My friend and colleague, Brett Waller, Director Emeritus of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, used to always mention to students and visitors that art museums were the birth-right of artists: explaining that historically, when many royal and private collections were first opened to the public as museums, they were linked to the local art academies and schools.
Artists such as Paul Cézanne and Alberto Giacometti both were sensitive to the importance of museums and their collections. It was Cézanne who stated many times that “. . . it was his ambition ‘to do Poussin again after nature’ and that he wanted to make of Impressionism ‘. . . something solid and enduring like the art of the museums.’”1
In his Sketchbook of Interpretive Drawings Alberto Giacometti shows us both the range and depth of how he looked at the great art of museums: “I began to copy long before even asking myself why I did it, probably in order to give reality to my predilections, much rather this painting here than that one there, but for many years I have known that copying is the best means for making me aware of what I see, the way it happens with my own work; I can know a little about the world there, a head, a cup, or a landscape, only by copying it.”2
Alberto Giacometti “Study after Pieter Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow” c. 1952 Ballpoint pen on paper 8 1/4” x 11 1/2” Annette and Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Paris and Zurich
Through the writings of Rudolph Arnheim we have known of the ascending and descending angles and movements through out a painting.3 Also, we understand kinetic and haptic space as it runs through a work of art, leading our eye and mind through this very space.
Rudolph Arnheim “Structural Map” (Figure 3, p. 4) Art and Visual Perception 1971
Whether it is a snow covered hill leading us downward from the center left to the bottom right of the painting, or the path that the hunters are taking from the lower left upward into the center, or even the complimentary angles of the magpie gliding above the distant landscape and holding the upper part of the composition, we can feel the structural movement throughout.
It is this seeing, and experiencing of the thing that is most important, and this of course is exactly what William Carlos Williams achieved with this great painting “The Hunters in the Snow.”
Pieter Breughel the Elder “The Hunters in the Snow” 1565 Oil on wood panel 46” x 63 3/4” Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The Hunters in the Snow
“The over-all picture is winter icy mountains in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening from the left sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign hanging from a broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold inn yard is deserted but for a huge bonfire
that flares wind-driven tended by women who cluster about it to the right beyond
the hill is a pattern of skaters Breughel the painter concerned with it all has chosen
a winter-struck bush for his foreground to complete the picture . . ”4
1 Chilvers, Ian, & John Glaves-Smith; A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art; Oxford University Press; Oxford, United Kingdom; 2009; p. 132.
2 Carluccio, Luigi; Giacometti: A Sketchbook of Interpretive Drawings; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; New York, New York; 1967; p. xi.
3 Arnheim, Rudolf; Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye; University of California Press; Berkeley and Los Angeles; 1971; p. 4.
4 Williams, William Carlos; Pictures from Brueghel and other poems; New Directions Publishing Corporation; New York, New York; 1967; p. 5.
“The humanity, the simple direct humanity of his figures—you feel like they’re real people that you can empathize with. He treats them with a certain dignity, it’s not like he’s trying to belittle them by making them seem so down-to-earth. He has respect for the ordinary person.”1
This is one of the many observations that my friend and colleague Stephanie Dickey has made regarding the work of Rembrandt van Rijn. She is one of the leading authorities on this artist, and was interviewed by Smithsonian Magazine on the anniversary of his 400th birth. She is unique amongst art historians, in my opinion, as she is so aware of, and sensitive to, the thought and painting processes of artists, not unlike the writing of the poet Robert Bly, who has himself had a life long interest and sensitivity to the work of painters and sculptors.
The Old St. Peter by Rembrandt
“Noah’s ship does not sail with its elephants forever. The crying of the monkeys breaks off and starts again. Even shame does not last a whole lifetime.”
Rembrandt van Rijn “Noah’s Ark” 1660 Pen & ink with brown washes 203mm x 248mm The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
“‘It was dark,’ Peter said. ‘We were alone. We had A single candle which shone on the steel breastplate Of the Roman soldier. The whole town was asleep.’
We are bubbles on the lips of our friends. Each time they turn their heads, we drift toward the Pole; We pass into the Many and return.
Who can say, ‘With God, the rest is nothing?’ Who can say, ‘I am a grandchild of the unfaithful?’ Who is able to wait one month to drink water?
We fell into weeping yesterday at five o’clock. We wept because slavery has returned; we wept Because the whole century has been a defeat.
Oh Peter! Peter! The night behind you is black. A beam of light falls on your outworn face. What can you do but lift up your hand for forgiveness?”2
Rembrandt van Rijn “The Apostle Peter” 1632 Oil on canvas 32.2” x 24.4” Nationalmuseum, Sweden
Rembrandt’s Brown Ink
“The sorrow of an old horse standing in the rain Goes on and on. The plane that crashes in the desert Holds shadows under its wings for thirty years.
Each time Rembrandt touches his pen to the page, So many barns and fences fly up. Perhaps that happens Because earth has pulled so many nights down.
When we hear a Drupad singer with his low voice Patiently waiting for the next breath, we know The universe can easily get along without us.
So much suffering has been stored in the amygdala That we know it won’t be long before we put Our heads down on the chopping block again.
Our thighs still remember all those smoky nights When we crouched for hours on the dusty plains Holding small-boned mammals into the fire.
How is it possible that so many nights of suffering Could be summed up by a sketch in brown ink Of Christ sitting at the table with Judas near?”3
Rembrandt van Reign “The Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci” 1634-1635 Red chalk 14 1/4” x 18 11/16” Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.
Rembrandt’s Portrait of Titus with a Red Hat
“It’s enough for light to fall on one half of a face. Let the other half belong to the restful shadow, The shadow the bowl of bread throws on the altar.
Some are like a horse’s eating place At the back of the barn where a single beam Of light comes down from a crack in the ceiling.
Painting bright colors may lie about the world. Too many windows cause the artist to hide. Too many well-lit necks call for the axe.
