The Best American Poetry

Met Percent: Week Twenty [by Alec Bernstein]

Bellini, Raw Pork and Opium

Left: Madonna Adoring the Sleeping Child, Giovanni Bellini, 1460s, not on view.
Top: The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches, Henry Fuseli, 1796, gallery 633.
Bottom: The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781, Detroit Institute of Arts.
Right: The sleep of reason produces monsters, Francisco de Goya, 1799, not on view. 

Getting the gestalt of gallery 633, titled Goya and the Eighteenth Century in Italy, was tough. Tiepolos, Goya's portraits from his “black period” - when he almost died from illness - and Fuseli’s Night-Hag. 

The influences on Fuseli are noted: Bellini’s infant on a stone slab; classical pyramid compositions; masterful chiaroscuro. And his utterly personal vision not based on typical themes of the canon.

The Nightmare became a mark of Romanticism. “She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair.” - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818.

The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) compares one of the paintings in the Usher House with Fuseli’s painting: “irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm.”

Freud had a copy of The Nightmare in his study, enamored of Fuseli’s aphorism, “One of the most unexplored regions of art are dreams.” Ernest Jones used the image for the frontispiece in his On The Nightmare. 

Although rumors would attribute Fuseli’s visions to consuming raw pork and opium, the results were horrific, but not diseased. Somehow the Enlightenment brought fantasies floating in clouds, winged beasts, and  demonic imagination.

Five Ways To Conjugate an Oil Sketch

Allegory of the Planets and Continents, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1752, gallery 633.
Top left: Madame Théodore Gobillard, Edgar Degas, 1869, gallery 815.

Top right: Woman with a Dog, painting and riccordo (14 fantasy portraits), Jean Honoré Fragonard, 1769, gallery 630.

Bottom left: Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Bréau, Camille Corot, 1832, gallery 803.
Bottom right: Sketch for The Haywain, John Constable, 1820, not on view. 

The general term “oil sketch” comes long after the creation of these rapid intuitive paintings. Earlier, more specific names were derived from the function of the work. The modello, for example, was made for clients and was a business task in ateliers. All of these forms were seen only as stages toward finished works and not considered worthy of public exhibition.

Modello: A finished presentation sketch specifically for “patron approval”.  (Tiepolo’s proposal included this sketch for the Residenz Palace fresco in Würzburg, Germany.)

Ébauche: Unfinished (for any reason). (Degas, after several dry media studies, left the oil sketch unfinished. It was a favorite of Mary Cassatt.)

Riccordo: A reduced version of a large work for the artist’s records. (Fragonard, after completing his 14 fantasy portraits, copied each oil sketch as a thumb-nail for himself. Although not in oil, they are “riccordos of oil sketches”.)

Esquisse: Smaller than final. (Corot enlarged the small landscape (shown above) in his large biblical canvas Hagar in the Wilderness. Interesting to see a French Oak in the Palestine desert scene.) Met gallery 803. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435962

Étude: Study (often fragmentary). (Constable, understandably proud of his “skying” period, studied the physics of the sky. “You can never be nubilous,” he told a friend, because “I am the man of clouds.”)

The French Academy battled over the oil sketch for 40 years. The Poussinistes denounced the rough gestures of the oil-sketching Rubénistes. “The loaded brush” won. I would have been a proud Rubéniste. Et vous?

 

“(The/A) (God/Devil) (is) in the Detail(s)”

Residenz at Würzburg, Germany:  Stucco work, Antonio Bossi, White Hall, 1744-45; Insert: Allegory of the Planets and  Continents detail, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, grand staircase ceiling fresco, 1752-53.

I travelled to Germany a great many times (205 trips, 543 hotel nights, 530,000 + Lufthansa miles). When business trips spanned weekends, I kept regular company with three of the Pinakothek museums (Alte, Neue, der Moderne) in Munich. In a deep Tiepolo period, I visited his ceiling frescos at the Residenz, Würzburg.

The Residenz is an astonishing assemblage of European Arts: German, French, and Austrian architects; a Bohemian garden artist; Italian sculptors; and one lone Italian painter Tiepolo — who was brought in to create the largest fresco (600 square meters) in the world.

I had come for Tiepolo’s The Continents, especially the giant crocodile in The Americas - A rococo fantasy of our supposed wilderness. 

But then I was stopped on the stairs, looking off to the left, at the walls; the hallucinatory surfaces with floating dragons. I had not known Antonio Bossi or his stucco work in the White Hall: What a room! An explosion of detail. Excess as ecstasy.

“Der liebe Gott steckt im detail”. - Early German proverb, commonly falsely attributed to Mies van der Rohe.

"Le bon Dieu est dans le detail." - Gustave Flaubert.

“If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they ‘artialize’ nature.” - Montaigne

 

Woods Half Empty?

I had a note to follow up on a description I found, when studying Brueghel’s landscape The Harvesters: “Peace and agriculture in a pre-Romantic ideal landscape, without sublime terrors.” I didn't think much on it until Cosimo. Here was terror; how is it ideal?

So I hunted . . . back to Edmund Burke on the sublime: "whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger . . . Whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror . . . and know there is an inherent pleasure in this emotion.” - A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757.

After these immersions, in Burke and Breugel, beauty, Cosimo, and the sublime, I had a Met dream: “By a winged something, arrived six everything I write(s)”. These writings appeared as volumes of “Iberian ancient poetry”. Likely memories of the Arms and Armor galleries: Moorish verses engraved on chivalric weapons foretelling “a barbarous pandemic”. It felt just like A Hunting Scene.

“A Culture Is No Better Than Its Woods”

 

 

"Young Dancers Dancing" by Eric Fischl [from Drive-By-Art organized by Warren Neidich]

Coming May 9 & 10: "Drive by Art" in the South Fork [The Hamptons, Sag Harbor, Wainscott et al]

Drive-By-Art (Public Art in This Moment of Social Distancing)

Organized by Warren Neidich

DATES:

May 9th and 10th , 2020 -- 12 - 5 pm

(Rain dates May 16th /17th )

LOCATION:

South Fork, Long Island including Southampton, Watermill, Bridgehampton, Sagaponack, Wainscott, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, North Haven

FEATURING: Eric Fischl, Young Dancers Dancing, 2017, Bronze [above]

Met Percent: Week Nineteen [by Alec Bernstein]

Couple Politics 

Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, Fra Filippo Lippi, ca. 1440, gallery 644; Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife (Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze), Jacques Louis David, French, 1788, not on view; Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes, John Singer Sargent, 1897, gallery 771.

The Filippo Lippi caught my eye, even online, while simulating my Met visits. This inconvenience is certainly a petty annoyance compared to our viral trauma. Covid-19.  If history is a model, the plague that devastated medieval Europe did lay the foundations for humanism and the Renaissance. May we be half as lucky.

So . . . I go to the Met map . . . pick a gallery, find its title (e.g. 603, Filippo Lippi to Botticelli) . . . search by gallery number and title . . . hope to find the works in that room. Be wary . . . the search lists every 603, including, for example, the 19th century horse carriage drawing, Design for Coupé, no. 603 ("Medium Size Clarence on C Springs"). 

The Filippo Lippi is the earliest surviving double portrait. It demonstrates the Italian preference for the profile over the three-quarter view. Her sleeve is embroidered with letters spelling "lealta" (faithful). The scale and pose of the couple invite a lot of discussion in the blog world. . . . They are on separate planes. . . . His hand is on an ownership crest . . . his to share? his to gain? And of course the male’s shadow refers to Pliny’s origin of painting; “a lover traces the contours of the shadow cast by his beloved” (my italics). Does this mean she is the inventor of painting? Robert Burton in his 17th-century bestseller The Anatomy of Melancholy claims the action is by the woman, tracing her man’s shadow, to comfort her while he is off in the wars.

Lavoisier was a research chemist, analyzing gunpowder, oxygen, and the chemical composition of water. In 1789 he published a chemistry textbook illustrated by his wife. Because of his politics, Lavoisier’s portrait was withdrawn from the 1789 Paris Salon and not exhibited for a century. Madame Lavoisier sits unusually higher than her husband in the painting and is looking directly outwards . . . at David with whom she had studied. Lavoisier was guillotined, David died in exile, not allowed burial in France. And Marie Anne? She remarried “badly” and kept the portrait in her rooms for the rest of her life. 

Sargent decided to portray Edith Minturn Stokes in sporty daywear with a Great Dane at her side. Her husband had "a sudden inspiration," he later recalled, when the dog became unavailable, and "offered to assume the role of the Great Dane in the picture." - MetText

 

Blackboard My-Opia 

Left: Mrs. Welch’s class photo; Right: Monet’s Haystacks, Art Institute of Chicago.

Mrs. Welch, my 1st grade teacher, discovered I was myopic. The blackboard was interesting, but I was unaware of anything written on it. Or aware of maybe a pattern. A few marks. Impressionism was the first painting genre that - I remember feeling relieved when viewing the Haystacks at the Art Institute in Chicago. They made sense. 

Much later, I read Trevor-Roper’s The World through Blunted Sight. He argued that, compared to the general population, “most of the Impressionists” were myopic. And most refused to wear glasses while painting, if they wore them at all.

“Take those vulgar things away!” - Cezanne, when offered glasses.

“Bon Dieu, je vois comme Bouguereau.” - Monet, rejecting both glasses and the conservative painter.

Left: Study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884, not on view; Right: Rapids on the Petite Creuse at Fresselines, Claude Monet, 1889, gallery 800.

I still prefer Seurat’s studies to his final paintings. I draw with my specs on - more so the view from each eye is similar - but I view art without them.

 

Speaking of Bouguereau

Left: Tobias Saying Good-Bye to his Father, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1860, Hermitage. 
Right: Tobias Curing His Father's Blindness, 1630–35, gallery 637; Healing of Tobit, 1630-40, Hermitage; Tobias curing his father's blindness, 1640, San Zaccaria, Venice; Bernardo Strozzi.

The Bouguereau is a lovely Pre-Raphaelite work and clearly illustrates Monet’s fear and loathing. 

The three Strozzi canvases all have vibrant brushwork. The apocryphal Book of Tobit is the subject: archangel Raphael directs Tobias to cure his father’s blindness with the gall of a fish. Bile, irritating as it is to the eye, was evidently a traditional trachoma remedy. It must have had some success, as it remained in use for two thousand years.

Tobit, father of Tobias, earned the cure by paying the debts of the unburied dead. Only then could they be legally buried. Strozzi painted this theme at least eight times. The theme also inspired Rembrandt, Jan Massys, de Vos, van Hemessen, Carracci, Carlone, Assereto, Feti, and Guardi. There is a lot of Tobit Art.

In Funk and Wagnalls’ Folklore Dictionary, the spirits of the rescued deceased - often in animal form (the attentive dog) - are known as The Grateful Dead. This entry did not go unnoticed by Jerry Garcia, who came upon it while playing a game of Fictionary.

There is something about paintings of the blind . . . It would have been interesting to see the myopics interpret the subject. 

 

Gallery 638: “The Most Perfect Style”

Left to right: Michelangelo, Attributed to Daniele da Volterra, gallery 638; Raphael self-portrait, Uffizi, Florence; Leonardo (assumed) self portrait, Uffizi, Florence; Titian self portrait, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

Frames left to right:  Pierced-Acanthus frame, not on view; 603 gallery frame; Reverse frame, 1640, gallery 958.

The Most Perfect Style: Finding out what is in Gallery 638 online is a challenge. Who’s in there is most clear: Masters and Influencers. “The sixteenth century in Rome, Florence, and Venice mark a high point in the history of art. Artists as different as Caravaggio and Ingres, Rubens and Reynolds, defined their achievement vis-à-vis the legacy of Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian.” - MetText

Goethe recounts how, when in Rome in 1787, he and a companion “argued about the rival merits of Michelangelo and Raphael . . . and we ended up in joint praise of Leonardo da Vinci.”

Left to right: The Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist, Andrea del Sarto, 1528; Venus and the Lute Player, Titian, 1565–70; Mars and Venus United by Love, 1570s, Paulo Veronese. Gallery 638.

There are as many “top Renaissance master” rankings as there are rankers. The Met rank, noted above, is made “vis-à-vis” its superlative modifier of an absolute adjective:  “most perfect”.

Del Sarto has been in and out of the canon for five hundred years. Sometimes “out” because of character (an opinion of character, usually Vasari’s), or because of innovations (by, for example, Tintoretto) - adamantly painting religious subjects in contemporary dress. Then again one could be “in” by impact: “Veronese was the happiest of painters and produced the happiest pictures in the world." - Henry James

My father always cautioned me, “De gustibus!” - so often, that the “non es disputandem” was not needed. No need to be distracted by the taste of others . . . perfect, more perfect, or most perfect.

"STOP Window" [by Susan Gunter]

 

Susan E. Gunter is a professor, Henry James scholar, poet, and watercolor artist. She began painting eight years ago, working from her own photographs and using just three colors: Windsor blue, alizarin crimson,  and cadmium yellow. The paintings attempt to capture vanishing moments and preserve them. She has studied photography and art at Allegheny College, Santa Rosa Junior College, and with Allis Teagarten. Her website:

www.susanegunter.com

This month we are showing some of her watercolors. For a view of "Goat Rock Beach," click here.  DL

"Leaf" [by Susan Gunter]

Susan E. Gunter is a professor, Henry James scholar, poet, and watercolor artist. She began painting eight years ago, working from her own photographs and using just three colors: Windsor blue, alizarin crimson,  and cadmium yellow. The paintings attempt to capture vanishing moments and preserve them. She has studied photography and art at Allegheny College, Santa Rosa Junior College, and with Allis Teagarten. Her website:

www.susanegunter.com

This week we are showing five of her watercolors. For a view of "Goat Rock Beach," click here. -- DL

"Laundry" [by Susan Gunter]

Susan E. Gunter is a professor, Henry James scholar, poet, and watercolor artist. She began painting eight years ago, working from her own photographs and using just three colors: Windsor blue, alizarin crimson,  and cadmium yellow. The paintings attempt to capture vanishing moments and preserve them. She has studied photography and art at Allegheny College, Santa Rosa Junior College, and with Allis Teagarten. Her website:

www.susanegunter.com

This week we are showing five of her watercolors. For a view of "Goat Rock Beach," click here. -- DL

Poets and Painters in the Garden of Drunkenness [by Michael Fontaine]

This is post #3 in the series. Click here for part one and here for part two. Pro tip: click on any picture in this series to find out more about it.

 

Fun cocktail party fact: the word for drunkenness in ancient Greek is methe (pronounced méth-ee).

Actually, you already knew that. How?

Because it – or rather "she," since the noun is grammatically feminine – shows up in English in the words crystal meth and amethyst. (An amethyst is the gemstone you wear to keep the lady at bay.)

Methe was never really an official goddess in ancient Greece, but since people do “worship” her, Greek artists thought she made a great allegory. What's more, that allegory works in two ways, since (like “drunkenness” in English) methe can mean either intoxication (getting drunk) or addiction (alcoholism).

In The Art of Drinking, Obsopoeus exploits that ambiguity at several points, especially in the teaser he ends book one with:

The next book depicts the haunting portraits and problems of Drunkenness, composed by me in classical verse. You, binge drinker, who are constantly getting hammered, look at them as if you were looking in a mirror, and see how truly disgraceful the sight is! Once you’ve seen Drunkenness, you should turn and run from her for all your life, if you love the glory of true sobriety.

As he repeatedly says, Obsopoeus thinks getting buzzed or tipsy is okay, but getting drunk--hammered, blitzed--is wrong. It's a distinction worth bearing in mind.

Moreover, in speaking of "portraits" here, Obsopoeus means what he says literally, but in a totally surprising way.

He starts book two by referring to Apelles, one of the greatest of the "old master" painters of ancient Greece 2,500 years ago. Think Raphael, Michelangelo, Artemisia Gentilischi, and you're on the right track:

Among the paintings of Apelles—those monuments of old—that learnèd Greece celebrates in its writings, his ingenious hand left behind a masterpiece. It surpasses both the Venuses he created—the one of her emerging naked from the waves of the sea, and the other for the people of Kos that he only managed to get a start on. I’ll describe that picture, though its excellence outdoes my song and its precious art defeats my verses.

The picture at right is a Renaissance recreation by Titian of the first one of Apelles' lost paintings of Venus mentioned here, the "the Venus Anadyomene." He painted it around the year 1520, sixteen years before Obsopoeus wrote The Art of Drinking.

Apelles' other lost painting of Venus, the "Aphrodite of Kos," was also recreated in the Renaissance by Botticelli in the 1480s. I'm sure you've seen it:

Like Botticelli and Titian, Obsopoeus also wants to recreate a painting by Apelles. The difference is that instead of using pigments, he's going to use poetry.

In formal terms, Obsopoeus is going to give us an ekphrasis. That's the fancy term for a poet's attempt to outdo the beauty of a painting by describing that painting in beautiful language. It's an ancient and classical technique, and as a rule rather than exception, the poet's description ends up far more artificially alive and animated than any painting could ever be. 

That's true here, too. Obsopoeus spends the next few hundred lines describing a painting you could call “The Garden of Drunkenness.” It's a sweeping allegory for people who cannot stop partying when the party is over.

The crazy thing is, though, no such painting by Apelles ever existed. Obsopoeus made the whole thing up, inspired (it seems) primarily by Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights" (1490–1510). That's the painting featured at the top of this post. Here's a wonderful short video introduction to the painting:

Like Bosch, Obsopoeus' "painting" shows us a green field filled with flowers and people. Unlike Bosch, his people are leisurely drinking wine at a festive gathering, and when the party's over, most of them get up and go home.

Others can't or won't, though. Instead, those people head for a walled garden in the center of the field. The garden is full of bad figures, like Hangover, Dementia, Self-Indulgence, Memory Loss, Depression, and a few others. And then--

Presiding in the center of the garden is a woman in royal raiment, drunk and surrounded by an entourage of women. A grassy garland’s encircling her styled hair, and she’s holding a phiale in her hands as if she’s about to drink from it. … As I studied these details, at first I thought the queen standing in their midst was Circe, but it wasn’t her. It was Drunkenness, labeled in Greek letters: Methe, Queen of all Wine-Drinkers.

This is a glass "phiale," or shallow wine bowl, from the time of Apelles (now in the Corning Museum of Glass in central New York).

By telling us that Methe is "holding a phiale in her hands as if she’s about to drink from it," Obsopoeus is doing something quite extraordinary.

To wit: at this central moment in his imaginary ancient Greek painting of Drunkenness drinking from a phiale, he’s alluding to a real ancient Greek painting of Drunkenness drinking from a phiale that once hung inside a shrine in Epidaurus, Greece -- and a famous one, to boot.

