My Inspiration for April 2023

This has been the most romantic April I have ever had! I would have drowned in its dreaminess were it possible. Days flew like a river, one melting into the other, each one more dreamy, more beautiful, bringing me new gifts in various forms; a flower, a loving word, a golden sunset… I have had a major Nick Cave obsession and have been listening to his albums “Let Love In” and “The Boatman’s Call” non-stop, and have been reading his Red Hand Files and also “Faith, Hope, Carnage”, and here is something beautiful from it: “The luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days.” Lilac, magnolia, iris, hydrangea; the favourites of this month. I’ve enjoyed the paintings of Ophelia, nymphs; Waterhouse’s and other, Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations, Delmira Agustini and Tagore’s poetry, Tinderstick’s album “Curtains”, Anglada-Camarasa’s paintings, Anais Nin’s journals, paintings of gardens, long gowns and flowers crowns as you’ve seen in my fashion inspiration post, water lilies and weeping willows, William Morris’s prints and his Briar Rose series…

“Ah! When you are far away my whole life cries
And to the murmur of your steps even in dreams I smile.
I know you will return, that another dawn will shine…”

(Delmira Agustini, From Far Away)

“Art is much, but love is more.
O Art, my Art, thou’rt much, but Love is more!
Art symbolises heaven, but Love is God
And makes heaven.”
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book IX.)

“I think of you in motion
And just how close you are getting
And how every little thing anticipates you
All down my veins my heart-strings call
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?”
(Nick Cave, Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for)

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

By Marianna Rothen

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

Hydrangea (@lovecats92 on Instagram)

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

 

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10:15 On a Saturday Night Waiting For the Telephone to Ring, Wondering Where He’s Been…

The song “10:15 Saturday Night” was the first song on the band’s debut album “The Three Imaginary Boys”, released on 11th May 1979. Just like many other songs by The Cure, it is about loneliness and despair, on a Saturday night which is very convenient because Saturday is usually the fun day of the week, the day for parties and pleasure, but it can also be the loneliest day, and night, of the week. Even if the party-abstinence and the isolation are self-imposed, as they were with Morrissey for example, one does still feel this slight ache… Robert Smith actually wrote the song when he was sixteen years old while sitting in his kitchen and feeling lonely one Saturday night. The song does have a teenage vibe to it and I love its rawness and simplicity. The water dripping in the sink, as described in the lyrics, is a monotonous reminder of the passing of time and it adds to the overall mood of doom and gloom; he is alone at home on a Saturday night, waiting for the telephone to ring, waiting for the girl to call, wondering where she’s been, and the dripping of the water in the sink is the only sound breaking the moody silence. Now, Millais’ watercolour “Dreams at Dawn”, painted in 1968, has a dawn setting, but who’s to say it’s not 10:15 and the girl is on her balcony, wondering where her beloved is? Is he thinking of her? Is he writing to her? The quietness of the lonely evening is only disturbed by her occasional sigh or a scream of a distant bird. The girl’s pose, her head leaned on her hand, says it all. Her eyes may be turned upwards at the big shining moon, but we know her thoughts are elsewhere… The stars may be shining beautifully but the magic is lost for her because she can’t stop wondering; where he’s been???

John Everett Millais, A Dream at Dawn, 1868

10.15
10.15
Saturday night
Saturday night
And the tap drips
And the tap drips
Under the strip light
Under the strip light
And I’m sitting
And I’m sitting
In the kitchen sink
In the kitchen sink
And the tap drips
And the tap drips
Drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip
Drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip
Waiting
Waiting
For the telephone to ring
For the telephone to ring
And I’m wondering
And I’m wondering
Where she’s been
Where she’s been
And I’m crying
And I’m crying
For yesterday
For yesterday
And the tap drips
And the tap drips
Drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip
Drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip
It’s always the same
It’s always the same

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale: With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied (A Nymph)

“There, in a meadow, by the river’s side,
A flock of nymphs I chanced to espy,
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby,
With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied…”

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, ‘With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied’, 1915, pencil and watercolour