Beneath his red hat, Titus’s eyes hint to us How puzzled he is by the sweetness of the world— The way the dragonfly hurries to its death.
So many forces want to kill the young Male who has been blessed. The Holy Family Has to hide many times on the way to Egypt.
Titus receives a scattering of darkness. He’s baptized by water soaked in onions; The father protects his son by washing him in the night.”4
Rembrandt van Rijn “Portrait of Titus with Red Hat” 1657 Oil on canvas 68.5cm x57.3cm The Wallace Collection, London, The United Kingdom.
Everything he paints, he paints with a sense of light (a touch of light) and a tacit understanding of the sitter just across from him. The form is felt with each brushstroke, and handled with sensitivity as the light falls across the space/face. One may identify one of these paintings from across the gallery, even without seeing the didactic information posted on the nearby wall. Always recognizable. And this work has grown so much, almost mythologically, that it exists on a whole ‘nother level of culture. So the last word on this surely belongs to my colleague and friend Stephanie Dickey from her observations on 400 Years of Rembrandt. Rembrandt’s reputation has taken on a life of its own:
“One thing that really surprises me is the extent to which Rembrandt exists as a phenomenon in pop culture. You have this musical group called The Rembrandts, who wrote the theme song to Friends—‘I’ll Be There For You.’ There are Rembrandt restaurants, Rembrandt hotels, art supplies and other things that are more obvious. But then there’s Rembrandt toothpaste. Why on Earth would somebody name a toothpaste after this artist who’s known for his really dark tonalities? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I think it’s because his name has become synonymous with quality. It’s even a verb—there’s a term in underworld slang, ‘to be Rembrandted,’ which means to be framed for a crime. And people in the cinema world use it to mean pictorial effects that are overdone. He’s just everywhere, and people who don’t know anything, who wouldn’t recognize a Rembrandt painting if they tripped over it, you say the name Rembrandt and they already know that this is a great artist. He’s become a synonym for greatness.”5
Dr. Stephanie Dickey, Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
1 Amy, Crawford; An Interview with Stephanie Dickey, author of ‘Rembrandt at 400’; “Arts & Culture,” Smithsonian Magazine; 1 December 2006; Washington, DC; Archived 21 September 2018.
2 Bly, Robert; The Night Abraham Called to the Stars; Perennial/Harper Collins; New York; 2001; p. 75.
3 Bly Robert; My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy; Harper Perennial; New York, London, Toronto and Sydney; 2005; p. 35.
4 Bly, Robert; The Night Abraham Called to the Stars; Perennial/Harper Collins; New York; 2001; p. 39.
5 Amy, Crawford; An Interview with Stephanie Dickey, author of ‘Rembrandt at 400’; “Arts & Culture,” Smithsonian Magazine; 1 December 2006; Washington, DC; Archived 21 September 2018.
He is both a poet and an art critic. An important combination. He reminds me a bit of another great poet, who early on became a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Frank O’Hara. Both were so important as poets and as members of the larger art world. I am speaking about the writer John Yau, and especially his collection titled Borrowed Love Poems.
In order to follow up on these poems, I have recently been re-reading several books on three of the artists. These include: Lucy Lippard’s book on Eva Hesse1, Craig Burnett’s extended essay on Philip Guston: The Studio2, and the tribute to Frank O’Hara, In Memory of My Feelings by Russell Ferguson3. On the surface, these three artists seem to have nothing in common: they are people of such a great variety of ages and backgrounds, aesthetics and motivations. Yet the insistence and determination that each exhibited in their life’s work, their struggles for acceptance, and their ultimate recognition are important examples of the lives of painters and poets.
Eva Hesse “Untitled” 1966 Watercolor on paper 12” x 9” Private Collection, Estate of the artist.
Bowery Studio
“It is never just matter
Smooth as the paper holding them in its mouth
the circles float in their circles of ink
Solace is found in sameness as is the soul
should one cling to such matter
and such matters mean much to some
But the sum is not all
The circles float in their perfect mouths of ink
Where else am I to store them
The windows have their own tasks The sky brings its own table”4
In writing about Hesse’s watercolors, Yau speaks of circles that float and a table that is brought in by the sky. On the other hand, Guston’s table is like a rock: piles of shoes and pyramids, books like stale bread, and light bulbs inhabiting and surrounding this table top landscape. And finally, a tribute to a fellow poet: in remembrance of Frank O’Hara, Yau laments the careers of well-groomed curators and artists, where images reflected in their windows offer sights of real flesh and blood. From three very different perspectives, we realize these are indeed descriptions of an important and ongoing dialogue amongst contemporary poets and painters.
Phillip Guston “The Painter’s Table” 1973 Oil on canvas 77 1/4” x 90” National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Studio Dream
“Your face is a shoe or a pyramid
What do you do with a bandaged rock
clogged with muck tea kettle’s dented noggin
common clock cracked with arrows
One is up or down staring into book of stale bread
dotted slab and square cloud Does the world move closer
when you scratch black lines Bulb hangs its note above bed
Head and arms embrace dust inside web
Did you want to join me on the sofa watch my skull float out to sea
Old crust, stitched mitten You’ve got a big empty head
but no place to cram it”5
Phillip Guston “Studio Landscape” 1975 Oil on canvas 67” x 104” Estate of Philip Guston, Courtesy David McKee Gallery, New York
Broadcast from 791 Broadway
“Salacious, broken-nosed, bantamweight Animals don’t ring my doorbell bring me cookies and champagne biscuits as big as movie stars’ post-nuptial crumbs I am not another image of the Buddha preaching or the ornate clouds he manufactures for those in need of eternal wisdom I am not even his rapid flagship cousin part nugget, part fly I am a defection from the mind of an Abyssinian tram quill rising through the pages of the wall and wind you surround yourself in almost hard-headed enough to make an appearance at the Statue of Librettists because the Primogeniture Mink pleaded with me to grind for the people of New York and to squirt you with news of how powerfully afloat we feel in Heaven its many villas and huts copied from the terracotta model of Manhattan we carried into the snowy mountains of thought”
Alice Neal “Portrait of Frank O’Hara” 1960 Oil on canvas 33 3/4” x 16” National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
“Since I left you, American art has received many stamps of approval I was commissioned to design by the School of Better Living Through Lusty Dancing and didn’t
Since I left you, smoother stools and life-like cats are being peddled by the curlicue gates of the Museum of Modern Fate
Since I left you, well-groomed curators have learned how to store their robes and purr without becoming overly philosophical, and artists have stopped skinny-dipping in the reflections carried past their windows on the shoulders of dead and dying poets disgusted perhaps by the sight of real flesh and blood
Since I left you, many other curious celebrations have taken place”6
Larry Rivers “Preparatory drawing for In Memory of My Feelings” 1967 Pencil on acetate 19” x 24 15/16” Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art, New York
1 Lippard; Lucy; Eva Hesse; New York University Press; New York, New York; 1976.
2 Burnett, Craig; Philip Guston: The Studio; Afterall Books; London, United Kingdom; 2014.
3 Ferguson, Russell; In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art; University of California Press; Berkkeley, Los Angeles, London; 1999.
4 Yau, John; Borrowed Love Poems; Penguin Books; New York, New York; 2002; p. 15.
5 Yau, John; Borrowed Love Poems; Penguin Books; New York, New York; 2002; p. 16.
6 Yau, John; Borrowed Love Poems; Penguin Books; New York, New York; 2002; pp. 17-18.
No, this is not about The Boxtops, nor Joe Cocker’s cover of their mournful rock ballad from 1967, although there is a reference to a Broadway musical from 1953. This concerns any number of artists who moved to New York City during the early and middle years of the 20th Century. They came especially from the Mid-West. David Smith was one of them, having been born and raised in Decatur, Indiana. Often feeling homesick, there is a certain letter, in the form of a sculpture, which he imagined writing home.
A. Eriss “David Smith” B&W Photograph 1936 (p. 11; David Smith by David Smith.)
Smith first worked in offices in Washington, DC and New York, and later as a welder in a steelworks. He was simultaneously energized by the life and pace of the east coast and demoralized by the loneliness and solitude that he found there. “Yet lonesomeness is a state in which the creative artist must dwell much of the time….”1
This instantly reminded me of Rainer Maria Rilke and the advice he had written in a letter from Rome on 14 May 1904 to his younger poet friend: “This very wish will help you, if you use it quietly, and deliberately and like a tool, to spread out your solitude over wide country. People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.”2
David Smith was doubly aware of this I think. While many of his contemporaries were easily falling into camps based solely on media or subject matter, his stated goal was that this work was an attempt to bridge the gap between painting and drawing and sculpture: a most difficult project.
There are several examples of this work: severely linear pieces that often contain, or are made up of, an arrangement of attenuated forms and glyphs. A great example of this is a beautiful piece in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art titled “The Egyptian Barnyard” and often described as a drawing in steel, or in this case, welded silver.
David Smith “Egyptian Barnyard” 1954 Wrought and soldered silver on wood base 14 1/2” x 24” x 5 1/2” Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James W. Alsdorf Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
Although his work has often been held up as great formalist abstraction, there are specific examples of content inherent in many of Smith’s pieces. For instance, these figurative gesture drawings of the dancer Martha Graham.
David Smith “Studies of Martha Graham” 1938 12” x 19” Drawing on paper after a series of photographs by Barbara Morgan. Collection of Candida and Rebecca Smith.
There are also photographic references to his daughters running and tumbling through their back yard, portraits of other artists and characters, and even several pieces inspired directly from Alberto Giacometti’s early masterpiece “The Palace at 4:00 AM.”
David Smith “Interior for Exterior” 1939 Steel and bronze 18” x 22” x 23 1/4” Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Orin Raphael
Over the years, writers such as Cleve Gray3 and Edward F. Fry4 have provided hints as to the content of “The Letter.” In 1967 at the Yale-Norfolk Summer School of Music and Art it was Mr. Gray who lectured on David Smith, whose biography he had just finished editing. In one of the earliest exhibitions I had visited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, it was the David Smith Retrospective of 1969 that made a lasting impression. Finally, during my freshman year in art school in Baltimore, an early winter 1965 visiting artist lecture by David Smith himself still rings true to me in all that he said.
David Smith “Sketchbook Study for The Letter” c. 1950 Pen and ink and pencil on paper David Smith Archives, III — 1283 New York, New York
In order to decipher this letter, we can see in the drawing study a salutation in the top left corner and a signature at the lower right. In between we have the written body made up of a series of scrap railroad hardware “h’s” and “y’s” and “o’s” forming a message. The particular wording of this letter itself is borrowed from a 1953 song that was included in the Broadway musical “Wonderful Town.”
In short, two young girls, sisters Ruth and Eileen Sherwood from Columbus, Ohio, arrive in Greenwich Village determined to make it in the city, one as a writer, the other as an actress. From their basement apartment, they are shaken by blasts from the nearby construction of a new subway line, as well as late night knocks on their door by ‘customers’ of the former tenant known as Violet. They are stricken with homesickness, and musically ask: Why oh why oh, did we leave Ohio? This reference did indeed become the content of David Smith’s “Letter.”
“DEAR MOTHER”
“OH WHY, OH WHY OH, DID I EVER LEAVE O HI OH?”
