Arts and letters Links
on February 7th, 2009Brandeis University has decided to sell the 6,000 piece art collection of the Rose Art Museum. Later articles seem to suggest that the museum is going to close but not sell the art. OK.
The University’s budget crises leaves it $10 million in the hole. The museum is known for its collection of American artists such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Roy Lichtenstein.
In The New York Times, an amusing article on the placement of the feet of animals in art. In more than half the pictures studied, the artists got it wrong.
“The researchers found, for example, that a skeleton of a dog at a Finnish museum depicts the right hindleg in a rearward position while the right foreleg is lifted and moving forward. In a proper depiction the hindleg would be forward too, having moved before the foreleg.”
Once upon a time, artists thought horses ran like this:
An excerpt from a new book on the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. He was a louse.
One of the the things I have often heard from others when discussing Rimbaud is the assumption that without his indulging his wilder side, Rimbaud would not have produced great work. With no alternate universe Rimbaud for comparison, we’ll never know.
As it is, the world got a guy who wrote great poetry at 17, and then chucked art at the age of 22.
“His first night in Banville’s maid’s room, he stood in the illuminated window stark naked and threw down his lice-laden clothes into the street. Within a week Banville had asked the miscreant to leave, but only after Rimbaud had smashed the china in his room, soiled the bed sheets with his muddy boots and sold some of the furniture.”
Charming.
Verlaine, a troubled fellow who had cleaned up his act and gone bourgeois upon marrying a young lady named Mathilde, took up with young Rambaud who then drove Verlaine to drink and ruin. I’m not convinced Verlaine’s poetry was improved by this. Here’s a look at Verlaine’s marriage:
“The birth seemed only to enrage Verlaine all the more. Mathilde later claimed that Verlaine threatened her life every day between October 1871 and January 1872. One day in January, after Mathilde refused to give Verlaine money for drink, he seized the three-month-old Georges and flung him against the wall. And then he started to choke his wife.”
Charming.
“Rimbaud saw himself as an archangel descended to earth to liberate Verlaine from his bourgeois temptations as a human being and the tendencies towards prettiness in his poetry.”
Between stealing people’s household goods and shaking lice into the street, Rimbaud’s presence is as basking in the light of the pearly gates themselves. OK.
I enjoy Rimbaud’s poetry, even though he was a stinker. The sad thing about it is it doesn’t really translate. You have to read/hear it in French, and my French stinks.
Total Eclipse starring Leonardo DiCaprio chronicled the strange love affair between Verlaine and Rimbaud. It was years before I saw another DiCaprio movie. He’s quite good and earlier films like Titanic don’t give much of an indication of just how good he is..\
If you don’t know the back story of the affair, the film is difficult. With this handy online primer, you might want to have a look, especially if you enjoy the idea of a brief eyeful of DiCaprio naked and snogging some guy.
Total Eclipseis a noble effort. I think some people gave it glowing reviews because it shows that DiCaprio was trying to stretch as an actor and the film’s embrace of challenging themes.
Some also consider this is a gay positive film, but the relationship is abusive and troubled in every way. Frankly, it reminds me of yaoi manga, which often depicts sado-masochistic gay passions.
At no time are the characters shown to have any redeeming qualities. This film would not induce positive feelings in people who were not sympathetic with gay relationships.
One wonders why anyone ever cared about Verlaine and Rimbaud, especially since we are barely introduced to their work in this film. Great art can convince people to forgive just about any unfortunate qualities in their fellow men. But since we never get to sense the work, we have no idea why anyone cares about these people who beat women and children, abuse each other, and spend most of their time in a drunken stupor. The film lacks context without the poetry.
There are some who believe that stories of Rimbaud’s excesses were contrived after his death to hurt his reputation, but there are too many sources who confirm his universal lousiness. He was a spoiled rotten brat genius. It is easy to admire that sort from afar, but they are best left to fiction and history. That said, perhaps you may want to see the film after all, if for no other reason than to know whom to avoid.
It could be argued that had he not been encouraged and enabled to indulge his more unfortunate side, he would not have given up poetry at the age of 22, and we would have had lots more great art to enjoy.
But we’ll never know.
c
I will never understand people who think that genius excuses rotten behavior. It simply doesn’t. I’ve also never understood people who think an artist has to suffer to produce good works.
Just got done reading Virgina Woolf and I’m shaking my head over some of her assumptions.
believe me, reading up on Victor Hugo is an equal eye opener. He probably was the most egotistic, self serving s.o.b ever to put pen to page, and unfortunately not only did he know it, he had the talent to back it up and get others to cave in. When you read Les Miserables and see all this grand social awareness he tries to project and then compare it to the walking the walk, it’s a major letdown.
And yet, we still read it, because it is still a great book. One of the great paradoxes of the age…
Isn’t that horse doing the jump that Lipinzaners (or however it’s spelled) do? The “airs above the ground” thingee? Or just jumping over a non-existant hedge?
The pose was called The Flying Horse. Almost all horses were drawn with all four feet up in the air when they ran! But I think usually with the front feet straight out.
Arlnee, I know what you mean about that. It has been quite a revelation to read of the lives of authors I admire. Some are real pigs. I never liked Rousseau, but the great idealist was the lowliest of them all in some ways. Wanker.