#i was trying to work with her previous design but added a flower motif to her

[heliosphere-underthesky]

Heliosphere: Under the Sky

Meet the dwarf planet, Eris! Like most dwarf planets, she lives in the Kuiper Belt.

Eris was discovered back in 5 January 2005, and her discovery, along with subsequent dwarf planet discoveries, were what led to debates about Pluto's planetary status.

Eris (NASA page)

[pipedreamprayer]

I don’t think Blue Maiden will be Aoi’s final avatar

Perhaps I’m reading too much into how the previous designs have reflected her attitude, but I honestly believe that seeing the design and knowing she refers to it as her battle form is enough to make a concerning prediction about how she will behave going forward: she’s trying to grow up too fast now.

Please hear me out.

As much as I enjoyed Blue Angel’s design, it always felt like something designed by a child’s interpretation of a Stage Idol, with as many hearts and wings and purple flowers included as possible, with the same hairstyle Aoi herself had as a youngster, not to mention the considerable increase in bust size from reality, and an over-abundance of accessories. Not that the outfit didn’t work, but it was designed with so many details that in retrospect I think it was meant to feel cluttered.

Then Blue Girl was trying too hard to be toned down from that extravagance while maintaining the sticker-book aesthetic with hearts and wings flatter but ever-present, and the 4 leaf clover on her cheek. Her hair is arguably utilitarian in comparison to Blue Angels style with how slicked flat it is.

Blue Maiden is an interesting blend of Blue Angel and Blue Girl with its own flair added in, too badass for the sort of Idol that Blue Angel embodied, and too stylish for the way Blue Girl was aiming for practicality. It’s also clearly been designed with the concept of maturity in mind. It’s her ‘’battle form’’ and makes her look closer to someone in college than high school with the darker colour scheme (though balanced by the hair colours switching), the make-up consisting of lipstick and a more understated cheek mark than the bright bold clover contrasting the rest of her outfit as the only green to stand out. Aside from the belt and earrings she no longer has heart motifs at all in fact, and even then the former is sharply stylised and the latter upside down. Unless I’m mistaken, her boots even have substantial heels.

So the aspects of Blue maiden’s design that do evoke the previous avatars imply more of a balance between those opposing extremes of the purpose behind the styles. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the design, and thus her defining drive for this arc, will be entirely healthy. For example, she has wings on her arms, but they’re sleeker and more understated than bright white angel wings, more of a nod to the motif than a replication. Yet there are many people clamouring for the return of the proper wings, and why shouldn’t they want them back? Why shouldn’t she? She’s no longer using Blue Girl as a step forward as a more serious worker, and even still trying to hide her identity with a different avatar she doesn’t need to be strict with the design anymore either given she’ll undeniably be the centre of much attention with an Ignis. If she wanted she could easily incorporate proper wings onto her design – it’s a choice not to, to instead replace them as though there was something wrong with the big sweeping statement made by their incorporation into Blue Angels outfit. As though she’s making a conscious decision to remove herself from less mature styles of ideas she clearly has a fondness for if she’s included them throughout her avatars.

This is where I get worried.

As aforementioned, Blue Angel’s child’s-dream-come-true design reflected her childish behaviour, from her rebellion to her indecisiveness to her taking on Baira as a means of lashing out in a temper to how she latched onto a concept of something better but couldn’t stick it through a tough time and turned back to focusing on the impact on herself by the end of the duel with Spectre. Blue Girl is her trying and failing to avoid those issues by following Akira’s desire to know the truth and Ema’s manner of dealing with situations: she wanted to be useful as a pawn instead of a hero for the public, but couldn’t stop listening to her own ideas and wanting to be pre-emptive. If this trend follows and Blue Maiden’s character reflects the design choices Aoi made while making her as opposed to being Aoi’s own personality with no masks, it doesn’t speak for someone trying to be themselves. It speaks of someone trying to grow up too fast, to be a proper, powerful woman, a force to be reckoned with, someone to be respected on the battlefield.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe the balance of following her own desires and trying to be serious about the issues at hand will be perfectly fine, and we’ll see her while she’s finally on top of her dilemma. But if that does happen, it would be implying that the balanced Aoi, the ideal Aoi, the version of herself who comes together best of all is her WAR persona. Because that’s what Blue Maiden is – a new persona specifically formed to take on the burden of this war over a potential apocalypse. If the entire point of the varying avatars is to display Aoi’s development, this seems like the poorest possible message to send to the kids watching. And more relevantly problematic, it would interfere with the message of the Lost Kids arcs of finding their opportunity to move forward with their lives once more, since this war persona would lose relevance once the war itself was over. There needs to be a way for every happy ending to not leave the character in question hung up on the past, or it would utterly dilute the meaningful message the writers have clearly been putting a lot of effort into crafting throughout the narrative.

