Digital collage | poemimage

Category: Digital collage

August 10, 2015

You Send Me by Sam Cooke (& the Hamangian Cubists)

Although cubistic, these artworks pre-date Cubism (and Sam Cooke) by roughly 7,000 years. Hamangia culture is a Late Neolithic archaeological culture of Dobruja (Romania and Bulgaria) between the Danube and the Black Sea and Muntenia in the south.

Cubist image: Pablo Picasso, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), late Spring, 1910

You Send Me by Sam Cooke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNco-e2CXuo

PabloPicasso-Girl-with-Mandolin-Fanny-Tellier-1910

 I do not claim credit or copyright for original source material in this post.

6 Comments

August 8, 2015

If You Decide

We need to learn an almost extinct language I will study with you.

We need to live among the people whose language is almost lost I will join you and also learn traditional survival skills.

To leave me for the shaman I will drive a stake through his medicine box, realize my grave error instantly, and escape, although barely.

To beckon and summon, seducing me with whispers that reach into my blood, I will return.

I must stand trial for my crimes against love and magic, I will escape, again.

If you decide to hypnotize me while I sleep I will seal my heart against your vibrations and embrace the crazed dream of modernity. Because I am a fool. Weary of surviving on roots. Even the root of you. Even the root of me.

If you decide I must seal my heart against the sounds you once made I will throw the window open a final time, upon your murmur coursing & drenched in starlight, intersected by a highway carrying the disappeared.

If you decide to remain quiet I will train my ear to hear the sunlight falling.

If you decide it is my duty to dig out the wooden stake I will return in the dead of night speaking an extinct language.

Photo credit: Renee Perle, a Romanian Jewish girl who moved to Paris, is famous as the first muse of the famous French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), who is considered one of the leading photographers of the 20th century.

http://www.romanianculture.org/personalities/Renee_Perle.htm

10 Comments

March 26, 2015

aeroplane

Experiments at the Hadron Collider

were perhaps on my mind

as I digitally revised

the image of a crowd

observing an early flying machine.

various flights

The serendipity of the moment

was surprising.

I realized I wanted

to add text.

adventure-3

The first page I turned to,

in the first book I opened,

a paperback I bought for one dollar

many years ago

titled

Cinema in Revolution,

mentioned the word aeroplane

almost immediately.

new sky

‘Generally speaking the character of the local people helped us a lot.

They are very sensible.

Nothing surprises them; they continued about their business

without paying any attention to the camera.

They did all the market scenes themselves,

at our request,

perfectly calmly and amiably

and exactly as we wanted.

They are really excellent people.

orb 3

When we needed to collect a large number of them

together for the final scenes,

the aeroplane served as bait.

We offered them trips in the plane.

Well, as I say, nothing surprised them!

grey zone

They saw an aeroplane for the first time in their lives,

and they got into it as calmly as might be –

a man must not show that he is frightened of anything.

happening 3

As for the monks, the lamas, it was even more simple:

they said that all this had already existed long ago,

only men had not considered it useful,

so had forgotten it…

Pudovkin was very impressed by all this.

We made the film,

with a very strong feeling

for all its living material.’

structure 2

Interview recorded in Moscow (1965)

with

Anatoli Goloynya – Cinematographer,

Storm Over Asia.

tools

Page 149, Cinema in Revolution,

Hill and Wang, 1973.

Edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer

and Marcel Martin.

Translated by David Robinson.

in part

As a result of the Khrushchev cultural thaw

Russians were able to see the work

of the Soviet experimental filmmakers

for the first time

since they were suppressed

under Stalin.

spectacle

Director Vsevolod Pudovkin’s 1928 film

Storm Over Asia

can be found on YouTube.

escape2

In 1848,

an archaeological expedition working in Egypt

discovered hieroglyphs of flying machines

at an ancient temple in Abydos,

several hundred miles south of Cairo.

I do not claim copyright to the original image

of spectators & the flying machine

(photographer unknown).