That painting was not by Apelles but by Pausias (4^th c. BC), another old master of ancient Greece. And what made it so famous is that it depicted Methe drinking wine from a crystal phiale, with her face visible through the glass. Not an easy feat!

(Pausias’ painting is lost, but his idea was imitated in the late Renaissance by Annibale Caracci, long after Obsopoeus' death. That's it at left.)

I'll come back to this point in a minute.

Meanwhile, what happens in the Garden of Drunkenness? As you might guess, things go badly.

The people inside continue drinking until they pass out. They transform into animals -- sheep, pigs, donkeys, monkeys -- and when they wake up, they start vomiting or attacking each other in a wild frenzy.

Some try to escape the Garden, but they're met by an entourage of old women as they do. The women lash the people trying to leave; they handcuff the compliant ones and bludgeon the resisters, and ultimately enslave them all. Obsopoeus then tells us their names: Fever, Edema, Psoriasis, Poverty, Old Age, and, yes, Death. Yikes!

Obsopoeus' allegorical painting is haunting and glorious. It’s the climax of the whole poem, and clearly designed to be. Rather than go into more detail, though, I'd like to share related material with you that I didn't have room for in How to Drink.

In my last post, I quoted a “liminary” poem in Greek by the Renaissance scholar Joachim Camerarius. In fact, Camerarius wrote two Greek poems for Obsopoeus’ book, and I’m pleased to present the other one here. It’s a miniature masterpiece, and it's a fantastic specimen of how learned and playful Renaissance poetry can be.

It alludes to the Garden of Drunkenness by way of Pausias' painting, and you could call it Poetry is a Painted Crystal Bowl. 

Like Obsopoeus, Camerarius is struck by the inherent competition between representing reality in the written word vs. the painter’s art. He heightens the similarity between those two arts by punning on the similarity of words used to describe each.

In his view, Obsopoeus’ written (engraphon) poetry is as beautifully, skillfully, and clearly executed as Pausias’ painted (graphike) crystal bowl because, through each one, you can discern the orderly rethe (features) of disorderly Methe (Drunkenness).

Here's the poem:

They say there was this one work of the painter’s art

    by Pausias that was really worth seeing:

Drunkenness drinking from a glass phiale that she was tipping up

    while facing forward, so that her whole face showed through,

and though the bowl covered her lips and eyes,

    all her features were still quite clear.

Unquestionably, then, this—a painting like that—was a work of art.

    But a greater work of art is the written one in your hands,

by our friend Vincent.

    It has the gorgeous adornment of the Muses’ verses,

it teaches you how to drink a lot with understanding and without harm,

    and it has found a system in an unsystematic business.

In it, not only will you be able to view Drunkenness,

    you can consort with her, and with pleasure and understanding.

Here’s the Greek for those of you who can read it. I’ve highlighted and color coded the many words that correspond or pun on each other in each part of the simile:

Παυσΐεω τέχνης ἔργον τόδε φασὶ γενέσθαι                  

      ἄξιον ἓν γραφικῆς, ὅ ττι μάλιστα θέας·

ἐξ ὑάλου πίνουσα Μέθη φιάλην ἐπέχουσα

      ἀντία, φαίνεσθαι ὥστε πρόσωπον ἅπαν,

τῆς φιάλης τ’ ἐπιπροσθούσης χείλεσσι καὶ ὄσσοις,

      εὔδηλ’ εἶναι ὅμως ὡς τάδε πάντα ῥέθη.

τεχνικὸν ὧδε γραφὲν—τίς δ᾿ οὔ φησ᾿;—ἦν ἄρα τοὖργον.

      μᾶλλον δ᾿ ἐν χερσὶν τεχνικόν ἐστι τόδε

ἡμετέροιο φίλου Νικήτα’ ἔγγραφον ἔργον,

      κόσμον ἔχον μέτρων πάγκαλον Ἀονίων·  

πολλὰ πιεῖν ἀβλαβῶς μετ᾿ ἐπιστήμης τε διδάσκον,

      καὶ λόγον εἰν ἀλόγῳ πράγματ᾿ ἐφευράμενον·

ἔνθαπερ εἰσιδέειν γε Μέθην δῆθ’ οὐ μονον ἔσται,

      ἀλλὰ συνεῖν’ ἀυτῇ εὖ καὶ ἐπιστάμενως.

 

Notes in the Margin

Since this is a blog for poetry lovers, I thought I'd end with a liminary poem of my own I wrote for How to Drink -- one of a couple I wrote in Latin. (Yes, to say that's old fashioned and nerdy beyond belief is an understatement.) I composed them in the Baroque tradition, a tradition that's distinguished by all kinds of wordplay.

Here's a one-liner I'm especially proud of because it manages a pun on methe, method, and methodicus. Depending on how you analyze it, that last word can mean (1) "methodical" or (2) "who talks about methe." The meter is dactylic hexameter.

 

"Tarascon" [by Susan Gunter]

Susan E. Gunter is a professor, Henry James scholar, poet, and watercolor artist. She began painting eight years ago, working from her own photographs and using just three colors: Windsor blue, alizarin crimson,  and cadmium yellow. The paintings attempt to capture vanishing moments and preserve them. She has studied photography and art at Allegheny College, Santa Rosa Junior College, and with Allis Teagarten. Her website:

www.susanegunter.com

This week we are showing five of her watercolors. For a view of "Goat Rock Beach," click here. -- DL

 

"STOP Window" [by Susan Gunter]

 

Susan E. Gunter is a professor, Henry James scholar, poet, and watercolor artist. She began painting eight years ago, working from her own photographs and using just three colors: Windsor blue, alizarin crimson,  and cadmium yellow. The paintings attempt to capture vanishing moments and preserve them. She has studied photography and art at Allegheny College, Santa Rosa Junior College, and with Allis Teagarten. Her website:

www.susanegunter.com

This week we are showing five of her watercolors. For a view of "Goat Rock Beach," click here. -- DL

Goat Rock Beach [by Susan Gunter]

"Two Portraits of the Poet" [by Ricky Mujica]

Paintings c 2020 Ricky Mujica.
Click here for more information: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/ricky-mujica-poet-david-lehman

Met Percent: Week Eighteen [by Alec Bernstein]

Met Absent(e) %

^{Met floor plan: Yellow highlighted galleries have been viewed, 3/14/2020. Inset: Dans un café, L'absinthe, Edgar Degas, Musée d'Orsay, 1875; Van Gogh Absente Poster; Photo of Toulous-Lautrec drinking Absenthe, 1910.}

I have visited ~55 times and viewed all galleries up to 599, 55% complete. As Absenthe is 55% alcohol and often depicted in paintings, it seems to be an auspicious metric for entering “European Paintings”.