April is a green month. Whereas in March the blossoming trees coloured the horizon, in April nature is all clad in green, at last. On cloudy days especially the verdant landscape is ever so vibrant. I think my enthusiasm for spring is quite obvious from my recent posts, and indeed I take delight every day in the awakening of nature and the lushness and sensuality that accompany it. I seek the same sensations in the world of art and this watercolour by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale known under the titled “With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied” perfectly encapsulated the April vibes that I am feeling at the moment. This is April in a painting, for me. A beautiful month, a beautiful painting. I am thoroughly enjoying all the Pre-Raphaelitesque details in each and every leaf, the nymph’s green-blueish hair, the reflections in the water… it is beyond praise. Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale was not a Pre-Raphaelite artist in the strict sense of the word, but her style of painting, vibrant and detailed, and her choice of motifs is very much Pre-Raphaelite. The natural setting in this watercolour, painted with such admirable attention to all the details, to every flower, every leaf, every branch, every blade of grass, is very reminiscent of John Everett Millais’ painting “Ophelia”. We might assume the same natural setting was used for the portraits of Ophelia and this lovely nymph.

The watercolour shows a naked nymph by the river, holding flowers in both of her hands. She seems surprised, caught off guard and gazing at something, or someone, that we cannot see. Despite being portrayed as naked, which is usual for a nymph, she doesn’t seem to be flaunting her nakedness in a sensual or inviting manner, as perhaps Waterhouse’s nymphs are doing, but rather she seems innocent to the point of unawareness, untroubled by society’s norms and demands, she is a free nature’s child and her heart is pure. Her long dark hair, tinged with shades of blue and green, and adorned with flowers, is elegantly covering her body and the blades of grass bellow are doing the same thing.

This watercolour is found in the “The Book of Old English Songs and Ballads” (printed in Edinburgh in 1915) and is an illustration for Edmund Spenser’s poem “Prothalamion” written in 1596 on the ocassion of a double wedding of Ladie Elizabeth and Ladie Katherine Somerset. The poem meditates on marriage, beauty of the brides and their wedding day, and dwells on the beauty of the natural world as opposed to the restrictive world of court and politics. In the poem, on a calm day when the sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play, the poet goes for a walk by the river Thames and sees nymphs, “the lovely daughters of the flood”, as he calls them, who are gathering flowers, lilies, daisies and primroses, and putting them in their little baskets.

Details

Here are the opening lines of the poem from where the title of the watercolour was taken:

“CALM was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play,
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan’s beams, which then did glister fair;
When I (…)
Walked forth to ease my pain
Along the shore of silver streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorned with dainty gems,
Fit to deck maidens’ bowers,
And crown their paramours,
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

There, in a meadow, by the river’s side,
A flock of nymphs I chanced to espy,
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby,
With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied,
As each had been a bride;
And each one had a little wicker basket,
Made of fine twigs, entrailed curiously,
In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket,
And with fine fingers cropt full featously
The tender stalks on high.
Of every sort, which in that meadow grew,
They gathered some; the violet pallid blue,
The little daisy, that at evening closes,
The virgin lily, and the primrose true…“

Fashion Inspiration: Long Gowns and Flower Crowns

Pictures found here.

 

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Lovers – Jugend Magazine Cover April 1899: Far worse to be Love’s lover than the lover that Love has scorned, I LET LOVE IN… (Nick Cave)

“Far worse to be Love’s lover than the lover that Love has scorned
I let love in…“
(Nick Cave, I Let Love In)

Angelo Jank, Cover of Jugend Magazine, 8 April 1899

I have been taking great aesthetical delight in this April 1899 cover of the German Jugend Magazine, painted by Angelo Jank, for months now but have patiently been waiting for April to write about it. And write about it I must because I feel it, in a way, encapsulates the romantic spirit of my blog. All the covers for the turn of the century editions of the Jugend Magazine are beautiful and innovative, but this one is by far my favourite. It is simple but stunning. Two lovers are shown kneeling on the grass, holding hands, their lips locked in a kiss. One doesn’t know where one lovers begins and where the other ends, why, even their knees are touching. Locked in a kiss forever, these painted-lovers, in a flowery meadow of a turn of the century magazine. Do they know they have been kissing for more than a hunred years? And has it been enough for them, and do their lips still taste ever so sweet? They seem out of time and place, and even their clothes have a historical flair, especially the man’s attire but the lady’s free-flowing dress as well brings to mind the fanciful princess from some bygone era.