I have revised the image to create a new work

for non-commercial purposes.

man in the moon

8 Comments

March 4, 2015

‘Mythological Visions of the Nature of Time’ (William Irwin Thompson)

In the post-Pleistocene period the glaciers retreated,

the seashore rose 300 feet,

the tundra turned to forest,

and the great herds disappeared

from Western Europe.

And gone with the animals

was the great ‘high culture’

of Ice Age humanity.

It is not hyperbole

to speak of the high culture

of these hunters and gatherers,

for cave paintings like Lascaux

are complex works that speak rather eloquently

for the abundant leisure

and rich cosmology

of their creators.

Primitive humanity devoted

most of its spare time

to matters of ritual and art.

As a contemplative people with time on their hands,

they gave much thought to menstruation and the moon,

observed nature,

constructed a calendar,

told stories,

and painted hundreds of thousands

of images

on the walls

of the caves.

As the Sistine Chapel expresses

the flowering of the culture

of the Renaissance,

so Lascaux expresses the flowering

of the culture

of the Magdalenians.

In more ways than one,

the two great murals have much in common,

for they are not mere decoration;

they are mythological visions

of the nature of time.

‘The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality & the Origins of Culture’ – William Irwin Thompson

11 with credit

12 Comments

February 15, 2015

Elevator

I read a quote by art critic Robert Hughes comparing painters: There is more death in a Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion…

Then I heard a song by an artist we saw in concert. Who spun magic, jewelled webs we fell into after chasing each other through twilight circumstance. Twilight and traffic.

The labyrinth ruled by Janus one level below.

The shadows jousting on the street didn’t remind me of your fingertips, or your January dancing, or your honeyed cake.

I didn’t make that joke in the elevator.

Carried, like some tragic Pieta, into the stream. The playing of a wooden flute sounding in the reeds. My hands flat against your skin. The temperature slipping.

dfaded

Forbidden music within your temple as quiet and still as polished stones. Awash in the fragrance of whispered moments. As shiny as a silver bracelet, a tunnel, a hook.

I’m not even sure I heard anything.

Did such music ever exist.

I’ve never wondered how my fine shoes, sewn of ancient parchment & soft as a silk purse, got so wet.

Nor have I contemplated Gustave Courbet’s

Trout.

Or the absence of all that is not

Trout.

detail fade

While gazing into the eye of the fish,

A future sun.

Credits for original images: The Trout by Gustave Courbet, 1873. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1958, based on the play by Tennessee Williams starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. Skyscraper and Tunnels by Italian Futurist painter Fortunato Depero, 1930. Pieta by Michelangelo.

I do not own the original images or claim copyright. I have created new images for non-commercial purposes of commentary under Fair Use provisions of copyright law.

8 Comments

February 4, 2015

& Walk

fish oils copy

Walk into this land of echoes, rising, from long disappeared passages &

old road

Pounding with the resonance of a single, surging heartbeat.

grey scale2

& Step lightly into, like a fox beneath the moon,

zeusian two

Or the hunting bird, balanced, upon a branch pulsing,

with bowl

& Heavy clouds damping electrical skies.

skyward 2

& Shaking berries into a bowl,

dusk bowl

Sharing handfuls bed to bed,

A nurse tending to the wound.

bowlbowl

The rhythm of & clapping hands,

hello again

Two Palms, pressing deeply & into a lover.

her again

& Feet upon a curving world, arcing night into day,

fish oils copy

Timelessly vanished into a pulsing desire & always

old road

Echoes dress the wound.

grey scale2

A heartbeat washing the sky &

zeusian two

A vanishing moon, poured into bowls & delivered bed to bed.

with bowl

& Walk pulsing,

skyward 2

& Walk always,

dusk bowl

& Walk into.

Source material for digital collage:

Etching No 2. Soft ground etching by German landscape painter and etcher Franz Joseph Manskirsch (1768-1830).

Ancient Egyptian tomb art. Unknown artist. est. 2000 B.C.

Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel, 1508-1512

Mesopotamian Incantation Bowl, 8th Century, photo Christies.

