Fandango’s Friday Flashback • February 14. I’ve not been a blogger nearly long enough to be able to go a year back. So this re-post of ‘Andy Warhol’s lines’ on #FFF is from October 14, that I wrote for Becky B.‘s Lines and Squares challenge.
Andy Warhol’s lines • Becky’s Lines & Squares #14
Andy Warhol’s lines
Here’s my entry to Becky’s Lines & Squares Challenge, Oct. 14, which is sparked by Victoria C. Slotto’s post Warhol-Pop Art in Words. A wonderful explanation and tribute to one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He’s up there with Edward Hopper and Tamara de Lempicka. Of these three, he’s truly the one who democratized art. Mostly just by idolizing ‘household brands’.
Green Coca-Cola Bottles was created the year that Andy Warhol developed his pioneering silkscreen technique, which allowed him to produce his paintings through a mechanical process that paralleled his use of mass culture subjects. Here, the image of a single Coca-Cola bottle is repeated in regular rows, seven high by sixteen across, above the company’s logo. The repetitive imagery and standardized format evokes the look of mechanical reproduction, but the black outlines were probably stamped by hand from a single carved woodblock onto green areas printed in a grid pattern. This engenders subtle differences in the work’s pattern; each of the bottles differs in both the evenness of the green underpainting and in the clarity of its stamped profile. The bottles are also often slightly askew, disturbing the overall regularity of the grid and making them appear simultaneously handmade and individualized, streamlined and mass-produced. In his deadpan and ironic way, Warhol at once criticized and glorified the consumerist idols and surface values of America’s media-saturated postwar culture. “A Coke is a Coke,” he explained, “and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.”
If you’d like to see more of my entries to Becky’s Lines & Squares challenges, just click here, here, here or here.
I hope you like this tribute on Fandango’s Flashback Friday.
Fandango’s Friday Flashback • January 24. I’ve not been a blogger nearly long enough to be able to go a year back. So this re-post of ‘Why Do You Blog?’ on #FFF is from December 24, that I wrote for Dr Tanya’s Blogging Insights that she posts regularly on her Salted Caramel blog. Do check it out if you haven’t done so already.
Why do you blog? • Blogging Insights#1
Dr Tanya – in her great blog Salted Caramel – has been running her Blogging Insights series for nearly three months. In this quest she has unearthed a wealth of insights from bloggers, and by keeping this all in-the-public-eye so to speak it can be of tremendous value for bloggers. Not in the least for rookie-bloggers like myself. So far she has fired off 11 salvo’s, or sets if you will, of questions. Some of these are pretty easy to answer. Others require some ‘soul-searching’. Now she has given us, who like myself are pretty new to this form of ‘mental exercise’, the opportunity to catch up with the front-runners.
So here are my answers to the first salvo.
Q: Do you blog to promote your business?
No, I don’t. Primarily because I don’t own my own set up any longer. Although I find hardly any joy in the so-called professional blogs. These seem to be (well-written in some instances, bordering to the hilarious) answers to specific issues. Too limiting in my mind.
Q:Or is your blog a launching pad for your social life?
Yes and no is my cryptic answer here. To my surprise (or is it really) my blog has very little traction from my real life friends and family. Instead, the vast majority of my visitors are people who I have never physically met. Welcome to those digital new ‘relationships’.
Does it exist only to complement your business or your Instagram/Facebook/Twitter accounts?
As far as my other social accounts go, it is quite the opposite. I hate Instagram, and am hardly present anymore on Facebook and Twitter other than to draw attention to my blog posts.
Is your blog making you real money (if so please let me into your secret)?
Nope. I did not start a blog to earn an extra source of income.
Are you blogging because you are so adept at this craft that you want to teach it to others?
If only… No. To say the opposite would be quite preposterous. I started it as a writing exercise, but got distracted by many of the photo challenges. Now, just shy of six months of blogging, I’m slowly returning more to the writing part of it.
So I’m learning every day, from every post I write and certainly from most of the bloggers that I follow and read everyday.
Or are you like me : blogging just due to the urge to write?
That is exactly how it all started for me. Two things happened though. Firstly, most of my ‘writings’ are just to blow off steam and a way to come to grips with things. Just to name one of a few: I’ve been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease roughly 15 years ago (I’m just 60 now, so 15 years ago I was one of the youngest PD-patients…just my luck) and coming to grips with this new reality has been (and still is) an arduous journey. Which, so far, I have largely kept to myself and the loving ‘rock’ in my life. While I slowly start posting some of my PD-infused experiences (let’s not exaggerate this, 2 posts as of yet), most of my writing are an outlet to prevent me slipping into self-pity. Therefor strictly personal rants. For now…
What are your reasons why you put the proverbial blood sweat tears into your blog posts?
