2026.08.19
scanning VVV Number 2-3, etc.
2020.08.19
Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service hours 157 158 159
whatever
2007.08.19
Elvis 30th anniv. tribute thread
I was on the train alone going from Florence back to Rome and a young (though slightly older than me) American couple in the same compartment asked:
"Hey, did you hear that Elvis Presley died?"
"No."
"It happened a week ago."
"Oh."
I was very uncomfortably hungover from too much drinking the night before at The Red Garter, and then falling asleep on some curb with an even more drunk roommate of our group. I specifically left Florence as early as possible to avoid traveling back to Rome with the excessive chatter of the rest of our group.
And 30 years ago today I fell asleep on the steps of Il Redentore (waiting till it opened) after the unplanned coincidence of reading page 42 (page 36 of 2nd edition) of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.
There's now a little plaque on the steps that says This spot is a supernal resting place.
2003.08.19
Locus Focus: "Hyperrealisms"
Pick your own realism tangent?
1977.08.19
August 19, 1977. Friday, Venice
Spent the day on the islands across from Venice--boat ride was nice, should have taken some movies.
Everyone liked the first Palladio church [San Giorgio Maggiore]. It must be something about its order and clarity (and overall classicalism) that makes it so attractive and made everyone respond favorably. I have trouble seeing it as a church.
View from campanile was very nice; lunch on harbor stop was excellent.
Later went to Il Redentore which was closed. Mohammad and I slept on the steps while others went for a walk. Guys came back and also slept. Mindy came back and woke up John and made him very mad. Mindy started to get on a lot of people's nerves. (Church was sort of ok.)
Ron, John and I ate in our room and later went to a lagoon side cafe (also Tom and George). Had various discussions about Knowles, Brigitte's book and architecture in general.
Italian Study Tour Journal
1959.08.19
1959. Wednesday, Paris
Saying that their "London programme will be scheduled" when the Copleys and Hamiltons arrive in Paris, Duchamp reminds Richard Hamilton, who is finalizing the typographic version in English [17.6.1959] of the Green Box: "As you know, I am not a bit keen about the BBC broadcast and will do it only to help the book (if it does)."
*
"Avoir l'apprenti dans le soleil [25.12.1949] is the title of a drawing," writes Duchamp to Serge Stauffer, "representing un cycliste étique climbing a hill reduced to a line. This drawing with its title," Duchamp explains, "belongs to a group of 16 (?) scraps of paper (like the green box) gathered in a box and dated 1914... It was the period," he continues, "when I hoped to achieve a complete dissociation between the written word and the drawn image to expand the significance of both (as far as possible from a descriptive title, in fact suppression of the concept 'title')."
The small circle above the Oculist Witnesses in the Large Glass [5.2.1923] should have had an optical lens glued to it similar to the one in the small glass (A regarder d' un Œil de pres... [4.4.1919]), but Duchamp explains: "it was at this moment that I left the glass unfinished and the lens was never glued. It is on a vertical plane and is not subject to any distortion of perspective."
While stating that he has never read a single treatise on alchemy, which he believes "must be quite inadequate", Duchamp argues that one cannot 'do alchemy' as one can, with an appropriate language, 'do law or medicine'.
"But one cannot," he declares, "do alchemy throwing words around or in full consciousness superficially."
Ephemerides
1912.08.19
1912. Monday, Berlin
It has already been a notable year for progress in air-travel. On 13 January Vedrines broke the record for speed by flying at 142 kilometres an
hour, and since the flying men learned to navigate through cloud, many have been competing to be the first pilot to fly from Paris to Berlin nonstop. Brindejonc des Moulinais made an attempt on 8 August from Villacoublay but was forced to land in Westphalia. Today this landmark in the history of aviation is reached when in the evening Edmond Audemars, who set off from Paris the previous day, lands triumphantly in Berlin.
Sometime during his stay in Munich [21.6.1912], Duchamp makes a drawing, separate from his other studies [7.8.1912], entitled Aéroplane in which, from a construction of metallic fuselage, a thrusting skyward movement is indicated with a small arrow.
Ephemerides
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