Daily Painting

George Morrison
ABSTRACT COMPOSITION (1950)

Daily Painting

Corneille
VIS (1950)

Daily Painting

Alfonso Ossorio
SACRIFICIAL MEAL (1950)

Daily Painting

Faeq Hassan
DESERT HEART (1950)

Daily Painting

Franz Kline
PAINTING (1950)

Currently Watching

IN A LONELY PLACE
Nicholas Ray
USA, 1950

ANATOLE BROYARD
"Portrait of the Inauthentic Negro: How Prejudice Distorts the Victim’s Personality " [July 1950]

Authenticity is difficult to attain. To make it even more difficult, no one seems to know exactly what it consists in. Authenticity, as I take it, would mean stubborn adherence to one’s essential self, in spite of the distorting pressures of one’s situation. By the Negro’s essential self, I mean his innate qualities and developed characteristics as an individual, as distinguished from his preponderantly defensive reactions as a member of an embattled minority.

RALPH JOHNSON BUNCHE
From the Nobel Lecture (1950)

Freedom, democracy, human rights, international morality, peace itself, mean different things to different men. Words, in a constant flow of propaganda—itself an instrument of war—are employed to confuse, mislead, and debase the common man.

Democracy is prostituted to dignify enslavement; freedom and equality are held good for some men but withheld from others by and in allegedly “democratic” societies; in “free” societies, so-called, individual human rights are severely denied; aggressive adventures are launched under the guise of “liberation.”

Truth and morality are subverted by propaganda, on the cynical assumption that truth is whatever propaganda can induce people to believe.

Currently Watching

WOMAN IN HIDING
Michael Gordon
USA, 1950

Daily Painting

Émile Chambon
LA CARTE À JOUER (1950)

RAY BRADBURY
The Martian Chronicles

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer's ancient green lawns.

Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.

Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.

The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land

THE BEAUTY OF THE DEVIL

[La beauté du diable]

____________________

René Clair

France, 1950