crossed words

the intentioned framing

Les cadrages (…) ils constituent le premier aspect de la participation créatrice de la caméra à l’enregistrement qu’elle fait de la réalité extérieure pour la transformer en matière artistique. Il s’agit ici de la composition du contenu de l’image, c’est-à-dire de la façon dont le réalisateur découpe et éventuellement organise le fragment de réalité qu’il présente à l’objectif et que se retrouvera identique sur l’écran. Le choix de la matière filmée est le stade élémentaire du travail créateur au cinéma : c’est le deuxième point, l’organisation du contenu du cadre qui nous occupe maintenant. Marcel Martin, Le langage cinématographique (1955)

What’s cooking in Almodóvar’s kitchens?

cinema, architecture

La presente publicación constituye un extracto [ES:EN:FR] del texto completo incluido en el libro Comfort and Domestic Space in Modern Spain , editado por Susan Larson y publicado por University of Toronto Press en 2024. El libro, publicado en inglés, reflexiona sobre como el cine español ha mostrado y desarrollado con el paso del tiempo el concepto de confort doméstico. Dividido en cuatro secciones, los artículos que se incluyen analizan como, desde sus primeras producciones hasta nuestros días, el cine español ha mostrado la configuración y uso de cuatro espacios domésticos: la cocina, el salón, el cuarto de baño y las habitaciones. Las ilustraciones en el libro son en blanco y negro. Se incluyen aquí, junto al resumen del artículo, las perspectivas en color de las cocinas analizadas realizadas por la arquitecta Ángeles Torres Pérez a partir de un levantamiento bidimensional de las mismas, trazado por el autor del presente texto.

El espacio psicoplástico de Josef Svoboda

the intentioned framing

art, photography, music, architecture

El artículo explora el trabajo del escenógrafo checo Josef Svoboda, centrando la atención en su interés por integrar el teatro y las imágenes en movimiento. Se analizan diversas escenografías desarrolladas entre 1950 y 1970 particularmente concebidas con este propósito, integrando en muchos casos tecnologías creadas por el propio Svoboda, innovadoras en su momento, y que hoy en día se han convertido en habituales.

La representación del límite en El cielo sobre Berlín de Wim Wenders

the intentioned framing

Pensamiento, cinema, architecture

El artículo analiza cómo relata Wim Wenders la ciudad dividida en su película El cielo sobre Berlín (1987), estudiando qué mirada ejerce sobre el límite que construye la coexistencia forzada de dos ciudades, cómo nos traslada la realidad de una ciudad dividida por una frontera física e ideológica, qué localizaciones de la ciudad selecciona, qué actores escoge como vehículo para narrar su historia, y qué relaciones mantienen los mismos con el espacio urbano

Diccionario analógico. Cine y arquitectura.

the intentioned framing

Pensamiento, art, photography, cinema, architecture

El cine y la arquitectura comparten una historia de encuentros. El séptimo arte ha necesitado de la arquitectura, del marco construido, como telón de fondo de las acciones desarrolladas en la pantalla. El cine ha permitido establecer una mirada diferente sobre el territorio artificialmente construido en el que los hombres habitamos, una mirada subjetiva, intencionada y distante. El diccionario aborda la posibilidad de diseccionar intencionadamente el trabajo del arquitecto y del cineasta mediante un posible conjunto de términos comunes.

Magritte. Words, images, cinema and architecture

the intentioned framing

Pensamiento, art, cinema, architecture

René Magritte published « Les mots et les images » in 1929. The architecture in his paintings and his cinematographic experiences are inspired by this hieroglyphic of multiple readings.

De consolatione Philosophiae

Pensamiento, art

La obra Consuelo de la filosofía [Boecio, 523] plantea un diálogo entre el autor y Filosofía, un personaje alegórico femenino al que Boecio increpa e interroga, intentando obtener respuestas sobre el incomprensible destino humano, la imposibilidad de conseguir una felicidad permanente, la fortuna y los bienes que ésta acarrea y la injusticia humana, por la cual los justos son castigados y los injustos obtienen recompensas terrenales.

Absolutely on Music. Conversations.

the intentioned framing

Pensamiento, art, music, cinema, architecture

This text was born as a personal commentary to a rich two-way dialogue established between the writer Haruki Murakami and the musician Seiji Ozawa in their book Absolutely on Music. Conversations. Along the way, some more interlocutors fictitiously joined the conversation.

Georges de La Tour in Tous les matins du monde

the intentioned framing

art, photography, cinema, architecture

Alain Corneau recognizes the inspiration in the work of the baroque painters Lubin Baugin and Georges de La Tour when studying the composition of certain frames and the intimate treatment of light in the film Tous les matins du monde, released in 1981.

