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.

 

*

My Inspiration for March 2023

What an incredible March I have had! With the excitement of a murmuring brook I have awaited each new day, nervously, in wild anticipation of spring that has finally sprung, to see which joys of soft blossoms and fresh leaves it will bring me. The purple hyacinth whose fragrance has been colouring my daydreams and lulling me to sleep this past week has closed its petals, but the fragrant flowers in my heart have only started opening theirs, blooming and thriving, more vibrant and fragrant than ever before. A month of love – a month of blossoms and vast blue skies! The nature’s awakening. Lying in the warm rays of the afternoon sun like the cat, delighting in the warm shade of green on the newly sprung leaves of a weeping willow, picking daffodils and cherry blossoms and enjoying every delicate transient moment that their beauty offers. This month I was obsessed with the art of Konstantin Somov and even more with the Kangra paintings on love, especially those which show the mischievous and tender love adventures of Radha and Krishna, Japanese ceramics and their philosophy of wabi-sabi especially in relation to poetry and art, ikebana or the Japanese way of flower arrangements, colours of the month: baby blue, baby pink and red, paintings of Sleeping Beauties, lanterns and cherry blossoms, blooming trees in art as well as in nature around me. Perhaps the faithful bamboo had been with me all throughout the winter, but – at long last – the music of the birds has returned to me and I am grateful for that. Very happy to see what April has to offer!

“Lovers are always waiting. They hate to wait; they love to wait. Wedged between these two feelings, lovers come to think a great deal about time, and to understand it very well, in their perverse way.”

(Anne Carson, from “Now then,” Eros the Bittersweet)

“I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves dress’d,
And the starry night…
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature‘s, and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.”

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Rarely, rarely comest thou)

“I want to sleep beneath
Peaceful skies in my lover’s bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And these romantic dreams in my head
‘Cause once we made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender…”
(Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender)

David Hamilton – Suzanne Farrell (1971)

Alex Chatelain – Jean-Marc Maniatis Ad (Vogue Paris 1970)

Willie Christie – Uschi Obermaier Wearing a Top from Forbidden Fruit & Skirt from Vern Lambert (The Sunday Times Magazine 1974)

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

Picture by Thomas Geppi.

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

photo by maoyeamh.tumblr.com

Two pictures above found here.

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

*

Fashion Inspiration: Yes, I deserve a spring – I owe nobody nothing

“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.”

(Virginia Woolf)

Sonam Kapoor for Harper’s Baazar Bride June 2016.

Sonam Kapoor for Harper’s Baazar Bride June 2016.

My Inspiration for February 2023

This February I have had too many beautiful pictures to include! It was truly hard to decide which ones to include for this month’s aesthetics, but I made my choice in the end. This February I revisited Osamu Dazai’s novel “No Longer Human” and Sei Shonagon’s “The Pillow Book”, I enjoyed the poetry of Catullus, Khalil Gibran, erotic love poems of India, watched and enjoyed tremendously the film “Before Sunrise” (1995), Milan architecture and Stile Liberty, paintings of Galileo Chini, Vittorio Zecchin, Klimt and Carl Krenek, all things decorative and ornametal, Indian fashions and Indian love paintings of Krishna and Radha, paintings by Konstantin Somov, mostly his carnival scenes with Pierrot and Harlequin, all things about Venice, Singer Sargent’s watercolours of Venice, Paul Signac’s Pointilist Venetian scenes, Botticelli’s Venus and Laetitia Casta in Yves Saint Lauren’t spring-summer 1999 rose ensemble, Nick Cave, Klimt’s portrait of Emilie Floge, Japanese ceramics in florals and gold, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, an wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky.”
(Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)

“So vanishes, so desolate
Youth leaves our mortal state.
The shadows disappear,
And the illusions dear;
And in the distance fading all, are seen
The hopes on which our suffering natures lean.”
(Leopardi, The Setting of the Moon)

Vogue Wedding Show 2018

Picture by Federico Berardi.