The background is made out of stylised roses and leaves, very simple but fitting. There is a simplicity to this scene, but also a beautiful flow, a rhythm of nature and a rhythm of love. The lovers’ pose with the touching points; the kiss, the hands and the knees, is very much in the Art Nouveau style, though it does bear a great resemblance to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s study for the cover of “The Early Italian Poets”, drawn in 1861. I feel that Angelo Jank’s drawing is more organic and flowing; both lovers are kneeling and seem to be in tune with one another and the nature around them. Even the shades of green on their clothing and in the background are the same. Still, it is interesting to see the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites seeping into the artworks even half a century later, almost, in a completely different artistic and geographical setting. Namely, the Jugend Magazine or simply “Jugend” which means “Youth” in German was an influential German art magazine that was being published from 1896 to 1940, although its peak was at the turn of the century. It was founded by Georg Hirth in Munich and he was the main editor of the magazine until he died in 1916. The legacy of the magazine, apart from the gorgeous and sometimes witty covers, is the promotion of the Jugendstil, which was the German version of the Art Nouveau style.

These past few days I have been listening to the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’s eighth studio album “Let Love In” very intensely and surprise, surprise, I discover that it was actually released on the 18th April 1994. Since the album, as most of Nick Cave’s music does anyway, revolves around the theme of love, in all its faces – the beautiful and the ugly, the angelic and the demonic, I thought it would be a perfect timing to publish a post about this magazine cover and, in some strange way, make it connected to Nick Cave’s album. To end a post, here are some lines from the last song on the album, the part two of the song “Do You Love Me”:

“Do you love me?
 I love you, handsome
But do you love me?
Yes, I love you,
 you are handsome…
Dreams that roam
 between truth and untruth
Memories that become monstrous lies
So onward! And Onward! And Onward I go!
Onward! And Upward! And I’m off to find love
With blue-black bracelets on my wrists and ankles
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle…”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Early Italian Poets (study for titlepage), 1861

Delmira Agustini: I lived in the leaning tower of Melancholy…

Delmira Agustini (1886-1914) was an Uruguayan poetess who published three poetry collections during her short life; The White Book (Fragile, 1907), Morning Songs (1910) and The Empty Chalices (1913), and the fourth one called “The Stars of the Abyss” was published post-humously in 1924. She was a passsionate woman with a love for all that is deep, raw and profound. The unashamedness, the vivid and powerful eroticism of her poetry and her turbulent personal love life were not well received in the Uruguayan society of the time. Hers is the poetry that I can easily get “drunk” on, in the Baudelaire-sense of drunkedness. No other poet describes the burning passions and sensations of love and desire as beautifully as Agustini does. Her verses and even the words she uses, like “fire, “rubies”, “hot”, all convey an image of something that is lush, ripe, sensual, hot, overflowing… Reading her poems is like eating honey, ripe figs and dates on a summer dusk, the sky is turning pink in the distance and the bats are dancing in the sky, and the ground is still hot from the sun, and the heavy scent of roses and lavender is making one drowsy and drunk, while the red and pink oleander is blooming near by, inhaling the deep scent of the dark night. There are no stars in Agustini’s night because they have all explored from too much intensity, as she herself did too, in a way. Her life was cut short when her jealous and possessive husband murdered her and then himself, under mysterious circumstances. Agustini lived and wrote with burning passion and intensity.

Today I decided to share a poem called “Oh You!” from her poetry collection “The Empty Chalices” because it really chimes with me these days. The imagery of a woman trapped in a “tower of melancholy”, the tower as a solitary and claustrophobic place and not only a physical place but also a mood of the spirit… A lonely woman, surrounded by dust, dried flowers and spiders, alive but not living, brings to mind many female literary female figures, from fairy tales and novels alive, from the Rapunzel and the Lady of Shalott who were both “awakened” by the man they saw from the tower, or from the mirror, to Miss Havisham. In connection, I really love this study by John William Waterhouse for this painting “The Lady of Shalott” which portrays the moment when Elaine, the Lady of Shalott, stands up from her embroidery to look out the window. It is Sir Lancelot; the man who caught her eye, the man who stirred something inside her heart. Seeing Elaine in this painting, with her white gown painted in such a sketchy, unfinished way that makes her seem as though she is ghostly, disappearing, makes me think of these lines from Mazzy Star’s song “Into Dust”: “I could possibly be fading/ Or have something more to gain/ I could feel myself growing colder/ I could feel myself under your fate…” As we know, this only brings doom to Elaine as the curse is upon her, but in case of Rapunzel as well as in case of Delmira Agustini, the man is the wind of change which blew in through the window of the tower and stirred something inside that, once awoken, will not fall to slumber again. For Agustini, the man “lifted the veil” and, perhaps most beautifully, “made a whole lake with swans” of her tears.

John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (from the poem by Tennyson), 1894

Oh You!

I lived in the leaning tower
Of melancholy …
The spiders of tedium, the grayest spiders,
Wove and wove in grayness and silence.

Oh! the dank tower,
Filled with the sinister
Presence of a great owl
Like a soul in torment;

So mute, that the silence in the tower is twofold;
So sad, that without seeing it, we are chilled by the immense
Shadow of its sorrow.

Eternally it incubates a great barren egg,
Its strange pupils fixed on the hereafter;
Or hunts the spiders of tedium, or devours bitter
Mushrooms of solitude.

The owl of illustrious ruins and souls
Tall and desolate!
Cast out from the light I drowned in shadows …
In the dank tower, leaning over myself,
Sometimes I trembled
From the horror of my abyss.

O you who tore me down from that mightiest tower!
Who gently lifted the shadow like a veil,
Who bore me roses in the snow of my soul,
Who bore me flames in the marble of my body,
Who made a whole lake with swans, of my tears …
You who in me are all powerful,
In me you must be God!
From your hands I even seek the good that harms …
I am the shining chalice that you will fill, Lord;
Fallen and stiff like a lily, I am at your feet,
I am more than your own, my God!
Forgive me, forgive me, if I should once sin, dreaming
Of your winged embrace, all mine, in the sun …

Fleeting Beauty of the Cherry Blossoms (Wabi-Sabi)

“There is nothing you can

see that is not a flower; there

is nothing you can think that

is not the moon.”

(Mastuo Basho)

Namiki Hajime, Weeping Cherry Tree 9, 2008

Even before the calender announces its arrival, the wonderful season of spring starts in my heart. The moment I behold the first blooming tree. The yesterday’s bare branches suddenly adorned with countless tender little blossoms. The thrill! The ecstasy! The rapture!

These past two weeks or so I have been taking great delight in seeing the kwanzan cherries finally in bloom, their petals ever so soft and ever so pink. Yesterday afternoon I walked passed some kwanzan cherry trees and I simply had to stop and admire their beauty for awhile. Their branches heavy from the rain were leaning lower than ever, the pink colour of the blossoms was even more radiant against the greyness of a rainy day than it would be on a sunny day, each drop of rain on the blossoms glistened like a little diamond… The pavement was wet from the rain and littered with pink blossoms, and so were the little puddles upon which the blossoms were floating like little boats. It was a magical moment, the kind you wish could linger on and on, but it cannot just as the kwanzan cherries will not be in bloom all year long, not even a month long. The beauty of blooming trees is the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ kind of beauty when one compares the length of the blooming time to all the other time when it doesn’t. The rainy days always seem to linger while the sunny ones just pass me by. For months the bare tree branches have been poking me in the eye with their drab, sad appearance and now, when they are dressed up in white and pink blossoms, when they are such a joy to behold, now this will pass… These blossoms are so delicate that even a slight breeze can, and does, tear them, but still, the greatest terror for these delicate, blooming beauties is time. The beauty of the early blossoms of spring lies in their impermanance. I enjoy gazing at them because I know that in a week, or two, or three, all these pink petals will have fallen off. There is something heart-wrenching about it, how unstoppable it is, the transience. And yet the trees accept it, this change, better than I do, it seems. They live on peacefully, whether their branches are full of blossoms, green leaves, clad in auburn and yellow, or completely bare. What can we do then, to capture these delicate, transient beauties?