The false return: archeographies of Elevator to the Gallows.

the intentioned framing

cinema, architecture

Based on a strictly visual analysis of the film's images, the article studies the possibility of tracing a possible graphic reconstruction of the spaces used during the shooting of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud [Elevator for the Scaffold, Louis Malle, 1958].

Philip Glass y Jean Cocteau. Opera and cinema

the intentioned framing

art, music, cinema

Philip Glass compose between 1991 and 1996 a trilogy of operas based on three homonymous films by Jean Cocteau: Orphée (1950), La belle et la bête (1946) and Les enfants terribles (1950). Always working with absolute respect and admiration for the French director Philip Glass makes a transcription between the cinematographic field and the operatic one very different in the three cases.

Godard in the Villa Malaparte

the intentioned framing

cinema, architecture

In 1963, six years after the death of its owner and the same year of the death of the architect Adalberto Libera, Jean Luc Godard chooses the Malaparte house for his film Le Mepris, based on a novel by the Roman writer Alberto Moravia. This text is an excerpt from the article Tres [+1] personajes en busca de terraza, published in 2009 in the book CASA x CASA, in which the filming in the house is analysed.

Read it and pass it on (Josep Quetglas, 1995)

Pensamiento, architecture

I don't know if I'll know how to explain it well. More than a reason is an instinct. It is an impulse, which makes you want to learn, to know with anger. I think that without this point of irritation, of intransigence, of hate, there is no learning.

Writing (Marguerite Duras, 1993)

Pensamiento

If we knew something about what we were going to write, before we did it, before writing, we would never write. It would not be worth it. To write is to try to know what one would write if one wrote - one knows it only after - before, it is the most dangerous question that one can ask oneself. But it's the most common too. The writing happens like the wind, it's naked, it's ink, it's written and it goes like nothing else in life, nothing more, except it, the life.

Ozu’s House

the intentioned framing

cinema, architecture

The architect Marta Peris Eugenio has just published a revealing document about one of the most important filmmakers of the twentieth century and, in addition, one of the most interesting to architects who approach the cinema as more than just entertainment: La casa de Ozu [Ozu’s house]. A book that, dodging the historical-documentary point of view that characterizes research in other disciplines, works from the particular perspective of the designer, with a professional look related to the existing with a certain greed for appropriation, a more technical than historical curiosity, interested in unveiling the way in which the problems were solved from the logic of the project, analyzing the visual and constructive decisions adopted to build the film.

Cinema female pionners

the intentioned framing

art, cinema

The first recognized presence of women in the universe of cinema was in the field of interpretation. Two other works, however, were from the beginning covered for very different reasons mostly by the female world in a much more anonymous way: the editing and the control of continuity during filming and postproduction. Although, without a doubt, the area in which this necessary recognition of the important role of women in the world of cinema becomes more relevant is in the field of filmmaking.

The Usefulness of the Useless. [2013]

Pensamiento, art

If the usefulness of the useless, the uselessness of the useful, is not understood, art is not understood. [Eugène Ionesco] The professor of Italian Literature Nuccio Ordine collects, orders and comments on his interesting book "The usefulness of the useless. Manifesto "a set of texts by various thinkers about the usefulness of all those knowledge whose essential value is, precisely, to be unconnected to any utilitarian purpose. A very interesting book.

The single look. An architect thinks the cinema

the intentioned framing

art, cinema, architecture

Abada Editores published in January 2019 my book La mirada única. Un arquitecto piensa el cine [The single look. An architect thinks the cinema]. Juan Deltell Pastor.

Cinema and Architecture. Extracts.

cinema, architecture

Cinema and architecture require the same glaze, the same kind of reception. Walter Benjamin.

movie posters & no-movie posters

the intentioned framing

cinema, architecture

NO-MOVIE POSTERS is much more than an allegory; it is a love song to cinema, to its promotional posters, to sketching, to photography and to those untold stories that want to fly but don’t have wings.

JackBackPack_Ruptura Silenciosa

the intentioned framing

cinema, architecture

The magazine JACK, initially managed by the Portuguese research group Ruptura Slenciosa, and currently published under the auspices of the Jackbackpack project, is one of the few publications that seriously analyses the relationship between cinema and architecture. The second issue has been published recently.

Théorie Poétique et esthétique (1957)

Pensamiento, music

We can count the steps of the goddess, note the frequency and average length, we do not draw the secret of his instant grace.

Cinema inside cinema

the intentioned framing

art, cinema

From the very beginning some films wanted to talk about the world of cinema, from aspects so different as homage, parody, memory, criticism, nostalgia, caricature, satire and even plagiarism. Especially significant are those situations in which the audience is intended to be conscious of the staging, clearly setting out the cinematographic construction’s artifice.

The seduction of the Long take

the intentioned framing

art, cinema, architecture

Many artists of very diverse fields have felt the attraction of including in their works a Long Take, a formal resource always difficult to carry out. The Rope [Alfred Hitchcock, 1948], Touch of Evil [Orson Welles, 1957] or Der Lauf der Dinge [Peter Fischli and David Weis] are good examples of this.

