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Alexandra Blaison

@alexandrabl.bsky.social

13 followers 13 following 32 posts

art historian, writer 📍Paris https://thepaperdrop.substack.com

thepaperdrop.substack.com

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Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 22d

Some thoughts I've written on ‘Alberto Giacometti and the Existentialists’ that you can read here
thepaperdrop.substack.com/p/alberto-gi...

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 7d

Raúl Zurita, translated by Anna Deeny

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 12d

🍂🍃

Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 14d

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread.
Their greenness is a kind of grief

- Philip Larkin, “The Trees”

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 12d

‘Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive, right here, feeling lucky.’

Maya C. Popa @mayacpopa.bsky.social · Sep 11

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 12d

Jean Tinguely & Eugène lonesco, Drawing made with a Meta-matic (1959)

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 12d

Erika Meitner

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 15d

Borges on Writing:
“one should work into a story the idea of not being sure of all things, because that’s the way reality is”
- Jorge Luis Borges

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 15d

a space of the unknowable 💕
“One of the things for me about free jazz or experimental jazz, or not just jazz but experimentation within the arts, where we can go with it and what it can do, is that there has to be a space of the unknowable for us to feel we can venture into.”
- Sonia Boyce

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 15d

Giuseppe Verdi to Clarina Maffei on December 29, 1872:

“Dear Clarina,
Good morning and a happy new year— that is to say, good health and peace! Peace! The best thing in this world, and the thing that I desire most at this moment.”

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 16d

I wrote some reflections on Verdi’s Aida and Shirin Neshat’s political remaking of the opera that you can read here bit.ly/4nT2UVs on The Paper Drop ➰

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 20d

“Art is always self-parading, I think. Always was, always will be.
Is there something wrong with the self? I parade as much as I can.”
―Paul Thek, postcard to Robert Pincus-Witten, 1969

#FromTheNotebook

Reposted by Alexandra Blaison

Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 21d

"Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion."

James Baldwin forever.

In James Baldwin’s words: “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. ... Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion.”

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Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 22d

Some thoughts I've written on ‘Alberto Giacometti and the Existentialists’ that you can read here
thepaperdrop.substack.com/p/alberto-gi...

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 22d

“Someday our bodies will no longer matter,
and we will leave them in our sleep, to travel easily.”➰

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · 27d

Some reflections I've written on Marlene Dumas' exhibition Cycladic Blues that you can read here bit.ly/46sNNLx

Marlene Dumas

and the Politics of Sorrow

open.substack.com

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 25

“I like to begin where winds shake the first branch.”
-Odysseus Elytis ➰

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 21

“Have you ever seen anything in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon…”
- The Sun by Mary Oliver

#FromtheNotebook ✨

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 19

O body o summer, naked, burnt
Eaten away by oil and salt
Body of rock and shudder of the heart
Great ruffling wind in the osier hair
Beneath of basil above the curly pubic mound
Full of stars and pine needles
Body, deep vessel of the day!
-Odysseus Elytis, Body of Summer
Tr. E. Keeley & P. Sherrard

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 18

in fragments 🔸

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 18

Today, my hope is vertical.
Tomorrow it will be horizontal.
The next day, cloudy.
My hope is like a Greek myth:
exchanging skin for bark,
bark for scales,
scales for the hollow bones of a bird.
- Jane Hirshfield, TODAY, MY HOPE IS VERTICAL

#FromtheNotebook

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 13

"Profuse light; splendour. Summer asserts itself and compels every soul to happiness."
- André Gide, Journal (1943)

#SummerWriting

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 10

"Shadow is a color, like light, but less bright; light and shadow are only the relationship between two tones." ➰
- Paul Cézanne

#art

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 8

In the recent Matisse–Marguerite show, one work held me: Marguerite with a Black Cat. Exhibited from Berlin Secession 1910 to the Armory Show 1913, it remained with Matisse until his death. On International Cat Day, what better tribute than to recall the cat in the portrait? It’s a famous #cat. 🐈‍⬛

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 7

In Antonello da Messina’s Crucifixion Painting, I am the one on the right. I am hanging like that, My back is arched like that, I am facing the real God, I am unknown and will be forgotten, But I am there, too, and my body is Open to all the pain of life.
— Preservation, Sylvie Baugartel #Ekphrasis

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Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 6

On this day, shall we remember Paul Claudel, the writer & brother to the brilliant Camille Claudel?

One of my favorite lines of his is the one where contradictions are in harmony:

‘Order is the pleasure of reason, but disorder is the delight of the imagination.’
— #paulclaudel

#bornonthisday

Alexandra Blaison @alexandrabl.bsky.social · Aug 6

I could underline every line, there isn’t a sentence I wouldn’t keep. ➰ #books