Grandville: The Evening Star, The Shooting Star, The Morning Star…

“One day, though it might as well be someday
You and I will rise up all the way
All because of what you are
The prettiest star…”

(David Bowie, The Prettiest Star)

J.J. Grandville, Les étoiles du Soir (Evening Star), 1849

French Romantic era artist and illustrator J.J. Grandville is one of the artists whose work has captivated me in the last year. The first artwork of his that I had encountered was his litograph “The Metamorphosis of Dreams” years ago, then last spring I had written about his series of illustrations “Flowers Personified” in which flowers are depicted as beautiful damsels with different personalities. These days it is his series called “Les Etoiles” or “The Stars” from 1849 that fascinates me the most. The night-time is, after all, is so much more romantic than day and the stars are so much more mysterious than the sun. In Grandville’s wonderful romantic-bordering-on-surrealism imagination the stars are again personified as beautiful women clad in the fashions of the day. My favourite at the moment is the one above, “The Evening Star” because of its Gothic mood. The illustration shows the evening star personified as a woman standing on the balcony that arises, not out of a castle tower, but out of a cloud and looking out into the night. Ah, but she should look into the mirror, for nothing is as lovely as the evening star itself! There are rays of gold stardust shining all about her head and we can see the moon in the distance behind her. In the lower part of the illustration, down on earth, there is gloomy and isolated Gothic looking castle and bats flying about it in an ominous manner. And yet the aura around the evening stair is so serene and bringht and pure that even the gloominess of the castle 0r the eeriness of the bats cannot ruin the magic of the scene.

My other favourites are different in mood to the one above, but equal in beauty and intricacy. “The Morning Star” shows the morning star personified as a woman in a white gown in the 1840s style and a short black cape. Soft hair is dancing around her pale face and bright colourful stars are dancing above her dress and her cape in a groovy way. One star also serves as her hair decor. She is gliding through the night sky on a boat of clouds that are subservient to this goddess-like woman. She seems as soft as those clouds, as unattainable, as fleeting, for she is announcing a new day and a defeat of the night…at least for a while. Down from the ground she is being watched by some farmers, or workers, and a very curious and eager rooster who is depicted with more colour than the rest of the scene, to prove his importance of course, or at least he thinks so. “The Shooting Star” shows two lovers sitting on some meadow at night and up in the sky they are witnessing a shooting star, appearing for a moment intensely bright and strong on the night sky and then disappearing in an explosion of beauty. It is such a rare thing to see and no one can forget the moment they saw it, nor the person they were with when they saw it. I remember both times distinctly and I am very grateful that I got to see it. “The Shepherd’s Star” is a star personified as a very fashionable woman; her hair is adorned with many, many stars and the star that she is wearing as a headpiece is even grander. In contrast to the fashionable attire, her eyes seem drunk almost, or at least she seems in a sort of a haze; from love, or from drugs, or from joy, who knows. She is being watched by shepherds, a dog and some sheep. Just how magical and ethereal she is compared to the heavy, serious, and boring life down there on the ground. I love how soft the transitions are between the Lady Stars’ dresses and the clouds on which they are standing.

J.J. Grandville, The Morning Star, 1849

J.J. Grandville, The Shooting Star, 1849

J.J. Grandville, The Shepherd’s Star, 1849

Konstantin Somov – The Lovers

“There’s the same hotel, and we can go there now

We can go there now if you want to
Through the doors of that rented room
Yeah, we stumbled through
It was only hours

It seemed such a short while
We had no time to cry
Or sit and wonder why
We had so many things started to say”

(Tindersticks, Rented Rooms)

Konstantin Somov, The Lovers, 1933

“I could have drowned in those so-called dreams”

(Tindersticks, Rented Rooms)

