A Way or Course

Roads that go straight somewhere and roads that go nowhere. Grey haired spinsters who drink hot water in Florence, Italy, and young ladies who study the Old Masters. Vague females in the background, bold females at the forefront; dusty and tousled, maybe wearing spectacles, or daring and beautiful. Roads of inspiration; roads of occupation. Roads that are less Victorian, or Edwardian, and more bohemian, though still leading mostly to marriage and children, and perhaps lovers. Roads that went somewhere, then went nowhere, nowhere in particular; straight roads whose end is met with suddenly, stopped short.

Picture credit: The Tuscan Road, 1899, Amedeo Modigliani

Written March 2022.

Ruins

A stone city made by nature, by erosion; “ruined architecture” fooling human eyes into believing this mirage, this illusion, and attempting always to cut a path to it. Ancient ruins made of natural materials; ancient ruins consumed by jungle; ancient civilisations simply disappear. And yet if the right god-selected agent looks he will see shards of pottery, moat-like ditches, evidence of bridges and causeways. Connecting to what? Leading to where? Other ancient (and lost) cities, probably.

Picture credit: Among the Ruins, 1904, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (source: WikiArt)

See The Lost City of Z by David Grann.

Written March 2022.

Picasso by Stein

Picasso as creator: fills and empties himself; fills and empties himself – of Spain, of France, of Italy; refills himself so quickly, he must recommence emptying himself of his different periods: blue, rose or harlequin, African, Cubism, still-lifes. Realistic, Naturalist, and Classic. Cubes, no cubes, and simply things. Large women and women with draperies. Period of rest – nothing to empty. That is his way. Picasso by Stein.

See Picasso by Gertrude Stein.

Written March 2022.

Picture credit: Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1905-6, Pablo Picasso, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (source: Wikipedia).

Worried and Worrying

I share – I know – Picasso's “worried and worrying” look; mine, inherited from my father; his (Picasso's) I don't know, it may just have been his from childhood or developed later as a result of a precarious lifestyle, but that this look was habitually his has been testified to by friends who knew him; and so I imagine too the charge of being worried was levelled at him when he wasn't at all, or that he was always responded to as if he was. Yes; the “worried and worrying” look is – whether true or not – both a curse and a benefit, but it perhaps suggests – if nothing else – a determined struggle: a rock pushed up and rolled down, and pushed up again, the same hill; and a struggle too against the medium which has been chosen to represent it: stone, wood, clay, plaster, water-colour, oil, photography, verse, prose, music, dance etc. Dry, factual; straight. Lyrical, poetical; fiction. What is seen by or impressed upon the mind. The struggle free and flowing, or arduous and prickly, but always accompanied by the same “worried and worrying” look. The face etched, creased, with worry lines; its expression strained, perhaps struggling against the other range of emotions it wants to express; the light withheld a little in the eyes, in the shape of the lips; and though a description of that person's nature is supplied, which suggests they were less worried than they appeared, still that look becomes their most mentioned characteristic, for the face, perhaps it is thought – like the eyes, reveals the soul.

Written March 2022.

Picture credit: Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1956, Marevna (Marie Vorobieff). (Source: WikiArt).

Theory

See things as they are (Realism); paint as you think, not as you see (Cubism); destruction is also creation (Dadaism); paint your dreams, your hallucinations, the inner world of your imagination (Surrealism). All art movements feeding, bleeding into, blending with the next. A nude, a landscape, an object straight; a portrait, a day or night scene, a still life in fragmented parts. Pre-war, the future coming through; post-war, the future here, but wait! there's more. Effort made and no effort made to adapt to the current trend: the line, the brush-stroke, the use of colour etc., by the various artistic personalities (the pleasing, the difficult), who either basked in the publicity or shied from it; who bartered their lives as they bartered their art.

Written March 2022.

Picture credit: Portrait of Maurice Utrillo, 1921, Suzanne Valadon (source: WikiArt).