Pictures
Just some rambling on the art I posted in the Photos section.
The Japanese print is, Chigusano Hano by Terukata (if I’ve read the hand-writing correctly) and was printed in 1902. I picked it up the first time I went to Tokyo from a place in Harajuku. Harajuku is famous now for the outlandish fashions of the kids which hang around the station there (think Gwen Stefani in the current music scene) but further up the main street there are a variety of upmarket stores and a place called Oriental Bazaar where I found "Matsushita Associates Inc, Dealers of Japanese Prints". Anyway, it was last day after three weeks in the city and I fell in love with the colouring.
The Henderson Cisz painting is one we picked up locally and which always has me in two minds. I love the restful scene, the two figures in the shade and the delicate detail of the trees. However, there seem to be hundreds of similar paintings by Cisz around in local shops and it gives a nasty sense of production line. Anyway, as you can see, the beauty and tranquillity won out and it’s hanging in the living room.
The nude I know very little about. It was a gift from my oldest friend who bought it from the Porthminster Gallery in St Ives, Cornwall. The signature seems to be Lendon, or possibly Landon. I’m very fond of it and I’m sure it belongs in our living room but currently inhabits the bedroom.
The black and white photographic print is of Holt Cemetery, outside of New Orleans. Holt Cemetery was a paupers’ graveyard from the early 20th / late 19th century. Many of New Orleans’ jazz greats died penniless and are buried there. I love the sense of brooding entropy. The picture was taken by New Orleans photographer, Louis Sahuc, and I bought it from his gallery in the heart of the French Quarter. His work is largely in black and white and it captures the sense, the magic of old New Orleans: hot, sticky, sleazy but alive, exhilarating, graceful and partying.
