ALL TOO HUMAN by Katerina Athanasiou

ALL TOO HUMAN

2 OCTOBER Katerina Athanasiou

Nietzsche, German Idealism and Its Critics ¨ding¨ meaning in German physiology

German[edit] Etymology[edit] From Middle High German ding, from Old High German thing, from Proto-Germanic *þingą. Compare Low German ding, Dutch ding, English thing, Danish ting.

Noun[edit] Ding n (genitive Dinges or Dings, plural Dinge or Dinger, diminutive Dinglein n)

thing

(mildly disrespectful) thing; girl; boy (young person)

(dated) Thing (historic Germanic council)

Usage notes[edit] 

The plural Dinge means things in general: Werte sind wichtiger als Dinge. – "Values are more important than things." It also means different kinds of things: Nahrung, Kleidung und Wohnung sind Dinge, die jeder braucht. – "Food, clothes and a home are things that everyone needs."



The plural Dinger means several items of one sort of thing: Was sind das hier für kleine rote Dinger? – "What are these little red things?" In formal style, this sense is preferably covered by Gegenstände rather than Dinger. The plural Dinger is also used for the sense “young person”.

Synonyms[edit] (historic council): Thing

What does Ding mean in German? English Translation thing

More meanings for Ding thing noun Sache, Gegenstand, Wesen, Chose, Gebilde

object noun Objekt, Gegenstand, Ziel, Zweck, Sache

item noun Artikel, Punkt, StĂźck, Gegenstand, Posten

entity noun Wesen, Objekt, Dasein

thingy Ding

See Also in German dummes Ding stupid thing

kein Ding no thing

arme Ding poor thing

ein Ding a thing

fieses Ding noun pig

albernes Ding silly thing

kleines Ding little thing

letztes Ding last thing

hartes Ding noun hard thing, snorter

tolles Ding great thing

Ο ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΟΣ (Χόρχε Λουίς Μπόρχες) Εναλλακτική Δράση Βιβλία , Προσωπικότητες

ΚΥΚΛΙΚΑ ΕΡΕΙΠΙΑ: Κανένας δεν τον είδε όταν ξεμπάρκαρε μέσα στην ομόθυμη νύχτα, κανένας δεν είδε το κανό από μπαμπού που χωνόταν στην ιερή λάσπη, μα, λίγες μέρες αργότερα, όλοι ήξεραν ότι ο σιωπηλός άνθρωπος ερχόταν από το νοτιά κι ότι πατρίδα του ήταν ένα από τ’ αμέτρητα χωριά που βρίσκονται προς τις πηγές του ποταμού, στην απότομη πλαγιά του βουνού, εκεί όπου η γλώσσα ζενδ δεν έχει διαβρωθεί από τα ελληνικά και η λέπρα σπανίζει. Το βέβαιο είναι ότι ο μουντός εκείνος άνθρωπος φίλησε τη λάσπη, σκαρφάλωσε στην όχθη χωρίς να παραμερίσει (ίσως χωρίς να αισθανθεί) τα κοφτερά χαμόδεντρα που του πλήγωναν τη σάρκα, και γλίστρησε, ζαλισμένος και ματωμένος, ώς τον κυκλικό περίβολο που πάνω του δεσπόζει ένα πέτρινο άλογο ή τίγρη και που, κάποτε, είχε το χρώμα της φωτιάς και τώρα το χρώμα της στάχτης. Αυτός ο κύκλος είναι κάποιος ναός που, παλιά, τον κατασπάραξαν οι πυρκαγιές και τον βεβήλωσε το βαλτωμένο δάσος, και που το θεό του δεν τον τιμούν πια οι άνθρωποι. Ο ξένος ξάπλωσε κάτω απ’ το βάθρο.Τον ξύπνησε ο ήλιος ψηλά. Σιγουρεύτηκε, χωρίς να παραξενευτεί, πως οι πληγές του είχαν γιατρευτεί· έκλεισε τα ξεθωριασμένα μάτια του και κοιμήθηκε, όχι γιατί δεν άντεχε το σώμα του, αλλά γιατί έτσι είχε αποφασίσει. Ήξερε ότι εκείνος ο ναός ήταν ο τόπος που ζητούσε ο ακατανίκητος σκοπός του. Ήξερε ότι τα πυκνά δέντρα δεν μπόρεσαν να στραγγαλίσουν τα ερείπια ενός άλλου ναού, στην κάτω μεριά του ποταμού, ενός ναού κάποιων θεών που κάηκαν και πέθαναν κι εκείνοι· ήξερε ότι αυτό που έβιαζε, ήταν ο ύπνος. Γύρω στα μεσάνυχτα, τον ξύπνησε η απαρηγόρητη στριγκλιά ενός πουλιού. Χνάρια από ξυπόλυτα ποδάρια, λίγα σύκα , ένα σταμνί, τον έκαμαν να καταλάβει πως οι άνθρωποι της περιοχής είχαν παραφυλάξει με σεβασμό τον ύπνο του και ζητούσαν την προστασία του ή φοβόvταν τα μάγια του. Ένιωσε το σύγκρυο του φόβου, έψαξε στα γκρεμισμένα τείχη την κόγχη ενός κεvοτάφιου και σκεπάστηκε με κάτι παράξενα φύλλα. Ο σκοπός του, αν και υπερφυσικός, μ’όλο που ξεπερνούσε τα μέτρα της φύσης, δεν ήταν κάτι το αδύνατο. Ήθελε νά τόν ονειρευτεί ολόκληρο, μέ κάθε λεπτομέρεια καί νά τόν μεταφέρει στήν πραγματικότητα. Αυτός ο μαγικός σκοπός, είχε γεμίσει ολόκληρο τό χώρο τής ψυχής του. «Αν

