Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[buttock]

Through the outskirts of Bonhooghly, where by now a dozen ragged children have joined us, the smaller ones hiding for warmth under Nirmal's shawl

 

 

 

 

Michael, care to comment on the hammer & sickle in this pic?

[Flex Mentallo]

Through the outskirts of Bonhooghly, where by now a dozen ragged children have joined us, the smaller ones hiding for warmth under Nirmal's shawl

 

 

 

 

Michael, care to comment on the hammer & sickle in this pic?

 

Dan

 

West Bengal was for many years a communist state.

 

Under the British, Bengal had the huge economic advantage over nearly every other state in India because it was heavily industrialised. An advantage it quickly lost.

 

When India became independent in 1947, Bengal was literally torn apart by religious strife.

 

The eastern half separated and became East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. In 1977 the communists came to power in what had become known as West Bengal, and their symbols festooned village walls everywhere for a generation and probably still do.

 

They have recently been ousted from power.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13374646

 

Two further points come to mind.

 

One is that Bonhooghly is a low caste Muslim village, founded by refugees fleeing the atrocities in Calcutta in 1947. My friend Ashraf told me how he and his family had to find there way out of Calcutta while the city was rioting. They had no baggage, and nowhere to go. In the end they only travelled 10 miles to reach relative safety.

 

The second is that Nirmal was not a Moslem. He was a Brahmo - essentially a high caste Hindu, of a specific elite who served the British as high ranking civil servants.

 

Nirmal's elocution was consequently pure BBC English.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmo_Samaj

 

 

India's greatest contemporary poet, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, shared the same lineage.

 

http://www.historytoday.com/hugh-tinker/death-rabindranath-tagore

 

 

"The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence."

 

 

 

I will dig out one of his poems - they are quite wonderful!

[Flex Mentallo]

This is the photo of Mohan that appears on every village household wall on the anniversary of his death

 

 

 

This is a sketch based on a worn out photograph of his funeral

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Rabindranath Tagore

 

 

The Child Angel

 

Let your life come amongst them like a flame of light, my child,

unflickering and pure, and delight them into silence.

 

They are cruel in their greed and their envy,

their words are like hidden knives thirsting for blood.

 

Go and stand amidst their scowling hearts, my child,

and let your gentle eyes fall upon them like the

forgiving peace of the evening over the strife of the day.

 

Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the

meaning of all things, let them love you and love each other.

 

Come and take your seat in the bosom of the limitless, my child.

At sunrise open and raise your heart like a blossoming flower,

and at sunset bend your head and in silence

complete the worship of the day.

[Flex Mentallo]

Hard Times

 

Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly

Has stripped unending skies of all companions.

Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizons

Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.

Still, O bird, O sightless bird,

Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

 

It's not melodious woodlands but the leaps and falls

Of an ocean's drowsy booming,

Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult flecked with foam.

Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves?

Where the nest and the branch's hold?

Still, O bird, my sightless bird,

Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

 

Stretching in front of you the night's immensity

Hides the western hill where sleeps the distant sun;

Still with bated breath the world is counting time and swimming

Across the shoreless dark a crescent moon

Has thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon.

--But O my bird, O sightless bird,

Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

 

From upper skies the stars with pointing fingers

Intently watch your course and death's impatience

Lashes at you from the deeps in swirling waves ;

And sad entreaties line the farthest shore

With hands outstretched and crooning ' Come, O come ! '

Still, O bird, O sightless bird,

Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

 

All that is past: your fears and loves and hopes ;

All that is lost: your words and lamentation ;

No longer yours a home nor a bed composed of flowers.

For wings are all you have, and the sky's broadening countryard,

And the dawn steeped in darkness, lacking all direction.

Dear bird, my sightless bird,

Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings

[Flex Mentallo]

My Song

 

This song of mine will wind its music around you,

my child, like the fond arms of love.

 

The song of mine will touch your forehead

like a kiss of blessing.

 

When you are alone it will sit by your side and

whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd

it will fence you about with aloofness.

 

My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams,

it will transport your heart to the verge of the unknown.

 

It will be like the faithful star overhead

when dark night is over your road.

 

My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes,

and will carry your sight into the heart of things.

 

And when my voice is silenced in death,

my song will speak in your living heart.

[Flex Mentallo]

 

I'll save chroma influences for another post.

 

I look forward to that!

 

[font:Times New Roman]OK, here goes:

 

Even before my university art school daze, I was impressed by the realism of Dutch masters (Rembrandt, Pieter de Hooch, especially Vermeer), the bizarre portraits of faces within objects created by Giuseppe Arcimboldo and the vibrant interpretation of French impressionists such as Manet & Pisarro and post-impressionists like Seurat.

 

Surrealism and speculative SF is where my own speculations would finally focus, but more on that later. Alas, I've never warmed to more abstract explorations even though appreciating the imaginative efforts of contemporary artists to break down compositions into their most primal, basic elements.

 

Johannes Vermeer...

 

 

 

 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo...

 

 

 

 

 

Eduard Manet...

 

 

Camille Pisarro...

 

 

George Seurat (pointillism)

 

 

Next, the inspiration of science fiction & fantasy...

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Thanks for posting these Cat! Some of my favourite artists as well! Hoping you will show us more and say a little about why these artists interest you so much?

[Cat-Man_America]

[font:Times New Roman]Thanks for asking Michael. My journey pales by comparison with your's as I've traveled outside the U.S. only recently. Alas, my work rarely involves anatomical studies or philosophical gestalt. I work primarily in the areas of surrealism, astronomical art, futuristic and imagined landscapes, animal studies and facial composition. My own art often vacillates between the tranquil and the mysterious, but more on that later.

 

I'll gladly post examples of my more complex illustrations and paintings if folks are interested in seeing them, but I'd rather present a selected sampling of other well regarded contemporary artist's work that my wife and I have collected in recent years. In a way, this may provide a bit more insight into my own influences and aspirations.

 

 

Keith Birdsong (one of the first originals we acquired)...

 

 

Rowena Morrill (in the process of reframing)...

 

 

Morris Scott Dolens...

 

 

Tom Kidd...

 

 

Lucy Synk...

 

 

Donato Giancola...

 

 

 

Heather Theuer...

 

 

John Kaufmann...

 

 

Jasmine Beckett-Griffith...

 

 

BTW, the acquisition of art has never been about investment even though paintings, like most rare or unique collectibles, tend to increase in value over time.

For me, collecting art is more about giving back to the community that nurtured my own meager talents than pride of ownership.

More than anything else, the art one chooses to display reflects personal tastes, moods, comfort and appreciation of beauty.

 

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Edited January 8, 2013 by DavidMerryweather

[Flex Mentallo]

 

 

 

 

 

Black Marigolds

 

 

If it is about anything at all, this strand is about the power of memory, and perhaps perception.. In some respects memory is all we are.

 

 

Seeing Cat's post of Seurat's great pointillist painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte had a similar effect on me as the taste of madeleines on Proust.

 

 

In In Search of Lost Time (also known as Remembrance of Things Past), author Marcel Proust uses madeleines to contrast involuntary memory with voluntary memory. The latter designates memories retrieved by "intelligence," that is, memories produced by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places. Proust's narrator laments that such memories are inevitably partial, and do not bear the "essence" of the past. The most famous instance of involuntary memory by Proust is known as the "episode of the madeleine," yet there are at least half a dozen other examples in In Search of Lost Time.

 

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.

—Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

 

 

 

What this has to do with "Black Marigolds" will I hope become plain by the end of this brief narration, which I hope will entertain, if nothing else.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

From Wikipedia:

 

Georges Seurat spent over two years painting A Sunday Afternoon, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original as well as completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He would go and sit in the park and make numerous sketches of the various figures in order to perfect their form. He concentrated on the issues of colour, light, and form. The painting is approximately 2 by 3 meters (6 ft 10 in x 10 ft 1 in) in size.

 

Motivated by study in optical and colour theory, Seurat contrasted miniature dots of colors that, through optical unification, form a single hue in the viewer's eye. He believed that this form of painting, called divisionism at the time but now known as pointillism, would make the colors more brilliant and powerful than standard brush strokes. The use of dots of almost uniform size came in the second year of his work on the painting, 1885-86. To make the experience of the painting even more vivid, he surrounded it with a frame of painted dots, which in turn he enclosed with a pure white, wooden frame, which is how the painting is exhibited today at the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

In creating the picture, Seurat employed the then-new pigment zinc yellow (zinc chromate), most visibly for yellow highlights on the lawn in the painting, but also in mixtures with orange and blue pigments. In the century and more since the painting's completion, the zinc yellow has darkened to brown — a colour degeneration that was already showing in the painting in Seurat's lifetime.[2]

 

The island of la Grande Jatte is located at the very gates of Paris, lying in the Seine between Neuilly and Levallois-Perret, in a short distance from where nowadays stands La Defense business district. Although for many years it was an industrial site, it is today the site of a public garden and a housing development. When Seurat began the painting in 1884, the island was a bucolic retreat far from the urban center.

 

The painting was first exhibited in 1886, dominating the second Salon of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, of which Seurat had been a founder in 1884.

 

 

The painting was the basis for the 1984 Broadway musical Sunday In The Park With George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_In_The_Park_With_George

 

 

And even an episode of Desperate Housewives

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_in_the_Park_with_George_%28Desperate_Housewives%29

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Although at first sight a "still life" it is full of animated vignettes

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

There are pictures within the picture...

 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

...and others inside those

 

 

 

 

It is rightly regarded as one of the seminal works of the late 19th Century.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Seurat

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

Seeing the Seurat also reminded me that the term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned the style, however, to form his own highly personal art. Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim in favour of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colours of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour. The work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.

 

 

In November 1910, Fry organised the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists (a term which he coined) at the Grafton Galleries, London. This exhibition was the first to prominently feature Gauguin, Manet, Matisse, and Van Gogh in England and brought their art to the public.

 

Fry’s essay on Seurat is regarded as one of the cornerstones of modern art criticism.

 

No-one who has a real understanding of the art of painting attaches any importance to what we call the subject of a picture – what is represented. To one who feels the language of pictorial form, all depends on how it is presented, nothing on what. (Roger Fry)

 

[Flex Mentallo]

When as a student I attended the Royal College of Art in London I found I had access to the great national collections, including the National Gallery, which is the home for another great Seurat painting, Bathers at Asnières.

 

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

I took a liking to Seurat's pointillist approach and began using it.

 

The Trojan Horse is based on an early, glowing photograph of my parents before they were married and is a premonition of my mother's early death.

 

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

It is one of only two of my works to find it's way into National collections, both of them quite by chance influenced by Seurat's technique.

 

 

 

 

The Trojan Horse is in the Government Collection

 

http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/artists_list.aspx?&l=A&lt=thumbnails&sb=ArtistName&sl=AM%20-%20AZ&pg=2

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

The Labyrinth is a slightly later painting in this style and was painted during my two years as a post-graduate student in India at the University of Baroda in Gujarat.

 

 

 

 

 

It is in the collection of the Arts Council of Great Britain.

 

 

http://www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk/loadWork.do?id=6643

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

I had not thought about these paintings, Seurat or Roger Fry for many years. But of all these things, it is the name of Roger Fry that surprisingly conjures up the most compelling associations, which carry me back to India, and through the medium of classical Indian art transports me into my own past and the deep influence Indian art has had on me. And beyond that, to Black Marigolds.

 

Here is Fry talking about Indian art just before his death.

 

The general aspect of almost all Indian works of art is intensely and acutely distasteful to me. It is excessive and redundant, it shows an extravagant and exuberant fancy which seems uncontrolled by any principle of co-ordination and, above all perhaps, the quality of its rhythms displeases me by its nerveless and unctuous sinuosity. In striking contrast to Chinese art, the sensuality of Indian artists is exceedingly erotic--the leitmotiv of much of their sculpture is taken from the more relaxed and abandoned poses of the female figure. A great deal of their art, even their religious art, is definitely pornographic, and although I have no moral prejudices against that form of expression it generally interferes with aesthetic considerations by interposing a strong irrelevant interest which tends to distract both the artist and the spectator from the essential purposes of a work of art.... the Indians are almost totally lacking in that organizing and co-ordinating power without which no cogent and inevitable unity can be achieved

 

He later goes on to compare Indian classical sculpture to that of Ancient Greece, and finds it severely wanting. To him Indian sculpture reveals a fundamental ignorance of anatomy, and hence a failure to embody universal ideals about perfection.

 

In so doing he inadvertently revealed within himself a chasm of incomprehension about what Indian art is intended to convey. And in the absolute presumption of the rightness of his view, visited upon himself the very ignorance he claimed for them.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

By contrast, the great Singhalese writer Ananda Coomaraswamy, (who was also a friend and associate of Rabindranath Tagore, whose poetry I posted yesterday), sought to enlighten the West regarding Indian art, seeking to relate it’s values to those of Plato, Heraclitus and other Greek philosophers.

 

Human cultures in all their apparent diversity are but the dialects of one and the same language of the spirit, that there is a "common universe of discourse" transcending the differences of tongues.

 

 

 

He pointed out that Indian sculptors did not work with stone – they worked with light.

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

I had opportunity to understand this first hand when I visited the Buddhist stupa at Sanchi.

 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2013 by alanna