Archive for August, 2010

Children

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Shy

Monday, August 30th, 2010

I knew from advertisements I had seen in the local papers that for 600 lire I could get a frame built to my measurements in Genoa. Out of my slender savings I took enough for the train fare to Genoa and back, gave my measurements, and handed over the 600 lire. I would have to buy the fittings and tyres from my errand-boy salary. Oh how my legs used to ache at night through climbing all those stairs during the day! But I’m glad I did, because it surely made my legs so strong.

“Come back within a week your frame will be ready” said the owner of the cycle shop.”

But it wasn’t ready, and not the next week, and not the next. For eight weeks I threw precious money away taking the train to Genoa and still no made-to-measure bike for me. The fellow just couldn’t be bothered making a frame for a skinny country kid who didn’t look as if he could pedal a fairy-cycle, let alone a racing bike. I used to cry bitterly as I went back home without the frame. On the ninth journey I took a frame home. But it wasn’t a ‘made to measure’. The chap just took one down off the rack. I was furious inside, but too shy to do anything about it.

Fausto Coppi

Flock

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Flock

Mario Merz

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Those who knew Mario and Marisa Merz understood that if you invited one artist, you got both. So they installed themselves for several weeks in San Gimignano, turning up together to eat lunch and sit under the trees. I sat with them often, observing Mario at close quarters. I dearly wanted to film him, but was advised against it. Marisa is totally camera phobic; Mario might not have liked it either, and he could famously be quite monstrous. But Mario was more knowing. He had already remarked that he had heard I made “beautiful films”, and I think he knew what he wanted.

So when eventually I asked, “Mario, can I film you?” he replied, “Yes, but no speaking,” and immediately sat himself in a chair under a tree, cupping a huge pine cone in his lap.

Tacita Dean

O R U

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Happiness Must Happen

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Again and again I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America: Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run — in the long-run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.

Viktor Frankl

Pino

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

Pino

筆禅道

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

Enso

Gather

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Artista

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Cantare sapeva, suonare anche, perché non tentare di riuscire un artista, come quei terroni che gli stavano tra i piedi?

Cesare Pavese