Flowers of the Unicorn Tapestry

The Unicorn in Captivity
South Netherlandish, 1495-1505
Wool warp with wool, silk, sliver, and gilt wefts
12ft. 7/18 in. x 8 ft. 3 in.
The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937

I had been wanting to see the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters for many years. I have blogged about them here, and even written about their floral designs in this article (posted on my blog) on plants in the decorative arts (the original pdf article is on pp 3-4 of the Summer 2007 issue of the Botanical Artists of Canada Newsletter). As I wrote in my blog post in 2010 (when I first wanted to see them):

I have never been to The Cloisters, but have always known that they house the beautiful tapestries The Hunt of the Unicorn. But, I was lucky to see another set of unicorn tapestries, The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la Licorne), housed in the Musée de Cluny, in Paris.

And from my article:

One of the most enchanting mergers of scientific observation and religious symbolism are the tapestries of the Hunt of the Unicorn. These tapestries are covered with the late Medieval tradition of fields of millefleurs. When analyzed carefully, many of these flowers are clearly identifiable, in their correct environment. The Madonna Lily, depicted in The Unicorn in Captivity tapestry, is both a religious symbol of the purity of Mary and also a medicinal plant that treated burns, ulcers and ear infections, amongst other things.

Finally, I got to see them during my trip in New York this past August. I tried to take photos (without my flash, as instructed by the guards), but couldn't come up with any decent images, so I had to make do with a postcard of The Unicorn in Captivity from the gift shop.

Here is a link to the Met, which has details of the flowers on the tapestry:
The Unicorn Tapestries: Flowers, Plants and Trees

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Portrait d'Une Négresse

Michelle Obama Nude Portrait
[This is one title I can find for the work.
Another is simply First Lady Michelle Obama]
By: Karine Percheron-Daniels

[I cannot find a date for this work, and even Percheron-Daniels doesn't give a date on her site. I would assume it is from midway into Obamas presidency, which could make it between 2011-2012]

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A Spanish magazine has a crude portrayal of Michelle Obama on its recent cover (see above image). It is after a nineteenth century painting of a slave woman titled Portrait d'Une Négresse by which is on display at the Louvre in Paris. The painter of Portrait d'Une Négresse is Marie-Guillemine Benoist, whose paintings are mostly of female, and feminine, figures both domestic and political. The famous characters she paints are related to prominent male figures, and their prestigious positions are often due to these associations.

Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist
Portrait d'Une Négresse, 1800
Oil on canvas
Paris, Musée du Louvre

Benoist also paints many domestic scenes, mostly of mothers with their young children. So, although a female painter, her subjects were very much feminine (and not feminist).

Benoist's painting is "interpreted" by Karine Percheron-Daniels, another female artist, although a 21st century post-modern one, whose repertoire is re-interpretations of paintings and works of famous figures whom she unclothes in various levels of nudity.

I thought that perhaps Percheron-Daniels actually paints her "parodies" but true to the mediocrity of post-modern artists, she is described in many sites as a "mixed-media" artist. Wherever I find works of hers that look like they were drawn (or painted), it is clear that she is a mediocre painter and drawer.

Here is how this site describes her technique:

The photo was created by photo-shopping or super-imposing Mrs. Obama’s face onto a black female drawing from 1800 entitled “Portrait d’une negresse” by Marie-Guillemine Benoist who was a French artist. The combination of altered artwork and cover photo is part of a “Famous Nudes” series created by artist Karine Percheron-Daniels.

Is it surprising that this "artist" (albeit one whose repertoire is unclothing famous personalities) might some day be tempted to paint Mrs. Obama with her upper body exposed? Although Obama has never shown us any crude, half-exposed breasts as some kind of fashion statement, she has given us plenty of shots of her bare shoulders with intimidatingly large muscles. Perhaps that is one of the reasons Percheron-Daniels chose Michelle Obama as her subject, and in that particular pose (notwithstanding the "blacks and slavery" angle, which she uses to demonize America, and particularly white America).


Perhaps this is the model that allowed Percheron-Daniels to depict the First Lady in semi-nudity. The photo above is from a post I did on Michelle Obama's "off-one-shoulder" style which she wore at the State Dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2011 (I describe the gown as "some kind of modern tied-dye African costume" so there's another angle Percheron-Daniels might be following). Mrs. Obama has no qualms about pulling down her bodice as far as possible without causing a national scandal to show us her toned muscles which she cultivates in the gym.

So far, there's no news on how the First Lady is taking this depiction of her.

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Straus Park in New York

Bronze figure titled "Memory" gazing into the reflecting pool
in Straus Park was sculpted by Augustus Lukeman
and dedicated on April 15, 1915.

I had my tablet with me while sitting in Straus Park in the Upper West Side in New York, and searched for the biblical quotation inscribed behind the statue (in gold, it is visible in the above photo) to see it in the context of the biblical story it came from:

Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives
And in their death they were not divided
II Samuel 1:23

The quote is a strange and obscure one. It tells the relationship between a father and a son (Saul and Jonathan), whereas the memorial is dedicated to a married couple.

I suppose we can use biblical texts to transfer to, and describe, many kinds of loves. Still, it is a little strange to transfer a father/son love to that of a married couple.

Ida and Isador Straus were on the Titanic when it sank. Ida, rather than save her life by boarding a lifeboat which was rescuing women and children (first), decided to stay with her husband as the ship sank. Eye witnesses say that Ida chose to remain on board with her husband, saying,"I have lived all these years with you. Where you go, I go."

Straus Park with the sculpture and the small garden,
with 106th street in the background

I think a Biblical quote more appropriate to a married couple could have been found. I'm not sure who chose this quote, but it is probably a team of people from the various New York city offices, the sculptor and the the Straus family descendants. The plaque behind the memorial informs us that it was:


There is also an eternal fountain (see top image), which originally flowed into a reflecting pool. The pool was filled in to create a flower bed for easier maintenance.

Water lilies float serenely in the reflecting pool during
the dedication of the Straus Memorial in 1915
[Photo Source: Library of Congress]

The portrait below is of Isador and Ida Straus. Here is information on Isador Straus, who was an important citizen of New York:

Isidor Straus (February 6, 1845 – April 15, 1912), a German-American, was co-owner of Macy's department store with his brother Nathan. He also served briefly as a member of the United States House of Representatives. He died with his wife, Ida, in the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Titanic.

Isador and Ida Straus about 1910
[Photo source: Straus Historical Society]

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At the Cloisters

Standing Virgin and Child
Attributed to Nikolaus Gerhaert von Leiden
(North Netherlandish, active in Strasbourg, 1460–1473)
Date: ca. 1470
Medium: Boxwood, tinted lips and eyes
Dimensions: 13 1/4 x 5 1/8 x 3 9/16 in.

Above is a photo I took of The Standing Virgin at the Cloisters Medieval Gallery in New York. She is enclosed in glass. I wasn't aware that I couldn't use my flash. The museum staff were quick to point that out to me, upon seeing the sudden flash of light. I apologized - I really don't want to participate in the destruction of these beautiful pieces. The damage was done, but I got the lovely photo above, with the light glowing on the faces of Mary and Jesus, and on the folds of Mary's robe. The stained glass window on the left, part of the collection in the Treasury, is reflected in the glass on the right.

Although it isn't that unusual to see a depiction of the Madonna and child in stained glass windows, it is still a little bit of a coincidence that the image in the glass behind The Standing Virgin also depicts the Madonna and Child. I instinctively included the whole of the stained glass background, although most photos I find of this sculpture crop off the background (as I show in the collage below - one even obstructs a stained glass with the sculpture). For example, this could have been a perfectly acceptable version, which focuses almost entirely on the sculpture (I cropped the image in photoshop, not in camera):


The stained glass is:


Virgin of the Apocalypse
Circle of the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet (active 1470-90)

Date: ca. 1480–90
Geography: Made in, Middle Rhine, Germany
Culture: German
Medium: Colorless glass, silver stain, and vitreous paint
Dimensions: 13 7/8 x 9 5/8in.

The imagery depicted on this panel derives from the Book of Revelation, which describes "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (12:1). The Virgin standing on a crescent moon, surrounded by rays of light, is a specific iconographic type, of German origin, which became popular by the middle of the fifteenth century. Encircled by the rays of perfect light, the Virgin, Queen of Heaven, outshines the transitory and evanescent nature of all other realms, just as the sun dissipates the light of the moon.

The softness and delicacy of the figures, as well as the unmannered, free use of line, place this panel in the immediate circle of the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, arguably the greatest graphic artist active in northern Europe before Albrecht Dürer. [Source: Metropolitan Museum]

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I've written about the external beauty of the Cloisters here and here, but the Cloisters also house an expansive, and beautiful, collection of medieval art. The Standing Virgin is in the newly re-opened Treasury, which is:

an intimate gallery displaying some of the most precious small-scale works at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages – has reopened to the public after two years of renovation. Originally constructed in 1988 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of The Cloisters, the Treasury houses small luxury objects acquired in the years subsequent to the branch museum's 1938 founding. [More on the Treasury here]

It was The Standing Virgin that caught my attention. I was taken in by the intricate carvings of her robe, her expression which is a mixture of alarm (she sees something in front of her) and expectancy, and her playful infant with his chubby cheeks and legs. Yet, this is clearly Jesus, who is blessing us. The guide who took us around said that the sideways view is as important (if not more important) than the view from the front, since Mary is holding her child sightly forward, so that his two-finger blessing is clearly visible from the side, and he is slightly ahead of Mary, making him more important then her. I found the back view also important, but in an artistic sense. The carver has not cut any corners with the back, giving us a detailed carving of her long locks, Jesus' curly hair, and the shawl on Mary's head which is draped forward leading us to Jesus' hand which is holding it at the front.

The Standing Virgin, images acquired from
various sources around the web.

In the bottom right of the collage is a reliquary arm.

Here's what the Metropolitan Museum's website says about this object:

Reliquary Arm, ca. 1230
South Netherlandish
Silver over oak; hand: bronze-gilt; appliqué plaques: silver-gilt, niello and cabochon stones
25 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 4 in.
The Cloisters Collection, 1947 (47.101.33)

Precious containers for relics—the bones of a holy person, or objects touched by that person—are among the most inventive and accomplished works of art in the Middle Ages. In this reliquary, a silver and gilded arm is bordered both by decorative filigree plaques set with gems and antique cameos, and figurative scenes crafted in niello on silver. These plaques include images of saints Peter and Paul, perhaps the patrons of the church from which this reliquary originally came. As a reliquary was thought to retain the power and holiness of the saintly person, clergy used arm reliquaries to bless people or heal the sick.

It is of course a larger, and more imposing (and truncated!) version of the blessing that Jesus is giving in the sculpture.

The wood used to sculpt The Standing Virgin is a rich, red wood. It is identified as "Boxwood" in the catalogs. Wikipedia says this about Boxwood:

Owing to its fine grain it is a good wood for fine wood carving, although this is limited by the small sizes available. It is also resistant to splitting and chipping, and thus useful for decorative or storage boxes. Formerly, it was used for wooden combs.

Owing to the relatively high density of the wood (it is one of the few woods that are denser than water), boxwood is often used for chess pieces, unstained boxwood for the white pieces and stained ('ebonized') boxwood for the black pieces, in lieu of ebony.

The extremely fine endgrain of box makes it suitable for woodblock printing.

And this about its use for musical instruments:

Due to its high density and resistance to chipping, boxwood is a relatively economical material used to make parts for various stringed instruments. It is mostly used to make tailpieces, chin rests and tuning pegs, but may be used for a variety of other parts as well. Other woods used for this purpose are rosewood and ebony.

Boxwood was a common material for the manufacture of recorders in the eighteenth century, and a large number of mid- to high-end instruments made today are produced from one or other species of boxwood. Boxwood was once a popular wood for other woodwind instruments, and was among the traditional woods for Great Highland bagpipes before tastes turned to imported dense tropical woods such as cocuswood, ebony, and African blackwood.

The Standing Virgin is attributed to Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leiden. She stands about 13 1/4 inches high, and was carved around 1470 [Source: MetMuseum.org].

Here is biographical information on the sculptor Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leiden:

Gerhaert is considered the most influential northern European sculptor of the 15th century. He was born in Leiden, Holland (present day Netherlands) sometime around 1420. Based on the location of his work, we know he spent most his working life in the Germanic areas of Trier, Straßburg, Baden, Konstanz, and Vienna. Much of his documented work is lost to history, but what has survived is characterized by elaborate drapery and extreme physical realism, both extraordinarily vivid and unconventional. His specialties were tombs, altarpieces and other religious pieces. Sandstone and limestone are among his most frequent mediums.

One of his most well known works currently resides in the Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame in Strasbourg (Alsace, present day France). Called the Buste d'homme accoudé (1467), it is an indisputed masterpiece, and is believed to be a self-portrait. Gerhaert died on 28 June 1473 in Wiener Neustadt (present day Austria)

Man Meditating (Buste d'homme accoudé),
an apparent self-portrait, c. 1467

Another source describes the stone as Red Sandstone. Gerhaert seems to like rich rose colored media, like the boxwood he used for The Standing Virgin and the reddish sandstone he used Man Meditating. The Cloisters also incorporate pink marble from the Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa Benedictine monastery, located at the foot of Mount Canigou in the northeast Pyrenees of France, into the architecture. More current areas of the building also retain that warm, pinkish hue.

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La Dentellière and the Lacemaker

La Dentellière is a hard film to take. It was showing recently on the French channel Télévision Français de l'Ontario (TFO), which is the french version of TVO, Television Ontario, last night. I hesitated to watch it, since I knew it would be a sad film to watch.

The lovely Isabelle Huppert is a young actress in this film.

I didn't get the connection between the film and the painting until the very end. Huppert turns her head and looks at us, the audience. It's the culmination of the many things her character, Pomme (her nickname which means "Apple" because of her round face), has gone through.

I've written about the uncontrollable desire to animate Vermeer's paintings, as though their stillness is some kind of suspended animation (or life). I've noticed that many artists feel the same way. Most, though, make small animated spurts of the actual painting. Claude Goretta, who directed La Dentellière, creates a whole story behind The Lacemaker. He brings the painting to life both through animation and through story, and creates a new character to embody her.

The film is from the novel La Dentellière by Pascal Lainé, who writes of Pomme:

She was like one of those genre paintings where the subject is captured in mid-movement. Her way, for example, of pursing hairpins in her lips as she redid her hair bun! She was The Laundress, The Water Girl, or The Lacemaker.

He is, of course, talking about Vermeer, after whose Lacemaker he titles his book.

Vermeer, Jan
The Lacemaker
c. 1669-1670
Oil on canvas transferred to panel
23.9 x 20.5 cm (9 13/32 x 8 1/2 in.)

It was fun to see Paris in the seventies, but most of the film takes place in the northern seaside resort of Cabourg. This is partly a story about sexual liberation, and the societal responsibilities (or irresponsibilities, more like) that followed from that era. A lovely, delicate girl like Pomme, again an apt name because she does look as lovely, fresh and round-faced as an apple, would have probably got a lot of protection from her mother and especially her male family members in per-feminist eras. "Elle est fragile," says Pomme's friend, who brought her to Cabourg for a short vacation, but has no time for the especially vulnerable Pomme. She probably brought her along on vacation to help with the hotel bills.

The Grand Hotel de Cabourg, where Pomme would sit
at their outdoor cafe with her chocolate ice cream
and a view of the Atlantic

Under normal family protection, some Don Juan wouldn't have been able to walk through the door, decide that he likes what he sees, and try to seduce (if he moves too fast, she might fly away) a young girl, without everyone making sure of his true intentions (i.e. marriage). That is what François, the young man Pomme meets on her trip to the seaside, tried to do.

Pomme was adept in many ways, although she would probably be considered a little slow. She works in a hair salon (mostly doing the hair of "vielle dames" as she explains), could manage many daily tasks well, and she maneuvers her way around Paris without difficulty. She is a respite for her young seducer, a University literature student full of ideas of romance, from the harsh feminists that surround him daily. I think that men are tired of feminists and feminism, even though many liberal men are staunch supporters of feminism. When it hits their daily life and choices, I am sure they would go for a gentler soul like Pomme. François realizes too late that he really was dealing with a vulnerable soul, and his clumsy attempts at seduction worked because Pomme really did like him, and trust him (he was different from the boys who whistle at her in the Paris streets). But, after he sleeps with her, he loses interest, or more precisely, he realizes he was dealing with not a savvy city girl, but a fragile, pure, soul he couldn't protect (or love). Pomme, uncharacteristically, had already told him she loved him after their night together, and it was too much for him to handle.


Huppert, in the still above from La Dentellière, has an uncanny resemblance to the woman in Vermeer's painting.
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Here is an article I wrote on Vermeer:
Vermeer's Discerning Light

And here is a blog post I wrote on the desire to animate Vermeer's works:
Vermeer's Light and Movement

In the blog, I've posted a very short animation I made of The Lacemaker. I've also made a box with the face of the lacemaker printed on fabric and stretched on the outer and inner lid of the box. The outer lid is a re-print of the original Vermeer painting. When opened, the inner lid shows a photoshopped version of the lacemaker, with her eyes up and looking out at us. The outer cover is of browinsh/yellowish hue, similar to the hues of the original painting. The inner is a light (celestial?) blue.

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A Road Less Taken

A view of the Cloisters with the Hudson River

I cannot upload photos from my camera to the computer I'm using while in New York. I will make a file (a post) of photos I took here when I return to Toronto.

But, there are plenty of online images to download.

I tried to get to the Cloisters today. They are a branch of the Metropolitan Museum, but they are somewhere in the Netherlands of New York City. They are located in an area called Fort Tyron Park. The closest street intersection is 190th Street. I'm not sure if this is the Bronx, or if it is still Harlem, but I decided to take the M4 bus which supposedly goes straight there. It didn't happen so easily.

There was some kind of parade (actually it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, or more precisely the National Puerto Rican Day Parade - what is "national" about Puerto Ricans in New York?) which held up buses between 44th and 79th on Fifth Avenue. At one point I waited close to half an hour to get a bus. When one finally arrived and we climbed on, we had to get off on 135th Street because...well the driver couldn't give a reason. He parked the bus and waited inside. Then this parked bus suddenly took life, and the patient group that was waiting for another (some people just left - to catch a cab?!) was allowed back on this one.

But it really was worth the wait. The ride on the M4 from about 135th street down to 79th was incredible. The bus went down Riverside Drive, along the Hudson and past the beautiful Riverside Church (which I think is even more beautiful than St. Patrick's, or St. John the Divine's just above 110th Street) until the driver turned on 79th Street and took Broadway. I went all the way to 59th Street and Columbus Circle and took the M10 down Central Park West, to get more views of another of New York's beautiful park. I got off just before 110th Street, where Central Park ends, to get to where I was staying on the Upper West Side. The ride took shorter than I thought, although it is a good 45 minutes. I highly recommend this "tour" for a mere bus token ($2.25). There were plenty of tourist buses taking a similar route, and I'm sure their's was an expensive affair.

A view of the Riverside Church with the Hudson River

One of the reasons I wanted (want) to go to the Cloisters is to see the beautiful unicorn tapestries.

The Unicorn in Captivity
At The Cloisters

(I've linked to backgrounds on The Cloisters and the tapestries, but I will write some more tomorrow on how they got to New York and to such a location. It is a fascinating bit of New York history.)

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A Hierarchy of Bouquets

Left: Marc Chagall, Bouquet sur Fond Orange, ca. 1975
Middle: Raoul Dufy, Le Bouquet d'Arums, 193)
Right: Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, Bouquet de Fleurs, 1968

Larger images:
- Marc Chagall's Bouquet sur Fond Orange
- Raoul Dufy's Le Bouquet d'Arums
- Jean-Pierre Cassigneul's Bouquet de Fleurs

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I've found similarities between Chagall, Dufy and Cassigneul (see my posts on their paintings here, here and here). But, like everything in art, there is a hierarchy. It goes:

First: Chagall
Second: Dufy
Last: Cassigneul

1. Chagall's Bouquet sur Fond Orange is an explosion of colors. But his painting is much more organized and structured than it seems. For example, he has divided his color blocks into three: floral sections of violet/blue and red/pink, and green/yellow leaves. The orange, which is reflected in the brownish pot, is the glow of light which illuminates the forms. Being Chagall, he cannot help but add in his village/town life, a glance at civilization. This painting is about an arranged, designed vase of flowers, not flower growing in the wild. Homes line the painting's background, and a fruit tree, another form of civilization, stands next to the table with the flowers. His bouquet dwarfs other items on the table, and rightly so since it is the most important item in the painting. It dwarfs a bowl of fruit and what look like a bottle of wine and a glass filled with wine, and a salt or pepper shaker. A miniature women dressed in red stands by the table. Clearly, the subject of the painting is the bouquet, and not her.

2. Next in hierarchy are Dufy's whimsical flowers in Le Bouquet d'Arums. Dark red and black ink trace the forms of calla lilies, leaves and small floral shapes, which are covered with strokes of colors. These colors are suggested rather than filling the forms with exactitude. The red flower could be a carnation: the lilac and purple of small flowers, the yellow and white of the lilies, and dark green for leaves. Rather than result with an unfinished effect, this evokes whimsy and delicacy, where shapes float in colors, and colors never completely define, or constrain shapes.

3. Finally Cassigneul's Bouquet de Fleurs. I tried looking for flowers without the perennial silent woman that fills his works, but could find only a few. I couldn't find any of the joyful, colorful renditions of bouquets that Chagall and Dufy paint. Instead, this was the best I could find. As always with Cassigneul, there is a lack of form. The tulips and roses are a blurred and shapeless, and the leaves blend into the background wall. Dufy's quasi-unfinished forms give us whimsy; Cassigneul's just look unfinished. This is because Cassigneul doesn't draw, but rather paints spots of color to form his shapes. His pot is the most elaborate of the three paintings, but it distracts from the flowers. Chagall left his pot without patterns. Dufy's callas could be in a garden, or in a vase that is below the paintings frame. Cassingeul pot is covered with an unidentifiable pattern his pot, which add a further layer of confusion. As always with Cassigneul, I feel that he is a clever painter, but not a very talented one.

And when we put him alongside the other two, we can see his limitations even more.

Art these days lacks a critical approach, partly because of the attitude that "everyone is an artist, don't you know," and a disrespect for art history and all our predecessors. We seem intent on working with a clean memory slate.

And modern art is all about deconstructing, then reconstructing. This is great if you were born about seventy-five years ago, where there were great works to deconstruct (and reconstruct, in your fashion). What we have now is an already diluted, deconstructed art, several generations down the masterpiece line. What can we deconstruct? The deconstructed pieces? This, of course, resulted with the famous empty canvasses that hang on museum walls, to the amusement of the unsuspecting public. Now, we just works that are dredged from an empty imagination, since there is nothing left that is worthy enough to guide us.

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"My eyes were made to erase what is ugly"

Left: Dufy, Jetee d'Honfleur, 1930
Right: Cassigneul, La Plage Aux Hortensias, 1985

[More images after the end of the post]

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Raoul Dufy:

"Mes yeux sont faits pour effacer ce qui est laid"
("My eyes were made to erase what is ugly")

A couple of days ago, I posted some images by Jean Pierre Cassigneul, a painter whose print I have carried around for many years. Yet, I don't know (or didn't bother to know) much about it, or him.

It is Dufy who has always attracted me. From a long time back, I started to study his vivid colors and exotic (French) locales. He painted a variety of subjects, but almost always the same ones. He painted mostly the French coastline, often in southern France in Nice, but sometimes in the north in Deauville and Honfleur. He scatters his scenes with people. His themes include: at the racehorses; sailboats; views of the sea through open widows; bouquets of flowers; musical instruments; and some famous European (mostly French) towns and buildings. He was also a diverse artist and designer, making textile prints, tapestries, murals, furniture, woodcuts, lithography, ceramics and theater sets.

Dufy is certainly the more important painter. Cassigneul never got the similar popularity. I think Cassigneul paints well. His subjects are pleasing and his paintings pretty. But there is a lack of completeness in his paintings, like a slightly blurred photograph, or a painting without the moldings of light and dark (shadow and light) to give them a three dimensional quality.

For all of Dufy's Fauvist "seemingly wild brush work and strident colors...with [his] subject matter [having] a high degree of simplification and abstraction [source]" his paintings are defined and sure, even if they often look like watercolor sketches. Sail boats have clear lines; horses are molded and given rounded bodies through dark and light paint; the sea is differentiated with white paint for crests and dark blue for troughs; the outer and inner colors of petals are given different shades; and he painted portraits of actual, recognizable people, rather than anonymous subjects like Cassigneul.

Cassigneul paintings are pleasantand flattering to the women, who are his central (overwhelming) theme. But they are always anonymous women, and he tells us nothing about their personal backgrounds: no names, titles, positions, or even relations. Many have dark, vacant eyes.

Dufy's subjects look anonymous, but they are seldom alone, and are almost always within a social context of the horse races, at the regattas, or on piers and promenades. We recognize the individuals and groups of individuals through their social and cultural milieu. Where his subjects are alone, they have distinct features. They are almost exclusively women, either painted as portraits or nudes. And in many of his portraits, he gives us the names of these female subjects.

Left: Dufy, Portrait of Regina Homburger, 1952
Right: Cassigneul, Profile, 1982

Left: Dufy, Reggatta, date not available
Right: Cassigneul, Dans le Train Bleu, Côte d'Azur, 1970

Left: Dufy, Fenêtre ouverte sur la mer, ca. 1923
Right: Cassigneul, Femme au Balcon, Vue de l'Avenue Foch, 1990

Left: Dufy, The Racetrack, 1928
Right: Cassigneul, Longchamp, ca. 1967

Left: Dufy, Le champ de courses de Deauville, ca. 1941
Right: Cassigneul, Dimanche au bois, 2008

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Time For Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas are blooming now, from yellow/cream puffs to variations of mauve and violet.

I have had the above postcard for years, and managed to keep it pretty much in tact. It has no title except at the back there is "Reproduction d'une oeuvre de Jean-Pierre Cassigneul," and a copyright with 1980 - it is not clear if that is the date of the painting or of the postcard print.

Cassigneul is a painter I really don't know anything about. Here is his website, with a biography and a large sample of his works. He draws and paints sinewy, pensive women in big hats, often by the seaside which looks like the northern French coastline, surrounded by large bouquets of flowers, often hydrangeas. He had his first exhibition in 1952, and is still producing work.

A recent Christi's auction brought $266,500 for Cassigneul's painting Le Massif d'Hortensias. That's a pretty respectable price.


I cannot find the title or the date of the piece above, but it has the grayish cast of the northern France coast. The muted colors of the hydrangeas brighten the painting. There are ships on the water, so this cannot be a view of some large river. Dieppe and Deauville are large towns on the Atlantic coast, although Deauville is (and was) a more popular vacation resort. Many of Cassigneul's paintings have Deauville as the seaside resort, so even those not bearing that city's name most likely depict it.

L'Hortensia Bleu, 2007

L'Hortensia Bleu is a dark, broody painting, with blue wall paneling and a violet/blue hydrangea. The empty writing pad suggests a letter that cannot be written, where words are not forthcoming. The wicker chair belongs to the southern, airier climate, but even that doesn't give respite to the dark interior.


The above piece is titled Le Massif d'Hortensias and again I cannot find its date. It is one of the few pieces which evoke the heat of a summer in southern France. But the surrounding trees suggest a northern region.

Femme au Balcon, Vue de l'Avenue Foch, 1990

Finally, above are hydrangeas even in the city, with the gray background reminiscent of the norther sea. This time, I was able to find a title and a date for the painting. This painting appears to have been appraised at between $72,921 and $97,228.

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All Scrubbed Up

TD Centre Cows
[Photo by KPA]

These calm and lovely cows sit and mull over their surroundings.
Yesterday, they had more to look at. The Royal Bank building
in the background (whose windows are filled with pieces of
gold leaves) was glowing in the afternoon sun.

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These are my favorite animal sculptures in Toronto. They sit in front of the Toronto Dominion Centre, calmly (as cows are wont to do) gazing at passersby. Some stop and sit to eat their lunch, drink a coffee, or dialogue with a colleague. But most just walk hurriedly by them.

I brought a small bottle of orange juice as a respite from the unbreakable heat we have here (although not as bad as what our neighbors to the south are experiencing), and sat on one of the few stone benches scattered around the grounds.

There is construction going on in the area (and has been for about a year now), and a construction worker walked by me.

"Hello there," I called out a greeting.

"Hi," replied the busy man, walking on.

"Have you been working around here for long?" I persisted. "Don't you think these cows have been given a scrubbing recently?"

He stopped, and laughed. And looked back at the cows.

"Yes they do look cleaner. They just got moved back from another location."

"Yes, I know. Maybe they wanted them to look as good as new, now that they're back in their old place. Thanks, bye."

He went off chuckling.

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A Petty Vandal's Petty Conquista of "Art"

Left: Woman in a Red Chair. Picasso, 1929
Menil Collection. Houston Texas
Right: Defaced painting

Here is the story of an "artist" defacing the work of another "artist."

Houston cops are hunting for a dapper art vandal who was caught on video spray-painting a priceless Pablo Picasso painting at a museum last week.

Cell phone video shot by a visitor at the Menil Collection Wednesday showed a suave hoodlum in a dark suit jacket and sunglasses spray-painting a stencil over the Spanish master's Woman in a Red Armchair...The brazen graffiti writer sprayed a picture of a bullfighter slaying a bull and the word "Conquista" on the painting.

The witness who shot the video told KPRC television that he confronted the well-dressed vandal afterward.

The vandal said he was an up-and-coming artist and desecrated the artwork in order to honor Picasso, the witness, who didn't want to be identified, told the station.

In this era when "art" is the most scared thing around, it is truly a sacrilege to deface a "work of art," even an ugly and mediocre painting!

But Picasso had it coming. I visited a recent exhibition of his work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and concluded that he was one of the biggest artist frauds around, and not only that, he was also one of the biggest defacers of art.

