My Inspiration for May 2023

This May was strange; a month of wistfulness and intense yearnings… I was “athirst for far-away things”, and people, to quote Tagore. The most romantic things filled my mind this month artistically; Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the Sleeping Beauty illustrations, paintings by Henri le Sidaner, Elaine, the Lady of Shalott in art and Victorian photography, J.J. Grandville’s series of drawings called ‘Flowers Personified’ which is absolutely fun and whimsical… I’ve been enoying the fields of poppies and the dew-drenched roses, and also Anais Nin’s diaries.

“I am still ashamed of myself, afraid to let myself go, to let things pour out of me; I am dreadfully inhibited, and that is because I have not yet learned to accept myself as I am.”

(Etty Hillesum, from a diary entry featured in An Interrupted Life: the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork (translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans)

“I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land…”

(Tagore)

Mary Ellen Mark – Arlo Guthrie & Jacklyn Hyde, 1969

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Poppy Field on Misty Morning by Teruo Araya

Vivienne Mok Photography: Natascha, Uttwil

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Palais Longchamp, Marseille, France ~ Jean F. Vole

by i.Anton ☂



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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)

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By Marianna Rothen

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Hydrangea (@lovecats92 on Instagram)

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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)

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Picture by Thomas Geppi.

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photo by maoyeamh.tumblr.com

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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

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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

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Windows of the World Andre Vicente Goncalves – Venice

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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

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Camille Rowe for Urban Outfitters Shoot – Fashion Gone Rogue

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

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‘Rose’ by Beatrix Potter,  25 September 1896.

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

New Orleans, Louisiana // Valerie Esparza

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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.

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Autumn in Istria | Croatia (by Robert Maric)

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

Picture by Ellen Rogers.

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My Inspiration for September 2022

This September I really enjoyed reading Paula Hawkins’ novel “The Girl on the Train” and watching the film adaptation starring Emily Blunt as the main character Rachel. Rachel is a miserable drunkard called who pretends to still have a job (which she lost because of drinking…) and through the window of the train she watches people in their houses, and she imagines what their lives must be like, how happy they all must be… And she is also often found stalking her ex-husband and there is a surprising twist in the end which I will not reveal. I can relate to Rachel because I also love watching people from the train and I wonder about their life, and my ‘people watching’ is usually accompanied with a constant longing and envy that their lives are more thrilling than my own is. I also watched a South-Korean thriller called “Midnight” (2021) which I, surprisingly, enjoyed. I loved discovering the rainy day scenes in art, spooky paintings by Leon Spilliaert and Serafino Macchiati, circus scenes in art, I had fun rereading Anais Nin’s Journal of Love…

“Give me a few days of peace in your arms. I need it terribly. I’m ragged, worn, exhausted. After that I can face the world.”

(Henry Miller, From a letter to Anais Nin, featured in A Literate Passion: Letters of Anais Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953)

“You were a dream. Then a reality. Now a memory.”
(Iain Thomas)

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

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nimue smit shot by venetia scott for orla kiely

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The Lovely Omens Tarot Deck from Keely Elle Art

shore of my life | © víctor m. alonso

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My Inspiration for August 2022

This August I very much enjoyed rediscovering some wonderful and underappreciated seascapes by the Romantic painter John Constable, and also many other beach scenes by artists such as Maurice Prendergast, Eugene Boudin and Philip Wilson Steer… As you may have seen in my book review, I read Shirley Jackson’s novel “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” and I thought it was amazing, I also read and enjoyed Stephen King’s novel “It”, John Ajvide Lindquist’s vampire-novel “Let the Right One In”, Jack Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums”, poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Tennessee Williams. I’ve had moments of great inspiration, particularly for collages and playing with words, but also moments of intense waves of inexplicable sadness. I am now assured that Kierkegaard is right when he says; “do it or do not do it – you will regret both”, for which ever thing I choose in life, misery seems to come along with it. A desire fulfilled is always tinged with a regret for something else and a longing for something that’s lost. My biggest discovery this month is surely the Cannadian singer-songwriter Michelle Gurevich and her songs “Lovers Are Strangers” and “The First Six Months of Love” which I absolutely adore.

“Life was then brilliant; I began to learn to hope and what brings a more bitter despair to the heart than hope destroyed?”

(Mary Shelley, Mathilda)

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
(Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life)

“Why was life so unsatisfying? (…) Each smile hid a yawn of boredom, each joy a curse, each pleasure its own disgust; and the sweetest kisses only left on one’s lips a hopeless longing for a higher ecstasy.”
(Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert)

Picture found here. March 1995. ‘What makes a good finale? Gowns that look just as good on the way out.’

Picture: untitled by christanoelle.tumblr.com on Flickr.

Picture by Alex Murison, found here.

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Photo by Elisabeth Novick, 1970.

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A Meandering Path: A walk in the desert, Willwood Badlands, Wyoming

by riverwindphotography, March 2017

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Alexandra Spencer by Sybil Steele for Spell Designs February/March 2016

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Thay Temple-  Hanoi, Vietnam 

farandaway.com

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