Week IX: JOURNEY

Max Beckmann, Departure

New word: JOURNEY  (Voyage, departure, maybe arrival and return...)

The painting is by Max Beckmann--one of those he made in a garret in Amsterdam during the Second world War--in hiding from the Nazi occupation, waiting to see if a crossing to the United States could be arranged... The painting is now in the MOMA in New York. Beckmann's career in total is quite interesting--his voyage, if you will--where he began (as a kind of tough-minded society painter), then his politically-pointed paintings in the 30s and during the war (as above)--and finally, the last works, made in the US after he was finally able to escape Europe...

Week VIII: LIFT

Eugène Delacroix, Chopin

Hi everyone--very enjoyable class, last Tuesday. Particularly because the work of so many of you is really worth looking at...  which is, after all,  what we mean by "visual studies"!

For now, the new word is LIFT (as in raise, or ascend...)

Chopin Mazurka Op.17 No.4 (Horowitz) - YouTube

and this Katia Sobolski (sent just this week):

Krystian Zimerman - Chopin - Scherzo No 2 in B-flat minor, Op 31 - YouTube 

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and the song I originally mentioned was Le Chiffon Rouge--written as a French workers' song, rousing and charming all at once--and (given the lyrics) filled with some nice contradictions. In other words, just right for today...

Le Chiffon Rouge - YouTube     (with line by line lyrics)
Le chiffon rouge - YouTube    (with appropriate images)   

(the and lyrics:   Paroles Le Chiffon Rouge - Michel Fugain)

Week VII: BEGIN

Éduoard Vuillard, Misia at the Piano, 1995

The new word is BEGIN. As in enter, or engage...

So, where did Vouillard begin. And why, perhaps? The scene is dated--but only by the woman's attire. The wallpaper, touch of yellow flowers, missing edges and corners--not to mention those pink touches on her blouse--and the luminous piano--all these are new...

Here's a detail (which we spoke about)--of how he painted her face. Remember, the warm gray interstices are Vuillard's cardboard ground. The medium is oil, overall size about 9 x 10 inches...

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And a poem by C.S. Giscombe with many beginnings (some of them simultaneous):

PRAIRIE STYLE


The direction going out--in the business past direction then and
avoiding love's blunt teeth there. Done with houses and wanting to be
seen as a boundary or as a line of plot re-appearing, done with all that
too. Houses cleave and, to me, it all gets hammered out in overstatement--
love's a terror, a revelation cleaving to contours. Love's a terror,
in town and out of town too.

I was an unqualified marker, some days the ache of an implicit region.
Nothing to the bear but bad hair. Having missed the trace the first time
through I found coming a specificity hard to pronounce: rive of unaccented
speech, a single voice to mark it all off. Well this is namelessness
up here, this inward, and nothing but the curl will do.

Love's over there, to me, the old terror.