Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper

The painting Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper, shows 4 personae late night in a New York downtown restaurant, in the decade of 1940. The limitation of perspective shows each figure totally independent from the others, therefore antecipating the contemporary hyperrealist style.

Seven-sided poem, by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, translated by Elizabeth Bishop

In the Seven-sided poem, Carlos Drummond de Andrade rhymed ironically mundo and Raimundo. When Elizabeth Bishop translated it, she associated faster and vaster, also a poor rhyme. That way, rhyme poverty brings humor to the original and its translation.

Xenakis, or The mathematics in music

Among the great contemporary composers, Xenakis was the most influenced by mathematics. Some said his computers were the real authors of the musical pieces. That’s wrong: Xenakis art is in his choice of themes, in how computers are programed.

Only happy when it rains, with Garbage

Garbage is one the best bands of the 90’s. They play alternative rock. Their strongest points are direct lyrics, dirty guitars and impacting vocalization. All musicians are ugly, and the cute singer does her best to look like them.

Prose poetry

The Modernist movement killed the meter and its verse laws. Then, we, the postmoderns, killed the rythm, its music. Nowadays, what we have is the poetry prose: texts without rythm, with visual or verbal images, namely fanopeia or logopeia.

Brian Epstein, the 5th Beatle

According to McCartney, the manager Brian Epstein was the 5th Beatle. He had a clearer overall view, since he was not actualy in the band. But he could present this view directly to the musicians and guide their work

Allegro non troppo, by Bruno Bozzetto

In the early years of the 20th century, two students cut the classes to to watch Allegro non troppo: one of us bloggers and a college colleague, very savvy, that knew it was a good movie. It was suprising and unforgettable: the movie was excellent, very creative. It was an afternoon session: mothers couldn’t take their eyes of the screen, while their children run between the cinema chairs…

Music pieces by Sibelius, Debussy and Stravinsky (among others) were so well associated to animations, that one could not believe the latter were created to be played along the former.

Camera lucida, by Roland Barthes

Barthes, a great theorist of photography interpretation, used studium to talk about the context of a photograph. And punctum to name its most remarkable element. The photograph of Napoleon’s brother started its theorization: this eyes have seen the Emperor!