About the Flaneur
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Kiki: Man Ray’s Dada Muse
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.Lee Miller: Surrealist Muse
Lee Miller traced a meteoric trajectory from flapper fashionista to surrealist muse. She played the Statue in Jean Cocteau's first movie. Picasso painted her portrait. She apprenticed with Man Ray and later became a noted war photographer for British Vogue. Read more.Miss Tic: Paris Street Art
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. Read more. See Ethics of Love for a video montage of Miss Tic's provacative poetry. More Paris Street Art.
The Lake and the River
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.
What is a village? A small place, yes, as wide as the world, layered with histories and stories, where you can walk wherever you want to go. My vision of that place is Yellow Springs 2.0.
Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Re-Imagining Accessibility
![Shepard Fairey’s “Barack Obama/Hope” image went viral during the 2008 election. Then controversy about the image’s source transformed it into the poster child for fair use in the public debate over copyright and free culture. Now FULAB takes “Hope” as its icon [Image source: Wikipedia]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/shepard_fairey_hope_2008.jpg "shepard_fairey_hope_2008")
Re-imagining accessibility through the transformations of culture -- particularly the transformative promise of accessible technology for people with disabilities -- is the work of the Fair Use Lab. What does Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster have to do with accessibility? Read more: Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]Blind Photographers
In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in New York, the social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it. Paul Strand probably didn’t give her much credit for making culture, either. Read more: Curiosity & The Blind Photographer [MiT5 2007] See more on blind photographers.BottomFeeder U.S.A.
![Grant Wood. Parson Weem’s’ Fable. 1939. Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth.. Steven Biel describes the painting: “Parson Weems, imitating Charles Willson Peale’s pose in The Artist in His Museum (1822), opens a red velvet curtain on the legendary scene: Augustine Washington, elegant in crimson coat, white ruffle, tan breeches, silver-buckled pumps, and green tricornered hat, grasps in his right hand the slim trunk of the bent cherry tree. A row of cherries dangles from the perfectly rounded treetop, mirroring the very cherry-like fringe of the Parson’s curtain. Augustine’s outstretched left palm and furrowed brow signal a serious inquiry. His son George, boyish in stature and dress—coatless, with sky-blue breeches and petite buckled pumps—is manly in his expression. In fact, his white-wigged head is that of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait and the dollar bill. He points with his right hand to the hatchet in his left. Wood chips lie in the circle of soil at the base of the tree, its lower trunk smoothly incised and poised to split off. In the background, a well-dressed slave couple harvests the fruit of a second tree.” [Alt Text Source: Common-Place/ http://www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-04/biel/ ]](http://www.bottomfeederusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px.jpg "grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px")
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Tag Archives: Art
Robert S. Duncanson: Blue Hole, Little Miami River
London Street Art Prepares for “The Thousands”
The blind flaneur needs to figure out how to get to London for this. via RJ Rushmore at Vandalog: The street art exhibition I announced last week finally has a name: The Thousands. It also has a special blog where … Continue reading
Tracey Emin: Those Who Suffer Love
The work takes on an existence of its own … Emin at the White Cube Gallery. Photograph: [Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images/Guardian] Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones reviews Those Who Suffer Love and concludes that Tracey Emin is far from … Continue reading
Tracey Emin & the Bad News Raccoons
What I like most about the BBC is the surrealism that surrounds listening to it in the middle of the night. My local public radio station broadcasts the BBC World Service in the wee hours. If I wake up then … Continue reading
Flaneur’s Gallery: Lady With An Ermine
Leonardo da Vinci. Lady with an Ermine (Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani). 1489-1490. Czartoryski Museum, Kraków. [Source: Wikimedia Comons] … Can sua picture La fa che par che ascolti e non favella. “’By his art he makes her look as if … Continue reading
100,000 Strolls In The Flaneur’s Gallery
Edgar Degas. Spartan Girls Provoking Boys. c.1860-62. National Gallery, London. Sometime last night this blog logged its 100,000th page view. By Internet standards that is a paltry number, but it pleases me in modest ways. Nothing of my making has … Continue reading
William Kurelek’s Canadian Art
Kurelek by William Pettigrew – NFB: (1967, 10 min 7 s) A documentary about the self-taught painter William Kurelek, told through his paintings. There are scenes of village life in the Ukraine and the early days of struggle on a … Continue reading
Louvre? Some Kind of Brothel, Right?
[Source: Nicolas de Crecy/NPR] What would archaeologists of the future imagine if they dug deep into the rubble of Paris and unearthed the treasures of the Louvre? That’s the concept behind a comic strip about the Louvre now on exhibit … Continue reading
Renoir’s Portrait of Alphonsine Fournaise
Pierre Auguste Renoir. Portrait of Alphonsine Fournaise. 1879. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. [Source: WebMuseum Paris] Alphonsine Fournaise was the woman in straw boater standing at the rail in the center of Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Alphonsine is the subtle … Continue reading