It is ironic that another useless, talentless artist should mimic him, to the extent of defacing his (Picasso's) images. Picasso's students cannot be accused of hypocrisy.

But, of course, this vandal only did superficial harm, since all he did to the painting was spray gold (!) paint on it, scribble the word "conquista" and a stick-bull. And isn't spray paint, the modus operandi of graffiti "artists," itself considered art by our connoisseurs these days? Picasso's heirs are pretty lame.

And to make it even worse, this petty vandal was caught on a cell phone! Some museum patron video taped the whole incident on his cell phone and "confronted the...vandal afterward." So much for a Kodak Moment gone awry. I actually don't know who is worse, the vandal, or the cell phone hero, who just wanted another sensation to post on his Youtube/twitter/blog.

Gretchen Sammons, a museum spokesman, assures us that:

'The artwork is currently with the museum's onsite conservation lab. The prognosis is good. But we have no idea when it will be back on display. It's an active investigation with the Houston police.'

The prognosis is good!

I'm working on a blog post on ancient Greek and Roman culture, which I viewed at the Royal Ontario Museum recently (actually, I've been there several times this past month). As I went through the sculptures, I was astounded at the beauty of the work, and specifically the carvings of delicate, gauze-like drapes on these sculptures.

As I looked at these works, I remembered seeing similar translucent drapes on one of Picasso's paintings at the AGO. It is on Les Demoiselles Avignon, a painting that distorted nude female figures and covered them with a gauze-like material. Someone as clever as Picasso (and as talent-bereft) could have only got the idea from these classic Greek and Roman sculptures. And of course, rather than marvel at the beauty of these sculptures and elevate them, the petty, envious Picasso can only desecrate and destroy them. And his are not goddesses, as the Greeks and Romans portray, but prostitutes from a whorehouse in Spain.

At one time, destroying or effacing the works of art of a civilization would be enough to start wars. And no, Woman in a Red Chair is not art, which the reason why the only irate person was a cell phone "artist" who just wanted the images for his personal gallery on twitter.

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Picasso's Fraud

Pablo Picasso
Figures au Bord de la Mer, 1931

On loan to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto
for the exhibit: Picasso: masterpieces from the
Musée National Picasso, Paris

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Tom Wolfe understood the high level farce of Picasso, as he writes in The Painted Word:

...a few fashionable people discovered their own uses of [Modern Art]. It was after the First World War the modern and modernistic came into the language as exciting adjectives...By 1920, in le monde*, to be fashionable was to be modern, and Modern Art the new spirit of the avant-garde were perfectly suited for that vogue.

Picasso was a case in point. Picasso did not begin to become Picasso, in the art world or in the press, until he was pushing forty and painted the scenery for Diaghilev's Russian ballet in London in 1918. Diaghilev & Co. were a tremendous succès de scandale in fashionable London. The wild dervishing of Nijinsky, the lurid costumes - it was all too deliciously modern for words. The Modernistic settings by Picasso, André Derain, and (later on) Matisse, were all part of the excitement, and le monde loved it. "Art," in Osbert Lancaster's phrase, "came once more to roost among the duchesses."

Picasso, who had once lived in the legendary unlit attic and painted at night with a brush in one hand and a candlestick in the other - Picasso now stayed at the Savoy, had lots of clothes made on Bond Street nearby, went to all the best parties (and parties were never better), was set up with highly publicized shows of his paintings, and became a social lion - which he remained, Tales of the Aging Recluse notwithstanding, until he was in his seventies. [pp 27-30]

I'm still trying to find researched articles (or books) on the artists that influenced Picasso (or that Picasso copied from, to use a more accurate activity). My recent tour through the Picasso exhibit at the AGO was of some help, but few of the commentaries by the paintings indicated his actual (artistic) influences. I wrote about it in my blog in 2008 thus:

Anyone who has studied Picasso will realize the fraud that he is, just as Tom Wolfe writes. Every step of Picasso's, which was so radically different from his previous steps (from his blue period, to his "cubism" to name the more famous ones), was a copy of other more serious artists in his milieu. An art critic who doesn't recognize this is being dishonest, to say the least.

I got these ideas from somewhere. I studied art books, paintings and gallery pieces over a number of years to have reached this conclusion. I remember telling my film teacher, Bruce Elder, that I thought Jackson Pollock was a fraud, throwing paint on paper. Granted, he had a good aim, but so do I being a former goal shooter for my netball (English version of girls' basketball) team. And that Picasso was a bigger fraud than Pollock because his fraud was not even his own physical effort, like Pollock's was. Picasso copied the movements and artists around him (some with considerably more talent and innovative abilities like Braque) and made a ton of money by "redefining" his art every now and then to his gullible, rich patrons, who loved this modern idea of "progress" in art. Professor Elder eyed me with suspicion after that, and rightly so. I ended up critiquing his work too [here and here].

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*...the social sphere described so well by Balzac, the milieu of those who find it important to be in fashion, the orbit of those aristocrats, wealthy bourgeois, publishers, writers, journalists, impresarios, performers, who wish to be "where things happen," the glamorous but small world of that creation of the nineteenth-century metropolis, tout le monde, Everybody, as in "Everybody says"...the smart set, in a phrase..."smart," with its overtones of cultivation as well as cynicism [p 16].

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Free Fall

Nico, Los Angeles, CA 1966
Photo by Lisa Law

I wrote about Nico, the odd, deep-voiced chanteuse of the Velvet Underground here. The photo I posted is actually a cropped version of an original by "rock" photographer Lisa Law. Nico has her feet (precariously) on the ground, as though she fell from the sky (or a tree). So even in my original interpretation of the cropped version, I was right that her movements showed the instability of someone wavering between free fall and stability.

Here is what Lisa Law, the photographer who took the black and white photo of Nico writes about her experience with mind altering paraphernalia. She was in good compaly with Nico.

Psychedelics assisted me in seeing that we are all one, not just us humans but everything on the planet, the animals, the trees, the water, the air, the earth, the plants. God is always present. It is a very humbling, unifying, heeling feeling that affected the way I looked at the rest of my life.

