On Being the Opposite of a Moth

Time 2021-10-16 13:04:28

Web Name: On Being the Opposite of a Moth

WebSite: http://theoppositeofamoth.blogspot.com

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Return here to The Opposite of a Moth home page.....WelcomeHawkwoodAuthor, artist, designer and neo-Renaissance Hermeticist. I like to consider that creative activity should aspire to the condition of talismanic magic. Other methods are possibly equally as effective, although perhaps not as cool.View my complete profileOn Being the Opposite of a MothIf it is the sunny canvases of the impressionists that do it for you, then best look elsewhere. This weblog is (mostly) about the shadow side of art, and the mysteries which may be found there. For my part, I at times tend to be the opposite of a moth; it is the darkness that attracts me. And the darkest well, they say, most clearly reflects the stars.
~ Hawkwood (David Bergen)My header
My header image is based upon the 1513 engraving The Knight, Death and the Devil, by Albrecht Dürer. The header contains a hidden alchemical message: in the center of the circle at the extreme right is the alchemical symbol for lead, while higher up in the center of the opposite circle towards which the knight is riding is the alchemical symbol for gold. The knight on his journey to transformation might be mockingly escorted by Death with his hourglass and the horned Devil with his pikestaff, but his guiding angel is always with him to help him keep a steady hand on the reins of his steed and to urge him forward.
The Farther You GoThe farther you go the deeper is the sea.
Tintoretto
What The Fire Said
From our distant past to mysterious futures, from sirens of the seas to contemporary sorcery: ancient myths, prophesies and oracles can all be found on What The Fire Said, the online portal which features my own art and writing. (right click opens a new tab)What The Fire Said: Featured Painting
Andromeda
Depictions of Andromeda being rescued from the sea monster by the hero Perseus typically portray her as a Grecian-style princess. But where did Andromeda really come from? (right click opens a new tab)Shadows in Eden
There's lost lands, heresies, Noah's Ark, heroes of ancient Sparta and a variety of Eves on my other weblog. Clicking on the image will take you there (right click opens a new tab).Sophia's Mirror
Sophias Mirror reflects all creation, is the source of all things. Emma's weblog is about the discoveries which can be made when we look into this mirror, and the encounters through art, writing and poetry which allow us to glimpse the oneness behind the many forms reflected there.Sophia's Mirror: featured post
Sophia - The Breath of Life
(Right click opens a new tab.)DRACULA: Darkness Rising
My own version of Dracula, featuring Bram Stoker's actual text. Clicking on the image will transport you to Transylvania. Right click opens a new tab. View it full-screen in HD, and bring garlic - a lot.REVELATIONS: The End of Time
The Book of Revelation by John of Patmos is a book of visions. By turns wondrous, nightmarish and bizarre, it describes the destructive end of the world and a new beginning. John's visions read like reports from other realities, and have inspired artists from Dürer to Turner. My own interpretation features the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Number of the Beast and the Whore of Babylon, set to the music of Nagual Art. Clicking on the image takes you to the End of Days. (Right click opens a new tab.)FollowersFollow me on PinterestFollow David's board Mythic Worlds on Pinterest.A Dark Knight
clicking on the image will take you to himDürer's RequestI admonish all who have any knowledge in these matters that they write it down. Do it truly and plainly, not toilsomely and at great length, for the sake of those who seek and are glad to learn.

Albrecht Dürer
The Knight, Death and the Devil
Albrecht Dürer, 1513
clicking on the image will take you to themThe Sham Dairymaid
clicking on the image will take you to herHawkwood's Featured PostsFamiliar, Unknown PlacesIt is a landscape which seems to take in all the world. Low in the foreground an arched bridge spans a lazily meandering river. The river, g...Extreme Love The phrase extreme sports has become a familiar one, and as the term suggests describes situations in which the participants are prepared...Through the Seventh GateAlthough astronomy can explain such phenomena as eclipses, the alignments of moons and planets still hold something mysterious: these phenom...Five Women and Four Serpents Her black python, the great serpent.. was believed to be born of the earths clay, since it emerges from the earths depths a...Franklin Booth: In Sunlight and Shadow Two robed men engaged in conversation are about to descend a wide flight of steps, to the sides of which friezes of winged angels swirl and...The Knight, Death and the Devil In full Gothic * armour a knight rides purposefully through a rocky ravine ( below ). His gaze is fixed firmly upon the way ahead, denying ...Beautiful, Naked and Chained to a Rock Take the portrayal in art of an ever-popular myth. It has three essential ingredients: a swooning heroine, beautiful, naked and chained to...Girl in a KimonoShe was born in 1877 in Zaandam, in the province of North Holland. When she was 16, * Geesje Kwak (a name perhaps as unlikely-sounding to Du...Between Good and EvilWhat is the difference between good and evil? It would seem to be a straightforward question, and we might consider that the answer is clear...In the Land of Giants It was the land of the Patagons. Their name appears on old maps of the region ( below ), and in travellers accounts which - literally ...The list above is generated by the posts which visitors are currently reading.The Sheltering Snow
clicking on the image will take you thereLinks to My Past Posts (2010-present)Extreme LoveDürer's Sea MonsterThe Ecstasy of EveThree Portraits and Four FacesJudith: The Woman with a SwordTemptationsShadows in EdenNaked or Nude?In Sunlight and ShadowThe Tainted Lips of AngelsThe Knight, Death and the DevilThe Thingness of ThingsBlood on the EarthGirl in a KimonoA Wild Man and a Willing LadyFamiliar, Unknown PlacesBeautiful, Naked and Chained to a RockThe Sham DairymaidVisitationsIn the Land of GiantsThrough the Seventh GateBetween Two Fires
clicking on the image will take you thereLinks to My Past Posts (2009)The Grail, or Something Like ItA Winter SilenceThe Sheltering SnowThe Phantom of the OperaThe Lair of the Sea SerpentA Winter ShadowBetween Two FiresFive Women and Four SerpentsThe Book from the Kingdom of ShadowsThe Villa by the SeaThe Little Shepherd and the Little VampireWould You Adam and Eve It?Between Good and EvilFear and Loathing in the Sistine ChapelMonsters Have Light InsideTwo TowersFlight and PursuitFallen AngelsDude, Where's My Prophet?The Deception of MirrorsAll Things Must PassTwo Faces of MysteryA Knight of Dark RenownOur Bones are Lightning
Image HawkwoodOur Bones are LightningLos huesos son relámpagos
en la noche del cuerpo.
Oh mundo, todo es noche
y la vida es relámpago.

