Support Freedom in Iran & Gene Sharp

Green is the symbolic color of Islam and the color that the pro-
Mousavi movement has adopted

A fellow blogger from Portugal who runs the blog Oeiras and Environs Daily and occasionally comments here, alerted me to a blog movement tomorrow on behalf of the people of Iran whose struggle for freedom has caught the world's attention. It seems that a member of the international blogging community is missing and many are concerned about this individual's whereabouts and safety. Here is the URL for that blog: http://tehranlive.org/, which JM has recently left in blog comments.

In solidarity with the people of Iran: I support you in your fight for democracy, freedom and human rights. Fight on.

Here you can read an article about a man named Gene Sharp, whom you may never have heard of, but whose book "From Dictatorship to Democracy" is rumored to have helped topple several dictatorships, including that of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, through its almost 200 hundred non-violent strategies; some of which have already been adopted by the student movement in Iran. If you're interested in non-violent protest, you'll really like reading this article.

There is some lively political discussion of the situation in Iran at the site of my Iranian blog bud Homeyra. You can read her at Forever Under Construction.

The Friday Evening Nudes (the late edition)

NOTE:
Whoops. I thought late last night that it was Friday. When school ends, I tend to lose track of what day it is! Whether you saw the post on Thursday or Friday, I hope you enjoy(ed) it!

Picasso
Seated Nute

(Click this one for a nicer view)
Emile Bernard
Bathers With Red Cow
1887

(See my Artist of the Week post on Emile Bernard)

Paul Delvaux
Proposition Diurne (La femme au miroir)
1937

(click this one for a nicer view)
Max Ernest
Woman, Old Man and Flower
1924

Rene Magritte

Marsden Hartley

(click this one for a better view)
Karl Schmidt Rottluff
Rote Düne (Red Dune)
detail
1913

Summer Solstice at Stonehenge

Sticky Note

Check out my Artist of the Week post on the work of Emile Bernard,

scroll down or click here.


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Aerialist Ninette Paloma performs in the Cosmic Splash inflatable float during the 2009 Santa Barbara Solstice Parade. (Kevin Steele photo / kevsteele.com/solstice)



The day of the Summer Solstice has come and gone and two days later, it is either raining or gray. I haven't felt terribly celebratory, either. Extra responsibilities don't agree with me occasionally and right now is such a spell. So I lived the solstice virtually and vicariously the other night by looking at these images. Experienced solstice via the internet. Some pagan, huh?.

They are spectacular images, though. Take a look and a listen.

Summer Solstice at Stonehenge

They had so much fun on Solstice in Santa Barbara but their merriment didn't stretch far enough across the country to affect our wet and gray weather. It's been so many days since we've seen a decent face on the sun that today it actually made me drag myself around like a sack of rocks.

Artist of the Week - Émile Bernard

Émile Bernard
by Toulouse-Latrec

Émile Henri Bernard (April 28, 1868 – April 16, 1941) is best known as a Post-Impressionist painter who maintained close relations to Van Gogh and Gauguin and, at a later time, to Cézanne.read more of this article here


French painter who is sometimes credited with founding Cloisonnism (see Pont-Aven school; Synthetism). He was noted for his friendships with such artists as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, and Paul Cézanne.

My apologies, for these are quite out of order by date. In some cases I don't know the date assigned to a painting and with others, I'm afraid to mess with their placement on the blogger layout which is notorious for giving me trouble.

Self-portrait with portrait of Paul Gauguin
1888.


In the same year, Gaugin painted this counterpiece

click this one for larger viewing size

Breton Women

Breton Women
(Van Gogh's version, after Bernard)

below:

Iron Bridges at Asnières
1887

Brother Scene
(for Vincent)

The Artist's Grandmother

Breton Peasants

click this one for larger viewing size

Apres le bain, les nymphes
1908

click this one for a bigger viewing size

Madeleine au Bois d'Amour
(Madeleine was the artist's sister. This painted when he was merely 2o years old)

The Harem

Breton Woman and Haystacks

Still Life with Flowers