Power and Seduction, Marilyn and Juliette, Muse and Model, Artemis and Aphrodite...

 ....Atalanta and Daphne....a post brought on by too much Christmas Pudding and Stilton?

The Three Graces, empowered or exploited, by Canova, c.1799. Image: Web Gallery of Art
THE DANGERS AND DELIGHTS OF BEING DECORATIVE
part six of The Laurel Trophy

Immortalized as the dark-haired model in white chemise, peeping under her lashes at onlookers in Gérard's  meltingly sexy portrait, and forever associated with the sofa on which she reclines in the painting by David, in her lifetime Juliette Récamier was a discerning patron of literature and the arts. Her personal taste influenced fashion and interior design in western Europe, and she helped promote philosophical and political ideas in post-revolutionary French society. She was also famous for her virginity, that she is alleged to have given up, willingly, at the age of forty. The long wait is usually perceived as odd, a disorder, rather than a trumphant assertion of individuality through sexual discernment.  

The greatest loves of her life, consummated or not, were always worldly intellectuals, people addicted to using and defining power, whose inclusion of her in their observations gave her validation. Down this road lies the danger, fun but facile, of comparison to Marilyn Monroe and her symbiotic relationships with professional writers, teachers and analysts, all besotted with the ambivalent sweetness of her sex appeal, a vicarious affair that persists in the dozens of publications about her exploited or empowered femininity.....for more dangers, read on

Daughter of The Tragic Muse

Sarah Martha Siddons, c.1795, portrayed and betrayed by the Romantic painter, Thomas Lawrence.

Private Collection. Image source: Wikipedia

"Whenever I meet his eyes...it is like an electric shock to me"

Dutiful daughter and casualty of Romantic egotism
part of
 NEOCLASSICAL GODDESSES AND ROMANTIC HEROINES

SALLY SIDDONS

Sally (1775-1803) and her sister Maria (1779 -1798) were both in love with the gifted young portrait painter, Thomas Lawrence. He was a friend of their mother, Sarah Siddons, and the whole family had known him well for several years. In his mid-twenties, he appeared to fit the description of a romantic hero. He was graceful, dark and delicately featured, with soul-piercing eyes and a charming manner. He behaved with the destructive emotional immaturity found in many former child prodigies. 

He courted both girls in turn, initially forming an attachment to Sally, then deciding that he was in love with the younger girl, Maria, who was already showing symptoms of consumption. Months later, he confessed that it was really Sally he had loved all along, and his engagement to Maria was broken off. He seems to have been genuinely confused about his feelings - Mrs Siddons, always indulgent of him, thought he was being quixotic - but that wasn't really the point. The sisters had only a two dimensional existence for him. Their feelings were as far removed from him as those of supporting characters in a play, in which he was watching Mrs Siddons and himself in the leading parts...CONTINUED

Once and Future Heroine: SARAH LUND

detail, Hammershøi: Young Woman from Behind

She's back. Despite being profaned by the cult of her sweater, Sarah Lund has joined the pantheon of Norse gods and heroines. Indefatigable, fallible, unflinching goddess of retribution and lady of sorrows, she and Forbrydelsen (The Killing) have elevated the TV thriller genre to modern myth. At its best, in the first two series, it achieved the moral authority of classical drama, consistently superior to English-speaking imitators and Scandinavian successors. 
Never mind that the third series does not, and never could, match up, that the supporting characters are less profoundly observed and the interlocking plots more formulaic. With a sense of duty that matches Lund's, Sofie Gråbøl.....CONTINUED

Who's afraid of heroes?

A twilight world of haunted houses on blasted heaths, billowing curtains, priest holes and craggy old retainers, grown men struggling with oedipal longings and alcohol addiction, a slender plot about a list of names and a china English bulldog, an accused Great Actress, superb yet ridiculous, reciting Tennyson's rallying cries to a lost people torn between technologically advanced modernity and their sentimental loyalties to a myth of nationhood - what is this we have, yet another re-working of a Bronte novel, a missing scene from the Olympics opening ceremony, or just more teenage vampires? 

I hear a gunshot on the Scottish moors; a man and a woman get out of their car and stand in the whisky-coloured heather beside a trickling burn. Is it mother and son on holiday in the Highlands, searching for their roots? Maybe it's Richard Hannay from The Thirty Nine Steps on the run from master criminals in 1915?
No, the year is 2012, and the man is Bond, James Bond, as we have never seen him before and should never, ever, have to see again.
In a feat of heroic acting against the odds, Daniel Craig doesn't lose Bond's masculinity or credibility (or put on a funny voice like the Batman, rasping long after everyone's realized he's Bruce Wayne), 007's upper lip still twitches with humour, not emotion, thank god, but he has to fall through the treacly vortex stirred by the director and screenwriters, hooked on the currently pseudo-Freudian, psychobabbling, whinging interpretations of action heroes, like men afraid of their own shadows.

JAMES BOND TAKING HIS MOTHER ON HOLIDAY IN THE HIGHLANDS

Detail of Morning in the Highlands: The Royal Family Ascending Lochnagar, by Carl Haag. Watercolour, 1853, in The Royal Collection

THIS POST IS FEATURED ON FIRST NIGHT DESIGN TIMES ONLINE NEWSPAPER

Special Guest Post: LUCIA BY SARAH

Reblogged from Sarah Vernon's First Night Design, here is an intimate portrait of a long dead woman, one of those ancestresses too well-brought up to divulge any secrets about themselves, who are only deciphered a hundred years later through a mixture of research and intuition. Sarah's post reveals just as much about her own and her mother's imaginative writing talent as it does about her clever, amused, inscrutable-looking great-grandmother Lucia:

My Great-Grandmother Lucia by Sarah Vernon

8 August 2011

My great-grandmother, Lucia, was a gently beautiful woman.  I have late Victorian photographs to show me just how charming she was to look at and last week I created an image with her as the centrepiece.  This particular photograph (below), which admittedly stands on its own, was exquisitely hand-tinted.

Image © Sarah Vernon

Being me, however, I wanted to embellish it!  I used my own textures and backgrounds alongside one from The Graphics Fairy and one from Deviant Art.

Lucia died in 1906 when she was in her 40s. There is some mystery about how she died....
My mother used to imagine that Lucia had had a riding accident since she found the idea so romantic....Read Full Post

If Downton Abbey was McDonalds....

"SO BAD IT'S GOOD" ENOUGH TO EAT - YOUR BRAINS

Poor comfort-eating recessionites, we've got to wait till Christmas for our favourite, luxuriously engineered, salt-fat-sugar fix. The invidious thing about Downton Abbey’s success isn’t its undeniable entertainment value and popularity, or that it has restored UK Entertainment’s balance of trade with America, but that such smugly gilded, spinelessly plotted, lumpily scripted bathos has won awards for excellence in drama and writing. It's another discredit to the honours and prize-giving system which needs abolishing. Preposterous, predictable, derivative, sychophantic, aristophile...

Discovery and Denial

A Mermaid by J.W.Waterhouse (1901). Royal Academy of Arts. Image source: Wikipedia

On January 8th, 1493, during his first New World voyage, Christopher Columbus, wrong again, mistook three sea cows swimming south of the Bahamas for mermaids. This had been a common delusion among sailors for centuries, whenever they saw the large grey creatures raising their amiable, long-nosed, whiskered heads above the ocean surface, and bending their fore-limbs like arms.  

Columbus was not the man to give up a preconception.The next day in his blog - sorry, log - rather than speculate that he had seen a new species, any more than he would ever admit landing on a new continent, he dissed his mermaids for being less beautiful than they were painted (no eran tan hermosas como las pintan) and for having masculine-looking faces (forma de hombre en la cara). From the distance of his ship, he was sure he had seen three butch sirens waving at him. CONTINUED

distemperature

drowning garden

video by Martin Huebscher Photography

...the moon (the governess of floods),
Pale in her anger, washes all the air

...And thorough this distemperature, we see
The seasons alter...