κανείς τόν ρωτούσε τ’ όνομά του η κάτι χαρακτηριστικό οπό τήν περασμένη του ζωή, δέ θά κατάφερνε ν’ απαντήσει. Ό εγκαταλειμμένος καί γκρεμισμένος ναός τού ταίριαζε, γιατί ήταν κάτι τό ελάχιστο τού ορατού κόσμου κι ακόμη, τόν βόλευε τό ότι ήταν κοντά οί χωρικοί, πού είχαν αναλάβει νά καλύπτουν τίς λίγες ανάγκες του. Τό ρύζι καί τά φρούτα τών προσφορών τους, ήταν αρκετή τροφή γιά τό κορμί του, πού τό ‘χε τάξει σ’ ένα μοναχά σκοπό τόν ύπνο καί τό όνειρο. Στήν αρχή, τά όνειρά του ήταν ασυνάρτητα· λίγο μετά, έγιναν διαλεκτικής φύσης. ο ξένος ονειρευόταν τόν έαυτό του στό κέντρο ενός κυκλικού αμφιθεάτρου πού, κατά κάποιον τρόπο, ηταν ο καμένος ναός. Σύννεφα σιωπηλοί μαθητές βάραιναν τίς κερκίδες. Τά πρόσωπα τών πιό μακρινών άπ’ αυτούς κρέμονταν πολλούς αιώνες μακριά, σέ αστρικά ύψη. τά χαρακτηριστικά τους όμως, ξεχώριζαν ολοκάθαρα. Ό άνθρωπος τούς δίδασκε ανατομία, κοσμογραφία, μαγεία: εκείνοι άκουγαν αχόρταγα καί προσπαθούσαν νά απαντήσουν έξυπνα, σά νά μαντεύαν τή σημασία αυτής τής εξέτασης, πού θά ελευθέρωνε κάποιον κι άπαυτους από τή φύση τού φάσματος, παραβάλλοντάς τον στόν πραγματικό κόσμο. Ό άνθρωπος, όσο ήταν ξυπνητός αλλά καί ήταν ήταν κοιμισμένος, μελετούσε τίς απαντήσεις τών φαντασμάτων του, χωρίς ν’ αφήνει νά τόν ξεγελάσουν μέ πονηριές καί μάντευε μές στήν αμηχανία τους μιά διαρκώς αυξανόμενη νοημοσύνη. Έψαχνε μιά ψυχή πού θ’ άξιζε νά μπεί μέσα στόν κόσμο. ‘Εννιά-δέκα νύχτες αργότερα, κατάλαβε μέ κάποια πίκρα πώς τίποτα δέν μπορούσε νά περιμένει από τούς μαθητές του πού δέχονταν παθητικά τό μάθημά του, ούτε ακόμα κι από κείνους πού, καμιά φορά, αποτολμούσαν κάποια λογική αντιλογία. Οί πρώτοι, αν καί ήταν κάπως συμπαθητικοί καί δέν τούς έλειπε κάποια άξία, δέν θά μπορούσαν νά θεωρηθούν τέλεια άτομα, όσο γιά τούς δούλους, προϋπήρχαν μόνο κάπως περισσότερο. ‘Ένα απόγευμα (τώρα καί τ’απογέματα ήταν στήν κυριαρχία τού ύπνου, τώρα δέν έμενε ξύπνιος παρά λίγες ώρες τά χαράματα) σχόλασε γιά πάντα τό μεγάλο φανταστικό σχολείο του κι έμεινε μ’ εναν μόνο μαθητή. Ήταν ενα σιωπηλό κιτρινιάρικο παιδί, δύστροπο μερικές φορές, μέ όψη κοφτερή, πού έμοιαζε μ’ εκείνον πού τ’ ονειρευόταν. Γι’ αρκετό καιρό, δέν τόν ανησυχούσε ή απότομη εξαφάνιση τών συμμαθητών του.Μετά από λίγα ιδιαίτερα μαθήματα, ή πρόοδός τους έκανε τόν δάσκαλο νά εκπλαγεί. ‘Όμως ή καταστροφή δέν άργησε. Ό άνθρωπος, ανατέλλοντας μιά μέρα από τόν ϋπνο του, σάν μέσα από μιά γλοιώδη έρημο, μέσα στό άδειο φώς τού απογέματος πού μπερδεύτηκε ξαφνικά μέ τήν αυγή, κατάλαβε ότι δέν είχε ονειρευτεί. «Ολη τή νύχτα κι όλη τή μέρα τόν περιτύλιγε ή ανυπόφορη λάμψη τής αγρύπνιας. Ήθελε νά εξερευνήσει τό δάσος, νά εξαντληθεί. μά ίσα ίσα πού πρόλαβε μέσα σέ θάμνους κώνειου. κάτι ριπίσματα αδύναμου ϋπνου, διανθισμένα μέ φευγαλέα, άχρηστα, συνηθισμένα όνειρα. Τού’ρθε νά ξανασυγκεντρώσει τήν τάξη του, μά μόλις πού πρόλαβε νά φωνάξει δυό τρία παραγγέλματα καί οί μορφές παραμορφώθηκαν κι έσβησαν. Στήν απέραντη αγρύπνια του, δάκρυα οργής τού πυρπολούσαν τά γερασμένα του μάτια. Κατάλαβε πώς τό ν’ αποφασίσει κανείς νά μορφοποιήσει τή συγκεχυμένη καί ιλιγγιώδη ϋλη τού ονείρου, είναι τό πιό δύσκολο πράγμα μέ τό όποίο μπορεί νά καταπιαστεί, έστω κι αν μπορέσει νά διεισδύσει σ’όλα τά αινίγματα τής ανώτατης καί τής κατώτατης τάξης πραγμάτων: πιό δύσκολο απ’ τό νά πλέξεις από άμμο ένα σκοινί, ή νά αποτυπώσεις σέ νόμισμα τή μορφή τού όμορφου ανέμου. Κατάλαβε πώς, στήν αρχή, μιά αποτυχία ήταν αναπόφευκτη.’Υποσχέθηκε στόν εαυτό του νά ξεχάσει τήν τεράστια παραίσθηση πού τόν έκαμε νά χάσει στήν αρχή τό δρόμο του κι έψαξε άλλη μέθοδο εργασίας. Πρίν νά τή δοκιμάσει, αφιερώθηκε ενα μήνα στήν

