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Fascinating compositions from Art of the Russians:-
More Aristarkh Lentulov – peisages, cityscapes, all in brilliant colour. What an artist. (Via Lobgott Pipzam.)
Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930-93) is best known for her sculpture who trained under Bernard Meadows was influenced by Henry Moore and Giacometti. She was also very keen on the work of Sir Jacob Epstein.
Her early work was done just after the war and it is clear that this expresses to some extent the horror of war itself. The sculpture is angular and scary; it expresses the fear of a child that has been subjected to aerial bombardment. The bird effigies are also those of which express the rigid terror visited from the sky whether from Luftwaffe attack or from V-Weapons. Small surprise that her work belonged to a group which became widely known as the Geometry of Fear school – this included Reg Butler, Bernard Meadows, Kenneth Armitage and Eduardo Paolozzi.
Her sculpture is very well known but her prints and drawings are also impressive. There is an endearing 1981 You-Tube clip which shows a rather reticent St John-Stevas conducting an interview with Elisabeth Frink at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXNSsq0cklk and there is another interesting clip on a poster for Antony and Cleopatra at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQIH3FODbRA
The combat scene in the image below illustrates a continuous theme in Frink’s work which deals with classical themes from antiquity. These sometimes reflect her interest shown in her sculptures in the male form. The grey image is actually a wool tapestry weave for furnishing purposes first exhibited in 1961.
The colour etching of Antony and Cleopatra was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company for a performance in 1982 at The Other Place. Antony was played by Michael Gambon and Cleopatra by Helen Mirren. The engaging etching was produced in a series of 213 and portrays the interpretation appropriate to the style of these actors.
Two other interesting websites showing this aspect of her work may be found at http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/elisabeth%20frink and of course at the Tate http://www.tate.org.uk/search/Frink
Ben Batten and Mary Quick have both referred to various home remedies used when calling the doctor might have been expensive. For many purposes a kaolin poultice was a frequent resort, as was various sorts of herbal tea or for sore throats honey and lemon was a simple palliative. Looking through copies of The Cornishman from the late 1920s an impressive number of remedies were advertised as being on offer:-
1) Women who are tired out
-How to regain lost vitality for women who feel tired out, nervy and overwrought, and suffers from headaches and backaches.
Try Dr Williams’ pink pills –of all chemists 3/- a box
2) Clarke’s Blood Mixture
“Just as good for abscesses, ulcers, bad legs, inflamed wounds, swollen glands, haemorrhoids, also rheumatism and gout- all of which are signs of blood impurities.
3) Swan’s Oxygen Therapy, Alperton, Penzance
Inhalation therapy for asthma, tuberculosis and pneumonia
Each copy of the newspaper would carry around five of such adverts, some large but few efficacious.
Had medical science a great deal to offer? As the CountyMOH report of 1933 shows the Women’s Hospital in Redruth was busy-some due to unsanitary home conditions- and some areas of the county, like Sennen, had no midwife coverage of any kind. Puerperal fever as it was termed had not been eradicated although the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Boston Physician with literary leanings, as far back as 1843 had shown the risk of physicians carrying infections from one infected patient to others. Whilst this was recognised, effective treatment for the condition depended upon the development of antibiotics. It was only in 1936 that Colebrook’s research was reported in the Lancet about the effectiveness of sulfa drug on a condition that was more lethal than pneumonia. They also worked on meningococcal meningitis so that the death rates for such conditions started to fall after 1940.
Eric Kemp mentions in ‘We want to speak of Schooldays’, that because his mother lost a sister, who died soon after she was born in St Ives, he comments, “…they decided that when I came along, they’d go up to London, and be born in a proper hospital.”
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Reviewing “Coco and Igor”
Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky
This film is stylishly shot in muted tones of blue and brown. This in itself adds emphasis to the black and white elegance of Coco’s dresses and the Art Deco interior of her grand villa just outside of Paris. This biopic tells the story of a passionate affair between the exiled Russian composer and the modernist fashion designer. The sound track is richly steeped in Stravinsky’s music, by turns lyrical and harshly cacophonic, together with snippets of Twenties jazz.
It commences, after some intriguing kaleidoscopic graphics with the riotous reception given to the strange ballet, “The Rite of Spring” in Paris in 1913. Audience tension builds with the staccato cutting and editing as the frantic music impacts. The bourgeois audience is soon shocked by the frenzied dancing. However, this does not include Coco who on the surface remains cool, aloof yet mysteriously, she is deeply moved. Anna Mouglalis, playing Chanel, charmingly conveys the broken hearted businesswoman whose heart has been shattered when she loses her young lover in a car accident. These incidents were also covered in the very different film, directed by Anne Fontaine in Coco before Chanel with Audrey Tautou in the female lead.
The modernist Russian composer and pianist, Igor Stravinsky, played by rising Danish star, Mads Mikkelson although vulnerable and racked with doubt –as well as exiled by the Bolshevik Revolution- nevertheless becomes the absolute epitome of artistic determination. After the couple are introduced by Diaghalev, they wander together among the dinosaur bones in the Jardin des Plantes and Coco, by now rich and successful offers the Stravinsky family refuge in her wonderful grand villa. Reluctantly Catherine, Stravinsky’s wife and also his musical mentor agrees to this arrangement. In this grand and luxurious setting the Stravinsky family, children and animals settle with differing degrees of comfort. Coco enjoys his music and dances with obvious enjoyment at the arrival of the new household.
