05 November 2007

matters of taste

We have told you earlier on about a beautiful project, a collaborative
translation of Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert. This quote is
from an article about "taste" written by Voltaire, Montesquieu,
d'Alembert and Diderot. This piece is by Voltaire.

"It is said that one should not argue about matters of taste. This is true as long as it is only a question of sensual taste, of the revulsion one experiences for a certain food and the preference one feels for another. This is not subject to argument because it is impossible to correct a flaw that is organic. The same is not true in the arts: since the arts have genuine beauty, there exists a good taste that discerns it and a bad taste that is unaware of it, and often the flaw of the mind that produces wrong taste can be corrected. There are also cold souls and men incapable of sound reasoning; these can neither be inspired with feeling nor corrected in their thinking; with them one should not argue about matters of taste since they have none."

I met her at the local rock club












I first met Charlotta at the local rock club.
I was in desperat need of someone that could play at a union meeting at my work and as I was talking about that with a friend Charlotta came as a rescuing angel and told me she could come and play and sing which she did in a really impressing way.

Quite some time passed and we didn' t really had that much contact then in the summer I needed someone to play at the opening on my exhibition.
So I called her up and planned the whole thing. A part of the exhibition was some portraits so we met on a cold and windy day in June and shot some portraits

Pictures and text Örjan Fredriksson

coocoo lunatic of the Surrealists

" ... I had to wait like an idiot till I met Marcel Duchamp (a marvelous painter) who is the only one who has his feet on the earth, among all this bunch of coocoo lunatic - of the Surrealists .... They are so damn "intelectual" [sic] and rotten that I can't stand them any more. It is really too much for my character - I rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than to have anything to do with those "artistic" --- of Paris."

Frida Kahlo to Nickolas Muray, 1939 Feb. 16. Letter. Nickolas Muray papers, 1911-1978. Archives of American Art.