Nick Cave – Are You the One That I’ve Been Waiting For? – Carl Krenek – The Lovers

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’s single “(Are You) The One I’ve Been Waiting For?” was released on the 19th May 1997. It was the first out of two singles from their album “The Boatman’s Call” which Nick Cave personally had expressed a dislike for, claiming the album was too personal and that music shouldn’t be that personal. The other single from the album is the song “Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere” which is sad but very beautiful as well. For some reason this painting of lovers in the month of May by the Austrian painter Carl Krenek seemed very fitting to accompany the song’s lyrics. I do love the tenderness between the lovers and the way the entire natural space is filled with flowers and leaves.

Carl Krenek, May – The Lovers (Mai – Die Liebenden), 1905, tempera

Are You The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?

I’ve felt you coming, girl, as you drew near
I knew you’d find me, cause I longed you here
Are you my destiny?
Is this how you’ll appear?
Wrapped in a coat with tears in your eyes?
Well take that coat, babe, and throw it on the floor
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?

As you’ve been moving surely toward me
My soul has comforted and assured me
That in time my heart it will reward me
And that all will be revealed
So I’ve sat and I’ve watched an ice-age thaw
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?

Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
Out of longing great wonders have been willed
They’re only little tears, darling, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Outside my window the world has gone to war
Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?

O we will know, won’t we?
The stars will explode in the sky
O but they don’t, do they?
Stars have their moment and then they die

There’s a man who spoke wonders
Though I’ve never met him
He said, ‘He who seeks finds
And who knocks will be let in’
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?

Belmiro de Almeida: I hate that sadness in your eyes, but Angie, ain’t it time we said goodbye?

“I hate that sadness in your eyes
But Angie, Angie
Ain’t it time we said goodbye?“

Belmiro de Almeida, Bad News, 1897

Brasilian painter Belmiro de Almeida is an artist that I have recently discovered and a few of his paintings I found particularly interesting these days and they are also thematically connected. Belmiro de Almeida was born in Serra in 1858 and studied in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, but later travelled to Europe where he studied in the Academie Julian in Paris. He loved Paris so much that for the rest of his life he would live half in Brasil and half in Paris. His perhaps most famous painting is “The Spat” from 1887, which I’ll show bellow, but the one that is the most interesting to me is the one above called “Bad News”, painted in 1897. The painting shows a woman alone in a room. She is leaning over the sofa and hiding her crying face. The space around her is empty save for some furniture in the background. The circle shape of the painting is especially interesting to me, it looks as if we are gazing at her through a keyhole. This is a very intimate scene because we are seeing the delicate, vulnerable side of the woman, the side that she would otherwise hide from everyone. But she is not wearing her mask now. No, her eyes are probably puffy and her cheeks flushed, her hair disarrayed. Oh, if someone walked in on her now, the tragedy would be all hers. This intimate, informal, secretive almost mood is further accentuated by the garments that she is wearing and her long and gorgeous hair flowing freely down her back. She is alone in the room, alone with the letter which is obviously the source of all her anguish. Oh Angie, don’t you weep! How many paintings there are in art history where a single (love) letter can completely set the tone and the mood for the painting? In the paintings of Vermeer and Fragonard for example, a love letter can send one flying or can throw one into the deepest, darkest abyss. The “Bad News” from the painting’s title refers to the letter on the floor. What is in the letter? We can never know for sure, but we can guess… Perhaps the letter says:

“Angie, Angie
When will those clouds all disappear?
Angie, Angie
Where will it lead us from here?
With no lovin’ in our souls
And no money in our coats
You can’t say we’re satisfied
Angie, Angie
You can’t say we never tried
Angie, you’re beautiful, yeah
But ain’t it time we said goodbye?
Angie, I still love you
Remember all those nights we cried?
All the dreams were held so close
Seemed to all go up in smoke
Let me whisper in your ear
Angie, Angie
Where will it lead us from here
Oh, Angie, don’t you weep
Oh, your kisses still taste sweet
I hate that sadness in your eyes
But Angie, Angie
Ain’t it time we said goodbye? Yeah“

Belmiro de Almeida, The Spat, 1887

Painting “The Spat” shows an argument between a bourgeous couple. While the woman is shown leaning over the sofa and weeping, the man is smoking a pipe and has the most disinterested look on his face. You can almost hear the woman asking the man “Do my tears mean nothing to you, do they not pull at your heart’s strings?”, and I can imagine the man saying, “No, my darling, they do not.” He just seems so disinterested and lacking any emotion. He probably finds her crying more tedious than touching. There is an emotional distance between them and the woman pose, her turning her back on him, is not only a way of hiding her face but also perhaps a body language. There is a pink rose on the carpet on the floor, some of its petals scattered about, and the rose here, just like the letter in the previous painting, brings a sad touch to it.

Caspar David Friedrich – On the Sailing Boat

“Let’s love, then! Love, and feel while feel we can
The moment on its run.
There is no shore of Time, no port of Man.
It flows, and we go on…”

(Alphonse de Lamartine, The Lake, translated by A.Z.Foreman)

Caspar David Friedrich, On the Sailing Boat, 1818-20

Friedrich, the melancholy misanthrop and loner of Greifswald, had finally tied the knot on the 21 January 1818, just a few months after his fourty-third birthday. His young bride was the twenty-five year old Caroline Bommer whose elegant figure in a red dress we can see in a few of his paintings from that time period. Friedrich’s friend, and a fellow painter, Carl Gustav Carus noted that the marriage didn’t leave a trace on Friedrich, but there is a subtle yet notable shift in Friedrich’s work after the marriage; the colours are softer, the overall mood lighter, and human figures appear more often. In fact, his famous and perhaps even the most beautiful painting “Moonrise Over the Sea” was painted in 1820. Nothing compares the pink and purple sky in that painting, it’s something most dreamy and romantic. But this uplifting, lighter phase of his career was, sadly, only a short Nordic summer; as he was getting older his gloominess prevailed and he started returning to his moody, isolated landscapes.