By Shodo Kawarazaki

Kotozuka Eiichi, Drooping Cherry Blossoms, 1950

Vincent van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890

Of course, as I do with every feeling in life, whether it’s love or sadness, I turn to art and I have spent many pleasant moments gazing at all these Japanese ukiyo-e prints with a motif of blossoms or even the festivals and celebrations surrounding the cherry blossom season. And of course I had to include this painting by Vincent van Gogh as well because he also desperately tried to capture the fleeting beauty of almond blossoms. And to finish the post here is a passage from Andrew Juniper’s book “Wabi-sabi: the Beauty of Impermanance” which connects the almost inseparable motifs of cherry blossoms and transience:

“Few factors hold more sway on a national character than the weather. The temperate climate that Japan enjoys brings some of themost wonderful changes of season, and it is to these that the Japanese focus their interests and energies. Blessed with some of the most beautiful trees in the world, Japan in autumn or spring can be truly breathtaking, and the cherry blossoms have become one of the defining features of the Japanese calendar. During the brief time that the millions of cherry trees in Japan blossom, hundreds of thousands of small and large parties are held underneath them. Sake is drunk, songs are sung, and the fleeting beauty of the blossoms is enjoyed to the full. They are enjoyed in the knowledge that at the whim of the wind or rain nature can withdraw their beauty at a moment’s notice. It is like a celebration of our own fleeting lives and is another way in which the Japanese can indulge their love of things impermanent. The changing of the seasons has always been a reoccurring theme in Japan’s art and is often used to illustrate our own passage of time. For example, spring is often used as a euphemism for the sexual stage of life (the word prostitute is actually made from the three characters “selling spring woman”).“

Utagawa Kunisada, Woman Walking under Cherry Blossoms at Night, c 1840s

Toyohara Chikanobu (1838 – 1912), Cherry Blossoms Party at the Chiyoda Palace (Chiyoda Ooku Ohanami), 1894

Yoshikawa Kanpo, Cherry Blossom at Night in the Maruyama Park, ca. 1925

Toyohara Chikanobu, Evening Cherry Blossoms – Ladies of Chiyoda Palace, 1896

Jokata Kaiseki
, Mt Fuji and the Cherry Blossoms on Asuka Hill
, 1929

Monet’s Water Lilies and Auggie’s Pictures from Smoke (1995): They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one

“They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your ;people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.”

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1922

In 1883 Monet had left the bustle of Paris and moved to the village of Giverny where he spent decades, all until his death in 1926, creating, planting, growing and portraying his wonderful garden. As an Impressionist Monet was concerned with painting that what is changeable; the different effects of weather, the dawn and the dusk, the seasons, the wind, the sunshine, the snow and the rain, painting the same motif and exloring it under all these various circumstances. Monet had studies many motifs under different influences and has creates many series of paintings, stacks of hay, poplars, the cathedral, to name a few, but my favourite of his series and perhaps the most fitting for these spring days is his series of water lilies that were blooming in a pond in his estate in Giverny. Monet painted about two-hundred and fifty paintings of water lilies alone. Now that is a dedication indeed. And I really see how that may be possible, I mean, just gaze at these painting and see how beautiful and seductive the water lilies are. The blues and greens of these paintings are soothing for the soul. All of these water lily paintings are very similar, all painted in blues and greens with white or pink for the lotus flower, but at the same time they are all different one from another, all unique and special. Interestingly, the pond with the water lilies takes up the entire space of the canvas, there is no space left for the sky or the clouds. And when are also immersed in this water lily world by gazing at them.

