My Inspiration for April 2020

I spent this April in thoughts of love, leisure and pleasure; partly dues to rereading parts of Milan Kundera’s novel “Slowness” and daydreaming about Fragonard’s series “The Progress of Love”. I daydreamed about all the places for leisure and reverie: parks, promenades, woods, ponds with water lilies, forest groves, meadows… I also enjoyed moments in nature, listening to birds, the river, picking flowers, and also connecting it to the artworks of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists where nature is beautifully portrayed. I listened to John Lennon’s song “Nobody Told Me” a lot this month and it seems fitting for these strange days:

“Everybody’s talking and no one says a word
Everybody’s making love and no one really cares….

Nobody told me there’d be days like these
Nobody told me there’d be days like these
Nobody told me there’d be days like these
Strange days indeed — strange days indeed”

Another joy these days was sitting on my windowsill in sunset, sounds of rain mingling with passionate Chopin’s Nocturnes, inhaling fresh green air of April and gazing at the greenness  I read a beautiful short story collection “Downfall and Other Stories” by Fumiko Hayashi and there will be a review coming soon… The painting of the month was surely a beautiful portrait of a girl with a hat called “Hommage a Renoir” by John Corbet, the colours and the mood touched the strings of my heart. I watched a beautiful Lolitaesque French film “Beau Pere” (1981) about a melancholy pianist whose step-daughter falls in love with him after her mother dies.

“I am a mistake, a ghost.”

(Jorge Luis Borges, from Labyrinths; “The Garden of Forking Paths”)

“To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely.”

(Gillian Flynn “Sharp Objects”)

Pic by Baie.

Pic found here.

333/365 Copenhagen lamps by M. Klasan on Flickr.

Photography by Xuebing Du

Nowy Sącz, Poland, 9 Konarskiego St. house built in 1909, architect: Zenon Adam Remi, taken on 18 April 2017.

Photography by Xuebing Du

untitled by 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong on Flickr.

Picture found here.

Pic found here.

Pic found here.

Pic found here.

Photo by Stefany Alves.

Richey James Edwards, of Welsh alternative rock group the Manic Street Preachers, Bangkok, Thailand, 27th April 1994. Photo by Kevin Cummins

golden poppy field & poppies over Lancing by Emma Varley

John Corbet, Hommage à Renoir, watercolour on paper, 2020

Beau Pere (1981)

Alejandra Pizarnik – Gas Fills the Chambers of My Little Doll’s Heart

Poet Alejandra Pizarnik was born on this day in 1936 in Argentina to Jewish Russian immigrant parents. Poem that I am sharing here today is the first out of the eight poems from the seventeen page long manuscript that Alejandra Pizarnik wrote between 1969 to 1971 and gave to the poet Perla Rotzait. There is something pure and mysterious about the poetry I’ve read so far by Alejandra Pizarnik and I love taking each verse for itself and just enjoying it, like letting a bonbon melt in my mouth; just enjoy it without analysing it. This is also some of the last poetry that Pizarnik wrote. On 25 September 1972 she overdosed on secobarbital sodium. Apart from the verse I chose for the title, I also love “I lived the impossible, destroyed by the impossible” which reminds me of something similar written by Reinaldo Arenas “There is only one place to live – the impossible.”

1  […] ON SILENCE

…it’s all in some language I don’t know…

1. C. (Through the Looking-glass)

I feel the world’s pain like a foreign language.

Cecilia Meireles

 

They play the part “estranged”.

Michaux

… SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING.

1. Carroll (Through the Looking-glass)

 

I.

This little blue doll is my envoy in the world.

An orphan in the garden rain where a lilac-colored bird gobbles lilacs and

 

a rose-colored bird gobbles roses.

I’m frightened of the grey wolf lurking in the rain.

Whatever you see, whatever can be taken away, is unspeakable.

Words bolt all doors.

 

I remember rambling through the sycamores …

But I can’t stop the drama—gas fills the chambers of my little doll’s heart.

I lived the impossible, destroyed by the impossible.

 

Oh, the banality of my evil passions,

enslaved by ancient tenderness.

 

                                    II.

No one paints in green.

Everything is orange.

If I am anything, I’m cruelty.

Colors streak the silent sky like rotting beasts. Then someone tries to write

a poem out of forms, colors, bitterness, lucidity (Hush, alejandra, you’ll frighten

the children…)

                                    III.

The poem is space and it scars.

I am not like my little blue doll who still suckles the milk of birds.

Memory of your voice in the fatal morning guarded by a sun rebounding

in the eyes of turtles.

The light of sense goes out remembering your voice before this green

celestial mixture, this marriage of sea and sky.

And I prepare my death.

Henry Peach Robinson – Fading Away

“The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.“

(Edgar Allan Poe)

Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away, 1858

I found myself thinking about death these days, and naturally the first things that came to my mind were the poems, the paintings and this Victorian era photograph taken by Henry Peach Robinson in 1858. “Fading Away” is a very romantical and elegantly sad photograph which shows a pale and frail young girl dying from consumption, or perhaps from a broken heart. She is surrounded by her a family members, all of which play a different role in the composition of the photograph and also in expressing emotion. The male figure, presumably the father, turned his back towards the girl, unable to face the painful truth; death of his beloved daughter. Perhaps he is trying to suppress his tears, and perhaps he feels powerless because he failed to protect her from the ultimate enemy: death.  This photograph perfectly encapsulated the morbidly romantical fascination with death which came to define the Victorian era. For modern viewers the aesthetic conveyed is very Victorian, but the Victorians felt very differently about Robinson’s photograph. It received mixed reviews from the public; some found it shocking that the photographer would invade such an intimate, private moment. The Victorians knew the distinction between the private life and the outside world. And also, the photograph is actually an early example of photomontage and Robinson. was a pioneer of that. I am as shocked as the Victorians were because the final result is so realistic and I would never have assumed that these individuals weren’t in the same room at the same moment together.

Poets of Romanticism expressed an inexplicable longing for death because every day life, with its struggles and ugliness, was far from their ideal of Beauty. “Transient pleasures as a vision seem, and yet we think the greatest pain’s do die”, wrote John Keats in his poem “On Death”. Percy Bysshe Shelley was equally dramatic, utterly obsessed with death, he saw it as the state of ultimate happiness and perfection. The Victorian era romanticised death, especially the slow, staged, almost theatre-like moment of death. And what actress to play the role of a person soon to be departed than a beautiful, pale, virginal girl who had tasted none of life’s sweetness and joys and already at such a tender age death was to take her away. It’s like a rose forever preserved in its loveliest stage of bud! Never blooming fully, and thus never withering either. Poe was right: death of a young girl is indeed the most beautiful topic for art. And here is John Keats’ poem “On Death” written in 1814 in a letter to his brother Thomas who was, just like the poor girl in the photograph, suffering from consumption which would ultimately be Keats’s end as well:

On Death

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s to die.

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.

Henry Peach Robinson, She Never Told Her Love, 1857

“She never told her love,

But let concealment,

like a worm i’ the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek”

(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night II,iv,111-13)

Robinson’s photograph “She Never Told Her Love”, taken in 1857, served as a study for the girl in “Fading Away”. Resting on soft big pillow, the girl truly does appear to be fading away. Her hair is spread on the pillow, her hands clasped on her lap, her lips ever so softly parted. This study’s focus is on the girl, she is alone in her pictorial space, alone with her woe, illness and that poor broken heart. In “Fading Away” she is surrounded by family, and even though the study has the intimacy of the girl alone, I feel like the characters add to the drama and the story behind the photograph.

It is interesting to think of the way poets and artists of Romanticism and the Victorians saw death, and how our culture sees it. The Victorian era attitude towards death is seen as “morbid” nowadays and I don’t quite see why. Every living thing on earth is bound to die one day, so why is death such a taboo topic, such a shocking morbid “Gothic” thing? It seems like everything is so sugarcoated nowadays; idealised, filtered, posed, set-up, and artificial and hence such a pure, dark truth such as death is hard to digest. Death comes without invitations, it cannot be ignored, postponed, sugarcoated, it changes everything, it is beyond our control. Perhaps we are too entitled today and we subconsciously feel that, along with our generally good standard of living (at least in the Western countries), immortality is also our god-given right, and it isn’t. Can’t we go back to times when death was romanticised and one could truly die of a broken heart!? I feel like I can relate to Romantic visions of the death much more, and also this beautiful poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye” by the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925) who ended his life not by consumption or broken heart, but by suicide:

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.

Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let’s have no sadness — furrowed brow.
There’s nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer.

The poem was written in the poet’s own blood and found in the hotel room where he had committed suicide. Still, despite the tragical ending, the poem carries a seed of hope, like a silver dandelion seed floating aimlessly in the wind, because dying is nothing new and living no newer, and the sad parting brings reunion, and could there be a more hopeful thought? Death is not the end, not the end…

Natsume Soseki: Spring makes one drowsy…

One of my all time favourite novels is Natsume Soseki’s “The Three-Cornered World” originally published in 1906. It is an oasis of calmness, wisdom and meditative thoughts on nature and art. The story is told in the first person by the main character, a nameless thirty-year old artist, a poet and a painter, who one day sets out on a journey to the mountains, in search of Beauty and the true meaning of art. I already wrote a book review for this novel and also a post about the Beauty in every day life in relation to the narrator’s thoughts, but today, on this wonderful, warm, green April afternoon, I wanted to share a passage from the first chapter in which the narrator speaks of the beauties of spring, seeing the world from the poet’s point of view, sadness and sensitivity as related to being a poet. I also love the point that detaching yourself from the situation makes you see the true Beauty of it, if you observe your life from a detached point of view, it turns into a poetic experience, I do this all the time and it’s wonderful. And to accompany this spring mood, a few lovely paintings by Renoir.

Scene from Marie Antoinette (2006)

“Spring makes one drowsy. The cat forgets to chase the mouse; humans forget that they owe money. At times the presence of the soul itself is forgotten, and one sinks into a deep haze. But when I behold that distant field of mustard blossom, my eyes spring awake. When I hear the skylark’s voice, my soul grows clear and vivid within me. It is with its whole soul that the skylark sings, not merely with its throat. Surely there’s no expression of the soul’s motion in voice more vivacious and spirited than this. Ah, joy! And to think these thoughts, to taste this joy – this is poetry.“

Renoir, Girls Picking Flowers in a Meadow, about 1890

“Shelley’s poem about the skylark immediately leaps to my mind. I try reciting it to myself, but I can remember only two or three verses. One of them goes

“We look before and after

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

Yes indeed, no matter how joyful the poet may be, he cannot hope to sing his joy as the skylark does, with such passionate wholeheartedness, oblivious to all thought of before and after. In Chinese poetry one often finds suffering expressed as, for instance, “a hundredweight of sorrows,” and similar expressions can be seen in Western poetry too of course, but for the non-poet, the poet’s hundredweight may well be a mere dram or so. It strikes me now that poets are great sufferers; they seem to have more than double the nervous sensitivity of the average person. They may experience exceptional joys, but their sorrows too are boundless. This being the case, it’s worth thinking twice before you become a poet….

Sorrows may be the poet’s unavoidable dark companion, but the spirit with which he listens to the skylark’s song holds not one jot of suffering. At the sight of the mustard blossoms too, the heart simply dances with delight. Likewise with dandelions, or cherry blossoms—but now I suddenly realize that in fact the cherries have disappeared from sight. Yes, here among these mountains, in immediate contact with the phenomena of the natural world, everything I see and hear is intriguing for me. No special suffering can arise from simply being beguiled like this—at worst, surely, it is tired legs and the fact that I can’t eat fine food.”

Renoir, Young Woman with a Japanese Umbrella, 1876

“But why is there no suffering here? Simply because I see this scenery as a picture; I read it as a set of poems. Seeing it thus, as painting or poetry, I have no desire to acquire the land and cultivate it, or to put a railway through it and make a profit. This scenery—scenery that adds nothing to the belly or the pocket—fills the heart with pleasure simply as scenery, and this is surely why there is neither suffering nor anxiety in the experience. This is why the power of nature is precious to us. Nature instantly forges the spirit to a pristine purity and elevates it to the realm of pure poetry. Love may be beautiful, filial piety may be a splendid thing, loyalty and patriotism may all be very fine. But when you yourself are in one of these positions, you find yourself sucked into the maelstrom of the situation’s complex pros and cons—blind to any beauty or fineness, you cannot perceive where the poetry of the situation may lie.

To grasp this, you must put yourself in the disinterested position of an outside observer, who has the leisurely perspective to be able to comprehend it. A play is interesting, a novel is appealing, precisely because you are a third-person observer of the drama. The person whose interest is engaged by a play or novel has left self-interest temporarily behind. For the space of time that he reads or watches, he is himself a poet.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Girls in the Grass Arranging a Bouquet, 1890

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Young Girl in the Garden at Mezy, 1891

Fragonard, Kundera and the Pleasure of Slowness

“Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? All, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafing heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars? Have they vanished along with footpaths, with grasslands and clearings, with nature? There is a Czech proverb that describes their easy indolence by a metaphor: “They are gazing at Gods windows. A person gazing at God’s windows is not bored; he is happy. In our world, indolence has turned into having nothing to do. which is a completely different thing: a person with nothing to do is frustrated, bored, is constantly searching for the activity he lacks.”

(Milan Kundera, Slowness)

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Progress of Love – Reverie, 1771

Milan Kundera’s novel “Slowness”, his first novel written in French and not in Czech, was published in 1995. Like all of Kundera’s work, “Slowness” is a philosophical novel. The plot line and the characters serve only as a starting point for the exploration of topics such as slowness, pleasure and hedonism as things of the past, and how the modernity, speed suppress sensuality; modern people have no time for idleness of conquests of love, everything is about the goal and not about the process. To contrast the motifs of slowness vs speed, slow seduction vs rash conquest, Kundera combines two plot lines set in different times. One follows a couple driving in a car to a countryside chateau in France, and the other goes back in past, Kundera takes us back to the wonderful 18th century by retelling a story originally written by Vivant Denons in which the two lovers have a night of slow seduction full of secret symbolism and love language. This is how the novel begins:

“We suddenly had the urge to spend the evening and night in a chateau. Many of them in France have become hotels: a square of greenery lost in a stretch of ugliness without greenery… I am driving, and in the rearview mirror I notice a car behind me. The small left light is blinking, and the whole car emits waves of impatience. The driver is watching for his chance to pass me; he is watching for the moment the way a hawk watches for a sparrow. (…) I check the rearview mirror: still the same car unable to pass me because of the oncoming traffic.Beside the driver sits a woman: why doesn’t the man tell her something funny? why doesn’t he put his hand on her knee? Instead, he’s cursing the driver ahead of him for not going fast enough, and it doesn’t occur to the woman, either, to touch the driver with her hand; mentally she’s at the wheel with him, and she’s cursing me too.

And I think of another journey from Paris out to a country chateau, which took place more than two hundred years ago, the journey of Madame de T. and the young Chevalier who went with her. It is the first time they are so close to each other, and the inexpressible atmosphere of sensuality around them springs from the very slowness of the rhythm: rocked by the motion of the carriage, the two bodies touch, first inadvertently, then advertently, and the story begins. Then begins their night: a night shaped like a triptych, a night as an excursion in three stages: first, they walk in the park; next, they make love in a pavilion; last, they continue the lovemaking in a secret chamber of the chateau.”

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Progress of Love – The Pursuit, 1771-72

I read “Slowness” five years ago, but this philosophical discussion is something that comes to my mind often and it dawned on me now how connected the slow seduction from Kundera’s novel is with the French Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s series called “Progress of Love” which was originally commissioned by Louis XV’s mistress Madame Du Barry for her pleasure pavilion designed by the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Despite the beauty and vivacious nature of these canvases, they weren’t displayed for a long time in the pavilion, Du Barry soon ended up returning them to the painter. The reason behind her odd dissatisfaction with the master pieces is unknown, perhaps the resemblance between the young lad and the king Louis and the girl and Du Barry was too strong, or perhaps the Rococo spirit of the paintings was going out of fashion and she wanted something less kitschy, more elegant and simple.

I certainly don’t share Madame Du Barry’s opinion. If I could travel in time, I would have persuaded Fragonard to sell the paintings to me and then I would hang them in my luxurious countryside castle and gaze at them and daydream all day long. I just love the elegance and romance in these artworks, the secrecy and the innocence of this love chase. In “The Pursuit” the young lad is handing her a rose, like a true romantic and cavalier. “It’s thy love I want, don’t run away from me!”, his lovely face seems to say. Her answer to this flirtatious proposal is a ballerina-like pose. Kundera directly mentions Rococo art and Fragonard in “Slowness”: “The art of the eighteenth century drew pleasures out from the fog of moral prohibitions; it brought about the frame of mind we call “libertine,” which beams from the paintings of Fragonard and Watteau, from the pages of Sade, Crebillon the younger, or Charles Duclos. It is why my young friend Vincent adores that century and why, if he could, he would wear the Marquis de Sade’s profile as a badge on his lapel. I share his admiration, but I add (without being really heard) that the true greatness of that art consists not in some propaganda or other for hedonism but in its analysis.”

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Progress of Love – The Secret Meeting, 1771

Despite faking fear and disinterest in the first canvas, there is our love heroine again, pale and delightful, dressed in a white silk gown. The place of their secret meeting is part-Rococo and part-Romantical; statues and vases are man-made ornaments, but the trees and the mood are summery and romantical. Pink fragrant roses everywhere, birches, serene blue sky and all those tiny light green leaves on the trees. I love the special shade that appear often in Fragonard’s trees, this turquoise, teal shade, the love-child of green and blue. The girl’s face shows concern, as if she had perhaps heard someone’s footsteps approaching. And he had just climbed up the overgrown ladder to the secret walled garden. Can this get more romantical?

I love to enjoy all the little details of the painting such as this letter the girl is holding in her hand. It seems this is the love letter from the young cavalier, filled with sweet words of seduction and details about the secret meeting in the garden which is now taking place.

“First stage: they stroll with arms linked, they converse, they find a bench on the lawn and sit down, still arm in arm, still conversing. The night is moonlit, the garden descends in a series of terraces toward the Seine, whose murmur blends with the murmur of the trees. Let us try to catch a few fragments of the conversation. The Chevalier asks for a kiss. Madame de T. answers: “I’m quite willing: you would be too vain if I refused. Your self-regard would lead you to think I’m afraid of you.”

Everything Madame de T. says is the fruit of an art, the art of conversation, which lets no gesture pass without comment and works over its meaning; here, for instance, she grants the Chevalier the kiss he asks, but after having imposed her own interpretation on her consent: she may be permitting the embrace, but only in order to bring the Chevalier’s pride back within proper bounds.

When by an intellectual maneuver she transforms a kiss into an act of resistance, no one is fooled, not even the Chevalier.”

Jean-Honorá Fragonard, The Progress of Love – The Lover Crowned, 1771-72

The third painting of the series “The Lover Crowned” shows the girl crowning her lover with a crown of pink roses. A crown for the man of her dreams who managed to seduce her. The may be the most vibrant painting out of the series, the colours are just wild; look at all that red and pink of the flowers, the red attire of the lad who seems to be painting a portrait of them, and then the lovely mustard yellow dress the girl is wearing. There isn’t a direct connection between Fragonard’s series “Progress of Love” and the 18th century couple in “Slowness” in terms of content, the story line is different, but it is the element of slow seduction, slow approach to pleasure that unites these two eighteenth century arts. Kundera describes the slowness of one summer night’s seduction, with every detail carefully planed and the pleasure delayed, and Fragonard’s approach is even broader because it portrays the slowness not only of one night’s seduction in a pavilion, but a carefully planned, romantic and innocent game of love which ultimately brings sweet, ripe fruit. Here are some passages from “Slowness”:

“The end of the first stage of their night: the kiss she granted the Chevalier to keep him from feeling too vain was followed by another, the kisses “grew urgent, they cut into the conversation, they replaced it. …” But then suddenly she stands and decides to turn back.

What stagecraft! After the initial befuddlement of the senses, it was necessary to show that love’s pleasure is not yet a ripened fruit; it was necessary to raise its price, make it more desirable; it was necessary to create a setback, a tension, a suspense. In turning back toward the chateau with the Chevalier, Madame de T. is feigning a descent into nothingness, knowing perfectly well that at the last moment she will have full power to reverse the situation and prolong the rendezvous. All it will take is a phrase, a commonplace of the sort available by the dozen in the age-old art of conversation. But through some unexpected concatenation, some unforeseeable failure of inspiration, she cannot think of a single one. She is like an actor who suddenly forgets his script. For, indeed, she does have to know the script; it’s not like nowadays, when a girl can say, “You want to, I want to, let’s not waste time!” For these two, such frankness still lies beyond a barrier they cannot breach, despite all their libertine convictions.”

“I see her leading the Chevalier through the moonlit night. Now she stops and shows him the contours of a roof just visible before them in the penumbra; ah, the sensual moments it has seen, this pavilion; a pity, she says, that she hasn’t the key with her.

As she converses, Madame de T. maps out the territory, sets up the next phase of events, lets her partner know what he should think and how he should proceed. She does this with finesse, with elegance, and indirectly, as if she were speaking of other matters. She leads him to see the Comtesse’s self-absorbed chill, so as to liberate him from the duty of fidelity and to relax him for the nocturnal adventure she plans. She organizes not only the immediate future but the more distant future as well, by giving the Chevalier to understand that in no circumstance does she wish to compete with

They approach the door and (how odd! how unexpected!) the pavilion is open!

Why did she tell him she hadn’t brought the key? Why did she not tell him right off that the pavilion was no longer kept locked? Everything is composed, confected, artificial, everything is staged, nothing is straightforward, or in other words, everything is art; in this case: the art of prolonging the suspense, better yet: the art of staying as long as possible in a state of arousal.”

“By slowing the course of their night, by dividing it into different stages, each separate from the next, Madame de T. has succeeded in giving the small span of time accorded them the semblance of a marvelous little architecture, of a form. Imposing form on a period of time is what beauty demands, but so does memory. For what is formless cannot be grasped, or committed to memory. Conceiving their encounter as a form was especially precious for them, since their night was to have no tomorrow and could be repeated only through recollection. There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.”

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Progress of Love – Love Letters, 1771-72

The last painting of the series “Love Letters” shows the lovers in a happy union. Again in some beautiful garden with roses and statues. A little dog is lying near the roses, perhaps hinting at the fidelity of the love union, or perhaps just enriching the painting with his cuteness. The girl’s rosy cheeks and pink dress are cuteness overload, and the way the young cavalier is gazing at her is of equal sweetness. Red parasol is a nice Chinoserie hint. But now, to end, I would like to share another quote from the novel “Slowness” about hedonism:

“In everyday language, the term “hedonism” denotes an amoral tendency to a life of sensuality, if not of outright vice. This is inaccurate, of course: Epicurus, the first great theoretician of pleasure, had a highly skeptical understanding of the happy life: pleasure is the absence of suffering. Suffering, then, is the fundamental notion of hedonism: one is happy to the degree that one can avoid suffering, and since pleasures often bring more unhappiness than happiness, Epicurus advises only such pleasures as are prudent and modest. Epicurean wisdom has a melancholy backdrop: flung into the world’s misery, man sees that the only clear and reliable value is the pleasure, however paltry, that he can feel for himself: a gulp of cool water, a look at the sky (at God’s windows), a caress.

Modest or not, pleasures belong only to the person who experiences them, and a philosopher could justifiably criticize hedonism for its grounding in the self. Yet, as I see it, the Achilles’ heel of hedonism is not that it is self-centered but that it is (ah, would that I were mistaken!) hopelessly Utopian: in fact, I doubt that the hedonist ideal could ever be achieved…”

I think the whole philosophy of slowness, pleasure, idleness and hedonism is something we could all use in our hectic, fast modern lives over-bombarded with information and changes, just take things slow and enjoy them.

John Singer Sargent: Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife

John Singer Sargent, Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife, 1889

I discovered this gem of a painting two months ago but I decided to save it for April because plein air paintings with such lush greenness just scream April and springtime to me. The man with a straw hat, long sharp nose and a beard is the French Post-Impressionist painter Paul César Helleu. His canvas sits in the grass, framed by noisy blades of grass. The long thin fingers of his right hand are not so dissimilar to the brushes he is holding in his left arm, and if you look at it closely, you will see that the brush is nothing more than a stroke of paint, confident and carefree. Whatever he is painting, and it must be the nature that is in front of him, is it for sure keeping him completely absorbed. Behind him, in the shadow of this great artist, is a seemingly disinterested auburn haired woman with greyish complexion; that is Helleu’s wife Alice Guérin.

The couple met in 1884 when Helleu was commissioned to paint a portrait of this graceful young lady with long red hair. They quickly fell in love and married two years later, on 28 July 1886 when she was sixteen years old and he was twenty-six. She was his favourite model, but in this painting painted by Helleu’s life-long friend John Singer Sargent, she is sitting wistfully in the grass behind him; lost in daydreams, listening to birds or just following a butterfly in its flight with her eyes. He seems so stern and so absorbed in his work, I wonder: was she bored just sitting there useless, like a captive bird, dressed in an almost matching grey jacket to that of her beloved husband? Or did she enjoy being his passive companion? Or perhaps he just seems serious, but we don’t see the jokes he might have cracked or smiles he might have sent to her in times of  little painting breaks. One thing I do know for sure: the grass in this painting is something out of this world! In so many different shades of green, from the proper grass green to being and brown tones… it is a joy to soak my eyes in this greenness! Sensuality of nature comes through in these colours. Every blade of grass has a unique life of its own. This isn’t some neat, tamed lawn, no, this is a sweetly wild grass that grows on its own accord, without man’s laws.

Bellow you can see a similar painting that John Singer Sargent painted four years before the Helleu one, and in this painting it’s the famous Impressionist Claude Monet who is shown painting plein air on the edge of the wood. Sargent sort of strikes me as a voyeur of a sort… I know that they knew they were being painted but still, it seems that Sargent was quick to capture them in their pursuit.

John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of the Wood, 1885

Jon Rappoport: A message to the pod people wearing masks

I read this thrilling and witty piece by Jon Rappoport last night on his blog “No More Fake News” and I just can’t help but sharing!

“Our world has literally turned into the movie set of “They Live.” Only, these days, no special glasses are required. They openly push their agendas in our faces and we lay down and take it like the good slaves they’ve trained us to be.” (picture and the caption found here)

A message to the pod people wearing masks

“You’re sincere. We get it. You can stop now. You’ve already won a gold star on the blackboard from the teacher. And yes, the epidemic is all Trump’s fault, because he called it the China virus, and he should have starting locking down cities in 1998. Right. Sure. Of course.

