Half watching this French film which strikes me as typically French and discursive, in German seems unusual and interesting. Dubbing would have been better for my language skills. At least, it has given me time to play with my last two days of Wien photographs.
Category: Art and Photographic History
Kinder können nicht sagen wie heiß der Tag ist,
wie scharf der Duft der Sommerrose,
These evocative lines from Robert Graves indicate how some pots translate so very well. Yesterday, travelling around Vienna left me little time for reading -only perhaps for a few lines of poetry. I started by going North to the Landstrasse – and wandered Feclessly down the Hauptstrasse which had interesting markets. I tried using the Sun to navigate but wandered in a direction away from the Danube Canal. Easily distracted, as usual by a bookshop I found an excellent plastic sleeved grammar of German on three foldable sheets. Then found an excellent cafe where the small house torte was the best that I found in Vienna thus far. I then followed a friends advice and entered a Church founded after the second encirclement of Vienna by the Turkish forces.
During a further digression around towards the Canal and the Prater, I discovered a pleasant Chemist/Herbal shop, bought some cough sweets for flying and generally forgot all my language skills explaining ludicrously St John’s Wort and its supposed benefits. I forgot the Latin name-hypericum.Walking over a 1950s bridge I arrived eventually in the Prater. Then there was a large tennis club and I wondered if this might be one that was referred to in Vienna by Eva Menasse. After apassing a cheerful group of blind children through tree-lined avenues, which neverthless gave thought to some reflection, I arrived at an interesting denkmal, the Habsburg composer, Carl M.Ziehrer. Finally looming out of the mid afternoon mists I saw the Prater wheel and felt Harry Lime must be about to emerge with a grotesque smile from the surrounding fun-park.
Karl Michael Ziehrer (also spelled as Carl Michael Ziehrer) (May 2, 1843 – November 14, 1922)[1] was an Austrian composer. In his lifetime, he was one of the fiercest rivals of the Strauss family; most notably Johann Strauss II[2] and Eduard Strauss.
Not difficult to find in Vienna – it’s just after the parliament building and turn through the archway-simple and effective method for getting tickets and free WC if you ask at the desk. 
Brilliant wi-fi connection in the middle of the MQ and nice cappucino at the inside cafe. Have just been investigating service of EE in a T-mobile shop, the only place where I have to queue. 
Apparently although capitalism may be international, the service to people is not. Perhaps this explains the why mobile phone producers produce a isolated and insular service that the Tory Party and UKIP would be proud?
Nothing prepares you for the size and vivid colour of the Schiele paintings. He produced some 170 self-portraits. Thecomposition and vitality of the collection is quite amazing. It was the great flu epidemic that curtailed the life of this highly prolific painter at the age of just 28. Add to these the drawings currently on show downstairs, the Klimt and other Austrian painters, you will have no difficulty in looking around for a minimum of four hours.
As an introduction to this topic take a quick look at this clip from the excellent film producer, Ken Loach-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odZrzqgOruE made for the Tate.
How similar in many ways was Hogarth’s London in the middle of the Eighteenth Century to the London of today. A city where it was easy enough to end up in debtor’s prison, as indeed did Hogarth’s beloved and unworldly father, having been condemned to the Fleet; a sad fate for a brilliant Latin scholar and writer of erudite texts. He opened a Latin speaking coffee house in St John’s Gate. Here the governor and authorities were open to high levels of corruption, as later in Dickens time and very reminiscent of the scandals of G4S today, from which Bill Gates has just withdrawn his investments. In other respects, the London which Michael Dean so vividly depicts with its gin shops and stews and general squalor appears more genial and creative than the contemporary city. A backdrop is painted where a young chancer such as William Hogarth Esq. can develop his prodigious artistic talents. Beyond the joy of the paintbrush, to say nothing of the etching tool, he ravishes with gusto the charms of both serving wenches and the daughters of his aristocratic patrons. Dean, who is incidentally versed in Chomsky’s linguistics, has furnished his readers with a beguiling study of this genius of visual satire.
There are also rich comparisons to be made between current financial calamities and the South Sea Bubble, the first major crash of the early stock market in 1720 and from which the first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole was deft at concealing his personal involvement. This was the very first subject for Hogarth’s satirical print where he depicts speculators of every religious persuasion gambling on the huge machine which stands for the merry-go-round of unlicensed gambling.
Dean illustrates vividly the crowded and fetid cobbled streets of the old city and his protagonist’s sharp eye for both hypocrisy and the opportunities for Hogarth’s enterprising talent. The account dwells considerably upon the dreadful prisons, already mentioned but also gives us an insight for instance, into the techniques which Bill Hogarth used to portray the dreadful plight of the murderess, Sarah Malcolm two days before her one- way cart ride to Tyburn. Dean shows us Hogarth’s determination to reveal the human qualities of his subject and the skill and concentration when posing her for this portrait. The chameleon nature and psychological adaptability of the great artist is outlined in the constant reappraisals that Hogarth made of his work and even how he recorded his own name.
Samuel Johnson showed his own admirable restraint by his famous remark the actor-manager David Garrick,” I’ll come no more behind your scenes, David for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.” Hogarth, however, shows little self control in his own sometimes comical and bawdy investigations, some of which were indeed conducted at the dark and chilly recesses in the Royal Theatre. In relation to other members of the female sex, whose general treatment at the time was abysmal, there is a touching bittersweet quality. Infection was to lead to this particular rake’s downfall.
Michael Dean focuses, in a mildly erotic account, upon the exchange of a hooped dress between his own intended, Jane Fenton, and the actress, Lavinia Fenton. The latter lady becoming the subject of further paintings he made of her and of her on-stage appearances. In an innovative and almost Brechtian manner Hogarth considered the inclusion of the audience; an opportunity too to provoke and admonish!
Essentially I,Hogarth is a non-fictional novel, sometimes referred to as a bio-fic; a form which has certain ambiguities and is exemplified by another well-known Eighteenth Century novel about Samuel Johnson, According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge where the story of the great man is told through an ancillary close observer. Dean’s book is written in the first person and this adds extra challenges. The style in which it is written, at first noticeable becomes gradually more engaging. There is little in the way of a conventional plot, however the narrative pace is sustained by the energy with which Hogarth pursues his goals, like his wooing of Jane Thornhill in opposition to her father, his patron. Those who wish to progress to a factual biography couldn’t do better than to read William Hogarth: A Life and a World by Jenny Uglow to whom the author refers in a note.
The pleasure in reading this account lies in its vivid, picturesque and satirical world view as seen through Hogarth’s sharp and observant eyes. The reader is introduced to an amusing variety of characters and educated about Eighteenth Century life. Many scenes from the book are posed as in an engraving. It will send people back to really look again at Hogarth’s achievement and support Michael Dean’s
heartfelt request for a better memorial to this inspired rebel.
At the opening of the exhibition Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones at the Victoria and Albert Museum, he is said to have commented;”Hats are a great antidote to what’s going on. It’s really their purpose to put a happy face on a sad world.”
The image or drawing which is shown below has some of the intensity of a realist drawing by, say Kathe Kollwitz. Her naturalism shares the integrity which we associate with Van Gogh. Indeed her second cycle of works concerned the German Peasant War which began in 1525. However, this is not by Kollwtz, who seems to have rarely depicted persons with headdress, but by Tamara de Lempicka.
The pellucid definition and monumental stocky quality might also have suggested this in her sketch of a Russian peasant. Headgear was a recurring interest for Lempicka.
In Pippa Young’s paintings, http://www.pippayoung.co.uk/Art/Welcome.html which she specifically states are not to be considered as portraits, the headwear seems to confer meaning. It renders significance and gives import. Blank spaces and highly modelled backgrounds add to this general effect. She states, “Often the figures are posed to echo art-historical characters: Mantegna’s Saint Sebastian, or one of Vermeer’s subjects. When context is removed the figures become something else, oddly familiar; occupying an empty pictorial space, free from imposed narrative; timeless and unadorned.”
One theme which appears in the headdress then is a kind of 15th Century Flemish cap which is detailed at http://research.fibergeek.com/category/garbclothing/page/15/
However, many of the male figures appear with antlers or horns and give the impression of dreams and mythology. There is a wide variety of different meanings which can be attached to such headdress or headgear. They may be symbols of earthy virility or alternatively give a suggestion of darker activities. These matters are discussed at http://spellsandmagic.com/Horns.html and further unusual images of horned masks are at http://www.pinterest.com/susantooker/antler-crowns-and-headdresses/ In some of Pippa Young’s paintings the texture of the headwear or clothing looks rather like thin polythene sheeting and seem, possibly, to suggest environmental concerns.
Pippa Young
The ornate quality also resembles the exuberance of Chinese ethnic dress as at http://traditions.cultural-china.com/en/15Traditions5963.html.
Pippa Young
Pippa Young
Returning to thoughts about horns must remind some of Falstaff in Act 5 of The Merry Wives of Windsor where he is dressed as Herne the Hunter and taunted and humiliated for his bad behaviour. As Shakespeare makes him say earlier in the play,” The Windsor Bell has struck twelve; the minute draws on. Now the hot-blooded gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa, Love set on thy horns- O powerful love that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some others a man a beast!