Claude Monet, Nympheas, 1915

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916

In the eighth episode of the first season of the show “Disenchantment”, which I love, a hermit called Malfus who lives in cave and who took an immortality potion says: “When life is endless, so is everything else! The monotony! The repetition! The monotony! The repetition! The monotony!…” Point taken. As hillarious as his moaning and complaning about immortality is, there is some wisdom to his claims. Without a sense of impermanance to our lives, from whence would a sense of magic arise? The clock of our lives is always ticking off our minutes and we don’t know when it will stop thicking. When you look at life from this perspective everything becomes more precious and you realise that indeed “every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.”

In the film “Smoke” (1995) the life of multiple characters revolve around the same tobacco shop, ran by Auggie Wren (played by Harvey Keitel), which they all frequent, not for the cigarettes alone but also for Auggie’s wisdom and advice. The life of Auggie Wren, who just runs a Brooklyn tobacco shop, may seem totally mundane and uneventful at first glance, but even in this banality of the day to day life, this ‘monotony and repetition’ of days suceeding one another, being all the ‘same’, Auggie manages to find some strange urban beauty. And here you can see a clip from the film where he is showing his photo album to one of his customers, a writer called Benjamin. At first Benjamin is flipping through it uninterested, not understanding the concept, but Auggie tells him: “You’ll never get it unless you slow down, my friend”, urging him to be patient in order to grasp the rhythm and meaning of the pictures, which all show the same view from the street corner of Auggie’s shop, and are all taken at 8 am every morning.

Auggie’s pictures of the street corner, and the last picture is of Auggie himself, all clips from the film.

This is how their dialogue goes:

Benjamin: They’re all the same.

Auggie: That’s right. More than four thousand pictures of the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue at eight o’clock in the morning, four thousand straight days in all kinds of weather. That’s why I can never take a vacation.  I got to be in my spot every morning at the same time … every morning in the same spot at the same time.

Benjamin: I’ve never seen anything like this.

Auggie: It’s my project. What you’d call: my life’s work.

Benjamin: Amazing. I’m not sure I get it though… What was it that gave you the idea to do this… project?

Auggie: I don’t know. It just came to me. It’s my corner after all. I mean, it’s just one little part of the world but things take place there too just like everywhere else. It’s a record of my little spot.

Benjamin: It’s kinda overwhelming.

Auggie: You’ll never get it unless you slow down, my friend.

Benjamin: What do you mean?

Auggie: I mean, you’re going too fast, you’re hardly even looking at the pictures.

Benjamin: They’re all the same.

Auggie: They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your; people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.

Benjamin: Slow down, huh?

Auggie: That’s what I recommend. You know how it is. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Time creeps in its petty pace.

Claude Monet, Water lilies, 1915

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916-19

What better way to show your love and appreciation for something than to give it focus, give it time? Auggie Wren loved the city he lived in and in particular his neighbourhood of Brooklyn, and likewise Monet loved his gardens and especially his delicate and dazzling water lilies. Is it monotony to painting something beautiful for the two-hundredth time, to capture the mundane for the five-hunredth time?

Claude Monet, Water-Lilies, Reflection of a Weeping Willow, 1916-1919

Jeanne Hebuterne’s Birthday: The thought of him fills every room, every space I go, and replaces the air in my lungs

“This is the room of a proper jeune fille, the person I am outgrowing or perhaps have never been. It is a room where Modi will never set foot, where his smile will never be caught in the mirror. Yet the thought of him fills every room, every space I go, and replaces the air in my lungs.”

