Portrait by Remo Frangiosa |
Philly-Bob’s Free-for-All 2025One man's visual art, largely consisting of digital manipulations of images, taken from (1) my own photographs/videos, (2) downloaded from the Public Domain, (3) utilized under the Fair Use provision of copyright law or (4) uncopyrightable images produced by A.I. image generation. This page is designed old-style, for display on full-size computer, not on phones or tablets.Click on a pic to enlarge. May take several clicks to get full-size. |
There's basically two "jobs" that fill my diminished post-retirement life: one job is keeping up the art and writing of this web page and the other job is running an Arts zoom, where artists gather to show off their latest work.
The arts zoom, an online conference of a dozen or so artists, is know as the "Tuesday Digital Sharing." You can see a listing of the recorded zooms here, dating back to the COVID pandemic, when it began.
Some time in 2023 I started preparing a weekly "Art News" segment to contain the latest "news" from the Art World, based on a reading of 153 different art magazines provided by feedspot.com. But I found this frustrating because so much of that news had either a political agenda or a personal/influencer agenda.
Some weeks ago I limited the Art News to the obituaries of different artists who died during the week. While perhaps grim and macabre, this in some sense randomized the selection of stories and matched my own awareness of my own oncoming death.
Here is last week' Art News:
April 22, 2025 Artists who died recently:
Zurab Tsereteli was a Georgian known for his monumental sculptures.
Sarah Cunningham, 31
Sarah Cunningham was an English artist who was only recently discovered; she died in a mysterious subway accident.
I am beginning to collect these artist's obituaries on a separate web page, Vita Brevis, title taken from the Latin "Ars Longa, Vita Brevis" (Arts is long, life is short).
The work of doing the web page plus the weekly zoom add up to about a four-day unpaid week: Sunday to edit the video, Monday to do Art News, Tuesday to do the Zoom, and Wednesday to do Vita Brevis.
April 26, 2025
Still from the movie "Dogville," a theatrica film by Danish director Lars Van Trier. A fleeing beauty (Nicole Kidman) seeks shelter in a Depression-era small town, revealing the petty selfishness of its residents. The end: all the residents are murdered by her gangster father and the town is burned to the ground.
Used the neuralstyle.art digital filter on this, very diluted. Below: first, the original publicity photo; then the direct result of the filter. The style I used was called "Nubiola Portrait Miro" (left image), apparently based on this 1917 painting (right image) by Spanish artist Joan Miro.
SOURCES:
Publicity Photo
April 9, 2025
Long-time Maryland politician Martin O'Malley addresses protesters in Baltimore. The Trump/Musk regime's moves on tariffs and shutting down institutions have been so extreme that establishment politicians are speaking up.
SOURCES:
Photo by Bob Moore
April 8, 2025
Continuing my attempt to movie away from American streaming services and to explore European entertainment sources (from MUBI.COM), this is a still from a joint French and American film "Swallow" (2019), about the psychological breakdown of a rich, pregnant woman, played by Hailey Bennett. She comes down with the eating disorder pica.
SOURCES:
A publicity photo: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8372298/mediaviewer/rm2636296705/
March 31, 2025
Continuing my exploration of European streaming services, here (from MUBI.COM) is a still from a Ukrainian film "Butterfly Vision" (2022) about a female Ukrainian soldier's return to her family after a prisoner exchange. Here, she takes her first shower after her return and cooly examines the signs of rape and beatings by her Russian captors.
Also continuing my technical pondering: whether my intermediate image (bottom) is better than the final image in my technique (top).
SOURCES:
A publicity photo: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14867294/mediaviewer/rm589897473/
March 27, 2025
Philosopher Daniel Dennett, whose bald and bearded look resembles mine, died last year. I just finished reading his autobiography "I've Been Thinking". Two impressions: (1) how nicely life treats you when you're at the top of your field and (2) he and I are contemporaries and share many interests. I don't understand the philosophical fine points, but I think I understand many of the questions he asked on the Philosophy of Consciousness. We also share many places: the academic landscape of the American Northeast, a conference in New Mexico that we both attended, and M.I.T's impressive AI lab.
Turns out my 18-year-old grand neice is studying many of the same questions in college.
SOURCES:
A publicity photo: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2lVUvL3_gx4/UtNDiqENCxI/AAAAAAAAS20/
March 21, 2025
Continuing to seek non-American news and entertainment, a scene from a Danish movie on MUBI.COM: "The Girl with the Needle" shows a young woman holding a baby running through the streets of post-WW1 Copenhagen.
SOURCES:
A screen shot from the movie: https://mubi.com/en/us/films/the-girl-with-the-needle
March 16, 2025
I have resolved to turn away from American news and entertainment sources toward European and international sources as long as Trump is making America the unpredictable bully/pariah of the world. First, a replacement for Netflix/Amazon streaming services: MUBI.COM.