So I suppose I was wrong about the title of this post: there’s a reasonable enough chance that this will be her final wardrobe change, but I’m here as probably the only person not wanting it to be. I want her character arc to conclude with a realisation she doesn’t need to be anything but what she is: not an idol for the masses, not an information gatherer, not a serious woman, just Aoi. Just a highschooler who’s allowed to sort herself out as a person first and foremost, and as a hero – as someone who serves a purpose – second in priority.

[idahagh]

How to achieve this design 

In creating this design, I have been  inspired by Connielim, who is fashion illustrator from LA/London that I have seen her works on Instagram .On her page, she explained her technique by short movies. She creates a detailes of her designs separately and after colouring place them on each other. So I decided to try this technique for creating my design, which was the movie on the previous post, that shows how to create it. I also have repeated this action for finding the initial idea about designing the garment, so I have drawn another flower similar to Tim Walker's Lily flower and place on my model, then I tried to change it in different directions. I tried this activity by different Shapes as an improvement to create a new design as well, but this technique was not successful in some of shape for representing  my concept. 

In the next step, I added my enlarged fabric pattern which was symbolic motif in my collection, that is made by embroidery technique and appliqué technique.

In my ideas, placing this flower was the courageous, which I did for unisex clothing. Because flowers are not usually used in menswear, and that was the challenge I did.

[funkypoacher]

Kinktober Day 1

“Aphrodisiacs”

Ship: Solas/Ori; Fandom: Dragon Age

The night was a warm one. He opened the door. She said, “I was just thinking about you,” to which Solas smiled.

Back kept straight, hands clasped behind, and feet called forward by her sweet confession, the man sauntered confidently towards where the she sat. Amidst the superfluous expense poured like rivulet silver, Orilya was almost lost. Not one example of extravagance was overlooked as the Inquisitor’s quarters exemplified the over-blown expression of opulence – at least, to some deluded man’s heart. A bed frame of molded gold; marble floors forgotten under stretches of silken tapestries woven with nature motifs: ostentatious displays such as this were meant to inspire dread rather than impress, and indeed they met their goal for Solas was afraid. He was very afraid of the appetites of the Orlesian elite. They found sweetness in starving their servants while consuming taffeta window-curtains like confection. They gorged on samite petticoats or stockings while the poor put their children in reappropriated sacking. While surrounded by a million brass mirrors so that they might better see the beautiful debauchery in which they binged, these powdered nobles metaphorically mirrored the world which had been locked away for all that they cost.

In the middle of this noisy luxury –rather amateurish when compared to the Evanuris’ tastes– was Ori, sitting like the jewel-like middle of a flower from whence the petals unfold. Soft and unassuming, and dressed down to only an over-sized shirt that fit her like a shift, she stood out for her simplicity and her spirit. And her mind. And her smile. Which was, at the moment, beaming.

Before her was a broad platter topped with varying vibrant fruit. In the excess of consumption, the woman’s mouth had tinged. As Ori smiled in her wide, animated way, it became clear that this colouring had not been confined to her lips alone: her teeth and tongue were blood-red, too. It was almost garish – and certainly charming.

Solas chuckled.

“Were you not taught that eating in bed is the behavior of beasts?”

