Saturday, November 29, 2014

A Pink Posada


I confess, I fiddled some color into this one.  Pink meant to indicate blood-thirstiness, yet also domestic setting of the somewhat dire events here.  I'm in Mexico for the fourth time this year: Posada, like Daumier, always relevant. 

Monday, November 17, 2014

Barber With Clippers

Detail from an (authentic?) West African barbershop sign I purchased a few years ago in the Mission.  At around that time, or a bit earlier, such signs, usually painted on masonite, had began showing up in trendy "shelter magazines," like Elle Decor---as part of a kind of cosmopolitan or "bohemian" Paul Bowles-in-Tangier interior decoration.  (Benito Cereno was never mentioned.)  I saw this one around then and jumped on the barber-shears bandwagon.   Now such signs seem to be "over"--or have at least receded into the background.

Interesting to know how these "3rd World" artifacts or "traditional" pieces of signage, cloth, costume, furnishings, etc. suddenly become First-World design tropes, then disappear almost as soon as they've arrived.  A similar bafflement: how it was that "Kantha-stitched" bedspreads, throws, pillows, etc suddenly appeared one day everywhere in upscale "lifestyle" catalogues like the Sundance Catalog.  Who started this particular import/export fad?  Mysterious East, etc.  These Kantha textiles are often very beautiful.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Real and Unreal People in Threes





"Three women" post of a few days ago got me thinking about threesomes--possibly the minimum number of actors needed to get a good narrative going?  Family unit?  Oedipus Complex?  Love triangle?  Mediated desire?   Graces?  Fates?

Tripods like to pretend they are stable, but they really aren't.



Cat Who Ate Canary in back.




Three Pierrots.





Three inhabitants of comet trail....

Sunday, November 2, 2014

San Diego Auto Court

When will my native place ever become picturesque?   Maybe it will start with something like this 1940s-50s motel.  Colors--really nice.  Little white rock borders--somewhat nice.  Postal stamp marks--freebie of dubious value.  But a Part of History.

Like the way how on the side of the first unit on the left the differently- sized windows look a bit like eyes with droopy orange eyelids.