Solstice

Solstice in the Newgrange passage tomb at sunrise (from the interior towards
the entrance, and sunlight on the floor of the inner chamber),
Ireland, December 21, 2007, taken from webcast (here)

Fireworks

Ryogoku hanabi (Fireworks at Ryogoku), Utagawa Hiroshige, 1856
here

Seascapes

Tyrrhenian Sea, Scilla, Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1993 here



Lake Superior, Cascade River, Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1995 here




Baltic Sea, Rügen, Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1996 here

They are merely conventional signs

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!"

from Lewis Caroll's The Hunting of the Snark

Untitled

Mark Rothko, 1968


This is one of a group of paintings on paper which Rothko made after a period of illness in 1968,
when he was too weak to work on his customary large-scale canvases.

image and text from the tate collection here

The Rothko Chapel

The Rothko Chapel, Mark Rothko, 1964-71

Black on Maroon

Black on Maroon, Mark Rothko, 1959


Black on Maroon, Mark Rothko, 1958


Photo © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/DACS 2006 here and here

Mark Rothko

/.../On the journey down from Naples the party had fallen in with a couple of Italian youths who offered to act as guides.
At Paestum, where the odd-assorted little band picnicked at noon in the Temple of Hera, the young men expressed their
curiosity as to the identity and occupations of the Americans. Fischer's daughter, who was acting as interpreter, turned
to Rothko and said: "I have told them that you are an artist, and they ask whether you came here to paint the temples,"
to which Rothko replied: "Tell them that I have been painting Greek temples all my life without knowing it."

John Banville on Rothko here

Tools and Grammar

/.../Utgångspunkten är en tysk journalfilm från 1926, som handlar om en klosterskola för blinda barn i Stuttgart.
I en scen besöker barnen en kyrkogård, som de sedan får återskapa i klostrets sandlåda. - Klosterskolan syftade
till att stärka de blinda barnens självkänsla genom att stärka deras andra sinnen. På den tiden fanns inte blindskrift
och de enda stället de kunde läsa, var på gravstenar där bokstäverna är urkarvade/.../

ur DN:påstan om Felix Gmelins utställning Tools and Grammar

the origins of time

"the days and nights had the same colour, as if everything happened just before daybreak..."
(Giacometti on The Palace..., Minotaure, No. 3-4, 1933)

The Palace at 4 A.M. enigmatically and explicitly is about time. But, one could hardly say that this "time-structure" reveals
any suggestions of organic vitality. Its balance is fragile and precarious, and drained of all notions of energy, yet it has a
primordial grandeur. It takes one's mind to the very origins of time - to the fundamental memory.


All above from Robert Smithson's Quasi-Infinities and the Waning of Space, November 1966 (in collected writings)

The Palace at 4 A.M.

The Palace at 4 A.M., Alberto Giacometti 1933


Study for The Palace at 4 A.M., Alberto Giacometti 1932

Dunkel hieroglyf

Hans gåtfulla symbollandskap låter sig inte diskursivt avläsas utan blott intuitivt fattas, det är landskapet som "dunkel hieroglyf" /...

Hans-Olof Boström om Caspar David Friedrich
Dagens Nyheter 18 januari 2002

Elbe

Elbe, Johan Hedbäck, 2010

The Orangerie Staircase

Versailles, the Orangerie Staircase, Eugène Atget, 1901

Marionett och ängel

Han kan allt efter smak och fallenhet betraktas som ett kosmiskt medium, som en förbryllande korsning av marionett och ängel,
som en inverterad panteist eller "panmorfiker" eller som en den medvetna omedvetenhetens motsägelsefulla labyrint /...

Erik Lindegren om Rainer Maria Rilke 1963
ur inledning till Malte Laurids Brigge

Empty stages

From Robert Fludd's Ars Memoriae, 1619


Sketch for the Globe Theatre based on Fludd. From Frances A. Yates' The Art of Memory.

Secondary theatre

from Robert Fludd's Ars Memoriae, 1619

Drop by drop

The hot sun struck the backs of their close-shaven necks. It was a peaceful, uneventful, glorious Sunday afternoon.
Yet Kiyoaki remained convinced that at the bottom of this world, which was like a leather bag filled with water, there
was a little hole, and it seemed to him that he could hear time dripping from it, drop by drop.

from Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima

At the Beginning of Each Season

Last day of summer, first day of fall, light is changing.

Hyggliga och föraktfulla cirkusbetjänter

Han hade sett alltför många kollegor som "stupat i manegen ... utsläpade ur ljuset av hyggliga och föraktfulla cirkusbetjänter."

Ingmar Bergman citerad i DN, 19 augusti 2007

Dirt on the ground, shadow of a tree

While searching for another picture yesterday I found this instead. I'm not sure where it comes from or
how it ended up in that drawer, I think perhaps it's from one of my family's holiday in the sixties before
I was born. I don't know why an uncertain origin always seem to add more beauty to a photograph.

I'm not a person in this dream - I'm a place

I had this dream
and in it
I wake up in this small house
somewhere in the tropics.
And it's very hot and humid.
And all these names and faces
are somehow endlessly moving through me.
Not that I see them exactly,
I'm not a person in this dream;
I'm a place.
Yeah... a kind of a... just a place.
And I have no eyes, no hands,
and all these names and faces just keep...
they keep passing through. And there's no... no scale.
Just a lot of details.
Just a slow accumulation of details.

from Laurie Anderson's United States Live

Beginning

They clothed me and gave me money. I knew what the money was for, it was to get me started.
When it was gone I would have to get more, if I wanted to go on. The same for the shoes, when
they were worn out I would have to get them mended, or go on barefoot, if I wanted to go on.

from The End by Samuel Beckett