(Our bones are lightning
in the night of the flesh.
O world, all is night,
life is the lightning.)

Octavio Paz
from Live Interval
Ishtar
Image HawkwoodBabylonEven through the darkest back alleys, it was said, Ishtar, the goddess of love, might be seen gliding, visiting her favourites in taverns and on the open streets, so that all the city, mingling festival with erotic adventure, appeared to glimmer with desire.

Tom Holland
From Persian Fire
The Villa by the Sea
clicking on the image will take you thereGo, Said the BirdAnd the pool was filled with water
out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us,
reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed,
and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird,
for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.

T. S. Eliot
From Burnt Norton
All Things Must Pass
clicking on the image will take you thereHorace, 1st century BCE
'We are but dust and a shadow'Prophesy
Image HawkwoodProphesy to the WindProphesy to the wind,
to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.

T.S. Eliot
From Ash Wednesday
This Fire is the Honey
Image HawkwoodThe Honey of All Beings'This fire is the honey of all Beings,
And all Beings are the honey of this fire.
O bright immortal Lover that is in fire
And shines in mortal speech;
O bright immortal Lover who is All!'

This was the song that came from
The small span of thin gold bodies
Shaped by the holy Dark.

Edith Sitwell
from The Bee Oracles
A Deeper Kind of Slumber
Image HawkwoodA Deeper Kind of SlumberRobin Goodfellow,
Dianae, my muse.
Morpheus in my heart,
Your sand in my veins.
It's a deeper kind of slumber.
What is the universe anyway
But a pouch of silver coins.
The intense breathing
Of a dying animal.
A foreboding of afterlife,
Master keys in an oaken chest.
The somewhere is mine
And from there I'll continue.
All I asked for was a little love.
Meet me on the other side,
Where as a rose I will wake.
Though blind I'll follow
Every step you take.
Dianae, my muse,
Dianae, my solitude.
Cease to exist,
Rise to exist no more.
It's a deeper kind of slumber.

Johan Edlund
of Tiamat
A Deeper Kind of Slumber
Music by Tiamat
Video by NebuschtanLeaning into the AfternoonsLeaning into the afternoons, I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes. There, in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames; its arms turning like a drowning man's. I send out red signals across your absent eyes that wave like the sea, or the beach by a lighthouse. You keep only darkness my distant female; from your regard sometimes, the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons, I fling my sad nets to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes. The birds of night peck at the first stars that flash like my soul when I love you. The night gallops on its shadowy mare, shedding blue tassels over the land. Leaning into the afternoons, I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes.

Pablo Neruda
Translated by W.S. Merwin
Leaning into the Afternoons
Video by 4Seasons ProductionsPowerAll things which are similar, and therefore connected, are drawn to each other's power.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim
The Law of Resonance, 16th century
Since July 2009 you are new visitor:
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clicking on the image will open itA Wild Man and a Willing Lady
clicking on the image will take you to themDeleyaman: Sweet SpaceSweet Space: lyricsO braided dusks of the oak,and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noon-day sunof the June day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heartI held you fast in mine;While the riotous noon-day sunof the June day long did shine.
Beautiful glooms, soft dusksin the noonday fire, Wildwood privacies,closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber partedwith wavering arras of leaves, Cells for the passionate pleasureof prayer to the soul that grieves,Prayer to the soul that grieves.
And when terror and shrinkingand dreary unnamable painDrew over me out of the merciless miles,merciless miles of the plain.
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face That sweet face of space.That sweet face of space. To the edge of the wood I'm drawn,To the edge of the wood I'm drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs,as a belt of the dawn,Where the gray beach glimmering runs,as a belt of the dawn.
Adapted from Sidney Lanier's poem
'The Marshes of Glynn'Night Music by Luigi Boccherini Performed by Susanne Frank,
Rolf Lislevand, Stephan GoernerSignsThere are signs which
arrive in your dreams

From Mayan Dream Walk
Richard Luxton with Pablo Balam
Posts Archive 2013(3) July(1)Extreme Love May(1) February(1) 2012(4) October(1) September(1) July(1) June(1) 2010(14) August(1) July(1) May(1) April(1) March(3) February(4) January(3) 2009(23) December(4) November(4) October(4) September(5) August(2) July(4)Hawkwood Recommends:
Savage Girls and Wild Boys:
A History of Feral Children.
by Michael NewtonAbout My Featured BookSavage Girls and Wild Boys:
A History of Feral Children.
by Michael Newton

Both poignant and disturbing, this book relates seven case studies of children who purportedly grew up in the wild, were raised by wolves, or were the victims of domestic neglect so extended and extreme that their circumstances and behaviour were little different from their feral counterparts. It is a sad fact that, having been rescued, these children seem afterwards to have led lives that were at times as troubled and as uncertain, if in very different ways, as their former neglected states.

