by Cedric | Mar 9, 2022 | Art, General
Van Gogh painted this arresting painting in the last few weeks of his life. He did a series of paintings of wheat fields around Auvers, of which Theresa May would be proud. This one, Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds, is quite arresting and took me by surprise.
In these landscapes he tried to express ‘sadness, extreme loneliness’. But the overwhelming emotions that Van Gogh experienced in nature were also positive. He wrote to his brother Theo, ‘I’d almost believe that these canvases will tell you what I can’t say in words, what I consider healthy and fortifying about the countryside.’
The elongated format of Wheatfields under Thunderclouds is unusual. It emphasizes the grandeur of the landscape, as does the simple composition: two horizontal planes. Van Gogh Museum
This is a simple painting, covering two horizontal plains. It is painted with simple, visible brush strokes, yet I find it quite striking. The emotion in this piece is palpable. The movement of the clouds, both light and dark is haunting. It is advancing towards you as you are watching. You can almost see the curtain of rain in the distance. The wheat in the field is almost moving and you can see the wind taking the three in the bottom right.
There is something very moving in this painting, there is a brooding, almost menacing quality to it. The painting reflects what Van Gogh must have felt in the closing weeks of his life, a kind of loneliness and despair, but at the same time in his own words, it is meant to show us the restorative qualities of the countryside. In all, a fascinating work in the later period of Van Gogh’s life.
by Cedric | Mar 5, 2022 | Art, General
Another metaphysical Catholic poem? Why, yes of course! Although, my dearest Charlotte tells me that he was in fact first Catholic, then reneged the faith (his family were recusant), then became Anglican priest and apostatised, which is rather shocking to me. That word has rather negative connotations for me since I watched the 2016 Scorsese film Silence. See below John Donne’s striking rebuke of Death personified:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
This poem uses the literary tactic of Apostrophe (not apostasy), which addresses a subject who cannot respond. Here, Donne addresses Death directly, as a person, and takes him down a peg. In the first two lines we see Death’s reputation as being full of pride and mighty. Donne tells us that this is in fact not the case. The second two lines follow suit, telling Death that he does not not in fact have the power to overthrow us, that Death itself has no power to kill, so we should not be afraid of it. Even St Paul knew this, as Charlotte pointed out to me as we were walking to Mass, in the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians:
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?”
1 Corinthians 15:55
The next four lines show death as akin to falling asleep, further degrading Death personified and encouraging the reader to be less frightened. Donne goes on to explain that the good die soonest in order to experience this peaceful rest and go with death to their eternal resting place.
There’s really no point in doing anything in life because it’s all over in the blink of an eye. The next thing you know, rigor mortis sets in. Oh, how the good die young.
Mr Gustave, The Grand Budapest Hotel
(excellent article on the nonsense poetry int he film here)
Lines 9-10 see Donne taunting Death saying that he is impotent without the foolish acts of man. Without chancers and fate, Death would not have a purpose, in essence. Donne makes fun of Death’s friends, poison war and sickness, to further degrade him. Lines 11-12 continue in the vein of lines 7 and 8, stating that Death brings only a short sleep and that poppies (drugs) can do the same. Why should we be afraid of a little sleep?
The final two lines are evidence of Donne’s faith. One short sleep and we, like Christ, awake into eternal life. Therefore, Death is robbed of all his power and indeed shall die. This notion of eternal life is one of the central tenets of the Christian faith. It helps the faithful live their life to the fullest in the hope of eternal glory. This concept is one I have been wrestling with for some time but can see is wonderfully calming when understood. Donne saw this almost 400 years ago and I have found great comfort in his writings. I can only hope you will, also.
by Cedric | Feb 21, 2022 | Art, General
The Incredulity of Saint Thomas or the Rockox Triptych (or “Altarpiece”), is a triptych painting by Peter Paul Rubens(1577 – 1640), and was produced between 1613 and 1615. On either side of the triptych you can see sir Nicolaas II Rockox and his spouse Adriana Perez. This painting was originally commissioned for the Lady Chapel in the Recollects Convent in Antwerp but now sits in the Great Hall of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where I saw it in October.
If you can bring yourself to ignore the ‘freaky Dutch bastards’ as Dr Evil would call them, the central panel is something of a masterpiece. I went to the museum with Celia and she must have thought me quite queer because I stopped and stared at this painting for at least ten minutes. I felt like Ongo Gablogian having an epiphany.
Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”John 20:25
Here, three apostles, Thomas, Peter and John, are incredulous at Christ’s returning from the dead. This event is the bedrock of the Christian faith. They are looking at Christ with surprise, with Thomas wanting to verify this incredible event with empirical evidence, namely putting a finger in the wounds. The event speaks to the quality of faith, asking us whether we believe this core tenet of our faith without needing for it to be verified. I was so moved by this painting. Seeing Christ depicted with such light and looking at his doubting apostles with love in spite of their doubt electrified me. There are three reactions in this painting as I can see, shock by Thomas, interest by Peter (closest to us, presuming this is indeed Peter) and love from John in the back. I may have got the apostles in the wrong order, for which I can only apologise. Which of these three reactions would we have when confronted with this event in scripture?
I noticed at once that Jesus’ halo was missing in this painting but that a faint gold glow can see seen behind his head. The absence of a halo emphasises the corporeality of the risen Christ, that is to say that Christ is here in human form again. This was another striking aspect of the painting for me, with Rubens, who was always inspired to his work by faith, stating clearly his belief in the resurrection.
Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”John 20:29
Overall this is a work of genius which left a lasting impression on me. It tackles the founding event of the Christian faith and was profoundly moving to me. I am very much looking forward to my next trip to Amsterdam when I will be able to see it again.
“My passion comes from the heavens, not from earthly musings.” Rubens
by Cedric | Feb 19, 2022 | Art, General
Henry Vaughan was a Welsh metaphysical poet, born in Brecknockshire in 1621. He wrote The Retreat in 1650 when he was just 29 years old, a poem part of the Silex Scintillans, his most famous collection. Retreat here has a dual meaning. One is to hide, to get away from one’s life. The other is a pleasant place where one might go to stay, such as a religious retreat at Ampleforth. Both a return to the past, and a longing to escape to an easier time are desired by Vaughan, which you will find below:
Happy those early days! when I
Shined in my angel infancy.
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
O, how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain
Where first I left my glorious train,
From whence th’ enlightened spirit sees
That shady city of palm trees.
But, ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
Some men a forward motion love;
But I by backward steps would move,
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.
Such power in 32 lines. What does this poem say to me?
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to consider my present ‘grown up’ problems with angel infancy and a blameless outlook. What would my younger self have made of my present self? Perhaps a futile exercise, but our present lives are quite riddled with difficulties. It can be easy to wish to shirk responsibilities and be in peace. Vaughan highlights in the first six lines the ease with which he reached a state of mental peace and laments, impliedly, that now he must make a great effort to reach white (pure) celestial thought.
Lines 7-14 speak of the forlorn memories of one’s first love; their childhood home. Looking back on these with adult eyes, as it were, helps the reader see how precious these moments were. It also helps us see the value Donne places on purity of mind and thought, unsullied by what we learn as we go through life. Indeed these were so precious that the reader sees God in them.
Again lines 15-20 continue on this theme, lamenting the loss of childhood innocence of thought, and not yet knowing how to over indulge the senses. In a way, Vaughan is saying that a state of purity is required for us to attain the everlasting. The following six lines develop this vague longing into an expressed desire – the writer tells us that he would rather live in the past than in the present, a shocking revelation to me.
The final six lines show us that the speaker realises that he is living in the past, and that this is unhealthy but he still chooses to do so. He writes expressly that some men prefer to move forward but he would rather go back, and this longing to go back transforms itself into a longing to skip the present and go furthest into the future – this is to say, to die and rise again and follow Christ into heaven.
This is undoubtedly a beautiful poem. I am a man who loves forward motion, so I cannot entirely relate to the longing for childhood in this poem. Nor can I relate to the longing to return to purity of thought and the awed wonder of initial discoveries. This belief that our current mode of thought is somehow inferior to that of our childhood selves is nonsensical to me. The idea that one should long for the past, or past purity of mind, to such an extent that they wish to die and return there, even in heaven, is horrifying. Surely one should acknowledge their childhood, note its passing, and focus on living in the present. They might also focus on planning for the future. Notwithstanding my philosophical objections with the subject matter, I recognise, especially given the unpleasant nature of the present what with its virus and storms, that some may find solace in this poem. Reading The Retreat, one may be comforted realising they are not alone in their wish to return to a simpler time.
by Cedric | Feb 5, 2022 | Art, General
Described to me as a ‘less morbid Donne poem’, see below my brief reflection on this beautiful poem by eminent metaphysical poet John Donne. Donne, far from being co-pilot to Clarence Oveur in Airplane!, was an English writer and Anglican cleric, born in 1572. His poem Air and Angels is marvellous and beautiful, speaking to the quality of human love.
Twice or thrice had I lov’d thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught;
Ev’ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt’ring bright, can love inhere;
Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
So thy love may be my love’s sphere;
Just such disparity
As is ‘twixt air and angels’ purity,
‘Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be.
I believe from my research that Donne was inspired by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch, who saw love in a different way, having had his love revealed to him on Good Friday to a woman, Laura de Sade, who could not love him back. The idealised this unattainable figure. The beauty he felt she represented, having been revealed to him on an important day in the Church’s calendar, went beyond the physical.
Petrarch was not selfishly obsessive, but a man instead who knew love in a different way. That God revealed Laura to him on Good Friday was everything. For him, Petrarch’s unrequited love for Laura was about directing his soul, “From her to you comes loving thought that leads, as long as you pursue, to highest good.”
The Imaginative Conservative
Air and Angels takes this theme and applies it. The poem speaks of the difference between love in its temporal physical form and love in the eternal sense, a higher love which is carried in the soul beyond death. Love as we experience it is corporeal, it is bodily. Donne draws a distinction here between our experience of love and how angels appear to manifest themselves through air, which is the purest of the four elements. Indeed human love is derided in the poem, with Donne saying that he tried to visualise his past love and alighted on a ‘lovely glorious nothing’, which seems to say, in the absence of a woman to look at and objectify, the male gaze is impotent. This is carried on by his imagining her features (lip eye and brow). Man’s love for woman, here, is restricted to the physical and cannot assume the position of the soul’s love, which is above such things as the soul itself is not corporeal.
Resorting to the metaphorical usage of air and angels, the poem furnishes a conceptualisation of love cognisant of its empirical being, of the necessitude of shared mutuality between the man and the woman within its ambit. The soul, if extricated from the body, would be aloft the pleasure of corporeal love, which is very much rooted in desire, which has its own legitimacy, as it were.
Love then, must not come from earthly longing, nor from angels and heavenly things, but from somewhere in between. The poem argues that the combination or synthesis of man’s love (angel) and woman’s love (air) is needed for the success of both.
The air producing the angel is as impure as the latter. By analogy, the poet argues that the woman’s love is also as pure, or as independent as that of the man’s love, and it is rather a mutual transaction of the two that will diminish the space between man’s passion and women’s response
So thy love may be my love’s sphere;
Just such disparity
As is ‘twixt air and angels’ purity,
‘Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be.
The final four lines leave the result of such synthesis unclear, perhaps intentionally.
by Cedric | Sep 14, 2021 | Art, General
Salford Museum and Art Gallery sits atop the famed Peel Park which is itself well worth visiting. My friends and I went here as our first stop in what was to be a jam packed Friday. See below my personal highlights.
Somehow the museum managed to re-create a street in late 19th Century Salford. This was a show stopping triumph for me. Going down the cobbled street (which smelled much better than it must have done at the time) and being able to look into a dozen different shop and home fronts was wonderful. I felt like a child discovering something wonderful. See above a brief shot of what to expect.
Bokelmann, Christian Ludwig; The Gambler
The Gambler by Christian Ludwig Bokelmann (1844–1894) was one of the highlights of the gallery for me. This struck me in its sentiments which seem to be anti-gambling. You see a smokey room with a young father clinging onto his betting slip, not taking notice that he has knocked over his pint. His probably wife is holding one of their progeny while the other, horrifyingly, is playing cards on the floor – seeming to get into her father’s nasty habit. The father is so engrossed in his habit that he fails to hear the dogs fighting in the background, indeed this blissful ignorance is shared by his floored daughter, seeming to echo the concern that her father’s habit can extend to children. Finally, the gang of old men in the background seems to point to what this gambler will become. In addition to being technically excellent, the sentiments behind this painting are clear and damning. A powerful painting.
Montague, Alfred; Ship on Fire off the North Foreland
Ship on Fire was the second piece in the gallery which struck me. I love ships at sea and I love motion. This is a dynamic combination of both. The ship on fire itself is not the main focus of this piece, the main focus is those escaping from it. This distinction is important. The spray on the top of the waves, the motion and the light are, combined, very powerful in denoting the chaos which ensued following the fire. What is particularly potent for me is being able to see what is under the water as well as above. The light from the sky illuminates hints of bodies beneath the water and parts of the ship. This for me is beautifully rendered and a powerful depiction of a frightful scene.
Lowry, L.S, Bandstand at Peel Park
Sadly the Lowry at Salford Quays was closed at the time of our visit but I did get to see a few Lowrys (or is it Lowries?). Peel Park’s bandstand was the subject of many depictions but this one was my favourite. There is something haunting to me about Lowry’s works, they seem to be hinting at something deeper. The looming buildings behind the park, one of which I believe now houses the Salford Museum and Art Gallery, are almost sinister.
Cheddar Gorgeous drag installation
There are a great number of drag queens in Manchester and one of the more famed ones is Cheddar Gorgeous. I have been a fan of Cheddar’s for some years, following them on instagram when I had the misfortune of being a member of this application. Cheddar is described as a “gender divergent drag artist, producer and self-confessed unicorn-idealist”. I’m not sure whether I am able or willing to go further into that. However, seeing a piece of drag art close up was quite a moving feat for me. Often I see these through the medium of television or on You Tube but seldom up close. The dress was constructed well and fit within the fantasy that Cheddar created following research into a local fable.
Overall this museum was an excellent use of time, was supremely economical (free admission) and fulfilling. It was likely one of the highlights of my trip.