But now I have an absent Met. Closed due to Corona Virus. Memories of viewings, Met online musings, and modified methods will follow. After all, Montaigne “sheltered in place” with 1,500 books in self-imposed reclusion for almost 10 years. 

“In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michael de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.” -  Montaigne, inscription on his bookshelves, 1571.

The Shape of Labor

The Harvesters, detail, and analysis, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565, gallery 642.

Shape: “If Bruegel’s peasants give the landscape its function, their tool gives it its form. Here, an entire world is constructed around the shape of its most essential unit; the shape of the scythe borne by the figure in the lower left corner.” Labor: “Each scythe-arc reveals the stages of the economic system: harvested wheat to the road; a cart to the village; a distant town to the ships; to the centers of manufacture and trade. The painting connects the dots of a newly expanding economy, depicting the peasants as the heart of a system that profits only those at the far end.” Extracts from On Bruegel's The Harvesters, Henry McMahon, The Painter’s Table (blog), 2016.

In college I had a neighbor, previously a second-tier official British Royal portrait painter, who’d fallen on hard times. His family trust kept him out of England, quietly in Baltimore when not institutionalized. He gave me a signed copy of a Salvador Dali book in exchange for my K&L Feeds hat with “I eat eggs” on one side and “I drink milk” on the other.  His exit came with an alcohol binge: hands painted red, displaying the shapes of labor in the local bar; hammer in one hand, sickle in the other.

 

Halves: Hip Gables and Basement Windows

Left: Two Cottages, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1636, not on view. 
Right: The Anderson’s Half-Hip Home, Alec Bernstein, 2020.

Drawn to Rembrandt.  The cottages, farms, and feelings of Rembrandt’s half-hip gabled roofs bring thoughts of the Dutch-style Chicago bungalows I grew up with. Good for snow. 

The sketch is the view out my bedroom window. These homes had basement half-windows at ground level outside and at the ceiling inside. For 25 cents a week, I fed our neighbor’s dog Bunnie by crawling through their basement window. I was not old enough to trust with a key. These halves seemed perfectly scaled to childhood. 

It feels as long ago as Rembrandt.

woulda, coulda, shoulda

Top: Hypothetical reconstruction of the portraits of Tommaso and Maria Portinari (The Met, 14.40.626–27) with Hans Memling, "Virgin and Child," ca. 1470.
Bottom Left and right: copper maps, fig. 11 & 15 Met online. 
Bottom center: Tommaso and Maria, 1470, Hans Memling, gallery 642.

The Met hypothesis of the triptych is a “how it would've been”. A marriage portrait pair with a devotional centerpiece. Quite a difference from the portraits as they are exhibited. Nota Bene - the improvement in the perspective when angled on its assumed hinges. 

The copper map of Tommaso could “show the use of a copper blue to add highlights to the folds of the very deep black jerkin, seemingly to suggest the way a velvet garment slightly glows at the edges when struck by light (left). The decoration in Maria contains copper in addition to lead, suggesting that lead white and a copper blue were used to create pearls further shaded with a carbon-containing black paint.” Met Online.

Memling, in my opinion, should have a more prominent place in the canon. He was an A-list painter in his time, and should be now. Even the copper maps are painterly.

 

Postponement of Rand & Shapiro Collaborations at Bravinlee Gallery

The March 19 reception at Bravinlee Gallery for the show of collaborations between the painter Archie Rand and the poet David Shapiro has been postponed. Which gives us this chance to exhibit one of their works from the "Kiss" series.  -- DL

Met Percent: Week Seventeen [by Alec Bernstein]

Ornament , Automata & Crime

Left: Two Spherical Clocks, George Seydell, Germany, 17th c. 
Right: Caricature of Engravers "in the Greek Style", Jean Charles Delafosse, French.
Bottom: Ostrich Egg Ewer, Hans Claus I, German, 1630. Sawtooth gravity clock, Isaak Ourry, 1710. Multi-faced Equatorial Sundial, Wolfgang Mayr, 1604. Cryptological Code Dividers, Joachim Deuerlin, 1633.  All in exhibition gallery 999.

The “Making Marvels” exhibition is a technical side-car of the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts galleries. The elite add machines to their sculptures, as if movement automatically makes decor virtuosic. It is a clear case of just how complicated one can make something when unlimited resources and desire meet. Ornamentation, according to Adolf Loos, “is a luxury that is slowing down the human evolution because men are wrongly focused on things they do not need”. - Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, 1908-13. “Less is more” - Mies van der Rohe, 1947. In the language of my comic book childhood, of which this exhibit reminds me,  ‘Nuff said.’ 

Then again, ornament has been a key element for unconscious release, linked to fantasy and desire*, embodying the never before seen, heard, thought. It has lived on artifacts since there have been artifacts.“Less is a bore” - Robert Venturi, 1966.

* Ornament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth Century French Literature, Rae Beth Gordon, Princeton University Press, 1992.

 

Angel Action

Miraculous Writing Machine, Friedrich von Knaus, 1760, Austrian, gallery 999.

The video is worth the watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLUoDSNDj4U. Or scroll down to the miraculous writing machine at the Met videos of all automata at https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/making-marvels-science-splendor/art-in-motion.

 

Subtleties: Molded, Pulled, Blown, Pressed, Sold

Left: Harlequin, Fürstenberg Porcelain Manufactory, 1764, after model of 1754, gallery 538.

Right: Designs for a pastillage pièce montée in the form of a putto in a chariot being drawn by a hunting poodle and (above) hunting poodle “at rest”, watercolor, 1820, The Bowes Museum.
Bottom: A view of the Empire dessert setting. https://www.historicfood.com/Royal-sugar-Sculpture.htm.

Initially, European porcelain figures were permanent versions of the very popular sugar sculptures. Sugar  table decorations for special occasions were called subtleties* and used by European elites from the Renaissance to the 18th Century. At the meal’s end, they were eaten or taken as souvenirs. The Bowes Museum sugar sculpture archive has 47 moulds for a total of 730 different objects, with 62 tools and 26 drawings.

In the developing bourgeois society, porcelain figurines found a permanent place on mantelpieces and side tables: an entirely new market success. 