It was difficult for him to affect such a lofty tone. And Ori snorted at the attempt. Flashing a wicked, gory grin, her head lolled skeptically to the side. Then, under the pretense of cleaning fruit juice from her finger, she puckered her lips around the tip of her pointer-digit, took it to the back of her throat, and, easing it out, letting it go with a loud pop.

“Really? Because I’m fairly sure all you ever do in bed is eat.”

His lover’s laugh was insidious. He rebutted in the only way he could: an even smile which darkened to something ravenous. While settling on the edge of the bed and sinking deep for the goose-down it was made of, Solas off-handedly considered how Ori’s bare legs –inviting him from beneath them hem of her shirt– kindled his mattress-based appetite. Then he wondered, even more casually, if that shirt was his.

The Inquisitor nodded at the food. She took more to her mouth.

“So. There’s fruit, and chocolate –melty chocolate– plus chilies, which is wild. They’re not too hot, though. Oh, and champagne. Which I drank most of. It gets less wretched after the first few glasses. The chilies, though, they are so— you’ve got to put them in the chocolate. I cannot believe how good it is. I’ve eaten… Well, it’s safe to say I’ve eaten more than I should have, at this point.”

Her description was accented by swallows and slurps as she gluttonously munched on watermelon cut into garish little hearts, pomegranate pearls, and rich, red strawberries nearly the colour of wine.

“It came from Celene,” Ori added, lips busying with a splash of water to wash it down.

“And Briala, ostensibly,” guessed Solas, all the while gathering chocolate with a slice of watermelon.

The Inquisitor settled with a sigh and a wriggle against the pillow-stack. According to her crooked look Solas had not touched upon the half of it, and Ori motioned towards a card of periwinkle parchment placed on the bed-side table. “Oh yeah. Take a look.”

While placing the watermelon to his lips, Solas glanced over Celene’s elegant script penned in a twinkling, golden ink. It read,

Ham of despair and acrimonious stag are quite fashionable for a soirée, but what you have done for me and mine requires a new palate altogether. Accept these morsels flavored of amour and passion, and may its fruits taste ever sweeter.

                                        ~Celene and Briala~

Solas swallowed the melon. After reevaluating the Empress’s words, he immediately ate more.

”See? They’re even signing things as a couple.” Ori’s hazel-stare watched him and shone. “Is that… alright? Briala is still one of us. It could be used as blackmail at some point. Don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” Solas shrugged, picking up some pomegranate. “Should they part as brutally as before.”

The fruit was extraordinary: a rich, raw, souring sweetness with a bit of a bitter follow-up which was much enjoyed. Audibly smacking his lips in approval, the man’s mouth then began to profusely water, which Solas thought to remedy with eating more. Taking a dozen of the glistening pomegranate pearls to his mouth, he noted Ori scrutinizing him with her head tilted, eyes steady, and mouth slackened to the point of showing off her little, red tongue. He almost had to ask as soon as he finished with chewing.

“Ah.” Solas feigned a modest look. “Am I to assume my lips have stained?”

She nodded languidly. The day’s long hours finally seemed to be having an effect, for Ori had now quieted, she was blinking her rounded, shining eyes more often, and her breathing came harder, catching thick in her throat. Swallowing hard around a sigh, she motioned towards his hands –“fingers, too,” – and fell deeper into her pillows.

It took Solas less than a second to stop caring about his loose-fitting, tight-collared, Orlesian-cut costume of light blue damask accented by ivory and mauve. They weren’t his colours. Nor did he like the style. But, while he didn’t care for the clothes, he did not want to smear reds all about Ori’s sheets, so he licked the few dribbling, wine-toned droplets dripping down his hands. There were no napkins – by design, in all probability, considering the appreciative, insinuating note.

“Lovely,” Solas approved. The last of the pomegranate he soon popped in his mouth.

Although simply a token –a reflex of etiquette really, and hardly a reflection of her true gratitude– Celene had outdone herself. The platter had more life and exuberance of taste than all the marinated meats or complicated creams usually served at table. It hit every kind of taste bud and left it distinctly gratified. To say nothing of the company, of course, which was superb.

Still reclined upon a dozen damask pillows, Ori watched him eat. Shoulder-length hair of mousy, silken brown framed her wide face in shadows, outlining its every aspect and making them more specifically beautiful. Her short, delicate, perpetual pout blazed in the dimmed candlelight for all the berry juice that now acted like a cosmetic. It drew the curves of her lips right into a picture of what they could be doing: sipping spirits while negotiating with nobles; sneering sourly at the kitchen staff’s treatment; contorting in the sweetest agony while screaming inarticulates that perfectly described her complete abandon while Solas was buried hot and hard inside.

She’d had her fill she’d been filled to brimming and was now simply content satisfied; utterly satiated to just see him relish in a delicious meal.

Solas was sweating. Bad. Particularly at the collar. Clearing his throat, the man let the sudden, hazy lust clear from his head before trading a happy look with his beloved.

“Try the chilies,” suggested Ori. She was very tired now, and it left her voice trance-like.

Doing as she’d needingly begged asked, Solas could not truthfully say they were his favorite fare. The spice was nicely accented by the bitter chocolate, but the new, sharp, without-warning sweat he developed couldn’t be forgiven because he was already sweating terribly. Although a few buttons were let, it did not help his breathing. Solas felt suffocated: by the stifling heat of the chilies, his constricting clothes, and, most of all, Ori’s very naked legs bending at the knee, folding up, and then falling apart just enough to suggest the smallest glimpse of her…

Ah. The air clouded thickly with her woman’s aroma.

“I believe the fruit is starting to have an effect,” Solas noted hazily as he vaguely recalled something about it tasting ever sweeter. His mind immediately moved on to the idea of shoving his fingers between Ori’s legs until she squelched and squeezed around him.

Ori spoke without acknowledgement. “Still got chocolate on your hands.”

Solas’ previous theory that she wasn’t sleepy –just deliriously horny– found glorious affirmation. As soon as he started laving over his messy fingers, the Inquisitor’s gaze exploded. All of Ori’s face fell to expressionless distraction in her desire except those eyes; those burning, ardent eyes, which were pretty much pleading that he keep fucking going. Clearly she was boiling inside just as badly as he. As the pace of her breathing quickened, Solas made sure to crawlingly lick and lap in the crook where his fingers met. It was a sensitive spot; it did as much for him physically –little quick tickles firing towards his cock– as it did for her to just watch his tongue work, never mind the innuendo; the insinuation. My face buried between your legs until you break, vhenan: I beg for it. Within a few more mouthy strokes, Ori made a sad little cry, parted her legs farther, and her fingers found their own sodden mischief.

She threw her head back with elated gratification. Growling, Solas stood away from the bed, began hastily undressing, and watched the Inquisitor finger-fuck herself.

“The… the fruit was… Um— So…”

Panting, Ori played furiously at her clit in those rapid, tight circles that sent her careening towards an end, but still she retained her stubbornness and quaintly tried to speak. The sounds of her stroking through her own slick were heard poignantly and perfectly as her folds slapped wetly together. “So the fruit was laced, or what?”

Solas chuckled while finishing up with his shirt. Wriggling out of the sleeves, letting it flutter to the floor, he then turned to the adversary of his belt. “There is certain cuisine that will inspire sexual appetite. Fruit, nuts; a variety of vegetables. But this may simply be the suggestion of Celene’s note. “Solas stepped out of his pants and dove towards her. “Or that we are both easy.”

Ori giggled joyously as Solas, without preamble, dove for her. Flippantly tossing her legs farther apart, he came to a thorough hilt, and groaned for her soft, milking grip that cradled him in soaking euphoria and poured hot silver to fire through his veins. Finding the rush of his body only incensed, however –and hearing Ori mewling so pitifully beneath– he gave into solid, body-jarring pounding until he felt the boil within his stomach want to burst just as badly as his balls.