Coco learns to trill on the piano and is soon sowing buttons back on to the composer’s worn suit. It is not long before the innovative composer succumbs to the refined charms of his hostess. This gives rise to the desperate heartache for Stravinsky’s wife, Catherine –already suffering from consumption and frequent pregnancies. This part is played with great emotion by Elena Morozova. There then ensues a battle between chic and chagrin. Stravinsky is at first inspired to write music of erotic charm. However, there is some other tussle emerging when Igor fails to recognise or respect Coco’s estimate of her own work as ranking with the artistry of his own work. The children are starting to notice and Madame Stravinsky withdraws and the music echoes these volcanic rifts as the man is torn between the love of his family and the independent and alluring Coco. She becomes preoccupied with another sort of chemistry, that which leads her to develop Chanel No.5. This is an evocative and intriguing film, exploring the fractures in personality and the lingering fragrance of an exquisite perfume.
This portrait by Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine (1888–1944) was completed in St Petersburg and it shows a cubist influence, the dynamism associated with futurism as well as a colourful lyricism. The palette is already not dissimilar from Sonia Delaunay with whom he was later to co-operate in Paris in the development of Orphism. They were both Jewish emigrants from Ukraine anduntil 1914 he was a resident in the artist’s colony La Ruche. This was an old three-storey circular structure- hence its name which is French for ‘ The Beehive’- situated in the 15th Arrondissement on the Left Bank and originally designed by Gustave Eiffell as a temporary building in the decidedly colourful area called the Passage Dantzig.
According to the Oxford Art On-Line, “His proximity in the mid-1900s to the artists of the nascent avant-garde, especially David Burlyuk and Vladimir Burlyuk, was of decisive importance to his stylistic development. Contributing to The Link (Kiev, 1908) and their other exhibitions in Moscow, Kiev and St Petersburg, he supported their stand against Realism and the Academy, favouring a brightly coloured post-Impressionism reminiscent of Georges Seurat and Louis Valtat.”
Amongst those considered as key figures in the development of painting before Matisse is the painter and print maker, Louis Valtat. He was a close friend of the Nabis. The latter used simple areas of pure colour and along with Gaugin, these influenced Valtat towards the purity of form, line and colour known as synthetism. His later work is also considered by some, notably Natalie Henderson Lee as proto-Fauvist. This was no doubt due to the time he later spent near the Mediterranean which intensified his use of colour.
Because Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine was fond of a bright coloured palatte it was said that he was influenced by the post-impressionism of both Seurat and Valtat. It is interesting how much information seems to have been flowing between Paris and St Petersburg in the mid 1900s partly due to the influence of art magazines. It was also supported by the influence of the members of the group The Link (Zveno) the Burliuks organized an avant-garde exhibition in Kiev.
Rossine’s self portrait was painted when he was just nineteen. The work already shows his movement towards a orphic style although his palette is not that far away from the colours employed by Nathan Altman in his The Ziger Macher (the watch mender). The notes from Hammersite.com suggest that this particular portrait was painted about 1914 and go on to say,” The painting is from the period Altman exhibited with The Jack of Diamonds group and attempted to express Jewish national identity utilizing a contemporary style. “
When Rossine moved to Paris in 1910, he will have come into a situation where critics such as Apollinaire, Gleizes and Vauxcelles were developing and defining the Cubist project. In addition he was already associated with the rather more expressionist style from the Russian cities such as the Burluik brothers. It must have been a period of quite frenzied excitement leading to the many innovative works.The crescendo came in Paris by 1913. (See The Essay at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pt70h) Other interesting figures within this general ambit include Jean Metzinger, František Kupka, a Czech painter, David Sheterenberg and the Ukrainian Avant-Garde Sculptor, Alexander Archipenko. The latter possibly an influence on Rossine’s own sculptural work.
More Rossine paintings can be viewed at http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/Rossine/interesting/
1925
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An interesting read….
Ian Kershaw, The End:
The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-45
In “The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-45,” eminent British historian Ian Kershaw, author of a highly-acclaimed two volume biography of Adolph Hitler, details how Germany continued to fight in the second half of 1944 and the first half of 1945, when it was clear that the war was lost. Kershaw also analyzes why Germany continued to fight to the end, the more enticing aspect of the book for me. Kershaw begins with the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, led by Klaus von Stauffenberg. From this point onward, Kershaw contends, there was no realistic possibility of removing Hitler and, hence, no realistic possibility of averting the catastrophic route which Hitler insisted upon. The book ends approximately 10 months later, after Hitler’s suicide in the Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, the…
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Interesting list here,,,,,,,,
In the final part of this series on the Magic Mountain of German Literature, I asked British publishers of German Fiction for their recommendations and grabbed hold of a couple of authors too. The resulting eclectic mix of classic and contemporary recommendations, some of which won’t be appearing in Britain until next year, should keep us all busy reading German literature for many months to come.
Regi Claire: Swiss Author of Fighting It!
I read Goethe’s Elective Affinities (publ. 1809) while still a student, quite a few years ago now. The novel has stayed with me, perhaps because it’s such a good read and is what I would call a perfect novel. It’s also an experimental novel, in the sense that it explores the idea of elective affinities as observed in chemistry. The relationships of the four main characters are developed within the force field of freedom/choice and necessity/fate. The…
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Like this Vimeo piece-
Here are some more thoughts and paintings by artist Louise McClary, alongside a poem by John Clare and short film…
‘We are I know really in the clutches of winter, now but it seems to me that the birds are still doing their autumn thing. Crossing ‘pelaggo’ field at dusk its like the rooks and black birds come to zip up the sky.. and the starlings… the starlings… at four yesterday evening there were hundreds above my head , they are enjoying the grain left in the stubble field from harvest time, it has to be THE most incredible sight, a ‘murmuration’ is what it is called when they make those wonderful shapes in the sky ..
John Clare called the starling a “sturnal ” which is rather fantastic I think… His poem autumn birds says it all …’
Autumn Birds
The wild duck startles like a sudden thought,
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This looks amusing….
penwithlit 