(Linda Lappin, Loving Modigliani: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne)

Jeanne Hebuterne, Self-Portrait, 1917

Amedeo Modigliani’s lover, companion, common-law wife and muse Jeanne Hebuterne was born on the 6th April 1898 in Paris. When lilacs start spreading their intoxicating fragrant, the iris is in full bloom, and the sky is all rosy from the blooming magnolias and kwanzan cherry trees, I know that April has arrived. Its warm and fragrant air is coming through the open window into my room and with it arrive the thoughts of Jeanne, carried by the breeze from some strange, far-off land…

It might seem strange, on the day of Jeanne’s birthday and in a post devoted to her, to include in the title the thought about Modigliani; “The thought of him fills every room, every space I go, and replaces the air in my lungs”, but Jeanne and Modigliani were and are so intertwined in the world of art that it would be impossible to write about one without mentioning the other. To write about Jeanne’s life or art without mentioning Modigliani, why, she would be furious! Jeanne adored him and revelled in being his muse, his companion, in belonging to him, darkly and richly – forever. She even, of her own accord, followed him into death, by jumping from the window of her parents’ fifth-floor flat two days after he had died.

I don’t think she would have minded it at all to be so tied to his name, to be looked at through the lense of Modigliani, to be in his artistic shadow. Why is it with female artists throughout the history that it always needs to be emphasised that they were in the shadow of their artist-husbands? What is so wrong in being in the shadow, in being remembered more as a model and muse than a painter? To a woman in love, to me, even a shadow of a man I love would be an abode of lightness, a glowing garden with lanterns and fireflies, a moonlit night, and I would not mind dwelling there. Knowing Jeanne’s mad, wild, steady adoration of Modigliani, I am sure she felt the same way.

Photograph of Jeanne, c. 1918

Jeanne Hebuterne, Self-Portrait, circa 1917

A maiden touched by love, just as a flower touched by the warm rays of sun, is starting to bloom into a woman. Malleable as clay, breakable as a porcelain vase, it is up to the man, to Modigliani, to either shape her into a beautiful woman or to leave her as a broken pitcher in Greuze’s painting. This delicate moment, the dawn of her womanhood, standing at the threshold, the excitement and fear; the trust, the hope – the surrender. I know how it feels, and I know how it must have felt for Jeanne and when I gaze at her self-portrait, the first one in the post, all in shades of blue, like the peacock, like the sea, like the garden of irises, hyacinths and forget-me-not. Although the photographs of Jeanne are all black and white, we do know that her hair was auburn and her eyes blue and it is the same in the self-portrait. And there is something of a lioness in her face, a fire under the quiet, reserved, melancholy exterior. I do find her exquisitely beautiful. But this is not Jeanne as she sees herself in the mirror, this is not the Jeanne as she sees herself, but Jeanne as seen through the eyes of man who loves her, through Modigliani’s eyes. How beautiful you are, when you look at yourself through the loving eyes of someone who loves you. When touched by love, it is as if for the first time you truly see yourself, as if the other person is a mirror and you look and you think; I exist and someone loves it. To quote Sartre, our entire existence seems suddenly to have a justification. When they look at me, what do they see? What is it about me, my face, my body, that they love? What beauties, what qualities do they see in me? You look at yourself trying to find an answer to those mysteries. Jeanne looked and Jeanne painted, seeking what Modigliani saw – in her. Spured by love on a quest to see oneself as one is, this is what I think is the motif behind these self-portraits.

Jeanne Hebuterne, Self-Portrait, 1918

Two Aprils ago I was fortunate enough to have received the newly published novel “Loving Modigliani: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne” by Linda Lappin. You can read my book review about it here. I was instantly drawn by the title alone and the way the novel begins in medias res, with Jeanne’s fall from the window, and the way everything was told from her point of view. Jeanne, as a ghost, is leading us through the tale of her love for Modigliani whom she desperately wants to find now that they are both dead. What can be more romantic than that!? It is almost like the tale of Orpheus and Euridice but in reverse; would Jeanne look back and would all be lost? I don’t know…

Amedeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne with Hat and Necklace, 1917

But here is the full quote from the novel; a part of Jeanne’s “imaginary diary”. It isn’t Jeanne’s real diary, but it feels very relatable to me and very much how I would imagine Jeanne’s diary would have been:

“I prop myself up on the pillows and reach for the coffee. The cheval mirror in the corner by the great armoire gives me back myself. My dark hair streams down over my shoulders in my chaste white shift, with its collar edged in lace made by the knotted hands of an old Bret-on woman. I gaze about the room as I sip, at the writing table piled high with notebooks and sketchbooks, my precious violin in its battered black case neatly tucked on a shelf, a hamper of drawing and painting supplies and on top of  that my sewing basket. Stuck in the oval mirror above the washstand with its skirt of rosebuds is a photograph of André in uniform—with a dedication to my darling Nenette—and next to the photograph is the Tarot card of the Lovers. This is the room of a proper jeune fille, the person I am outgrowing or perhaps have never been. It is a room where Modi will never set foot, where his smile will never be caught in the mirror. Yet the thought of him fills every room, every space I go, and replaces the air in my lungs.”