Thrusting along in uneven, violent, writhing tandem, Ori came quick with a holler that left her face beautifully contorted. Her cunt convulsed and clamped down as her hands grabbed around his back, pulling him closer and signaling that he was allowed to cum. Gasping and heaving far more than audibly, Solas followed up with his own orgasm which was short and bright and ended with him sweating and quietly laughing.

For all the relaxing inaction he was seeing while in Halamshiral, it was well that they were screwing so often or else Solas’ legs and back would have been aching. Instead, he felt slightly light-limbed, but waited to go again once Ori had caught her breath. In the interim, they both lay far apart, the huge bed accommodating more than enough room for each

“It was the fruit,” Ori insisted as soon as her jaw could make more than her familiar gasping purrs. “Definitely the fruit. We are not easy.”

After a skeptical snort, Solas affirmed her declaration with a slightly more affable “yes.” His hand crawled over and across the sheets, and his fingers twined and entangled with hers. “It was the fruit, vhenan.”

[caveartfair]

The Wild, Expansive World of Maurice Sendak’s Opera Sets

Maurice Sendak, Diorama of Moishe scrim and flower proscenium (Where the Wild Things Are), 1979-1983. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Graham Haber.

Maurice Sendak liked to say that he didn’t write for children; rather, he just wrote. “I do not believe I’ve ever written a children’s book, I don’t know how,” he said in a 2011 interview with the Tate, at age 82. He did, however, have a great reverence for children; he believed in the particular bits of knowledge that they alone possess. “The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood,” he said in the same interview, “the uniqueness that makes [children] see things that other people don’t see.”

Sendak often told the story of a young girl who witnessed the towers collapse on September 11th, then told her father that she had seen butterflies falling from them as they came down. Later, she admitted that she had lied to her parents so as not to upset them—she knew they weren’t butterflies, but people. The instinct to shield oneself from suffering by layering it with absurdity and beauty is often unique to children, but was Sendak’s most acute gift of all.

This sensibility is perhaps most apparent in the illustrator’s lesser-known career as an opera set and costume designer, as opera is an art in which all action is at once supremely beautiful and inextricably heartbreaking. Sendak designed about a dozen operas in his lifetime, and a show of nearly 150 objects, drawings, and paintings from them will be on view at the Morgan Library in New York from June 14th to October 6th.

Maurice Sendak, Study for Wild Things costume, with notes (Where the Wild Things Are), 1979. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy ofThe Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

By 1981, at age 53, Sendak was working on the sets of four different operas. His first two had been produced the previous year: A one-act adaptation of his beloved 1963 book Where the Wild Things Are began its run at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels in November and, two weeks earlier, his design for Mozart’s The Magic Flute, led by director Frank Corsaro, debuted at Houston Grand Opera in Texas.

One highlight at the Morgan is a watercolor and graphite study for the costume of Moishe, the beast from Where the Wild Things Are who was an avatar for Sendak himself. In the drawing, a young boy wears the costume, with Sendak’s hand-written notes detailing requirements like “Eyes must move!” (Early versions of these costumes were unsuccessful; performers reported being unable to breathe while wearing them, and one Wild Thing even fell off the stage due to a lack of peripheral vision.) Another treat is a depiction of the backdrop for the finale of The Magic Flute. In it, animals, mystical and otherwise, crowd the scene as the composition is split in half between night and day, a rainbow bridging the two.

Maurice Sendak, Design for Temple of the Sun, finale II (The Magic Flute), 1979-1980. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy ofThe Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Graham S. Haber.

Corsaro, who was already an established opera director at the time, admired Sendak’s range of ability, particularly after seeing his Brother’s Grimm illustrations. The Magic Flute was the perfect beginning to their professional relationship: It’s an opera that offsets vaudevillian absurdity and allegory with heavy, substantial undercurrents; and Sendak, unbeknownst to Corsaro at the time, was what one might call a Mozart super-fan. (Decades later, on PBS’s American Masters, he referred to Mozart as “a god I could really respect.”)

While Mozart reigned supreme for Sendak, he had strong associations with various composers. In a 1966 interview, he said he always worked with music playing. “All composers have different colors, as all artists do, and I pick up the right color from either Haydn or Mozart or Wagner while I’m working,” he explained. “And very often I will switch recordings endlessly until I get the right color or the right note or the right sound.”

