Pauline's paint, photography, college 1961 "It's a Man's World". "Pauline Boty's Nightmare" is a restored clip from a Ken Russell documentary. Simple, scary and creepy in just the right amount for me. Love this!!! In "The Great Women Artists Podcast", Katy Hessel interviews Sue Tate, art historian and expert on Pauline Boty.

I've practiced martial arts for many years, but recently I have also been learning partner dancing in ballroom and West Coast Swing. I have watched many dance performances, but this rumba-- is pure magic. Slavik Krykyyvyy and Karina Smirnoff competed together and dated for years before separating for 9 years. When then reunited as dance partners, they made this showcase performance.  

Unskilled Worker aka Helen Downie painted this after the white supremacist racist violence in Charlottesville in 2017. ​

One day, I happened to find these in my mom's garage. A friend had left them there and gone back to Korea. I treasure them, and they inspire my paintings. 

His paintings feel close to me. I hope i can see his show in person one day. 

Today I came across this traditional Korean martial art for the first time. This was likely depicted in Kokuryo murals possibly originating in the Three Kingdoms period (over 2000 years ago). Song Duk Ki (1893-1987) kept this form alive as it was almost lost during Korean Independence. I continue to be touched by traditions that are almost lost but kept alive by the passionate devotion of an individual or a small group of people. This is the same feeling I have for the Korean folk art and embroidery that inspire my paintings and in my practice of Tai Chi as a martial art. It's the knowledge that these practices and objects are ancient, precious and carefully passed from one generation to another. I want to treasure them and make them alive.

You or Me (2005), Lady with Brain (1990-99), Self with Guinea Pig (2000)
Seeing her connection to Alice Neel, Dana Schutz and Jenny Saville. Then I think of De Kooning, Cecily Brown, then Francis Bacon. 

She calls it "...a love letter to Black Britain." It was commissioned for the National Portrait Gallery in London. The left is Jamaican palms, the right a map of where Sadie's from. In Katy Hessel's interview, Toyin says she'd most like to meet- Elizabeth Catlett, Frida and the writer of the Tale of Genji, the world's first novel. Toyin's- exploration of uncomfortable storytelling, full of possibility, can't be pinned down. 

A fascinating life and evolution as an artist. Makes me want to know a lot more about the Harlem Renaissance and how interconnected it was. 

I saw this on TV when I was a violin playing, church nerd elementary school child of Korean immigrants living in the suburbs of Long Island. It's Woody Allen as misfit turned criminal Virgil Starkwell in the mockumentary, Take the Money and Run. I've never forgotten how hard I laughed, and since then I have followed Woody Allen's career and life. Though I have not seen all 50 of his movies, he is one of the world's great filmmakers and makes among the most complex and interesting cinematic roles for women(E.g.Wonder Wheel).  

PS -- I am a Woody defender as he is the target of a calculated revenge using a brainwashed child. Mind bending reality surpasses fiction.​

I was looking for "3 Month Old Lung Patient" which is the painting she said she kept for herself. I could not find it, but I found: "The Dance of Life in Nhamacurra" and "Resting Embryo and Orange Moon" and "Little is Enough for Those in Love". ​

Fantastic interview with Alyce Mahon, curator of Leonor Fini: Theater of Desire exhibit. Also Tracey Bashkoff curator on Hilma af Klimt and Johanna Moorhead on Leonora Carrington. Much to discover in the Great Women Artists Podcast with Katy Hessel. If Katy asked me who I would most like to meet, I might say Leonor Fini.

Another YouTube gem. This reading has made me see Gauguin differently and Keanu too. Keanu says, "..for what we leave behind, for who we want to be... It is the most human thing." PS- Peter Doig's art is in the background which he acknowledges. CRUSH!!

The Artist Project from the Met has contemporary artists commenting on works in the collection. Mariko considers the bowing and nature of respect in the Japanese tea ceremony, seeing the unseen, and what it means universally for all beings.

The Guggenheim exhibit 2018-19 that blows everyone's mind and rewrites modern art-  "HIS story"

Doig says," I wanted this painting to be dreamlike." This painting was started eight years prior. I identify with what sounds like a kind of fermentation process and his feeling of geographical outsiderness/displacement. Love the sensitivity in this painting.

"Leonor Fini: Theater of Desire" was a phenomenal show in 2018. Thank you Museum of Sex curators.

"Don't compete. Don't compare. Don't complain, Don't explain." 

You give me courage. I look forward to your next novel.

Young Jean Lee is a fiercely experimental playwright. Here she is in a band! Her voice and stage presence are like an average person singing karaoke except that she is performing songs she has written. With sincerity, sly humor and devastation truth, she weaves story, performance, music, art and play into an offering of comfort for others who may suffer when facing loneliness, getting old, tragedy and death. I was mesmerized, entertained and truly comforted by the wisdom in these songs. The highlight is at 23 minutes in when Young Jean does a song based on her mother's grandmother's comments on aging. So dark and hysterically funny.

I continually question how artists can impact the world in a profound way. Today I came across an answer in Lily Yeh. Through an unexpected opportunity to transform an inner city lot, she went on to do the same in a massive dump site in Nairobi where 100,000 people live and then to build a Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. Seeing the memorial, people said, "When we see beauty, we see hope. Our loved ones can some home in honor and dignity." Lily explains that through art, we travel to the "dustless world" a sacred place of pristine beauty and poignant serenity." This is her Web site.  http://barefootartists.org/. There is a documentary on her called The Barefoot Artist. 

The Gwangju Biennale 2018 is showing 22 paintings from North Korea to the South Korean public for the first time through the extraordinary and courageous efforts of curator, B.G.Muhn, Georgetown Art professor and artist. My expectation of North Korean art was cartoonish social realism, but in these paintings changed my view completely.  I am struck by the expressiveness, the vibrant colors, rhythmic lyricism, playful sentimentality and sense of togetherness and humanity. I wish I knew what the poster behind the bus stop said that no one is noticing. The women around the laptop is a fascinating scene as is the way the pink and yellow fabrics are painted in contrast to the drab surroundings. My father was from Anju in North Korea. His family fled and became refugees in 1943 when he was 9 years-old. Seeing these images feels healing. Thank you B.G. Muhn for pioneering this connection to artists in North Korea. You have made a bridge so that we can see each other with more humanity.

"Special Lecture on Korean Paintings" by Oh Ju-seok is the best, most passionate and heartfelt writing on Korean paintings I have found since Dr. Zo Zayong. "A Hen Leading a Brood of Chickens"(middle painting), is one that Oh loves dearly. Surrounding are other works by Byeon Sang-byeok (1730-?) a late Joseon period artist nicknamed "Byeon the cat" because he excelled at painting cats and received the title "master hand" for his wonderful paintings of birds and animals. 

Today I ordered Ai Weiwei's book, Humanity. On August 4th, his studio in Beijing was demolished to pave the way for a shopping center. He has lived in Berlin since 2015. Here are some quotes from him book which compelled me to want to read it:
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"This problem has such a long history, a human history. We are all refugees somehow, somewhere, and at some moment."
"Allowing borders to determine your thinking is incompatible with the modern era."
"Art is about aesthetics, about morals, about our beliefs in humanity. Without that there is simply no art."
"I don't care what all people think. My work belongs to the people who have no voice."