Cardfile's Blog

July 2, 2012

Misc

  • Apologue – A moral fable, usually featuring personified animals or inanimate objects which act like people to allow the author to comment on the human condition. Often, highlights the irrationality of mankind. George Orwell, Animal Farm; Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book & the fables of Aesop are examples

“The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.” (40-1, at Gatsby’s party)

a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up… Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms.

  • synesthesia, meaning “joined sensation”, shares a root with anesthesia, meaning “no sensation.”  denotes the rare capacity to hear colors, taste shapes. The neurological mixing of the senses. A synaesthete may, for example, hear colors, see sounds, and taste tactile sensations. Although this may happen in a person who has autism, it is also a common effect of some hallucinogenic drugs.

Cytowic, Richard E.   The Man Who Tasted Shapes: A Bizarre Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Reasoning, Emotion, & Consciousness. NY: Putnam. 1993
Synchromism was an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright & Morgan Russell. Their abstract “synchromies”, based on a theory of color that analogized it to music, were among the first abstract paintings in American art.

  • Duffy, Carol Ann (1955- ) British poet & playwright. Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan Univ; appointed Britain’s poet laureate in May 2009 – the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly gay person to hold the position.

“He spoke early. Not the goo goo goo of infancy, but I am God…. We heard him through the window, heard the smacks which made us peep. What we saw was commonplace enough. But afterwards, we wondered why the infant did not cry, why the Mother did.” (Luke 2:41-52) Based on Max Ernst, The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus before Three Witnesses

  • Holloway, Richard  How to Read the Bible, Granta Books, 2006

refers to he calls the “hermetic circularity” upon which claims for the Bible’s authority rests. The Bible is almost universally regarded as the inspired source of God’s revelation to humanity. Should anyone dare query on what authority this claim is made, the response is that the Bible says so. That this is a circular & therefore invalid argument is not a recent objection. It was made by none other than Matthew  Tyndale in 1730, with these words: It’s an odd jumble to prove the truth of a book by the truth of the doctrines it contains, and at the same time conclude these doctrines to be true because contained in that book.

  • Harris, Adrian   “Notions of Embodied Knowledge”

Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff & Johnson claim that “What our bodies are like & how they function in the world…structure the very concepts we can use to think.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962

  • Wittgenstein 

In the long aphorism xi of the second book of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein makes a distinction between “seeing” & “seeing as”.  To “see as” is something one learns to do.  It is based on a technique that one masters.  One might look at a map, say, without recognizing it for what it is.  But with a bit of training one learns to see the map differently and to use it as a guide around the city.  Before one does that, one has to learn to see as, that is to see the scriggly lines as streets

Theodore W. Adorno – “Every work of art is an uncommitted crime”

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  • Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-69) notes

Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life (Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben) a 1951 seminal text in Critical Theory.
Norman, Carol  “‘Every Work of Art Is an Uncommitted Crime’: The Application of Sociological Theories of Deviance to Modern Art,” Internet Journal of Criminology  (2009) pdf
“Every work of art is an uncommitted crime”  Like crime, it often breaks societal rules, however, art is not typically against the law & for this reason it is ‘uncommitted crime’
Three movements in modern art are particularly associated with rule breaking. Chronologically,
❶ Impressionism & Post-Impressionism. The modern period & Impressionism began with Édouard Manet (1832-1883). At this time, cultural certainties were collapsing. Manet’s work, e.g., Le Dejeuner sur L’herbe’ (1863) reflected this & transgressed the traditional assumptions of the art canon in a number of ways (Gombrich 1972). He mixed secular & religious themes; he refuted the idealised conception of the female nude & painted nudes with individual character
❷ Surrealism & Dada  Example: Max Ernst’s ‘The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard and the Painter’ (1926) depicts the three wise men as surrealists and shows Christ as merely an ordinary naughty child. (Luke 2:41-52)
❸ Contemporary art

March 5, 2012

Muses & Models

Jiminez, Jill Berk (ed)  Dictionary of Artists’ Models   London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001

Prose, Francine  The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women & the Artists They Inspired. Harper Perennial 2003

Claude Monet & Camille Doncieux ― Gedo, Mary Mathews   Monet & His Muse: Camille Monet in the Artist’s Life   Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 2010

Monet, Camille & Alice

Victorine Meurent (1844-1927) Manet’s model in Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass); Olympia; Gare Saint-Lazare (The Railway); (and even the boy in The Fifer). Also modeled for Degas & the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens

Renoir & His Models. Aline Charigot     http://www.artistsandart.org/2010/05/renoir-and-his-models-aline-charigot.html

Suzanne Valadon (1865–1938) Marie-Clémentine Valadon, Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France.  In 1894, became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.  “A free spirit, she would wear a corsage of carrots, kept a goat at her studio to “eat up her bad drawings”, & fed caviar to her “good Catholic” cats on Fridays.”  became a circus acrobat at the age of 15;  She modeled for Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, (Young Woman at a Table), Pierre-Auguste Renoir & Pierre Puvis de Chavannes; she also had affairs with all of them. In 1889 Toulouse-Lautrec would paint: “The Hangover.”