ανανέωση τών δυνάμεων πού τού ‘χε αντλήσει τό παραλήρημα.’Αφησε κατά μέρος κάθε λογής προετοιμασία νά ονειρευτεί καί, αμέσως σχεδόν, κατάφερε νά κοιμάται ενα λογικό διάστημα κάθε μέρα. Τίς σπάνιες φορές πού ονειρεύτηκε στήν περίοδο αυτή, δέν έδωσε προσοχή στά όνειρά του.Γιά νά ξαναπιάσει δουλειά, περίμενε νά γιομίσει όλότελα ό δίσκος τού φεγγαριού. Τό απόγεμα εκανε λουτρό καθαρμού στά νερά τού ποταμού, δεήθηκε στούς αστρικούς θεούς, πρόφερε τίς μυστικές συλλαβές ένός κραταιού ονόματος καί κοιμήθηκε. Σχεδόν aμέσως, ονειρεύτηκε μιά παλλόμενη καρδιά. Τήν ονειρεύτηκε ζωντανή, θερμή, μυστική, στό μέγεθος γροθιάς, μέ χρώμα πορφυρό μές στό μισόφωτο ένός ανθρώπινου σώματος πού ακόμα δέν είχε ούτε φύλο, ούτε πρόσωπο. Τήν ονειρεύτηκε δεκατέσσερις λαμπερές νύχτες, προσέχοντας στοργικά τήν κάθε λεπτομέρεια. Καί κάθε νύχτα, τήν εβλεπε καθαρότερα. Δέν τήν άγγιζε, μονάχα βεβαιωνόταν γιά τήν παρουσία της, τή μελετούσε καί τή διόρθωνε μέ τό βλέμμα. Τήν ένιωθε, τή ζούσε από διαφορετικές αποστάσεις, από διαφορετικές οπτικές γωνίες.Τήν δέκατη τέταρτη νύχτα ακούμπησε απαλά μέ τό δείχτη τού χεριού τήν πνευμονική αρτηρία κι ύστερα ολόκληρη τήν καρδιά, από έξω καί από μέσα.Ή εξέταση τόν ικανοποίησε.Μιά νύχτα, επίτηδες δέν ονειρεύτηκε.Μετά, ξαναπήρε τήν καρδιά, Επικαλέστηκε τό όνομα ένός πλανήτη κι άρχισε νά ονειρεύεται άλλα βασικά μέλη τού σώματος. Σ’ έναν χρόνο περίπου, έφτασε στό σκελετό, στά βλέφαρα. Τά αναρίθμητα μαλλιά ήταν ίσως ή πιό δύσκολη δουλειά. ‘Ονειρεύτηκε εναν ολόκληρο άνθρωπο, ένα παλικάρι, πού όμως δέν σηκωνόταν, δέ μιλούσε, ούτε μπορούσε ν’ ανοίξει τά μάτια του.Νύχτα τή νύχτα τόν ονειρευόταν κοιμισμένο.Στίς γνωστικές κοσμογονίες, οί δημιουργοί πλάθουν εναν κοκκινωπό ‘Αδάμ πού δέν μπορεί νά σηκωθεί. Τόσο χοντροφτιαγμένος καί πρωτόγονος όπως κι εκείνος ό χωματένιος ‘Αδάμ, ήταν καί ό ‘Αδάμ τού ονείρου πού έφτιαξαν οί κουραστικές νύχτες τού μάγου.’Ένα απόγεμα, κατάστρεψε σχεδόν ολόκληρο τό έργο του, αλλά μετάνιωσε (Θά ‘ταν καλύτερα γι’ αυτόν νά τό ‘χε καταστρέψει). Έχοντας εξαντλήσει τίς επικλήσεις του στίς θεότητες τής γής καί τού ποταμού, πέφτει στά πόδια τού ειδώλου, πού ήταν πουλάρι ίσως ή τίγρη καί ζήτησε βοήθεια από τήν άγνωστη δύναμή του. Τά χαράματα ονειρεύτηκε τό άγαλμα, τ ονειρεύτηκε ολοζώντανο, νά σπαρταρά: δέν ηταν διασταύρωση τρομερής τίγρης κι αλόγου αλλά, ταυτόχρονα, καί τά δύο άγρια όντα μαζί, καί μαζί ταύρος, τριαντάφυλλο καί καταιγίδα. Αυτή ή πολλαπλή θεότητα τού αποκάλυψε ότι τό γήινο όνομά της ήταν Πύρ, κι ότι στόν κυκλικό αυτό ναό (καί σ’ άλλους παρόμοιους του) τής έκαμαν θυσίες καί τή λάτρεψαν καί ότι, μέ τρόπο μαγικό, θά έδινε ζωή στό πλάσμα τού ονείρου του έτσι πού, όλοι (εκτός από αυτόν τόν ίδιο πού τό ονειρεύτηκε κι εκτός από τήν ίδια τή φωτιά) νά τόν περνούν γιά άνθρωπο από σάρκα καί οστά.Τόν διάταξε νά τόν στείλει νά μαθητέψει στίς τελετές πού γινόταν στά χαλάσματα τού άλλου ναού, εκείνου πού οί πυραμίδες του ορθώνονταν στήν κάτω μεριά τού ποταμού, γιά vά ύπάρχει σ’ εκείνο τό ερειπωμένο χτίριο μιά φωνή νά τήν δοξάζει.Μέσα στό ονειρό του, τό πλάσμα πού ονειρευόταν, ξύπνησε. ‘Ο μάγος εκτέλεσε τίς εντολές. Ορισε μιά προθεσμία (πού τελικά διάρκεσε δυό χρόνια) γιά νά αποκαλύψει στό παιδί τά μυστικά τού κόσμου καί τή λατρεία τής φωτιάς.Μέσα του τον πονούσε να τό αποχωριστεί.Και με το πρόσχημα τής παιδαγωγικής αναγκαιότητας, παράτεινε μέρα τή μέρα τίς ώρες πού αφιέρωνε στόν ύπνο.’Ακόμα, ξανάφτιαξε λιγάκι τό δεξί ώμο πού τού φαινόταν κάπως ατελής. Μερικές φορές τόν ανησυχούσε κάποια εντύπωση πώς όλα αυτά είχαν ξαναγίνει….

