Between the mirage hue of Tiepolo Pink linings hides the tempting phantom of Proust’s invisible Venice

Jean François de Troy (French 1679 – 1752), The Abduction of Europa (detail of Europa's hand and cape), 1716, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

“It was the very evening on which Albertine had put on for the first time the indoor gown in gold and blue by Fortuny which, by reminding me of Venice, made me feel all the more strongly what I was sacrificing for her, who showed no corresponding gratitude towards me. If I had never seen Venice, I had dreamed of it incessantly since those Easter holidays which, when still a boy, I had been going to spend there, and earlier still, since the Titian prints and Giotto photographs which Swann had given me long ago at Combray. The Fortuny gown which Albertine was wearing that evening seemed to me the tempting phantom of that invisible Venice. It was overrun by Arab ornamentation, like Venice, like the Venetian palaces hidden like sultan’s wives behind a screen of perforated stone, like the bindings in the Ambrosian Library, like the columns from which the oriental birds that symbolised alternately life and death were repeated in the shimmering fabric, of an intense blue which, as my eyes drew nearer, turned into a malleable gold by those same mutations which, before an advancing gondola, change into gleaming metal the azure of the Grand Canal. And the sleeves were lined with a cherry pink which is so peculiarly Venetian that it is called Tiepolo pink.”

～Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu // In Search of Lost Time, Volume 5: The Captive, The Fugitive, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff & Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright, p. 531.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696 – 1770), details of An Allegory with Venus and Time, about 1754-8, oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London. 

*“Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: a thematic essay”on The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website

*“Proust & Fortuny”on A Hymn to Intellectual Beauty: Creative Minds and Fashion blog

A Million Kisses to My Skin

David and I went out this evening for a very lovely dinner date at the wonderful French restaurant/bistro Le Boudin Blanc. We had beautiful food including a divine chestnut crème gateau with spices and dark chocolate sorbet (my obsession with Indian chai these days has given me a penchant for everything exotically fragranced). In a way the ambiance in this little gem of a restaurant neatly tucked away on a cobble-stoned alley felt even a teeny bit more French than being in Paris (ah, the blasphemy!)...

On our drive back home Bach's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor was playing on the radio. I instantly turned up the volume as I've loved this gorgeous piece ever since I first heard it, and even more so after seeing David Dawson's ballet "A Million Kisses to My Skin" which he created for Dutch National Ballet in 2000. I went to the performance when Dutch National Ballet toured Sadler's Wells in London. The precision and athleticism does not wane its artistic and emotional quality in anyway, as far as I am concerned. Instead, I find a beautiful parallell between the dancer's movements and what attracts me so much to Bach's music (as well as numerous contemporary choreographers/musicians/composers). An emotional complexity and profundity achieved not through the least bit of sentimentalism, but via a channel that is controlled, balanced, subtle/implicit, at times intellectually challenging, or even 'digital' and rigid. Yet this communicative channel delivers something that is infinitely timeless, glowing intrinsically with qualities that are transcendent. How Bach's music moves me.

David mentioned one of his favourite books dealing with a similar subject, which he thinks I will love - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book described as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll." It is to be included in my ever growing book list, and I am not a fast reader at all!

As Random Dance Artistic Director and Royal Ballet Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor eloquently puts it, “I think there’s something wonderful about these dancers, how they’re able to take dislocating, disorienting physical language and imbue it with emotional resonance. I’m a great believer, as was Merce Cunningham, in that the human body can never be without meaning, that the body can never be abstract. The body is inherently literal.”

*Since embedding is disabled, please click here to watch the first movement of David Dawson's A Million Kisses to My Skin, performed by Dresden Semperoper Ballett in 2008, starring Natalia Sologub, Jiri Bubenicek, Olga Melnikova, Maximilian Genow, Elena Vostrotina, Claudio Cangialosi, Julia Carnicer, Giselle Doepker and Arika Togawa. Also visit the gallery for some excellent photographs of this ballet.




Glenn Gould plays Bach Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, BWV 1052

A Tulip for Irving

"I have always stood in awe of the camera, I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel."

Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009), R. I. P.

Tulip, New York, 1967, by Irving Penn.

O, let me forever weep:
My eyes no more shall welcome sleep.
I'll hide me from the sight of day,
And sigh my soul away.
He's gone, his loss deplore,
And I shall never see him more.


Soprano: Nancy Argenta
Composer: Henry Purcell (1658/9-1695) , The Plaint, Z. 629, from Orpheus Britannicus, Vol. II (1692), from The Fairy Queen, No. 40, an operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Dance of Mandala

As though moving in a dream, she sank to a chair. The room was losing shape; it was dark and getting darker and there was nothing to be done about it; she could not lift her hand to light a lamp.

Suddenly, closing her eyes, she felt an upward surge, like a diver emerging from some deeper, greener depth. In times of terror or immense distress, there are moments when the mind waits, as though for a revelation, while a skein of calm is woven over thought; it is like a sleep, or a supernatural trance; and during this lull one is aware of a force of quiet reasoning: well, what if she had never really known a girl named Miriam? that she had been foolishly frightened on the street? In the end, like everything else, it was of no importance. For the only thing she had lost to Miriam was her identity, but now she knew she had found again the person who lived in this room, who cooked her own meals, who owned a canary, who was someone she could trust and believe in: Mrs. H. T. Miller.

(From Miriam, by Truman Capote, 1945)

+++

I was fortunate enough to see one of Damien Hirst's "mandalas" in London (from memory it was either at Stephanie Hoppen Gallery or Gagosian Gallery). It was a special experience to view the painting in person, up close—various pastel hues in beautiful harmony; yet slightly darkened, as if the colours had caught a cold, as if bloodletting had been performed on the artwork. It takes up an entire wall—quieting and commanding simultaneously.


