what do you believe in?

This morning I came upon a Jacksgap video.
He is great, definitely inspiring character :D

Hope you enjoy it

I believe in me
I believe in you

true detective

yes finally the new season has arrived; I am looking forward to it. With all the respects a recap of season one:

enjoy

underneath the beech tree

Güneşte çimenlere uzanmışsınız. Üstünüzde bir kayın ağacı. Hafif bir rüzgâr ince dalları sallıyor, yaprakları kıpırdatıyor. Uzaktan yaprakların bu sabit hareketi, ağacın yeşil fonunun önünde yeşil bir kar yağıyormuş hissini veriyor, tıpkı bir zamanlar gri sinema perdesi önünde gümüşi bir kar yağıyormuş hissine kapıldığımız gibi.

Yarı kapalı gözlerle yukarı bakıyorsunuz. Yarı kapalı çünkü dikkatle bakıyorsunuz. Bir dal diğerlerinden daha uzun. Üzerindeki yaprakları saymak olanaksız. Bu yaprakların hem arasında hem çevresinde gördüğünüz mavi gökyüzü, kelimelerin harflerinin arasından görünen kâğıdın beyazlığına benziyor. Gök fonunun önünde gördüğünüz yaprakların dağılımı hiç de gelişigüzele benzemiyor. Acaba bu yaprakların sıralanışı bir kitaptaki harflerin ve kelimelerin sıralanışı gibi açıklanabilir mi diye düşündüğünüzü fark ediyorsunuz. Sonra tıpkı iyi bir öğretmen gibi, karışık kafanızı yönlendiren bir imge keşfediyorsunuz. Her şey –diyorsunuz kendi kendinize– varolabilmek için bir hedefi tam ortasından vurmalı; on ikiyi ıskalayan hiçbir şey varolamıyor. Ama öğretmen sınıftan çıktıktan sonra, sözleri genellikle hayal kırıklığı yaratır. O yüzden orada öylece kalıp, başınızın üstündeki dalın nasıl olup da tüm baharı temsil edebileceğini anlamaya çalışıyorsunuz... Böyle düşünerek filozof olabilirsiniz, ama ressam olabileceğinizi sanmıyorum.

Uzanmışsınız, başınızın altında dikkatle katlanmış bir ceket var. Ağacın boyunun en az yirmi metre olduğunu hesaplıyorsunuz. Hiç tomurcuk var mı? Başınızı uzatıp bakınıyorsunuz. Hiç kalmamış. Mevsim sizin oralara göre bir on beş gün daha ileri olmalı. Daha alçak bir bölge, hem yüksek yaylalar tarafından da korunuyor. Dikkat çekmeyen çiçekleri görebilir miyim diye bakıyorsunuz sonra. Dal çok yüksekte, ışık da çok parlak. Kıtlıklar sırasında insanların kayın meyvesi yediğini hatırlıyorsunuz. Ne de olsa kayın kestane ile aynı aileden; domuzlar da sonbaharları kayın ormanına girer. Ama domuzlar ne olsa yer zaten. Gözleriniz dal boyunca ilerliyor. Dalın şekli bir atın arka bacağının yandan görünüşüne benziyor. Uykunuz geliyor, ama başınızı kaldırıp bu dalın üzerinden bir ip attığınızı hayal ediyorsunuz. Artık düşünmüyorsunuz, dalıyorsunuz, gözleriniz neredeyse kapalı. Ama avuçlarınız ve diz altlarınız, çocukken tırmandığınız böyle eğri büğrü dalların anısıyla geriliyor. Ağacın parçalarına şu ya da bu yolla hükmedebilirsiniz... Ama resim yaparak değil.

