Kaoru Kakizakai: a modern Komuso (Zen Priest of Nothingness) plays Shakuhachi

Kaoru Kakizakai in Athens

Introduction

I was blessed to attend a recital by Kaoru Kakizakai in the Onassis Cultural Center of Athens, Greece.

Kaoru Kakizakai is a master of shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute.

In the sections that follow I try to present the key aspects of the history and the tradition surrounding the shakuhachi, the profile of the master soloist, and some of the pieces he played in the concert.

But behind or above or beyond all of this, the revelation for me is that this instrument produces the sound of the soul.

So if you want to hear the sound of the soul (see also my article on Butoh Dance “Not thinking, only soul”), carry on reading.

Sui Zen: Blowing Meditation.

Shakuhachi

“Shaku-hachi” means “one shaku eight sun” (almost 55 centimeters), the standard length of a shakuhachi.

The bamboo flute first came to Japan from China during the 6th century. The shakuhachi proper, however, is quite distinct from its Chinese counterpart– the result of centuries of isolated evolution in Japan.

Sanzo Wada: The Komuso

During the medieval period, shakuhachi were most notable for their role in the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhist monks, known as komusō (“priests of nothingness,” or “emptiness monks”), who used the shakuhachi as a spiritual tool. Their songs (called “honkyoku”) were paced according to the players’ breathing and were considered meditation (suizen) as much as music.

The primary genres of shakuhachi music are

  • honkyoku (traditional, solo),
  • sankyoku (ensemble, with koto and shamisen), and
  • shinkyoku (new music composed for shakuhachi and koto, commonly post-Meiji era compositions influenced by western music).

The Komuso

虚無僧 (komusō) means “priest of nothingness” or “monk of emptiness”

Komuso

The komuso monk wore a straw basket on his head, the tengai. This denoted the absence of specific ego.

What the hat also did was remove their identity from prying eyes. That of a komusō was a popular disguise for spies, samurai, particularly ronin, and supposedly ninjas.

Fuke Zen (Fukeshu) comes from the teachings of Linji Yixuan, a Zen teacher from China in the 9th Century. Fuke however is the Japanese name for Puhua one of Linji’s peers and co-founders of his sect. Puhua would walk around ringing a bell to summon others to enlightenment. In Japan, it was thought the shakuhachi could serve this purpose.

Komuso print

Fuke started as early as 1254 by the priest Kakushin, who visited China and learnt there not only theology but music. Upon his return he wandered about Japan preaching and playing the flute.

Komusō practiced Suizen, which is meditation through the blowing of a shakuhachi, as opposed to Zazen, which is meditation through sitting as practiced by most Zen followers.

The Fuke sect of Zen was active during the Edo period 1600-1868.

The Meiji Emperor, moving from Kyoto to Tokyo in 1868

With the Meiji Restoration, beginning in 1868, the shogunate was abolished and so was the Fuke sect, in order to help identify and eliminate the shogun’s holdouts. The very playing of the shakuhachi was officially forbidden for a few years. Non-Fuke folk traditions did not suffer greatly from this, since the tunes could be played just as easily on another pentatonic instrument. However, the honkyoku repertoire was known exclusively to the Fuke sect and transmitted by repetition and practice, and much of it was lost, along with many important documents.

When the Meiji government did permit the playing of shakuhachi again, it was only as an accompanying instrument to the koto, shamisen, etc. It was not until later that honkyoku were allowed to be played publicly again as solo pieces.

Kaoru Kakizakai

Kaoru Kakikazai

Kaoru Kakizakai studied under and recorded with Yokoyama Katsuya. He graduated from the NHK Traditional Music Conservatory and was a past winner of the Kumamoto All Japan Hogaku competition. Kakizakai has performed widely in Japan and abroad, including as shakuhachi soloist in Toru Takemitsu’s November Steps with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. As of 2006, he is a research fellow at the Tokyo College of Music. He is also full-time instructor for the International Shakuhachi Kenshukan and NHK Culture Centre, and President of the International Shakuhachi Kenshu-kan Chichibu School and Higashi Yamato School.  He is a member of the regular faculty of the Shakuhachi Summer Camp of the Rockies in Colorado (USA).

Kaoru Kakizakai in Athens

The program

I will refer to some of the pieces played by the soloist. The explanatory notes for the pieces are sourced from the excellent “komuso.com”, The International Shakuhachi Society.

Koku

The concert started with this traditional piece.

Empty Sky is the usual translation of Koku.

It fails, however, to convey the meaning of the original Chinese characters, which by definition, cannot be known by the rational mind of the ‘relative’. The second character of the word, ‘ku’ is easy; it means ‘sky’ or ‘air’. The first character ‘ko’ is not so easy. It refers to a concept that is in the realm of the Absolute and therefore cannot be explained or understood with words. Words, and indeed our thoughts, are of the world of the relative. For example, the word ’empty’ has no meaning apart from the word ‘full’. The work ‘ko’, on the other hand, does not mean merely ’empty’, because it is not the opposite of ‘full’; it is ‘that’ which has nothing to do with ‘fullness’.

Hokusai: The big wave

Daha

Traditional

Daha / Pounding Wave is a prayer for the will power or determination to achieve one’s highest aspirations. There are times when strong, intense, and unyielding determinations, like the ocean waves pounding at the cliff face, is appropriate. Other times, gentle, patient and unceasing will power, like the quiet waves lapping at the base of the cliff, gives better results. This piece reflects both the Yin and the Yang of will power.

Pregnant women playing in summer heat (5 heads, 10 bodies) -- Utagawa Kunitoshi, 1881

San’an

Traditional

Folklore has it that when the wife of a shakuhachi player became pregnant, he would pass grains of rice through his flute and play this song while cooking the rice for his spouse as an offering for safe birth. Some Buddhist sects believe that at a certain level one’s soul or spirit chooses one’s parents and karma determines the place and/or conditions into which one is reborn. This feeling of wanting to be born safely into the conditions and with the people one chooses is the attitude of prayer involved here.

Although many recognizable rhythms make this piece easy to play from memory, interspersed throughout are melodies full of strong passion. This is somewhat different than the image of honkyoku as serenely meditative. Meditative energy can, indeed, be very powerful and dynamic. This song is also the most technically demanding of all the dokyoku. Throwing a unique sound into the middle of a melody that is flowing along smoothly can be a real challenge. From a technical standpoint, linking up sounds that are quite diverse is the big difference between honkyoku that move along slowly and honkyoku that progress at a swifter pace.

A word of note: Yokoyama-sensei admitted that he played San An all four times his wife was pregnant, praying for a boy on each occasion! Playing this piece earnestly many times is undoubtedly how he came to master it. Nevertheless, one must recognize some inherent limitations when dealing with the gods as Mrs. Yokoyama gave birth to four daughters!

Kaoru Kakizakai in Athens

Tamuke

Traditional

“Tamuke” literally means “hands folded together in prayer” and is a eulogy or requiem for the departed souls of loved ones. It is a melody that brings indescribable sorrow and stillness deep into the heart. Tamuke originated in the Fusai Temple in Ise, Wakayama Prefecture, a branch of the Kyoto Meian Temple. Let’s look at the image of a person sitting in prayer, facing. . . what? Facing the unknown. Someone special and dearly loved has crossed over to the other side. You are communicating with them, however, your mind faces “nothing”. You expect them to walk through the door any minute, but they do not. They have vanished from the face of the earth. The rational mind cannot deal with this very well. We sit in an attitude of respect for both the deceased and in the face of the unknown. When one goes through this “tearing away” that occurs when someone who is a part of your life dies, a wide range of emotions are experienced: pain, anger, fear, sadness, bewilderment, hope, expectation, helplessness, grief, and so on. Tamuke gives us a vehicle to express these deep feelings and a way to communicate with our loved ones.

In Japan, most homes have a Buddhist altar where one can sit and connect with those who have passed on from this world. Often there is a photograph of the deceased in front of the altar as well as some food or drink they enjoyed. One sits at the altar, burning incense and communicating in some form, usually by chanting a sutra, by talking or even in the silence of memories. This is wonderful because, in Japan, there is a place to make such contact in a most natural way.

A shakuhachi player can sit in this space before the altar playing Tamuke until the person in his or her heart appears. Time is not part of this world; one should naturally lose oneself in this process and several hours will pass in an instant. Play shakuhachi to express the emotions you experience at the gates of death. Play while remembering the things you experienced with this person, recalling their existence as if you are sharing old stories with them. Play until tears of sadness stream down your cheeks, then tears of happiness, as you feel their presence sitting next to you and the relief that they still have an existence, albeit in a different world.

The feeling of Tamuke is whatever you bring to it. Not just a sad effigy, but something very real as you play from your life experience. Do what is natural. Play happily if you feel like doing so; this is a private matter. Tamuke gives an opportunity to play from the core of your life. This skill cannot be taught, but only learned through “doing”.

Koson Ohara: Itsukushima torii with stone lantern and deer

Shika no Tone

Traditional

“Shika No Tohne” describes a scene in deep autumn when the voice of the male deer calls for his female deer mates. And this type of descriptive scene has been used in poetic material since the time of the “Kokin Washu” (an ancient poetry anthology).

“Shika No Tohne” can be played as a solo piece, however, in a duet, the ending of one musical phrase overlaps into the beginning of another. This piece can be divided into five parts. After the introductory phrase of the whole piece, the first part is that which is played with the special “Mura-Iki” technique with the octave rising. Part two takes in part one, moreover, four individually characteristic melodies develop. Emotionally, part two is the climax of the entire piece. In the third section, the previous high feeling is succeeded and then every phrase intensifies. Then, to our surprise, the first melody re-appears abruptly. In part four, the melody proceeds calmly and the fifth part is brief, concluding the whole piece. In this concluding part, it is as if, rather than viewing deer, the focus is changed to that of the scenery deep in the mountains where the leaves on the trees have turned red and yellow. This is felt because the ending of “Shika No Toneh” is so calm.

Japanese bronze vase, early 20th century

Tsuru no Sugomori

Nesting of cranes

Traditional

Tsuru no sugomori depicts various aspects of the life cycle of the crane, a bird symbolizing longevity in Oriental thought. A pair of cranes build a nest, lay an egg, raise a fledgling and rear it to maturity before bidding it farewell as it flies away and they are left to live out their allotted life span. Although the whole piece can be appreciated as a piece of absolute music, it is equally interesting to note the variety of programmatic playing techniques used in describing the wing flutters (trill-like fluttering effects, heard between 1:00 and 3:00 minutes), the cries (another trill-like technique, heard between 4:00 and 7:00), and even the fledgling’s departure from its parents (a simple melodic line heard at around 7:50). As a whole, this piece is thought to emphasize Buddhistic values of affection between family members.

Sanno Shinto Shrine, 800 meters from the hypocenter of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945

Kata Ashi Torii no Eizou

Composer: Toshinao Sato

If you climb up some stone steps in the Sakamoto machi (Nagasaki), you will find a torii gate (a two-legged arch at the entrance to Shinto shrines) with only one leg. I’m not certain what time it was exactly the first time I saw it, but I’ll never forget how I stood rooted to the spot, staring in utter amazement as I considered what brought about that empty space and the mechanics of the balance of the structure. In 1970 when I was asked by the famous Kohachiro Miyata to write an unaccompanied shakuhachi solo for him, the image of that torii gate somehow attached itself to that request. Looking back, it seems to have been a mysterious connection. Without a doubt, this one-legged torii gate was created by the atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki. The anger and tragedy of those victims of long ago are enveloped in this music. – Toshinao Sato

Kaoru Kakizakai in Athens

Material sourced from:

1.Relevant  wikipedia articles

2. The Zen priests of nothingness, ABC Radio

3. The International Shakuhachi Society

Martha Argerich and friends play Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for 4 Pianos, BWV 1065

On Monday 12th March 2012 I was lucky to attend a concert given by Martha Argerich and a group of young pianists in the Athens Concert Hall “Megaron”.

The program comprised Igor Stravisknky’s Rite of Spring arranged for four pianos and percussion, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s three concerti for pianos and orchestra, BWV 1060, 1064 and 1065.

The friends are young pianists who have already performed in Martha Argerich’s project, an annual event taking place in Switzerland.

Argerich played in the last concert  for four pianos and orchestra, JS Bach’s BWV1065. This is a transcription of Vivaldi’s concerto for 4 violins in B minor, op.3 no.10, RV 580.

In addition to Martha Argerich, the other thee piansits who performed in the concluding concerto were:

Lily Maisky

Lily Maisky

Lily Maisky was born in Paris in 1987, moving to Brussels soon after. She performed with such artists as Mischa Maisky, Julian Rachlin, Janine Jansen, Renaud Capuçon, Sergey Krylov, Nicholas Angelich, Frank Braley, Gérard Caussé, Chantal Juillet, Dora Schwarzberg. She is the daughter of the cellist Mischa Maisky.

Alexander Mogilevsky

Alexander Mogilevsky

Pianist Alexander Mogilevsky was born in 1977 in Odessa, Russia, and regularly appears at music festivals such as Martha Argerich’s project in Lugano, Switzerland; Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival; Verbier in Switzerland; and the Roque d’Antheron Piano Festival in Mikkeli, Finland.

Alexandros Kapelis

Alexandros Kapelis

Born of a Greek father and Peruvian mother, Mr. Kapelis grew up in both countries during his formative years. Mr. Kapelis has appeared with the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Camerata Italica, the Monterrey Symphony (Mexico), the Filarmónica de Lima (Peru), and the Orchestra ton Chromaton (Greece).

Martha Argerich

There is no point to say anything about Martha Argerich. She just comes from another universe.

The Orchestra

The in house orchestra of Megaron of Athens, the Kamerata Orchestra, was conducted by Gerard Korsten.

I found concerto 1065 exceptionally youthful and playful, totally out of line with the rather somber tone of JS Bach’s work. It could be the Italian influence. After all, this is a transcription of Vivaldi’s concert for four violins, as I mentioned earlier.

My strongest impression though, was that this was more of a game played between the pianists. All four of them were having great fun. I do not recall another performance of classical music where the musicians were having so much fun. Argerich has managed to create an atmosphere of musical creativity that is combined with sheer joy. And it shows.

I found in youtube a performance of concert 1065 from Verbier  on 22 July 2002, with Martha Argerich playing one of the four pianos. The other three pianos were played by: Evgeni Kissin, James LEvine, and Mikhail Pletnev.

In the orchestra you will enjoy the presence of Sarah Chang, Gidon Kremer, and Mischa Maisky.

Enjoy it.

Time according to Theo Angelopoulos – Ο Χρονος κατα τον Θοδωρο Αγγελοπουλο

Theo Angelopoulos: Ulysses' Gaze

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

Theo Angelopoulos: Voyage to Cythera

Ο παρων και ο παρελθων χρονος

Ισως ειναι κι οι δυο παροντες σε χρονο μελλοντικο,

Και ο μελλοντικος χρονος εμπεριεχεται σε χρονο παρελθοντα.

Αν ολος ο χρονος ειναι παντοτινα παρων

Ολος ο χρονος ειναι χωρις λυτρωμο. 

(Η αποδοση στα ελληνικα ειναι δικη μου)

Burnt Norton, Four Quartets, T S Eliot

Theo Angelopoulos: The Weeping Meadow

Introduction

Theo Angelopoulos died in a accident on 24 January 2012. He was a Greek film director, producer and screenwriter.

Ο Θοδωρος Αγγελοπουλος πεθανε σε τροχαιο ατυχημα την 24η Ιανουαριου 2012. Ηταν σκηνοθετης, παραγωγος και σεναριογραφος.

As it happens with every great filmmaker, a lot has been written and said about Angelopoulos. Most of it is stereotypical and cliche, which Angelopoulos himself hated. As an example, I site his “left wing” ideology, that he was the filmmaker of the “defeated” side in the Greek civil war of 1944-1949. In addition, a lot has been written regarding Angelopoulos’ “sequence-shot”, which imposes huge demands on the spectator, almost forcing him to delve into the image and its slow motion. Angelopoulos is notoriously difficult, but pays off handsomely the brave ones who can stand their ground in front of the ocean of slow images the director throws at them.

Όπως συμβαινει με καθε μεγαλο σκηνοθετη, εχουν ειπωθει και γραφτει πολλα για τον Αγγελοπουλο. Και τα περισσοτερα απο αυτα ειναι κλισε και στερεοτυπα που ο ιδιος ο Αγγελοπουλος απεχθανοταν. Αναφερω για παραδειγμα το οτι ηταν αριστερος, το οτι εκανε κινηματογραφο για τους ηττημενους. Επισης πολλα απο τα γραφεντα και γραφομενα εχουν να κανουν με τα παροιμιωδη πλανα-σεκανς του Αγγελοπουλου, που απαιτουν απο τον θεατη να εντρυφησει στα οσα βλεπει. Ο Αγγελοπουλος ειναι πολυ δυσκολος αλλα ανταμοιβει πλουσιοπαροχα οσους αντεξουν.

In his artistic development and path Angelopoulos followed a helix curve. Its description requires a separate article and I will not do it today. Today I want to focus on Angelopoulos’ treatment of time, a recurrent and self-standing topic in his movies.

Στην καλλιτεχνικη του διαδρομη ο Αγγελοπουλος ακολουθησε μια ελικοειδη πορεια. Και μονο η περιγραφη της απαιτει ενα ξεχωριστο αρθρο. Δεν ειναι αυτη η προθεση μου σημερα. Σημερα θελω να εστιασω στον τροπο με τον οποιο ο Αγγελοπουλος χειριστηκε τον Χρονο, που ειναι ενα συνεχως αναδυομενο και αυτοτελες θεμα στις ταινιες του Αγγελοπουλου,

Theo Angelopoulos: Voyage to Cythera

Part I: The sequence shot

Μερος 1ο: Το πλανο-σεκανς

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”

Το παρελθόν δεν είναι ποτέ νεκρό. ∆εν έχει καν παρέλθει.
Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner

The sequence shot is one of the trademarks of Angelopoulos and a major tool in his treatment of time in his films.

“The sequence shot offers, as far as I’m concerned, much more freedom,” Angelopoulos explained. “By refusing to cut in the middle, I invite the spectator to better analyse the image I show him, and to focus, time and again, on the elements that he feels are the most significant in it.” (The Guardian)

Το πλανο-σεκανς ειναι απο τα ιδιαιτερα χαρακτηριστικα του Αγγελοπουλου και σφραγιζει την διαχειριση του χρονου στις ταινιες του.

Σε αρθρο της βρεταννικης εφημεριας “Γκαρντιαν” διαβαζουμε τη σχετικη αναφορα – δηλωση του Αγγελοπουλου: “Το πλανο-σεκανς κατα τη γνωμη μου σου δινει πολυ περισσοτερη ελευθερια. Αρνουμενος να το κοψω στη μεση, προσκλαω τον θεατη να αναλυσει καλυτερα την εικονα που του δειχνω, και να εστιασει ξανα και ξανα στα στοιχεια εκεινα που αισθανεται οτι ειναι τα πιο σημαντικα μεσα σε αυτο.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The weeping Meadow

David Jenkins in his BFI article, helps us with the way Angelopoulos is deploying the “sequence shot”:

“His stock-in-trade is the immaculately choreographed sequence shot in which his camera lopes ominously and gracefully across landscapes, through rooms, shacks, courtyards, over and around huddled crowds of people who themselves produce artful formations as they mingle within the frame. His colossal geopolitical masterwork from 1975, The Travelling Players (O thiassos), offers just 80 separate shots during its four-hour running time. History, catastrophes, celebrations, political intrigues, social shifts are rarely recounted in the traditional linear sense – rather, they are daubed on to a vast and elaborate narrative fresco.”

Theo Angelopoulos - Reconstruction film poster

Ο Ντειβιντ Τζενκινς σε αρθρο του στον ιστοχωρο του Βρεταννικου Κινηματογραφικου Ινστιτουτου αναπτυσσει τον τροπο με τον οποιο ο Αγγελοπουλος χρησιμοποιησε το πλανο-σεκανς στις ταινιες του.

“Το σημα κατατεθεν του ειναι το αψογα χορογραφημενο πλανο-σεκανς, στο οποιο η καμερα του με χαρη αλλα και απειλη δρασκελιζει νωχελικα τοπια, δωματια, καλυβες, αυλες, περιτριγυριζει συνωστισμενα πληθη πουαναπτυσσονται σε καλλιτεχνικα σχηματα καθως εμπλεκονται στο πλανο. Η κολοσσιαια γεωπολιτικη δημιουργια του απο το 1975, ο Θιασος, προσφερει μολις 80 διαφορετικες ληψεις στη διαρκεια των τεσσαρων ωρων της. Η Ιστορια, οι καταστροφες, οι γιορτες, οι πολιτικες συνομωσιες, οι κοινωνικες μεταλλαξεις, σχεδον ποτε δεν παρουσιαζονται με γραμμικο τροπο, αλλα στιβαζονται στον τεραστιο και περιπλοκο αφηγηματικο καμβα του Αγγελοπουλου.”

Part II: Beyond technique

Μερος 2ο: Το επεκεινα της τεχνικης

“Αιών παις εστί παίζων πεσσεύων”

Time is a child playing dice

Ο χρονος ειναι ενα παιδι που παιζει ζαρια

Heracletus, Ηρακλειτος

Theo Angelopoulos: The traveling players

Barthélémy Amengual notes in his essay “The poetics of History”:

“History dictates to the filmmaker his two major themes: time and remembrance. Time is the body and the place of History. Remembrance is the human form of time.  Remembrance is the clerk of time, but also its palimpsest. The last shot of “Reconstruction” reproduces the first shot. The traveling players ends in 1952 at the spot where it started back in 1932: the rail station of Aegion. All the actors are there, including those who have died or left.”

Ο Barthélémy Amengual στο δοκιμιο του “Μια Ποιητικη της Ιστοριας” σημειωνει:

“Η Ιστορία υπαγορεύει στον κινηµατογραφιστή τα δύο µεγάλα του θέµατα: το χρόνο και τη/τις µνήµη/ες. O χρόνος είναι το σώµα και ο τόπος της Ιστορίας· η µνήµη, η ανθρώπινη µορφή του χρόνου. Η µνήµη είναι ο γραµµατικός του χρόνου,
µα και το παλίµψηστό του. Το τελευταίο πλάνο της Αναπαράστασης αναπαράγει το πρώτο. O θίασος ολοκληρώνεται το 1952 εκεί όπου είχε αρχίσει, το 1932: στον σιδηροδροµικό σταθµό του Αιγίου. Όλοι οι ηθοποιοί είναι εκεί, ακόµα και
οι απόντες: αυτοί που έχουν πεθάνει ή αποχωρήσει.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The traveling players

“In Angelopoulos’ films time, which is nothing but the bedrock of every change, manifests itself between the start and the end of the same sequence shot. If the sequence has begun with the dusk, it concludes with the dawn. Like a river, if it starts flowing from a source, it ends at a totally different place. Time stems from and flows in fornt of our eyes, as we see a rose bloom in accelerated motion. The moment (in the context of the sequence shot) extends itself; we have to wait for the sugar to dilute itself first. After a while time is transformed (in the flow of panoramic travelling shots) by acquiring Bergsonian duration and, almost in hiding it is submerged in history. The present becomes remembrance; not a frozen dot in the past, but a moving unit of becoming, a gathering of being, of the group, of the world.”

“Στον Αγγελόπουλο, ο χρόνος, που δεν είναι παρά η κοίτη κάθε αλλαγής, εκδηλώνεται µεταξύ αρχής και τέλους του ίδιου πλάνου-σεκάνς. Αν το πλάνο έχει αρχίσει σούρουπο, ολοκληρώνεται την αυγή· αν έχει αρχίσει σ’ έναν τόπο, εκβάλλει σ’ έναν εντελώς διαφορετικό· αν σε µια εποχή, καταλήγει σε µιαν άλλη. O χρόνος πηγάζει και κυλά µπροστά στα µάτια µας, όπως βλέπουµε ένα ρόδο ν’ ανθίζει µε αξελερέ. Η στιγµή (στο πλάνο-σεκάνς) παρατείνεται: πρέπει πρώτα να περιµένουµε να λιώσει η ζάχαρη· µετά από λίγο, µεταµορφώνεται (µέσα στη ροή των πανοραµικών τράβελινγκ) σε µπερξονική διάρκεια και, στα κρυφά, βυθίζεται στην Ιστορία. Το παρόν γίνεται µνήµη· όχι νεκρό παρελθόν σηµείο, αλλά κινούµενη µονάδα τού γίγνεσθαι, συνάθροιση του είναι, του ατόµου, της οµάδας, του κόσµου.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The traveling players

Part III: When the cycle closes

Μερος 3ο: Οταν κλεινει ο κυκλος

The secret roar of the approaching events is coming to them (the wise men).

Η μυστική βοή τους έρχεται των πλησιαζόντων γεγονότων.

C Cavafy, Σοφοι δε προσιοντων, Κωστας Καβαφης


Theo Angelopoulos: Ulysses' Gaze


In “Ulysses’ Gaze”, the Greek filmmaker “A”, played by Harvey Keitel starts his journey in the Balkans in a taxi driven by Thanassis Veggos, a legendary Greek actor. When they stop to rest on a snow-covered mountain, Veggos says:

“Do you know something? Greece is dying. We die as people. We have completed our cycle. I do not know how many thousands of years in the midst of broken stones and sculptures… and we die…

But if Greece is going to die, let her die quick! Because the agony lasts very long and makes a lot of noise.”

Thanassis Veggos in "Ulysses' Gaze"

Στην ταινια “Το Βλεμμα του Οδυσσεα”, ο Ελληνας κινηματογραφιστης “Α”, που τον υποδυεται ο Αμερικανος ηθοποιος Χαρβευ Καιτελ  ξεκινα το ταξιδι του στα Βαλκανια μεσα σε ενα ταξι που το οδηγει ο Θανασης Βεγγος. Οταν σταματουν να ξαποστασουν σε ενα ορεινο περασμα σκεπασεμνο με χιονια, ο Βεγος λεγει απευθυνομενος στο “Α”:  

“Ξέρεις κάτι; Η Ελλάδα πεθαίνει. Πεθαίνουμε σα λαός. Κάναμε τον κύκλο μας. Δεν ξέρω πόσες χιλιάδες χρόνια ανάμεσα σε σπασμένες πέτρες και αγάλματα… και πεθαίνουμε…

Αλλά αν είναι να πεθάνει η Ελλάδα, να πεθάνει γρήγορα! Γιατί η αγωνία κρατάει πολύ και κάνει πολύ θόρυβο.”

Eternity and a Day - Film Poster

Part IV: The return of the father

Μερος 4ο: Η επιστροφη του πατερα

Forthcoming is already present and becoming is already done.

Το γενόμενον ήδη εστί και το γίγνεσθαι ήδη γέγονεν

Ecclesiastes, Εκκλησιαστης

Theo Angelopoulos: Eternity and a day

During the Greek Civil War (1944-1949) Angelopoulos’ father was arrested by the leftists and disappeared without trace. Young Theo spent days going to mass graves with his mother, trying to locate the father. Eventually the father returned alive. In one of his interviews, Angelopoulos recounts:

“I was playing in the street when I saw him coming from a distance. Instead of shoes, he had his feet wrapped in rugs… I called for my mother. She came out of the house without breath. I remember how they run into each other… we got into the house… the emotions were so high that nobody was saying a word… we were watching each other in silence… he was not speaking either… we were watching the father, we were watching each other… We had soup for dinner, and it lasted for an eternity. I was 9 years old.”

The Hunters - Film poster

Ο πατερας το Αγγελοπουλου συνεληφθη απο τους αριστερους στη διαρκεια του Εμφυλιου Πολεμου και εξαφανιστηκε χωρις να αφησει ιχνη. Ο μικρος Θοδωρος περασε μερες με τη μητερα του, γυρνωντας απο τον ενα μαζικο ταφο στον αλλο, ψαχνοντας να βρουνε τον χαμενο πατερα, που τον νομιζανε νεκρο. Μετα απο πολυ καιρο, ο πατερας επεστρεψε ζωντανος. Σε ένα απόσπασμα συνέντευξής του («Θόδωρος Αγγελόπουλος», εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, σελ. 189) θυμαται:

“Έπαιζα στο δρόμο, όταν τον είδα να έρχεται από μακριά. Αντί για παπούτσια είχε στα πόδια πανιά… Φώναξα τη μάνα μου. Βγήκε αλαφιασμένη. Θυμάμαι πώς έτρεξαν ο ένας προς τον άλλο… μπήκαμε στο σπίτι… από τη συγκίνηση δεν μιλούσε κανείς… σωπαίναμε και κοιτούσε ο ένας τον άλλο… ούτε αυτός μιλούσε… κοιτάζαμε τον πατέρα, κοιτάζαμε ο ένας τον άλλο… Το φαγητό ήταν μια σούπα, κι αυτή η σούπα κράτησε μια αιωνιότητα. Ήμουν 9 χρονών”.

Theo Angelopoulos: Eternity and a Day

Epilogue

Επιλογος

I conclude this post wiht a comment I wrote on an article written by Nikos Xidakis in the daily newspaper “Kathimerini”. Xidakis claimed that Angelopoulos was the filmmaker of the “defeated” ones. Here is what I wrote in response:

“In my eyes Angelopoulos depicted in his own personal and unique gaze the existential deadend he experienced, exactly the way he lived through it, conceptualized it, and formalized it. There is a hero in his films, the filmmaker does not deny this. He is a lonely and defeated hero, but not necessarily. Defeat is not always a given. Angelopoulos’ hero has many questions and is not ready to accept the “easy” answers. Whether he is searching for his lost dreams, like Manos Katrakis in the Voyage to Cythera, or lost pioneers, like HArvey Keitel in Ulysses’ Gaze, the hero has more questions than answers. Angelopoulos’ Word is also very important, it is a Pictorial Word. Angelopoulos’ shots transcend Time and Space, and interweave them into a mix that is difficult to tread, and becomes sometimes repressive. The fog and the drizzle are heavy on you. Your gaze is dampened by the endless snowed landscape. But as the old saying goes: “Every man carries his own sadness.” Angelopoulos was brave to share his sadness with us, and express it in his own way. He did this in a authentic way, without screens and covers. This does not mean that his sadness and its expression are necessarily accepted or liked. Deconstructing it or, even worse, trying to appropriate it as your own has no meaning.”

Theo Angelopoulos: Eternity and a day

Σε σχολιο μου πανω σε ενα αρθρο του Νικου Ξυδακη στην Καθημερινη, που δημοσιευτηκε μετα τον θανατο του Αγγελοπουλου, εγραψα:

“Για μενα ο Αγγελοπουλος αποτυπωσε με το δικο του προσωπικο και μοναδικο υφος το υπαρξιακο αδιεξοδο που βιωσε, οπως το βιωσε και το συνελαβε και το τυποποιησε. Υπαρχει ο ηρωας, δεν τον αρνειται ο σκηνοθετης. Ειναι ενας ηρωας μοναχικος και ηττημενος. αλλα οχι αναγκαστικα. Η ηττα δεν ειναι παντα δεδομενη. Ο ηρωας του Αγγελοπουλου εχει πολλα ερωτηματα και δεν ειναι ετοιμος να δεχτει τις ετοιματζιδικες απαντησεις. Ειτε ψαχνει τα χαμενα του ονειρα, οπως ο Κατρακης στα Κυθηρα, ειτε ψαχνει χαμενους πρωτοπορους, οπως ο Καιτελ στο Βλεμμα του Οδυσσεα, ο ηρωας εχει πιο πολλες ερωτησεις απο απαντησεις. Ο Λογος του Αγγελοπουλου εχει επισης μεγαλη σημασια, αφου ειναι Λογος Εικαστικος. Τα πλανα του Αγγελοπουλου διασχιζουν τον Χωρο και τον Χρονο και τους συνθετουν σε ενα μιγμα δυσκολοδιαβατο και πολλες φορες καταναγκαστικο. Σε βαραινει η ομιχλη και το ψιλοβροχι, σου θολωνει το βλεμμα το χιονισμενο ατελειωτο τοπιο. Οπως ομως λεγαμε παληα στην Ελλαδα, “ο καθενας με τον καημο του”. Ο Αγγελοπουλος τολμησε να μας μιλησει με τον τροπο του για τον καημο του. Και το εκανε αληθινα, χωρις φερετζεδες. Αυτο δεν σημαινει οτι ο καημος αυτος και η εκφραση του πρεπει να ειναι αρεστος ή αποδεκτος. Ουτε και εχει καμια σημασια η αποδομηση του, ή ακομα χειροτερα, η αποπειρα οικειοποιησης του απο διαφορους.”

Theo Angelopoulos: The Dust of Time

Tracey Emin – British Artist

Tracey Emin - Photo: Scott Douglas MacNee

Doing cycles in the world of Art, today I have the immense pleasure of  hosting Tracey Emin, a British enfant terrible. As she approaches 50, Emin does not let go of the relentless defiance that epitomizes her style.

Tracey Emin: My Bed

“My Bed”, first created in 1998, was exhibited in TatGallery in 1999 and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Although it did not win it, it created a furore.

Tracey Emin: Sweet Thing

Emin’s ‘Sweet Thing’ was based on Robert Barn’s poem ‘Nine Inch Will Please a Lady’.

Emin has already created a mulitude of little drawings, the most famous one being a series on female masturbation.

Text-based neon signs have been current in art since the 1960s. The leader of the neon-sign trend was Bruce Nauman.

Emin’s neon text works are always made in her signature handwriting, emphasizing the personal nature of their commentary.

Emin at work in her East London studio (WSJ)

Emin has collaborated with Louise Bourgeois to create “Do Nor Abandon Me”, a set of sixteen drawings that “articulate physical drives and feelings, candidly confronting themes of identity, sexuality and the fear of loss and abandonment through joint expression.” (Hauser & Wirth Press Release)

Louise Bourgeois, Trace Emin: Do not abandon me

If I were to characterize Emin, I would call her a rebel without a cause. And she can be extremely funny.

Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin: Tippi Hedren Suit (WSJ)

She just spits it out, raw and violent, and sensitive, and lonely. There is no intellectual veneer, there is no politics.

Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin

 

Lynda Benglis – American Artist

Lynda Benglis at Le Consortium

Today’s post concludes a sequence of three consecutive posts dedicated to female American artists (poets are artists).

Lynda Benglis: Roberta (1974)

Sculpture, enamel, sculpmetal and tinsel on aluminium screeing and foil
Primary Insc: not signed, not dated.
79.1 h x 89.1 w x 41.3 d cm

Lynda Benglis is an American artist, mainly sculptor with Greek blood. Her father’s family was Greek in origin and she still has family on the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo.

She was born in Louisiana in 1941 and after graduating from college moved to New York in 1964.

Christopher Knight writes in Los Angeles Times:

“When she arrived in New York shortly after, in the mid-1960s, art’s purity police were out in full force, busily patrolling what artists shouldn’t do when making paintings and mustn’t do when making sculptures.

If you sense a collision coming, take a bow. Benglis, after surveying Manhattan’s art landscape, did the only reasonable thing. In the face of its ponderous penitential virtue, she brought Mardi Gras to Soho.

The fiesta was undertaken neither lightly nor at random. Ambitious, she looked hard at the local art that had come before, from the 1940s to the early 1960s. Much of it was great; still, it’s always helpful to know how we get to where we are.

She looked at Jackson Pollock’s skeins of dripped paint and at Helen Frankenthaler’s big puddles of stained color. Barnett Newman’s zip-lines — those ambiguous vertical bars of color dividing fields of painted light and darkness — came under scrutiny. So did more recent work: Carl Andre’s checkerboards of metal plates that turned the floor into an artistic pedestal for people, Donald Judd’s orderly sculptural subdivisions of space and Richard Serra’s molten lead splashed into studio corners — all of them sculptures directly challenging the postwar primacy of painting. “

Lynda Benglis: Smile (1974) cast bronze

Benglis has a powerful sense of humour, which she manifested gloriously in her 1974 advert in Artforum magazine.

Hilarie Sheets comments in her New York Times article:

“She (Benglis) lampooned both the machismo of the art world and the way artists were expected to promote themselves in a market-driven system by exposing herself, with a dildo between her legs, in a 1974 Artforum advertisement that she paid for, earning her as many fans as detractors.”

Lynda Benglis: Phantom

Arttatler offer the followng insight into Benglis’ work:

“Benglis’s best-known works question the rigors of Modernism and Minimalism by merging material, form, and content; bringing color back into sculpture; and taking painting off the wall. These works include her richly layered wax paintings and poured latex and polyurethane foam sculptures of the late 1960s and early ’70s; innovative videos, installations, and “knots” from the 1970s; metalized, pleated wall pieces of the 1980s and 1990s; and pieces in a variety of other mediums, such as glass, ceramics, photography, or cast polyurethane, as in the case of the monumental The Graces (2003-05)”

Lynda Benglis: The Graces

In her 2010 interview to the “frieze”, Benglis talked to Marina Cashdan about her art and work in a comprehensive way. I copy here one of the questions and the answer:

MC: Is Robert Pincus-Witten’s term for your work, ‘the frozen gesture’, a misnomer, because your work feels more like it’s living, an act as opposed to a confined object?
Lynda Benglis: Well ‘the frozen gesture’ was something that I think both Yves Klein and Franz Kline had done. Symbolically, Klein jumped out the window: he was involved with gesture, process (his ‘women brushes’ painting with their bodies) and the symbolic (sponges soaked with his paint on monochromatic blue canvases). Kline took the gesture and made it iconographic. Frank Stella said that Kline was one of his favourite artists, so I think Stella himself took the canvas, the stretcher bars, and turned them on their side to make them painted objects, as did other artists who were using materials and geometry. They were presenting something that was, in a way, rebellious and sometimes simplistic, and it was called Minimalism. I saw that and understood it in the context of where art could go, but for me it was a statement that seemed very rococo. It was way out on a limb. I felt that art had to have more content, a multiplicity of meaning and associations. And even many of those so-called Minimal artists broke out of their own self-created mould! ”

Lynda Benglis at Le Consortium

On the occasion of her first major retrospective in the UK, Benglis talked to “The Guardian’s” Laura Barnett, and concluded as follows:

“You can say, ‘Is there the influence of Greece?’ or ‘Do these works look like the sea?’ Those things are all there, but there are many other associations. I think all good art is really abstract. That’s how it transcends cultural differences. That’s how it speaks to us.”

Lynda Benglis: Untitled

1001 Ways to die (9) – Sylvia Plath, American, Poet, Novelist

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath, photographed in a hallway of Smith College, 1952

Sylvia Plath was born in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on October 27, 1932 the oldest child of Otto and Aurelia Schoeber Plath. The daughter of a Boston Univesity German and entomology professor and a high school English teacher, Plath was raised in a household that valued learning highly.  While in college, in August of 1953, Plath attempted to overdose on sleeping pills. This suicide attempt would be recalled years later in her poem, Lady Lazarus. Plath was able to return to college and only graduated a couple of months behind her class.

Ted Hughes

After receiving a Fulbright scholarship, she began two years at Cambridge University. There she met and married, in 1956, the British poet Ted Hughes.

Hughes was born on 17 August 1930 in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, and raised on local farms. According to him, “My first six years shaped everything”. He studied at Cambridge University and first published poetry in a journal launched with fellow students called St Botolph’s Review. It was at the launch party for the magazine that he met Plath, and they married in 1956.

Sylvia Plath in 1957

They separated in 1962.

On February 11, 1963, after carefully sealing the kitchen so her children would not be harmed, Sylvia Plath took a bottle of sleeping pills and stuck her head in a gas oven.

As Plath’s widower, Hughes became the executor of her personal and literary estates. He oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel in 1966. He also claimed to have destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last few months together. In his foreword to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, he defended his actions as motivated by consideration for the couple’s young children. He wrote about his relationship with Plath, and his response to her suicide, in Birthday Letters. It was his final collection and one of his most successful works.

In 1969 Hughes suffered another loss when his mistress, Assia Wevill, also gassed herself and their daughter in an apparent copycat suicide.

In 1982, Plath became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for The Collected Poems. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death.

Ted Hughes died from cancer in 1998.

On 23 March 2009, CNN reported:

Nicholas Hughes (right) in 1999

“The family history of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath took another tragic turn Monday when it was revealed that their son had committed suicide after battling depression.

Nicholas Hughes, whose mother asphyxiated herself in 1963 by putting her head in a gas oven at her London home while her two children slept in the next room, hanged himself at his home in Alaska, his sister Frieda told The Times newspaper.

Hughes, 47, was unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.”

O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----
Sylvia Plath, Nick and the Candlestick
Sylvia Plath: Boat in Rock Harbor, Cape Cod

A selection of 44 ink and pen drawings by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was exhibited for the first time between 2 Nov and 16 Dec 2011 at the Mayor Gallery in London, displaying Plath’s love for her “deepest source of inspiration”, art. Sam Leigh wrote in “The Guardian”:

“Nearly half a century after her suicide, the great poet is capable of surprising us. A selection of her drawings that have just gone on display at London’s Mayor Gallery shows us a new side of her. I found these drawings moving: not because they feed into the legend, but because they sidestep it. They bring us a fresh look at a woman now so barnacled with myth it’s hard to see her clearly. And – wow – they’re really good….

To see these drawings as in some way complementary to the poems, as some will doubtless try to, seems to me off-beam. Plath did once tell the BBC: “I have a visual imagination.” But what’s so striking about these drawings is exactly their difference from the visual world of the poems. These are pictures that revel in the thinginess of things: in wine bottles, an old kettle, a pair of shoes, the uneven timbering of beached boats, the architectural curlicues of a Parisian roof.”

Un Mundo Efimero – An Ephemeral World

Brigitte Wellisch, Rote Erde

Nel mezzo del cammin

di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

che la diritta via era smarrita

Half-way upon the journey of our life

I find myself within a forest of darkness

for the straight way had been lost

Dante, La Divina Commedia,  Inferno, Canto Primo

I said to myself: “Here I am and I might be elsewhere – I might exist a thousand years ago or in a thousand years’ time …”

I thought how I had come out of endless night and would soon go on into another endless night and that my brief passing was marked only by absurd and casual actions.

I then understood that my distress was caused not by what I was doing but more profoundly by the mere fact of being alive which was neither good nor evil but only painful and meaningless.

Alberto Moravia, La Romana

No beginning, middle, end – such is the structureless structure…

Our existence, as we know it, is no longer transparent and understandable by reason, bound together into a tight, coherent structure.

William Barret, Irrational Man

All these people… know where they’re going and what they want,

they have a purpose and so they hurry along,

they’re tormented, sad, happy, alive,

while I … I have nothing… no purpose…

if I weren’t walking I’d be sitting down; it makes no difference

Alberto Moravia, Gli Indifferenti

Lucio Fontana, Concerto Spaziale Attese

Seven nights higher red makes for red,

seven hearts deeper the hand knocks on the gate,

seven roses later plashes the fountain.

Paul Celan, Kristall

After that, everything became hazy; the minutes passed more and more slowly until eventually minutes seemed like hours. Two or three times the distant barking of a dog offered some hope, but we couldn’t see anything in the pitch black night and the dogs fell silent or were in the wrong direction.

Ernesto Che Guevara, Un diarrio per un viaggio in motocicletta

… for I have long since resigned myself to being myself.

But the fact is that my longing for a splendid imaginary destiny has, as it were, condensed the tragic, purple elements of my actual life into a kind of extremely compact, solid, and scintillating reduction…

Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers

Thomas Schutte – German, Sculptor and Draughtsman

Thomas Schütte © Jörg Koopmann, May 2009

I first saw works by Schutte in 1999, when he exhibited in the Bernier/Eliades Gallery in Athens, Greece. What impressed me back then were the aluminum figures “Great Spirits”.

Thomas Schutte: Grosse Geister - Great Spirits - No 9 and 14, 1998, Photo courtesy of Bernier/Eliades Gallery

Some 13 years ago, the press release of Bernier/Eliades Gallery read like this:

‘THOMAS SCHÜTTE

January 16 – February 25, 1999

Thomas Schtutte was born in 1954, in Oldenburg,Germany. He lives and works in Dϋsseldorf.

“One of the most important German artists working in the late 20th century, Thomas Schütte’s installations, sculptures, models, drawings and watercolours can take many, often contradictory guises.

His art looks utilitarian, offering shelter, sustenance and companionship, yet delivers false promises and alien worlds: a museum that incinerates art; potatoes made of bronze; or the artist’s own ‘audience’, consisting of wooden stand-ins or metallic figures assembled before his work. Like Gulliver wandering through a Swiftian world of shifting scales, the viewer is immersed in a series of theatrum mundi, poetic yet dysfunctional utopias which alternate between the private and the public, the romantic and the sceptical.

The artist deploys a vivid spectrum of colours and a range of materials to revision the basic constituents – natural, cultural and political – of everyday life whilst exploring fundamental questions about the artist and society.”

(Thomas Schütte, Phaidon)

The exhibition will last until February 25, 1999.’

Thomas Schutte: Gross Geister, Palazzo Grassi, Venice

I met one of the great spirits again in Venice in late 2011, in Palazzo Grassi. The photo below is shaken and obscure, but it is better than nothing. The sculpture is enveloped by Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog.

The photo was taken under distress, as in spite of the fact that there was no reasonably priced catalogue, the policy of the Palazzo is not to allow photographs. I protest!

“The Grosse Geister came to life through the formation and molding of long strands of wax, which were 
then cast in aluminum. This explains their anti-monumental appearance: they are both robotic and organic, futuristic and absurd. The “great minds” referred to in this work’s title are contained in reflective aluminum shells, which passively absorb the shadows and forms of their environment. Despite their monumental size, they seem elastic, ready to move about the space as soon as the viewer looks away. This blending of contradictory elements results in these comic somewhat mischievous sculptures, through which Schütte gives mass and presence to vaporous beings.” (Source: Palazzo Grassi)

Thomas Schutte: Grosse Geister, Kunstplatz Graben, Wien, 2011

While I was in Venice, other great spirits were installed in Kunstplatz Graben, in Vienna. This time, they are black and look menacing. The neutral curiosity of the alumunium is replaced by the threatening black shining surface.

I quote from the October 2009 issue of “frieze” magazin’s review of the Thomas Schutte exhibition in Munich’s Haus der Kunst:

‘Schütte’s ‘Große Geister’ series stalked the entrance to the show, foreshadowing the exhibition’s partial focus on the figure and the artist’s ambivalent relationship to it. Melty, molten and reflective, these aluminium figures evince both menace and levity: part Darth Vader, part Pillsbury Doughboy. Outsized, they put the viewer at a disadvantage, an auspicious start to Schütte’s lecture on power relations. ‘

I have two comments on the Great Spirits:

  • The name chosen: we do not have a person, or a creature even. We have an entity that cannot be grasped by our senses, it is a Spirit.
  • The entity is a cross between the human form and a robot, although the Michelin Man also comes to mind (or SPirit?) for parts of the body.
Thomas Schutte: Efficiency Men, Punta della Dogana, Venice

Next meeting with Schutte’s work was in Punta della Dogana, in Venice yet again. This time I met with the “Efficiency Men”.

“These works explore states of conflict, isolation, disillusionment, despair and vulnerability, which are also echoed in his Efficiency Men(2005), spectral figures made out of thin steel spirals, wrapped in heavy blankets from which emerge three disquieting colored silicone faces. Grotesque masks of corrupt contemporary society, the three figures advance in space like prisoners in chains engaged in a forced patrol.”  

(Source: In praise of Doubt)

Thomas Schutte: Four Sisters in Bath, 1989, Tate Gallery

Before concluding, let us take a bath with the four sisters, let the water cleanse us and our Minds, Great and Small, silver and black, and lets hope that we get out of the sight of the Efficincy Men.

P.S. I thank Tate Gallery for inspiring me to add “… and draughtsman” to the title of this post.

In my beginning is my end (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker, I)

5th century BC

Acropolis, Athens, Greece

6th century AD

Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

16th century

Matthias Gruenewald, Die Stuppacher Mdonna
Tiziano: Salome con la testa di S. Giovanni Battista

16th – 17th century

Caravaggio, San Giovanni Battista

18th century

San Francisco Church, Salvador, Bahia, Brasil
Inside the Church of San Francisco in Salvador

19th century

Cezanne, Large Pine and Red Earth
Degas, The Millinery Shop

20th century and beyond

Nolde, Hermit on Tree
Freud's Couch, The Freud Museum, London, England
Helmut Newton
Maria Adair, Instalacao Ambiental
Elaine Roberts, Lotus Flower
Venice - my photo
Anselm Kiefer, Salt of the Earth
Boy - my photo
Thomas Schutte, Efficiency Men
Naoussa, Paros, Greece - my photo
Lefkes, Paros, Greece - my photo
Marpissa, Paros, Greece - my photo
The Earth of Marathon, Attica, Greece - my photo
T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets, East Coker, III

 

Happy New Year!!!

P.S. This came as a result of rediscovering X’s letter with the extensive quotation from Eliot’s poem “Four Quartets”. The hand written page is hers.

Frida Kahlo: Cartas Apasionadas (The Letters of …)

Today I travel to Mexico, to join the Great Mexican Painter Frida Kahlo. My aircraft is Martha Zamora’s compilation of Frida Kahlo’s letters, Cartas Apasionadas, published in 1995 by Chronicle Books in San Francisco, USA.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

The painter was born in 1907 in Coyoacan, a borough of the Federal District of Mexico City as Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón.

I started painting twelve years ago while I was recovering from an automobile accident that kept me in bed for nearly a year. In all these years, I’ve always worked with the spontaneous impulse of my feeling. I’ve never followed any school or anybody’s influence; I have never expected anything from my work but the satisfaction I could get from it by the very fact of painting and saying what I couldn’t say otherwise. (Letter to Carlos Chavez, 1939).

Frida Kahlo: Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas y Colibrí” (“Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming-bird”).

In 1925 Frida has a horrible accident while riding a bus.

The only good thing is that I’m starting to get used to suffering. (Letter to Alejandro Gomez Arias, December 5, 1925).

Frida Kahlo: Frida and Diego Rivera, 1931

A short while ago, maybe a few days ago, I was a girl walking in a world of colors, of clear and tangible shapes. .. If you knew how terrible it is to attain knowledge all of a sudden – like lightning elucidating the earth! Now I live on a painful planet, transparent as ice…I grew old in a few instants and now everything is dull and flat. I know there is nothing behind; if there were something I would see it. (Letter to Alejandro Gomez Arias, September 1926).

Diego Rivera: Man masters the Elements

In 1929 Frida got married to the Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Their marriage hits the rocks quickly, as Diego is irreversibly unfaithfull. In 1934 Diego has an affair with Frida’s sister, Cristina. Frida is devastated.

First, it is a double disgrace, if I can explain it like that. You know better than anyone what Diego means to me in all senses, and on the other hand, she was the sister whom I loved the most and whom I tried to help as much as I could; that’s why the situation became horribly complicated and it is getting worse every day… My situation seems so ridiculous and stupid to me that you can’t imagine how I dislike and hate myself. I’ve lost my best years being supported by a man, doing nothing but what I thought would benefit and help him. I never thought about myself, and after six years, his answer is that fidelity is a bourgeois virtue and that it exists only to exploit (people) and to obtain an economic gain. (Letter to Ella and Bertram Wolfe, October 18, 1934).

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mask from Mexico

Even if we experience endless adventures, cracks in the doors, “mentions” of our mothers (the mentioning of one’s mother is considered to be very insulting in Mexico), and international complaints, don’t we always love each other? … All this anger has simply made me understand better that I love you more than my own skin, and that even though you don’t love me as much, you love me a little anyway – don’t you? If this is not true, I’ll always be hopeful that it could be, and that’s enough for me… Love me a little …. I adore you … Frieda (Letter to Diego Rivera, July 1935).

Frida Kahlo – Photo by Vicente Wolf

Diego has also been sick, but now he is almost well. He is working as usual, a lot and well. He is a little fatter; he is eating a lot and is as talkative as usual. He sleeps in the bathtub, reads the newspapers while on the toilet, and spends hours playing wiht Don Fulang Chang (pet monkey), for whom he already found a partner. (Letter to Ella Wolfe, 1938).

Diego Rivera: In the trenches – Photo by Tina Modotti)

Well child, let me thank you for your letter and for being so nice as to ask me about Diego’s shirts. I’m sorry for not being able to give you the sizes you asked for, but no matter how much I look inside the collar, I can’t even find a clue of what could be a number indicating the thickness of Don Diego Rivera y Barriento’s neck. So, I think it would be best to tell Martin to please buy six of the largest shirts that New York has, that is, if this letter gets to you in time, which I doubt very much. Get the kind (of shirts) that seem almost impossible to be made for a person, i.e the largest on this planet, commonly referred to as the Earth. (Letter to Ella Wolfe, 1938).

Frida Kahlo: Two nudes in the forest 1939

Now I will tell you some things about myself. I haven’t changed very much since you saw me last. Only I wear again my crazy mexican dress, my hair grew longer again, and I am as skinny as always. My character hasn’t changed either, I am as lazy as always, without enthusiasm for any thing, quite stupid, and damn sentimental, some times I think that this is bacause I am sick, but of course that is only a very good pretext. I could paint as long as long as I wish, I could read or study or do many things inspite  of my bad foot and other bad things, but, there is the point, I live on the air, accepting things as they come, without the minor effort to change them, and all day long I feel sleepy, tired and desperated. (Letter to Lucienne Bloch, February 1938).

Frida Kahlo: The broekn column 1944

My child, I really should not complain about anything that happens to me in life, so long as you love me and I love you. (This love) is so real and beautiful that it makes me forget even distance. .. I don’t have the words to describe how happy I am, knowing that you tried to make me happy and that you are so good and adorable… My lover, my heaven, my Nick, my life, my child, I adore you. .. Don’t make love to anyone, if you can help it. Do it only in case you find a real F. W. (fucking wonder), but don’t fall in love. .. Oh, my dear Nick, I adore you so much. I need you so much that that my heart burns. (Letter to Nickolas Muray, February 1939).

Excerpt from a Poem to Lina and Arcady Boytler

I am leaving my portrait to you

so you’ll have me in front of you

every day and every night

in which I am far away from you.

Sadness is portrayed

in my whole work,

but that’s my condition;

I am hopeless.

Frida Kahlo, 1941 – Photo by Emmy Lou Packard