Anomalisa

I feel still, almost an agitated paralysis just now having finished watching Charlie Kaufman's new film, Anomalisa. It is probably one of the most touching, honest and real films I have seen in a long time and my stillness is one that I welcome, one that is rare, in the same way that Lisa is an anomaly both to herself and to Michael, a customer service specialist and public speaker she meets in a hotel the eve before a conference she is to attend and at which Michael is the speaker.

The stop motion animation as a medium for this particular film reflects its narrative in such a way that it describes the on and off experience of what might otherwise be a mundane or prosaic existence. This flux at times organically and at other moments, almost too mechanically functions to create movement and the illusional or real feeling of time passing, one moment sewed into the next to convince you of the natural continuity of days and nights. It is clear from the outset that Michael, the protagonist, is at a crossroads: he is lost, frustrated with everyone he meets, and is convinced he has psychological problems. He feels impeded by something unknown to him and is utterly unable to find any pleasure in his life, where everything and everyone appears to be the same. About his own life and existence, he is incapable of feeling turned "on".

Curiously, and the audience quickly determines this film narrates a subjective relay of Michael's experience whereby every character has the same male voice, be they his wife, his child, other women he encounters as well as all of the men he speaks to. This is until he meets Lisa, a woman who has been single for eight years, and who's esteem of herself is unusually low, made emblematic by a large scar on the side of her face, the cause of which she chooses not to disclose. Upon meeting Lisa, and after sharing a few drinks with her and her coworker, Michael invites Lisa back to her room. Astonished and deeply moved by her voice, he gets her to sing a song: she chooses Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Her voice, the only female one in the entire film is instantly beautiful, not for its technical skill or correct tone, but for its very quality of being unremarkable, gorgeously human, and ultimately original. Such a honeymoon is short lived, and after the pair make love and fall asleep together, Lisa's voice begins to morph into that of everyone else and as her brilliance goes dim and murky, Michael's anxiety is again unleashed. He is left unable to cry, contorting his face as best he can; he feels empty, nothing, and fails to recognize his friends.

Two quotes by Gaston Bachelard on verticality and horizontality

“Verticality is ensured by the polarity of cellar and attic, the marks of which are so deep that, in a way, they open up two very different perspectives for a phenomenology of the imagination. Indeed, it is possible, almost without commentary, to oppose the rationality of the roof to the irrationality of the cellar”[1]


“But the height of city buildings is a purely exterior one. Elevators do away with the heroism of stair climbing so that there is no longer any virtue in living up near the sky. Home has become mere horizontality. The different rooms that compose living quarters jammed into one floor all lack one of the fundamental principles for distinguishing and classifying the values of intimacy”[2]


[1] Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 18.
[2] Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 27.

Agnes Martin, Untitled #9, 1999. acrylic and graphite on linen, 12 x 12 (30.5 x 30.5 cm).  

Adolf Loos, Josephine Baker House, Unbuilt, 1928

Drawings (one of Adam)

HuskMitNavn

Just love these... (http://www.charlottefogh.dk/product-category/prints/huskmitnavn/)

Quote by Amédée Ozenfant

"Accustomed to judge painting by what it imitated, the public vociferated or split its sides, in front of canvases in which it could recognize nothing : wonderful discussions took place in the Press, and the most asinine views were exchanged. The astonished public was unable to recognise the extraordinary talent to which these surfaces, painting in so remarkably novel a manner, bore witness : or that, solely as a result of form and colour in no wise representational, unprejudiced minds could derive very real gratification from them".

I have been reading Ozenfant's Foundations of Modern Art on which I hope to include a brief discussion in my dissertation. Although I will be primarily looking at the images included in the text, he does nonetheless come up with these brilliant and wonderfully modern statements, which I can't help but smile at! Here is he talking about the reception of works by Cézanne, who he designates as the forefather of Cubism (which he also suggests could alternatively be called "Super-Cézannism"), Picasso, Braque, and Derain. 

Generation Painting Symposium: Abstraction and British Art 1955-65

On March 5, I attended the Generation Painting Symposium at Downing College at the University of Cambridge where I was introduced to a lot of British abstract painters, some of which include: Richard Smith (presented by my PhD supervisor, Jo Applin), John Hoyland, Frank Auerbach, Prunella Clough and where I got to hear more about David Hockney and Bridget Riley.

Perhaps the individual artwork that struck me most was a collaboration done by Bridget Riley and Ad Reinhardt titled Poor.Old.Tired.Horse from 1966 (presented at the conference by Moran Sheleg, a UCL PhD candidate). This project consists of a set of pages whereby Riley illustrated a series of "0"s and Reinhardt, in his iconic calligraphic style, wrote poetry around them, which read quite similarly to his other manifesto-like writings. Each page declares a different composition, yet all of them partake in a somewhat chance-like abstraction, not only facilitated by Riley's 0s but also through the shapes that Reinhardt forms with his text, which must subsequently react and work around the existing 0s.

Two cabbage heads from the Bowes Museum