I won’t try to make a distinction between the junk science you worship and actual science. You’re too far gone for that.

You’re in a box. In your minds. You’ve been in that box for a long time. It’s created by the “authorities in charge,” and their super-coiffed high-priced press hookers. The recent order to go on lockdown was just another piece beamed into that box, and you stood at attention. Yes sir.

Even some of you anti-vaxxers are in the box. What did you think you were saying about viruses with your stance on vaccines? Let me translate. You were saying, “We can deal with viruses, we don’t need your toxic vaccines to gain immunity.” But now, all of a sudden, with this ghost fake virus, you fold up like puppets. You ask your masters to pull on the strings so you can put on your masks. All along, you’ve had a piece of mind control stuck in your domes you didn’t know about. I mean, really.

To all you pod people: you needed a new religion at this late date?

I’m sure some of you were actively against the Iraq war under Bush 2. You bucked the artificial consensus. But now, you salute and enlist. Can you back up just a step and take a peek at yourselves and glimpse how ridiculous you look, in lock-step, masks on, gloves on, trudging 27 feet apart down the middle of some deserted Main Street?

I’ll even bet there are long-time JFK assassination researchers in masks. For decades, they’ve combed through one false trail after another, traveled through halls of mirrors, finally arriving at the door of the CIA…but now, after three sentences from that petty bureaucrat Fauci, they’re in the cult. Bingo, bango, bongo…..”

(read the rest of it here.)

Maurice Prendergast: Mothers and Children in the Park

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”

(William Morris)

Maurice Prendergast, Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook: Mothers and Children in the Park, watercolor over pencil, 1895-97

This is not the first and probably not the last post I wrote about Maurice Prendergast. I already wrote about his dazzling and vibrant watercolour beach scenes and about his dreamy and radiant La Belle Epoque portrait of the Lady with a Red Sash. Today, let us take a look at this beautiful watercolour “Mothers and Children in the Park” which was painted around 1895-97, right after his return from Paris. It’s part of Prendergast’s “Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook”.

Maurice Prendergast studied in Paris from 1891 to 1895 at the Académie Colarossi (Modigliani’s lover and muse Jeanne Hébuterne also studied at this academy, though many years later) and Académie Julian. In Paris he met Aubrey Beardsley, Walter Sickert, Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard with whom he shared artistic ideas and these friendships inspired him to experiment with compositions and formats of his paintings. Along with these progressive artistic ideas of Pointilism, Japonism and rudiments of Art Nouveau (through Aubrey Beardsley’s art), Prendergast was naturally introduced to the wonders of Impressionism and the theme of this watercolour is very Impressionistic: a carefree, lazy, sunny day in the park. The world “impression” was originally used pejoratively to describe a sketchy, carefree style which differed greatly from the precise, no-brushstroke-seen style of the Academic art. In that sense, this lovely watercolour is a true “impression” of a sunny, warm, radiant afternoon in a park. A moment of quiet joy captured in a dazzling harmony of pinks, greens and yellows. Everything looks trembling and alive and colours fully contribute to this mood.

Bellow I have included an array of details of this watercolour and these details really show the true beauty of this artwork. You can see the pencil appearing under the watercolour, the soft transitions and mingling of the watercolour. Something about two different shades of watercolour mingling together in a kiss and creating another shade gives me such a thrill. Such radiance and vivacity! A watercolour “impression” of such a simple, everyday motif as is a day in the park gives an even greater immediacy and liveliness to the motif than the usual oil on canvas that the Impressionist were painting. I especially love the detail of the little girl in pink dress with puffed sleeves and wheat-coloured hair. Her lovely oval face is but a few strokes of pencil and dashes of blue for eyes, so simple and effortless, yet so lovely.

Alfonse van Besten: Two Girls Picking Cornflowers

Today I wanted to share a few of these wonderful, dreamy photographs by a Belgian painter Alfonse Van Besten (1865-1926) whose curious, inventive spirit prompted him to experiment with photography as well. In one of these photographs, you can see Van Besten painting in his beautiful garden full of flowers and greenery. Painting in one’s garden is the kind of idyll that Claude Monet knew all too well. These autochrome photographs are a real delight to gaze at, they are like nostalgic windows to a secret lost world of eternal spring, meadows with cornflowers and gardens in bloom, the kind of place that I often daydream about. “Two girls picking flowers” is my favourite photograph out of all these, there’s just something so innocent about it and I can imagine the mood of a warm, fragrant summer day, bees buzzing, crickets chirping, long thin stems of the cornflowers swaying in the soft southern breeze, the girls pick flowers oblivious to everything else. Only the cornflowers exist, nothing else matters.

“Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with bird calls.”

(Louise Gluck, Primavera)

Alfonse van Besten, Two girls picking cornflowers, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Young girl amidst marguerites, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Van Besten painting in his garden, 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Children at play, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Youth Idyll, 1914

Autochrome photograph by Alfonse Van Besten, “Modesty”, 1912

Alphonse van Besten, Mime in love, c 1912

Alphonse van Besten, Mime in love, c 1912

YouTube Bans David Icke: Censorship Will Stop Your Excess Thoughts

Make poverty your perfect home
Allow your leaders to control you
Questions are now blasphemy

Why walk when you can crawl
Stay on your knees and kiss my feet
Censorship’ll stop your excess thought

(Manic Street Preachers – Crucifix Kiss)

Mikhail Larionov, Red Rayonism, 1913

One thing that easily makes my blood pressure jump high is political correctness. Other thing that has the same effect is censorship and this problem is more important than we realise. Just because you never had a problem with censorship personally, doesn’t mean the problem isn’t real. You don’t have to touch fire to realise it burns. I feel very strongly about the freedom of speech, freedom of holding different opinions even if they are morally wrong or unpopular, I believe in freedom. I don’t believe in suppressing one’s thoughts and opinions. It is tremendously important to be able to express oneself freely and also to be able to inform yourself on the topic from many different sources. I don’t need Google, Facebook etc to tell me if something is “disinformation” or “false information”. “False information” is the same as “ceonsored information that we don’t want you to see” and that’s the same shit wrapped in a nicer, smoother vocabulary. I need all the sources to be available to me and I will make my final judgement.

But unfortunately, this isn’t how the world works these days. YouTube channel “LondonReal” had a live stream yesterday with David Icke who spoke of this virus and this pandemic being fake, about the horrible impact of 5G on humans and nature alike, elite, Bill Gates and vaccines and all that. Well guess what, YouTube banned the video without any warning or without stating a reason why. Brian Rose, the interviewer, said something that sums the point, he said he doesn’t agree with everything David Icke says, but that he will fight to death for his right to say it. I remember reading about a politician in Canada whose Twitter account was deleted because she tweeted “men are not women” which is a biological truth, or a teenager being sent out of the class for saying there are only two genders. Truths are becoming something that one should be ashamed to say. “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.“ (George Orwell) The emperor is naked, but don’t dare anyone say it out loud! Sure, you are allowed to quarrel over the way avocado on bread is eaten, or trivial day to day stuff, clothes and shampoos, but oh oh don’t talk about the disease that cannot really make you sick because it doesn’t exist!

Jean-Leon Gerome, Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind, 1896

I strongly urge you to check out what David Icke has to say about this whole situation and you can still watch the video here. If YouTube, Google and BBC don’t want you to see it, then you should definitely watch it!!! If Icke was really saying silly things, no one would care to censor him. The truth that might reach many people and make them question the world they live in, that is why they try so hard to ban him. You don’t have to agree with what he says, but he should be allowed to say it. And that goes for everyone else! Let us remind ourselves of this:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

But now there’s an article on BBC, which you can read here, which explains why the video was removed. Thank you BBC for explaining to me what the problem with the truths… I mean the video was. I feel so relieved that you are out there to protect me from misinformation. I am relieved I am safe! (being very sarcastic here). F* you BBC and F* you censorship! You cannot stop my mind from questioning things, in fact you only make me wanna spread this information further and to explore the truth further. This cold-blooded “elimination” of information, hysterical efforts to destroy any info out there which doesn’t fit the agenda reminds me so much of, not only Orwell’s 1984, but also Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” where books are burnt and it is a crime to read them. I chose Larionov’s painting for this post because these yellow and red rays remind me of fire, fire which burns books and with them, information. Here is a passage, I wonder do these people who decide on censorship also get off on it or are they “just doing their job”:

And then Clarisse McClellan said:

“Do you mind if I ask? How long have you worked at being a fireman?”

“Since I was twenty, ten years ago.”

“Do you ever read any of the books you bum?”

He laughed.

“That’s against the law!”

“Oh. Of course.”

“It’s fine work. Monday bum Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ’em to ashes, then bum the ashes. That’s our official slogan.” They walked still further and the girl said, “Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?”

“No. Houses. have always been fireproof, take my word for it.”

“Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.” He laughed.

This censorship these days is an act of desperation because people are starting to wake up and question things. It’s not aimed to protect us, it’s not aimed at creating a better world of information out there. Its only purpose is to impose one way of thinking, one version of reality and leave no space or freedom for any critical discussion.