I have been tremendously interested in the paintings of the Russian painter Konstantin Somov the whole of last year and still his work holds a spell over me mainly because he so often paints lovers and because of the escapist, nostalgic tendencies that he exhibits in paintings parties and park scenes with obvious hints to the paintings of Antoine Watteau and Rococo in general. Love, pleasure and the eighteenth century; who can resist!? And yet, what I like about his watercolours of lovers such as the one above, “The Lovers”, from 1933 is its simplicity, rawness and intimacy. While his eighteenth-century inspired paintings have an air of glamour, fun and slight decadence to them, these kind of watercolours are pure in that they depict a genuine emotion, a softness and tenderness between lovers which doesn’t seem like a scene from a comedy. It is more as if we are peeking through the keyhole and witnessing what we ought not to be witnessing. The fact that it was set in that time and not in some idealised past era also brings this sense of intimacy and immediacy. The poses of the lovers are not theatrical as his eighteenth-century depictions of lovers often are, but tender; the man is laying his head in the lap of the women, perhaps the safest place in the world for him, a flowery meadow of calmness and inspiration. One of her bosom is touching his head, but her head is turned away, she seems shy, or closed-off perhaps, or maybe I am reading too much into it. The other elements in the watercolour; the mirror, cushions, flowers on the windowsill, opened window, all brings a sense of domesticity and joy. The medium of watercolours truly fits the gentle mood of the scene.

The watercolour made me think of Tinderstick’s song “Rented Rooms” from their album “Curtains” (1997) which is about lovers stealing time to be together, rushing to all the secretive places where they can give in to their intimate urges. The relationship in the song is one characterised by a sense of impermanence, restlessness and instability, and not of the exciting kind because the lovers have a deep desire to connect but the physical union alone leaves them feeling again restless and yearning for more. Especially the lines “We can’t afford the time to sit and cry or to wonder why…” makes me think of this watercolour because lovers are always in a frenzy, with so many kisses yet to happen, who has time to sit and think about things!? In Somov’s another watercolour, “Daphnis and Chloe”, painted in 1931 and shown bellow, we again see the lovers tenderly depicted, though there is more of an erotic touch here for sure; the man is holding the woman around the waist and closing her eager-to-chit-chat lips with a kiss until they sink down in a bed of dreams. The woman’s rosy cheeks and her golden hair cascading down her neck and breasts give her a doll-like, elegant appearance.

Konstantin Somov, Daphis and Chloe, 1931, watercolour

Dosso Dossi – Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape

Dosso Dossi, Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape, 1525

To continue the love witchy theme this month here is a painting called “Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape” by an Italian Renaissance painter Dosso Dossi. The painting shows the legendary enchantress Circe surrounded by her lovers who are all turned into animals. Circe may not be a major figure in mythology but she sure is a girl boss of her island and unlucky is the man whose ship gets stranded on her shores. There is a dreamy aura to the painting as this is Dossi’s early work and he was under the influence of Venetian art, mainly that of Giorgione and Tizian, hence the lyricism in portrayal of nature as well. You can see the beautifully painted trees in the distance and there is even a little mansion there as well. Circe is seen in mythology as a predatory female, a sexually free woman who is a threat to men and everyone really who offends her in any way. In Dossi’s painting though, Circe is portrayed as a beautiful hippie girl with long wavy hair and a flower crown. Just notice how soft the strands of her hair seem to be, flowing above her shoulder, and the vibrancy of the little red flowers, each petal a single brush stroke it seems. She isn’t wearing any clothes which is in contrast to the later Victorian depictions such as those by John William Waterhouse. There is no malice in her face, rather she seems dreamy, looking into the distance and lost in thougths while she is pointing at a stone tablet with some words inscribed in it, but the animals around her tale a different tale. A greyhound, a white little dog, a stag, a hawk, an owl, a deer, and a spoonbill are all sitting and standing around her. They seem meek and docile, faithfully accompanying their mistress. Only the look in the stag’s eyes betrays the situation. His face seems to say “This is not happening to me.” And yet he is quiet as well. What else can he do? Perhaps Circe is reading something to her lovers-turned-into-animals and they are listening. Circe had a vast knowledge of potions, herbs and spell. Bellow her feet is a book of spells; the same spells that have probably turned all these unfortunate men into animals. There is a bit of humour here as well, perhaps a comment on men being under women’s spell and blindly following their commands, being trapped in their webs of love, being demasculinised.

Details.

Indian Miniature Painting – Lovers On Bed: The days are short and nights are dark and long, and this is the month for love

“The days are short and nights are dark and long,
and this is the month for love.
Do not quarrel and turn away from me,
and leave me not this month of Pausha.”

Lovers on Bed, opaque watercolour on paper, Kangra, c. 1780-1790

In Indian miniature paintings the lovers are always waiting, yearning, pining, dreaming, suffering. The beautiful heroines such as Utka Nayika are anxiously waiting for their lovers, or, like Abhisarika Nayika, all dressed up and walking through a dark forest to meet her lover. When I discovered the Kangra paintings last year I was completely enthralled by the beautiful representations of love. In these Indian miniature paintings I found what I was seeking all along; all the subtle beauties and nuances of love – fifty, and more, shades of love. No other art movement or school portrays love in such an intricate manner.

There are many Kangra paintings that I love and I discover my new favourites all the time, but at the moment the painting “Lovers on Bed” from the late eighteenth century is my favourite. When we think of a perfect setting or season for love, we might think of warmth, spring or summer, flowers, gardens, and parks, the kind that we see in paintings of Fragonard or Boucher. A land of love might equal the land of eternal summer. And yet Keshav Das speaks of the winter month of Pausha as “the month for love”. There is a delightful sense of coziness about winter that summer, despite all its beauty and magic, simply doesn’t have. And indeed, in these cold winter days there is nothing better to do than to cuddle up to your beloved under a blanket, gaze at the moon perhaps or, better yet, gaze into each other’s eyes. And this is exactly what the lovers in this miniature painting are doing. In this Kangra watercolour, “Lovers on Bed”, the lovers are united at last! No more yearning, uncertainty, anxious waiting or walking through a dark snake-filled forest to meet your beloved, why, he is right here, under the blanket with you. The painting shows a sweet, intimate moment between two lovers on a winter night. The woman is offering the man – her man – paan, while he is covering them both in a warm yellow blanket. Despite the simplicity of the scene, the simple background and also the simple gesture between lovers, still so much warmth and love and a sense of a quiet, secure joy is conveyed. Truly, no words, no adornments, no other visual elements in the painting are needed to express the beauty of the love they are feeling. Yesterday was the night of the full moon and even though a new month had therefore begun in the Hindi calender, these verses by the poet Keshav Das describing the month of Pausha, the winter month that had just passed, are very fitting for the scene in the painting:

“Anything cold in the month of Pausha,
food, water, house, or dress,
Is liked by none anywhere.
Cold are the earth and the sky,
and the rich and poor all alike
Want sunshine, massage, betel, fire,
company of women, and warm clothes.
The days are short and nights are dark and long,
and this is the month for love.
Do not quarrel and turn away from me,
and leave me not this month of Pausha.”

The full painting.

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?

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

Galileo Chini – L’Amore: To sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lip

“Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
(…)
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lip.”
(Khalil Gibran, from The Prophet)

Galileo Chini (Italian, 1873– 1956), L’Amore, 1919

Galileo Chini was an eclectic and vibrant figure in the Italian art scene at the turn of the century. Painter, designer, decorator, ceramic artist, and an important figure in the “Liberty style” (Stile Liberty), which was the Italian version of Art Nouveau, just as Secession was the Austrian (or rather Austro-Hungarian) version of Art Nouveau. These days I derive a great joy in simply gazing at the vibrant paintings with ornamental background, where the figures and the decorative background fight and compete for the dominance on canvas, especially in works of Klimt, but also of Vittorio Zecchin and Galileo Chini. In particular, I have enjoyed Chini’s painting “L’Amore” painted in 1919.

The painting shows two lovers, kneeling down, in an embrace. The setting is natural but whimsical, not realistically depicted but dream-like. In addition to the undefined, somewhat mysterious setting, there is another element which brings a sense of mystery to the painting; we cannot see the faces of the lovers. Chini painted it from such a wonderful perspective that the man’s face is hidden by the woman’s head and we see only the most beautiful, most important and symbolic elements; his strong arms wrapped around her and her long golden hair flowing down her back, like a golden river made out of flickering stars. The woman’s rosy pink dress is falling straight down at first and then, the moment it touches the grass, it starts spreading out like a pink puddle in which the pale pink blossoms and the stars are reflected. The surface of the painting seems to be dissolving and every little thing in the painting, especially in the background, whether a flower or a star, seems to be flickering, shimmering, twinkling, it is just such a joy to gaze at it.

The shapes are clear enough to be recognised, but abstract enough to be dreamy and to provoke the viewer to sink into a daydream. Is that a weeping willow falling from the upper left corner? An ocean of golden stars in the upper right corner? A vertical straight cloud of cherry blossoms or a sea of pink May roses right behind the couple? A round shape of a full moon falling behind the horizon? And the meadow upon the couple is kneeling, a lake made entirely of daisies or some other white flowers which are so gentle that they are almost transparent, ghostly. Is this heaven? Oh, a hug is a heaven while it lasts. Which brings to mind the lines from Andre Breton’s poem “The Road to San Romano”:

“The embrace of poetry,
Like love’s impossible, perfect fit,
Defends while it lasts
Against all the misery of the world.”

While their embrace lasts, it is a shield against the miseries of the world. Everything is so delightfully vague and so inspiring for daydreaminess. I also love the almost spiritual, otheworldy aura of their love, despite their embrace being physical and the man being naked, it seems, (or is it only in my imagination?), it seems to me this is a visual representation of the ‘confluence of souls’ as is a title of a painting I love by Max Švabinský from 1896.

Galileo Chini, La Primavera, 1914, one of the panels in the Venice Hotel Terminus

In the artwork above, “La Primavera”, from 1914, you can see more of Chini’s decorative style. I love the different decorative panels; are those vibrant circles or heads of carnations and dahlias, then the elegant women in long dresses, as beautiful as the flowers, fruit and triangles, but both so beautiful that it is incredible. I wish the world were as vibrant!

Gustav Klimt’s 105th Anniversary of Death – Portrait of Emilie Flöge

Austrian painter Gustav Klimt died on this day, 6th February, in 1918, from a stroke. His last words were “Call Emilie”, referring to Emilie Flöge: his life-long best friend, intellectual companion, muse and possibly a lover as well.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Emilie Flöge, 1902

I have been captivated by Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Emilie Flöge” these days. It is this mesmerising blueness, at once dreamy and vivacious, and the pattern of the dress which seems to be dancing on my mind, moving almost in front of my eyes – the more I gaze at it the more it is coming alive. This is yet another one of Klimt’s wonderful portraits of the high-class Viennese ladies, but this is not just another Viennese lady. Who was Emilie Flöge and who was she to Klimt? In the simplest, or perhaps in the most complex of terms, Emilie was Klimt’s life companion. She was his muse and his best friend. Their relationship has been as much a subject of debates and gossips in their times as it is in our times.

Klimt was a notorious womaniser and a painter known for his provocative erotic themes, but in the end, Emilie was the one with whom he had exchanged more than four hundred letters and postcards, she was the one with whom he had been spending his summer holidays, she was the one with whom he collaborated artistically, and, perhaps most poignantly, she was the one he called for on his deathbed and she was the one who inherited half of his estate. Was she his lover in the physical sense of the word? Well, who knows really. The fact that Klimt has left no proof of their relationship in his letters means nothing, for he was not a man of words nor was he the man to kiss and tell. The discreet nature of their companionship doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t more under the surface. Emilie wasn’t a low-class girl or a prostitute as Klimt’s other models were. Despite her association with the bohemian circles, and mainly due to her fashion philosophies, Emilie was still part of the respectable society and had her own reputation to keep. One doesn’t need to flaunt what one has.

And how did they two meet? Well, Klimt’s younger brother and a fellow artist, Ernst, died suddenly in 1892. Klimt lost not only his brother but also his father that year and that left him with the responsibility of taking care not only of his own family but also of Ernst’s young bride Helene Flöge. Emilie was Helene’s younger sister, eighteen years old at the time, and she befriended Klimt by suggesting they both start learning French together. These innocent lessons have grown into a serious bond that laste for twenty-seven years, until Klimt’s death. From such a simple, unassuming root a beautiful golden flower of ‘Vienna Secession’ blossomed, or should I say perhaps, two flowers, intertwined yet separate, for Klimt and Emilie, despite their close bond, both had their own pursuits.

Ceiling mosaic “Garden of Eden”, barrel vault, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia (died 450), daughter of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, Ravenna, Italy. Picture found here.

Emilie was a seamstress turned couturiere, and, in 1904 she became a business woman as well, having opened her own fashion salon called “Schwestern Flöge” (Flöge Sisters) together with her sister Helene. The dresses that they were designing were in the style and spirit of the Wiener Werkstätte or “Vienna Workshop” which was a productive association in Vienna, established around the same time, in 1903, by the painter and graphic designer Koloman Moser, the architect Josef Hoffmann and the patron Fritz Waerndorfer. The association brought together architects, artists, designers and artisans working in ceramics, fashion, silver, furniture and the graphic arts. Their ideas, in terms of fashion, were unconventional and reformative, continuing perhaps where the Victorian trend of the Artistic dress and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had stopped.

The freedom in one’s clothing wasn’t merely a matter of feeling comfortable, it was a liberation from society’s restraints on a symbolic level. A lady freeing herself from the torments of the corset had made not just a practical decision, but a social statement as well. Designs of Emilie’s dresses had a loose high-waisted silhouette, flowing fabrics, billowing sleeves, comfortable in terms of form, inspired by the flowing Oriental styles of kimono and kaftan, and inspired in print by the kind of patterns that Klimt loved and often designed as well, a stunning mixture of geometrical and floral. Klimt himself loved to feel cozy and free, especially whilst painting and during his countryside holidays. He was often seen, and photographed even, in his garden wearing comfotable loose garments with no underwear and sandals on his feet.

Emilie Flöge wearing an Artistic Reform dress, photograph by D’Ora, 1907

Emilie Flöge and Gustav Klimt in a garden, both wearing their loose garments.

In May 1903 Klimt travelled to Ravenna and Venice, then spent the summer months pleasantly on the Attersee with the Floge familie, and in November the same year he made another trip to Italy and visited Padua, Pisa and Florence. This portrait of Emilie was painted in 1902, a year before Klimt’s Italian adventures, but, to me, it signifies a premonition of sorts, as though the fifth century mosaics of San Vitale and Galla Placidia had been calling out to him with their golds and blues, with their centuries old Byzantine charms. I do love the dress that Emilie is wearing in the portrait! It is just magnificent; flowing loose and freely as though it were a river of dreams, with those beautiful bishop sleeves, wide and then tight at the wrist, and the pattern with its blue swirls, golden circles, white dots, white ovals, then the shawl tight around her neck, like the goddes of Midnight, her pale moon-face arises from the blueness and then that voluminous hair which brings to mind the hairstyle from the portraits of the Spanish painter Velázquez. Hungarian writer and journalist Ludwig Hevesi wrote upon seeing the portrait: “another, unfinished portrait has come to us as if from a blue-mottled world of majolica and mosaic.”