The first time I took LSD, Owsly's purple liquid, I knew life would never be the same.

Below is a much better photo of Nico. The freedom one associates with floating, swimming or being in water with all our senses in tact (which is how I like being near or in water) is not there. She is overwhelmed, and has a defiant, but frightened look, goading the water to come get her, as she probably does the heroin she used to smoke (shoot), and yet is petrified at the same time. Her behavior is not one of bravery, but of recklessness, as she well knows. Even Lou Reed writes in his heroin song: "Heroin, be the death of me."

Nico, 1967
Photo by Michael Ochs

All people want stability and beauty, amongst many other human (humane) necessities. Hippies are no exception. Law lived in a hippie commune called the Castle in San Fransisco, which she describes as a mansion. Below is a short transcript from her interview with journalist Tom Lyttle. I cannot find the date of the interview, but it looks like it is in the 1990s. The online version is a pdf article and is clearly a copy of an original. It is also available as an html online. This excerpt is from page eighteen if the article:

If the Factory [Warhol's New York studio] was a place that the beautiful people hung at...then the Castle was the West Coast version of that. Word traveled fast and in the two brief years that we were there, everybody came by to visit and hang out, partake, party, sing, make love, eat, write songs and dance their hearts out. Tom Law and John Phillip bought it with Jack Simons for mere $100,000 and had to sell it at a loss. John Getty owns it now.

Vultures like Law and Warhol collected their beautiful people only to desecrate and destroy them later. This is what Wikipedia says about Nico, after her initial glamor and beauty wore off:

Nico was a heroin addict for over 15 years. In the book Songs They Never Play on the Radio, James Young, a member of her band in the 1980s, recalls many examples of her troubling behaviour due to her "overwhelming" addiction...Shortly before her death, Nico stopped taking heroin and began methadone replacement therapy while also embarking upon a regimen of bicycle exercise and healthy eating.

Despite her career in music, she was deaf in one ear, which made it difficult for her to understand what others were saying.

On 18 July 1988, while on holiday with her son on the Spanish island of Ibiza, Nico had a minor heart attack while riding a bicycle and hit her head as she fell...[She] died at eight o'clock that evening. X-rays later revealed a severe cerebral hemorrhage as the cause of death.

Nico was buried in her mother's plot in Grunewald Forest Cemetery in Berlin. A few friends played a tape of "Mütterlein," a song from [her album] Desertshore , at her funeral.

Mütterlein
By Nico

Dear little Mütterlein
Now I may finally be with you
The longing and the loneliness
Redeem themselves in blessedness

The cradle is your homeland-dress
A gracefulness your glory
In ecstasy your heartbreak transforms
And reaches inside of the victorious tide

Beauty alone is not enough.

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Bob Dylan's Desk, the Castle, 1965
Photo by Lisa Law

Bob Dylan also stayed at the Castle. Above is a photo of a corner of his room by Lisa Law, beautiful and ordered, with a Tiffany style lamp, a patterned cloth on the table, and some small carved animals. He has a view.

The Castle, Los Angeles, 1965
Photo by Lisa Law

Above is the Castle where the hippies hung out. Beauty is clearly not wanting, including a sports car, meant for the rich and famous but why not for hippy squatters as well?

Drudge has an article about drug use (abuse) in contemporary teens from in the suburbs, and links to this Daily Mail article. Not crack or marijuana for these pampered adolescents, but heroin. These are the children of the sixties.

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"Le Tout New York on a Cubist Horse"

After my run through of the Picasso exhibition at the AGO, which I wrote briefly about here, and which I will expand upon soon, I remember reading a scathing article/book/review of his work, namely that his talent as a painter was negligible, and that he didn't have much of a training. I thought it was Roger Scruton (whose book Beauty I recently bought and will review in full soon) who wrote it, or possibly Kenneth Clark in his book Civilization, which I also have.

Looking online, I found this interview of Tom Wolfe by National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Bruce Cole, where Wolfe states that Picasso didn't have the training nor the skills of an artist. Below is part of the interview:

Cole: Since Picasso, the hallmark of great art has been originality, which was certainly not the case in the preceding periods. Since everyone is original now, how do you know who is original? There are no boundaries anymore.

Wolfe: Well, the art world decides for you. That's, that's really what happens. Tom Stoppard in his play, Artist Descending a Staircase, has one of his characters say that imagination without skill gives us modern art.

Cole: I do think you're seeing a return to the object and the figure. But my question is can you ever put it back together again after artists have really seen things in different ways?

Wolfe: Often the artists simply have not been taught. They don't know enough about draftsmanship to do it. They don't know enough about color. They don't know enough about light and shadow. You can see a lot of it in Picasso.

Picasso left art school at the age of fifteen, on the grounds there was nothing more they could teach him. This is extolled in biographies of Picasso. Unfortunately, he never learned perspective. In his realistic period, early in his life, there's never a room with perspective. He puts a figure or two and a stick of furniture in the foreground, and everything beyond them is fog. He never really learned anatomy. In many of his realistic pictures, fingers and thumbs are like a bunch of asparagus that you buy in the grocery store. He was never very good on things like foreshortening. If I were as ill-prepared as Picasso or Braque I would have thought up a name like Cubism, too, as a way of legitimizing one's lack of skill.

I think that the book I'm looking for is Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word, with the sections on Picasso. Below are the chapters of the book:

Chapter I: The Apache Dance
Chapter II: The Public is Not Invited (and Never has Been)
Chapter III: Le Tout New York on a Cubist Horse
Chapter IV: Greenberg, Rosenberg & Flat
Chapter V: Hello, Steinberg…
Chapter VI: Up the Fundamental Aperture

I will get a hold of The Painted Word (which I thought I had in my book collection) to re-read and to review.

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Doors At Old City Hall and Magritte's Clouds

I posted a photo of the doorway at the Old City Hall yesterday, and I chose to post the one which cropped off the bottom half of the door.

This was an instinctive choice, I didn't really think much about it. But, looking back at the full length f the door, I notice now that the clouds reflecting on the window panes of the door are much clearer on the cropped version.

