The Chess Art Thread

anemic cinema  "chess"

im very happy that "the chess art thread" is not dead !!!!!!!!!

Henric Carlson

     Draw

How important
it is to dream.
In spite of the facts.
We set out right
from the start
towards each other,
the territory and intent,
thinking each other
the enemy.
Developing, aligning
forces. Underestimating.
Moving our pieces
pieced together
Through infinite squares
of the checkered grid.
Bound--however will
lead us--by its laws.
Perhaps even
hoping against hope
for a silly blunder
that would prove
we were right to take
the positions we have
“knew he was
no damn good.”
But no, to
cough it back up
unclaimed
and press
forward through
the thick billowy mess
unscathed
by its swath colors.
Knowing now,
that the heat
of the battle
that the pressures applied
between you
and me are what
can make us stronger,
bring us together
though set apart.
Yes, and to dream
through the movement
and our bliss or
blustery nights.
Our sweet
and sweat filled days.
And dream,
dreams where we
make each others dreams
come true.

phishcake5

This is my favorite chess picture...it says it all!

Here it goes "The immortal game":

Cuttlefish Bones

Don't ask us for the word to square
our shapeless spirit on all sides,
and proclaim it in letters of fire, to shine
like a lost crocus in a dusty field.

Ah, the man who walks secure,
a friend to others and himself,
uncaring that high summer prints
his shadow on a peeling wall!

Don't ask us for the phrase that can open worlds,
just a few gnarled syllables, dry like a branch.
This, today, is all that we can tell you:
what we are not, what we do not want.

Eugenio Montale

The chess art thread is not dead !!!!!!!!!!!

"The Chocolate Chess Match" Carina Jorgensen

This work represents some details from a match that Jennifer Shahade played against Greg (her brother) a few years ago in a "psycho-geography" event organized by artist Sharilyn Neidhardt.  The piece was done as a present for Greg by the artist for his work on chessvideos.tv. http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3073&hilit=thesalesman 

I highly recommend all of Greg's videos, they are a welcome break from more "serious" instructional videos.

SonofPearl blogged Jorgensen a while back but I don't remember this piece being included there.  Her website:   http://www.carlinart.net/

Bronze Chess Piece of Caliph Harun al-Rashid Central Asia 780AD-850AD

Watching one of Greg's video's the other day he used the phrase choo choo and it reminded me of these videos.  So here it is the art of trash talking (warning there is some mild language here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRsXLdCKmvI&feature=related

Here is one for the more PG minded among us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8QbdUDQoxY

and...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttjJ1fi855M&feature=related

Not too much talking here but who needs to talk when you have presence like these two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZo8O-p9qy4&feature=related

Albert Einstein refered to chess "as the gymnasium of the brain."  He was interested enough in the game and familiar enough Emanuel to write the introduction to Jacques Hannak's "Emanuel Lasker, The Life of a Chess Master."  Here is what Al had to say:

Emanuel Lasker was undoubtedly one of the most interesting people I came to know in my later years. We must be thankful to those who have penned the story of his life for this and succeeding generations. For there are few men who have had a warm interest in all the great human problems and at the same time kept their personality so uniquely independent.

I am not a chess expert and therefore not in a position to marvel at the force of mind revealed in his greatest intellectual achievement - in the field of chess. I must even confess that the struggle for power and the competitive spirit expressed in the form of an ingenious game have always been repugnant to me.

I met Emanuel Lasker at the house of my old friend, Alexander Moszkowski, and came to know him well in the course of many walks in which we exchanged opinions about the most varied questions. It was a somewhat one-sided exchange, in which I received more that I gave. For it was usually more natural for this eminently productive man to shape his own thoughts than to busy himself with those of another.

To my mind, there was a tragic note in his personality, despite his fundamentally affirmative attitude towards life. The enormous psychological tension, without which nobody can be a chess master, was so deeply interwoven with chess that he could never entirely rid himself of the spirit of the game, even when he was occupied with philosophic and human problems. At the same time, it seemed to me that chess was more a profession for him than the real goal of his life. His real yearning seems to be directed towards scientific understanding and the beauty inherent only in logical creation, a beauty so enchanting that nobody who has once caught a glimpse of it can ever escape it.

Spinoza's material existence and independence were base on the grinding of lenses; chess had an analogous role in Lasker's life. But Spinoza was granted a better fate, because his occupation left his mind free and untroubled, while, on the other hand, the chess playing of a master ties him to the game, fetters his mind and shapes it to a certain extent so that his internal freedom and ease, no matter how strong he is, must inevitably be affected. In our conversations and in the reading of his philosophical books, I always had that feeling. Of these books, The Philosophy of the Unattainable interested me the most; the book is not only very original, but it also affords a deep insight into Lasker's entire personality.