I almost prefer the blueness of this portrait to Klimt’s future golden portraits, there is something ethereal, mystical and dreamy about it which brings to mind the nocturnal atmosphere of the ceiling mosaic in the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the daughter of the Roman emperor Theodosius I, in Ravenna, representing the “Garden of Eden” where the deep blue circular golden decorations represent the white corollas of moonflowers. As one may physically pass from the nocturnal atmosphere of the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, where one sees nothing but blueness wherever one ganders, to the bright and golden interiors of the Basilica of San Vitale, full of lightness and life, thus it seems that Klimt has symbolically passed from the starry night of the portrait of Emilie and exploded into the bright golden day that was his Golden period.

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

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

Marc Chagall, Les Amoureux, 1928

These days I am not merely thinking about Marc Chagall’s artworks – I am living in them, and oh my, what a wonderful place to live in. In particular, I am enjoying gazing at his painting “The Lovers” from 1928. The painting, as suggested in the title, shows two lovers lost in an embrace, floating somehere in the sky, somewhere in the world of their own. The motif of lovers is something that pervades Chagall’s canvases. While the woman is gazing in the distance, the man’s head is leaned on her shoulder, as if seeking comfort. She is looking into the future and he is holding onto her. The crimson colour of the woman’s dress is echoed by the fuchsia coloured background and in the colour of the roses on the right side of the painting. A blue sky with a large full moon and a bird flying by is seen emerging from the bottom right side of the canvas.

Chagall’s lovers don’t live in the real, material, tangible world around us, no, they live in the realm of love, in the soft, feathery, fragrant and sweet clouds of love. Dancing in the sky in the rhythm of each other’s hearts, floating through the night sky like shooting stars. Even when the space around the lovers is real, with its little cottages, wooden fences, cows, goats, fiddlers and mud, this ugly banality is transformed and transcended, it is as if the lovers are completely untouched by it all. It’s like threading over the fresh snow and leaving no footprints. In Chagall’s art the “down to earth” and “dreamy” meet and collide in a perfect way. Chagall is the most tender-hearted man in the world of art and his innocent, imaginative and childlike vision of the world is obvious in his canvases. The figure that always haunts his art is the slender figure of a black haired woman; his beloved wife Bella Rosenfeld.

Marc Chagall, The Promenade, 1917-18

Their early days of love are captured in a series of paintings such as “Birthday”, “Promenade” and “Over the Town”. There is a playful innocence and a pure display of affections in these paintings that chimes with me so well. Chagall takes the phrase “floating in the air” quite literally because in these paintings the lovers are flying indeed; the power of their love is so strong that not even gravity can stop it.”The Promenade” shows Chagall and Bella having a picnic on a meadow outside town but then suddenly Bella is flying in the air like a pink ballon. Chagall is holding her hand but he too will quickly rise into the clouds following his darling. Painting “Over the Town” shows an embracing couple flying above the little houses of the little town which is now too small to contain the vastness of the love that they feel. The houses and the landscape under them both seem faded, as if seen in a dream or in a memory, painted in shades of grey. Only that one house is red, like a crimson red heart pulsating in the rhythm of love.

“Over the Town” is a painting which thematically and aesthetically goes hand in hand with Chagall’s painting “Birthday” painted in 1915; both paintings show lovers magically lifted from the ground by the power of love, the power against which all the mundane things in life suddently seem gray and irrelevant. When I gaze at this paintings, these lovers which all have faces like Chagall and Bella, the lyrics of the Beatles’ song “Something” come to mind;

“Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

Somewhere in her smile she knows
That I don’t need no other lover
Something in her style that shows me
I don’t want to leave her now
You know I believe and how

You’re asking me will my love grow
I don’t know, I don’t know
You stick around, now it may show
I don’t know, I don’t know…“

Marc Chagall, Birthday, 1915

I can imagine Chagall gazing at Bella and musing to himself “something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover, something in the way she woos me…” In the painting “Birthday” it is Chagall who is flying above Bella though she too is about to join him soon. Again we see the everyday transformed into the wonderful; a simple room, Bella in her everyday clothes, yet there is magic, the magic of love which transforms everything. Bella wrote about this feeling which Chagall so beautifully portrays in his paintings: “I suddenly felt as if we were taking off. You too were poised on one leg, as if the little room could no longer contain you. You soar up to the ceiling. Your head turned down to me, and turned mine up to you… We flew over fields of flowers, shuttered houses, roofs, yards, churches.” In most paintings Bella is portrayed as wearing the same clothes she would have been wearing everyday and on the photos which exists of her, and the town we see is their hometown of Vitebsk in Belorus. Both of these elements bring a domestic kind of familiarity which becomes magical and sweet when Chagall portrays it.

Marc Chagall, Over the Town, 1913

The love at first sight between Bella and Chagall started in 1909 when a beautiful daughter of a rich jeweller met the poor and aspiring painter who worked as an apprentice for Leon Bakst and it lasted for thirty five years until Bella, sadly, passed away three months shy of her forty-nineth birthday in 1944. In his autobiography “My Life”, Chagall writes of Bella: “Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me; as if she has always watched over me, somewhere next to me, though I saw her for the very first time. I knew this is she, my wife. Her pale colouring, her eyes. How big and round and black they are! They are my eyes, my soul.”

Bella, although seemingly a quiet, pale and withdrawn girl, was enthusiastic about Chagall as well, and later wrote about being mesmerised by his ethereal pale blue eyes: “When you did catch a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they’d fallen straight out of the sky. They were strange eyes … long, almond-shaped … and each seemed to sail along by itself, like a little boat.“ She also wrote of their first meeting: “I was surprised at his eyes, they were so blue as the sky … I’m lowering my eyes. Nobody is saying anything. We both feel our hearts beating.“

Marc Chagall and Bella in Paris, 1938

Marc Chagall and Bella, c 1920

Chagall’s paintings reflect his way of thinking, he said; “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” These are painting created from the heart, indeed. There is no logic, rationality or coldness about his art. Even when he paints in the Cubist manner, his squares and rectangles are not harsh but somehow still coated in the colour of dreams. Chagall had no interest in Cubism and Impressionist and was of an opinion that art is the “state of the soul.”

Marc Chagall, Lovers in Pink, 1916

Marc Chagall, Grey Lovers, 1917

When I am in love I live not in real world but in Chagall’s paintings. I am flying in the night sky and I am bathed in that gorgeous blueness. I am smiling at the stars and they are smiling back at me. Their golden dust is falling all over my white tulle dress. I am floating above the bridges, forests, meadows, flower fields, little houses with red roofs. I hear the violins, and flute, and the guitar, and I am carried away by that sweet music. I smell the violets, the roses, the lily of the valley; what sweet scents fill this warm summer night. Love is a warm summer night. My heart is overflowing with love and bursting into a thousand ruby red rose petals, and the petals fall and fall like a never-ending waterfall. I am melting into shapes, sounds and colours. I am the lilac, I am the crimson, I am the blue. I am the bird and the star. I am a rose petal carried by the wind, travelling far and far beyond. The coldness, dreariness and bleakness of winter Can.Not.Touch.Me. To live always in this way ahh that would be a life well lived. Is it possible? Is it really possible? Gazing at Chagall’s paintings makes me believe that it indeed is.

Tennessee Williams: We have not long to love, A night. A day….

A poem that’s been on my mind these days…

Lovers, c 1850

We Have Not Long To Love

We have not long to love.

Light does not stay.

The tender things are those

we fold away.

Coarse fabrics are the ones

for common wear.

In silence I have watched you

comb your hair.

Intimate the silence,

dim and warm.

I could but did not, reach

to touch your arm.

I could, but do not, break

that which is still.

(Almost the faintest whisper

would be shrill.)

So moments pass as though

they wished to stay.

We have not long to love.

A night. A day….

Illustration for Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin by Lidia Timoshenko, 1878