What makes the book so compelling is the author's examination, not just of the children themselves, but also of these children's 'rescuers', these well-meaning individuals' reactions to their charges, and their sometimes conflicting motives for rehabilitating the children. In reading about both sides, we come to consider our own views, both of our romantic notions of 'The Wild', and of the conflict between apparently objective research and simple personal compassion.
Octavio Paz, 20th century
'You too belong to the night'Kanji
'The imagination drives recklessly'ArtistsAdrian ArleoAndrew BartonBarbara LeBéguecZdzislaw BekzinskiDozier BellBarbara CanepaHelmut DitschBathsheba GrossmanKaren HanmerSha Sha HigbyDindi van der HoekSebastian HolzhuberCarlotta IkedaTheo JansenKris KuksiMaya KulenovicKate D. MacDowellMia MäkiläCatherine McIntyreAlina LebedevaRobert PowellEduardo RecifeGerhard RichterSuzan SchuttelaarJoyce TennesonAleksandra WaliszewskaBruno WalpothClaire WendlingPortals and ResourcesAncient ScriptsAncient World MapsArchitectural Time and SpaceBibliOdyssey's AlchemyKuzhebar DesignLabyrinthosLe Zèbre BleuMesowebObsidian DawnPatagonian MonstersReal Color WheelRed BindSan Graal LibraryThe Mayan Calendar PortalVamp hl=enfs=1color1=0x3b2e1fcolor2=0x55412dborder=1" name="movie">The Gawain Poet, 14th century
'Shame on the one who thinks ill of this'DisclaimerOwnership of any copyrighted material appearing either as visual, written or audio files on this weblog, remains with the holders of the original copyright, and no further claim to such material by the author of this site is intended, and need not be inferred. It is believed that the limited use of any web resolution images for the purposes of identification and critical commentary qualifies as fair use.

Copyright of any material credited to Hawkwood remains with the author. The registered creative commons license below permits further use and distribution of Hawkwood's work subject to the three conditions: (1) The user attributes the work to 'Hawkwood', (2) The context is non-commercial, (3) The work remains unaltered. A link back to this weblog is appreciated.
Creative Commons LicenseWorks by Hawkwood are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License based on works at:theoppositeofamoth.blogspot.com. Hawkwood is listed at:OnToplist Blog Directory
Blog Directory by Blog FluxLet her come to youLet her come to you
The end is naught but the real beginning
Resist, and your soul will know unrest
Let her find you, and you both will soar
Beyond the deepest nights
Beyond unconquered depths

This uncredited text is printed on a T-shirt of mine. Many thanks to one of my visitors for supplying the information which now allows me to credit the poet:It is an extract from Death Dragoness by Jesse C. Scott.
Robert Fludd, 17th century
'And thus, to infinity'

................................................................................. Wednesday, July 10, 2013 Extreme LoveThe phrase extreme sports has become a familiar one, and as the term suggests describes situations in which the participants are prepared to go to extremes in order to test the borders of what is possible, what is do-able. Only by pushing against those borders can we discover new territory within ourselves, take on new challenges, and explore our own limits and capabilities. But what if we apply such a term to emotional territory? Can there exist such a thing as extreme love?

Artemisia II was for a brief two years the ruler of Caria, a Grecian-influenced province of Ancient Persia in western Anatolia. She succeeded Mausolus, who was both her husband and her brother, and history records her devastation at his death. Where does love go when the object of that love no longer exists? How does such a love find a new form? If it is strong enough, then it will not fade, but seek to transform itself into new emotional territory, begin to explore its own farther limits. Inconsolable, Artemisia strove to find a way to give her love a new form, to absorb her beloved into her own being, to allow the departed in some radical way to endure within her inmost self.

From the carefully preserved ashes of Mausolus this woman who was both a bereaved sister and a widow took each day a small measure and mixed it with a beverage, which she then drank. We do not know over what period of time the grief-stricken Artemisia continued to ingest her late husbands mortal remains, although it is reasonable to assume that she must have weighed each little portion of ash with utmost love and care, in order to protract the process of consumption for as long as was possible. We do know that she continued to pine away, until merciful death took her as well just two years later.

In her short reign Artemisia managed to express her grief in a more conventional though no less memorable way, through the medium of architecture. In the name of her beloved we recognise the term mausoleum, for Artemisia it was who ordered the first mausoleum built to honour her husbands memory. And true to the intensity of her emotions this prototype of all future mausoleums was on such a grandly impressive scale that it is on the exclusive list of the seven wonders of the Ancient World as the [1]Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.
Of ashes and architecture, it is the ashes which paradoxically seem to have proven the more durable of the two. Artemisia did not live to see the Mausoleums completion, and only a few scattered and fragmented columns now [2]remain to suggest its former magnificence. But more than eighteen long centuries after the lovelorn ruler lingered over what she knew was the last goblet of her husbands remains, the Italian artist Francesco Furini selected this mourning heroine as a suitably dramatic subject for his art, and created an imagined portrait of her.

Furini has served Artemisia well. In the limpid darkness of his subjects eyes we glimpse what never can be regained, no, not even with draughts of funerary ash and memories fashioned from resplendent marble. But also in those composed, resigned depths we might discover, if we open ourselves both to Furinis genius and to Artemisias spirit, a hint of the strength which only the most extreme love will let slip through the door: the mysterious force of a love more potent even than death.Hawkwood

Notes:
[1] The site is now Bodrum, in contemporary Turkey.

[2]A series of 15th-century earthquakes further weakened the parts of the structure which still remained, and the close of that century saw Christian crusaders make use of its stones to reinforce their nearby castle. They additionally heated and burned some of the remaining marble columns, then mixed the ash with water to create building mortar. With an irony of history, the crusaders had unknowingly subjected the very building in Mausolus' memory to the same process as his remains had been subjected by his desolate widow. The reconstruction (right) shows one possible version of the Mausoleum's appearance.


Artist: Francesco FuriniWork: Artemisia Prepares to Drink the Ashes of Her Husband Mausolus, c1630Medium: OilsLocation: Yale University Art Gallery, Connecticut, U.S.A.


If you would like to read another of my posts which features the art of Francesco Furini, you are welcome to visit my other blog here:Lot and His Daughters: The Inside StoryPosted byHawkwoodat7:50 PM0comments Sunday, May 26, 2013 Dürers Sea MonsterI can just see the headlines: "NOBLE LADY ABDUCTED BY SEA MONSTER Authorities Baffled! As well they might be, for as with those two fantastic figures of Death and the Devil which escort the fearless knight in Albrecht Dürers other masterpiece [1]engraving, the artist once more has provided us with a fantastic being so credible in his detail that we doubt his non-existence. This triton or merman, with his growth of horn, his turtle shell shield and his scaley tail, positively bristles with self-assured confidence. And he looks wily and sly enough to know exactly how to go about carrying off fair maidens to the depths of his watery realm.

The scene provides us with enough incidental detail for us to piece together what has taken place: a lady her elaborate headdress (above) suggests her social status while bathing in an estuary near the sea shore, is being abducted by the fish-tailed merman. To the left, three other bathing women (below) hastily retreat to the safety of dry land while a fourth woman swoons in horror on the shore. Next to them a running man in a [2]turban raises his hands in a gesture of startled helplessness. One feels nevertheless that given the chance of a face-to-face encounter, the man, even armed with his sword, would be no match for this cunning and grizzle-bearded hybrid, and the ladys fate seems sealed.

What makes the scene so intriguing, so mischievous, are the conflicting signals which the lady is giving out. Dürer suggests little outward show of resistance by her to the astonishing fate which has overtaken her. Her vaguely anguished expression is, if anything, contradicted by her body language; her right hand rests languidly across her naked hip, while her left almost brushes the creatures genitals, and she seems to recline at her ease on the back of her fantastic abductor with as much aplomb as she would were she safely at home relaxing on a chaise longue. It is this which makes us feel that the regret in her face is only token as she leaves the receding shore forever and rides off to her new life aquatic.

Dürer has divided his composition into two halves: the top half provides us with a classic landscape of a walled town dominated from the heights by a castle (above). In the distance a ship, its sails billowing, beats its way along the coast towards the horizon. This part of the scene seems peaceful enough, but it is the lower half of the composition that brims with action, and thrusts us into the centre of the drama which unfolds before us.

The pace of the monsters progress is indicated by the foaming wake that streams away from himself and his human prize, and Dürer has used the line of the cliffs in the background to mirror this, creating a kind of left-to-right bow wave of motion (above) from the top to the bottom of the entire scene which gives the composition its tangible dynamism. We ourselves feel irresistibly swept along on this wave, with the creatures shield forming the prow, and it is the artists genius which sets it all in motion.


Art critics usually cite The Knight, Death and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study and Melancholia as Dürers engraved masterpieces. But as an image of unexplained strangeness and power - and mischievous charm - [3]The Sea Monster resonates in the mind as surely as these.Hawkwood

Artist: Albrecht DürerWork: The Sea Monster, 1498Medium: EngravingLocation: San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, and other collections housing this print.
Notes:[1] Please see my postThe Knight, Death and the Devil
[2] Just as all things Chinese became fashionable and influenced the arts in the 19th-century, fanciful and exotic Middle Eastern styles became the thing in Dürers day. The artist featured this influence several times in his work, as in this Turkish family (left).

[3]My blog aims to provide the best quality scans of the various artworks featured.Please note that this image of The Sea Monster is high resolution, and may take time to download with a slow connection. The second image from the top in this post is an actual size detail taken from this scan. For the same reason, wherever possible I include the borders (however irregular!) of the original engravings: borders which are almost always cropped off even in quality art books which feature such engravings. I like to 'do the right thing' by the artist, and if the border is a part of the engraving then it should be included.

Posted byHawkwoodat3:30 PM2comments Wednesday, February 6, 2013 The Ecstasy of EveWhether or not our beliefs endorse the account of Eves creation in the [1]second chapter of the Book of Genesis, even a charitable soul has to concede that the idea of a fully-grown woman being fashioned from a sleeping mans rib and then being extracted from his side is a clumsy and disturbing image to get ones head around. But as it nevertheless is a scene which is central to the Biblical creation story, it has both drawn and challenged artists, and its various depictions take in a spectrum ranging from bravura originality to pedestrian literalism and all shades in between.

Solomon J. Solomons The Birth of Eve (above) is surely one example from the top end of such a spectrum. It carries a force of conviction which sweeps us up into Eves drama, and we become willing believers in the scene whether we buy into the Genesis account of her creation or not. Caressed by two supporting angels, the newly-emerged Eve rises from the flesh of a comatose Adam. All around her, swirls of new life eddy in vortices of charged energy, and we are left to guess whether her swooning pose indicates either the cathartic ecstasy of her creation, or the painful trauma of her emergence into the world. Perhaps these extremes of emotion lie close enough together for her to be experiencing both.


Earlier centuries clung more safely to the security of scriptural literalism, with the resulting imagery being both more pedantic and more unintentionally bizarre than the sensuality permitted by a later age. Bartolo di Fredis fresco (above) introduces what I irreverently think of as the 'Caesarean section' category of depictions of the scene. In a charmingly decorative Eden, a dark-robed God, supported on a hovering formation of red angels, offers the emerging Eve a steadying hand. Our sense of logic shouts to us that the fleshy space from which she emerges is an undersized impossibility, and we unconsciously suspect the unseen hollow chamber in the earth beneath the sleeping Adam, as we would suspect the stage illusionists concealing mirror which makes it appear as if his pretty assistant is emerging from an impossibly small box on a table.

His titan status in art history might lead us to expect something more from Michelangelo. But in the event, his depiction of the scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (above) is as banal as any other of its kind. Flanked by four extravagantly voluptuous male nudes which apparently had more to do with Michelangelos own [2]sexual preferences than they did with anything remotely Biblical, Eve steps out of Adams side with all the demure aplomb of a woman alighting from a bus. The artist balks at showing the actual physical opening of the flesh, and opts instead for a fudged compromise which gives the impression that Eve is in fact emerging from a cave behind the sleeping Adam, which summons an unwitting echo of the cave of birth featured in the pagan mystery schools of Ancient Greece right there on the ceiling of what is, after all, a Christian chapel.

What cannot be denied about Michelangelo is his iconic influence on subsequent depictions of these events. Although this influence is obvious in the engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (above), where Michelangelo gives us mere fleshy puppets, von Carolsfeld at least invests his characters with some humanity. God, appropriately larger-than-life and surrounded by rays of deific glory, blesses the wondering Eve who gazes steadfastly into her creators face as cloud-wreathed angels look on. The oblivious Adam, when he awakens, is in for a welcome surprise.