Sonam Kapoor – by Sheldon Santos

Yves Saint Laurent interviewed on Dim Dam Dom (1968)

My Inspiration for January 2023

This January dragged passed me so slowly and days fell on their knees, to paraphrase David Bowie’s song “Stay”. It truly seemed never-ending and how glad I am it is gone! Still, despite the cold weather outside, and the general grey and drab mood, this January has given me many sweet, warm and precious moments, many beautiful letters that awoke a smile on my face as bright as the candles burning continuously in my room these cold evenings. The ethereal, dreamy voice of the dreamy and mysterious Hope Sandoval and the neopsychedelic sound of Mazzy Star have kept me awake many a night in January, and I’ve also found myself enjoying Depeche Mode’s 1990 album Violator, in particular the song “World in My Eyes”; how hypnotic! Cactus and desert landscapes from Mazzy Star’s video for the song “Fade Into You” and Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ “Scar Tissue”, Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolours of canna flower, green hills and starry nights, early 1990s fashion, in particular the floral baby doll dresses and platform shoes from the season four of Beverly Hills 90210, the purple swirls in Klimt’s painting “The Virgin” and the golden rainshower in “Danae”, Diego Rivera’s women weaving, selling flowers or fruit at the market, whimsical illustrations by Florence Harrison, vibrant and sensual art of Olga Costa, beauty and intricacy of William Morris’ prints… I look forward to February because it means that spring will be just around the corner. Oh spring, how my soul aches for you! Come please and shower me in flowers! I already have a vision of what the next month on the blog may be…

“I suppose I shall have to live now.”
(E.M. Forster, A Room with a View)

“I wanna stay inside all day
I want the world to go away
(…)
Yeah, I wish I’d been, I wish I’d been, a teen, teen idle
Wish I’d been a prom queen, fighting for the title
Instead of being sixteen and burning up a bible
Feeling super, super, super suicidal

The wasted years, the wasted youth
The pretty lies, the ugly truth
And the day has come where I have died
Only to find, I’ve come alive”

(Marina and the Diamonds, Teen Idle)

“I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take the breath that’s true
I look to you, and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life, you go in shadows
You’ll come apart, and you’ll go black
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what’s not there
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew…”
(Mazzy Star, Fade Into You)

Pia Riverola

Hope Sandoval, photo by Andrew Catlin

Mazzy Star (1990), photo by Laura Levine.

Hope Sandoval, photo by Laura Levine.

Saguaro National Park photographed by Bella Nugen.

 

Glowing barrel cacti, Mojave National Preserve, California by Scott Gibson via Flickr https://flic.kr/p/beeUcH

Floral book cover ( Kashmir School, early 19th century), Lacquer painted on papier mâché.

Fireworks, Los Angeles – July 4th, 2020

Instagram: @matthewgrantanson

*

Inspiration: Circus, Harlequins, Carnival, Venice

Photo by jerryLYZon flickr.

Piotr Motyka – Editorial – London Issue 424 Showcase Sep 2013 magazine – Production Paradise.

Dreamer by Shiori Matsumoto

Daniel Merriam – Walking on Air

Unguided Tour, 1983, Susan Sontag

Picture found here.

Windows of the World Andre Vicente Goncalves – Venice

Picture found here.

*

My Favourite Posts of 2022

Each published post is followed by another, and then another, and another, until the earlier ones are forgotten, and I am not really a fan of this. It is a reflection of the fast-paced modern world that we live in, and our constant craving for everything fresh and new, but I like to revisit things and enjoy them even if they’re not fresh-out-of-the-oven.

It is interesting for me to look back upon my year of writing and see which themes have posessed me and which new artists or artworks I have discovered. There are definitely some themes that have fascinated me continually throughout the 2022; Indian themes with poetry of Tagore, and fairy tale illustrations by Warwick Goble and Edmund Dulac, and also a work by a contemporary Indian artist as you will see bellow, festival and lanterns such as Prendergast’s watercolour bellow, watercolours by Georgia O’Keeffe, and not to forget my summer obsession with the Rust Belt which I’ve explored musically through Bruce Springsteen, and also artistically and literally through a collection of essays on the theme, and to crown the year a revisit to one of my favourites; Marc Chagall. So, bellow are twelve posts which I have chosen as my favourites in the last year, it’s either for the beauty of the painting, the whole concept and/or they hold personal significance for me in one way or another.

Maurice Prendergast – Feast of the Redeemer

“Spring lanterns –

colourful reincarnations

of the moon”

(haiku by Isabel Caves, found here.)

Film Saawariya (2007) and Art: Carl Krenek, Maurice Prendergast, Edmund Dulac

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help reliving such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experiened.