Γενικά όμως, οι μέρες του ήταν ευτυχισμένες, όταν έκλεινε τα μάτια του, σκεφτόταν: Τώρα θα βρεθώ με τον γιό μου.’Η πιό σπάνια: Ο γιός που γέννησα με περιμένει και δεν υπάρχει αν δεν βρίσκομαι μαζί του. Σιγά σιγά, άρχιζε νά τόν συνηθίζει στήν πραγματικότητα.Κάποτε τόν διάταξε νά στήσει μιά σημαία σέ μιά μακρινή κορφή.Τήν άλλη μέρα ή σημαία ανέμιζε απάνω στήν κορφή. Δοκίμασε κι άλλα παρόμοια πειράματα, κάθε φορά καί πιό παράτολμα. Μέ πίκρα πιά κατάλαβε ότι ό γιός του ήταν έτοιμος, κι ότι ίσως μάλιστα ν’ αδημονούσε νά γεννηθεί. Κείνη τή νύχτα τόν φίλησε γιά πρώτη φορά καί τόν έστειλε στόν άλλο ναό, στά ερείπια πού άσπριζαν στήν κάτω μεριά τού ποταμού, μετά από λεύγες βάλτους καί δάσος πυκνό. Προηγουμένως όμως (γιά νά μήν καταλάβει ποτέ πώς ήταν πλάσμα όνείρου καί νά θεωρεί τόν έαυτό του άνθρωπο σάν τούς άλλους) τού έμφυσσά τήν απόλυτη λήθη τού χρόνου τής μαθητείας του. Τή νίκη καί τήν ηρεμία του, κηλίδωνε ή ανία. Τά δειλινά καί τά χαράματα, προσκυνούσε τήν πέτρινη μορφή καί φανταζόταν ότι ό ονειρικός του γιός τελούσε παρόμοιες τελετές, σέ άλλα κυκλικά ερείπια, στήν κάτω μεριά τού ποταμού. Τή νύχτα δέν ονειρευόταν ή ονειρευόταν όπως όλος ό κόσμος. Άντιλαμβανόταν τούς ήχους καί τίς μορφές τού σύμπαντος κάπως άτονα: γιατί ό γιός του, μακριά, τρεφόταν απ’αυτές τίς ελαττώσεις τής ψυχής του. Ό σκοπός τής ζωής του είχε ολοκληρωθεί. Παράμενε σ’ ένα είδος έκστασης.’Ύστερα από καιρό, πού άλλοι αφηγητές τής ιστορίας αυτής τόν υπολογίζουν σέ χρόνια και άλλοι σέ πενταετίες, τόν ξύπνησαν μές στά μεσάνυχτα, δυό κωπηλάτες. Δέν μπόρεσε νά δεί τά πρόσωπά τους, αλλά τού μίλησαν γιά κάποιο μάγο, σ’ένα ναό στά βόρεια, πού μπορούσε νά περπατάει στή φωτιά χωρίς νά καίγεται. Ό μάγος, θυμήθηκε ξαφνικά τά λόγια τού Θεού. Θυμήθηκε πώς από όλα τά όντα τού σύμπαντος, μονάχα ή φωτιά ήξερε πώς ό γιός του ήταν φάντασμα.Αυτή ή ανάμνηση, πού τόν ηρεμούσε στήν αρχή, τώρα τόν τυραννούσε.Φοβόταν μήπως συλλογιστεί ό γιός του αυτό του τό αφύσικο προνόμιο κι ανακαλύψει τήν πραγματική του φύση: ένα είδωλο. Νά μήν είσαι άνθρωπος, αλλά προβολή τού ονείρου άλλου ανθρώπουταπείνωση φοβερή, ίλιγγος! Κάθε πατέρας νοιάζεται γιά τά παιδιά πού γέννησε (πού επέτρεψε νά υπάρξουν) μ’ ενα άπλό σύμπλεγμα η σέ μιά στιγμή ευτυχίας. Είναι φυσικό λοιπόν νά φοβάται ό μάγος γιά τό μέλλον τού γιού του, πού τόν μελέτησε έντερο μέ έντερο, κάθε χαρακτηριστικό ξεχωριστά, σέ χίλιες καί μιά μυστικές νύχτες. Οί λογισμοί του σταμάτησαν απότομα, άν καί τό τέλος τους τό είχαν ήδη προμηνύσει κάποια σημάδια. Καί πρώτα, (μετά από μεγάλη ξηρασία) φάνηκε πάνω σ’ ένα βουνό, ένα μακρινό σύννεφο, ανάλαφρο σάν πουλί.’Ύστερα, πρός τά νότια, ό ουρανός πήρε ενα χρώμα μενεξελί, όπως τά ούλα τής λεοπάρδαλης. Μετά οί καπνοί, πού σκούριασαν τό μέταλλο τής νύχτας. Κατόπιν ό πανικός τών θηρίων πού φεύγαν. Γιατί έγινε πάλι, εκείνο πού’χε γίνει πολλούς αιώνες πρίν. Τά ερείπια τού ίερού τής φωτιάς, πυρπολήθηκαν. Καί μιάν αυγή χωρίς πουλιά, ό μάγος είδε νά κυλάει, κυκλώνοντας τούς τοίχους, ή φωτιά. Γιά μιά στιγμή σκέφτηκε νά καταφύγει στά νερά, ύστερα όμως, κατάλαβε ότι ό θάνατος ερχόταν νά στεφανώσει τά γηρατειά του καί νά τόν απαλλάξει όπό τούς κόπους του. Περπάτησε πρός τά λεπίδια τής φωτιάς.Μά εκείνα, δέν τού δάγκωσαν τή σάρκα του .τόν χάιδεψαν καί τόν πλημμύρισαν χωρίς νά τόν κεντίσουν. ‘Αλαφρωμένος, έντρομος, ταπεινός, κατάλαβε ότι κι ό ίδιος ήταν όνειρο, πού κάποιος άλλος τό ονειρευόταν.

——————————————————————————Jorge Luis Borges “Ο ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΟΣ” Γεννήθηκε το 1899 στην Αργεντινή και θεωρείται από τους μεγαλύτερους συγγραφείς του αιώνα μας. Πέρασε το περισσότερα χρόνια ως τυφλός. Έγραψε ποιήματα, σενάρια, διηγήματα, δοκίμια κ.α. Στα μεγαλύτερα πανεπιστήμια της γης διετέλεσε επίσημος διδάκτωρ. Απέσπασε πολλά βραβεία εκτός εκείνου του Νόμπελ Λογοτεχνίας. Απεβίωσε στη Γενεύη το 1986. Το ‘κυκλικά ερείπια’ είναι μία φανταστική ιστορία, ένα μοναδικό αριστούργημα. Το έργο του Μπόρχες έχει χαρακτήρα κοσμοπολίτικο, κάτι που αποτελεί αντανάκλαση της πολυ-πολιτισμικής Αργεντινής, της έκθεσής του από νωρίς στη μεγάλη συλλογή παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας που διέθετε ο πατέρας του, και τα πολλά ταξίδια που έκανε στη ζωή του. Νεαρός, επισκέφθηκε περιοχές των πάμπας όπου τα σύνορα της Αργεντινής, της Ουρουγουάης και της Βραζιλίας θολώνουν, και έζησε και πήγε σχολείο στην Ελβετία και την Ισπανία. Μεσήλικας, ταξίδεψε σε όλη την Αργεντινή για να δώσει διαλέξεις και σε διάφορα μέρη του κόσμου ως επισκέπτης καθηγητής. Συνέχισε να γυρίζει τον κόσμο στα γεράματά του, πεθαίνοντας στη Γενεύη, όπου είχε πάει λύκειο (δεν πήγε ποτέ πανεπιστήμιο). Ο Μπόρχες ήρθε σε επαφή με λογοτεχνία από αργεντίνικα, ισπανικά, βορειοαμερικανικά, αγγλικά, γαλλικά, γερμανικά, ιταλικά και βορειοευρωπαϊκά/ισλανδικά συγγράμματα. Διάβασε επίσης πολλές μεταφράσεις έργων από τη Μέση και την Άπω Ανατολή. Η παγκοσμιότητα που τον έκανε να ενδιαφερθεί για την παγκόσμια λογοτεχνία — και αναγνώστες σε όλο τον κόσμο να ενδιαφερθούν για αυτόν — αντανακλούσε μία στάση η οποία ερχόταν σε πλήρη αντίθεση με τον ακραίο εθνικισμό της κυβέρνησης του Περόν. Όταν ακραίοι Αργεντίνοι εθνικιστές, οι οποίοι ταυτίζονταν – τουλάχιστον εν μέρει – με τους Ναζί, υποστήριξαν ότι ο Μπόρχες ήταν Εβραίος — υπονοώντας ότι δεν ήταν αρκετά Αργεντίνος — ο Μπόρχες αποκρίθηκε «Yo Judío» («Εγώ, Εβραίος») Πολύ-πολιτισμικές επιρροές στα κείμενα του Μπόρχες: Η Αργεντινή του Μπόρχες ήταν πολυ-πολιτισμική και το Μπουένος Άιρες, η πρωτεύουσα, μια κοσμοπολίτικη πόλη. Αυτό ίσχυε ακόμη περισσότερο κατά την εποχή της σχετικής ευημερίας των παιδικών και νεανικών χρόνων του Μπόρχες, παρά σήμερα. Κατά την ανακήρυξη της ανεξαρτησίας της Αργεντινής το 1816 ο πληθυσμός ήταν μικτός, κυρίως ισπανικής καταγωγής, αλλά και με πολλούς μιγάδες. Η εθνική ταυτότητα των Αργεντίνων διαμορφώθηκε σταδιακά, με την πάροδο πολλέων δεκαετιών μετά την ανεξαρτησία. Κατά τη διάρκεια αυτής της περιόδου ήρθαν πολλοί μετανάστες από Ιταλία, Ισπανία, Γαλλία, Γερμανία, Ρωσία, Συρία και Λίβανο (τότε μέρη της Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας), Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο, Αυστρο-Ουγγαρία, Πορτογαλία, Πολωνία, Ελβετία, Γιουγκοσλαβία, Βόρεια Αμερική, Βέλγιο, Δανία, Ολλανδία, Σουηδία και Κίνα, με τους Ιταλούς και τους Ισπανούς να αποτελούν τις μεγαλύτερες ομάδες. Η συνύπαρξη διαφόρων εθνοτικών ομάδων και κουλτούρων στην Αργεντινή φαίνεται έντονα στα Έξι προβλήματα για τον Δον Ισίδρο Παρόδι, το οποίο ο Μπόρχες συνέγραψε με τον Αδόλφο Μπιόι Κασάρες, και στην ανώνυμη πολυ-εθνοτική πόλη στην οποία εκτυλίσσεται το «Ο θάνατος και η πυξίδα», η οποία μπορεί να είναι ή να μην είναι το Μπουένος Άιρες. Στα κείμενα του Μπόρχες υπάρχουν επίσης επιδράσεις και πληροφορίες από χριστιανικά, βουδιστικά, ισλαμικά και εβραϊκά κείμενα.

