'Genius: Picasso' (2018)

Genius: Picasso (National Geographic), 2018.  An impressively epic ten-part mini-series, Picasso provides a good introduction and overview, with crafty historical context. Its ensemble approach works, though it took me a while to acclimate to the chronological jumping back and forth. Very worthwhile. 

Picasso actors include: Alex Rich and Antonio Banderas as Picasso (younger and older, respectively); Samantha Colley (Dora Maar); Clémence Poésy (Françoise Gilot);  Sofia Doniantes (Olga Stepanovna Khokhlova); Aisling Franciosi (Fernande Olivier); Poppy Delevingne (Marie-Thérèse Walter); Valentina Bellè (Jacqueline Roque); Tracee Chimo (Getrude Stein), Simon Buret (Jean Coctaue); Andrew Buchan (Henri Matisse); Kerr Logan (Georges Braque); T.R. Knight (Max Jacob); Seth Gabel (Guillaume Apollinaire). 

Picasso is clearly based at least in part on various memoirs. Françoise Gilot's observations jump out in particular. At the time of this post she's still alive -- and ninety-six years old.   

Dora Maar (1907-1997), the coolest of them all. 

Today's Rune: Warrior. 

Televisión Española: 'El Ministerio del Tiempo' / 'The Ministry of Time:' Season One, Episode 5 (2015)

Now on Netflix, Televisión Española's El Ministerio del Tiempo / The Ministry of Time. My mother and one of my sisters have been watching this, and now I'm into it!

Season One, Episode 5 (2015):  Cualquier tiempo pasado / Every Past Time. In this episode, members of the Ministry of Time go back to the Spanish Civil War (1937) and to 1981, and another one goes back to around the turn of the twentieth century to meet a young Picasso, in three different attempts to attain or forge a receipt for Picasso's Guernica, which another time traveler is trying to thwart in 1981. 

A fun series, perfect for anyone wanting to learn about Spanish culture, history and language. (English subtitles included).

The secret Ministry of Time has multiple portals and can access Spain's past -- but only inside Spain. People are recruited from various ages, then cross-trained for time travel.

Imagine the possibilities!  The active viewer has to engage -- and use critical thinking. It's mind-expanding on multiple fronts!

A woman from the 1800s must consider the different attitudes and social mores of the 21st century, and, then, say, go to the 16th century, and come back again. A soldier from 16th century Flanders muses over changes in technology, communications, transportation, and gender roles. The viewer must empathize to grok these different and changing viewpoints. 

On the sly, certain people go back in time to "fix" personal memories. But if they do anything drastic, the present may be changed (enigmas of time, paradox, anomaly).

Painter Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) badly wants to meet Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). They do meet, and discuss Francisco Goya (1746-1828), among other things. Keepin' it real -- a real cool time!

All aboard for funtime!  

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

'A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album' (2002)

In the last post, we considered the merits of Russell Martin's Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece That Changed the World. New York: Dutton, 2002.  In this one, let's consider the similarly structured A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album by Ashley Kahn (New York: Viking, 2002). 

Kahn's study provides the backstory, big and little, of A Love Supreme (1965) -- John Coltrane's life, the jazz scene specifically and the greater scene in general; how the album came to be recorded on December 9, 1964 with experimental follow-up on the next night; its release and immediate impact; Coltrane's career until his death in 1967; and the album's enduring, long-term impact, including re-release in CD format and beyond. A wonderful read.

Over the years, I've acquired multiple copies of A Love Supreme. Here, images of the verso of two of my CD copies.

From Coltrane's liner notes, quoted on page 123: '"Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts, fears and emotions -- time -- all related . . . all made from one."'

The impact of Trane and A Love Supreme is far-reaching, especially among musicians, writers and other artists. 

Carlos Santana: '"The first time I heard A Love Supreme, it really was an assault. It could've been from Mars as far as I was concerned, or another galaxy . . . It was like trying to tell a monkey about spirituality or computers, you know . . .'" (page xviii). 

Ravi Shankar: "'I have been so moved by this record . . . It's beautiful . . .'" (page xxiii).

Patti Smith in high school: "'. . . Coltrane spoke to my soul and my developing intellect.'" (page 73).

Branford Marsalis: "'You know Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love?' . . . That's the bass line in the first section of A Love Supreme . . .'" (page 99)

Rick James: "'Most of the white boys I was hanging out with in Toronto in 1965 were down with Coltrane . . . Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young. That's one of the good things about the musical experience there . . . everybody had A Love Supreme.'" (page 160).

Patti Smith (again): "'I can't say why it's so popular, but perhaps it fulfills people's need for prayer . . . A Love Supreme has a feeling of moral authority in the most humble and spiritual way.'" (page 212).  

"Four decades on, A Love Supreme continues to be felt and to matter . . . [i]n sound, spirit, and name, its arc of influence and inspiration remains unbroken and, like the transitory elements that helped create it, poignantly unrepeatable." (page 213).

An added bonus for me is that A Love Supreme was recorded on December 9 -- my birthday!

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Russell Martin: 'Picasso's War' (2002)

Russell Martin, Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece That Changed the World. New York: Dutton, 2002.

The way it's organized:
Prologue
The Spanish Dead
Remembering the Bullring
Images Spilling from Fingers
Save Spain!
A Wearable Pair of Boots
Exiles
The Last Refugee
Guernica in Gernika
Epilogue

Highly absorbing book, providing background, context, a detailed account of artistic creation, setting, display, impact, rescue, and ongoing installation.

We see why Picasso was moved to perform his artistic duties on behalf of the Spanish Republic, then under attack by Nazi and fascist-backed brutes from 1936 until 1939. Martin shows how Picasso's response to the German-Italian air assault against Guernica on April 26, 1937 led to the creation of his Guernica masterpiece.  

A vivid account of the bombing, how word of it spread (and was also denied by the usual suspects), and how Picasso's work was displayed at the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris Expo, the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) that ran later in 1937. At this utterly surreal expo, giant German Nazi architecture ranged against Soviet symbols, even as German and Italian military forces and equipment faced off against Soviet equipment and advisers in the ongoing Spanish Civil War. 

Most of Europe would be engulfed in the Second World War before the decade of the 1930s was out, but only after Spain was left to burn to the ground.     

Picasso's War includes still-current debates over modern Spanish life, identity and policy. The aspirations of people in the Basque region and Catalonia are notably included. 

Since 1992, Madrid has been hosting Guernica in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; but not without a fight and the creation of a proposed alternate venue at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Basque country. 

I've seen the original Guernica at the Reina Sofía in Madrid and the huge tapestry copy at United Nations headquarters in New York City.  Now I'd like to visit Balboa and, of course, sacred Guernica (Gernika), both in Euskadi, Basque country. 

Here is the author's tribute to his teacher-friend and mentor Angel Vilalta: "Angel continually demonstrated that the best kinds of men were inquisitive and energetic, courageous yet compassionate, attuned to the breadth of the world's worries and pleasures but also equally focused on family and friends." (page 187). 

Today's Rune: Growth. 

Richard Rhodes: 'Hell and Good Company' (2015)

Richard Rhodes, Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).  

This is another well-written book about the endlessly absorbing Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Rhodes interweaves personal accounts (of nurses, doctors, artists, officers) with technical observations (types of equipment, processes, construction of air raid shelters) in a winning combination, because he also manages to keep the book fairly short.

"War is chaotic. People come and go. I decided to pin my narrative not to the people but to the chronology of the war itself, starting at the beginning and marching through to the end." (page xvii).

Lots of people make their way in and out of and then back into the narrative as the war moves along. Many have poignant arcs, such as that of Patience Darton and Robert Aaquist: "Love made a space for them, but love doesn't conquer all." (page 221).

There are tales of Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, John Dos Passos, André Malraux, Joan Miró, and much about medical efforts and hospitals. Nearly one in five doctors in the anti-fascist International Brigades were women (page 187).

Rhodes favors the side of the Republic defending against the fascist and Nazi-backed Nationalists, and he shows greatest sympathy where it seems most appropriate. The Spanish people are given their due, but this is mostly a collective story told from the outside in, mostly through the words of international participants or semi-omnisciently.

I like the specificity of detail that Rhodes delves into from time to time. I've learned new things about the war. Not only about the heroism of the various medical corps, but more about the Germans sent by Hitler, too: "The Condor Legion deployed to Spain by ship . . . consisted initially of thirty-seven officers, 3,786 men, and ninety-two factory-new aircraft, including three squadrons of Junkers-52 bombers, three squadrons of Heinkel 51 biplane fighters, two squadrons of Heinkel 45 and Heinkel 70 reconnaissance bombers, and a seaplane squadron . . . Hitler also sent tank companies, antitank platoons, signals units, and submarines to bolster Franco's forces. Mussolini contributed not only planes, tanks, and submarines but also tens of thousands of infantry." (page 29).

One of the legacies of the Spanish Civil War is in the use of air power to bomb civilian targets en masse, with ruthless repetition -- a terrible legacy, indeed, especially when one side gains air supremacy against a virtually helpless enemy stuck on or under the ground. 

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Picasso and Dora: Take I

I love reading about the lives and work of artists. Here's another really good book of this type that I finished reading a few weeks ago: James Lord's Picasso and Dora: A Personal Memoir (New York: Fromm International, 1994; hardback published in 1993). 

Among the many real characters breathed back into life, there are three principals: James Lord (1922-2009), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Dora Maar (1907-1997). Not far behind is Françoise Gilot, who even now in 2015 is still very much alive and kicking at 93 (born November 26, 1921).

Dora Maar, one of Picasso's key -- and romantically doomed -- muses, has some of the best quips and observations in the book.

Of Picasso: "'He doesn't know how to stop making things,' she said. 'It must be terrible for him. Of course, it's terrible for us as well.'" (page 107).

Of Picasso: "'It's simple,' Dora said . . . 'He would submit to anything to be able to keep on painting, and he knows that what matters in the end is not whether people say good things or bad things about you. What matters is to be talked about.'" (page 118).

And: "'I felt so alone I got into a taxi and told the driver to take me out of Paris. The trees were like balloons ready to float up in the sunrise . . ." (page 149). 

Because it's based on Lord's notebooks and scribblings made at the time things were happening, Picasso and Dora has an exceptionally crisp and intimate feel.

(To be continued . . .) 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

'Madrid, 1987' (2011)

David Trueba's Madrid, 1987 (2011): in simple settings ranging from a café to an artist's apartment with atelier (studio room), the two main characters chatter away like dueling typewriter vs. computer keyboard. Nudity and sexual energy keep things down to earth as needed. 

With an age difference of fifty years, veteran journalist Miguel (José Sacristán) and beginner Ángela (María Valverde) are able to cover a lot of ground, roving from the effects of the Spanish Civil War to American writers and, inescapably, on to the socio-political Pandora's Box opened up at the end of the Franco dictatorship: a period of four decades of repression followed by many years of exploring new-found social freedoms (still on-going in the 21st century). Ángela's fascistic father and Miguel's wife remain off-stage. 

Madrid, 1987: Miguel snapping away at a typewriter, making his living as a writer.  

Ángela, seemingly a bit naïve, is subtly more subversive than Miguel. 

By way of synchronicity, I was reading Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake's Life with Picasso (1964) at the same time as watching Madrid, 1987, so it doesn't seem at all far-fetched even as a realistic movie. Gilot and Picasso (another Spaniard, by the way) were forty years apart in age and there are a couple of scenes in Madrid, 1987 that are reminiscent of their early interactions. The main setting is -- coincidence? -- the inside of an artist's apartment. If an artist's space can't be free of ordinary convention, where's the fun in being there?

Today's Rune: Defense. 

Françoise Gilot's 'Life with Picasso' (1964): Take Two

An ideal French conversation will aim to consider many interesting topics without beating any one to death. And so it is with Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake's Life with Picasso (1964). Throughout the book, much is observed about Picasso, but from multiple vantage points. Two specific examples follow.

Gilot was, during her early meetings with Picasso -- the artist and man -- amused by the situation. Picasso quickly became "interested" in her, certainly, and wanted to "let her in on things," show off a little. "But whatever the pretext, it was quite clear that he was trying to discover to what degree I might be receptive to his attentions. I had no desire to give him grounds to make up his mind. I was having too much fun watching him try to figure it out" (page 22).

As an artist, Picasso keenly explained his philosophies and craft as they went along. One idea they discussed was the challenge of voluntary restraint in creating something (anything) new: ". . . we need one tool to do one thing," Picasso asserted, "and we should limit ourselves to that tool . . . [F]orcing yourself to use restricted means is the sort of restraint that liberates invention" (page 57). Working within a convention or genre, for instance, frees one to try fresh approaches within an already popular framework. Such was one small bit of Picasso's advice to Gilot as an artist developing in her own right. 

Life with Picasso also treats the avid reader to many other characters -- always with sharp description and reflection. Gilot's take on Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, for one, is observant and downright playful. Her powers of observation range over many people, not to mention ideas, places and events. Fabulous book -- one might even say, ideal. 

Today's Rune: Protection. 

Françoise Gilot's 'Life with Picasso' (1964): Take One

Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake's Life with Picasso (1964), a thoroughly fascinating, well-written and entertaining memoir, serves as a sort of gold standard for this kind of book. Reading it inspires quick resort to the internet for further research about the characters and artworks discussed within. 

Life with Picasso also serves as an inspiring "classroom" and "studio" for further reflection, possibly even action, as in the James Brown song, "Get Up Offa That Thing!"

At the time of this posting, Françoise Gilot is ninety-three years old. Pablo Picasso, who was in his sixties when they became paramours in 1944, died in 1973.

Today's Rune:  Breakthrough.  

Journey to Sevilla / Seville: Part I (2014)

From Madrid, you can take an AVE train (Alta Velocidad Española) to Sevilla / Seville -- a distance of about 500 kilometers / 300 miles -- in two hours and twenty minutes, via the Nuevo Acceso Ferroviario an Andalucía line. You climb aboard at Atocha Station, disembark at Santa Justa station, and from there trudge to the Cathedral and Alcázar area on foot -- or take a short taxi ride.

Spanish train stations tend to have interesting features. Here at Santa Justa, the slanted elevators make a lot of sense when you're carrying luggage. 

If you want to walk around the older parts of Sevilla, some of the streets are wiggly and zigzag. Here, an upslope way goes by the Hostel Picasso.

One of the main points of visitation on this journey was La Catedral de Santa María de la Sede de Sevilla. The Catholic architecture dates from the 1400s onward; Islamic vestiges (including La Giradla, with minaret-tower core) go back to around 1200 A.D.    

The remains of Cristóbal Colón / Christopher Columbus (circa 1450-1505 A.D,) reside here -- moved from Cuba to this location after the Spanish-American War of 1898.  

El Real Alcázar de Sevilla -- the Alcázar -- is stunning in its beauty and intricacy. Parts of this glorious Islamic-style complex date to the 700s A.D., with additional tweaking and maze-like construction continuing for many centuries. Fortunately for the universal legacy of the human spirit, Catholic leaders who inherited the site (through conquest) chose to maintain it. (This -- as we should know well even in 2014 A.D. -- is not always the case).

Today's Rune: Warrior.   

Juan Gris (1887-1927)

"Juan Gris has long been seen as the third member of a prodigious trinity that produced the very best Cubist painting. First came [Pablo] Picasso and [Georges] Braque and then -- following in their footsteps -- came the modest, disciplined Gris." ~ Juan Gris, text by Rafael Jackson Martin, translated by Sue Brownbridge (Madrid: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2005), page 5. 

Juan Gris just happened to be born at the same place that mi madre and I used as a base for cultural operations in Spain earlier this summer: Hotel Europa, Calle Carmen, 4 (just off the Puerta del Sol). What good luck! We had no idea until we arrived. The plaque above is mounted outside by the café: 

EN ESTA CASA

NACIO

EL PINTOR MADRILEÑO

JOSÉ VICTORIANO GONZÁLEZ
JUAN GRIS

1887-1927

Vue sur la baie / View Across the Bay (1921), lobby of Hotel Europa in Madrid, June 2014. How cool is that? Original can be seen at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris. However, more than two dozen of Gris' works are in Rooms 208 and 210 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Calle Santa Isabel, 52, Madrid. Link here.

In addition to his often colorful Cubist work, Juan Gris did illustrations, sketches, portraits (as above of his friend, the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro) and so on. Some of his work is still floating around the world on the open market, or remains hidden. Jack Lord (Hawaii Five-O) purchased at least one work; another sold on auction in February 2014 for the equivalent of more than $56 million dollars. Check out the link to Christie's Sale 1505, Lot 9, here. Probably needless to say, Gris saw nothing like this kind of cash flow in his own lifetime, and he died at age forty between the World Wars, before the Spanish Civil War.   

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed). 

Modigliani and Braque

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) and Georges Braque (1882-1963): a study in contrasts, and yet . . . this world may be big enough for both. 

Alex Danchev, in Georges Braque: A  Life (New York: Arcade, 2005), gives us a fresh perspective from Braque's point of view, filling in gaps as he goes.

On the mischievous side, Danchev delights in poking fun at Braque's fellow artist, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), but this effort sometimes inspires the opposite of the intended effect: making Picasso seem at times more vibrant by default.

One of Braque's existential turning points came with the Great War of 1914-1918. He went off to the French Army, was promoted to sub-lieutenant in November 1914. He was badly wounded in the head and "left for dead" in no man's land during a horrendous assault on German trenches near Vimy Ridge in May 1915. He barely survived, and it took a substantial period of recovery before he could resume painting. (See Danchev, Georges Braque, especially pages 122-126). 

"Modi" Modigliani, an Italian national with Sephardic ancestry, had no interest in getting into the war, and while living in France, he didn't have to. He also had serious health issues (tuberculosis being the most salient), not made any better by his wild Bohemian lifestyle. Though he succumbed in 1920 at age 35, he survived the Great War. However: 

'Many of Modi's friends -- the writers Salmon, Apollinaire and Cendrars; the artists Gaudier, Derain, Vlaminck, Zadkine, Kisling and Soutine -- joined the army, and most of them went straight into combat . . . The Delta artists Maurice Drouard and Henri Doucet, Gaudier and Apollinaire, the Italian Umberto Boccioni, the Germans Franz Marc and August Macke were all killed in the war.'  ~ Jeffrey Meyers, Modigliani: A Life. Duckworth Overlook, 2008; first published in 2006, page 131.

Picasso, a Spanish national, also refrained from diving into the Great War (Spain remained neutral during the conflict). But still, from his point of view, too, everything changed in the 1914-1918 years, including his friendship with Braque. As he rather wickedly put it: "On 2 August 1914 I took Braque and [André] Derain to the station at Avignon. I never saw them again" (quoted in Danchev, Georges Braque, page 121).   

Today's Rune: Growth. (Source for sketch at top of post: "A Modigliani 005 Wiki Commons Baster78 uploaded 2006").  

Shock Delivered

Alvah Bessie's Men in Battle (1939) delivers a riveting non-fictional account of the Spanish Civil War from a soldier's or "worm's eye" (as he terms it) point of view. It goes perfectly well with Pablo Picasso's epic 1937 masterwork, Guernica. Here's one small sample:

'They brought the Fascist pilot in, and he was a Spanish youngster in a beautiful Italian flying suit, with a bullet wound in his arm and a broken face. The Spanish company commander in the sector where he landed had smashed him in the jaw in a fit of rage (and we all agreed that while this may have been humanly understandable, it was politically incorrect). . .'   ~~ From the 1977 Pinnacle Books version, page 273.

'[The pilot] was a native of Majorca and had been a pilot before the war. When the Fascists took Majorca, they had asked him to fly for them, and since there is nothing a pilot would rather do than fly, he had accepted. He had raided Barcelona many times. Like most pilots everywhere, he had no political convictions whatsoever, and it is relatively easy to drop high explosives on people you cannot see . . .' (Ibid.).

Guernica -- an impressively large painting (eleven feet high and between twenty-five and twenty-six feet long) -- was moved from New York City to Madrid in 1981 (Casón del Buen Retiro), then on to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 1992. A tapestry version created by Madame J. de la Baume Dürrbach is temporarily on display at the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas, USA (until March 8, 2015) -- I saw this version in the 1980s at United Nations headquarters. In the parlance of our day: WOW.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

The Age of Picasso and Matisse (Take Two)

The ticket's detailing looks like something out of the early 1980s. Computer World, indeed. A simple arti-fact.

This one by Franz Marc jumps out of the wall as you approach ~ Die verzauberte Mühle / The Bewitched Mill ~ completed in 1913, exactly one hundred years ago. How many enchanted animals can you make out in there?

Poor Franz was killed at Verdun in 1916, during the Great War, at age thirty-six.

Today's Rune: Signals. 

At the Kimbell: The Age of Picasso and Matisse (Take One)

Took a close look at the Kimbell Art Museum's latest exhibition, The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago.  Though I remember some from Chicago during a brief Chicago visit in the last ten years, there are many "new" works to consider, enough to prompt me into joining the Kimbell as a "new member." Hence, I'll be back to see more of this soon, hopefully.

Suzanne Duchamp's Multiplication brisée et rétablie / Multipication Broken and Restored (1919).  Fun mix of color, shapes and text.

Flip the image surface of Multiplication brisée et rétablie and voila! La Tour Eiffel / The Eiffel Tower, as if crackling with elecricity. Are those planets and moons mysteriously manifesting?

Suzanne Duchamp (October 20, 1889-September 11, 1963) had three older brothers, also artists -- including Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968).

Today's Rune: Protection.  

Hotel Texas: JFK in Fort Worth, 1963

Up close and personal at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, USA.  Specifically, I checked out the new Hotel Texas exhibit and picked up a copy of its accompanying book -- Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy (2013). 

When the Kennedys stayed in a suite (Room 850) at Hotel Texas (now Hilton Fort Worth), they discovered -- on the morning of the assassination -- that their quarters had been fully decorated with original works of art specifically deployed for their stay. 

One of the pieces that sticks out is Pablo Picasso's all-blackened bronze Angry Owl sculpture from the early 1950s. Another little bronze: Eros Pellini's Girl from Lombardia (late 1950s). And let's not forget Marsden Hartley's Sombrero with Gloves 1936 oil painting.

It's a small, interesting exhibit.  

Today's Date: Journey. 

Age of Surrealism

I aim to maintain a library of about 500 books -- "3D" books. Ebooks are another virtual matter altogether.

Here's one of the 500. Wallace Fowlie's Age of Surealism (The Swallow Press and William Morrow & Company, 1950).

Why do I keep this one? It's interesting in its own right, but I knew Professor Fowlie (1908-1998) in the 1980s and 1990s. He was still teaching at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, when I first spoke with him, after a lecture at the Durham Public Library.

The good professor was gregarious and open-minded. He knew or had known many people, a variety ranging from students and former students to veteran writers and artists (including Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin). He was particularly well versed in French culture. Age of Surrealism continues to speak. I'm still learning about its main topics, most lately through Jean Cocteau's works.

From the Table of Contets:

ORIGINS
LAUTRÉAMONT: the temperament
RIMBAUD: the doctrine
MALLARMÉ: the myth (Hérodiade)
APPOLLINAIRE: the poet
BRETON: the manifestoes
COCTEAU: the theatre
ELUARD: the doctrine on love
PICASSO: the art
CONCLUSIONS

All in all, Age of Surrealism continues to inspire curiosity; that plus having known the author is why this book remains one of "the 500." 

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Of What Do You Dream?

Here are four more images, people and texts touched upon in Jean-Luc Godard's conciousness-raising film Notre Musique (2004). The Cuban poet-writer José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), author of Paradiso (1966) and "Muerte de Narciso" / "Death of Narcissus" (1937).

Notre Musique / Our Music is divided into three simple divisions: Hell (War), Purgatory (Life Between Wars) and Paradise.

The Roman God Janus looks both to the past and the future. Janus Films preserves past movies for the future, often coordinating efforts with the Criterion Collection. In Notre Musique, Godard speaks of camera images and reverse images, angles and reverse angles. It's also noted that in a lexicon prior to ancient Sumer, the word for After = Past and for Before = Future. In a dreamy observation of social reconcilation/paradise, “It is like an image but a distant one. It must be far from here or later on."

The ghost of André Malraux weaves its way more than once through Notre Musique. From the Malraux book  La Tete d'obsidienne  / Picasso's Mask (1974) comes Picasso's story of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. When Bernadette was asked by Catholic authorities how the image of Mary appeared to her, she came to an icon of Our Lady of Cambrai.

As artists, Picasso (and Malraux) interpreted Bernadette's choice as affirmation of something transcendent -- the evident presence of divine energy. The iconic image of Notre Dame de Grâce / Our Lady of Cambrai counters the hellish energies of war, providing a real alternative to violence in the way of love and compassion. For cigar-smoking free thinker Godard, that's a sweet dream, indeed.  

Today's Rune: Signals.