Now I must justify myself because I never considered in detail, either in writing or in our conversations, Emanuel Lasker's critical essay on the theory of relativity. It is indeed necessary for me to say something about it here because even in his biography, which is focused on the purely human aspects, the passage which discusses the essay contains something resembling a slight reproach. Lasker's keen analytical mind had immediately clearly recognized that the central point of the whole question is that the velocity of light (in a vacuum) is a constant. It was evident to him that, if this constancy were admitted, the relative of time could not be avoided. So what was there to do? He tried to do what Alexnder, whom historians have dubbed "the Great," did when he cut the Gordian knot. Lasker's attempted solution was based on the following idea: "Nobody has any immediate knowledge of how quickly light is transmitted in a complete vacuum, for even in interstellar space there is always a minimal quantity of matter present under all circumstances and what holds there is even more applicable to the most complete vacuum created by man to the best of his ability. Therefore, who has the right to deny that its velocity in a really complete vacuum is infinite?"

To answer this argument can be expressed as follows: "It is, to be sure, true that nobody has experimental knowledge of how light is transmitted in a complete vacuum. But it is as good as impossible to formulate a reasonable theory of light according to which the velocity of light is affected by minimal traces of matter which is very significant but at the same time virtually independent of their density." Before such a theory, which moreover, must harmonize with the known phenomena of optics in an almost complete vacuum, can be set up, it seems that every physicist must wait for the solution of the above-mentioned Gordian knot - if he is not satisfied with the present solution. Moral: a strong mind cannot take place of delicate fingers.

But I liked Lasker's immovable independence, a rare human attribute, in which respect almost all, including intelligent people, are mediocrities. And so I let matters stand that way.

I am glad that the reader will be able to get to know this strong and, at the same time, find and lovable personality from his sympathetic biography, but I am thankful for the hours of conversation which this ever striving, independent, simple man granted me.

Dr. Emanual Lasker      Köpfe berühmter Schachmeister

Akiba Rubinstein             Köpfe berühmter Schachmeister

Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch          Köpfe berühmter Schachmeister

Heinrich Wolf                Köpfe berühmter Schachmeister

Richard Teichmann                   Köpfe berühmter Schachmeister

My friends without shields walk on the target

It is late the windows are breaking

My friends without shoes leave
What they love
Grief moves among them as a fire among
Its bells
My friends without clocks turn
On the dial they turn
They part

My friends with names like gloves set out
Bare handed as they have lived
And nobody knows them
It is they that lay the wreaths at the milestones it is their
Cups that are found at the wells
And are then chained up

My friends without feet sit by the wall
Nodding to the lame orchestra
Brotherhood it says on the decorations
My friend without eyes sits in the rain smiling
With a nest of salt in his hand

My friends without fathers or houses hear
Doors opening in the darkness
Whose halls announce

Behold the smoke has come home

My friends and I have in common
The present a wax bell in a wax belfry
This message telling of
Metals this
Hunger for the sake of hunger this owl in the heart
And these hands one
For asking one for applause

My friends with nothing leave it behind
In a box
My friends without keys go out from the jails it is night
They take the same road they miss
Each other they invent the same banner in the dark
They ask their way only of sentries too proud to breathe

At dawn the stars on their flag will vanish

The water will turn up their footprints and the day will rise
Like a monument to my
Friends the forgotten

W.S Merwin

"Chess at the Art Gallery"      thOrium    

"Chess in the Schools"      M. Kaggen

                            Aphorisms

Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take 
the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.

                      *

When one does not love the impossible, one does not love anything.

                      *

Every time I wake I understand how easy it is to be nothing.

                      *

Now you do not know what to do, not even when you go back to being 
a child. And it is sad to see a child who does not know what to do.

                      *

Only a few arrive at nothing, because the way is long.

Antonio Porchia       

Translation  W.S Merwin

             Happy Endings for the Lost Children

One of their picture books would no doubt show
The two lost children wandering in a maze
Of anthropomorphic tree limbs: the familiar crow

Swoops down upon the trail they leave of corn,
Tolerant of the error of their ways.
Hand in hand they stumble onto the story,

Brighteyed with beginnings of fever, scared
Half to death, yet never for a moment
Doubting the outcome that had been prepared

Long in advance: Girl saves brother from oven,
Appalling witch dies in appropriate torment;
Her hoarded treasure buys them their parents' love.

                                * * *

"As happy an ending as any fable
Can provide," squawks the crow, who had expected more:
Delicate morsels from the witch's table.

It's an old story—in the modern version
The random children fall to random terror.
You see it nightly on the television:

Cameras focus on the lopeared bear
Beside the plastic ukulele, shattered
In a fit of rage—the lost children are

Found in the first place we now think to look:
Under the fallen leaves, under the scattered
Pages of a lost children's picture book.

                               * * *

But if we leave terror waiting in the rain
For the wrong bus, or if we have terror find,
At the very last moment the right train,

Only to get off at the wrong station—
If we for once imagine a happy ending,
Which is, as always, a continuation,

It's because the happy ending's a necessity,
It isn't just a sentimental ploy"
Without the happy ending there would be

No one to tell the story to but the witch,
And the story is clearly meant for the girl and boy
Just now about to step into her kitchen.

Charles Martin

Nice painting