painting in a minor key

this whole rather stream-of-con- sciousness meandered from one inspiration to another (i'll get to that), and since much of this travel was through the nabis' neighborhood, i tried to find that tune in my head. forgive my synaesthesia, but i realised that the only way i could describe it was through sound.

this adventure began when i when i saw the elmes poster at the (below right). i knew it reminded me of something,
and it was clearly indebted to nabi music.
(see more at this amazing blog!)

i looked through my nabi books, and i think that this vallotton (above left) comes the closest, and that perhaps the ones i was seeing in my mind's eye were conflations of a few of the other ones.

the next two are just echos, the synapses skipping.

while bernard was the only one of these two who were part of the pont-aven crowd, you can surely see the route. but all this made me want to grasp what message i was getting from their work.

and i found that for me, it is non-verbal. it like the minor- key in the key- strokes of symphony, like a rotation that leaves every- thing rotated, not quite in

free-fall...........

three of these bottom images are from another won- derful site, i added the fourth, from ernest batch- elder, but its original artist is not attributed. personally, i think the bonnard more matches the batchelder.

there is something terribly attractive about that skewing, that minor key; it can be almost unbearable to come right-side up again. yes, the artists were heavily influenced by japanese prints, their flatness, their blocks of color, and their their knowledge of the importance of the non-linear line, and symbolism, and a response to the impressionists. but i believe that the goal, probably unconscious, was to play by the music that they heard, not anyone elses.

which is like so many of us today.

the music of wallpaper

while actually reading the text in my copy of 'hidden impressions,' the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name at the MAK in vienna, of instances where the japanese influenced the austrian arts. we'll get back to that catalogue in a future post, but for now, let's follow this little adventure.

i was wildly taken with the two images of japanese endpapers, the cranes on the salmon background and the puppies. sure i had seen a western equivilent, i searched for days to no avail. all of the western endpapers, even those from childrens' books, were, to my eyes anyway, far more rigid by design.

refusing to give up, i started perusing some others of my books. i double-checked the catalogue and all of my other books about design in vienna at that time: nothing. why, i asked myself, and still do, have japanese endpapers in the catalogue with no japonisme version for comparison?

i started on my other books about paper, wallpaper, and had myself an aha moment. i recalled having noticed so many times how actually un-equivalent these matches-up usually are. rarely does a japanese design form get re-interpreted in some into something comparable back and forth. usually, it, like some inherited traits, skips a generation.

but once i found these, not only didn't they surprise me, but they gave me deeper understanding in both sides of the equation. first, we've discussed the lesson that the west learned that caused them to question the validity of any differences between art, decoration, and craft.

no one embraced this concept more strongly than the nabis, for whom there was no less a creative act in creating wallpaper than in painting a painting. much of what we know as paintings are actually bits of a wall-hanging or a screen (see here), but even when the item was a painting itself, it was covered with wallpaper, and, or, the sort of design that hangs in an invisible balance between subject and surround.

in fact, the more one looks at the work of the nabis (here represented by maurice denis, pierre bonnard, and vuillard), the more one sees rhythm, pulse. these pieces do not make a statement, they make a song.

and the songs have continued out in ever widening circles. whistler sued over it; the right to see a surface as something other than flat, the right to name a painting a symphony, a rhapsody, a song.

art detective

how i love to play detective. when i first saw the vallotton painting i thought i recognized the print on the wall. finally dug it up, it's by his compatriot, vuillard. i looked too at a similar print (the name of the painter of which i will fill in when i remember it!), but then i was so excited when i remembered which one it was.

the next one, i knew what it was imme- diately, but it took me a while to find it online. it's so cool when artists highlight other artists.



willcox does it again with william nicholson's book. (okay, i changed the cover to red, but why not?)

artists also fea- ture them- selves! willcox fea- tures an image from the book on the cover.


and manuel robbe has a woman perusing another of his own prints.







but what gives me a cool chill is knowing two of my favorite artists, at different times, sat in the exact same spot, and were each moved to paint it.














and this last is just a hoot: which came first, the poster mocking the women or the women mocking the poster?

oh silly me -- the poster is in the photo!

for what is already lost

LETTER FROM CRANBERRY ISLAND

Today in a meadow beside the sea
I knelt among sea rocket
and lupine
as a deer I’d startled
flipped heels up

and bounded
into the spruce grove.
Prebbles cove,
the beach of stones
glistening and smooth from the pummel of waves.

And I, who understand pounding,
wanted to walk into the sea, to rock there.

At the far edge of my life
on an island four hundred miles
from home, I lean against
an uncurtained window,
and all my grief

for what is already lost,
for what it may get too late to find,
jostles up against how much
I continue anyway to love the world.

I am tired of wanting to sleep beyond waking —
tired of the numbing that is no better than death,

But here on the sill,
stones oval as eggs —

blue, gray, black,

a whole row of them —
glow in the afternoon light

and here, across the meadow,

light enfolds even the least

small running creature.

And here. And here. And here.

More light, great sheets of saving light

surge and flash — green, coral, cerulean —
off the turbulent
white-capped waters.

Patricia Fargnoli

from Necessary Light

green hair

I know you wonder why I wear
The hat which I have called Green Hair
And why I cover up my own

Which has a tawny chestnut tone

Warm, when all its lights are lit,
As a swarm of bees with the sun on it.

You say bronze hair is prettier

Than this strange green of feathery fur;

But there's a charm in
this strange green
Which is so nearly blue; I've seen

A comb of coral set with pearls
Drawn through lengths of such green curls

In the green gloom of a chilly cave
Down, far down in a hollow wave;

And under ancient forest trees
Long green tresses such as these
Shadow like a falling veil

Shy secret faces, dusky pale;
And I have seen green locks like those
Deep in a glacier, under snows.
I have seen such green hair tossed

From the brows of a creature wandering lost
On the other side of
a waning moon,
And in the golden sun at noon

I have seen young April plait
Flowers in showery hair like that,
And wring the rain from it in drops,
And spread it to dry on green hill-tops.

Now do you wonder that I wear
The hat which I have called Green Hair?
Thus with witchcraft I am crowned
And wrapped in marvels round and round;

There's sorcery in it, and surprise;

Believe your own dark-amber eyes
When mine of hazel look at you
Turned to incredible turquoise blue.

© 2008 Elinor Wylie

(the beautiful fouquet brooch
will be seen in
the boston museum of fine art's
Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - Sunday, November 9, 2008)