Tembel tembel, arada bir gözlerinizi kapatıyorsunuz. Yaprakların oluşturduğu şekil, sönüp gitmeden önce, bir an için retinanıza nakşedilmiş halde kalıyor, ama kıpkırmızı, koyu rododendron renginde. Gözlerinizi tekrar açtığınızda ise ışık o kadar parlak ki, dalga dalga üzerinize geldiği hissine kapılıyorsunuz; çimenlerin üzerinde ne kadar küçük bir ada olduğunuzu hatırlıyorsunuz. Etrafınızda oynayan çocukların farkındasınız, ve izleyemeyeceğiniz kadar hızlı –ama sonradan hatırlayacağınız– bir çağrışımla, bir ağaçta ne kadar çok kuşun saklanabileceğini düşünüyorsunuz. Alacakaranlıkta bir insan yaklaştığında bir tek ağaçtan kırk elli sığırcık havalanıp gökyüzünde bir tur daha atarlar; ansızın açılıp sonra tekrar kapanan bir yelpazenin üzerindeki kuş resimleri gibi. Ağaç hayal edilmiş ve hatırlanan olaylarla doludur. Ama sizin için ağaç, her şeyin ötesinde, zaman içinde varolur; büyüklüğü, yeşilliği, onu eken adamın ve aynı derecede onun kesilmesini emreden adamın akıl yürütmeleri, hepsi size bu gerçeği hatırlatıyor. Ansızın gökyüzünün maviliğinin tekdüze olmadığını fark ediyorsunuz. Orada, ağacın üstünde daha uçuk mavi bir şerit var, üst kısmında farklı yönlere çatallanıyor. Aslında o da bir ağaç gibi diyorsunuz kendi kendinize. Sonra onun bir aslan kafasına dönüşmesini izliyorsunuz. Gözlerinizi kullanıyorsunuz; bir şair gibi belki, ama bir ressam gibi değil.

Orada yatıyorsunuz. Çimenin kokusunu alıyorsunuz. Güneşin sıcaklığının her zamankinden çok farkındasınız. Dünyanın yüzeyine yayılmış olduğunuz ve dünyanın eğimini vücudunuzda hissedebildiğiniz duygusuna kapılıyorsunuz. Ağaca ait hiçbir şey sizi şaşırtmıyor. Bir oyuncunun seyircilere bakması gibi bakıyorsunuz ona. Ya oyun? Kolunuz bir başkasının beline sarılı; bir el saçlarınızı okşuyor. Herhangi biri olabilirsiniz, ama o an ağacı bir sevgilinin göreceği gibi görüyorsunuz. Ağaç ikiniz için de bir yeri gösteren bir X işareti.

Bakmıyorsunuz. İlle de gözlerinizi kullanacaksanız, yatıyor olmanın anlamı ne? Yarım kulakla rüzgârı dinliyorsunuz. Yaprakların sesi karıştırılan kum sesine benziyor. Uyandığınızda yorgun gözlerle yukarı bakıyorsunuz. Beyaz ve toprakla karışmış yeşil, mavi, yeşil görüyorsunuz. Yeşil, mavideki tüm sarı izlerini silmiş. Bu kesin. Başka her şey karışık. Fazla yoğunlaşmadan, sanki ellerinizi kullanıyormuş gibi, gördüklerinizi ayıklıyorsunuz. Hangi sapı hangisinin yanına koyacağını kesinlikle bilen bir çiçekçi gibi, yeşillik kümelerini birbirinden ayırmayı, her birini kendi dalına, uzay içindeki kendi yerine yerleştirmeyi öğreniyorsunuz. Dalların açılarını sınıyorsunuz, bir matematikçi gibi değil, bir terzi gibi. O ağacı küçültmek, elle tutulur bir boya ve basitliğe indirgemek için elinizden geleni yapıyorsunuz. Tekrar gözlerinizi kapatıyorsunuz. Ama bu kez yoğunlaşıyorsunuz. Kendi resminizi düşünüyorsunuz. Böyle bir ağacı içerebilmek için kendini nasıl değiştirip adapte edebilir? Böyle bir ağacı nasıl yerli yerine oturtabilir? Giderek ağacın resminizde nasıl belireceğini hayal edebiliyorsunuz. Ancak resim henüz, parmaklarınızla yaptığınız, kilisenin çan kulesiyle rahibi simgeleyen bir işaretten fazla bir şey değil. Ama siz ormancı değilsiniz ki? Ağaçları taşıyıp deviremezsiniz. Tohumlarını alıp toprağınıza da ekemezsiniz. Gözlerinizi açıp gerçek ağaca baktığınızda, onu hayal ettiğiniz resmedilmiş ağaca benzetmek için elinizden geleni yapıyorsunuz.


Ama başaramıyorsunuz. Ağaç orada öylece göğe yükseliyor. Onu tekrar küçültüyorsunuz. Gözlerinizi tekrar kapatın. Resminize ait olan ağacı uyarlayın. Gözlerinizi açıp kontrol edin. Daha yakın, ama kayın hâlâ tepenizde dikilmiş titreşiyor. Tekrar ve tekrar. Böylece hava kararana kadar yatabilir... ve ressam olabilirsiniz.

john berger

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (English: The Luncheon on the Grass)

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (English: The Luncheon on the Grass) – originally titled Le Bain (The Bath) – is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet created in 1862 and 1863. The painting depicts a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting. Rejected by the Salon jury of 1863, Manet seized the opportunity to exhibit this and two other paintings in the 1863 Salon des Refusés where the painting sparked public notoriety and controversy. The piece is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. A smaller, earlier version can be seen at the Courtauld Gallery, London.


