from a cool-chic temple to stylistic innovations and iconic fashion-worship in Paris to a secret rustic-charm chapel in the green womb of the breton countryside, my time in France is always precious because it is so limited...but what I savour and inhale and absorb would permeate me so fully that I leave satiated and gratified, at least for another year...
To one and all a vivified year of bearable lightness
"Explaining how painting is done might perhaps interest the idly curious because they'll never understand anything.... Real painters understand with a brush in their hand.... besides, is this vulgarization of artistic matters really necessary?
"The art of becoming, the perishable, the transitory and the expendable."
...Filippo Tommaso Marinetti on futurism from modernism by Richard Weston [Phaidon Press Ltd., 1996]
all is nothing, nothing all:/ to tired tiberius soft sang the sea thus,/under his cliff-palace wall./the sea, in soft approach and repulse,/sings thus, and tiberius,/sea-sad, stares past the dusking sea-pulse/yonder, where come,/one now by one, the lights, far off, of surrentum./he stares in the blue dusk-fall,/for all is nothing, nothing all.
[first verse of 'II. Tiberius on Capri' from Two pieces after Suetonius by Robert Penn Warren, 1960]
"I was a cubist till somebody threw me a curve"...stuart davis from stuart davis's abstract argot by william wilson [chameleon books, 1993]
"l'architecture est un art social... l'architecte peut seulement créer s'il écoute et comprend les voix des millions d'hommes, s'il souffre comme eux, s'il lutte avec eux pour les sauver... il emploie le fer qu'ils ont forgé, il les guide vers le futur parce qu'il sait ce qui appartient au passé."...pierre chareau from pierre chareau by brian brace taylor [taschen, 1998]
"architecture really is the need to synthesize the best out of life, out of history... whatever is still valid, I do not care how old it is, use it... and what is not valid, abandon it."...i.m.pei from i.m.pei: mandarine of modernism by michael t. cannell [random house, 1995]
mon amour j'étais dans tes bras/ au dehors quelqu'un murmura/ une vieille chanson de france/ mon mal enfin s'est reconnu/ et son refrain comme un pied nu/ troubla l'eau verte du silence...
[de 'zone libre', louis aragon]
le réalisme
le titre de réaliste m'a été imposée comme on a impose aux hommes de 1830 le titre de romantiques. les titres en aucun temps n'ont donné une ideé juste des choses; s'il en était autrement, les oeuvres seraient superflues. sans m'expliquer sur la justesse plus ou moins grande d'une qualification que nul, il faut l'espérer, n'est tenu de bien comprendre, je me bornerai à quelques mots de développement pour couper court aux malentendus. j'ai étudié, en dehors de tout esprit de système et sans parti pris, l'art des anciens et l'art des modernes. je n'ai pas plus voulu imiter les uns que copier les autres; ma pensée n'a pas été davantage d'arriver au but oiseux de l'art pour l'art. non! j'ai voulu tout simplement puiser dans l'entière connaissance de la tradition le sentiment raisonné et indépendant de ma propre individualité. savoir pour pouvoir, telle fut ma pensée. être è même de traduire les moeurs, les idées, l'aspect de mon époque, selon mon appréciation, en un mot, faire de l'art vivant, tel est mon but. G.C. [the realist manifesto, 1855]...from courbet by james h. rubin [phaidon, 1997]
"pour les attraper, il vous faut une ligne et un hameçon avec un appât de viande ou un morceau de tissu rouge. une fois les grenouilles prises, coupez-les en deux par le milieu du corps près des cuisses et videz leurs intestins. prenez les deux cuisses que vous pèlerez toutes crues après avoir coupé les pattes. puis lavez-les à l'eau froide; si elles restent pendant une nuit dans de l'eau froide, elles en seront d'autant meilleures et plus tendres. après qu'elles auront trempé, il faut les laver à l'eau tiède puis les essuyer dans une serviette. ensuite elles seront roulées dans la farine puis on les fait frire dans de l'huile, de la graisse ou un autre liquide. les mettre ensuite dans une écuelle avec de la poudre fine d'épices." ['friture de cuisses de grenouille'...le ménagier de paris, anonyme, vers 1393]...les français à table: atlas historique de la gastronomie française [hachette livre, 1997]
"...madame rêve ad libitum/ comme si c'etait tout comme/ dans les prières/ qui emprisonnent et vous libérent/ madame rêve d'apesanteur/ des heures des heures/ de voltige à plusieurs/ rêve de fougéres/ de foudres et de guerres/ à faire et à refaire/ d'un amour qui la flingue/ d'une fusée qui l'épingle/ au ciel/ au ciel/ on est loin des amours de loin/ on est loin des amours de loin/ madame rêve/ au ciel/ madame rêve/ au ciel/ madame rêve..."...alain bashung, in 'madame rêve' [barclay, 1991]
"goya found no followers during his lifetime, but by the middle of the nineteenth century he had become a god of the romantics - not only the painters, but such literary figures as victor hugo. and he has been adopted on one ground or another as the natural father of successive generations of innovational painters. but, all historical considerations aside, the ultimate question in the case of goya is an uneasy one: what has he told us about ourselves?
he has told us that we are vain, cruel, superstitious, and easily deluded; that at our best, when we rise to affirm our noble potential, we are most likely to be annihilated as individuals. but he believed in one thing, and his work says it again and again: in spite of everything, to have been alive has been worthwhile. he knew that life is as wonderful as it is terrible, and that the only thing more terrible than life is its alternative - nothingness." ...john canaday, in 'goya and horror' [an essay in horizon, summer 1968]
"and mind, my dear fellow, paris is paris. there is but one paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even - the french air clears up the brain and does good - all the good in the world."...vincent van gogh, in a letter to h.m. levens in 1886 [from in the footsteps of van gogh by gilles plazy]
"for that would be, amid the roses and raptures, to go on writing about paris all day, all night, and so into the dawn..."...marcel aymé [from paris que j'aime...]
"nostalgia is the poetic awareness of our personal past, and since the artist's own past is the mainspring of his creative potential, the architect must listen and heed his nostalgic revelations"...
luis barragàn
"casa come me," said the stylish man,... [as] he looked down to his beloved house. blood red, it sat on a rocky outcropping in the midst of capri's wildest terrain. "this house, my 'portrait in stone'," he mused, his features softening. "a house like me," he said again, "but which me?"...curzio malaparte from malaparte: a house like me by michael mcdonough
il y a qu'à me pencher sur le précipice de la fusion sans espoir de ta présence et ton absence
j'ai trouvé le secret de t'aimer toujours pour la première fois...andré breton ('air de l'eau')
"an ephemeral structure built to house a poetic impulse"...kakuzo okakura, on a tea hut in the book of tea
plutôt que de traîner/ mauvaise poésie/ d'ambiances surannées/ en intérieurs cosys
plutôt que d'enforcer/ dernière fantaisie/ les portes du passé/ je cultive l'amnésie
j'ai vidé mon grenier/ fait voler la poussière/ les photos les papiers/ et mes amours d'hier
j'ai vidé mon grenier/ sur un coup de colère/ appelé les chiffonniers/ et pas les antiquaires... art mengo ('j'ai vidé mon grenier' on his album la vie de château)
one of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventures. everything is so well arranged, so admirably combined, so plainly labelled, that chance is an utter impossibility; if we go on progressively in this fashion, towards perfection for another century, every man will be able to foresee everything that will happen to him from the day of his birth to the day of his death... [and] an intense feeling of ennui will then take possession of the universe... théophile gautier (1811-1872) in wanderings in spain
captain misson was a [17th century] french filibuster opposed to slavery, favouring equality, democracy and fraternity... he founded the utopian colony of libertalia in northern madagascar... an idyllic socialist community of peace-loving pirates with its own universal language and rudimentary parliamentary system... kevin rushby in hunting pirate heaven
"pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés"... old french proverb
del rumor cadencioso de la onda/ y el viento que muge,/ del incierto reflejo que alumbra/la selva y la nube;/ del piar de alguna ave de paso,/ del agreste ignorado perfume/ que el céfiro roba/ al valle o a la cumbre,/ mundos hay donde encuentran asilo/ las almas que al peso/ del mundo sucumben.... rosalia de castro (1837-1885) galicia
[galician was the language of literature and courtly poetry in spain... "expressing quintessentially galician emotions for which other languages lack words, for example, the sweet sadness of plaintive 'saudade', connoting solitude, longing for the absent, and a paradoxical comfort in the very melancholy it conveys."]... from the defiant muse edited by angel flores and kate flores
"not so long ago in france, there was a grand château that belonged to a distant relative - the château de la grillère, not far from the loire... it was a benignly haunted castle where the resident ghost wandered the garden freely, surprising the odd visitor... every summer medieval pageantries would take place at the castle with the whole family and the villagers dressed in ornate costumes to return to more quixotic times...
