Monthly Archive for January, 2009

here are a few spectacular stills from Hitchcock’s Saboteur. they occur at points in the film where the hero’s innocence and resolve are tested by man and nature and are right out of the pages of the German romantics 125 years prior (see Philip James de Loutherbourg, An Avalanche in the Alps, 1803, also Casper David Friedrich, Sunset 1830) and the American rocky mountain school (Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie, 1866).

have a look at what the neo-romantics are up to now: Christopher Orr, The Farthest Shore, 2008, and here.

on the sublime, here is a list (!) by Hildebrand Jacob in How the Mind is Raised by the Sublime, 1730′s, of such things and places: oceans, either in calm or storm, the setting sun, precipices, caverns and Swiss mountains, compiled during a time when excursions were made to such places for the purpose of inspiration, awe, reverence. in other words to be made to feel small, frail, temporary…

A new maquette/installation featuring a waterfall, precipice and bridge is in planning stage. I plan to have it ready for exhibition in the Fall.

“The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room”–Pascal, Pensees, 136.

(list and Pascal quote from The Art of Travel)