“YOUR SON, DAVID SMITH”
David Smith “The Letter” 1950 Steel 37 3/4” x 22 7/8 x 11” The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Utica, New York
1 Clark, Trinkett; The Drawings of David Smith; International Exhibitions Foundation; Washington, DC; 1985; p. 20.
2 Rilke, Rainer Maria; Letters to a Young Poet; W. W. Norton & Company; New York, New York; 1934 & 1962; p. 53.
3 Gray, Cleve, ed.; David Smith by David Smith; Holt, Rinehart and Winston; New York, New York; 1968.
4 Fry, Edward F.; David Smith; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; New York, New York; 1969.
In French, the sign along the roadside simply read: DANGER MORTAL! These were posted all along the winding coastal roads going out from the port at Le Palais. They covered most of the island. They were a very real warning as many of the island roads curved right along the coast, with precipitous and precarious views down from the cliffs, and across the inlets and bays. There were no guardrails.
We visited there in the summer of 1995 with our friend, the painter Holly Hughes and her mother Wanda, who at that time was the studio/office manager for the contemporary American painter Ellsworth Kelly. Wanda was armed with a map that had been given to her by Ellsworth so that we might find the ‘village’ where he had lived after WWII. Little did we know what a sight we were approaching?
Claude Monet “Tempête, côtes de Belle-Ile” 1886 Oil on canvas 65.4 cm. x 81.5 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
Over the years on Belle-Isle, the largest of the Breton Islands, many artists found in the isolation, the savage waves and tides, the inspiration that they were searching for. Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, the actress Sarah Bernhardt and her companion the painter Georges Clairin, the Irish painter John Peter Russell, were all attracted to this special place, and later of course, so was Ellsworth Kelly.
During the fall of 1886, from 12 September to 25 November to be exact, Claude Monet lived and worked on Belle-Isle. During this time he produced a series of 39 paintings, exploring the weather and the wildness of this place.
Not to be outdone by the painters, the contemporary poet Patricia Clark from Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently visited Paris and many of the great museums there. She noticed in particular the paintings by Monet at the Musée D’Orsay, and the potential for an ekphrastic experience. When I asked Clark about this, this is what she said:
“As for the poem about Monet’s Rochers — we did not go out to the place, alas! Would love to see it. I believe (memory is slippery!) we saw the painting at the Musee D’Orsay. My method — such as it is! — is to buy postcards of paintings that really move me. . . . Then there’s a catalog. But I know I have a postcard of this painting.”
“I think what drew me to it is that it’s not an image I’d seen that much. It seems rougher and less ‘pretty’ than many Monets. I kept it in front of me and then one day, I started to write about it. That’s about as much as I recall — of course, a writer can’t help but layer their own issues over what they look at — so that’s what happens, doesn’t it? I hope that comes through.”[i]
Claude Monet “Les rochers de Belle-Île” 1886 Oil on canvas 25 7/8″ x 32 1/8″ Musee des Beaux-Arts, Reims
“Les Rochers de Belle-Ille”
(after the painting by Claude Monet)
“No beach here—just the sea swirling in blue
deep blue and green
Both the sea and the rocks show age
It’s a tired scene of their coming together
each hour and day
The water’s force, erosion of all the softest parts
leaving only solid rock
This you could be crushed upon—the hardest
knowledge of all—
What is impervious to you, quite solidly indifferent
No escaping the sea
throws you repeatedly on the rocks of all you’re stupid about—
self-ignorance, deception, lies—
Instead someone calls this a scene, a landscape, seascape—
Claude Monet “Rochers a Belle-Île at Port Goulphor” 1886 Oil on canvas 26” x 32 3/16” Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Following the end of WWII, from 1948 to 1954, the American artist and veteran Ellsworth Kelly visited and lived in several areas of France. In July 1949 he even rented a house on Belle-Ile-en-Mer for the summer and part of the fall. He had fallen in love with France and with its artists, especially Claude Monet and Henri Matisse.
In 1965 Kelly returned to Belle-Isle with a specific purpose, to re-visit certain sites that Monet had painted and witness them directly, not just metaphorically. Later in his life, 2005, he returned to Belle-Isle for a last series of drawings, not abstracted from the rocks, but directly created from the sources.[iii]
Ellsworth Kelly “Port-Goulphar, Belle- Île” 2005 Pencil on paper 49.5 cm x 62.2 cm Estate of the artist.
It is a landscape that would challenge one’s imagination. From the earliest visitors to contemporary painters and poets, one can only wonder how they felt when approaching these vistas for the first time. Looking out on this frighteningly beautiful land, with its bays, inlets, needles, rocks, and steep cliffs, it is no wonder that this entire region of France would come to be described as Finistère: the end of the earth.
[i] Clark, Patricia; in an e-mail response to this writer; 9 January 2021; 9:52 AM.
[ii] Clark, Patricia; Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars; Terrapin Books; West Caldwell, New Jersey; 2020; pp. 36-37.
[iii] Bois, Yve-Alain, and Sarah Lees; Monet/Kelly; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; Williamston, Massachusetts; and Yale University Press; New Haven and London; 2014.
In ancient times, as these stories, tales, and histories were spoken and traded, collected and written down, it was Homer who ultimately composed the epic poem The Iliad. In so doing, he chronicled the adventures of the Greek army, the sack of Troy and the heroic wanderings of the many participants across the seas.
In one section especially, he described at length the great warrior Achilles as he was preparing for his battles in the Trojan Wars. Achilles’ mother, Thetis, who had foreseen these upcoming events, commissioned the blacksmith Hêphaistos to forge a shield, with many layers and stories illuminated on its face. He, Achilles, would have a choice of living a long life in peace and relative obscurity, or going into battle, with imminent death awaiting, but having his name become legendary. We all know which of these paths he took.
It was Homer’s description of this amazing shield, going into great detail on all levels, which we accept today as the first and most important example of the ekphrastic tradition. In reading The Iliad over the years since that time, many artists and poets have tried to explicate these details, in both analytical and romantic ways.
