Obits

Four NYT obituaries from recent weeks, not for linguists or language-related figures and not for very famous public figures (like Margaret Thatcher), but for people whose work has brought me enlightenment or pleasure: Anthony Lewis, Paul Williams, Hugh McCracken, and Carmine Infantino.

Mary Azarian

(About art and illustration rather than language.)

In a catalog for publisher David R. Godine that came today, an offer of a set of notecards from Mary Azarian’s Farmer’s Alphabet of  1981 (Apple, Dog, Farm, Jump, Neighbor, Underwear). The Z item in her Gardener’s Alphabet of 2000:

(On zinnias, see here.) Azarian’s chosen medium is the woodcut, which gives her work a deliberately old-fashioned appearance.

Ay papi!

(Not about language.)

An arresting image posted on Facebook by Arne Adolfsen, from the Papacito site (a trove of steamy but not X-rated male photography; perfil dedicado a la belleza masculina… los mejores cuerpos, los más sexys y mucho chico guapo):

Arne comments:

This has got to be one of the funniest pictures I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. I would love to see what a semiotician makes of this since it’s such an over-determined photograph.

Lesbo bride meets NY girl

(Not about language.)

The third and last of the wedding gown collages, this time showing lesbo brides paired with New York girls (with a kinky bent).

Lesbo brides

(Not about language, except for the clipping of lesbian to lesb-, with the affective suffix -o added on.)

Continuing the brides collages, here are four collages from another series, Lesbo Brides.

Marla and Margo’s Wedding

(Not about language.)

More collages from some years ago, this time put together on backgrounds of photos from bridal magazines. Thanks to Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, who saw the artistic potential of the material.

In this series, we see photos from Marla and Margo’s wonderful wedding day.

Christmas, sweet Christmas

(Not about language.)

A day away from Halloween, and already Christmas items arrive in the mail. Some of them are sticky-sweet and earnestly celebratory, and invite subversion. Here are six I tried to collage into submission some years ago in a protest against holiday sentimentality. They range from mildly critical (a composition about “women’s work”), through varying degrees of outrage and menace, to a Father Christmas as a child molester. (You’ve been warned; these are on the dark side.)

The Invisible Man

(Not about language.)

The weekend’s background track while working and diversion from pain and discouragement was the Legacy Collection box on The Invisible Man, a collection comprising the 1933 original and four more on the theme – The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman (1940), Invisible Agent (1942), and The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944) — plus some extras. Unfortunately, it lacks Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), the most entertaining of the later spinoffs. But then the A&C is played for laughs, with only a hint of the Science Amok theme that drove the first Invisible Man film (as well as Dr. Moreau, Frankenstein, and Jekyll / Hyde from the great years of b&w horror movies); close to the end of The Invisible Man’s Revenge, we get the solemn pronouncement:

He probed too deeply in forbidden topics.

Forbidden Planet

(Not about language.)

In a packet of film cards, this poster for Forbidden Planet (1956):

I was struck when reminded of the cast, and also tickled by the visual cliché of the young woman in the poster, hopeless in the arms of the monster, alien, brute (see King Kong), whatever.

Human furniture

(Not about language.)

A link from Arne Adolfsen on Facebook to this entertaining but somewhat disturbing photograph by David Blazquez, crossing the human with the inanimate:

A Human Furniture Photograph.