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene 1 

AFTER THE STORM (A Story)

More distemperature: SPRING, SUMMER, DENIAL

contrablog:

 

A fine dose of revenge is in every complaint. Nietzsche

WORLD'S END GARDEN

 ...I am re-begot

Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.

John Donne, A Nocturnal Upon S. Lucy's Day, Being The Shortest Day

Part One GARDEN
Part Two PUNISHMENT
Part Three RE-BEGOT
Part Four BOUNDARIES
Part Five SWORD
Part Six BESIEGED
Part Seven BREACHED
Part Eight GARDEN
© Pippa Rathborne 2012

 
Like all histories, this is a product of the imagination, based on real events. Every word is true, but, except for the first person singular and plural, the characters are fictional composites and any resemblance to living persons is unintended and purely coincidental.

I think that whenever one has something unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Consciousness of Griffins

The gold the griffin guards is its own integrity, or soul, which it keeps intact through every test of life, not for self-love but for love of a part greater than itself. 
The gold the griffin guards is all the money we've paid in taxes and will never get back.

That's the wonderful thing about griffins: for 5000 years, people have made up anything they like about griffins, or gryphons, or griffons, to protect their personal sacred treasure. Even its name can be spelt whichever way you prefer. Whatever you value or are scared of, the ancient griffin will be your friend in need. 

 An avenging Griffin of Dürer's imagination, resembling Nemesis, full of Weltschmerz and reforming zeal while it guards humanity from moral self-destruction. Detail of Triumphal Arch, woodcut commissioned by Emperor Maximilian I, 1515.

The griffin, half-lion, half-eagle, guardian of mountain gold and royal thrones, defender of justice and truth, a king among beasts and companion to pharoahs, protector from evil, supporter of marriage and good reputations, is one of the most ancient of all mythical creatures, known to the great early eastern and mediterranean civilizations since the Bronze Age, in Egypt, Minoan Crete, Greece, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, India and China, and recorded in their histories by Herodotus and Pliny. In appearance it resembled the cherubim of the Hittites; it was later adopted as an emblem of Jesus by early Christians, and its statues erected outside Buddhist and Hindu temples; it was borrowed as an heraldic device by ambitious medieval dynasties, and as a popular mascot for religious, civic, educational, financial and business institutions across the globe, and even now the griffin is flying its majestic course through fantasy stories and films. CONTINUED

The standing stones of Brodgar

Stonehenge by Constable. Image source: Web Gallery of Art

....a sylvan pagan pyre,

or her body covered in flowers on a boat rowed to Avalon, or buried at water's edge under Brodgar's stones - none of these allowed today....CONTINUED

Acting the King: Power and Illusion of the Baroque

Louis XIV as Apollo, Grotto at Versailles. Photo source: Web Gallery of Art

Louis XIV turned the ceremonial rituals of kingship into ballet, every gesture studied to be as graceful and as pregnant with meaning as possible; even his bodily functions had to be treated as if they were an entertaining performance, but nobody laughed. Individuals like Louis XIV and Elizabeth were skilled performance artists able to bring off the parts of pseudo-deities they created and costumed and choreographed to hedge themselves with divinity, which worked its charm only for as long as the supporting cast was persuaded it had a vested interest in suspending disbelief.  

Full story: Power and Illusion in the Age of Baroque

Revised Pompous Post 2 - Milking History on TV

HISTORY AS SHE WAS BEFORE TV HISTORIANS:
the Muse, Clio, by Boucher

Clio has made herself more important than her story. Now she shows off by treading the boards and singing broadside ballads. The line between showing off and fun-filled, full-bloodied identification with the past has been crossed. 
Everyone nowadays thinks they're a natural performer. The culprits used to be male historians who obviously had been coached to keep their hands busy, and over-compensated by constantly cupping invisible breasts, but now....

arc stories

Destiny's vanishing point: garden arcade at Hever, Kent, photo by Pippa Rathborne

one of Chesterton's "spiritual puns" photo by Martin Huebscher Photography

Ecce homo

THE LESULA LOOKS IN DESPAIR AFTER DISCOVERING HUMANS

The amateur art restorer who botched Christ's head in the fresco of her local church may be a visionary rather than a vandal. The shy, soulful face of the newly discovered lesula species of monkey in the Democratic Republic of the Congo looks exactly like the depiction of Jesus with fuzzy chin curtain, close-set eyes and sad, twisted mouth, the introverted expression of someone who has seen it all before.

human islands

"You must move on". What do they mean? Forget? After three months, even friends get impatient. Grief is now my stigma, my badge of shame. Move On means, I think, Snap Out Of It. "You should be over it by now".When they ask me how I feel, I tell them I am fine. I wonder, have they never been lost....

BOUNDARIES part four of Re-begot...

A man walked in the park and looked

conducting

Photographs of Dunorlan Park, Tunbridge Wells

by MARTIN HUEBSCHER PHOTOGRAPHY

LOOK, TOO

Tweets from a funeral

Someone boasts he’s taken a photo of me with my tongue hanging out.

“Be histrionic as you like at the funeral” -

display of emotion is socially approved there,

1930s crematorium purpose-built

for bourgeois ritual, convenience-grief.
(but not alone at home, in bed at night,

nor in the street, outside the shops,

nor by the river in the dark,

the places where other animals freely howl)

- No, thanks.....

We are sorry you feel that way

The modern art of the narcissistic apology

An apology is not an apology when it is qualified by "I am sorry you feel that way..." which is the formula nowadays for all organizations, whether town hall or pharmaceutical company, internet provider or hospice, to fend off criticism or legal action even in cases when there is no ambiguity about the facts. An apology should start with an acknowledgment of responsibility ("I am sorry we made a mistake"..."I am sorry for all the inconvenience/expense our stupidity/our computer glitch has caused you") not an implicit denial of wrongdoing by suggesting that subjective emotionality on the part of the complainant has warped their perception. The effect is as conciliatory as "Keep calm, dear".

If you get a reply like that, my advice is, complain again - whether they've got something to hide or are just being arsy, they need to look in the mirror. If a friend you love resorts to the phrase, you'll forgive them, because you know they don't want to hurt your feelings; if you don't love them, you'll never trust them again.

"WE ARE SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY"

There are things one does not write
(remark attributed to Napoleon by Stendhal, in The Red and the Black)

Detail of APOLLO REVEALING HIS DIVINITY by Boucher, 1750.  

The apollonion messenger stood us up...

life through DvP's eyes

 

The statue of Fragonard and his muse in Grasse 

(photo by PJR)

Plain packaging, good taste

I am not, and never have been, a smoker, but now I'm considering it. Can't bear the smell of cigarettes, or the ugly stinking piles of their ash, they give me asthma and make my eyes water, and I can't afford them anyway; I don't want nicotine stains on my remaining teeth, there's a history of cancer in the family and I think when you have smoked and alcoholically poisoned your organs away you've got some cheek expecting new ones on the NHS, but if I hear one more, smug, prissy, overpaid to be sanctimonious idiot preach the virtues of plain packaging, or packets decorated with skulls and health warnings, I shall go out and buy a pack of 200 to blow in their faces....

Tell us how you feel, Hecuba

We still need catharsis, we are addicted to it, but it isn't morally improving anymore.

Nowadays, sometimes more out of self-gratification than sympathy, we like to vicariously experience other people's extreme emotions and subject them, whether jubilant or suffering, to instant inquisition. Empathy is recognized as a professional tool that could sometimes be mistaken for politeness ("I hope your  journey here was alright?", "I'm sorry about that") and as a fashionable attribute, usually mistaken for compassion.

Traditionally this sort of feelgood factor used to be regulated, produced artificially through dramatic representation, a consensual imaginative act given the morally improving name of catharsis. Only the emotion aroused in the audience was real. How the actor and dramatist achieve their ends, through application of techniques or painful substitution of themselves, does not matter; it is the powerful mystery of their art. 

The intoxicating effects of this emotional communion were acknowledged in ancient Greek civilization by associating theatre with, of all the gods, mood-altering, self-gratifying, subconscious-dwelling Dionysus, not the rational Apollo, overall patron of poetry and the performing arts. The same experience has been undergone by mystics of all religions, reproducing the passion of sacrificial gods and saints. The downside of this was scapegoating and witch-hunting, practices condemned by modern society.

We still need catharsis, we are addicted to it, but it isn't morally improving anymore. Sated with simulated realities, we demand confessions from real living persons. We are angry and suspicious if they deny us with "no comment" or "how the **** do you think I feel?" The description of feeling has become an evasion, more vital to us than the real thing. 

We do not always make a moral distinction between sharing someone else's joy and our own Schadenfreude. We applaud ourselves for feeling empathy, like trainee professionals awarded extra marks for showing it to patients or clients, regardless that compassion as a virtue is not enjoyed, but given to alleviate the suffering of others. We are upset if anyone suggests our interest is motivated by addiction to gossip rather than selfless concern about other people's lives and deaths; a good murder is as alluring as a wedding. 

It's the modern secular game, the coveting of souls for entertainment. The thrill wears off; we need to move on to the next one. Like tragedies in five acts, the limits of compassion for an individual are set for the comfort of the wider community. What's Hecuba to any of us, or us to Hecuba, after three hours?  

"How do you feel?" 

Detail of Antonio Tempesta's print, c.1600, of Hecuba, the inconvenient mourner who took her grief too far for the communal good, lamenting over the corpses of her children.

**********************************

Please don’t ask me: “How do you feel?” In the garden of how I feel nothing....

The falsified self, continued

PRISONER OF FREE WILL

There are worse jobs: shielded by tree bark from harassment, she is free to be beautiful, intellectual and adorable forever. 
But is she happy?

Mortal anguish made exquisite through artistic metamorphosis:  
detail of Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, Marble, 1622 - 25, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

The transformation of Daphne from chaste nymph into laurel tree is portrayed by both Ovid in poetic form and Bernini in sculpture as a sexual experience, even though it is ostensibly sex that she is running away from. Ovid emphasizes the languor of her surrender to a consummation she has prayed for, the death of carnal existence in exchange for spiritual and cerebral life. Revulsed by the lust her beauty stimulates in other people, perpetually in flight from sexual contact - and Ovid in Metamorphoses constantly reminds us how fast she is, one of those athletic women who outrun men in classical mythology - she is an ethereal, wistful being even before she is changed from human to plant form, a dutiful daughter who doesn't want to grow up and bear children of her own, who slips away from flesh-pains as gently as Sleeping Beauty, acquiescent to her new vocation as a symbol of other people's triumphs, conferring prestige without feelings or sensations of her own. There are worse jobs: protected by bark from sexual harassment, she is allowed to be decorative and intellectual forever. 

The significant point about Ovid's Daphne is that she wants to be changed, though she has no say in how or to what. Bernini's Daphne, pursued by Apollo, is traumatized, less of a conflicted personality than a victim of attempted assault, caught in the moment of violent transition....

The falsified self

HECUBA AND THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION

part two

Magic cloak

Fashionable sports' kit for female athletes, 
4th century AD. 
Detail of mosaic in a private room of
Villa Romana del Casale, Siciliy
where it is always warm enough to wear bikinis.

Awe and Wonder during Austerity for £27 million 

We know sporting spectacles have always been political, even before the first chariot race in the Colosseum. They have never promoted peace - ancient Greek city-states suspended civil wars to send athletic teams to compete at sacred sites, and then resumed killing each other as soon as the games were over - but they have been invaluable public pacifiers and propaganda tools for governments....

Disinterested used to mean impartial

HECUBA AND THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION

part one

Every time a TV arts programme critic describes a film or performance as "visceral", I imagine piles of cocktail sausages, when I'm sure I should be seeing shining entrails. The word doesn't cut the mustard any more. I don't feel my fingers touching vile jelly, like Cornwall does when he plucks out Gloucester's eyes.

