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Kitaj once said that books are for him what trees are for a landscape painter. His ateliers in the London neighborhood of Chelsea and in Westwood, Los Angeles, were crammed full of books, on shelves, around his easels and piled up on the floor.

R.B. Kitaj, Unpacking my Library, 1990-1991 © R. B. Kitaj Estate

He was already ranging through the cheap bookshops on 4th Avenue – the largest bookselling district in the world – on his way to Cooper Union when he was a student there. He found the modern classics like James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Kafka, as well as journals such as the “Partisan Review” and the American surrealist magazine “View.” In Oxford, his teacher Edgar Wind introduced him to the Warburg School and he bought a complete set of the famous “Journals of the Warburg Institute.” His visual imagination was fuelled by the illustrations for the “Afterlife of Antiquity,” copperplate engravings made according to ancient templates. In 1969, Kitaj published as silkscreens 50 book jackets from his personal library, in an edition that he called “In Our Time: Covers for a Small Library after the Life for the Most Part.” → continue reading

On the occasion of Julia Child’s 100th birthday I watched the film “Oma & Bella.”

Oma and Bella © Salzgeber & Co. Medien GmbH

Oma and Bella share with Julia Child a love of cooking. They are not yet 100, but not far off: they are 84 and 88 and live in Berlin. Fifty years ago they went dancing at the “Las Vegas”; today they go to the “Chalet Suisse” and drink Berliner lager. Oma’s granddaughter made a film about them: having their hair done, out on a boat trip, watching television, and again and again, cooking in Oma’s kitchen. → continue reading