of people booking the whole of a famous but then low profile restaurant serving Chinese court dishes in an out-of-the-way hutong ...



The authenticity of the cuisine came from the fact that Miss Lili was the grand-daughter of the last cook of the Dowager Empress Cixi ...

Dowager Empress Ci-Xi on Flat-Bottomed Boat in the Lake of the Middle Sea at the Summer Palace outside Beijing

And of course Miss Lili made an apperance at the end of the 16 course meal - to be endlessly and respectfully photographed ...


There was calligraphy on the walls done by Aisin Gioro Puren, youngest brother of the last Emperor Aisin Gioro Puyi, seen here talking about his eldest brother ...

Even while still in the PRC, I became a bit interested in the last emperor ...

Prince Chun Tsai Feng with two sons - Puyi is standing

On the Dragon Throne at 3 in 1908

1922

Puyi on roof of the Imperial Apartments just before being driven out of the Forbidden City in the mid-1920s

Puyi as Emperor of Manchukuo (Manchuria) c1925

Puyi as Manzhouguo Emperor - In Japan with Emperor Hirohito in the 1930s

With the new skill of sewing - After undergoing re-education in the Fushun War Criminals Administrative Center in the 1950s

Seeing the footage of Puren, I began to wonder what Puyi himself was like - and finally tracked down this footage of him speaking at the War Crimes Tribunal, Tokyo in 1946 ...

The sound of a voice somehow really brings a person to life for me.

Puyi died in 1967 - at the height of the Cultural Revolution.

And, reading 'Son of the Revolution' (Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro) about this dangerous period from the point of view of a very young impressionable student, I've always suspected that the last emperor was murdered - like so many others of his class.

BTW, YouTube never ceases to amaze me - it's now considerably enlarged by own experience of China!

Jeffrey Smart (1921-) - Australian Modernist Painter

I've always loved and admired the modernist urban landscapes of Jeffrey Smart - partly cos they remind me of two other favorite painters - David Hockney and the Australian, Alan Oldfield (see earlier posts on both artists).


There is a quality of airlessness and bleaching light in all three, and a clear and spacious setting out of the elements in a picture. A real elegance of formal and geometric design.

Many of these things show one of Smart's strongest influences - the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca (1445-1492) ...

Piero della Francesca Piero 'The Flagellation Of Christ'

What I particularly like in Jeffrey Smart is the way he selects the most ordinary objects and street-scapes and turns them into something classic, sculptural and monumental.

'Morning, Yarragon siding' (1982-84)

'Bus Stop'

On a social level, I love that Jeffrey Smart has lived his life as an openly gay man.

In an interview I was watching today, he talks in such a natural way about, Hermes (?), his partner of thirty something years - not self-consciously pushing a currently politically-correct agenda.

He is also out-spoken in a more general way - and his candor is a breath of fresh air in the sometimes 'rarified' and chocking discourse of serious main-stream painting.

Second study for 'Monument and car park' (1972)

'Bus terminus' (1973)

The two men have lived most of the last forty in Italy, where Smart bought a house in Posticcia Nuova, near Arezzo in 1965.

Study for 'Holiday'

'On the beach, San Diego' (1983)

On a more personal level, I went to an auction at Lawsons here in Sydney a few years back to bid on a study for 'Cooper Park' ...

'Cooper Park'

... and sadly (in retrospect) stopped raising my hand as the work edged up to $14,000. Bugger! LOL.

I really really love this work.

There is something haunting or foreboding about the scene. Perhaps achieved through the dark sky.

And this, to a degree, is in counter point the guy lying casually back on the grassy hill, legs apart and shoes off. Staring unselfconsciously at the viewer - and maybe in askance. I imagine he's gay. Or want him to be.

Oh well, it's on The Regret List - quite high up in fact!

On a happier note, Jeffrey Smart's autobiography 'Not Quite Straight' was published in 1996. I must go out and get it!

As Cute as a Button - The New VW IPO

The new VW, designed in Hamburg, Germany and to be available in Shanghai in 2010, will be a mere $AU900 or $US600!

This tear-shaped single-seater with a 1.7 gallon/6.8 litre tank gets 258 miles per gallon or round 100 kilometres per litre - and has a top speed of 75 miles (120 kilometres) an hour.





I seriously want one and, if I ever did, only hope I wouldn't drive up someone's trouser leg!

'Looking for Anna Pavlova'

It's bound to come out sooner or later ... so I may as well fess up now and just post 'Looking for Anna Pavlova' ...

'Mia culpa' - Okay now!

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) - 'The Lady of the Lamp'

It's a recognized medical condition guys - and I'm taking pills for it.

But unfortunately I could stop myself guys doing it today.

So here's 'Florence Nightingale', the Nick Productions latest release. With the only recording of her voice as the soundtrack.

What do you think?

Some Public Signs - A Bit (or a Lot) of Levity

Absolutely no commentary needed.

But comments welcome!

The Curious Speaking Voice of Virginia Woolf

Googling away, as you do, I heard the speaking voice of Virginia Woolf today - and couldn't have been more surprised. In a 1937 BBC broadcast where she talks about the English language and the process of writing.

I've read widely about the Bloomsbury Group of writers, artists and intellectuals that formed round 1908 at the home of Virginia Woolf and her brothers Thorby and Adrian at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury ...


... people such as the writers E M Forster and Lytton Strachey, the philosophers Bertrand Russell and G E Moore, Leonard Woolf, the economic theorist Maynard Keynes, the painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell ... it goes on a bit!

And I guess had a pretty firm idea of what Virginia Woolf's voice would have been like - from having read her novels, and biographies about her such as that of her nephew Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Quentin Bell. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

Virginia Woolf's Writing Desk at Monk's House, Rodmell in Sussex

But in the broadcast, Virginia comes across as a bit cool and pompous. And rather more conventionally upper middle class than I'd imagined - as though looking down on her audience from a great height. She did in fact give public lectures to working class men and women about literature - so at least on one level, she was concerned with social reform and enfranchising education.

Virginia Woolf at Garsington 1923, Home of Lady Ottoline Morrell and Haunt of Bloomsbury People

The writer seems ploddingly serious much of the time - with somewhat clumsy and forced attempts at light-hearted humour. The voice is slow, deliberate and plumy - quite different from that I had in mind from accounts of her at times razor sharp wit and lively racy conversation.

But then I guess the context and her perceived audience drove most of what I love/d momentarily out of Ms Woolf!

Virginia Woolf Later in Life

Anyway, I rattled up this video today to go with an audio of one of the raciest bits I could find (well, ... !), adding some more images of her life and circle on top.

But I think I'll stick to the version of Virginia I have in my mind!