“Then, running round the shield-rim, triple-ply, he pictured all the might of the Ocean stream.”[i]
Alexander Pope “Diagram for Achilles’ Shield” (MS 4808) 1712-1724 Pen and ink on paper The British Library, London
In the eighteenth century Alexander Pope set out on a personal project to create a modern translation of Homer’s Iliad. It stretched out over a twelve-year period, and he supported himself during this time by selling subscriptions to this as a series. Along with this writing project, he attempted to reconstruct the design of Achilles’ shield, paying close attention to Homer’s descriptions. The drawings and diagrams that he created are now in the manuscript collection of the British Library. They give an excellent glimpse into this fictional work of art, and the Ocean stream that runs around its shield-rim.
Homer continues to describe the richness and imagination of the decoration for Achilles’ shield. In the lines below he lays out the scheme for this project, including several realms and worlds in which the story takes place.
“Durable fine bronze and tin he threw into the blaze with silver and with honorable gold, then mounted a big anvil in his block and in his right hand took a powerful hammer, managing with his tongs in his left hand.”
“His first job was a shield, a broad one, thick, well-fashioned everywhere. A shining rim he gave it, triple-ply, and hung from this a silver shoulder strap. Five welded layers composed the body of the shield. The maker used all his art adorning this expanse. He pictured on it earth, heaven, and sea, unwearied sun, moon waxing, and the stars that heaven bears for garland: Plêiades, Hyades, Orion in his might, the Great Bear, too, that some have called the Wain, pivoting there, attentive to Orion, and unbathed ever in the Ocean stream.”[ii]
Later in history, the artisan John Flaxman was commissioned by the firm of Rundell, Brigge & Rundell in London to take Homer’s description of this shield, using the original Greek text and Alexander Pope’s translation, and using his own illustrations to reconstruct this great work of art. It includes all of the realms and landscapes as they are described, as well as the people and all of the characters as they interact, in both war and peace. To our modern eye, and mind, this shield may have been beautiful, however, it also would have been huge, impossible for a single warrior to wield.
John Flaxman (Commissioned by Philip Rundell) “Shield of Achilles” 1821 Silver gilt 90.5 x 90.5 x 18.0 cm The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, United Kingdom
Coming closer to our own time, both W. H. Auden and Cy Twombly bring this imagery up to date. A contemporary rendering of this story by Auden alternates shorter and longer lines in its retelling. The following selected stanzas show Achilles’ mother, Thetis, looking over the shoulder of the blacksmith Hêphaistos during the process of the making of the shield. She seems to be checking on its progress, with special attention to the inclusion of the many details that will go into this narrative.
Auden however, sets a darker tone than the purely heroic one, including this description: “An artificial wilderness and a sky like lead.” Coming full circle, so to speak, the contemporary artist Cy Twombly re-visits this theme with a very energetic and abstract depiction of the shield. Insane scribblings perhaps, yet they are lyrical and beautiful, graphic expressions with the pure kinetic energy that enlivens Achilles’ shield.
The Shield of Achilles
“She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-groomed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead.”
“She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene.”
Cy Twombly “Fifty Days at Iliam: Shield of Achilles” 1978 Oil, crayon and graphite on canvas 75 1/2” x 67” Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music, But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor But a weed-choked field.” “The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.”[iii]
[i] Homer; The Iliad; Everyman’s Library and Alfred A. Knopf; New York, London and Toronto; 1992; p. 454, lines 607-608.
[ii] Homer; The Iliad; Everyman’s Library and Alfred A. Knopf; New York, London and Toronto; 1992; pp. 450-451, lines 479-497
[iii] Auden, W. H.; Collected Poems; Modern Library; New York, New York; 2007; pp. 594-596.
Somehow in the course of events we have been led to believe that the ‘modern’ has come to mean only formalist abstraction and minimalism. A smaller and smaller world defined by a very tight description. There are however, several important modern writers and artists who have paid special attention to the details of modern life, seeing in them the larger world and how these details might speak to us.
SUNDAY NIGHT “Make use of the things around you. This light rain Outside the window, for one. This cigarette between my fingers, These feet on the couch. The faint sound of rock-and-roll, The red Ferrari in my head. The woman bumping Drunkenly around the kitchen . . . Put it all in, Make use.”[i]
“Don’t forget when the phone was off the hook all day, every day.”[ii]
“When, at 12:24, I look at the clock that isn’t running and it tells the same time as the clock that is”[iii]
As we read the above observations, both Musa McKim and Raymond Carver look directly at the world surrounding us: a telephone lying off its hook, a broken alarm clock, a bag of sugar, or just the sun creating a glare on a sheet of white paper. Many of the same things that would catch the eye of an artist. The abstract form and shape of a grand piano, or the abstracted movement of a bird in space. All are examples of minimal imagery with maximum power that both poets and painters would employ.
Brancusi’s sculpture, straight out of a folk tradition, but unrecognzable to the Parisian elite, later became the sophisticated form that synthesized beauty, abstraction and content. There is the catch: abstraction and content. At first no one saw Brancusi’s pieces as birds, neither in space nor in flight. Today, however, they have become a symbol of just that.
Constantin Brancusi “Bird in Space” 1928 Bronze 54” x 8 ½” x 6 ½” Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York
Not unlike the sculpture of Brancusi, the orchestral pieces of Igor Stravinsky synthesized classical music with jazz, folk and even the primal. Traditional painting had also gone through a similar synthesis of realism, cubism and pure plastic painting.
Arnold Newman “Igor Stravinsky, New York City” 1946 Black & White Photograph 12 1/16” x 22 5/16” National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.
In the 1950’s and 60’s many young art students were taught by American abstract artists. Process and abstraction formed the content of most of the work at that time. But later, outside of academia, these artists were also confronted by the dilemma of what to do now? They were well versed in process, but struggled to find content. One artist however, set the most impressive example. Philip Guston at his Marlborough show in 1970 envisioned the end of one aspect of this process, and opened the gates and possibilities to new forms of imagery. Making use of the things around him.
By looking at certain details occurring in the world he single handedly opened the doors for himself, for poets, and later artists to come. These included Clarke Coolidge, Musa McKim, Raymond Carver, Robert Moskowitz, Elizabeth Murray, Susan Rothenberg and more.