I do not claim copyright ownership of original images. I have created new images for non-commercial purposes of commentary or parody under fair use provisions of the copyright law.

6 Comments

December 23, 2014

Vincent in the Sky Above Bologna, 1493

A star hung in the sky just above

The brim of his straw hat.

He gazed upon a city.

I hope nobody mistakes me, he thought.

He gazed upon a medieval woodcut

On Christmas Eve.

I used Google Earth

To track the movements of the past,

Finding where the sky began…

I had to do this

Before unplugging

For a few days…

To contemplate what I might awaken

Soon, &

2015,

So soon upon us…

& In this season of celebration,

A star alighting upon Vincent,

Wishing you

A Happy New Year.

The woodcut, depicting Bologna, is by an unknown artist, 1493.

Self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh, 1887.

Bologna street scene from Google Earth, 2014.

I do not claim copyright of the original images.

I have recomposed original images to create a new non-commercial work

for purposes of parody or commentary

under fair use provisions

of the copyright law.

8 Comments

December 21, 2014

Solstice (with Van Gogh sunflowers)

and night solstice-with-sunflowers overlay2

panel a change panel a

panel a

10 Comments

December 19, 2014

A Bolt of Black Cloth

I imagined a colour the density of funeral bunting,

new 10

A bolt of black cloth,

a singed song

A sudden black waterfall quickly dropping six stories,

dales 17 new

Unrolled from a balcony,

dense nights

The beginning of a voyage,

fire lot

Negotiating darkness.

flaring

My father shopped at Dales for paper bags full of groceries,

parkinglot

I waited in the car listening to the radio,

people who know

I tried to describe a song called Eve of Destruction,

He looked at me in the rear-view mirror,

Columns of black smoke rose above the Pacific Ocean,

spark 2

Like poisonous vines,

the projector shining

Morse code blinking through the darkness,

waiting in the car 1

At night he came home as late as possible,

Then looking again into the rear-view mirror,

new 10

He repeated the name of the song,

‘Eve of Destruction.’

dales 17 new

I pictured a wooden bowl in my chest,

parkinglot

Smoothed and worn by water,

& Climbing the stairs into this language,

a ring

Gazed, longingly, into a rear-view mirror.

8 Comments

December 15, 2014

Patty Hearst in Hibernia

On April 15, 1974,

Patty Hearst,

A 19 year old university art student and heiress,

Kidnapped by revolutionaries,

& Suffering from

Stockholm Syndrome,

Appeared on camera,

Robbing the Hibernia Bank, (Sunset District Branch, San Francisco),

Alongside her new comrades.

Pulled into this place,

Across time & coincidence,

Into this name

Pursuing

Consciousness &

Thirst,

Into, possibly, a

Type of

Portal…

ph indelibly

In Rudolf Steiner’s slim volume ‘The Druids’

He discusses The Mysteries of Ancient Ireland,

& the Mystery Centres of Hibernia:

ph psychedelic gravel

It sounds strange today that an older humanity experienced sweet after-effects of sleep in the limbs, the arms, right down into the finger-tips and the other parts of the body. But the research of the science of the sprit shows that it was so; and the genius of language has retained something of this, though in a crude and materialistic form. A sleeping-draught was once something spiritual, that is, sleep itself, and it was only later that it became an actual liquid draught in a material form…

ph action

In modern initiation we ascend from our ordinary ideas to spirit-sight, but in those days, while ordinary human beings passed from their dreamlike life into sleep, for which they cultivated a consciousness and experienced this after-taste, the mystery priests had the ability to feel their way consciously into sleep and so learned what this after-taste implied…

Her thirst for

A draught of sleep,

A waking-dream of

Clouds or plants…

This was the consolation which the priests of the Mysteries could give their people in ancient days; they made them see that plants are not just beautiful but are permeated by the weaving of the spirit; that the clouds do not just sail through the air but that divine spiritual elemental beings are active in them, and so on. It was towards the spirit of nature that these initiates led the human beings who depended on them for guidance…