Main reason number one is listed above. Main reason number 2 is that I needed something to keep me ‘off the streets’ so to speak. After a long career in advertising, more than 30 years or so, I was finally laid off. My PD had made work impossible and to some extent irresponsible. Not that it wasn’t good work that I was still capable of producing. Some of my finest and most awarded work – two times winner of a Film Grand Prix at the International Cannes Advertising Festival (sorry, but I think I did earn these bragging rights) – was at a stage when my PD really started to kick in to an extent I couldn’t hide it anymore.
So I was suddenly faced with that question that had been troubling me for almost a decade ‘is there life after advertising?’ Is there hope for a one-trick-only-pony who’s too old (the official version) or too ill to still perform? Only now, with the support of my girlfriend, I can answer this question with a resounding Y E S !
Blogging gives me a sounding board, something where I can ventilate, rant, comment and write without being lambasted or shot down. I find posting, and reading blog posts fun and inspiring and motivating. So thank you all for putting up with me.
If you want to sprint ahead and read my answers to Dr Tanya’s latest set of q’s, click here.
Fandango’s Friday Flashback • January 17. Thanking whichever God I might believe in I was reminded of this by the WordPress reader. Not having blogged that long, I only have this post to share that dates back to a 17th of a month.
On Display • Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #76
‘On Display’ so to speak is part of Thierry Mugler fabulous haute couture creations in a must-see exhibition in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. For those of you where the mention of the name Thierry Mugler only rings a faint bell in the distance, here’s a brief attempt to refresh those grey cells into working order.
On Display: Thierry Mugler
To quote the site in the above link, Thierry Mugler is ‘undeniably artistic figure – visionary couturier, director, photographer and perfumer’. You can find more on this famous couturier here.
I’ll leave you with one more, albeit blurry, photo taken of a film on display in this wonderful exhibition:
On Display: Thierry Mugler • On fire
Thierry Mugler is on display until March 2020, so if you’re in the neighbourhood…
Especially since Museum Boijmans is closed due to reconstruction.
Fandango’s Friday Flashback • January 3. Thanking whichever God I might believe in I was reminded of this by the WordPress reader. Not having blogged that long, I only have this post to share that dates back to a 3rd of a month.
Majestic Glow • Tuesday Photo Challenge
Majestic Glow • Tuesday Photo Challenge is my submission into Dutch goes the Photo challenge of the week. As usual, it is as brutally simple as imaginative: ‘I think that the interesting part of this challenge will be your choice of direction with the theme of Glow…will you opt for the glow of an ember, a firefly, or the glowing praise that is heaped on a great performance? There are many choices, so feel free to push the boundaries and shoot for that glowing review!’
Majestic Glow
Majestic Glow
Isn’t she just glowing majestically? I took this photo from a moving bus in the harbor of the City of Rotterdam. Hence the reflections at the bottom part. Incidentally, the ship named after the city was moored in its home harbor at the time we passed it. In order to make this lady glow like this I had to do some (extensive) post prod in Apple Photos, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. I took the original photo with my iPhone XR.
For a peek at my previous submission in this Tuesday Photo Challenge, called Peace, click here.
Fandango’s Friday Flashback • December 20. The photo in this post from November 20, that I wrote for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, I’m more than a little pleased with. I’ve not nearly been blogging for a year, which is why I only go month back…
Red • Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge
Stones against red bench
Picture was taken in the Japanese Garden section of the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, The Netherlands. Since I did not bring my Leica, I had to shoot this with my iPhone XR. Highlighted the colour red a bit in the Apple Photos and Adobe Lightroom apps.
For more entries into photo challenges simply click here.
Fandango’s Friday Flashback • December 13. Today is the first time I stumbled on the Friday Flashback post/opportunity. To say I’m a novice at blogging is a bit of an understatement; I’ve only started really this October. After having made many a faux pas in the past few months I’m slowly (reached the tender age of 60) beginning to understand and get a feel for it. Who said something about old dogs and new tricks? Not that I’m making plenty of mistakes still. I’m in the process now of listing virtually every mistake I’ve made (like using a picture of a poster that started with the F-word in a ‘FOWC with Fandango’ post only yesterday – you Americans can be so touchy). Might become food for a separate post…
Anyways, this post from October 13, that I wrote as part of the month long challenge Becky’s Lines & Squares, could use a little more love.
I took this shot of a rather confusing line ‘No entrance exhibition’ which somebody had pasted on the stairs of the main entrance to an art exhibition.
But please note the feet in sneakers on the left. We Dutch hardly take any notice of signs telling us what (not) to do. Unless it’s a ‘no parking’ sign. These tend to cost you dearly if you ignore them…
Which reminds me of our international sports club in Karachi, Pakistan, the good old Sind Club. The only way to access the bar was to walk across a grass lawn to the door. To avoid nagging wives dragging their husbands home, somebody had put a sign on the lawn saying ‘Women NOT allowed on the grass’. Not sure any of the expat wives ever obeyed that sign. My mother certainly didn’t.
If you’d like to see more of my entries to Becky’s Lines & Squares challenges, just click here, here, here or here.