How could you regain a poetical frame of mind at times like this? (Natsume Soseki’s The Three-Cornered World)

My go-to book for the late winter and early spring days is Natsume Soseki’s novel “The Three-Cornered World”; it is soothing, meditative, lyrical and inspiring. 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. He stays at a hot spring resort where he is the only guest. One moonlit night he hears a woman singing in the garden. This mysterious beauty, called Nami, captures his imagination, not in a romantic but in an artistic way. The novel is filled with the narrator’s observations on nature, art and life. Every time I read the novel, something new catches my attention and this time it was this passage about distancing oneself from one’s emotions and how that may help in maintaining the poetic vision of the world.

Painting by a Korean artist Oh Myung-Hee

“Even something frightening may appear poetic if you stand back and regard it simply as a shape, and the eerie may make an excellent picture if you think of it as something which is completely independent of yourself. Exactly the same is true with disappointed love. Providing that you can divorce yourself from the pain of a broken heart and, conjuring up before you the tenderness, the sympathy, the despair and yes, even the very excess of pain itself, can view them objectively, then you have aesthetic, artistic material. There are those who purposely imagine their hearts to be broken, and crave for the pleasure they get from this form of emotional self-flagellation. The average person dismisses them as foolish, or even a little mad, but there is absolutely no difference, inasmuch as they both have an artistic standpoint, between the man who draws an outline of misery for himself and then leads his life within it, and him whose delight it is, to paint a landscape which never existed, and then to live in a potted universe of his own creation. (…) Putting it as a formula, I suppose you could say that an artist is a person who lives in the triangle whichremains after the angle which we may call common sense has beenremoved from this four-cornered world.

(…) The shadow I had just seen, considered simply as a shadow and nothing more, was charged with poetry. So much so, that nobody who saw or heard it could possibly fail to appreciate the fact.—A hot-spring in a secluded village—the shadow of blossoms on a spring night—a voice singing softly in the moonlight—a figure flitting through the shadows—every one of them a subject to delight any artist. Yet for all that I had engaged in an investigation which was quite out of keeping with the situation, and probe dabout pointlessly trying to find reasons for everything. I had been privileged to see the world of pure poetry, and had tried to apply to it the yardstick of logic.

(…) How, I wondered, could you regain a poetical frame of mind at times like this? I came to the conclusion that it could be done, if only you could take your feelings and place them in front of you, and then taking a pace back to give yourself the room to move that a bystander would have, examine them calmly and with complete honesty. The poet has an obligation to conduct a post-mortem on his own corpse and to make public his findings as to any disease he may encounter. There are many ways in which he may do this, but the best, and certainly the most convenient, is to try and compress every single incident which he comes across into the seventeen syllables of a Hokku. Since this is poetry in its handiest and most simple form, it may be readily composed while you are washing your face, or in the lavatory, or on a tram. When I say that it may be readily composed, I do not mean it in any derogatory sense. On the contrary, I think it is a very praiseworthy quality, for it makes it easy for one to become a poet; and to become a poet is one way to achieve supreme enlightenment. No, the simpler it is, the greater its virtue. Let us assume that you are angry: you write about what it is that has made you lose your temper, and immediately it seems that it is someone else’s anger that you are considering. Nobody can be angry and write a Hokku at the same time. Likewise, if you are crying, express your tears in seventeen syllables and you feel happy. No sooner are your thoughts down on paper, than all connection between you and the pain which caused you to cry is severed, and your only feeling is one of happiness that you are a man capable of shedding tears.“