* see Kara Walker’s sculpture Sugar Sphinx A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, 2014; and Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney N. Mintz, Penguin, 1985.

Kick Up Your Heels and...Relax

Boiserie from the Palais Paar, 30 Wollzeile, Vienna, Austria, architect Isidor Canevale (1730–1786),1765–72, gallery 526. Inset: Palais Paar, exterior, 1907.

The Baron’s Suite, info@chateaugrandluce.com.

In case you need an extended, more personal experience of this style, you may rent The Baron’s Suite at the Chateau Grand-Luce in the Loire Valley. Only $15,000  per night, complete with “private library stocked with French literature.”

 

Or Just Kick Up Your Heels . . .

Dance Movement "G", 1910–11 and Nijinsky, 1912, Auguste Rodin, gallery 556.

Stravinsky said in his autobiography that the riots at “The Rite of Spring” premier were not because the music was “radical”; it was because the dancers could not keep up with Nijinsky and stumbled on the stage. 

Rodin’s two captures of the dance in this gallery felt like seamless extensions of the earlier expressive terracottas (see gallery 552 in Met% week sixteen), particularly the bas-reliefs. “Nijinsky conceived a strict two-dimensional limitation; his dancers moved as in a slot, with abrupt profile turns. Poses recalled Greek Vases and stone reliefs. . . . Sculptures of draped maidens from Egypt or Phoenicia”. - review of Afternoon of a Faun, 1912.

Rodin said he had “captured movement” in this work. Once in a meeting on neuro-marketing at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in Los Angeles, I was told they had discovered a small single area of the brain that is only activated when a still object - that appears to be moving - is seen. A message center for false danger . . .  

Titian, a Limerick from London

When Titian was grinding rose madder,
his model was posed on a ladder.
Her position to Titian
suggested coition
so he climbed up the ladder and had her.

Very English -- instructive on pronunciation of challenging words (Titian, coition) so it combines a didactic function with a titillating one. Above is the master's Venus and Adonis at the Met in NYC.

Posted by The Best American Poetry on October 03, 2013 at 01:42 PM in Adventures of Lehman | Permalink

When Titian was grinding rose madder,
his model was posed on a ladder.
Her position to Titian
suggested coition
so he climbed up the ladder and had her.

Very English -- instructive on pronunciation of challenging words (Titian, coition) so it combines a didactic function with a titillating one. Above is the master's Venus and Adonis at the Met in NYC.

Posted by The Best American Poetry on October 03, 2013 at 01:42 PM in Adventures of Lehman | Permalink

Met Percent: Week Sixteen [by Alec Bernstein]

And Away We Go

Model for a Proposed Monument to Commemorate the Invention of the Balloon, ca. 1784, Clodion (Claude Michel) French, gallery 552.

I had walked by this exuberant monument proposal without at first seeing its story. 

Consider this marvel: “This airy Rococo flight of fancy - in which putti pile bundles of hay to launch the balloon, guided by Fame and propelled by Aeolus - is difficult to imagine in marble. Gradually, hot-air ballooning spread to the point of being commonplace, and the project was dropped.” - MetText

This celebration of balloon flight seems a perfect opening to the ESDA department (European Sculpture and Decorative Arts): Hotel rooms, boudoirs, often gilded, and sculpture raw and cooked in bone, wood, silks, marble, crystal. . . and some with all of the above.

I knew there would be surprises.

 

Raw Ideas

Above: Children and Satyr Children with a Pantheress and Her Cubs, detail and (inset) complete, ca. 1781, Clodion (Claude Michel) gallery 552. Below: Pieta, 1864, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, France, gallery 552.

The terra cottas in gallery 552 feel like the first captures of ideas.

“Modelling in clay is to the sculptor what drawing on paper is to the painter… In the soft clay the genius of the artist is seen in its utmost purity and truth…”

 - Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of Art, 1776.

“Mounding the clay pellets and pressing them into shape in mere seconds, Carpeaux’s entire attention is on the Virgin Mary's maternal embrace, to the virtual exclusion of Christ's legs.” - MetText

It is my favorite 3D medium.

To be well read on the contradictions (classic theme vs. modern  expression) of art in the age of reason is one thing. To walk into a gallery and feel it is yet another. Is excluding Christ’s legs rational or raw?

 

 

Hyphen-Love

Le Trait d’Union, June 1872, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, France, gallery 552.

“The term trait d’union is French for hyphen, the sign linking the parts of a compound word. Here it poetically signifies the familial ties that were renewed when Carpeaux and his wife reconciled after their little son Charles recovered from terrifying convulsions. Amélie is on Carpeaux’s lap. Charles binds their heads in an embrace. The reconciliation was brief and Carpeaux himself was soon jealous all over again and already desperately sick.” - MetText

Poetic hyphen? Desperately sick? Again? On this text description, I would have preferred either much more or much less. Their arms, in this context, look like parentheses, which I love.

 

“Real” Portraits

Left: Hypocrite and a Slanderer, ca. 1770–83, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Germany, gallery 548.

Right: Child Portrait, Jean Antoine Houdon (French, Versailles 1741–1828 Paris) gallery 552.

After early commissions and rising stature, Messerschmidt’s late portrait sculptures were at first considered outsider art - exhibited as a freak-show attraction at a carnival - but much later seen as important precursors to both Modernism and Expressionism.

Houdon’s intense naturalism has an equally accurate sense of realism. His children’s portraits express Jean Jacques Rousseau’s “Childhood as a golden age of unconscious happiness”.

“What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, ‘He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death.’ Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile; or, On Education, 1762.

I feel like I am in a thought gallery. . . .

Taming “digital art”: Gaïté Lyrique chooses cultural context

Where, when, who for?: Adrien M. & Claire B., “Faire Corps” © Romain Etienne

Until the other day I associated with the Gaïté Lyrique with music & sophisticated light and sound shows; last year, among many others, the venue featured the inimitable Alice Phoebe Lou  and a fifth annual music-film festival (F.A.M.E). So it was really good to see Adrien M. & Claire B’s digitally-generated Faire Corps (“All Together”) installation – material sculpture, virtual visual, public and performance interaction, sound, music and environments.

Even more through-provoking, in some ways, than the Faire Corps installation – which is proving a big attraction – was to hear Jos Auzende, Gaïté Lyrique’s artistic programmer, take the opportunity of the Faire Corps opening to clearly place “digital” in the context of culture and creative achievement.