The false city. Urban space acting

the intentioned framing

cinema, architecture

The cinema has created a new way of recognizing the city. Cinema can even reinvent the existent city, through the foreign and timeless gaze with which every filmmaker works. Watching is at once to know and to decide, two practices closely linked to the human condition. The cinema, in some way, has taught us to look at our cities from a different perspective, building in our minds a false memory of the urban spaces that it shows us.

Gramática del arte (1993)

Pensamiento, art

The compound of two left halves of a face can be curious, but not exciting. The symmetry could be described as axial equilibrium, but the most stimulating balance is the asymmetric one. That is, the balance of a kilo of feathers and a kilo of lead. The volume differs, but the weighing scales shows balance.

Understanding a Photograph (1972)

Pensamiento, art, cinema

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything there existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

The Decay of Lying (1891)

Pensamiento, art

Those who do not love Beauty more than Truth never know the inmost shrine of Art.

The Naming Of Cats (1939)

art

T. S. Eliot publishes in 1939 his book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which includes the poem The Naming Of Cats.

Mies and Rothko. Report of a [dis]agreement.

the intentioned framing

art, architecture

If a thing is worth doing once, it is worth doing over and over again – exploring it, probing it, demanding by its repetition that the public look at it.

Gould and Monsaingeon. Form, structure and method.

the intentioned framing

art, music, architecture

A Toronto hotel witnessed in July 1972 the first meeting between Glenn Gould and Bruno Monsaingeon. The fruitful friendship developed between them over 10 years left us an important set of audio-visual documents and written texts, essentials to understand the creative process of the pianist, undoubtaly giving extrapolable keys to other creative fields such as architecture.

Jeanne Moreau and Miles Davis. An unforgettable night.

the intentioned framing

music, cinema, architecture

No longer possible to meet Jeanne Moreau on Boulevard Haussmann. The same Paris that gave birth to her testified last July 31th the silent and domestic closing of her enigmatic and sad look. Miles Davis had been born two years before her, far away. His gaze was also sad, but his death was not silent, rather angry, as it was all his life. Both shared an unforgettable night.

crossed words

The eye follows the paths that have been laid down for it in the work (Paul Klee) To begin with, the art of jigsaw puzzles seems of little substance, easily exhausted, wholly dealt with by a basic introduction to Gestalt: the perceived object –we may be dealing with a perceptual act, the acquisition of a skill, a physiological system, or, as in the present case, a wooden jigsaw puzzle- is not a sum of elements to be distinguished from each other and analysed discretely, but a pattern, that is to say a form, a structure: the element’s existence does not precede the existence of the whole, it comes neither before nor after it, for the parts do not determinate the pattern, but the pattern determines the parts: knowledge of the pattern and of its laws, of the set and its structure, could not possibly be derived from discrete knowledge of the elements that compose it. That means that you can look at a piece of a puzzle for three whole days, you can believe that you know all there is to know about its colouring and shape, and be no further on than when you started. The only thing that […]

Poe’s Raven

the intentioned framing

Pensamiento, art

The last day of February 1845 Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem, The Raven, is published in The Evening Mirror. Replying to certain criticisms received, the poet publishes a year later his essay Philosophy of Composition.

To write standing up (1991)

art

An artist can, on his behalf, accept all honorus, provided that his work rejects them.

Cinema and Architecture

the intentioned framing

cinema, architecture

Cinema and architecture demand the same look, the same kind of reception.

¿Para que servimos los filósofos? (2012)

Pensamiento

Philosophy means "love for knowledge". "Knowing by knowing". A knowledge that is not for this or that, but a knowledge that is merely "knowing by knowing", "knowing disinterested" and, therefore, knowing "of all" and "of no one", know "of any other". Therefore, the first answer to our question, what is the purpose of philosophy ?, is that for nothing. And precisely for this reason, from Socrates to Plato, it was thought that it served to govern.

Exercises to sow lightnings

art

The Colombian artist Nicolás Paris (Bogotá, 1977) presents from February 10th to May 1th 2017 in the CaixaForum space in Barcelona his project Ejercicios para sembrar relámpagos [Exercises to sow lightnings], a reflection on the relationship between art and spectator analyzing how the importance lies not in the objects used to create a particular work, but in the formal and syntactic relationship between them.

Abstracció en arquitectura: una definición (2000)

art, architecture

The abstract procedure diverts the architectural work towards the syntactic side, giving priority to the rules of formal construction of the object itself; the interest is then shifted from the elements to the relationships established between them and to the principles of composition that regulate them. read more

Mary Ellen Bute

the intentioned framing

music, cinema, architecture

The American artist Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983) is today recognized as a pioneer of animation films, especially in the field of so-called visual music.