Στη Βίβλο υπάρχουν εικόνες, μύθοι, μια θρησκεία, μόνο πού δεν υπάρχει σκέψη, στοχασμός. Είναι οι Έλληνες πού πρώτοι άρχισαν πραγματικά να στοχάζονται, οι πρώτοι πού δημιούργησαν ένα εξελιγμένο αστικό πολιτισμό. —————————Το έργο που έχω αναλάβει δεν είναι πραγματικά δύσκολο, μόνο που θα ‘πρεπε να είμαι αθάνατος για να το φέρω εις πέρας.————————— Είναι άσκοπο να γράφει κανείς τεράστια βιβλία αναπτύσσοντας σε 500 σελίδες μια ιδέα που μπορεί κάλλιστα να αποδοθεί σε πέντε λεπτά κουβέντας. Είναι προτιμότερο να προσποιείσαι ότι αυτά τα βιβλία ήδη υπάρχουν και να κάνεις μια σύνοψη ή κάποια σχόλια.

Χόρχε Λουίς Μπόρχες, "Ο δημιουργός" Σκάκι Ι Συγκεντρωμένοι οι παίχτες νύχτα μέρα καθοδηγούν τα αδιάφορα πιόνια. Ως το πρωί θα κλείνει η σκακιέρα δυο χρώματα που αντιμάχονται αιώνια. Μέσα, τα πιόνια αναδίνουν μια προσήλωση μαγευτική: ευκίνητα άλογα, πύργοι ομηρικοί, 11

βασιλιάς στα μετόπισθεν, διαγώνιοι αξιωματικοί. Μα κι όταν αποσύρονται οι παίχτες, από το χρόνο πια εξαντλημένοι, η δράση εξακολουθεί να επιμένει. Απ’ την Ανατολή έχει ο πόλεμος αυτός ανάψει∙ το δίχτυ του σ’ ολόκληρη τη γη απλώνει. Μα ούτε η μια παρτίδα ούτε η άλλη δεν τελειώνει.

ΙΙ Φρενιασμένη βασίλισσα, πύργος ευθύς, αξιωματικός λοξός, στρατιώτης πολυμήχανος, βασιλιάς ασθενικός ψάχνονται στο ασπρόμαυρο πεδίο του αοράτου να συγκρουστούν σιωπηλά μέχρι θανάτου. Δεν ξέρουν πως το αποφασισμένο χέρι του παίχτη τούς ρυθμίζει την πορεία τέλεια, δεν ξέρουν καν πως μια ασύλληπτη νομοτέλεια τις αποφάσεις και τη διαδρομή τους περιφέρει. Αλλά κι ο παίχτης είναι επίσης ένας αιχμάλωτος μιας άλλης σκακιέρας με νύχτες μαύρες (η έκφραση είναι του Ομάρ) και άσπρες μέρες. Ο Θεός ελέγχει τον παίχτη κι ο παίχτης τα πιόνια. Μα τάχα ποιος θεός πίσω από τον Θεό, κινεί αιώνια τα νήματα του χρόνου, του ονείρου και της αγωνίας;

Η βροχή Το πρόσωπο της μέρας χαρακώνει η αργυρή λεπίδα της βροχής. 12

Όμως η λάμψη αυτή που σε κυκλώνει είναι η βροχή μιας άλλης εποχής. Και σε χρονιές σε παίρνει που η μοίρα σε μοίρανε να δεις μέσ’ απ’ το χώμα του ρόδου του εκατόφυλλου τη σπείρα το άλικο παράξενό του χρώμα. Αυτή η βροχή που τα τζάμια θολώνει στην ξεχασμένη αυλή μιας γειτονιάς αλλοτινής τα σταφύλια χρυσώνει. Κι όσο γέρνει η μέρα το υγρό της στεφάνι μια φωνή ξανακούω, έναν αχό λησμονιάς: τον πατέρα μου, λες και δεν έχει πεθάνει.

Σ’ έναν παλιό ποιητή Την πεδιάδα διασχίζεις της Καστίλης και σχεδόν δεν τη βλέπεις. Σε παιδεύει ένα δύσκολο εδάφιο του Ιωάννη και της ύλης Δεν προσέχεις τον ήλιο που βασιλεύει. Το φως σκορπίζεται σπαρταρώντας∙ διαυγής στα βάθη του ήλιου ανοίγει εκείνη η πορφυρένια σκωπτική σελήνη που είναι ίσως ο καθρέφτης της Οργής. Γυρνάς το πρόσωπό σου και την κοιτάζεις. Κάποια σου μνήμη ξεπετάγεται χωρίς ήχο. Χαμηλώνεις το λευκόμαλλο κεφάλι και προχωράς βαθιά στης λύπης το χορτάρι χωρίς να θυμηθείς εκείνον τον παλιό σου στίχο: Και είχε επιτύμβιο το ματωμένο φεγγάρι. 13

Αναφορά σ’ έναν ίσκιο του 189… Τίποτα. Μόνο το μαχαίρι του Μουράνια. Στο γκρίζο απόβραδο πλανιέται μια ιστορία. Καθώς νυχτώνει νιώθω πίσω απ’ τα πλατάνια εκείνο τον απρόσωπο φονιά να ψάχνει ευκαιρία. Το Παλέρμο έφτανε τότε ως τα μέρη που σκίαζε ο ωχρός περίβολος της φυλακής στο υγρό προάστιο μιας άλλης εποχής όπου είχε πέραση μόνο η φρίκη, το μαχαίρι. Ένα μαχαίρι. Ένα πρόσωπο σβησμένο. Απ’ το χέρι αυτό το πληρωμένο που για μοναδική του τέχνη είχε το θάρρος απόμεινε μια λάμψη ατσαλιού, σαν ίσκιος δίχως βάρος. Ο χρόνος που σκουριάζει τα καράβια στα λιμάνια ας ήταν να κρατήσει τούτο τ’ όνομα: Χουάν Μουράνια.

Από το βιβλίο «Χόρχε Λουίς Μπόρχες, ΠΟΙΗΜΑΤΑ» (συλλογή «Ο δημιουργός, “EL HACEDOR”, 1960»), Μετάφραση, Εισαγωγή, Σχόλια: Δημήτρης Καλοκύρης. Εκδ. Ελληνικά Γράμματα 2006

γλωσσική πράξη [speech act] Στο πλαίσιο της κοινωνικής μας αλληλεπίδρασης χρησιμοποιούμε τον λόγο για να κάνουμε κάποια πράγματα, δηλαδή επιτελούμε γλωσσικές πράξεις, όπως είναι οι υποσχέσεις, οι παρακλήσεις, οι εντολές, οι ευχαριστίες, οι απολογίες κλπ. Αντίθετα με την κρατούσα γλωσσολογική άποψη της εποχής ότι η

γλωσσική σημασία εξαντλείται στην περιγραφική δυνατότητα της γλώσσας, ο J. L. Austin, σε μια σειρά διαλέξεων το 1955 στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Harvard των ΗΠΑ, χαρακτήρισε την άποψη αυτή ως περιγραφική πλάνη και ανέδειξε τον διαπροσωπικό και κοινωνικό ρόλο που υπηρετεί η χρήση της γλώσσας κατά την επικοινωνία. Υποστήριξε δε ότι παράλληλα με τα διαπιστωτικά εκφωνήματα [constative utterances], όπως, π.χ. Η γάτα είναι στο χαλί, που περιγράφουν μια κατάσταση πραγμάτων, υπάρχουν και τα επιτελεστικά, μέσω των οποίων η ομιλήτρια κάνει κάτι. Π.χ. με το εκφώνημα Ευχαριστώ για τα λουλούδια, η ομιλήτρια ευχαριστεί τον ακροατή για το δώρο του, ή με το Υπόσχομαι να το θυμηθώ δίνει μια υπόσχεση. Η κατηγορία των επιτελεστικών εκφωνημάτων συχνά συνδέεται με μια κοινωνική σύμβαση, οπότε το εκφώνημα έχει εξαιρετικά συμβατικό χαρακτήρα, όπως π.χ. το Βαπτίζεται η δούλη του Θεού Θεοδώρα κατά το θρησκευτικό μυστήριο της βάπτισης επιτελεί και την πράξη της βάπτισης από τον ιερέα. Οι γλωσσικές πράξεις επιτελούνται ρητά όταν η ομιλήτρια χρησιμοποιεί μια γλωσσική έκφραση, ρηματική κυρίως, που αναφέρεται στην πράξη που επιτελείται, όπως είναι η χρήση του ρήματος υπόσχομαι στο παράδειγμα Υπόσχομαι να το θυμηθώ. Η υπόσχεση επιτελείται και υπόρρητα αν η ομιλήτρια πει Θα το θυμηθώ οπωσδήποτε στην κατάλληλη περίσταση επικοινωνίας, χωρίς αυτό να σημαίνει ότι τα δύο εκφωνήματα έχουν την ίδια σημασία ή επικοινωνιακή βαρύτητα. Αξίζει εδώ να σημειώσουμε ότι το δεύτερο εκφώνημα, σε μια διαφορετική περίσταση επικοινωνίας, θα μπορούσε να περιγράφει μια μελλοντική κατάσταση πραγμάτων, θα μπορούσε δηλαδή να χαρακτηριστεί ως διαπιστωτικό, παρά επιτελεστικό. Για τον λόγο αυτό ο Austin, στη συνέχεια του έργου του, υποστήριξε ότι και τα διαπιστωτικά εκφωνήματα αποτελούν μια κατηγορία των επιτελεστικών, με την έννοια ότι και το να περιγράφει, να βεβαιώνει ή να δηλώνει κάτι η ομιλήτρια, είναι και αυτό ένα είδος γλωσσικής πράξης. Επομένως, κατά την εξέλιξη της θεωρίας, η διάκριση μεταξύ διαπιστωτικών και επιτελεστικών εκφωνημάτων εγκαταλείφθηκε. Στο πλαίσιο της εξέλιξης αυτής ο Austin υποστήριξε ότι κάθε εκφώνημα, ως έκφραση μιας γλωσσικής πράξης, επιτελεί επί της ουσίας, τρία διαφορετικά είδη πράξεων: (α) τη λεκτική πράξη [locutionary act], δηλ. ένα εκφώνημα με σημασία. Το ότι η ομιλήτρια λέει κάτι που έχει γλωσσική σημασία συνιστά από μόνο του μια πράξη, τη λεκτική, (β) την προσλεκτική πράξη [illocutionary act], δηλ. την πράξη που επιτελεί η ομιλήτρια ενώ λέει κάτι. Π.χ. όταν η ομιλήτρια λέει Θα το θυμηθώ οπωσδήποτε, το εκφώνημά της «μετράει» ως υπόσχεση σε μια συγκεκριμένη περίσταση, ενώ σε μια άλλη μπορεί να «μετράει» ως πρόβλεψη. Το πώς «μετράει» ένα εκφώνημα αποτελεί την προσλεκτική ισχύ/δύναμή του [illocutionary force], και (γ) την απολεκτική πράξη, δηλ. την πράξη που επιτελεί η ομιλήτρια με το να λέει κάτι το οποίο επιφέρει κάποιες συνέπειες ή αποτελέσματα στα αισθήματα, τις σκέψεις ή τις πράξεις του ακροατή της. Π.χ. το εκφώνημα Η σούπα καίει μπορεί να επιτελέσει την απολεκτική πράξη της καθυστέρησης της κατανάλωσής της στη συγκεκριμένη περίσταση, αλλά μπορεί και όχι. Ενώ η λεκτική και, κυρίως, η προσλεκτική πράξη συνδέονται άμεσα με την πρόθεση της ομιλήτριας (δηλ. τί επιδιώκει να κάνει), το αποτέλεσμα της απολεκτικής πράξης δεν εμπίπτει στον έλεγχό της. Αναγκαίος όρος για την κατανόηση ενός εκφωνήματος είναι να αναγνωρίσει ο ακροατής την προσλεκτική ισχύ/δύναμη του βάσει των συνθηκών επιτυχίας [felicity conditions] που αυτή προϋποθέτει. Π.χ. προϋπόθεση για την επιτυχή επιτέλεση της γλωσσικής πράξης της βάπτισης ( Βαπτίζεται η δούλη του Θεού Θεοδώρα) είναι το παιδί να μην έχει ήδη όνομα, ο ομιλητής να είναι ιερέας και η διαδικασία που ακολουθείται να είναι η προβλεπόμενη στον κατάλληλο χώρο κλπ. Για την επιτυχή επιτέλεση της διαταγής Πάρε τα ψώνια από το αυτοκίνητο πρέπει η ομιλήτρια να επιθυμεί την εκτέλεση της εντολής, ο ακροατής να έχει τη δυνατότητα να την εκτελέσει (π.χ. να μην είναι διετές νήπιο ή ολικά ανάπηρος άνθρωπος) και, βεβαίως, να υπάρχουν ψώνια και αυτοκίνητο, διαφορετικά η εντολή δεν μπορεί να εκτελεστεί. Για την επιτέλεση μερικών προσλεκτικών πράξεων απαραίτητη είναι η προσλεκτική υιοθέτησή τους [illocutionary uptake] από τον ακροατή. Π.χ. όταν η ομιλήτρια στοιχηματίζει λέγοντας Πάω στοίχημα