Pippa Young’s figurative work is finely drawn and the palette which she uses adds to the mysterious and evocative quality in her work. Her present collection can be viewed at the Cornwall Contemporary Gallery at http://cornwallcontemporary.com/HumanNature.html
Her work is in some respects interesting to contrast with that of Cristina Iotti whose work can be seen at http://www.cristinaiotti.it/2013-2012/
Pippa Young
Imagine a sumptuous Italian feast in the sunlit bathed ancient countryside near Milan. Next to you a gentleman talks and eats with furious energy. He tells of Dante, Cicero, and St Augustine and quotes a multitude of obscure troubadours from the Middle Ages. He repeats himself, gestures flamboyantly, nudges you sharply in the ribs, belches and even breaks wind. His conversation contains nuggets of information but in the flow of his discourse there is a fondness for iteration and reiteration. He throws bones over his shoulder and when he reaches the cheese course. Definitely, too much information on the mouldy bacteria! When you finally get up things the elderly gentleman has said prompts your imagination. You are better informed, intrigued and prodded to examine his discourse again and again, even if only to challenge what you have heard. Such are the effects of reading Eco’s essays in “Inventing the Enemy”.
The first essay, discloses what your choice of opponent or indeed those you victimise says about yourself. Eco splendidly quotes from Cicero’s Orations against Catiline lecturing the Senate on his opponent’s seditious moral perversity. Within a few pages we read of Pliny, the Younger on his persecution of Christians, Odo of Cluny’s disgust with women and, time and again more poisonous invective against the Jews. The reader will recall Peter Porter or perhaps, Cavafy:-
Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.
Since theology is never distant from Umberto Eco’s thought there is an echo of the unkindness mentioned in Matthew Chap45 v25” And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
This eclectic collection covers matters as varied as St Thomas Aquinas on whether Embryos have souls to this famous cultural critic’s latest thoughts on Wikileaks. The philosophical chapter comparing Absolute and Relativism is particularly interesting. Touching on questions about the nature of contingency, the verification principle, positivism and post-modernism Eco provides the reader, given an interest in such matters, plenty to stimulate the little grey cells. Significantly, he mentions how Pope John Paul II thought modern philosophy had become dominated by questions about the theory of knowledge rather than issues about the nature of being (ontology). The orphic resonances of Mallarmé’s symbolic communication, Kafka’s opinions on interacting with the Absolute, quoted by Elie Wiesel, and Nietzsche’s advocacy of the subtlety of art all get a mention. This is not an easy read; it is indeed something of an intellectual tour de force.
The lengthy chapter concerning Victor Hugo, The Poetics of Excess begins by outlining Gide and Cocteau’s concern that the writer’s insufferable style is thoroughly bombastic. However, Eco is entranced by Hugo’s lengthy descriptions, his penchant for making lists and constructing unstable rough-hewn characters. Frequently Eco seems attracted by the ugliness and brutality that conveys the cruel forces of destiny which characterise Hugo’s highly romantic writing. Memorably, the guillotine on its rough wooden scaffold with its glinting sharp blade becomes a devouring beast. Umberto Eco concentrates on Hugo’s novel about revolution and reaction, [[Ninety Three]] where the lengthy lists of villages, crossings and homesteads provide the reader with a convincing panorama of the scale of the social upheaval. Redemption it seems to Hugo, quoting de Maistre, necessitates human sacrifice. Eco is explaining how in becoming more radical by 1870 and supporting the Communards he feels too he must justify The Terror. This engaging chapter with the portrayal of the Royalist Vendée, led by the clergy and by peasants who were chosen in each locale, cost more than 240,000 lives. The trendy professor convinces us of the necessity of reading Hugo’s inimitable contribution to the historical novel. Even attempting a few selected paragraphs in French would prove a rewarding challenge!
Plunging deeper into this very varied collection, “Inventing the Enemy”, the reader becomes beguiled by Eco’s verbal fire display. The chapter on [[Imaginary Astronomies ]]delves into the curiosities of approaches, ancient and modern to explain the structure and shape of the firmament. First as a glorious tabernacle progressively he illustrates cosmologies linked with how man’s inventions alter too his conception of himself and society. Humour and irony are freely sprinkled through the text which leaps into convolutions that mirror the Ptolemaic system of epicycles of the planets that are described. The story is enlivened too by an engaging display of strange maps. By the end of these essays, the reader will have a sense of the strange, entertaining pleasure of Umberto Eco’s company and an introduction to the diversity of ingenuity and fun to be found among otherwise neglected archives.