“I thought I would never write anything down again. Then I put on my cold wristwatch.”[iv]
Philip Guston in collaboration with Musa McKim “I thought I would never write anything down again.” (UNDATED) Pen & ink drawing on paper 19” x 24” The Estate of Musa Guston
In the mid 1960’s Robert Moskowitz produced a series of small paintings of a simple corner of a room. Quiet, minimal, very abstract and infused with a new sense of content and space. Where the simplest shape or form of a thing could clearly speak.
He would later take this process, including both personal and universal images, and juxtapose them in subtle but provacotive ways. A corner of the Flatiron Building, or the tops of the Empire State Building and the World Trade Towers, for example. A simplified assortment of visual images, not unlike the sparse and provacotive language used by Raymond Carver and Musa McKim.
Robert Moskowitz “Untitled (Empire State)” 1980 Graphite and pastel on paper 106” x 31 1/4” Collection: Mr. and Mrs. Robert K. Hoffman, Dallas, Texas
“Talking about her brother Morris, Tess said: ‘The night always catches him. He never believes it’s coming.’”[v]
“When on TV I see my sister in a bit part in an old movie”[vi]
“Three men and a woman in wet suits. The door to their motel room is open and they are watching TV.”[vii]
“And below in the street they are rattling the Coca-Cola bottles”[viii]
Robert Moskowitz “Painting (For Duke Ellington)” 1977 Oil on canvas 90” x 75” Collection of Mary and Jim Parton, Great Falls, Virginia
His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes “Duke Ellington riding in the back of his limo, somewhere in Indiana. He is reading by lamplight. Billy Strayhorn is with him, but asleep. The tires hiss on the pavement. The Duke goes on reading and turning the pages.”[ix]
[i] Carver, Raymond; “Sunday Night,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 53.
[ii] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 66.
[iii] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 105.
[iv] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 121.
[v] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 64.
[vi] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 105.
[vii] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 65.
[viii] McKim, Musa; Alone With the Moon; The Figures; Great Barrington, Massachusetts; 1994; p. 105.
[ix] Carver, Raymond; “His Bathrobe Pocket Stuffed With Notes,” A New Path to the Waterfall; The Atlantic Monthly Press; New York, New York; 1989; p. 66.
Nothing extraneous. Everything working. With muscles tense, movement over every inch of the surface, the figures themselves create the space in which they exist, taking the place of time. Timeless.
The Priest Laocoön was a seer in the Temple of Apollo. He had two sons, Antiphas and Thymbraeus. One story has him ostracized from the temple for breaking his vow of celibacy. Another describes his ill-fated warning to the assembled people of Troy against accepting a suspicious gift from the army of Greece: the Trojan horse. In either case, it is an ancient Greek sculpture that brings this story to life.
Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus of Rhodes “The Laocoön” 200 BC — 100 AD Marble 6’ 10” x 5’ 4” x 3’ 8” The Vatican Museum, Vatican City
“… Of our men
One group stood marveling, gaping to see
The dire gift of the cold unbedded goddess,
The sheer mass of the horse.”
“Build up a bonfire under it,
This trick of the Greeks, a gift no one can trust,
Or cut it open, search the hollow belly!”
“Contrary notions pulled the crowd apart.
Next thing we knew, in front of everyone,
Laocoön with a great company
Came furiously running from the Height,
And still far off cried out: ‘O my poor people,
Men of Troy, what madness has come over you?
Can you believe the enemy truly gone?’”[i]
Writing in the Aeneid the poet Virgil related the story of Laocoön’s warning to his fellow citizens, the subsequent sack of Troy, and that infamous horse. Laocoön, sensing the horse to be hollow, struck it with his spear, echoing both inside and out. So either Apollo, or Minerva, sent serpents in retaliation for Laocoön’s warnings and his defiance of the gods. The research, dating, and other historical facts surrounding the telling of this story and the creation of the sculpture are, however, confusing.
Pliny the Elder attributed the commission of this sculpture to a team of three artists from Rhodes: Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus. They worked together seamlessly, interlacing the figures and serpents into a dynamic whole. It was thought to have been completed between 200 BC and 100 AD but those dates continue to be debated.
The original work was buried and lost after being in the Palace of Titus around 79-81 AD. It was later rediscovered during an excavation in early 1506 and brought immediately to Pope Julius II who had it placed in the Vatican Collection. His Holiness requested Michelangelo, who was working in Rome at the time, to inspect this newly discovered example of classical sculpture. Upon seeing “The Laocoön” Michelangelo declared it to be the most beautiful example he had seen from ancient times.
At first “The Laocoön” was attributed to the Romans as a copy from a lost original. Later it was theorized that it was not Roman, but truly a classical Greek composition. This debate continued without much clarification until the historian Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote an explication of this sculpture in his “Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry” in 1766. Lessing describes this sculpture and looks deeply into it, while simultaneously analyzing Virgil’s poem.
These art historical speculations pose a problem for the student of ekphrastics: if it had been created earlier, then Virgil may have actually seen it and been inspired to write his account in the Aeneid. However, if it had really been a Roman composition, then it was much later than Virgil, and possibly an illustration of his telling of this story.
In any event, Lessing’s descriptions and speculations are in themselves important examples of the ekphrastic tradition. His observations search the surfaces of this piece of marble and look deeply into its meaning. Describing a facial feature in one example, and then writing regarding the anguish coming from behind the mask, Lessing gives us a meditation on the expressive possibilities in a work of art.
Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodoros of Rhodes “The Laocoön” (DETAIL)
“Virgil’s Laocoön cries out, but this screaming Laocoön is the same man whom we already know and love as a prudent patriot and loving father. We do not relate his cries to his character, but solely to his unbearable suffering. It is this alone which we hear in them, and it was only by this means that the poet could convey it clearly to our senses.”[ii]
Lessing’s observations address the processes of both seeing and writing. In his essay he searches for significant details that are employed for creative expression and he, himself, debates the use of these details in order to tell the entire story. Which elements will work for the poet? Which ones for the artists?
“It is claimed that representation in the arts covers all of visible nature, of which the beautiful is but a small part. Truth and expression are art’s first law, and as nature herself is ever ready to sacrifice beauty for the sake of higher aims, so must the artist subordinate it to his general purpose and pursue it no further than truth and expression permit. It is enough that truth and expression transform the ugliest aspects of nature into artistic beauty.”[iii]
Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodoros of Rhodes “The Laocoön” (VERSO)
“The idea of having the father and his two sons connected in one entanglement by means of the deadly serpents is undeniably an inspired one and gives evidence of a highly artistic imagination. Whose was it, the poet’s or the artists’?”[iv]
“But only that which gives free rein to the imagination is effective. The more we see, the more we must be able to imagine. And the more we add in our imaginations, the more we must think we see.”[v]
Early in the summer of 2017, during a visit to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Cité de Paris, I came upon the following statement on one of the information tags in an exhibition and copied it down in my notebook:
“Tout l’art du passe, de toutes les époques, de tout les civilisations surgit devant moi, tout est simultané comme si l’espace prenait la place du temps.”
—Alberto Giacometti, 1965[vi]
This led me back to a book of “Interpretive Drawings” by Alberto Giacometti that included two of his drawings from “The Laocoön.” In English his statement reads: “In all art of the past, of all eras, and all civilizations that came before me, all share a common vision in which space takes the place of time.”[vii]
Alberto Giacometti “Laocoon, after a statue in the Vatican Museum” 1952Ballpoint pen drawing 11 1/2” x 8 1/4” Annette and Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Paris and Zurich
Not only did Alberto Giacometti go to this source in reference to the old masters, so did James Joyce when Stephen Dedalus comments on this very story in Ulysses: “Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope.”[viii]
And this is how Virgil described Laocoön’s confrontation with this beast:
“…Some crookedness
Is in this thing. Have no faith in the horse!
Whatever it is, even when Greeks bring gifts
I fear them, gifts and all.”
“He broke off then
And rifled his big spear with all his might
Against the horse’s flank, the curve of the belly.
It stuck there trembling, and the rounded hull
Reverberated groaning at the blow.”[ix]
Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodoros of Rhodes “The Laocoon” 200 BC — 100 AD Marble 6’ 10” x 5’ 4” x 3’ 8” The Vatican Museum, Vatican City
“…. But straight ahead
They slid until they reached Laocoön.
Twining about and feeding on the body.
Next they ensnared the man as he ran up
With weapons: coils like cables looped and bound him
Twice round the middle; twice about his throat
They wipped their back-scales, and their heads towered,
While with both hands he fought to break the knots,
Drenched in slime, his head-hands black with venom,
Sending to heaven his appalling cries
Like a slashed bull escaping from an altar,
The fumbled axe shrugged off. The pair of snakes
Now flowed away and made for the highest shrines,
The citadel of pitiless Minerva,
Where coiling they took cover at her feet
Under the rondure of her shield. New terrors
Ran in the shaken crowd: the word went round
Laocoön had paid, and rightfully,
For profanation of the sacred hulk
With his offending spear hurled at its flank.”[x]
Alberto Giacometti “Head of Laocoön” 1952Ballpoint pen drawing 11 1/2” x 8 1/4” Annette and Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Paris and Zurich
[i] Virgil; The Aeneid; (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald); Vintage Classics and Random House; New York, New York; 1990; BOOK II, Lines 42-45 & 52-61, p. 34.
[ii] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; The Johns Hopkins University Press; Baltimore and London; 1984; p. 24.
[iii] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; p. 19.
[iv] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; p. 35.
[v] Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim; (translated by Edward Allen McCormick from the original of 1766); Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry; p. 19.
[vi] Carluccio, Luigi; Giacometti: A Sketchbook of Interpretive Drawings; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; New York, New York; 1967. Giacometti’s statement regarding these drawings led me to revisit this book of his drawings copied from many historic works of art.
[vii] From an e-mail correspondence between this writer and Dr. Rosalie Vermette, Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Paris, France, and Professor Emerita, School of Liberal Arts, Indiana University and Purdue University at Indianapolis, 22 May 2018.
[viii] Joyce, James; Ulysses; Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf; New York, London, Toronto; 1934 & 1997; p. 301.
[ix] Virgil; The Aeneid; (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald); BOOK II, Lines 67-75, p. 35.
[x] Virgil; The Aeneid; (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald); BOOK II, Lines 290-310, p. 41.
From the Sheldon Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana to the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago and from the Museum of Modern Art in New York across town to the Whitney Museum of American Art, we can discover several iconic images of American life, all produced by the same artist: Edward Hopper.
Their sense of place and history not only documents an era in our national life, but also evokes the feel and texture of those years. These images have intrigued and inspired a variety of American poets and painters including both Edward Hirsch and Phillip Koch. They have also become iconic images that stand in for a much larger and more complex sense of our country: rooftops and storefronts, bridges and lighthouses, and of course railroad tracks and isolation.
For Phillip Koch many of these images are reminders of his own childhood and studies in art school, especially in New York, Ohio, and Indiana. Seeing and confronting Hopper’s paintings are one of the most important ways of learning, not only about them, but also about painting in general.
When I asked Phillip Koch about Hopper’s painting “House by the Railroad” this was his response:
“I’ve loved that painting for years and in March of 2015 made a special trip up to Haverstraw, NY (just north of Hopper’s hometown of Nyack, NY) as I knew the building Hopper had worked from was still standing and little changed from his day. The house is high up on a hill overlooking the Hudson River. There is a railroad track just down the hill a bit from the house, and still farther down the hill a road where Hopper stood and envisioned his painting.”