Painting “On the Sailing Boat” shows a couple, that is, the painter and his wife, sitting at the prow of the ship, hand in hand, gliding towards the infinity of their love. Typical for Friedrich, the figures are seen either from behind or in profile, which definitely adds to the mysterious appeal. The tender purple and blue waves are cradling the lovers’ boat and above them the yellow-tinted vanilla sky is smiling with promises of future joys. In the distance the shadowy contours of a townscape appear as if they are seen through the mist, or – seen in a dream. The vastness of the sky and the sea further intensifies the dreamy, almost mystical aura of this painting which correlates to the Romantics’ view on love, or a cult of love we might even say, as a union of souls. This solemn seriousness towards the matters of love was a far cry from the frivolous and playful attitude of the Rococo generation. Just how different is this dreamy painting to something painted by Boucher or Fragonard. The subtle melancholy which permeats Friedrich’s paintings, even the seemingly joyful ones, brings to mind the work of Watteau. It seems the two painters have more in common than one would initially assume. Their work, although so dreamy and charming, holds a deeper truth about life: that all human experiences are bitter-sweet and transient: “Upon the sea of time can we not ever/ Drop anchor for one day?” (de Lamartine, The Lake) Another interesting thing about this painting is the viewpoint; while gazing at the painting we feel as if we too are on the boat and that makes us closer to the scene in the painting, but two is a company, three’s a crowd, we better leave them alone to enjoy the hours of bliss until they pass…

Wassily Kandinsky – Riding Couple

“Darling, it’s only the fairy tales we really live by.”
(Katherine Mansfield, Letter to J.M.Murry, 18 October 1920)

Wassily Kandinsky, Riding Couple (Couple on Horseback), 1906-07

This magical and romantical painting known under various titles such as “Riding Couple” or “Couple on Horseback” is a beautiful example of Wasily Kandinsky’s early work. The embracing couple dressed in their traditional Russian costumes bring to mind the romantic paintings by a fellow Russian painter Viktor Vasnetstov, particularly his painting “Ivan Tsarevich Riding the Grey Wolf” (1889) which I wrote about here. Kandinsky may be using a similar motif but his treatment of the painting’s surface is completely different. While Vasnetsov tries to evoke the mysterious and romanticised, but still realistically painted, spirit of the forest, Kandinsky transports us into a carnival of colours bursting with energy and vibrancy. Around the riding couple are a few thin elegant birches, and behind them is a scenery made up of a wide river and a townscape with many colourful domes and roofs, reminiscent of the grandeur of Moscow, a town that had a special place in Kandinsky’s heart. The description of the scene makes it sound beautiful, but then upon seeing it, ahh it is a feast for the eyes! Kandinsky here uses a Divisionist method which allows the colour to mix and mingle freely in the eye of the viewer and not on the painter’s palette. He is building the space with little dots, dashes and dabs of colour.

Just look at the outfit the couple is wearing; it’s made out of little dots of blue and pink, then the leaves on the trees just blots of brown and gold, the horse’s body is made up of grey dashes, the river is glimmering in all colours, on the right we see the landscape made up of horizontal dashes, and then the sky, those blues and the purple cloud; it’s woven with magic. The landscape is smiling and flickering like Christmas lights. The orange and red leaves that have fallen on the ground also add to the magical appeal. There is a visual contrast between the shining and inviting city across the river and the solitary, more intimate space hidden by the trees where the lovers on the horse are, as if they are hiding their love, or, the city with its lights and promises of fun and gaiety doesn’t appeal to them because they already found the heaven on earth in each other’s arms. The motif, the scenery and the manner in which it was painted all make it seem as if this is a scene from a fairy tale. Maybe the riding couple were banished from the kingdom on the other side of the river and now, shivering from the chill autumnal air and finding abode in the embrace, they will cast a last, melancholy-tinged glance at the place they use to consider their home…

Bellow you can see a painting from the same time period called “The Colourful Life” and again you see this wonderful technique; vivacious patches of vibrant colour are arising out of a dark background and glowing like gemstones; this is what makes these paintings so enchanting. It also makes me think of mosaic; church mosaics seen in the flickering light of a candle. Take a moment to appreciate the wonderful colours; just look at those gorgeous blues, teal, purple and orange in the painting bellow. It truly uplifts the soul. The characters look like they escaped from the pages of fairy tale books and we have a motif of a castle perched on the top of the hill, all of these little details bring the fairy tale spirit and that is another characteristic of Kandinsky’s early period. And it is interesting to note that even though this is Kandinsky’s early phase, he actually celebrated his fortieth birthday on 16th December 1906, so I guess it goes to show that it is never too late to start a hobby or chase your dream. Age shouldn’t be an impediment to your desires.

Wasily Kandinsky, Das Bunte Leben (The Colourful Life), 1907, tempera on canvas