Henry Fuseli, better known for his dark portrayals of disturbing visions and nightmare visitations, provides us with an emerging Eve (above) straight from those worlds. In a scene of impenetrable inky shadows, both Eve and Adam swoon in apparent trauma as a uniquely clean-shaven and remarkably gothic God rolls his eyes to his own heaven. No comforting escorting angels here. All other details are swallowed up in the surrounding gloom, and even the relieving vegetation of Eden is replaced by an unyielding granite boulder. It is a secular interpretation which would have been impossible to consider before the romanticism of the late 18th- early 19th-century, and the more original for that.

Although he tends to be associated with the 19th-century pre-Raphaelites, George Frederick Watts was more of a visionary in line with such artists as Fuseli and William Blake. Watts tells us that he was inspired by contemplating the swirling patterns in carpets and wallpaper to produce his visions of winged angels and mystical beings, and his depiction of Eves emergence (above) seems to owe something to that technique of trippy visions. All superfluities are here dispensed with. Even the characters of God, Adam and the angels are brushed aside in the artists drive to produce an ecstatic vision of Eve becoming aware of her own existence, as she is borne up in the cloud of her own floating hair and the wreathing forms of the birds and flowers of Paradise. Watts, as with Fuseli, rode the wave of the Romantic movement in the arts to create a fabulous image whose rich sensuality would have been impossible for previous more scriptural centuries. But unlike Fuseli's bleak shadows, what we sense in Watts is the emergence of a new and intensely personal spirituality that we recognise as essentially contemporary in its quest.

With Martha Mayer Erlebachers creation of Eve (above) we have arrived in a radically different world. Eden now seems as bleak as the waste land which reaches to the uncertain horizon beyond, and the [3]legendary four rivers which flow out of Eden serve only to drive the focus towards the two central figures. But the figure lying on the bare ground is no slumbering Adam. Instead, what we are shown is an anonymous Caucasian female, with Eve as an African American woman. A more radically original version of the scene than this it is hard to imagine. Perhaps it took a woman to shake the original story loose from its Biblical literalism and offer us an interpretation which drives beyond all borders to reach new and questioning territory. Supernatural elements are not even hinted at in Erlebachers vision of things. Instead, we are confronted with stark and simple truths: that it is the woman who is the creator, that racial preconceptions have no place in scripture, and that even the earth of Eden can at times feel like cold, hard ground.Hawkwood
Notes:[1] Genesis 2:21-25 are the verses which relate how God fashioned Eve from a rib of the sleeping Adam. This and other events of the Creation directly contradict the version of the forming of the first unnamed man and woman in the preceding chapter (Genesis 1:27), in which the couple are created simultaneously with no mention of the rib. Some commentators take this discrepancy either as an indication that at least two versions by different writers have been combined in this part of Genesis, or that the Genesis 1 version of events actually refers to the couple of Adam and Lilith, Adams wife before Eve was created. Lilith, being created simultaneously with the first man, was therefore also his equal: a state of affairs that patriarchal scripture could not and would not tolerate, and Lilith was therefore edited out of the canonical version to linger instead in Hebrew legend.
[2] Please see my post Fear and Loathing in the Sistine Chapelfor other examples of the ways in which Michelangelos homosexuality influenced the frescos which he produced for the ceiling of the Papal chapel.
[3] In Genesis 2:10-14, the four rivers are given as the Pison, Gihon, Hidekel (Tigris) and Euphrates. The identity of the first two remains speculative.

Sources:Solomon J. Solomon: The Birth of Eve. Oils, 1908, Art Gallery of New South Wales (?), Australia.Up until 16 December, 2009, the painting was owned by the Ealing Borough Council, who due to increasing costs of upkeep, and security and conservation concerns, auctioned it through Christie's on that date for a hammer price of 713,250. ($1,159,031), a realized price just above its reserve price of 700,000. I have traced a photo of it on public exhibition after that date to the collection to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which presumably is the new owner.
Bartolo di Fredi: The Creation of Eve. Fresco, 1456.Collegiate Church of San Gimignano, Italy.
Michelangelo Buonarroti: The Creation of Eve. Fresco,1508-12,Sistine Chapel, Rome, Italy.


Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld: The Creation of Eve. Engraving, 1825. One of a complete cycle of engravings which von Carolsfeld produced for an illustrated edition (at left) of the Bible.
Henry Fuseli: The Creation of Eve. Oils, 1791-93, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany.
George Frederick Watts: She Shall be called Woman. Oils, 1875-92, Tate Gallery, London (not on public display at this time).
Martha Mayer Erlebacher: The Creation of Eve. Oils, 1996, private collection.Posted byHawkwoodat5:09 PM2comments Thursday, October 25, 2012 Three Portraits and Four FacesHe stands like some 18th-century captain-explorer at the prow of his ship, his eyes shaded from the glare of the fierce tropic sun as he voyages on towards uncharted horizons (below). It is the gesture of shading his eyes that makes this self-portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds so daringly unique, and he leaves us wondering. Was this a simple natural gesture, betraying the fact that he was bothered by the direct sunlight streaming through his studio window, and making it difficult for him accurately to gauge the exact colours on his palette? Or was this the way in which he consciously wished to portray himself, searching for a landfall on some undiscovered shore of art?

If the latter, then Reynolds was navigating treacherous shoals. His flair for experimenting with concocting his own oil paints was very much a hit-and-miss affair. 'Mix a little wax with your colours,' he is reputed to have advised a student, 'but don't tell anybody.' Within his own lifetime, he saw his own paintings crack with the brittleness of the unstable pigments which he used. 'All good paintings crack.' was his typically spry response.

This self-portrait in pastels by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (below) has long been one of my favourite self-portraits by an artist. We easily can imagine Chardin working quietly and alone in his studio, intensely observing his own likeness in a looking-glass, then briefly focusing back towards his easel as, step by step, he transmuted his own features into art. A hint of quizzical enquiry plays around the upturned corners of his mouth: a self-regard which is also a self-awareness of his involvement in the task to which he has committed himself.

Here in the interior of his studio, his fashionable wig has been replaced in favour of a comfortable white scarf secured in place by a blue headband. In this self-portrait he makes us, his audience, privilege to his informal dress. We see Chardin as he saw himself in the privacy of his own house, and not as we would see him had we encountered him on the street. The pink and blue neckerchief, the steel-rimmed pince-nez perched upon his nose, all combine to underscore the informal humanity of the artist himself. When I look at this self-portrait I find myself thinking: yes - Chardin was someone whom I would like to have met and talked with. He was, I am sure, a decent and likeable person.