The painting features a nude woman casually lunching with two fully dressed men. Her body is starkly lit and she stares directly at the viewer. The two men, dressed as young dandies, seem to be engaged in conversation, ignoring the woman. In front of them, the woman's clothes, a basket of fruit, and a round loaf of bread are displayed, as in a still life. In the background a lightly clad woman bathes in a stream. Too large in comparison with the figures in the foreground, she seems to float above them. The roughly painted background lacks depth – giving the viewer the impression that the scene is not taking place outdoors, but in a studio. This impression is reinforced by the use of broad "photographic" light, which casts almost no shadows. The man on the right wears a flat hat with a tassel, of a kind normally worn indoors.

Despite the mundane subject, Manet deliberately chose a large canvas size, measuring 208 x 264 cm, normally reserved for historical, religious, and mythological subjects. The style of the painting breaks with the academic traditions of the time. He did not try to hide the brush strokes; the painting even looks unfinished in some parts of the scene. The nude is also starkly different from the smooth, flawless figures of Cabanel or Ingres.

A nude woman casually lunching with fully dressed men was an affront to audiences' sense of propriety, though Émile Zola, a contemporary of Manet's, argued that this was not uncommon in paintings found in the Louvre; he also felt that such a reaction came from viewing art differently than "analytic" painters like Manet, who use a painting's subject as a pretext to paint.

There is much that we still do not know about the painting such as when he actually began painting it, exactly how he got the idea, and how and what sort of preparation works he did. Though Manet had claimed this piece was once valued at 25,000 Francs in 1871, it actually remained in his possession until 1878 when Jules Faure, opera-singer and collector, bought it for just 2,600 Francs.

The figures of this painting are a testament to how deeply connected Manet was to Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Some assume that the landscape of the painting is meant to be Ile Saint-Oeuen, which was just up the Seine from Gennevilliers, where his family property was. Manet often used real models and people he knew as reference during his creation process. The female nude is clearly thought to be Victorine Meurent, the woman who became his favorite and frequently portrayed model, that later was the subject of Olympia. The male figure on the right was based on a combination of his two brothers, Eugène and Gustave Manet. The other man is based on his brother-in-law and Dutch sculptor named Ferdinand Leenhoff. Nancy Locke referred to this scene as Manet’s family portrait.

What many critics find shocking about this painting is the interaction, or lack thereof, between the three main subjects in the foreground and the woman bathing in the background. There are many contrasting qualities to the painting that juxtapose and distance the female nude from the other two male subjects. For example, the feminine versus the masculine, the naked versus the clothed, and the white color palette versus the dark color palette creates a clear social difference between the men and the woman. Additionally, viewers are intrigued by the questions raised by the gaze of the nude woman. It is indeterminable whether she is challenging or accepting the viewer, looking past the viewer, engaging the viewer, or even looking at the viewer at all. This encounter identifies the gaze as a figure of the painting itself, as well as the figure object of the woman’s gaze.

"Commentary of Émile Zola
The Luncheon on the Grass is the greatest work of Édouard Manet, one in which he realizes the dream of all painters: to place figures of natural grandeur in a landscape. We know the power with which he vanquished this difficulty. There are some leaves, some tree trunks, and, in the background, a river in which a chemise-wearing woman bathes; in the foreground, two young men are seated across from a second woman who has just exited the water and who dries her naked skin in the open air. This nude woman has scandalized the public, who see only her in the canvas. My God! What indecency: a woman without the slightest covering between two clothed men! That has never been seen. And this belief is a gross error, for in the Louvre there are more than fifty paintings in which are found mixes of persons clothed and nude. But no one goes to the Louvre to be scandalized. The crowd has kept itself moreover from judging The Luncheon on the Grass like a veritable work of art should be judged; they see in it only some people who are having a picnic, finishing bathing, and they believed that the artist had placed an obscene intent in the disposition of the subject, while the artist had simply sought to obtain vibrant oppositions and a straightforward audience. Painters, especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not have this preoccupation with the subject which torments the crowd above all; the subject, for them, is merely a pretext to paint, while for the crowd, the subject alone exists. Thus, assuredly, the nude woman of The Luncheon on the Grass is only there to furnish the artist the occasion to paint a bit of flesh. That which must be seen in the painting is not a luncheon on the grass; it is the entire landscape, with its vigors and its finesses, with its foregrounds so large, so solid, and its backgrounds of a light delicateness; it is this firm modeled flesh under great spots of light, these tissues supple and strong, and particularly this delicious silhouette of a woman wearing a chemise who makes, in the background, an adorable dapple of white in the milieu of green leaves. It is, in short, this vast ensemble, full of atmosphere, this corner of nature rendered with a simplicity so just, all of this admirable page in which an artist has placed all the particular and rare elements which are in him."