Phillip Koch “Haverstraw” 2015 Vine charcoal on paper 10 1/2” x 14” Collection of the artist, Baltimore, Maryland
“This is Haverstraw, vine charcoal, 10 1/2 x 14 inches, 2015, that I did from nearly the exact same spot where Hopper stood to do his House by the Railroad. I didn’t include the railroad tracks though they are still there and in use, just as in Hopper’s day. If you compare Hopper’s oil to my version, you can see Hopper felt free to invent some additional architectural features to make his structure more interesting (realist that he was, he loved to play around with his subjects and add and subtract forms at will.)”[i]
For the poet Edward Hirsch, Hopper’s paintings frame a mid-western sense of isolation: spatial and psychological conditions. Hirsch often personifies the typical American storefront, or an old house façade, giving them human expressions: these are some of the classic human conditions that poets constantly deal with, playing with only light and shadow and words and rhythms in order to intensify and exaggerate a mythical presence.
What follows here, is Hirsch’s articulate and sensitive meditation on Edward Hopper’s great painting, “House by the Railroad” from 1925:
Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad
“Out here in the exact middle of the day,
This strange, gawky house has the expression
Of someone being stared at, someone holding
His breath underwater, hushed and expectant;
This house is ashamed of itself, ashamed
Of its fantastic mansard rooftop
And its pseudo-Gothic porch, ashamed
of its shoulders and large, awkward hands.
But the man behind the easel is relentless.
He is as brutal as sunlight, and believes
The house must have done something horrible
To the people who once lived here
Because now it is so desperately empty,
It must have done something to the sky
Because the sky, too, is utterly vacant
And devoid of meaning. There are no
Trees or shrubs anywhere—the house
Must have done something against the earth.
All that is present is a single pair of tracks
Straightening into the distance. No trains pass.
Edward Hopper “House by the Railroad” 1925 Oil on canvas 24” x 29” (Anonymous Gift) Museum of Modern Art, New York
Now the stranger returns to this place daily
Until the house begins to suspect
That the man, too, is desolate, desolate
And even ashamed. Soon the house starts
To stare frankly at the man. And somehow
The empty white canvas slowly takes on
The expression of someone who is unnerved,
Someone holding his breath underwater.
And then one day the man simply disappears.
He is a last afternoon shadow moving
Across the tracks, making its way
Through the vast, darkening fields.
This man will paint other abandoned mansions,
And faded cafeteria windows, and poorly lettered
Storefronts on the edges of small towns.
Always they will have this same expression,
The utterly naked look of someone
Being stared at, someone American and gawky.
Someone who is about to be left alone
Again, and can no longer stand it.”[ii]
[i] Koch, Philip; An artist’s statement contained in an e-mail correspondence with this writer; 19 November 2017.
[ii] Hirsch, Edward; “Edward Hopper and the House by the Railroad (1925)” Wild Gratitude; Alfred A. Knopf Publishers; New York, New York; 1986; pp. 13-14.
It was my first year of graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington and there was a field trip from there up to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. The major exhibition was a collection of Modern Masters from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, including Matisse’s painting of “Nasturtiums with Dance, II” from 1912. It remains one of my all time favorites, even to this day. However, what I was not totally prepared for was the extent of the permanent collection in Chicago.
So many pieces that I had read about in art history books and now saw in person: from Corneille de Lyon and El Greco to Cezanne, Renoir, Manet and Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. This experience brought back many memories, especially me youthful visits to the National Gallery of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Recently in reading more about this work, and the work of contemporary poets, I came across this insightful piece by Thomas Lynch surveying this collection in Chicago. It is like a walking and talking tour of the Impressionist wing of the Art Institute.
Georges Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” 1884-1886 Oil on canvas 81 3/4” x 121 1/4” Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago
“Art History, Chicago”
“It’s not so much a Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte as the point
of order according to Seurat –-
that bits of light and color, oil paints
aligned in dots become the moment caught,
verbs slowed to a standstill, the life examined.
We step back wide-eyed for a better look:
an assemblage of Parisian suburbanites
in Sunday dress, top hats and parasols,
are there among the trees beside the river.
There are girls and women, men and dogs
in random attitudes of ease and leisure.
A stretch of beach, boats in the blue water,
a woman with a monkey on a leash,
a stiff man beside her, a mother and daughter,
that little faceless girl who seems to look at us.
And everyone is slightly overdressed except
for a boatman stretched out in the shade.
He smokes his pipe and waits for passengers.
Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street, A Rainy Day” 1877 Oil on canvas, 83 1/2” x 108 3/4” Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago
But I have never been to Paris.
I’ve never holidayed beside the Seine
nor strolled with a French girl in the gray morning
as in this Paris Street, A Rainy Day—
Gustave Caillebotte’s earlier masterpiece
three galleries down in this collection.
So I do not know these cobblestones, this street,
this corner this couple seems intent on turning.
But I have walked with a woman arm in arm
holding an umbrella in a distant city,
and felt the moment quicken, yearning for
rainfall or a breeze off the river or
the glistening flesh of her body in water
the way this woman’s is about to be
that Degas has painted in The Morning Bath.
She rises from her bed, removes her camisole
and steps into the tub a hundred years ago.
Edgar Degas “The Morning Bath” 1887-1890 Pastel on off-white laid paper mounted on board 706 x 433 mm Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago
History’s a list of lovers and cities,
a mention of the weather, names and dates
of meetings in libraries and museums
of walks by the sea, or through a city,
late luncheons, long conversations, memories
of what happened or what didn’t happen.
But art is a brush of a body on your body,
the permanent impression that the flesh
retains of courtesies turned intimate;
the image and likeness, the record kept
of figures emergent in oil or water
by the river, in the rain or in the bath
when, luminous with love and its approval,
that face, which you hardly ever see,
turns its welcome towards you yet again.”[i]
[i] Lynch, Thomas; Still Life in Milford; W. W. Norton & Company; New York, New York; 1998; pp. 19-20.
BRIDGING THE GAP 