As does Reynolds, Chardin provides himself with a neutral dark background - common-enough to be seen in portraits of his time. And he plays the harmonics of his colour palette throughout this work, dragging the pinks and blues of what he is wearing through his own features. Seeing this portrait in our own time, it is difficult to appreciate just how cutting-edge Chardin's techniques were. His method of using hatched lines of pure colour (the detail, above) in such a way that the eye of the observer mixes them together from a distance was revolutionary for its time. More than two centuries later, I have used this identical technique when I have worked with pastels, and I owe it to Chardin's groundbreaking originality.

Fast-forward exactly one hundred and one years on from the affable originality of Chardin's self-portrait. The neutral background darkness is still there, but what a different world we find ourselves in. The Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin presents his likeness to us (above), but his is not the only presence which we see: the all-too-real face of Death emerges from the shadows over the artist's left shoulder. But this visible horror seems to leave the artist unmoved; he even inclines his head towards the grim figure, almost in a gesture of familiarity. Death the fiddler calls the tune, and Böcklin, unphased, calmy paints along.

Death here might be portrayed as tangibly as Albrecht Dürer's figure of Death of almost four centuries before (see this blog's header), but there is no gothic grimness in this self-portrait. How could there be, when the overwhelming feeling is one of reconciliation, of an awareness of death as being simply a part of the scheme of things, as real and as necessary to the scene as the artist's own palette and brush which he holds. Death cannot be defeated, but it can be accepted. That is what Böcklin shows, and this simple realisation is his triumph.Hawkwood



On Sir Joshua Reynolds: Charlotte J. Blennerhassett: Sidelights
On Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin: Geneviéve Monnier: Le Pastel
On Arnold Böcklin: Ursula Bode: Kunst zwischen Traum und Alptraum


Artist: Sir Joshua Reynolds
Work: Self-portrait, 1747
Medium: Oils
Location: National Gallery, London

Artist: Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin
Work: Self-portrait, 1771
Medium: Pastels
Location: Louvre, Paris

Artist: Arnold Böcklin
Work: Self-portrait with Fiddling Death, 1872
Medium: Oils
Location: National Gallery, BerlinPosted byHawkwoodat11:22 AM4comments Tuesday, September 25, 2012 Judith: The Woman with a SwordYou know straight away that a woman who carries a sword in one hand and a severed head in the other has a story to tell. The story of Judith could be found in the Old Testaments Book of Judith until just over a century ago, at which time the book was dropped from the canon. But in or out of the Bible her story endures, and always has been one which spoke to artists.

Judith, as her story relates, is a beautiful widow who, in order to save her beleaguered city from the surrounding Assyrian army, dresses herself in her most seductive finery, and with only her handmaiden for company slips out of the city to visit the encamped Assyrian commander, one Holofernes. The general is duly charmed: charmed enough to incautiously fall into a drunken stupor. Judith seizes the moment - and the generals own sword. Two terrible strokes are enough to make the general shorter by a head, and with the compelling and bloody evidence wrapped up in the handmaidens hamper, our heroine slips back home. Long story short: headless corpse discovered in the cold light of morning, army in demoralized disarray, city is saved.

A beautiful and daring heroine will always appeal to artists, and Judith has been portrayed often multiple times by the same artist throughout the history of art. Botticelli, Caravaggio and Klimt have all seized upon the theme, from demure poses which focus on Judiths finery to the actual nitty-gritty of grim and graphic severance. Jan Massys (below) presents us with a coyly-smiling Judith wearing the delicate ghost of a chemise which preserves nothing for modesty, while Conrat Meits masterful and sensitive sculpture in alabaster (above) grants his Judith a three dimensional actuality. Both of these confidently-poised Judiths are from the mid 16th century.

In a post-Freudian age it would perhaps be an easy option to discuss the male fear of the powers of the castrating female even with just these first two examples, but it seems more fruitful to approach such works, not from the point of view of contemporary psychology, but as the expressions of art which they are. Just as with Greek art, it is the nudity of Meits Judith which makes her heroic, which lifts her out of time to become something *mythic in a way in which Judith in all her finery could not convey. The subtlety and fidelity of Meits carving is monumental, even for such a comparatively small-scale work - it is just 29cm (1 foot) high.

Now to two Judiths in their finery, both from the 19th century. Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constants assertive Judith (above)owes much to the then-prevailing Orientalist style, and is the richer for it. No severed head is here visible, but the hand which grips the haft of the sword, and the deep blood red of the drapes in the background, do more than enough to suggest such details of the story without any further need to get into the specifics. This Judith has used her own sash to support the swords scabbard, and so has made the weapon and the situation her own.

In August Riedels Judith (above), the gruesome trophy is only partially glimpsed, although the dangling lock of dark hair is telling enough. But this Judith is essentially of the artists own time and place: a fabulous poster girl for a 19th century revolution. The artist has utilised the backlit sleeve to draw attention to the contrastingly dark blade, and although the costumes rich brocade worn by the model is as likely to be a curtain drape or an improvised table spread, we hardly care. This is a Judith whom we would cheerfully follow over the barricades in the name of liberty.

The 1920s sees Franz von Stucks Judith (above) transformed into a fully-fledged femme fatale, and wielding a blade that looks massive enough to fell a sequoia. At her feet the insensible Holofernes lies oblivious to the coming blow, and Judith herself casts an impenetrable shadow over the blood-red background, leaving almost half the canvas in ominous darkness. This is not reality. This is opera, with all the enhanced drama which stage lighting and prop weaponry can bring to a scene.

Jan Saudeks 1996 work Sword (above) employs the style of a staged 19th century studio photograph as a counterpoint to the essentially contemporary pose of his model. The artists image is not about seduction, nor even about Judiths story as such. It is about power. Saudeks image is already far removed from von Stucks operatic Judith of a few decades earlier, and an impossible gulf away from the ennobled Judiths of previous centuries. Its essentially predatory power ignores the courageous heroism and altruistic ideals of the original Judith story, which in itself is perhaps a sardonic-enough comment on changed times.
Four and a half centuries of time separate Meits Judith from Saudeks, and the differences in between are plain to see. Assuming that the story endures for another several centuries (and I for one hope that it will), how will an artist portray such a future Judith - a Judith as removed from our own time as Saudeks is from Meits?Hawkwood


*See my previous post: Naked or Nude? This post and my other post (Five Women and Four Serpents) which also features the work of Jan Massys can be found on my sidebar's Top Ten Posts.
If youd like to read about another (shocking!) aspect of Judiths story, youre welcome to visit my other blog here:Renaissance SnuffPosted byHawkwoodat3:50 PM0comments Sunday, July 8, 2012 TemptationsThe city of Alexandria in Egypt, in the year 285. A man, then aged thirty four, turns his back on his estate, his possessions, and all that his life has been up to that moment, and walks away into the unforgiving desert dunes. What drives him into the hot North African winds, into this landscape of dust and nothingness, is his longing for an experience of the divine, of something that would infuse his life with a transcendent other. It was then not unknown for those who sought such mystic encounters to retreat to the less-frequented outskirts of the city. What was different about Anthony is that he went farther. In the inhospitably barren wilderness of the Egyptian desert, far from the city, Anthony settled down to a life of total seclusion that would last for thirteen years.

Other locations as remote, and other unrelentingly reclusive periods would follow, as Anthony's pious reputation spread widely enough for his life to be chronicled, and for his name to become a title. He was now Anthony of the Desert. The chronicles recounted his privations and his visions, and interpreted these in the context of his Christian struggles with his adversary the Devil. It is these accounts which have provided a rich theme for artists. But when we look at these works, what appeals to the artists would seem to have less to do with Anthony's fervent piety than with the visions with which the Devil chose to tempt him.

Piety, it seems, is not only a more difficult quality to portray convincingly, but less appealing for artists than the parade of phantasms which the Devil supplied to the hermit, either in the form of voluptuous temptresses or bizarre and terrifying monstrosities: all of them fertile ground for the creative imagination of artists from Hieronymus Bosch to today's intricate sculptural constructions by Kris Kuksi (above).

Henri Fantin-Latour's 19th century temptresses drift towards the studying Anthony out of nebulous wreaths of vapour (above). But Alexandre Louis Leloir and Domenico Morelli (below) supply the saint with altogether more substantial female company. Leloir's Anthony grips desperately - and rather melodramatically - onto his crucifix as two apparently all-too-real temptresses seek to embrace him, while Morelli's Anthony strives not to notice as his own two female illusions emerge insidiously from underneath the reed matting of his hermit's cave as three more disembodied females lurk in the shadows.


John Charles Dollman has a kneeling and inexplicably clean-shaven Anthony studiously ignoring both a single alluring female and a whole menagerie of desert animals - wolves, foxes and apes - circled around the entrance to his firelit retreat (below). Mere illusions ought not to cast shadows, but the shadows cast by Dollman's phantoms give them a telling reality. The impassive saint seems calmly unaware of these presences, making them more curiously real to us, the artist's audience, who have not endured Anthony's privation-induced visions.

Intriguingly, Dollman returned to the same subject twenty eight years later, and the differences with his first canvas are striking, with the colours being quieter, more muted (below). Although fewer in number, the animals are much the same, but it is the woman who has undergone the greatest transformation. Now substantial enough, not merely to cast a shadow, but to leave her footprints in the desert sand behind her, her modest pose conveys not so much wantonness, but humility. Silently she stands with her hands clasped behind her back, seeming almost to offer herself in companionship to the kneeling hermit. We feel that, once he turns to become aware of her presence, his gesture will be one, not of tortured horror, but of calm acceptance, a surrender to the seeming reality of this comforting presence which has come to him in the moonlit desert silence.

Perhaps in the intervening years Dollman had reached a deeper understanding of the nature of illusions, coming at last to a realisation that our own awareness, while it might not shatter such illusions, at least reaches a measure of acceptance. And in that acceptance the illusions are themselves transformed into something less threatening, more consolling, in the midst of hostile realities.Hawkwood
This post is complementary to my current post about Anthony of the Desert on my other blog, which investigates Anthony's life. You are welcome to visit and read my post here:
Anthony of the Desert: Life as Fiction.

My own portrayal of Anthony can be seen at:Anthony of the Desert.Posted byHawkwoodat8:44 PM0comments Tuesday, June 19, 2012 Shadows in Eden

http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/
Why was the simple idea that space is infinite considered to be a heresy? Just how seaworthy would Noah's Ark really have been? What might you experience if you spend a night inside the Great Pyramid? You are welcome to visit my new blog SHADOWS IN EDEN, where these and other topics both maverick and progressive will be posted. The question of infinite space is already on the blog, and other subjects will follow - and this blog will soon have a new post as well! Just click on the link here, or on the SHADOWS IN EDEN picture on my sidebar.Posted byHawkwoodat8:43 PM0comments Wednesday, August 11, 2010 Naked or Nude?It must be one of the most 'frequently asked questions' in art. Whole books have been written on the subject, and it is one of art's most explored and enduring themes. So what actually is the difference between 'naked' and 'nude'? In seeking an answer for myself, rather than diving into my own library, I'll see if I can come up with some of my own ideas with the help of artists whose treatment of this theme I particularly enjoy.

Dutch Artist George Hendrik Breitner called his painting (above) Seated Half-Nude. His model is 'half-nude' because the artist shows the woman in the act of removing her chemise - an intimate moment. We might normally think that with such a private gesture she would be 'half-naked', and yet Breitner's title alone tells us that she is 'nude', and not 'naked'. Where does the difference lie? For me, it lies in the artist's own attitude, and in his treatment here of the painting itself. Breitner's brushwork is so chiselled and monumental, the forms so sculpted in paint, that he lifts his model away from the everyday through the sheer force of his artistry. The woman whom we see in the canvas is at the same time both an individual - the artist's model - and a more universal 'everywoman': a created form which emerges from the paint in slabs of light and shadow. It is this 'more than the everyday world' aura that makes this woman 'nude'.

This study (above) by contemporary digital artist Craig Mullins displays the same freedom of brushwork - although in this case the artist's 'brush' is a digital one. And Mullins, every bit as much as Breitner before him, is 'at work' here. We feel in the brush lines the striving to understand and describe the planes of the model's body: the arch of the back, the skin stretched taught below the rib cage. The artist is not out to capture feminine beauty, but to reach an understanding of the forms which the model's anatomy describes. And again, as with Breitner's model, Mullins is little concerned with a portrait of a specific individual. The woman's face is articulated with the same rough but incisive brushwork as the rest of the figure.

With the treatment of the nude by Boris Zaborov (above) we are in a radically different setting. Here this removal of the figure from the everyday world is pushed even further by the artist's use of a neutral background. It could be anywhere, at any time and place. Contradictorily, Zaborov's model is a specific individual, her face anything but anonymous. She gazes steadily out at us from her drifting world, as if afloat in a passing dream.

But why need the figure be nude at all? Another often-asked question. Different artists will give different reasons, but my own reaction is again to do with this removal from the everyday. The clothes we wear express much, both about who we are as individuals, and about the time and the place in which we live. For this reason, models who are fully-clothed become 'portraits' almost by default. Clearly, with a nude model there must be another factor at work.

In a very real sense, to step out of one's everyday clothes is to step out of time - to remove oneself from any context with the everyday world. To be nude is not to be naked. It is for this very reason that for a model to be nude can prove to be an empowering experience. Javier Valhonrat's composition (above), from his Possessed Space series, is a clear example. However 'boxed-in' the artist has chosen to portray her, this model in her nudity has all the freedom to occupy an 'eternal now'. For her to have worn even so much as basic underwear would have looked ludicrous, and this is what we sense.

So if all these images are what being 'nude' is about, and if we can define it through these examples, where does that leave 'naked'? If nudity removes someone from the everyday, then nakedness must do the opposite. And indeed: you are naked if you are about to climb into bed with your lover. You are naked if you are about to step under the shower. And if you as a model leave your clothes in a neat pile on a chair of the artist's studio, and step forward with the thought that you are serving the needs of art, then with that step you leave the everyday world to become empoweringly nude!Posted byHawkwoodat1:32 PM10comments Thursday, July 1, 2010 Franklin Booth: In Sunlight and ShadowTwo robed men engaged in conversation are about to descend a wide flight of steps, to the sides of which friezes of winged angels swirl and flow around the pillars that the men are about to pass between. Both the men and the steps are bathed in bright sunlight, and the scene seems at first idyllic. But behind the two figures rises an impenetrable wall of tall Lombardy poplars, their shadows so dense that it seems almost as if we are staring into the darkness of space. The work's title confirms the foreboding. This is Steps to the Tomb (below), by the American illustrator Franklin Booth.

Like his fellow-countryman Maxfield Parrish, who also was active in the 1920's, Booth strove to create worlds redolent with the romance of a sunlit age that never was. But something in Booths makeup kept pulling him towards darker regions; his compositions so often feature tombs, burials, dark interiors, walls of shadows too dark to penetrate. To what extent Booth himself was aware of this hankering after the darkness is unclear; what is certain is that his body of work, executed almost entirely in chiselled pen strokes and black ink, is masterful in the range of tones and textures which he created with his limited choice of medium.

Even in small details of his work (the footer of a decorative border, above), there is a reaching out, a gesture of longing, that we feel will go unrequited. Who are these beseeching robed figures? We do not know, and the artist does not tell us. At times Booth's subject matter is more direct, as in Burial (below). Here the composition is - quite literally - half in shadow, half in light. To the right: towering sunlit spires and a congregation of figures emerging from a walled garden. To the left: darkness and shadow, as a priest reads the burial service while mourners contemplate a casket and the mysteries of mortality. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, reads the tomb's inscription.

With The End of the Way (below), we have crossed the threshold. Booth actually takes us beyond death to the realm that awaits. The robed soul, airily floating on tiptoe, is received by a bearded angel to be guided further. In the background, figures on the path are still approaching, dwarfed under towering piled cumulus.

In The Healed Ones (below), the artist carries us even further into the beyond. Souls drift through the airy spaces as light as the clouds behind them. In the foreground, the 'healed ones' of the work's title are welcomed by other heavenly guides. Booth's masterful pen style is here very apparent. The face and arms of the central female figure are described entirely with varying thicknesses of continuous pen lines.

This device of the artist's of setting foreground figures against distant backgrounds is abandoned in The House of Rimmon (below). Here the groups of figures are distant and anonymous, as we are led through layers of foreground shadows into sunlight and then back into far shadows again. Booth's chiselled linework seems here almost to make the shadows come alive and drift like smoke up to the building's vast roof. It could be the stage set of an opera.

Franklin Booth was in one sense a jobbing illustrator. He made his living producing line drawings to illustrate articles for the magazines and periodicals of his day - Good Housekeeping, Scribner's Magazine, and others. Sometimes his work was produced for individual books, as with his vignette for The Flying Islands of the Night (below), by James Riley.

What sets Booth's work apart is his truly masterly pen technique, with which he described forms and textures, light and shadows - and even a suggested effect of colour - through his pen alone. And there is a darkness there which is the darkness that leads to the tomb. But the artist also carries us beyond these shadowy places to show us other realms. Death, Booth seems to wish to reassure us, is not the end of the way.



PLEASE NOTE: The images for this post were made from scans taken from the book The Art of Franklin Booth, which is itself a 1976 facsimile reprint edition of a tribute to Booth published originally in 1925. This much-treasured book has been on my bookshelf for the last thirty-odd years, but I learned only recently from the Internet that this facsimile apparently is even more scarce than the original, with only thirteen known copies catalogued! So as I now realize, I own the fourteenth, and this post therefore reflects a homage to Booths art more rare than I myself was aware of at the time that I compiled it.Posted byHawkwoodat11:44 AM8comments Older PostsHomeSubscribe to:Posts (Atom)

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