Picasso's Luncheon on the Grass 

For more than two years, from August, 1959, to September, 1961, Picasso worked on this series of paintings, which consists of twenty-seven paintings and many drawings. Once again he found an opportunity to take up a number of his favorite themes. 

Manet's composition, showing two nudes with two clothed men in a landscape, is itself a kind of variation. Almost exactly 100 years before Picasso treated this theme, Manet, building on a theme taken from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, attempted to translate Giorgione's Concert champetre (in The Louvre) into a contemporary idiom. The Arcadian figures in the work of the great Venetian painter were transformed by Manet into Parisians of his own day, and Arcadia itself took on a new, contemporary form just outside the gates of Paris.
Picasso's variations are of an entirely different kind: he takes Manet's composition as a sort of springboard for his own imagination, which carries him into new, as yet unsuspected directions.

In the course of this work we find Picasso often straying far from his starting point, then coming back to it again, and inventing ever new variations on the theme. To Picasso, Manet's painting - like anything in art or nature - is a theme. 

In the painting below (it is the last of one series of variations) Picasso retransforms the model into an Arcadian scene: instead of juxtaposing nude and clothed figures, we have here an idyl with four nude figures, shown near a pond in the subdued green light of the foliage. This brings to mind the themes of the Bather, and Figures on the Beach, which turn up so often in Picasso's works. But, via Manet, a new background has been added to these themes - the dimension of mythology - and the link with nineteenth-century painting has deepened the relationship between the figures, endowing them with greater tension and thus bringing them closer to the spirit of our own days.

Picasso repeatedly felt tempted to match himself against the old masters. He was conscious of his equality with them, and this feeling gave him the freedom to make whatever use of the old masterpieces he cared to. These paintings show his magnificent ability to transform things and forms alike into new signs, which disclose a new meaning, and in which the image of our time is recorded for posterity.

in search for lost time

"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind."
Marcel Proust

In Search of Lost Time (French: À la recherche du temps perdu)—also translated as Remembrance of Things Past—is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust (1871–1922). His most prominent work, it is known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." It gained fame in English in translations by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin as Remembrance of Things Past, but the title In Search of Lost Time, a literal rendering of the French, has gained usage since D. J. Enright adopted it for his revised translation published in 1992.

The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages as they existed in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.

The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927. Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs, and scenes are foreshadowed in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel had great influence on twentieth-century literature; some writers have sought to emulate it, others to parody it. In the centenary year of Du côté de chez Swann, Edmund White pronounced À la recherche du temps perdu "the most respected novel of the twentieth century."

The novel was initially published in seven volumes:

1. Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann, sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's) (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorff, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide was famously given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic errors, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay the cost of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7). Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous madeleine cake episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory. In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset

2. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, also translated as Within a Budding Grove) (1919) was scheduled to be published in 1914 but was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all of the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception. When published, the novel was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.

3. The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes) (1920/1921) was originally published in two volumes as Le Côté de Guermantes I and Le Côté de Guermantes II.

4. Sodom and Gomorrah (Sodome et Gomorrhe, sometimes translated as Cities of the Plain) (1921/1922) was originally published in two volumes. The first forty pages ofSodome et Gomorrhe initially appeared at the end of Le Côté de Guermantes II (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 942), the remainder appearing as Sodome et Gomorrhe I(1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.

5. The Prisoner (La Prisonnière, also translated as The Captive) (1923) is the first volume of the section within In Search of Lost Time known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in volume 5 and 6 were developed during the hiatus between the publication of volumes 1 and 2 and they are a departure of the original three-volume series originally planned by Proust. This is the first of Proust's books published posthumously.

6. The Fugitive (Albertine disparue, also titled La Fugitive, sometimes translated as The Sweet Cheat Gone [last line of Walter de la Mare's poem "The Ghost"] or Albertine Gone) (1925) is the second and final volume in "le Roman d'Albertine" and the second volume published after Proust's death. It is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921).[2] The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the titleAlbertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.

7. Finding Time Again (Le Temps retrouvé, also translated as Time Regained and The Past Recaptured) (1927) is the final volume in Proust's novel. Much of the final volume was written at the same time as Swann's Way, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.