*Be sure to click on all the images for enlargement of stunning details. You can read more about Damien Hirst here.

Damien Hirst, Psalm Print: Exaudi, Domine, 2009. 740 mm x 715 mm paper size. Silkscreen print with glaze.

Damien Hirst, Tranquility, from the Butterflies series, 2008. Butterflies and household gloss on canvas, 231.6 x 323 x 13 cm.

Damien Hirst, Ascended.

A butterfly piece by Damien Hirst, part of the Superstition installation series at the Gagosian Gallery, 17-19 Davies Street, London. Photo via flickr.

Damien Hirst, Cathedral Print, St Peter's, 2007. 1200 x 1200 mm. Silkscreen print with glazes and pearlised colours.

Damien Hirst, Cathedral Print, St Paul's, 2007. 1200 x 1200 mm. Silkscreen print with glazes and pearlised colours.

Damien Hirst, Cathedral Print, Orvieto, 2007. 1200 x 1200 mm. Silkscreen print with glazes and pearlised colours.

Damien Hirst, Cathedral Print, Palais des Papes, 2007. 1200 x 1200 mm. Silkscreen print with glazes and pearlised colours.

Damien Hirst, Butterfly Wallpaper, 2004.

Damien Hirst, Psalm Print: Exaudi, Domine (diamond dust), 2009. 740 mm x 715 mm paper size. Silkscreen print with glaze.

Butterflies, by Damien Hirst. Gloss Household Paint and Collage on Canvas, 9 x 12", 2007.

Damien Hirst, Soul, 2006. Silk screen on 410gsm Somerset Tub Sized paper, print and paper size 420mm x 297mm.

*

Sarabande, Giga and Badinerie by Arcangelo Corelli, one of my favourite Baroque composers.




Arcangelo Corelli's Sonata VII in D minor: Preludio (Vivace), Corrente (Allegro), Sarabanda (Largo) & Giga (Allegro). Performed by: Andrew Manze (historical violin), Richard Egarr (historical harpsichord); label: Harmonia Mundi. Corelli's Opus 5 is a set of 12 sonatas for violin and cello or harpsichord, although only violin and harpsichord settings were agreed upon by performers as written in their liner notes. Published on the first of January, 1700, the set of sonatas quickly became famous and are the only violin sonatas from Corelli.

Wilde & Bach (inspired by my previous post...)

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
~Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

"Just a Few Moments More", by Maleficent1 (Iretta Tiger). Taken at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, Massachusetts, USA.

As a continuation to my previous entry on Bach's Goldberg Variations, I would like to introduce this delightful and intelligent video. A stop-motion puppet animation centred around and dedicated to Oscar Wilde's writing and life story, with music from The Goldberg Variations. (I do, however, recommend that you begin with the playlist of videos in my previous post.) I first came across this little gem several years ago on the webpage of my friend Maliciousness (who is a wonderful photographer). You can see a selection of Maliciousness's photographs on deviantART, her own website Iretta Tiger Photography, and MySpace.

The Goldberg of Gould

I am besotted. I am in love. This has to be one of the most beautiful Glenn Gould recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations - so much so that it makes me feel all teary! I grew up listening to Gould's Bach, and to my mind he will always be the scholar and intellectual of Bach's music (and yet at the same time with tremendous emotional depth and strength), no matter what some critics might have to say about him or his music. I just adore the way he sang along when he played (apparently a habit developed as a child learning piano from his first teacher - his mother).

Many thanks to my very talented friend Jean-Marc for this video clip.


P.s. Sometimes you need to click on the mini floating screens (inside the big YouTube screen) if the list doesn't play smoothly (you will see a message saying "an error has occured"), as is true with all playlists of videos. However all clips on this blog should be working fine.

The Beauty that is Baroque

I like how Stern and Perlman interpret this Bach piece, and the faithfulness to Baroque aesthetics. 節制，均衡，收斂之美。Surely Bach's music is not in want of emotive qualities (far from it in fact--it always moves me boundlessly--on a transcendent, different level that is transports you), but even with his Largo one needs to maintain certain discipline, rather than slipping into a somehow natural state of self indulgence. As one of my piano teachers once said to me whilst I was playing a Bach piece, "You make it sound like Chopin." ;-)

For me, Nathan Milstein is another true Bach virtuoso.


Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern play Bach Double Concerto

Largo

Another Bach piece I'm obsessing over - Largo from his Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005.

Henryk Szeryng


A great musician transcends mere sounds from something of this world to those even above the soul. Music is the closest, truest and most direct representation of the will, or the world as it really is. In other words, something that can only be felt and can otherwise never be known.

In addition, a great musician is someone that loves and gives his or her whole heart to the music - a love that freely enables the musician to 'serve' the music.

Bach's Chaconne

I am obsessed with Bach's Chaconne these days. This is a very different version by Sigiswald Kuijken - an extremely beautiful opening/introduction, less emotive for sure than Heifetz's or Milstein's, and WAY faster. (Some consider this as more 'authentic' to the original interpretation/intention of the Baroque style. Viktoria Mullova is another violinist who opts for this approach.)



Itzhak Perlman's version.


Jascha Heifetz's Chaconne.


And finally, my favourite violin virtuoso—Nathan Milstein.

Maestro Rostropovich

I was fortunate enough to meet Rostropovich in person when he gave concerts in Taipei—such a childlike, disarming, humorous, down-to-earth and wonderful being who was filled with lightness and a love for life, and such an extraordinary artist. No.5 is my favourite Bach Cello Suite.