Take That Step #53
Diana Vreeland in her “garden in hell”
1) I’m a fan of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Pritzker winner, he is known for thinking about practical and fast solutions to deal with natural disasters, often using paper and other biodegradable materials to build shelters. I just visited the Aspen Museum, his project... a beautiful building that seems to be inside a wooden basket (the checkered façade we see from inside the museum in the photo below). And the light:
2) PI, a poem by Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska:
The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance,
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn’t stop at the page’s edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird’s nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief — a mouse tail, a pigtail — is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star’s ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing,
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.
3) Every time I heard the director of the movie Hamnet speak, I got emotional. In a podcast I listened to, Chloe Zhao said:
When you are afraid of dying, you can’t live life fully.
4) I watched Sofia Coppola's new movie about Marc Jacobs. I wrote down several little things to share here:
When Andy Warhol was asked what he wanted to be if he reincarnated, he said: a diamond ring on Liz Taylor's finger. Ha!
One of his greatest aesthetic influences are Bob Fosse's choreographies:
Marc Jacobs says something I've felt about São Paulo and NYC:
Wearing a black T-shirt in NY is different from wearing a black T-shirt in Paris!
Another Bob Fosse show that inspired him, Big Spenders:
Liza Minelli and Cindy Sherman also appear as great aesthetic influences for Marc. About them, he says he loves women who are caricatures of themselves. He praises Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills series, in particular. A classic:
5) Also in the film, Jacobs talks about how the painting Jeremiah Goodman made of Diana Vreeland's apartment was the inspiration for his Fall-Winter show back in 2015.
The decor is a 1955 project, designed by Billy Baldwin. The Vogue editor would have asked for an apartment that looked like a garden... "a garden in hell".
6) I was at the Metropolitan Museum this week for the preview of the exhibition Raphael: Sublime Poetry.
The show dives into the creative process of one of the most beloved and influential artists in history. A true titan of the Italian Renaissance, Raffaello di Giovanni Santi (1483-1520) - better known as Raphael - combined ambition with lyricism to create works with intellectual weight and emotional depth. In his short life of only 37 years, he achieved such a profound success as a painter, designer and architect that he was considered the "peak of artistic perfection" for centuries after his death.
Raphael: Sublime Poetry brings together more than 170 of the artist's greatest masterpieces. This presentation brings together important drawings, paintings and tapestries from public and private collections throughout Europe and the United States, many of which have never been shown together.
It opens on 3/29 to the public and is up until 6/28.
7) I laughed out loud with the real NYC seasons:
8) I loved this episode of Brazilian podcast Vibes in Psychoanalysis about conversations we struggle to have. They quote Donald Winnicott when discussing the conflict between communicating and hiding, and reminded me of this great quote:
It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.
9) Few things bother me more than garbage on the street. That's why I loved it. Via NYPost:
Collect garbage while running with friends is NYC's new fitness trend. Running clubs have become increasingly popular as a way to exercise, make friends and meet romantic partners. Now, some New Yorkers are taking the idea one step forward — cleaning the streets while exercising..
10) Today's playlist brings together songs I listened to in Colorado after skiing: