Lost ... and Found - #1

The never ending, it would seem, story of the unpacking continues and though there may be some light at the end of the tunnel there isn't much in the spare room which still contains 52 boxes of CDs, books and sundries.  I am assuming that things such as the cable for the printer is in one of them but until I can get the bookcases in place I can't even start to take exactoknife to tape.

Happily so far there has been very little damage in the shipment from Italy - only two broken bowls in an old dinner set - and the wine arrived intact!  Would that the same could be said for things that were in long term storage - there is rather large dent in the upholstery of an armchair and the satin-finished Watered Maple dining table top has a few more abrasions, scratches and nicks than when it left the house in Aylmer.  But one of the fears of any unpacking job - no matter the provenience of the packing - is that you may inadvertently leave something in the reams of packing paper and have it whisked off to the mangler at the warehouse.  I was sure just such a fate had befallen two of my favourite little creatures.

Two hummingbirds - carved in BC cedar by Haida artist Dorothy August - said to bring joy and healing.

 Back in 2002-3 I was working in Vancouver and that allowed me to spend some time with my friends Dan and Cameron.  In those days they were renovating a house in town but have since moved to a wonderful waterfront home on Galiano Island in the Gulf - some people have all the luck.  One rainy Saturday (hey its Vancouver okay???) we headed up to Horseshoe Bay and after a healthy vegetarian, organic lunch (hey its Vancouver okay????) we wandered into The Spirit Gallery to look at the Haida art and crafts.  I fell in love with two tiny hummingbirds (7cm x 10cm - 3" x 4") carved in BC cedar by Dorothy August.  Said to bring joy and healing to a home, they have always found a place on a wall in ours since then. 

In Rome they graced the wall of the hallway leading down to the bedrooms.  I had opened a box and everything from that hallway was there - two small drawings from San Miguel de Allende,  a decorative hanging from Sappa,  a searing political cartoon from Poland and an 18th century hand coloured print of Warsaw.  And only after the box had been collapsed and paper disposed off did I realize that of hummingbirds had I none. 

I looked through the discarded paper in nearby boxes  - in effect unwrapping everything again - but no luck!  There were 12 other boxes filled with wrapping paper but I just didn't have the time or strength to go through them all.   Several people - Cathy, Mark and Laurent - assured me that I would find them, that they had just been put in another box.  That the packers had perhaps overlooked them and then at the last minute put them where space allowed.  I wasn't buying that story - everything else from the hallway was in the one box so they must have been.  They were small and very light weight so I had missed them in the unpacking.  I reconciled myself to the fact that my two little hummingbirds had been lost.

Well I guess you should always listen to your friends.   A few days later as I was unpacking a box from the dining room (?) there they were.  Not to be too poetic or sentimental - my two tiny birds hadn't flown away at all - they were just waiting to be found, unwrapped and to be given a place in our new home.

I'm not sure when Haida artist Dorothy August carved these two - 12/8 is written on the back in pencil which could be December 8 or August 12 but no year is indicated.  She's originally from Port Alberni on Vancouver Island and her Haida heritage is Nuu-chah-nulth from the Ahusaht First Nation.  According to the brief biographical note I received from The Spirit Gallery as well as cedar carvings she is know for her intricate bead-work and the Cowichan sweaters she knits. 

The hummingbird has no prominence in the older iconography or legends of the Haida but has made more of an appearance in recent years.  Within the constantly evolving mythology of the West Coast its character has developed into a speedy messenger of joy, love and healing.  If it appears at a time of great sorrow, wings beating rapidly as it hovers in mid-air, spiritual healing is said to quickly follow.

I know their appearance amongst all that bloody wrapping paper gave me a sense of joy - and relief.  They are now hovering on the hallway wall in our - and their - new home.


17 agosto/august - Sant' Elia di Enna

Quote ... Unquote

While paging through the Guardian today - I guess that's what you call it when you read a newspaper on the Internet - I came across an interactive article (see link below) on a painting that is being sold in England by its present owner, Lord St ­Oswald. The National Trust and the Art Fund are trying to raise the needed £2.7m to keep The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Bruegel the younger in the country. In the article there was a quote by W. H. Auden which sent me scrambling to Google for the poem in its entirety.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus - long thought to be by Pieter Bruegel the elder is now considered a copy of a work rather than the original. It is in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Brussels where Auden saw it in 1938.

Musée des Beaux Arts

W. H. Auden - 1938

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith and Monroe K. Spears,
Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden.

Auden's words brought to mind the presepi which will be appearing in churches and homes next month: tableaux of the Nativity surrounded by people going about their normal business. Though some may be aware of the event being celebrated others are oblivious to the occasion. And I've often observed it in miniatures and early paintings in museums and churches that while the mundane activities of the town or country continue unaffected miracles are wrought, martyrdom inflected and achieved and the gods thunder, roar and laugh.

Post Script: Auden was not the only poet inspired by Bruegel's painting, William Carlos Williams also wrote a short poem entitled Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Related articles

• Jonathan Jones on The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Bruegel the Yuonger (guardian.co.uk)

Sunlight on the Side of A House

I was first fully aware of who Edward Hopper was back in 1981 when I fell in love with Pennies From Heaven, a musical film fantasy with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters based on Dennis Potter's successful BBC TV Series. The settings for several scenes were right out of Hopper paintings - and the one I recognized immediately was his most famous: Nighthawks. A bit of investigation - the library, yes Virginia we went to the library back in those days - revealed more about him and his work and I number him amongst the 20th century artists that I adore.

When the Hopper exhibition at the Museo di Roma was first advertised on billboards throughout town I made a note to myself that I really had to catch it. And finally I did last weekend - further note to self: try to catch these things other than on the day before they close.

This retrospective has toured several cities here in Italy with Roma being its last stop. I had been hoping that Nighthawk would be amongst the paintings but sadly its still hanging in its usual place at the Art Institute of Chicago. But they did have a marvelous life-sized mock up of the scene and allowed you to have your photo taken in it. Being the shy person I am, I declined as really if Hopper had wanted an extra person in the scene he would have painted them in.

If his most famous painting wasn't there then certainly others quite recognizable as the work of the Nyack born artist were. Included were some of his early work from Paris, including Soir Bleu and a series of wonderful caricatures. Many of his graphic works from his earlier New York days revealed the subjects he would return to again and again but in shades of black and white.

One of the interesting features was the work ups for so many of the paintings that were included - it appears that Hopper or more specifically his wife and chief model Jo saved pretty much everything he did. When she died in 1968 - a year after Hopper - she left almost 3000 items to the Whitney Museum. Needless to say much of the exhibition was on loan from them.

At the beginning of the exhibition Hopper is quoted as, rather ingeniously, saying: All I ever wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a house., And that he did do - on houses in both urban and rural settings. But he also painted lamplight in streets and parks, the flickering lights in a movie cinema, the clotted light of industrial cities, the clear air of New England, the glare of neon on an interior and the first sun of morning through an open window on the walls of a room and the body of his beloved Jo.

Morning Sun was painted in 1952 and as usual Hopper did a series of drawings before brush touched paint or canvas.

Hopper worked with Conté crayons for most of his preliminary drawings. The top drawing was obviously his initial thoughts on the composition and you can trace the line of this thinking as the drawings become more and more detailed.

What I found fascinating was his detailed notation on colours and shadings to be used once he got to work. Noting the effects he wants to achieve, the degrees of light and shadow within the painting and the shading of colours. This was the first time I was aware of an artist taking that approach - I guess much of my view on how painters work is based on how they do it in Hollywood.

Obviously these notations were meant as guidelines and there would be deviations but it is interesting to see how often those first thoughts are present in the finished work.


As with most of Hopper's work the lines are clean, at first glance the colours deceptively seem primary and the subject seems very ordinary. What makes its extraordinary is Hopper's ability to "paint sunlight".

The preliminary drawings are all from the Hopper collection at the Whitney Museum, the painting itself is in the care of the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio.

18 giugno - Sant'Erasmo di Formia

Video - Visages d'Art

Once again Philip Scott Johnson (Eggman913) has worked his video magic. I find the morphing of the first two images particularly fascinating.



Music: Bach's Prelude And Fugue No. 6 In D Minor BWV 851 - Praeludium from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 performed by Daniel Ben Pienaar.

Masterworks

It had been a while - a long while, in fact I missed his Christmas animation - since I visited Eggman913 (Phillip Scot Johsnon)at YouTube. His Women in Art and Women in Films animations from last year where amongst my favorites.



Music: Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F Major - 2nd Movement - Allegretto Scherzando performed by Philharmonia Baroque.

03 febrraio - San Biagio

Video - Women in Western Art

A beautiful piece of video art created by Eggman913 - with the help of a few of the renowned - and not so well-known - artists of the past 500 years. And his Picasso and Civil War videos are exceptional pieces of video, you might want to check them out on YouTube.

Wish I knew what the cello piece is!