Nearly 10 years ago, the city of Paris re-inaugurated the historic Gaïté Lyrique – Jacques Offenbach was once its director and Diaghelev started his Ballets Russes there – as a “center for digital art and culture”, without, I think, knowing what that could mean.

Now, Auzende seems to say, just as we all see Fantasia as the achievement of Walt Disney animators and storytellers working, say, in a “pre-empire Americanization culture”, not just as the result of applying color-film technology, so we should see that the achievement and interest in digitally generated work such Adrien M. & Claire B.’s lies not in how, but in where, when, for whom they have re-invented or appropriated digital technology to make it work.

Taking a stand for cultural context as the primary lens through which to look at esthetic achievement where contemporary digital technology is involved seems to me really challenging.

For music, for example, no matter how it is generated, we take the centrality of creation and culture for granted. “Digital music” means “music generated using digital technology”, not “music that is (somehow) digital”; it is indeed hard to think of any music generated in any way that is not essentially viewed and critiqued through its cultural context.

But, when it comes to “digital art”, the same casual assumption of cultural primariness is not true. People do often mean “art that is digital”, dropping culture all together and identifying the creation with the technology the creators used to achieve it.

A Simulation: Adrien M. & Claire B., “Organismes Typographiques” © Laurence Fragnol

The tendency to squeeze creation and culture into the tool is due, partly, I think, to intense commercial promotion of digitalized stuff (saleable) and digital uses (rentable), of course. But more especially, I think, digital technology is seen to be and is presented as, a competitor to humans.

Contemporary digital technology simulates human physical and mental movement: repetitive gestures such as driving or abstract processes such as judgment. Most funded digital R&D in industry and entertainment (and a lot of institutionally-funded Middle and high-brow art) turns around substituting digital technology for (saleable) movement and behaviors: slicing off and splicing up bits of recorded human movement and converting it into a saleable catalogue of products, services, tasks and processes – think consumer-service robots, virtual reality video, micro-targeted advertising, automatic public security identification.

It is not just difficult to get people to look at digital technology (or any technology for that matter) through the lens of cultural achievement. Looking at anything is to betray critical interest. Looking at digital technology through a culture – from where, when, for whom – is automatically “political”: what kind of cultural context generates a market for automatic public facial recognition; what kind of people systematically mistake the mediums for messages and vice versa?

In terms of intention, achievements and content, in Faire Corps, Jos Auzende chose a good talking piece for her speech.

As creators, Adrien M. & Claire B. declare an intention to “resist corporate colonialism”, inciting creators and audiences alike to remember both that digital technology is just technology and that, just as for other technologies, who controls and who uses digital determines why and how it gets used.

Adrien M. & Claire B. take digital technology use a step further than, say, a savvy contemporary choreographer such as Mourad Merzouki would do. Comparison of Merzouki’s dance-performance Pixel and Adrien M. & Claire B.’s sound-movement-performance Equinoxe speaks to their will to move away from technology as show-enhancement and -support to technology as sensory interaction with the show (without its becoming virtual reality). Pixel’s wow-me tech stuff was created by Adrien M. & Claire B.

Overall, each of the different parts of the Faire Corps installation, much like the Equinoxe performance piece, emphasizes sensory interactions with its onlookers. But each of its magic lanterns, its pools, patterns and projections suggests increased potential creative interface and esthetic interest in available technology.

Auzende’s Gaïté Lyrique’s approach to “digital art and culture” come in the context of a recent change of management – the current energetic director, Laëtitia Stagnara, was appointed only at the end of 2018. She has apparently determined to use Gaïté Lyrique’s existing noos: Jos Auzende, for example, is the originator of the theater’s popular children’s arts workshop Les Voyages du Capitaine Futur, billed, unsurprisingly, as “art taming technology”. Stagnara was formerly in charge of “digital development” at Cité des sciences et de l'industrie (La Villette). La Villette does a notably good job of getting past wow-me promotion of amazing (must have) technology to actually popularize science and technical achievement.

My hat is off to Jos Auzende, Laëtitia Stagnara and the esthetic team at Gaïté Lyrique.

Met Percent: Week Fifteen [by Alec Bernstein]

Tear Catchers (?)
Swan-Neck Glass Bottle, Iran, 19th c., gallery 462;   Christie’s South catalog.

“It is unclear how bottles of this shape were used, though sometimes they are known as ashkdans and were supposedly for collecting the tears of wives whose husbands were away at war”. - MetText

It seems that the use of a tear catcher or lachrymatory bottle is probably not ancient nor even Victorian. More likely they are a romantic myth based on the “eye shaped” openings: The bottles hold funeral tears, and when they evaporate, the mourning period ends. No science here, but so beloved by enthusiasts of the Victorian art of mourning that they are sold and collected even now. Christie's sold two 18th c. bottles in 2014, very like the 19th c. bottle at the Met. 

For tear enthusiasts, see https://tearcatcher.com/tear-bottles/tear-bottle-history/.  “With each tear bottle, you will receive an elegant organza gift bag and a small story card that explains the intriguing history and meaning behind the tear bottle”. 

 

Pilgrim Flasks

Pilgrim Flasks; Left: India or Deccan, early 17th c., gallery 463, Right: Turkey, early 17th c, gallery 469.

Unlike the tear bottles, these pilgrim flasks have a clear function, and appear in many regions and eras. These Islamic vessels were designed to collect and bring home holy water, sanctuary lamp oil or sand from a sacred site. Sometimes called a Zamzameyyah, because pilgrims took holy water from the famous well in Mecca called Zamzam. The word derives from Zomë Zomë, meaning "stop flowing" - a command repeated by Abraham’s wife Hajar attempting to contain spring water in the desert. 

Pilgrim flasks (not on view): Left, Pasargadae, Iran, ca. 4th–3rd century B.C., Middle, Ctesiphon, Iraq, 8th c., Right, Iran, ca. 3rd c. B.C.–A.D.

These early ceramic versions are found in Islamic, Jewish and Christian cultures and are documented in the Crusades. The twin strap-eyed design has a marvelous continuity over millennia. 

 

Parrots

Top: Finial in the Form of a Parrot, Northern India, 17th–18th century, gallery 464
Bottom and detail: Dagger with Zoomorphic Hilt (India, Deccan, Bijapur or Golconda), 16th c., gallery 463.