10 ευρώ ότι πάλι θα αναβάλεις τον οδοντίατρο, το στοίχημα δεν ισχύει αν ο ακροατής δεν απαντήσει Εντάξει ή Το πάω ή Μέσα. Επειδή ο Austin επικέντρωνε την προσοχή του στις επιτελεστικές πράξεις που έχουν ένα τελετουργικό χαρακτήρα, επιθυμώντας έτσι να τονίσει την κοινωνική διάσταση της γλωσσικής σημασίας, θεώρησε ότι αυτές είναι κοινωνικά συμβατικές και η ισχύς τους άμεσα αναγνωρίσιμη από τον ακροατή, όπως π.χ. στο παράδειγμα της βάπτισης. Η συμβατικότητα της προσλεκτικής ισχύος συνδέεται επίσης με τη γλωσσική μορφή: οι καταφατικές / αποφατικές προτάσεις συνήθως έχουν την ισχύ της δήλωσης (π.χ. Η γάτα είναι στο χαλί), οι ερωτηματικές έχουν την ισχύ της αναζήτησης πληροφορίας (π.χ. Τί ώρα είναι;), οι προστακτικές έχουν την ισχύ της εντολής (π.χ. Πάρε τα ψώνια από το αυτοκίνητο). Ωστόσο, δεν υπάρχει σχέση ένα-προς-ένα μεταξύ γραμματικής δομής και προσλεκτικής ισχύος ενός εκφωνήματος. Π.χ. Η γάτα είναι στο χαλί έχει την ισχύ της προειδοποίησης σε μια περίσταση όπου μια βρώμικη και άρρωστη γάτα βρίσκεται πάνω σε ένα πανάκριβο χαλί. Τι ώρα είναι; έχει την ισχύ της επίκρισης αν εκφωνείται από τον γονιό εφήβου όταν αυτός επιστρέφει σπίτι του τις πρώτες πρωινές ώρες. Πάρε ένα σοκολατάκι έχει την ισχύ της προσφοράς, και όχι της εντολής, στην ανάλογη περίσταση επικοινωνίας. Η παραπάνω συζήτηση συνδέεται με τη διαπίστωση ότι οι γλωσσικές πράξεις μπορούν να έχουν ευθεία και πλάγια προσλεκτική ισχύ [direct/ indirectillocution]. Π.χ. η ευθεία προσλεκτική ισχύς του εκφωνήματος Τί ώρα είναι, όπως συζητήθηκε παραπάνω, είναι η αναζήτηση πληροφορίας, ενώ η πλάγια είναι η επίκριση. Ωστόσο αυτή η εξέλιξη της θεωρίας των γλωσσικών πράξεων, για την οποία κυρίως υπεύθυνος είναι ο Searle (1969), εστιάζει περισσότερο στην πρόθεση της ομιλήτριας να επιτελέσει μια συγκεκριμένη γλωσσική πράξη παρά στην κοινωνική και γλωσσική σύμβαση που ακολουθείται προκειμένου να επιτελεσθεί η πράξη αυτή. Η έννοια της προθετικότητας , καθώς και της απόστασης μεταξύ του τί λέει η ομιλήτρια από το τί εννοεί, μελετάται εκτενέστερα στο πλαίσιο της θεωρίας του συνομιλιακού υπονοήματος του Grice (1975). Σ. Μαρμαρίδου Πηγές 

Austin, J. L. 1962. How To Do Things With Words. Οξφόρδη: Clarendon Press.



Βελούδης, Γ. 2005β. Η σημασία πριν, κατά και μετά τη γλώσσα. Αθήνα: Κριτική.



Levinson, S. C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Marmaridou, S. A. S. 2000. Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition . Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Searle, J. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Visceral and unsparing: Why Francis Bacon's portraits of screaming popes and lovers live on Published 29th July 2019

Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images

Visceral and unsparing: Why Francis Bacon's portraits of screaming popes and lovers live on SHARE Written byNick Glass, CNN

Artist Takashi Murakami is CNN Style's latest guest editor. He has commissioned a series of features on identity.

Francis Bacon's work has always been instantly recognizable. "Nightmarish horror" was how art critic David Sylvester described it in 1954, citing the general critical

response to his paintings. Raw, dark and visceral, Bacon's images were disquieting from the outset. Just look at 1944's "Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion," his first masterpiece. Here was an early example of what became his favored form: a triptych of disturbing imagery featuring distorted limbs, eyeless heads and open snarling mouths -- the teeth bared and ready to savage -- all painted on a glowing orange backdrop.