Valadon ― Miles, Margaret R.   “Nakedness, Gender, & Religious Meaning,”  in Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness & Religious Meaning in the Christian West   NY: Vintage, 1989 pp.169-85

Renoir (1841-1919) ‘las grandes banhistas’– (1884-1887)  Phila Museum of Art (Aline Charigot, Senhora Renoir, Suzanne Valadon)

http://bjws.blogspot.com/2010/07/henri-de-toulouse-lautrec-1864-1901_29.html

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) one of his favorite models, in addition to Suzanne Valadon, was another laundress named Carmen Gaudin (1866?–1920).(La blanchisseuse) La Rousse (the redhead)

http://www.davidrumsey.com/amica/amico935317-19344.html

Klimt & His Women – document.   Alma Maria Mahler-Werfel,  (nee Schindler) (1879-1964) Viennese-born socialite.  wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, & novelist Franz Werfel, as well as the consort of several other prominent men, e.g., affair with the artist Oskar Kokoschka,  Bride of the Wind

In 1911, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) met the seventeen-year-old Valerie (Wally) Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna & served as model, Woman in Black Stockings (1913). Very little is known of her, except that she had previously modelled for Gustav Klimt & might have been one of his mistresses.

Julia Prinsep Stephen (nee Jackson) (1846–95), mother of Virginia Woolf, model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones

Lytton Strachey & Dora Carrington

Elizabeth Siddal ― John Everett Millais, Ophelia;  Rossetti,  Beata Beatrix

Annie Miller — Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, et.al

Jane Burden (later Jane Morris, 1839–1914)

Gray, Euphemia (“Effie”) Chalmers (1828-97) wife of Ruskin, but later left her husband to marry his protege, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais

Edward Burne-Jones & Maria Zambaco  she appears in some of his most inspired pictures—as the sorceress in the Wine of Circe, the witch in The Beguiling of Merlin, & the demonic sprite in Phyllis & Demophoön.

Corder, Rosa Frances (1853-93) model & lover of Charles Augustus Howell unscrupulous agent of both Ruskin (eventually Edward Burne-Jones persuaded Ruskin to sever his connection with Howell) & Rossetti (persuaded Rossetti to dig up the poems he buried with his wife Elizabeth Siddal). alleged to have persuaded Corder to create fake Rossetti drawings

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)  “Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau)” 1883–84

Butler, Ruth   Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model­, Wives of Cézanne, Monet, & Rodin.   New Haven: Yale, 2008  Hortense Fiquet & Paul Cézanne; Camille Doncieux & Claude Monet; Rose Beuret & Auguste Rodin

Rousseau’s portrait of  Guillaume  Apollinaire with his mistress Marie Laurencin, The Muse Inspiring the Poet (1909)

Joanna “Jo” Hiffernan (Heffernan) – Whistler’s mistress & model & Courbet’s favorite model

Evelyn Nesbit     Uruburu, Paula Evelyn Nesbit: ‘American Eve,’ Excerpt”; Nesbit, White & Madison Square Garden; Murder of the Century PBS American Experience; http://www.americaneve.com/homepage.html

Barney, Natalie Clifford (1876-1972) & Brooks, Romaine 1874-1970

Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo

George Sand, novelist, muse to Chopin and Alfred de Musset

Anais Nin, author, muse to Henry Miller

Amanda Lear, singer, muse to Salvador Dali;  Salvador & Gala Dali

Man Ray & Lee Miller

Catherine Deneuve, actress, muse to Bunuel, André Téchiné and Yves Saint Laurent

Camille Claudel (1864–1943)sculptor, muse, model, confidante & lover of Rodin; she never lived with Rodin, who was reluctant to end his 20-year relationship with Rose Beuret.

Alice B. Toklas, author, muse to Gertrude Stein

Leonora Carrington, artist, muse to Max Ernst

Augustus John & model, mistress, wife, Dorelia McNeill

Gwen John model & mistress to Auguste Rodin (33 years her senior)

Pierre Bonnard Renée Monchaty (model, lover, suicide), Marthe de Méligny (model, wife, muse)

“Misia” Marie Sophie Olga Zénaïde Godebska (1872-1950) muse & model to Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard, Renoir, Diaghilev, Cocteau, & Vallaton

Matisse & Lydia Delectorskaya; model Loulou Brouty; model Caroline Joblau, with whom he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894
Between Dec. 1916 & the close of 1917, Matisse painted at least 25 pictures of an Italian model named Laurette. She also posed with her sister & a woman named Aïcha for some 15 additional works by the artist.  Laurette in a Green Robe (Black Background), 1916 [Met Museum]

Jeanne Hebuterne, model and painter, muse to  Amadeo Modigliani

Loulou de la Falaise, designer, muse to Yves Saint Laurent

Francisco Goya and his mistress Leocadia Weiss,La Leocadia (1819 to 1823)

Lise Trehot & Auguste Renoir

Seurat’s model & common law wife, Madeleine Knobloch

Picasso & Dora Maar; Fernande Olivier, Olga Koklova, Marie Thérèse Walter, Françoise Gilot,  Jacqueline Roque, et.al

Jessie Macauley Olssen  The Annunciation (1898) wife & model of Henry Ossawa Tanner

Raphael & Margherita Luti  La Fornarina & “Woman with a Veil (La Donna Velata)”  1516

Botticelli & Simonetta Vespucci

Godley, Kathleen (Kitty) Epstein Freud (1926-2011) ― Artist & muse, daughter of Jacob Epstein & first wife/model of Lucian Freud. Her second marriage was to musician & Cambridge economist Wynne Godley (Epstein’s model for the head of the figure of Saint Michael spearing the devil in the sculpture at Coventry Cathedral).

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