haunted castles and haunting landscapes... this is the france that continues to inspire my unabated passion and to fuel my constant return"... g. verster in vespertine views [ongoing project]
"from nora's house, in the village, you could easily see the castle. no one had lived in the old castle for a long time. "there may even be ghosts there," people told her. when it was stormy, or on gloomy winter days, you could really believe what they said. but when the weather was fine, how beautiful the castle looked! was it really true that no one lived there? one day during summer vacation, nora decided to find out for herself...................
these days, when nora looks out her window, she still sees the castle - her castle. in the beautiful countryside, it looks as it always did, silent and mysterious. but now, when the people of the village tell her that the castle is deserted, nora smiles and thinks fondly of all her friends who lived there. but she never tells anyone what she knows about the castle. it is her secret."...satomi ichikawa in nora's castle, [a children's book based on the château de la grillère and dedicated to the esser family who had once lived there in such playful splendour]
"we write to taste life twice"...anais nin
mon enfant, ma soeur,/ songe à la douceur/ d'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!/ aimer à loisir,/ aimer et mourir/ au pays qui te resemble!/ les soleils mouillés/ de ces ciels brouillés/ pour mon esprit ont les charmes/ si mystérieux/ de tes traîtres yeux,/ brillant à travers leurs larmes.
là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté/ luxe, calme et volupté....charles baudelaire ['l'invitation au voyage']
j'aime le jeu, l'amour,/ les livres, la musique/ la ville et la campagne,/ enfin tout; il ne m'est rien/ qui ne me soit souverain bien/ jusqu'au sombre plaisir/ d'un coeur mélancolique....jean de la fontaine (1621-1695)
"when one travels and works with visual things - architecture, painting or sculpture - one uses one's eyes and draws, so as to fix deep down in one's experience what is seen. once the impression has been recorded by the pencil, it stays for good - entered, registered, inscribed. the camera is a tool for idlers, who use a machine to do their seeing for them."...le corbusier
now we are on dieppe beach: on the pebbles,/ a bottle of muscadet, a portion of frites,/ pâté de campagne, bread, goat cheese and cherries./ i do not want to do anything else in life/ except to sit on these grey stones, madly in love,/ and eat this picnic, and stare at the slack grey sea.
at noon/ as i am painting a cemetery on the cliffs/ a bell with a dreadful resonance sounds the angelus,/ the sound of french continuity humming out over the sea.... from 'a day in france' by david holbrook
"my native country is for me the country that I love, that is, the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well. I am as much chinese as french, and I don't rejoice about our victories over the arabs because I'm saddened by their defeats. I love those harsh, enduring, hardy people, the last of the primitives, who at midday, lie down in the shade under the bellies of their camels, and while smoking their chibouks, poke fun at our civilization, which quivers with rage about it..."...gustave flaubert (c.1850's) [from the art of travel by alain de botton]
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