I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.

I feel I know you so well that I couldn’t have known you better if we’d been friends for twenty years. You won’t fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled with me, resolved all my doubts.

(…) If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don’t need to wish her anything, for she’ll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be forever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness that you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of one’s life?“

Eugène Grasset – La Morphinomane (The Morphine Addict)

“Well it just goes to show
Things are not what they seem
Please, Sister Morphine, turn my nightmares into dreams
Oh, can’t you see I’m fading fast?
And that this shot will be my last…”

(The Rolling Stones, Sister Morphine)

Voyage of Delights: Fragonard – Alcine Finds Ruggiero in His Chamber

“….now that nothing restrains
his ardor he gathers her into his arms to begin
their voyage of delights.”

Charles Burchfield – In a Deserted House and Bruce Springsteen’s Downbound Train

“In the moonlight, our wedding house shone
I rushed through the yard
I burst through the front door, my head pounding hard
Up the stairs, I climbed
The room was dark, our bed was empty
Then I heard that long whistle whine
And I dropped to my knees, hung my head, and cried…”

Bruce Springsteen’s Blue-Collar Heroes, the Rust Belt and “My Hometown”

“Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows
And vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody
Wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill
Across the railroad tracks
Foreman says, “these jobs are going, boys
And they ain’t coming back
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown…”

(Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown)

Winslow Homer – Sunset Fires

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

(Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds)

John Constable – Seascape Study with Rain Cloud (Rainstorm over the Sea)

 

Depeche Mode and Caspar David Friedrich: Pleasures Remain So Does the Pain, Words are Meaningless and Forgettable

Vows are spoken
To be broken
Feelings are intense
Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain
Words are meaningless
And forgettable

Arjun Shivaji Jain: Solitude, If I Must Thee Accept

“There’s a club if you’d like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry
And you want to die…“

(The Smiths, How Soon is Now)

Georgia O’Keeffe: Canyon with Crows and Other Watercolours

 

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me”

Marc Chagall: Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down the 2022 posts memory lane!

My Inspiration for December 2022

This December felt long and days passed as in a dream. From the first to the thirty-first, it feels like a whole novel, a little century of different feelings and sensations. This month I was living in the world of love and Chagall’s paintings and, despite the winter’s coldness, my path was covered with roses, and even the snow that fell felt more like powdered sugar than actual snow. Yellow roses were smiling to me, and the green-grey waters of the river murmured to me that spring is around the corner. I know they were lying to me but it brought me comfort indeed. The mist over the hills felt mysterious and inviting. Southern winds caressed my cheeks. Strange days. Every corner I turn is echoing with memories. Another spring will come soon. I really enjoyed many different fairy tale illustrations this month, mostly by Warwick Goble and Edmund Dulac, but also some others, in particular for the fairy tales The Princess and the Pea and The Frog Prince. Roses and frost, frilly dresses and red kisses, winter castles forgotten under layers of memories and frost, Degas’ pastels, Zinaida Serebriakova’s ballerinas and nudes, colourful houses in Gdansk, gorgeous Marine Vacth with a white parasol and adorable Brooke Shields with a white veil… an overall fairy tale mood.

“The years had gone by like a dream.”

(Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Family Moskat)

“Take me out tonight
Where there’s music and there’s people
And they’re young and alive…”

(The Smiths, There is a light that never goes out)

“You are everything to me. What wouldn’t I want to be for you. I’d like to follow you when you’re dead, look back to see you even if I might be turned into stone.”

(Ingeborg Bachmann, In the Storm of Roses from ‘The Poem for the Reader’, tr. Mark Anderson)

Sai Pallavi and Dhanush

Roseraie du jardin des plantes Paris 1909, autochrome frères Lumière , plaque de verre

九水巷 aka 999999999sx (Chinese) – Evening Pond, 2022, Paintings

九水巷 aka 999999999sx (Chinese) – Evening Pond, 2022, Paintings

Winter garden. by Neera

Gdańsk, Poland by Martyna Damska

Picture found here.

Camille Rowe for Urban Outfitters Shoot – Fashion Gone Rogue

love letter from 1913 that opens up to form an art gallery (x)

Picture found here.

‘Rose’ by Beatrix Potter,  25 September 1896.

Picture found here.

Marine Vatch photographed by Cédric Klapisch for Madame Le Figaro (2011).

