Should you care to read on Gerhard Richter, I did put a few thoughts down on the subject. For those of you in Paris, his retrospective opens tomorrow at the Fondation Vuitton.
thepaperdrop.substack.com/p/on-gerhard...

In 1975, Richter depicted the duo Gilbert and George from a series of multiple exposure photographs of the artists. The works achieved a striking sense of motion and atmospheric blur, challenging the belief that such effects could be obtained from oil on canvas.

Raúl Zurita, translated by Anna Deeny

Jean Tinguely & Eugène lonesco, Drawing made with a Meta-matic (1959)

Erika Meitner

I wrote some reflections on Verdi’s Aida and Shirin Neshat’s political remaking of the opera that you can read here bit.ly/4nT2UVs on The Paper Drop ➰

Some thoughts I've written on ‘Alberto Giacometti and the Existentialists’ that you can read here
thepaperdrop.substack.com/p/alberto-gi...

“Someday our bodies will no longer matter,
and we will leave them in our sleep, to travel easily.”➰

“Have you ever seen anything in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon…”
- The Sun by Mary Oliver

#FromtheNotebook ✨

O body o summer, naked, burnt
Eaten away by oil and salt
Body of rock and shudder of the heart
Great ruffling wind in the osier hair
Beneath of basil above the curly pubic mound
Full of stars and pine needles
Body, deep vessel of the day!
-Odysseus Elytis, Body of Summer
Tr. E. Keeley & P. Sherrard

"Profuse light; splendour. Summer asserts itself and compels every soul to happiness."
- André Gide, Journal (1943)

#SummerWriting

In the recent Matisse–Marguerite show, one work held me: Marguerite with a Black Cat. Exhibited from Berlin Secession 1910 to the Armory Show 1913, it remained with Matisse until his death. On International Cat Day, what better tribute than to recall the cat in the portrait? It’s a famous #cat. 🐈‍⬛

In Antonello da Messina’s Crucifixion
Painting, I am the one on the right.
I am hanging like that,
My back is arched like that,
I am facing the real God,
I am unknown and will be forgotten,
But I am there, too, and my body is
Open to all the pain of life.
— Preservation, Sylvie Baugartel #Ekphrasis

I could underline every line, there isn’t a sentence I wouldn’t keep. ➰ #books

I’ve recently returned to the work of Giovanni Battista Moroni, but it’s this detail from his Portrait of Alessandro Vitoria that continues to haunt me: an image of distilled precision, where a quiet dialogue between maker and medium seems to unfold.

#arthistory

“… I can talk plainly to you, you little blue flower of the Spring!”
- To A Blue Flower, John Shaw Neilson

For a first post, a flower by Baud Postma. Beauty in restraint. ✨