tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16761020.post5339001612426151093..comments2023-10-20T21:52:36.752+05:30Comments on Cross Connections: Sunday ka FundaFarzana Verseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06891229615361937135noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16761020.post-23284833227399900382015-04-06T00:15:55.426+05:302015-04-06T00:15:55.426+05:30Hi Mark:
Indeed, there is world of difference bet...Hi Mark:<br /><br />Indeed, there is world of difference between the linear and the painterly. <br /><br />{The effect, I think, is to strongly suggest the work as “saying” more than, say, a Mona Lisa smile}<br /><br />But Mona Lisa, with all the linearity, has given rise to a whole lot of painterly analysis!<br /><br />Illuminating to read about the comparisons re this work, for I certainly am not so knowledgeable about the works of either. I'd agree with you on Blake, but Bonheur seems not quite like the Dance series. It is erotic, although in a pastoral sense. <br /><br />I absolutely loved Nasturtiums. Your description is rather vivid. It so happened that when I opened the link on my tab only the top half was visible initially and I thought the figure above seemed reminiscent of Christ on the Cross. I scrolled down and the portion directly below — the stool's legs, the reddish bit — look like an upturned Cross! It was not even Good Friday when I first saw this, so don't know where the reference comes from...<br /><br />That was not the end. The two figures in the lower half with their fingers reaching out look a lot like da Vinci's The Creation of Adam. <br /><br />I suppose, as we have had occasion to discuss often, art and perception are comrades even if sometimes contradictory. Let me leave with these from A Midsummer Night's Dream:<br /><br />"Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!<br />That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow."FVnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16761020.post-29003771542511546032015-03-31T07:39:18.906+05:302015-03-31T07:39:18.906+05:30Hi Farzana,
Wikipedia suggests Matisse's favo...Hi Farzana,<br /><br />Wikipedia suggests Matisse's favoured approach as “painterly,” which is contrasted with works rendered in a “linear” style. Apparently the so-called linear painter strives for a more true-to-life, 3-dimensional depiction in the application of paint (more “studied,” it would seem); whereas the painterly artist's subjects are roughly defined, the application of paint . . . well, “slap-dash,” perhaps, with the colors employed not a little fanciful. The effect, I think, is to strongly suggest the work as “saying” more than, say, a Mona Lisa smile . . .<br /><br />Cezanne is suggested as having had the profoundest influence on Matisse. However, where the Dance is concerned, I have to go along with those who compare it to William Blake's depiction of a scene from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, also known as Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, here:<br /><br />http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Oberon%2C_Titania_and_Puck_with_Fairies_Dancing._William_Blake._c.1786.jpg<br /><br />Though Matisse's earlier work, Le bonheur de vivre, makes the connection much more compelling:<br /><br />http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/Bonheur_Matisse.jpg<br /><br />Here is another version of his still-life with dancing studies, Nasturtiums with the Dance II:<br /><br />http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Henri_Matisse%2C_1910-12%2C_Les_Capucines_%28Nasturtiums_with_The_Dance_II%29%2C_oil_on_canvas%2C_193_x_114_cm%2C_Pushkin_Museum.jpg<br /><br />As with the one you provide, there is indeed room to suppose the eponymous “still-life” of fruits and flowers might be shown to have been supplanted as objects of study by the dance – and, indeed, the fruits and flowers foregrounded in yours might be seen to be critically appraising the canvas in the background, the none-too-usual amphorae-like handles Matisse provides the flower vases suggestive of a figure's indignant hands-on-hips; the fruits prostrate, rolling about the table, hard-pressed to conclude anything from their vantage (and thus perhaps accounting for their “glisten of new dew,” lol); whereas, in Nasturtiums, the dance is portrayed upon a wall and the foregrounded still-life becomes a squat, handle-less, globular pot with curling nasturtium stems spilling out of an abruptly tapered, narrowed end, moved to the middle-ground, and centrally placed atop a three-legged platform apparently designed to be raised higher or lower by mechanical means. Spun, perhaps; or raised and lowered notch-by-notch. <br /><br />How and why did they come together? Well, in that I too find Matisse's Dance (beginning with Le bonheur de vivre) to allude to Blake's depiction of dancing fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, I'll hazard it has something to do with four nights of pomp, triumph, and revelries. :)<br /><br />M.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com