Maurice Sendak, Design for show scrim (The Magic Flute), 1979-1980. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

In 1981, Sendak published Outside Over There, one of the only books he would publish during this period in which he was so dedicated to set design. It’s a dark story about a little girl named Ida whose infant sister is stolen by ladder-wielding goblins. Ida eventually distracts the goblins by playing her horn and saves her sister.

Maurice Sendak, Storyboard (The Love for Three Oranges), 1981-1982. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation, The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak, 2013. Photo by Janny Chiu.

Maurice Sendak, Design for March curtain, Act II (The Love for Three Oranges), 1981. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

Maurice Sendak, Storyboard (Where the Wild Things Are), 1979. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

Maurice Sendak, Design for show curtain (The Love for Three Oranges), 1981. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

Maurice Sendak, Scene design for Clara's bedroom (Nutcracker), 1982-1983. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

Maurice Sendak, Fantasy Sketch (Mozart, Der Schauspieldirektor) , 1987. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Collection of the Maurice Sendak Foundation. Digital image courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum. Photo by Graham S. Haber.

Sendak’s love for opera is deeply baked into Outside Over There, a book explicitly about the power of music; just as Tamino in The Magic Flute overcomes adversity by playing his flute, so does Ida play her horn. Sendak once said that when he wrote the book he was trying to write “an opera with pictures,” and Mozart even makes a cameo in it—Ida and her baby sister pass him composing in his cottage as they return home. (Mozart’s likeness also appears on a hot air balloon in The Magic Flute and on a bust above a cabinet in a set design for The Nutcracker.)

Maurice Sendak, Design for battle scene, Act I (Nutcracker), 1982-1983. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice SendakPhoto by Janny Chiu.

Mortality, too, is a presence in Sendak’s work, and one which cast inescapable shadow over him from a young age. On the very day of his Bar Mitzvah, in 1941, he found out that the entire father’s side of his family had been killed overseas in concentration camps. That trauma stuck with him and shines new light on his celebrated book, Into the Night Kitchen (1970), a tale in which the protagonist’s goal is to escape from an oven.

Sendak was also a sickly child, near-terminally so. In Where the Wild Things Are, which he conceived of while sitting shiva, it’s speculated that the white pajamas the protagonist Max wears reference an all-white outfit that Sendak’s grandmother once dressed him in as a young boy—she hoped that the Angel of Death would spare his life if he already looked like an angel. Max’s pajamas in turn went on to heavily inspire Sendak’s costumes in Cunning Little Vixen (1981), an opera he did with Corsaro, the plot of which takes place in a world of gaiety, with anthropomorphic foxes and badgers, all while leaning heavily into the rhythms of life and death. In a study on view at the Morgan, the vixen expounds a speech with her finger pointed up and her hand on her hip, recalling Max’s posture with uncanny likeness.

Maurice Sendak, Costume study for Fox Golden-Stripe (The Cunning Little Vixen), 1981. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

Among the motifs that overlap between Sendak’s books and set designs are symbols of nature. Sendak illustrated Where the Wild Things Are, a book centered around rich greenery, from his windowless studio in New York City, adding longing to the lushness of his scenes. Likewise, the trees in his set designs are rendered with such vigor and care, that they become the focal point of countless works in the Morgan show. When Sendak illustrated Randall-Jarrell’s book The Bat-Poet, the artist’s long-time friend, playwright Tony Kushner said of it, “I think, for Maurice, those drawings were just an excuse for him to draw beautiful trees.”

In fact, one of the first things Sendak did after finding success was move to suburban Connecticut, in a house surrounded by trees, where he remained from 1972 until his death. In an interview with Terry Gross of NPR in 2011, he spoke to the beauty of his home, and what it meant for him as he aged. “I’m not unhappy about becoming old. I’m not unhappy about what must be […] [I look] out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old,” he said. “And you see, I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music.”