And to be completely honest ( :-) ), I didn't notice the clouds in the window panes as I was taking the photos in the first place. I was more interested in the Romanesque engravings above the doorway, a well as the carvings on top of the doors.

Still, something interesting came out of my shoot. The clouds in the window panes resemble the cloud paintings that modernist painter Magritte was famous for. And modernists are big on the "element of surprise," something which happens when we are "not thinking" or "not reasoning" but let our subconscious lead us to the right image. I guess my subconscious saw those clouds, registered them, and influenced my conscious being to take the photo.

Whatever the reason, it worked!

René Magritte
"The Human Condition", 1933.
Oil on canvas

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Madonna: Modern Day Cybele

Group Orgy with Madonna and her Homosexuals

I wrote about Madonna's homosexual stilettoed dancers and her new music video Girl Gone Wild here. The dance troupe is from the Ukraine and calls itself Kazaky or Boys in Heels. Wikipedia describes them thus:

Kazaky (also known as The Boys In Heels) is an all-male Ukrainian dance group. Assembled by choreographer Oleg Zhezhel, the group has released several songs which have garnered popularity on YouTube. The group confronts gender norms by fusing masculine and feminine attributes together, most notably by regularly wearing stiletto heels.

Strange cultural and artistic phenomena often have ancient and mythic precedences. Madonna's homosexual men are like the castrated dancers of the Greek goddess Cybele, who danced around their goddess into sexual frenzy. Here is more on the cult of Cybele:

The cult of Cybele was directed by eunuch priests called Corybantes, who led the faithful in orgiastic rites accompanied by wild cries and the frenzied music of flutes, drums, and cymbals. Her annual spring festival celebrated the death and resurrection of her beloved Attis.

And more on the word "eunuch":

[T]he word ‘eunuch’ has many meanings to modern scholars. It may...refer to transgendered individuals, and it has been used to refer to gay individuals... When a Galli, transgendered priestess of the Magna Mater, Cybele, was unearthed in York a few years ago, the skeleton was said to be of a eunuch; it was found surrounded by female accoutrements and clothing samples.

This site provides interesting and comprehensive information on Cybele and her followers, including the transgendered, sado-masochistic nature of the male eunuchs/homosexuals, and their frenzied, orgiastic rituals.


Fashion designer Anna Osmekhina designed Kazaky's "costumes." Her dress above (not used in Kazaky's performances) has ancient Greco-Roman goddess references, and it is snips and cuts suggest a sado-masochistic style, thus fitting well with her costume creations for the Kazakys.

Kasaky Fashion, by designer Anna Osmekhina
 
The stilettoed fashion of the blatantly homosexual Kazakys
 
The stilettoes of Madonna's dance troupe have multiple meanings. One obvious meaning is their evocation of penetration (through both the female sexual organs and the anus). Since this group of dancers is openly gay, penetration would clearly not be of the female anatomy.

Anal penetration, usually a homosexual sexual act, is a violent act. Here is what could/can happen:

Since the rectum doesn't produce natural lubrication like the vagina does, anal sex risks tearing the rectal walls or the sphincter...that presents a real chance of potentially lethal peritonitis due to leakage of fecal bacteria into the abdomen...A 2004 study by the American Cancer Association showed that women practicing anal sex had more than twice the risk of developing anal cancer...

Stilettoes also evoke sharp and dangerous weapons like knives. As I wrote here, one of the definitions for stiletto is "a small dagger with a slender, tapered blade," implying a covert and dangerous weapon. The homosexual movement is still, to a large extent, a hidden world (camouflaged as, say, fun pop dancers, or fashion-savvy commentators) but it is serious about changing, and destroying, our heterosexual society. However much homosexuals may praise females (or the female way of life), their ultimate purpose is to destroy the feminine and the female.

Christian history also figures in homosexual imagery. There is a clear analogy between Saint Sebastian and the convoluted body of one of Madonna's dancers (see image below). The dancer's body looks like it has been pierced with arrows, like the saint's body.

Left: Saint Sebastian
By: Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi), 1525  
Right: A dancer from 
Madonna's 2012 video 
Girl Gone Wild
 
Perhaps the earliest, least ambiguous, homoerotic associations of St. Sebastian with homoeroticism occurred in the early sixteenth century:

In about 1525, Bronzino painted an unconventional Saint Sebastian with unmistakable homoerotic appeal...The arrows, moreover, are not abstracted symbols of his ordeal...but erotic emblems: one penetrated his body, the other is casually, but suggestively, held against the pink drapery, the saint's index curved around and almost touching the arrowhead...These characteristics...suggest that (the painting) may have been intended to have an ambiguous meaning - an image on the one hand religious, and on the other, homoerotic...

Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo) 
Saint Sebastian ca. 1533

Later on,

From the Renaissance on, Sebastian is most often depicted tied to a tree, sometimes by one arm, gazing heavenward as his flesh is pierced by arrows, which may number from just a couple to a dozen, depending on the artist's enthusiasm; his body is made porous and "feminized" by the experience. His reception to this penetration has obvious associations with male homosexuality.

In our gender-bending, brave new world, Madonna is the gay icon. Homoeroticsm has made it into the mainstream (or, better yet, the mainstream has homoerotisized itself). If there is any advancement in the homosexual, socio-cultural history of man, it is that woman (big girl gone wild) is now the icon of the gay male. And she needn't prove her sainthood either, since nothing can be more highly esteemed and more saint-like in our modern, feminist, world than woman.

Kazaky is making its pop culture rounds these days. Sean O'Pry, a male model described as "American" (some websites describe him as White/Caucasian) but who has Asiatic features (Russian/Ukrainian?) stars in the video advertizement for the new cologne Spicebomb by Viktor and Rolf. The cologne bottle is shaped like a grenade. The slick black and white video shows the grenade/bottle exploding orgasmically to Kazaky's song Love as O'Pry struts in homoerotic half-nudity to the pulsing beat. O'Pry is also featured in Madonna's Girl Gone Wild video.

It is a small, gay world after all.

Sean O'Pry, an "American" model, also 
described as White/Caucasian, with
Asiatic (Russian/Ukrainian?) features

At the end of the Spicebomb video, we are left with a blank, white screen, cleared of all signs of life.

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