Capes are back - winter 2011

I have noticed that capes are back in fashion, now you can see women wearing their ‎capes in winter and I must admit at the beginning it looked a bit strange although the ‎cape has it own charm.‎

Anyway it reminded me a beautiful painting by the 18th century French painter Jean ‎Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699 – 1779), Morning Toilette, c. 1740, oil on canvas, 49 ‎‎× 39 cm, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden.‎

In this painting you can see a mother and her daughter with their capes on. The scene ‎is taking place in a small room with a table and a mirror. The light in the painting is ‎coming from the left side with range of reds and pinks. The little girl cape is in pale ‎blue, the mother wear a black sheer cape. They share an intimate mother and ‎daughter moment with their elegant charming capes.‎
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My Tooth Extraction and Renaissance Art

Michaelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Tooth Extraction,1607-9, oil on canvas, 140×195 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy.

This painting describes exactly how I felt this week about my tooth extraction.
This procedure is soooo painful and made me stay in bed for a while and to think on tooth extraction in the renaissance art and that what I found out:
the painful gaze of the "victim" haven't changed.
thanks god all the other stuff like sterilization, tools and methods – have changed.
So here I am bringing you some paintings that describes the agony of the patient and the insistence of the so called dentist, enjoy :)

Gerrit Dou,The Extraction of Tooth, 1630-5, oil on wood, 32×26 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris, France.

Adriaen Jansz. Van Ostade, Barber Extracting of Tooth, 1630-35, oil on wood, 34×41 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria


Gerrit van Honthorst, The Dentist, 1622, oil on canvas,147×219 cm Louvre Museum, Paris, France.

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

Another novel by Murakami, which is my favorite writer, that doesn't really ends...
This novel published in 2004 and I have just read it. The book is divided by the hours of one night, which takes place in Tokyo.
The main characters are Mari, a 19 years old student who seating in a diner and reading a book. The second one is Takahashi a trombone player in a jazz band who recognizing Mari as Eri's sister, which is at their parents home sleeping....
Takahashi and Mari are spending some time together and letting know each other.
Mari is studying Chinese and that information is passed by Takahashi to his friend, which retired from the female boxing world and now manages a Love Hotel. That special lady comes to the diner to Mari after a Chinese prostitute has been beaten inside the hotel room.
The reality of the story is very mixed with the dream world, the line between what is here and now is fading very fast...

Haruki Murakami – Underground

I have read it last year and I enjoyed it. The book is about the terror attack that took ‎place on March 1995 by the Aum - Shinrikyo members which released Sarin in the ‎Tokyo subway trains, killing and seriously injuring. Some estimates claim as many as ‎‎5,000 people were injured by the Sarin attack. ‎

Well the story is sad and terrified, but the book is well written, Murakami succeeded, ‎in my opinion, to catch the story of both the victims and the cult of Shoko Asahara.‎
When I have started the book I automatically thought that Murakami will describe the ‎story mostly from the victims eyes, but he chose in a manner that will represent the ‎story from the whole, I mean as close to the people that were involve with it.‎

So in a few words I really recommend on this book and if you are a student of ‎Japanese culture I think it will be very interesting for you, because Murakami writes a ‎lot on the aspects of Japanese culture and disscuss on their ways of dealing with such ‎a terror by Japanese in Japan. ‎
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Thought of the day

Another day of art thoughts.... what's that?? I'm not really sure, but I think that means ‎that I have worked today on too many things that aren't connected with art. ‎
Unfortunately I've postponed my curatorial project of the day:) in order to make some ‎urgent office work:) how's that happened to me? that's what I've asked myself today ‎and shockingly I'm not really sure or maybe that's the so close but yet sooo far ‎syndrome, you know that feeling that you're given the opportunity you've waited for ‎so long and than when you get it you're stuck, because you're so afraid of loosing ‎your one time opportunity!!! or maybe that's PREFECIONISM.‎

Well today was my last day as an office worker, for me, my boss don't know that ‎yet:) and tomorrow will be my first day as a project manager, that means that ‎tomorrow I'm going to show my boss that I can do much more and also my ‎presentation, so he would also see my potential:) ‎
and maybe I'm too influenced by those Robin Sharma books....‎