HECUBA TRANSFORMED BY GRIEF INTO A DOG

AFTER GOUGING OUT THE EYES OF POLYMESTOR IN REVENGE FOR THE DEATH OF HER YOUNGEST SON

detail of Johann Wilhelm Baur's illustration to Ovid's Metamorphoses,1659 edition

"....Hecuba,

....was driven mad by sorrow

and began barking like a dog...

Such mighty power had grief to wrench her soul"
Dante, Inferno 

When, in the cause of truthful citation, I put the quotation from the thirtieth Canto in Roman numerals, my blog was overrun by lascivious spybots...

World's End gentrification

                 “Mad bitch, mad bitch,

                     we hear that thing you do -

                          laughing that turns to crying -

                        mad bitch, it’s got to stop"....

RE-BEGOT

Please don’t ask me how I feel

because I don’t think you’ll believe me.

What I feel is bigger than me, inside and outside me,

dark matter swallowing and swallowed;
weight of emptiness, a heavy heart,
pulls down rocks and torrents
a storm raging that no-one else sees or hears,
a vacuum filled with shrieking motion.
Her death: event horizon.
My grief: crossing where I’m torn apart
This is not pathetic fallacy;
it is the geography of me....

Patriotism is not enough

GOD IS NOT AN ENGLISHMAN (OR SCOTS)

When Madame la Pompadour addressed Louis V as "France" in bed, it was not in tribute to his sexual heroics.....

Boy next door

Statue of a boy holding a basket of flowers, standing in a niche above a private doorway in Tunbridge Wells. 

Photo by Martin Huebscher Photography

Playing Carice Elgar

ELGAR, STIRRING THE SPIRIT

Cast: David Graham, Pippa Rathborne

Musicians: The Locrian Ensemble

Edinburgh, London & National Tour 2004 - 2007

production photo by The Locrian Ensemble

Rational creatures

Motherhood for the personal and common good: illustration by William Blake for the frontispiece to the 1791 edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's children's book, Original Stories from Real Life. Image source: Wikipedia

I must have been mazed by the weekend's progeny of evils, financial and torrential, because while watching Sharon Osbourne being interviewed on TV, I thought Cherie Blair in one of her desperate fashion attacks had dyed her hair crimson. I think these two powerful women share identities, the one grown rich on ruthlessly promoting dubious acts, boastfully hectoring audiences, and guarding a mad husband's reputation, and the other a talent show panelist....

face, voice, 2008

MHP CASTING PHOTOS

phony

I pressed the eject button within 10 minutes of watching Meryl Streep....

Still running

  Atalanta by Heinrich Keller, 1802,  Kunsthaus, Zurich. Image source: Web Gallery of Art

It was a time of high taxes, low wages, rising unemployment, failed revolutions, reactionary oppression, and deepening social inequality while the poor despaired and the rich luxuriated in power....

Heredity and Rebellion

NEOCLASSICAL GODDESSES AND ROMANTIC HEROINES 

testing the limits of self-determination
 

part ten: Heredity and Rebellion

  Atalanta by Heinrich Keller, 1802,  Kunsthaus, Zurich. Image source: Web Gallery of Art

Atalanta, or "equal in weight": the princess had a sort of masculine rigour*

A might-have-been of history, one of the lost heirs to the throne, and the only one known for “rolling about”, Princess Charlotte of Wales is significant as a catalyst for national catharsis by dying young, not for any achievements in her life. Her real character was buried under decorous veils of Victorian sentiment, concealing the tension and flux of her personality, the combined result of inheritance and of her own response to the spirit of her times. Her individuality was puzzling to contemporaries, who tried to reduce it to "masculine rigour" and "acts" similar to Queen Elizabeth I's. 

Like Blake’s Little Girl Lost, her impetuosity and candour, her instinctual behaviour, her sensual appetites, her enthusiasms, her wildness were disapprovingly held in check by adults. “Doucement, chèrie”, her urbane husband (the future “Uncle Leopold” of her cousin Victoria) would whisper to her whenever she got out of control in public, as if he was breaking in a horse....