In Tutinama (A Parrot’s Tale) the parrot tells 52 stories to his owner Khojasta, to prevent her from having an affair while her husband is away. A mynah and a parrot are her guards. The wife strangles the mynah for advising her not to indulge. The parrot, realizing the gravity of the situation, narrates distracting stories over the next fifty-two nights: a more indirect approach.

I lived under flocks of these fine birds in Pasadena, CA and often woke to their extreme calls. I understand their assigned role as storytellers.

 

Textiles Underfoot

The Emperor's Carpet and detail, Iran, 16th c., gallery 462.

Ushak Medallion Carpet on White Ground and detail, Turkey, 17th c., not on view.

Part of Shah ‘Abbas’ (r. 1587–1629) program for restructuring the economy and attracting European merchants was the expansion of both the production and international trading of carpets. They were traded to Europe and the Far East where, too precious to be placed on the ground, they were used to cover furniture or hung on walls. 

The legend of Sir Walter Raleigh putting his cloak on the ground - to help Queen Elizabeth I over a mud puddle - is part of the mystique of textiles underfoot.

 

Vermeer, Ram’s Horns and Hands on Hips

Full page and detail: A Maid Asleep, Johannes Vermeer, 1656-57, gallery 964.

Many carpets from the Middle East are today called by the names of European painters who depicted them: Lotto, Holbein, Ghirlandaio, Crivelli, and Memling. 

Vermeer’s famous A Maid Asleep depicts two different seventeenth-century Anatolian carpets. Within the patterns, one can find classic Kilim symbols: The Ram's Horn - Kocboynuzu - the symbol of fertility, heroism, power and masculinity and Hands on Hips - Elibelinde - the symbol of motherhood and fertility.

 

 

Met Percent: Week Fourteen [by Alec Bernstein]

Beauty-Writing (Callos-Graphia)

“Handwriting is jewelry fashioned by the hand from the pure gold of the intellect.” - treatise on the penmanship of Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, 9th century.

The diacritical marks indicate vowels (the alphabet has consonants only). The text is always cursive and has no upper or lower case (although shape variants are used in the beginning, middle or end of a word). Proportions are determined by a pen-stroke dot “grid” system within a circle.

How the Arabic letter “teh” is written: in its positions, and with its “isolated” proportion guides.

 

Chat with a Lampstand

Lampstand, Iran, 1578-79, gallery 462

Inscriptions are often verses of conversations. This lampstand “speaks” to its owner/viewer in a dialog of flame.

“I remember one night as my eyes wouldn’t sleep

I heard a moth speaking with a candle

Said the moth: Because I am a lover it is right that I should burn

[But] why should you weep and burn yourself up?”

Planning, Truth and Happiness

"Planning before work protects you from regret; prosperity and peace.”

“It seems worthless to me, even after all the terrible things we have had to go through, if we writers do not tell each other the truth.”

"To its owner happiness, security and life as long as a dove coos.”

The bowl with Arabic inscription (top left) has an abstract, almost contemporary, minimalist design, inscribed with a proverb on planning. It is stunning. Iran, 10th c., gallery 450.

The plate (top right) 2007, is from the Oskarmaria Brasserie inside Literaturhaus Munich, the cultural institute promoting education and literary events. After the salmon was enjoyed, a writer at our table discovered the phrase on writers and truth on the plate. At the end of the meal, a German colleague went to the kitchen and returned with the plate in a brown paper bag. She forced it from the hands of the staff. The Brasserie’s namesake, Oskar Maria Graf, was a German writer who, when the Nazis did not have his books on the Munich book-burning list, published an article entitled “Burn Me”. He got on the list.

The pen box (Qalamdan) (bottom) sends praise to the “owner”,  fashioned from brass and inlaid with silver and gold. Iran, 16th century, gallery 462. May there always be cooing . . .

 

Amulets and Talismans

This shirt was believed to be imbued with protective powers and may have been meant to be worn under armor in battle. Its surface is decorated with painted squares and medallions and the entire Qur'an written out and bordered by the ninety-nine names of God written in gold against an orange background. Talismanic Shirt and detail, Northern India or Deccan ,15th–early 16th c., not on view.

The power of the names of religious figures (Mohammed’s relatives), the Qur'anic verses, and the Shi'i prayers endow this standard with its amuletic properties. E.g. the “Protective Throne Verse”: “His Throne doth extend/ Over the heavens/ And the earth, and He feeleth/ No fatigue in guarding/ And preserving them . . .”.  Silver Standard, Iran, 18th century, not on view. 

When I was 10, my Great Uncle Harry - in the back of his wholesale underwear store in Galesburg, IL. - gave me amuletic advise on the battle of life: “To attain your natural leadership, bring your ‘lucky marbles’, and play to win.”

 

Invisible Rules

Left: Ornamental ceramic star, Iran, gallery 453. Center: a set of 15 furmah and 3 zillij. Right: M.C. Escher’s study of a Moorish tile pattern, 1936.

One of the technical design languages in Moorish art is the Zillij (or Zellige) set based system. It combines geometric tiles (furmah) with complex rules (no holes, no parts of a furmah permitted, etc.). There are at least 360 known furmah and an uncountable number of Zillij constellations. These Moorish geometries inspired Escher’s interest in tessellations. For me, they recall the set technique of 20th century serial music. Lots of rules all around.

Left: Met Moroccan Court, gallery 456,  inspired by two fourteenth-century madrasas of Fez. Right: Pattern generated by ruler and compass only. 

These patterns, as noted above, are generated by ruler and compass only. The four basic shapes, or “repeat units,” are: circles and interlaced circles; squares or four-sided polygons; the ubiquitous star pattern, derived from squares and triangles inscribed in a circle; and multisided polygons. I have had a recurring dream since high school geometry, in which I alone discover the way to trisect any arbitrary angle with only a ruler and compass. This was proven impossible in 1837. It is still impossible today.

I was against high ornament in my youth (“youth” defined as adolescence). The Baroque, Mannerist and Islamic patterns were ”over the top”. I was at home with Classic, Renaissance, and Modern. Over the years, I understood this as a need for balance and structure. I liked simpler rules. As the complexities of life became comprehensible - I could admit it - the complex, expansive, and decorative became newly appreciated. Tiepolo and Bernini were joys to grow into, and the door to over-stimulating art has stayed open. 

“I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.” - Montaigne

 

 

Kiss: Archie Rand collaborates with David Shapiro (2017)

"Kiss” consists of six units with David Shapiro's text written in his hand with his drawn additions.