Two other interesting links are this Guardian Review by Nicholas Lezard is at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/27/nicholas-lezard-inventing-enemy-umberto-eco
and an interview with Jeremy Paxman is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLblYsHc7uI
“In 1960 Ida Kar (1908-74) became the first photographer to have a retrospective exhibition at a major London art gallery. Her portraits offer a fascinating insight into post-war cultural life and her subjects included some of the most celebrated figures from the art world of 1950s and 1960s Europe and Russia. A number of the artists Kar photographed also included artists from the St Ives School.” as it says at http://www.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/.
I saw this exhibition on Saturday and was truly moved at this small but fascinating exhibition and the sculptures that came with it which included Hepworth and Epstein. Lovely picture of Ida with Victor Musgrave with whom she lived in the 1940s in Cairo. Delightfully bohemian, her work is taken from the studios and ateliers of Paris and London. Even more exciting I found her photographs of St Ives in the 1950s. Her Braque portrait captures the essence of the artist-his eye sockets look as though they were a Picasso portrait brought to life. The portraits of Leach, Denis Mitchell whose reputation is still growing and Hepworth forming an armature from wire for a sculpture are all lively and moving. The original exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is reviewed at http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/mar/13/ida-kar-bohemian-photographer-review. There is a great review of her photographs at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11998337. Should you get to Truro Museum at the moment there is an intriguing collection, A Century of St Ives Art 1840-1940.
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A_Edgar-Poe_(Devant_le_noir_soleil_de_la_Melancolie,_Lenore_apparait « L’artiste vient à la vie pour un accomplissement qui est mystérieux. Il est un accident. Rien ne l’attend dans le monde social. » What exactly did Redon mean by this remark? In general he had a penchant for the mysterious, the half defined, chiaroscuro and the symbolic image which might suggest several meanings at the same time. This very shy man sought for many years to gain recognition and attained it through his literary friends but not at first in the way that he had sought it. Perhaps he had a tendency not to want to gain recognition except in a manner which he found acceptable. This he attained quite late in life among the artists that are known as the Nabis.
- For many years in his charcoals and lithographs he struggled to express inner fears and traumas that were the result of a difficult childhood with by his uncle. As the French version of Wikipedia expresses it:- “D’une nature fragile, il est confié à une nourrice puis à son oncle, à la campagne, et passe son enfance entre Bordeaux et le domaine de Peyrelebade, près de Listrac dans le Médoc ; c’est là vers six ans « en plein isolement de la campagne » que les fusains voient le jour, dans cette nature pleine de clairs-obscurs et de nuances propres à éveiller chez le jeune garçon ce monde étrange et fantasmagorique, ce sentiment subjectif qui est l’essence même de son œuvre, et qui est encore aujourd’hui une énigme. ” The strange and suggestive charcoals emerged from his experience of life in the moist, atmospheric wine region that now produces bottles of fruity Médoc from €11.00 to €69.73.
Peyrelebade by Redon - The images which Redon made during his earlier “noir” period when his use of black and white was an attempt to struggle against a form of naturalism of which he disapproved. He might be considered a late romantic or on the other hand a very early surrealist. His imagery reflected his obsessions with mortality and his interests in Hindu mysticism.
Pierre Bonnard by Odilon Redon Armand Clavaud his close friend was interested in botany and there is evidence of his influence in terms of images which might be viewed under the microscope. These were becoming capable of increasing resolution and chromatic aberration, which might have interested Odilon Redon might be compensated. After all this was the time when small micro-organisms were the subject of research in Paris by Pasteur.
Maurice Dennis by Odilon Redon - Were the traumatic images in the charcoals and lithographs an early exloration that might be associated with some early form of psychoanalysis? In some way there
appears to have been a kind of theraputic working through of dreams and images( part-objects) associated with infant trauma. The Zeitgeist of romanticism included a renewed respect for childhood fantasy and philosophers such as David Hartley (1705 – 28 August 1757) who was an English philosopher and founder of ideas of association and psychic structure. Of course Charcot (Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Martin_Charcot )twas using hypnosis to treat hysteria at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital where Sigmund Freud was studying and researching in 1885. Charcot used drawings and photography widely in his, now shocking and unacceptable, observations of his patients.
- Some of the spider imagery seems to evoke uncanny associations with Kafka’s work http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Verwandlung
- What were the factors which moved Redon towards the brilliant and beautiful colours of his later pastels?
Golden Cell - To quote Fr. Wikipedia again “Les années 1890 et le début du siècle sont une période de transformation, de mutation, c’est l’abandon de ses « noirs », il commence à utiliser lepastel et l’huile, et la couleur domine les œuvres du reste de sa vie. Eve est son premier nu féminin réalisé d’après modèle. En 1899, il est présenté parMaurice Denis aux Nabis, groupe d’artistes qui compte parmi ses membres Gauguin.”
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
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
penwithlit 