Maurice Sendak, Study for stage set #10 (Where the Wild Things Are), 1979-1983. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum, bequest of Maurice Sendak. Photo by Janny Chiu.

When Sendak was hospitalized the next year, a trip from which he would not return, Kushner brought him a copy of the opera La Cinesi to listen to. La Cinesi had been written for Empress Maria Theresa, and Sendak loved it so much that he insisted the nurses refer to him as Your Royal Highness Princess Amalia, the name of one of the empress’ daughters. And that’s how it ended, humor and sadness all mixed up in the same aria.

from Artsy News

[abbyklinkenberg]

01 July 2017

I just finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for the second time. It's a hot day in Chicago and the edge of the circle of time is so sharp. 

I decided that I should try to see all 50 major museums here in Chicago before I leave, so yesterday I went out on the Brown line & transferred to the Red line in order to get to the Chicago station. There, I had a Potbelly sandwich and talked to Aidan for a little while before heading to the first museum: the Loyola University Art Museum, which turned out to be a very Catholic museum full of religious artifacts from the middle ages/Renaissance era, mostly. There were relics, the bones of saints, in some of the pieces--there were silver chalices from Germany in the 1700s and Roman keys from the first century BC and paintings by students of Caravaggio and stone apostles defaced during the Reformation. One of the hallways was full of self-portraits done by member of a poor community somewhere in Chicago, just pencil sketches that mostly looked as if they were done by children but were probably done by adults who never had the time or resources to fool around with artistic experiments. I tried to read all of the little museum information signs but at some point I got overwhelmed by the religious imagery and simply took it in aesthetically. There were two stained-glass windows done mostly in gray with bright yellow shading as the only color that I probably liked the best. A display of keys from the copper ones of the Roman empire through to the iron ones of the Middle Ages and steel ones of the Renaissance was also really striking. I like that they all did the same things but in slightly different ways, that they were all so neat and precise in their designs--one even had a club shape as the barrel of the key, or whatever it's called. It was really empty, I only saw maybe one or two other people apart from the staff (college-aged girls in blue shirts and black pants) who gossiped with one another while I walked through the museum. 

The Museum of Contemporary Art was only a block away, and was the real object of my day, so I went over there and paid the $8 entrance using my JNU student ID that expired last month. Lots of young people sat on the steps leading up to the entrance and the windows above were adorned with a giant tentacle motif in homage to the Murakami exhibition on the third floor. The first floor had two exhibitions, ETERNAL YOUTH and SMOKE, RISES or something; the first was nostalgic somehow, with magazine prints of Marky Mark and Kate Moss in Calvin Klein ads, an Instagram model blown up to be life-sized, and some other not-so-surprising or provocative looks at youth; it's not surprising anymore, to see kids wrecked by drugs or hiding behind masks or struggling with the trials of adolescence; we're so oversaturated with such content these days, it felt like a somewhat lazy exhibition--I did find some of the text pieces interesting, talking about the commodification of youth and how it's used as an empty promise and vague reason to buy something. 

The other, across the hall, was a series of basic sculptures involving 'other people' outside of the exhibition somehow, outside of the museum. Marble sculptures with shallow pools containing contact lenses of people who didn't know one another, SIM cards in cement blocks, manipulated window panes folded in strange shapes with cigarette buts or guitar strings attached to them. The most provocative one, to me, was a 'wall' with a square canvases on either side painted in the pattern of a shirt and a dress worn by a man and a woman who would occasionally come to the museum; the might meet, they might not; the canvases were put on parallel tracks that ran the length of the wall. And then a metal rod with a single earring through it--the other is presently worn by a woman somewhere in the world, which is the complementary part of the sculpture. The artist invites you to imagine the human elements that are contained in-part, yet that ultimately transcend, the museum space and sculpture itself. I found myself wanting more of that one, I felt that it was real art that provoked something in the viewer, a creative act that was the same and different every time. 

