Ian McEwan's art

Over the break, I’ve been reading a lot of Ian McEwan: Amsterdam, Atonement, and Sweet Tooth (I’ve also read his Saturday and Chesil Beach). Over his career, especially in his earlier ears, he has written many grisly and tragic scenes but also observed many moments of sweetness and love. His sentences are filled with acute observations described with jewel-like care, and his tone is often ringing like a Chopin ballade.
Take this scene from Amsterdam where a man (Vernon) visits the home shared by recently deceased friend (Molly) and her husband (George); Molly and Vernon were lovers twenty-five years ago:

“In the semidarkness, during the seconds it took George to fumble for the light switch, Vernon experienced for the first time the proper impact of Molly’s death—the plain fact of her absence. The recognition was brought on by familiar smells that he had already started to forget—her perfume, her cigarettes, the dried flowers she kept in the bedroom, coffee beans, the bakery warmth of laundered clothes. He had talked about her at length, and he had thought of her too, but only in snatches during his crowded working days, or while drifting into sleep, and until now he had never really missed her in his heart, or felt the insult of knowing he would never see or hear her again. She was his friend, perhaps the best he had ever had, and she had gone. He could easily have made a fool of himself in front of George, whose outline was blurring even now. This particular kind of desolation, a painful constriction right behind his face, above the roof of his mouth, he hadn’t known since childhood, since prep school. Homesick for Molly. He concealed a gasp of self-pity behind a loud adult cough.

The place was exactly as she had left it the day she finally consented to move to a bedroom in the main house, to be imprisoned and nursed by George. As they passed the bathroom, Vernon glimpsed a skirt of hers he remembered, draped over the towel rail, and a towel and a bra lying on the floor. Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from the drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses, crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high-heeled shoes—not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly’s, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue.”

Amsterdam is a novel with a grisly denouement, which, to be honest, I skimmed over, but the combination of scenes like the above and biting social satire (of British politics and the press) made the novel a great pleasure.

PS: As I wrote this, I thought about McEwan’s consistently jewel-like diction in comparison with say the tone quality with which Mozart and Chopin’s piano music is usually played. In a way, McEwan's diction is more like the consistent ringing tone of Mozart (brought out, said Georgy Sandor and Anton Rubinstein among others, by a certain softness in the wrist) compared to Romantic music like Chopin’s, which is typically played with a mixture of a ringing tone and a dryer, more percussive tone brought out by stiffness in the wrist. And yet there’s wild cataracting tactile passion in McEwan that I more readily associate with Chopin, which not say that there is no depth in a Mozart fantasia. Perhaps the tactile passion of timbre stirs my guts while the passion of dissonance stores my emotional brain in an equally profound but different way.

Galina Ulanova's Giselle

Galina Ulanova as Giselle

      The version of Giselle at this Youtube link with the Soviet ballerina Galina Ulanova has to be one of the most moving pieces of art I've ever seen, definitely one of the top five films I've ever seen. What's makes this Giselle special is not Ulanova's technical skill (her technique seems fine to this non-expert on ballet, and I think leeway must be given due to the fact she was almost fifty and nearing retirment) but her depiction of the character of Giselle.

      The ballet Giselle is of course about an innocent peasant girl; she falls in love at the start of ballet, but then discovers the lie of her noble lover and dies of a broken heart at the end of the first half of the ballet.  In the second half, her spirit forgives him and protects him from vengeful spirits; at the end of the ballet she has to say farwell to him.  Though it's one of those works that forces characters into traditional gender roles, it has undeniable humanity and beauty.

       Ulanova embodies this character to a degree that far surpasses other ballerinas I've seen.  I was lucky to see Maria Kochetkova in SF Ballet’s production of Giselle last spring, and I’ve spent some time this afternoon on Youtube watching performances by some of the pimera ballerina assoluta and otherwise great ballerinas of the 20^th Century (Alicia Markova, Alessandra Ferri, Natalia Bessmertnovna, Gelsey Kirkland) as well as some of the top contemporary ballerinas (Alina Cojocaru and Svetlana Zakharova).  They’re all surpassed by Ulanova, who draws you into her role with every gesture.  I have to agree with Sergey Prokofiev, who, according to Wikipedia, said the following of Ulanova: "She is the genius of Russian ballet, its elusive soul, its inspired poetry. Ulanova imparts to her interpretation of classical roles a depth of expression unheard of in twentieth century ballet."

      What a treasure!

PS:

      The Wikipedia page of Giselle has an excellent plot summary if you’re interested in getting into the ballet.

      Based on searching on Amazon and IMDb, I’ve discovered that this film version with Ulanova was filmed in 1956 when the Bolshoi Ballet toured in Britain.  At about 70 minutes, it’s a somewhat abridged version without the famous Act 1 solo variation for Giselle, but it’s still very moving.

The seasons of Yellowstone, an illustrated prose poem

Some time ago I came across this description of spring and autumn in Yellowstone by Henry Chittenden, the army engineer who built much of Yellowstone National Park’s roads and bridges in the late 19^th century.  I thought it was a beautiful example of a descriptive and rhythmic 19^th century prose.  (It is just one passage from a book of several hundred pages in tribute to Yellowstone.)  I present two versions of it below, the first being the original version, and second illustrated with pictures from the web.  I hope you’ll read the original version slowly and enjoy the hearing the rhythm and seeing the images in your mind, and then look at the pictures in the second version.  (I enjoyed imagining the images on my own and looking them up on the web later.)

Original version

“The scenery of these mountains, moreover, is subject to continual and interesting change. Scarcely have the bleak storms of winter subsided, while yet deep fields of snow lie upon the upper slopes, the soft blossoms of spring shoot eagerly from the scanty soil and oppose the gentle warmth of their blooms to the chill snow which is slowly receding before them. So profuse and beautiful are the flowers in these lofty regions that one would doubt if any other season could rival the springtime in beauty.

But in truth the somber season of autumn is the most attractive of all. The early frosts cover the mountain sides with the most varied and gorgeous colors. The quaking aspen, which before was simply a mass of green upon the mountain side, now stands forth with tenfold greater distinctness in its rich autumnal foliage.  The low growth of underbrush, which scarcely attracts the eye at other seasons, takes on a livelier hue, transforming whole mountain sides into fields of pleasing color. Even upon those inaccessible and apparently barren slopes, where the eye had not before detected any sign of vegetable life, may now be seen spots of crimson and gold, as if nature had scattered here and there rich bouquets of flowers and bunches of fruit.”

Illustrated version

“The scenery of these mountains, moreover, is subject to continual and interesting change. Scarcely have the bleak storms of winter subsided, while yet deep fields of snow lie upon the upper slopes, the soft blossoms of spring shoot eagerly from the scanty soil and oppose the gentle warmth of their blooms to the chill snow which is slowly receding before them. So profuse and beautiful are the flowers in these lofty regions that one would doubt if any other season could rival the springtime in beauty.

But in truth the somber season of autumn is the most attractive of all. The early frosts cover the mountain sides with the most varied and gorgeous colors. The quaking aspen, which before was simply a mass of green upon the mountain side, now stands forth with tenfold greater distinctness in its rich autumnal foliage.

The low growth of underbrush, which scarcely attracts the eye at other seasons, takes on a livelier hue, transforming whole mountain sides into fields of pleasing color. Even upon those inaccessible and apparently barren slopes, where the eye had not before detected any sign of vegetable life, may now be seen spots of crimson and gold, as if nature had scattered here and there rich bouquets of flowers and bunches of fruit.”

Image sources

1)        http://www.123rf.com/photo_3936279_spring--crocus-flowers-blooming-through-the-melting-snow.html

2)        http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-45886729/stock-photo-mountain-meadow-in-bloom-crocus.html

3)        http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevepearcephotography/88663105/sizes/z/in/photostream/

4)        http://www.flickr.com/photos/pat-e/4314872689/sizes/m/in/photostream/

5)        http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanvernon/5126043913/sizes/o/in/photostream/

The cloisters of Santa Croce and the spirit of the Renaissance

The other day I decorated the room I’m renting form my new landlords in Palo Alto.  Above my dresser I put up these three photographs: 

The first picture is of the Pazzi Chapel in one of the cloisters in the complex of the Cathedra of Santa Croce in Florence (‘Croce’, with the ‘ce’ pronounced like ‘Che’ in ‘Che Guevara’, means cross in Italian).  The second is of one my favorite art historians, a mid-20^th-century British art historian named Kenneth Clark, in another of the cloisters.  The last is of the cloister in its full glory.  The cloisters and the interior of the Pazzi Chapel were designed by Fillipo Brunelleschi[1], while the exterior of the chapel is by an unknown architect who did the design after Brunelleschi’s death.

            I put up these pictures because to me the cloisters of Santa Croce and Pazzi chapel embody the values of the Renaissance--peace, harmony, order, and noble striving.  Take the cloister in which Kenneth Clark sits, for example.  There is no architectural form that speaks to me of inner peace and gentlenss like repeated semicircular arches.  Moreover, the repetition of the arches and the banks of columns exudes a sense of harmonious order—not the jarring order of soldiers standing in a Draconian array, but the beautiful order of people standing gracefully by their own free will.  And there is something too in how the second story of columns doesn’t support a layer of arches and in how they’re slightly shorter than the first story.  Each column in the first story, and the two havles of the arches that it supports, and the column above it in the second story, seems to be united entity that sharpens as it rises, projecting energy into the sky.

            In his television documentary Civilization: A Personal View[2], the British art historian Kenneth Clark sums up the spirit of the Renassiance with a quote from the humanist Leon Battista Albertti[3]:

                        Man!

                        To you has been given a body more graceful than other animals,

                        To you power of apt and various movements,

                        To you wit, reason, and memory, like an immortal god.[4]

            I think it is because the cloisters of Santa Croce and the Pazzi Chapel embody this celebration of man that I love them so much and have posted them on my wall.

            

            Here’s an excerpt from Civilization (I have a copy of it, so feel free to ask me for a copy!):

---

[1] Brunelesschi was of course the builder of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore or the Duomo.  That dome is his most famous work.  But while I feel the dome demonstrates his engineering genius, I think it is his other buildings like the cloisters of Sanata Croce that demonstrate his architectural genius.  (The dome of the dumo is a gothic (peaked) dome and not a semicircular dome, but is does not have flying buttresses for support like other gothic domes.  It’s held together by ingenious stone work and iron chains embedded in the walls, which are described in the Wikipedia article =))

[2] This is my favorite documentary program.  It was a 13-hour series made by the BBC in about 1970, soon after the founding of the BBC, to demonstrate the potential of television.  Kenneth Clark wrote and narrated it.  The concept of the series was to survey European civilization from the fall of Rome by having Clark visit and comment on the great cultural sites of Europe and to combine the video of the great works of art and architecture with great pieces of classical music and readings from poetry and so forth.  Clark chose the sites to emphasize what he felt were the noblest and wisest elements of European civilization.  Kenneth Clark, by the way, is in my opinion one of the greatest art historians—extraordinarily intelliegent and sensitive and deeply satisfying with the approach to art he takes in Civilization.  Coming from a wealthy Scottish family, he attended Oxford in the 1920’s, assisted the famous American art dealer Bernard Berenson, directed one of the museums at Oxford in his 20’s; became the director of the British National Gallery at age 30; and retired to become Slade Professor of Art History at Oxford in his 50’s.

[3] Leon Battista Alberti is considered to be one of the four fathers of the Renaissance, along with the architect Brunelleschi, the painter Massacio, and the historian Leonardo Bruni.  He was most famous as the author of treatises on architecture and painting, in which he formulated the rules for designing of classically inspired buildings and for perspective.  It’s clear that he was a friend of the leading painters and architects of the day.  It’s not clear whether he took the lead in developing the rules he wrote about them or whether he formulated them based on discussion with his artist friends.  He was also a philosopher, as suggested by the quote, though Kenneth Clark unfortunately does not source it.

[4] If like me, you have a tendency to question whether this summing up of the Renaissance is a romanticization, know that I’m fairly confident that is summing up is reasonably accurate.  I think it’s accurate to say Renaissance culture (at least the culture of the elites In Flourence) differd from medieval culture (at least that of the church elites) in its belief in what man could achieve in this world, outside of the salvation of his soul.  Of course, it’s a great challenge for a professional historian to establish what the people of an age thought.  And of course, it’s a still greater challenge for me, I who lack the time to read much of the literature to come to a well-grounded, unbiased, and unsentemental  conclusion.  Nonetheless, I think it’s clear that if you look through the works of leading medieval philosophers like Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, you will find a preoccupation on doing God’s will and salvation (I read some of them in high school for a philosophy class).  And I think it’s clear that the works of Renaissance humanists like Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (this is very short and available at http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/pico.html),  Leonardo Bruni’s History of Italy, and Matteo Palmieri’s On Civic Life, you will find a clearly different concern with what man can achieve outside of salvation.  Besides the Wikipedia pages on these works and authors, the pages on medieval scholasticism and the Renaissance are also good starting points to convince yourself the Albertti’s quote captures the general difference between Renaissance philsophy and what preceded it.