New Orleans, Louisiana // Valerie Esparza

*

My Inspiration for November 2022

This was perhaps, in some way, the sweetest November I have had. Usually Novembers are very depressing for me, but this one went smoothly with a lot of lovely surprises and lovely conversation with lovely people, or should I say – a lovely person. I enjoyed reading John Fowles’ novella “The Ebony Tower” and also Guillaume Apollinaire’s erotic, but also sometimes funny in its exaggeration, novel “The Amorous Exploits of a Young Rakehell“. Poetry by Lermontov and Pushkin, read in bed by a light of a single pink candle, have given me solace in these drab and rainy November nights. I loved getting lost in the fog and noticing the last roses blooming, feeling sad because their soft, velvety petals will soon fall into muddy ground covered in wet, decaying leaves. And how sad the gardens and orchards, blooming but months ago, look now! The sadness and the sense of ending that November brings can be very poetic and even catharsic if used in a right way. I must thank my reader and her lovely blog “At the Sunny Side – Where Truth and Beauty Meet” because it is on her blog that I discovered this lovely quote by Goethe bellow.

“I will know how much you gave me
just by sometimes being near.”
(Julio Cortázar, If I Have To Live Without You, Translated from Spanish by Paul Weinfield, © 2017)

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
(Goethe)

“O, how revolting reality! How can it compare with dreams?”

(Nikolai Gogol, Nevsky Prospect)

Marianne Faithfull photographed by Gered Mankowitz at the Salisbury Pub, 1964

The Value of Possessions

Picture found here.

Alphonse Mucha, Stained-glass windows for the Fouquet shop, c. 1915

Osijek, Croatia, Leaf art by Nicola Faller of Slama Art project, August 2021.

Natalia Drepina (@yourschizophrenia)

A fall of Ginko leaves hand engraved by Maison Pouenat in bronze, gold, copper and green designed by Laura Gonzalez

Alphonse Mucha, Stained-glass windows for the Fouquet shop, c. 1915

“Beyond a haze of yellow flowers, the Beatles and their womenfolk (above, from left, Paul and his girl friend, John, George, Ringo and their wives) struck a lightly brooding pose with their new guru— Indian mystic Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.” — Life, 8 September 1967.

Marbled endpaper, Source

Alfa Castaldi – Viviane Fauny & Lynn Sutherland (Vogue Italia 1970)

Multicoloured sunset over frozen Tempelfjord, Source here.

Marbled endpaper.

Source

Instagram: elise.buch

Artist: Henri Privat-Livemont (1861 — 1936)
Date: 1900

Image by Nicolas Gras

Zandra Rhodes Ad (1971)

1974. Marianne starring in the theatre play ‘The Collector’ in 1974

Marianne Faithfull photographed by John Cowan, 1966.

*

My Inspiration for October 2022

This October was a strange month for me; it felt like it was a century long and it feels like it’s still going on… I really enjoyed Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolours, Depeche Mode and Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes, Yoshio Markino’s wonderful foggy watercolours, also I discovered a painting, and wrote about it here, called “Solitude, If I Must Thee Accept” by a contemporary artist Arjun Shivaji Jain and I must say that it really left an impact on me because it is so relatable. I read Stephen King’s novel “Misery” which I enjoyed immensely, and I finally read Douglas Murray’s brilliant but depressing book “The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam” in which he criticises Europe’s loss of tradition and identity and points out at the horrible damage done by the mass immigration of people from countries whose values don’t match ours, that is, European values. I don’t see the book being “controversial”, I only see it being true and perhaps truth is controversy these days. An artistic hint for November: Georgia O’Keeffe.

“Before the wedding, she had believed herself in love. But not having obtained the happiness that should have resulted from that love, she now fancied that she must have been mistaken. And Emma wondered exactly what was meant in life by the worlds ‘bliss’, ‘passion’, ‘ecstasy’ which had looked so beautiful in books.”

(Flaubert, Madame Bovary)

“And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or lonelines?”
(Charles Bukowski)

“Autumn is no time to lie alone”
(Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji)

Roses, picture found here.

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

Painting found here.

Autumn in Istria | Croatia (by Robert Maric)

Eliot Porter | Frozen Apples, Tesuque, New Mexico (1966) | Artsy

Picture by Ellen Rogers.

Picture found here.