There was another gallery on that floor, tucked in the corner--a series of made-up constellations was on one wall, understandably meditating on the arbitrary yet meaningful nature of any constellation in the night sky that we have come to identify. The exhibit was named after some part of Moby Dick, 'the shallow level' or something like that. From Ahab's quotation about needing to strike through the mask, about how there is something beyond us that we can't quite access. Though the written explanation of the intention excited me tremendously, I found the art to be somewhat lacking, probably just because it's not to my taste. A painting that was overlaid with pink paint such that you can still kind-of see the stuff beneath (really obvious relevance, not profoundly interesting), a set of concrete blocks that looks solid from 3/4 sides but opens on the other, a map written over with a poem by the artist about metaphor and perception and imagining an analogous human example of reducing the world to a map, which I liked best, and some other things that didn't strike me particularly. 

Upstairs was an installation that I really hated with some computer-generated supermarket images of fruit and weird grocery store dollies and something about trying to make you feel like you're inside of a freezer with bags of fake ice and all that. Then things that look like paint cans but are actually meticulously crafted wooden sculptures of paint cans. The only part I liked, which was small, was built into the wall; a supposed massage parlor--you can see the entry with the sign, a stairway up to a door, and a back entrance, all in miniature, through holes in the wall. Playing the voyeur with nothing to see, sparking a curiosity that exists but can't exist there. 

On the third floor was the Murakami exhibition, which I didn't expect to love so much. The wall was covered in silver and electric pink, tentacles patterns and a stylized 'MURAKAMI.' Some of his beautiful early works with a traditional Japanese artistic technique that depicted turtles that seemed to have been made of condensed and reptilian mystery. A massive blue wall of many panels and absurdly deep blue pigments, an ornate stage setting with 2/1 at the top to celebrate the artist's birthday by making fun of that one guy who only made art that was the date written out on a canvas. More of those mocking types except the date and the canvas were painted the same color so it can hardly be distinguished. And then some rooms on Mr. DOB, his mouse-thing, that I liked sometimes but mostly didn't. Some explanation of his workshop technique making his larger pieces was also featured, but I wasn't too interested in seeing how the magic is made, but rather in the magic itself. His 'superflat' pieces were really compelling--flowers with faces covering an entire wall, for instance--and his aesthetic came back to me from his various famous collaborations with people in the 2000s, especially. None of that stuff was really my thing, but the rigorous detail impressed me. It started to get really exciting for me upon seeing Kanye's Graduation album cover in real life, in addition to a sculpture of the Kanye Bear and another painting from that time-period. A grandmother was trying to explain to her grandkids who Kanye West was--'a very famous rapper' and I found it funny. 

The room that made me feel the most, though, was a huge rectangular gallery with two massive sculptures of demons or something, red and blue, at the entrance and exit of the room, with some Murakami stained-glass windows behind them in a sort of religious allusion. The long walls were covered by two pieces--one was a white and blue dragon that didn't captivate me terribly much, but the other was a huge, intricate, and profoundly striking work of 100 monks of various sizes, stylized and detailed in the most precise and stunning manner. It was both grotesque and ascetic, simultaneously religious and irreverent. The size of everything was really moving to me. 

The final room displayed Murakami's most recent piece, done especially for the exhibition, entitled 'the octopus eats its own tentacle' or something like that. It's a reference to a Japanese saying that deals with cutting off an arm in order to grow a new one, with the recycling of the past and the coming of a circular future. That one was also beautiful, though I had been too impressed by the previous room to feel anything but a visual hangover as I pondered the equally beautiful scene. 

I left looking for a place to read and enjoy something to drink while listening to Vince Staples' new album, which I was inspired to hear because the museum is having him speak there later this month. I really liked what I heard and keep meaning to peruse it further. I ended up at a little French bistro where I had some happy-hour red wine that I had missed. Red wine was plentiful in Argentina, but I was very deprived of it in India, so it felt like a revelation. I read my book, talked to my sister and parents, and then ordered some muscles around sunset. They were gorgeous; I had smelled them from another table earlier in the evening and resolved to try them despite my ongoing attempts at vegetarianism (currently, I've decided to eat meat only one day per week). And it really was a beautiful day, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Solitude isn't necessarily that bad.