Art – MAMsterdam

BUTCH by Meg Allen

September 23, 2014

Butch by Meg Allen Studio Couple by Meg Allen Studio

BUTCH by Meg Allen is a beautiful series of photos that portrays the butch culture in the San Francisco area. As she describes it herself:

“BUTCH is an environmental portraiture project and exploration of the butch aesthetic, identity and presentation of female masculinity as it stands in 2013-14. It is a celebration of those who dwell outside of the stringent social binary that separates the sexes and a glimpse into the private and often unseen spaces of people who exude their authentic sense of self”.

Family by Meg Allen Studio Tullius by Meg Allen Studio

Photography to me is a form of art and communication. I love it when I am inspired, surprised and amazed by portraits. And I love it even more when it opens my mind to something new. I was very touched and impressed by these women, who dare to be themselves and do not give in to what society expects a woman to look like. They are empowered and beautiful.

Meg Allen Studio - Butch Michelle by Meg Allen Studio

Please check out all these amazing images in full size, and many others at Meg Allen Studio.

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Art

The Favours of the Moon

February 14, 2014

The Favours of the Moon by Charles Baudelaire
Published 1869

THE MOON, who is caprice itself, looked through the window while you were sleeping in your cradle, and said to herself: ‘I like this child.’

And softly she decended her staircase of clouds and, noislessly, passed through the window-panes. Then she stretched herself out over you with the supple tenderness of a mother, and laid down her colors on your face. Ever since, the pupils of your eyes have remained green and your cheeks unusually pale. It was while comtemplating this vistor that your eyes became so strangely enlarged; and she clasped your neck so tenderly that you have retained for ever the desire to weep.

However, in the expansion of her joy, the Moon filled the whole room with phosphorescent vapour, like a luminous poison; and all the living light thought and said: ‘You shall suffer for ever the influence of my kiss. You shall be beautiful in my fashion. You shall love that which I love and that which loves me: water, clouds, silence and the night; the immense green sea; the formless and multiform streams; the place where you shall not be; the lover whom you shall not know; flowers of monstrous shape; perfumes that cause delirium; cats that shudder, swoon and curl up on pianos and groan like women, with a voice that is hoarse and gentle!

Dark half moon

‘And you shall be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtiers. You shall be the queen of all men that have green eyes, whose necks also I have clasped in my nocturnal caresses; of those who love the sea, the sea that is immense, tumultuous and green, the formless and multform streams, the place where they are not, the woman whom they do not know, sinister flowers that resemble the censers of a strange religion, perfumes that confound the will; and the savage and voluptuous animals which are the emblems of their dementia.’

And that, my dear, cursed, spoiled child, is why I am now lying at your feet, seeking in all your person the reflection of the formidable divinity, of the foreknowing godmother, the poisoning wet-nurse of all the lunatics.

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Art

Sonnet CXVI

October 18, 2009

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. “

~ William Shakespeare

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Art

The Lady of Shallot

December 4, 2008

♫ Tori Amos – Tear In Your Hand ♫

John Williams Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shallot is my all time favorite painting. When I went to London the last time, I simply had to go to Tate Britain so I could see the painting. I just stood there, staring at it for more than 15 minutes. It’s beautiful, enigmatic, melancholic… just how I like it. I like al of Waterhouse’s work, but this ones, if by far, my favorite.

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Art Personal

Being Human

September 10, 2008

♫ Eddie Vedder – Society ♫

The other day I was on my way home, sitting in the tram, and I overheard a conversation between a father and his son. The boy could not have been older than 8 years old. They just came out of a morning performance of an opera by Verdi. The boy was fascinated but he didn’t completely understand all that he had seen on stage.

The opera happened to be Othello, based on Shakespeare’s tragedy.The boy kept asking what exactly had happened between Othello, Desdemona, Iago, Cassio and Emilia. The more the father tried to explain, the mothe confused the boy became. It wasn’t the plot that left the boy consufed but the actions of human beigns, and why they acted this way.How can you explain to a child all the wickedness and manipulations human beigns are able to commit? It would be easy to tell him that the opera was just ficction but soon this boy will grow up and come across some of these human traits. Hopefully not in shakespearian proportions…

What always drew me to Shakespeare’s work is that his tragedies are human, driven by feelings. There is no will of a god at play. His fate is not a divine fate, but very earthly and human.

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Art People

Posthumous Woman

August 26, 2008

♫ The Mary Onettes – The Laughter ♫

If Nietzsche is the posthumous man, Lou Salome surely is the posthumous woman. Friend, pupil, lover, muse and an inspiration to many geniuses of her time, like Nietzsche, Paul Rée, Rilke, Wagner and Freud. She wrote books, poems and dedicated Escreveu livros, poemas e devoted her life to psychoanalysis. It was. Lou was the one whom Freud trusted the treatment of his own daughter. Here is one of her poems, which Nietzsche put to music: Hymn To Life.

Surely, a friend loves a friend the way
That I love you, enigmatic life —
Whether I rejoiced or wept with you,
Whether you gave me joy or pain.

I love you with all your harms;
And if you must destroy me,
I wrest myself from your arms,
As a friend tears himself away from a friend’s breast.

I embrace you with all my strength!
Let all your flames ignite me,
Let me in the ardor of the struggle
Probe your enigma ever deeper.

To live and think millennia!
Enclose me now in both your arms:
If you have no more joy to give me —
Well then—there still remains your pain.

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