The Friday Evening Nudes

Woman in the Sun

Edward Hopper

Magritte

Discovery

Fernand Leger

The Bathers

Philip Pearlstein

Model on African Stool

Manet

Woman in Tub

William Merritt Chase
Modern Magdalen
1888

What's Goin' On

There's a lot goin' on! I'm assembling my info for the application packet for the graduate (fast-track) program I'm enrolling in. The first class starts on June 29. That means that I have one precious week after school ends and before I start attending M-TH, from 2:30-7:30 daily, with an hour plus round-trip commute. This ends on July 9.

In two weeks SG1 and The Beloved are graduating from college; cum laude and with thesis honors. Several activities are planned that weekend, which is Memorial Day weekend. The girls are moving into their tiny apartment on the Santa Barbara University campus mid-August. That is starting to settle in, though it's still hard for me to imagine my daughter living a continent away from me. She has applied for a AmeriCorp job which she is eagerly awaiting word about. The Beloved will have her graduate studies and stipend and SG1 hopefully will be working a job with benefits. AmeriCorps is perfect: offers benefits, money toward the cost of paying off student loans and a small stipend. We're really hoping she gets it. She would be perfect in that setting.

SG2 is home for the summer and will be starting her summer job this weekend at the supermarket. She's somewhat despondent about leaving Boston and all her friends. She's settled in very nicely this year and immensely looking forward to returning. This is cause for relief for me, her mother, because her first year was not her happiest. She and her high school boyfriend have parted ways for a few months now and she is seeing other boys, having fun and doing very well in school.

This summer SG1 and SG2 and I are going on vacation together to visit my mother in Portugal; not far from Lisbon. But before we do that, we're making a little stop. I'm splurging on three days and nights in Barcelona for us. I can't imagine the next time we'll have such an opportunity. The Beloved is flying home to Sacramento to spend her last summer with her family before she and SG1 resume their life as a couple. This is the perfect time for the three of us to do some bonding and funning together. Then we go relax with my mother and see the rest of my family and enjoy some hot Portuguese sun, some Atlantic Ocean and lots of great food.

These family trips to Portugal have tended to have sibling rivalry all over them in the past but we're going to try to behave as if that's not so. We three are older and wiser and hoping for the best. And I think we're all really going to try not to get on each other's nerves. (keeping fingers crossed). Speaking of the past. Here's a digital photo of a print (cuz I can't figure out this scanner and I just never get around to figuring it out) of us on vacation in Portugal in 92', I think it was. That flash is glare and the one making the goofy face is SG1, in her own little world.



I think I've accepted the fact that I have to get through this program in order to get out of the trap I'm in at work, which I can't discuss in very much detail here. Today was just awful. Every day that I have like this at work is just another indication of how I need to move on from there. It is simply just a bad fit between this workplace and me.

World and national politics have me burned out. I'm discouraged by the escalation of war. Instead of bringing the troops home from Iraq, we're gearing up big-time for Afghanistan and Iran. I didn't expect such hawkishness from this president. Go ahead and lecture me, if you need to. I know a lot of people feel that Obama is between a rock and a hard place. But you can't convince me war is justified. It very rarely is. It should be a last resort. I know it's ideaistic but it's my conscience and I'm listening to it.

What are you all doing for the summer, do you know yet?

Artist of the Week

Salvador Dali

1904-1989

Self-Portrait with Raphaelesque Neck
1921-22

“There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.” - Salvadore Dali

I've tried my best to place the images in order by date, whenever possible. I've been collecting Dali images on the web for many weeks now and what I've done is pull both my favorites as well as some lesser-known Dali paintings and sculpture.



Figure at the Window 1925

Bust of a Woman
1933

The Sign of Anguish
1932-36


below
Sculpture
(title & year unknown)

The Ship 1943


Forgotten Horizon
1936
(below)

(click to enlarge)
"Three Dancers" detail of Forgotten Horizon

I'll have you know that I've been saving this, my favorite Dali, for months now, to include in this post. It's one of my favorite nudes, so it was tempting to feature it on The Friday Evening Nudes. This is stunning to my eye and my imagination and I saw it, up-close and personal, at The Tate in 2005.

Scatalogical Object Functioning Symbolically
(The+Surrealist+Shoe)
1931

Shirley Temple the youngest Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time 1939

Lobster Telephone
1938
Painted metal,plaster,rubber and paper
(I saw this at The Tate)

Crucifixion or Corpus Hypercubicus
1954

Vivante
Living Still Life
1956


below:
title and year unknown

Gala Contemplating the Corpus Hypercubicus
1954

(Gala was Dali's wife, who died before him)

One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate
1944

(another one of my personal Dali favorites)

Fifty Abstract Paintings Which as Seen from Two Yards Change into Three Lenins Masquerading as Chinese and as Seen from Six Yards Appear as the Head of a Royal Bengal Tiger
1963
(yes, that's the entire title!)


"One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams."

Salvador Dali links

VirtualDali

Olga's Gallery

Salvador Dali Art Gallery

Webcoast's View on Salvador Dali

Dali Museum

Video clip of Dali interviewed by Mike Wallace
(worth viewing)

Music for Sunday: Cesária Évora

Happy Mother's Day to all you groovy mamas out there!

Cape Verde Islands, off the west coast of Africa. Portuguese melodics to african rythms. Cesária Évora, Cape Verde's international star singer.

Saudade (singular) or saudades (plural) (pronounced [sawˈdadɨ] in European Portuguese, [sawˈdadʒi] or [sawˈdadi] in Brazilian Portuguese and pronounced [sawˈdade] in Galician) is a Portuguese and Galician word for a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost.