Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Friday, August 29, 2003
I'd like to commend to you, in addition to the comments on "Primitive" and "Naive" Art here, recent posts on the subject at The Coffee Sutras and Pretty Serendipities.
Soon I'm going to take on the definitions that keep cropping up: "primitive", "naive", "folk"; like E. I find them limiting both to the artists themselves, and to us by interposing language and a suggested meaning before we ever look at the work.
For today, I wanted to think instead about what makes us respond to a work of art, regardless of its genre, acceptability under various criteria, period, or technique. The famous art teacher Robert Henri had something rather profound to say about this (with apologies from me for his sexist language - it was 1923!):
An art student must be a master from the beginning; that is, he must be master of such as he has. By being now master of such as he has there is promise that he will be master in the future.
A work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man. It is the manifest of a very positive nature in great enjoyment, and at the very moment the work was done.
It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work. The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself.
For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been interesting to himself. He must have been capable of intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation.
He who has contemplated has met with himself, is in a state to see into the realities beyond the surface of his subject. nature reveals to him, and, seeing and feeling intensely, he paints, and whether he wills it or not each brush stroke is an exact record of such as he was at the exact moment the stroke was made. Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, 1923
8:19 PM
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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Mars was spectacular last night. We went out around 9 pm to put a DVD back in the mail, and J. drove around to some of the best sky-viewing points so we could look at the red planet, presiding over a night sky ablaze with stars. Apparently you can see the polar ice caps if you have access to a telescope.
Right now I'm anxious to hear from some of my UK readers about their power outage - strange business, coming so soon after the one here. I'm suspicious. I hope none of you had frightening experiences, caught in the tube.
I went to the market and bought a bunch of meat and fish which I froze in small portions, and now I'm on a cooking binge this late afternoon, trying to make some food to keep for busy days ahead. So far I've cooked the eggplant for an Iranian eggplant kuku, a sort of marriage of a souffle and frittata, and have been soaking some jasmine rice in salted water for the past four hours, for tadik (Iranian rice-with-a-crust). A cucumber salad made from cucumbers fresh from thegarden, yogurt,and fresh mint will complete our meal tonight, but there will be plenty of rice and eggplant left over, and if the weather stays fairly cool I'll make a chicken stew tomorrow. We got word that Shirin landed safely in Iran and didn't have problems entering the country; maybe I'm cooking for her.
Tonight is our first choir practice of the new season, and we'll begin work on the Mozart Requiem, which I've never sung, for All Saint's Day, as well as music that we'll be singing at Gene Robinson's consecration in November. I'm ready to getback to singing. But right now it's teatime, and I'm sitting in the north side of our upstairs living room/library, a small cozy area where there are two windows at right angles looking out on some big maple trees and the garden. Yesterday there was a breeze, and I laid back on the couch with my tea, just watching the tree branches toss in the wind and feeling it on my skin - that late summer feeling of warmth and relaxation mixed with melancholy. Today the light is bright, the trees still, and the neighborhood noisier with crickets, children's voices and traffic; nature is staying outside, resiliantly summery. And so it will go for the next few weeks, see-sawing between seasons and emotions.
4:06 PM
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
MARS-DAY
It’s a clear day here, so I’m hoping to be able to see Mars tonight as the two planets pass as close together as they’ve been in 60,000 years. It is definitely Mars-day, even if it is Wednesday, not Tuesday!
Mars, the Roman god of war, lent his name to so much in modern parlance that the connection barely registers. Not only do we have the month of March, and the French their Mardi (Tuesday), but our English word Tuesday actually comes from the same root. The Old English twesdaeg and similar words in Old High German and Old Norse all come from a prehistoric West Germanic-North Germanic compound formed from the Old English Tiw, god of war, and daeg day; this is a translation of Latin Martis dies, literally, day of Mars (Roman god of war), which in turn is a translation of the Greek hemera Areios, literally, day of Ares (Greek god of war). (Merriam-Webster).
I also discovered that mars is a now-obsolete alchemical word for iron, which I suspect came more from red color of iron-containing rocks rather than the connection to iron weapons – but that’s just a guess.
Ares Kneeling Before Aphrodite (The Francois Vase)
Old classicist that I am, I went on a little art-and-myth foray this morning and turned up several depictions of Mars. The God of War is rarely depicted alone; what appealed to both classical and romantic artists was the illicit courtship of Mars/Ares and Venus/Aphrodite, who was married to Vulcan/Hephaistos, the lame smith who was a son of Juno/Hera, wife of Jupiter/Zeus.
My favorite (because I especially love early Greek art), above, shows Ares Kneeling Before Aphrodite on an Attic black figure volute krater known as the Francois Vase. If you look closely you can see "ARES" in Greek letters to the right of the kneeling figure; Aphrodite is standing and "ARTEMIS" must be beyond her name, to the left.
And a painting by Martin van Heemskerk (1536) intrigued me, not for its florid style but because I had forgotten the story of Mars and Venus Caught in the Net. Homer relates the tale in Book 8 of the Odyssey; the central portion is below, and you can read the whole story here. (The online version is a translation by Butler. Below is Lattimore, which I prefer greatly; it's much closer to the original in feeling.)
Demodokos struck the lyre and began singing well the story about thelove of Ares and sweet-garlanded Aphrodite, how they first lay together in the house of Hephaistos secretly; he gave her much and fouled the marriage and bed of the lord Hephaistos; to him there came as messenger Helios, the sun, who had seen them lying in love together. Hephaistos, when he had heard the heartsore story of it, went on his way to his smithy, heart turbulent with hard sorrows, and set the great anvil upon its stand, and hammered out fastenings that could not be slipped or broken, to hold them fixed in position...he went to his chamber where his own dear bed lay, and spun his fastenings around the posts form every direction, while many more were suspended overhead, from the roof beams, thin, like spider webs, which not even one of the blessed gods could see. He had fashioned it to be very deceptive...
So...these two went to bed, and slept there, and all about them were bending the artful bonds that had been forged by subtle Hephaistos, so neither of them could stir a limb or get up, and now they saw the truth, and there was no longer a way out for them... Odyssey, Book 8, 266-281 and 295-299 (Lattimore)
Ares and Aphrodite eventually got out of their trap, though, and escaped unpunished - gods are gods, after all - and we inherited Mars and Venus as our closest planetary neighbors and eternal archetypes of "man" and "woman".
A few more images are below.
Ares in battle, behind the fallen Kyknos on an Attic Black Figure neck-amphora (c 515-500 BC):. Worcester Art Museum 1966.63 (This is very nice.)
As usual, I got sidetracked. My plan for today was to write a post about Picasso’s relationship to primitive art, but then I found and feasted upon the gorgeous banquet of summer berry paintings at Pretty Serendipities. That got me thinking about American folk painting, and off I went searching for some berries in that genre. Instead, I found the work of Clementine Hunter.
Clementine Hunter was born Clemence Reuben in 1886 or 1887 on Hidden Hill cotton plantation, Louisiana (A notorious place which supposedly inspirated Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.) Her family eventually moved to Melrose Plantation, where the little girl’s name changed to Clementine. She worked in the fields and later was in the house as a servant, cook, and caretaker of children.
“In 1940, the New Orleans artist Alberta Kinsey visited Melrose to paint magnolias. She used an old kitchen as a studio. After her departure it was Clementine's task to tidy up the building. She found several tubes of paint Miss Kinsey had left behind. That evening, she approached Mignon, saying she could "mark" a picture of her own. He gave her an old window shade, some brushes and turpentine. The next morning, she delivered to him a picture. In the years following, she painted whenever she had time, on anything she could find - from cardboard boxes, brown paper bags, lumber, to plastic milk cartons and wine bottles.”
Gradually, visitors to the plantation began to notice Clementine Hunter’s work, and helped her by procuring supplies and support. She had her first show in 1955, in New Orleans, and also at Northwestern State College in Natchitoches. She wasn’t allowed to see her work in the gallery when white patrons were there, but only on a Sunday when the gallery was closed.
“Clementine Hunter referred to her works as memory paintings, because they depict scenes of everyday life around the plantation and her church. ..Clementine lived at Melrose until 1978, when she moved to her trailer house several miles away. She continued to work through her hundredth year. In her long career she created several thousand paintings, which sold from twenty-five cents in the early days to several thousand dollars in the 1980s. In addition to paintings, she created quilts and dolls. She became one of the most important African American artists in history, as her life literally encompassed the major changes of the 20th century - segregation, world wars, economic depression, the Civil Rights movement, and more. She died January 1, 1988, having never been over 100 miles from her home.”
So, in light of our ongoing discussion, I’m curious what readers think of this type of “folk” art. In America we have a long tradition of naïve paintings – portraits, still lives, and scenes from daily life -- beginning in the early American period and re-popularized in our time by Grandma Moses (who detested the term “primitive”). Do you like it? Do you feel it’s art? If so, is it “good” art?
And tomorrow, on to Picasso, who we can also argue about! Meanwhile, please go look at those berry paintings. Elena has put together something quite wonderful.
3:53 PM
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Happy Monday. Maybe you'd like to take a little break from your day, as I did, and visit Cezanne's studio in Aix en Provence. Lovely pictures of the actual place and some of the artist's familiar paintings and objects. I have a poster on my studio wall, a view of Mt. St. Victoire. from the unforgettable Cezanne exhibition at MOMA in late 1977. I think that was the first "blockbuster" exhibition I ever attended, and it was packed - but the hoards didn't interfere with the intensite visual and emotional experience of walking into a huge room filled with Cezanne still lives.
Be sure to view the panoramic tour of the studio as well as the still photos.
1:03 PM
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Sunday, August 24, 2003
The Hinton St. Mary mosaic, Britain, 4th C AD, which may be one of the earliest depictions of Christ. It includes the chi-rho symbol (the first two letters, in Greek, of "Christos") and two pomegranates, which were ancient pagan symbols of immortality - later replaced in similar combinations with the chi-rho by an alpha and omega, for "beginning and end". From the Roman Britain galleries at the British Museum.
A few months ago, a friend told me about a summer solstice party she had this year, attended by some seventy women of various ages. They all walked a labyrinth she had made on her property, and as the sun went down, formed a big circle, held hands and chanted - I'm not sure what. "The energy was incredible," she said, "You have to come next time."
I'm sure the energy was amazing, but I don't think I'll be going. It's odd, how in my daily life I can question my commitment to Christianity and find all sorts of bones to pick with the dogma and the Church, but when I'm actually faced with participating in what to me is a pagan celebration, something in me balks, and I can't quite do it. I'm surprised when that happens, because I quite willingly participate in Jewish and Muslim worship, and as you all know by now, have no problem accomodating Zen into my spiritual life.
Paganism, though, is something else, and whether present-day solstice celebrations are overtly pagan or not, something in me says, "uh-uh, not for me." Of course, I recognize (and have written here) that many of our Christian holidays are pagan in origin, "rolled over", as it were, to help accomodate local beliefs in a converting population - which England, for example, was at one time. The pagans were out there worshipping the sun and all manner of gods, and their symbols appear cheek-by-jowl with the chi-rho, the fish, and other early Christian symbols on everything from mosaic floors to the most elaborate silver dinner platters of the 3rd century on.
Having said all that, today after church I was working in my garden. It's the first cool day in ages, but a glorious one with a clear sky. The sun was beating on my back as I worked, and raising the scent of hot ferns, warm earth, and crushed lavender leaves. Oh, it's so elemental there in the garden. Earth, water, air, and fire. Sustaining plants, hungry mammal. On my knees in the garden, tugging at roots, remembering the bare ground in spring amid this near-autumn chaotic splendor, I could well understand why people fell down and worshipped the sun and made gods of the other elements. Our bodies are, after all, made of the same things, and, nose-to-nose with life-giving earth, we know it. But ---there's more.