"Bird," the latest movie on MUBI.COM, tells the story of a significant week in the life of 12-year-old street-smart Bailey in hard-scrabble Kent County in England: her first period, her father's wedding, her chance meeting with a stranger with supernatural powers. Hectic story but happy ending.
SOURCES:
A publicity photo from the Movie
March 13, 2025
I have been stunned into guilty silence by the wrong-headed and destructive policies of the Trump/Musk administration. Four years of this? The heart sinks.
As I said on October 31, when I endorsed Harris, "Trump is enmeshed in the plans of Russian leader Vladimir Putin." Events since his inauguration have borne this out, including betrayal of American pledges to Ukraine and NATO, the U.S. voting with the Soviet bloc at the UN, and squabbles with allies Europe, Canada and Greenland.
All because Trump, a greedy real estate developer, has made some sort of deal with Putin and taken the Republican Party with him.
Distrust of Russia has been a constant all my life, from my father's accounts of Russian atrocities he knew of in World War II (the Katyn Forest Massacre) -- to the McCarthy hearings -- to the Cuban missile crisis -- to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 -- to Soviet warfare in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Even in my most leftist days during Vietnam, I thought the Russian state was clumsy and brutal, even though Russian kids loved rock and roll.
The depth of my disenchantment with Trump (and the American Tech Bros that put him in office) has led me to question my consumer choices. Here are two charts that describe how to switch to a more European, less American equipment setup.
Already, I'm reducing my Amazon orders and streaming from MUBI.COM instead of Netflix and Hulu.
SOURCES:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j2k8fg/breaking_free_from_american_big_tech_is_hard_so_i/#lightbox https://boycott-flyer.eu/
March 12, 2025
An AI image of a girl on a crackling surface, titled "Golden Fractures: Beauty in Brokenness" by American digital artist Jeff Doutes on DeviantArts (Link1). The image is superimposed on a photo of a new suburban development in Brazil (Link2).
The originals:
SOURCES:
Link1: https://www.deviantart.com/jeffdoute/art/Golden-Fractures-Beauty-in-Brokenness-1150527715 Link2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Suburbanhell/comments/1idgmj3/my_house
January 30, 2025
A news photo superimposed on a design downloaded from DeviantArt.(Link1)
New president Donald Trump's wife Melania at the inauguration, dressed in this austere nun-like outfit, one of her unhappy fashion choices. Like her coat emblazoned with the slogan "I really don't care. Do U?" when she went to visit refugees. Her dark Christmas decorations. Are we really going to have four more years of this loveless arrangement? The heart aches.
Not to speak of her husband's policy decisions....
The originals:
SOURCES:
Link1: tapestrycreate_a_handmade_tapestry_that_showcases__by_artworksstudio_diy8g2e.jpg
January 23, 2025
VIDEO: Clip from the 1920 silent movie "The Last of the Mohicans" (Link1) based on James Fenimore Cooper's novel of life on the American frontier during the French and Indian War.
MUSIC: Sonata Number 42 by Joseph Haydn from Arthur Loesser's 1967 record "Con Amore" (Link2)
Link1: https://archive.org/details/PublicdomainTheLastoftheMohicans Link2: https://archive.org/details/lp_con-amore_arthur-loesser-joseph-haydn-wolfgang-am
January 11, 2025
The originals:
SOURCES:
Link1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamir_(ship)#/media/File:Yasmina. Link2: https://editors.dexerto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/13/Miss-
Incidentally, the top pop song
of 2024 to my Motown-tuned
ear is "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus, a catchy anthem of female independence (for the rich, young, and physically attractive):
[Verse 1] We were good, we were gold Kinda dream that can't be sold We were right 'til we weren't Built a home and watched it burn [Pre-Chorus] Mm, I didn't wanna leave you, I didn't wanna lie Started to cry, but then remembered I [Chorus] I can buy myself flowers Write my name in the sand Talk to myself for hours Say things you don't understand I can take myself dancing And I can hold my own hand Yeah, I can love me better than you can [Post-Chorus] Can love me better, I can love me better, baby Can love me better, I can love me better, baby
December 28, 2024
Time to archive last year's page and start a new page for another year. This is a laborious, high-risk, unrewarding job, but the passage of years is the sole organizing principle of this would-be writer would-be artist's life.
Image is one of the last of the square-riggers, the four-masted German steel-hulled barque "Pamir", first launched in 1904. She was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn, in 1949. She sank in 1957 carrying a cargo of 3,780 tons of barley from Buenos Aires to Hamburg.
The font used is "History of Wawa" (Link1) by Indonesian type designer Syaf Rizal [Khurasan]. It does not refer to the Philadelphia convenience store of the same name.
SOURCES:
Link1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1hgzw0w/the_pamir_was_a_fourmasted_sailing_vessel Link2: https://www.dafont.com/history-of-wawa.font
December 24-26, 2024