Photographers capturing "Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion" (1944) by Francis Bacon. Credit: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Bacon was already in his mid-30s by then -- "a late starter," as he put it. Yet this single painting dramatically announced his arrival as a major artist. At the time, London was being bombarded with V-1 and V-2 rockets from Nazi Germany but Bacon drew his inspiration from elsewhere. The image transcended traditional religious iconography. Stylistically, Bacon was freed up to experiment, his artistic identity shaped by the radical work of his early hero, Picasso (whose 1927 show in Paris left a profound impression on the Irish-born painter). Just as importantly, he was inspired by Greek tragedy; he was obsessed with the playwright Aeschylus and the Furies of his "Oresteia" trilogy. Tellingly, when he talked about the Furies, goddesses of vengeance in classical mythology, Bacon would habitually quote a passage from the plays: "The reek of human blood smiles out at me." Poignant works of art show the reality of mental illness

In his famous 1944 work, Bacon -- consciously it seems -- painted the Furies and gave us an indelible image of menace, anguish, terror and revenge. The triptych somehow sears into the brain. Seen in the flesh, it's an image that is hard to get out of your head. The painting was first exhibited in April 1945, in the final months of World War II. The allies were just liberating the Nazi concentration camps, and haunting images were emerging -- grotesque piles of bodies and pitifully emaciated prisoners. Bacon's masterpiece jangled a nerve. It still does.

Early influences Bacon painted largely from memory and photos, in a small, chaotic studio in London's South Kensington (the studio has since been reconstructed, complete with its original contents, at the City Gallery in Dublin). We know the artists he especially admired: Michelangelo, Velรกzquez, Degas, Van Gogh and Ingres. But critics have also identified some of his direct sources. A life mask of the poet William Blake, for instance, served as the basis for a series of small portraits in 1955. Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering 19th century photos of human and animal movement, notably of men wrestling, had a more enduring impact. The resulting paintings are sometimes intensely sexual -- or, to be more precise, homoerotic. Bacon knew that he was gay from an early age. His authoritarian father threw him out of the family home in Dublin for wearing his mother's clothes, and he took himself to London aged 17. Today in the British capital, the Gagosian gallery is exhibiting what it describes as "two of the most uninhibited images that Bacon ever painted." They were executed long before homosexual acts between men was decriminalized in England in 1967. "Two Figures" (1953) depicts two naked men, blurred and grappling like wrestlers on crumpled sheets. Is one pinning the other down? Is this agony, ecstasy or a bit of both? Their faces are distorted -- we can't tell for sure.

"Two Figures in the Grass" (1954) is a passionate coupling with lots of pinky-white flesh. Buttocks, a leg, an ear and hair, all half-hidden in the blades of grass. The patch of grass is fenced in. Bacon often liked to frame the space -- thin vertical and horizontal lines within his paintings -- to somehow intensify the image, to box it in. Another key inspiration came from one of silent cinema's best-known sequences: a still image of a screaming woman, her glasses smashed and her face bloodied, stood on Odessa's famous steps in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 film "Battleship Potemkin."

"Study after Velรกzquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X" (1953) by Francis Bacon exhibited at Prado Museum in Madrid, on January 30, 2009. Credit: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Bacon's series of screaming popes, meanwhile, were inspired by Velรกzquez's "Portrait of Pope Innocent X." The paintings helped establish his reputation in the early 1950s. In Velรกzquez's original (circa 1650), the papal mouth was clamped firmly shut. But in most of Bacon's versions, of which there were around 50, he is screaming and caged. In interviews, Bacon said that he was "always very obsessed by the actual appearance of the mouth and teeth," and that he had "always hoped to paint the mouth like Monet painted a sunset."

'Saying something that matters' The fact is, Bacon fundamentally altered figurative painting in the 20th century. His aim wasn't so much to create a likeness, but a sense of presence. Sometimes, he just did this viscerally. Viewing his work, we feel like we've stumbled into a human abattoir. At other times, his figures appear like apparitions, wraiths. Most of his subjects were his friends and lovers, his small circle of intimates or his companions from the Colony Room Club, the private members' club he frequented in London's Soho (where he was known to consume a lot of champagne).

"Triptych inspired by T.S Eliot's poem, Sweeney Agoniste" (1967) by Francis Bacon. Credit: Cathy Carver/Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture G/Smithsonian Institution

Although Bacon was never filmed painting, we know more about his practice than perhaps any other important 20th-century artist. And this is for one simple reason: his friendship with the aforementioned critic and curator, David Sylvester. Sylvester wrote about Bacon with rare acuity and accessibility over a period of some 40 years. His interviews with Bacon, first published in 1975 and later expanded, remain a primary source for understanding the artist's work. Sylvester's conclusion was, he wrote, that "everyone feels (whether they like the work or not)" that Bacon "is saying something that matters about the times in which we live."

"In Memory of George Dyer" (1971) by Francis Bacon. Credit: © The Estate of Francis Bacon /All rights reserved / Adagp, Paris and DACS, London 2019© The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS/Artimage 2019. Photo: Hugo Maertens

Sylvester felt that Bacon achieved his greatest work in 1974. A sudden and shocking bereavement reinforced his artistic identity. George Dyer, a handsome small-time crook who'd become Bacon's lover, was the subject of many portraits after the pair met in 1963. Dyer's suicide in a Paris Hotel in 1971, just days before a Bacon retrospective at the Grand Palais, triggered a series of searing triptychs. In them, Bacon aimed to convey what he described as "all the pulsations of a person." In Sylvester's view, they are perhaps "the most moving things he ever did." Here was a conscious act of exorcism by Bacon -- paintings created in memory of Dyer. One of them, "Triptych May-June 1973," is absolutely unsparing, a painting of pity and terror.

"Triptych May-June 1973" (1973) by Francis Bacon. Credit: © The Estate of Francis Bacon /All rights reserved / Adagp, Paris and DACS, London 2019© The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS/Artimage 2019. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Each of the three images is framed by a door. In the left panel, Dyer is doubled up on a toilet, just as his body was found. On the right panel, he is depicted throwing up into a sink. In the center panel, Dyer's figure crouches in the darkness beneath a hanging, naked light bulb. He casts a shadow -- a bird of prey perhaps, or a Fury. Sylvester thought that this was probably Bacon's greatest painting.

An artist's legacy Bacon's market value has risen by leaps and bounds since his death in 1992. Damien Hirst collects, telling the Guardian in 2006 that he owned five of his paintings. In 2013, "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" (1969) sold at Christie's in New York for $142.4 million , then a world auction record for a work of art. From September 2019, the Pompidou Centre in Paris is putting on a new show of Bacon's work.

"Three Studies of Lucian Freud" (1969) by Francis Bacon. Credit: Christie's

Bacon told Sylvester that "no artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because I think it takes at least seventy-five to a hundred years to sort itself out." But he was nonetheless aware that he had made an impact. Three retrospectives were held during his lifetime: in 1962 and 1985 at Tate Britain, and the 1971 show at the Grand Palais. I was filming the 1985 Tate exhibition when Bacon and his then companion (and later heir) John Edwards suddenly wandered into the space. Bacon quickly spotted the camera and they swiftly turned around. We missed the shot. Francis Bacon was essentially a private man who wasn't remotely interested in celebrity. But he definitely wanted his work to be seen. Top image: "Study after Velรกzquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X" by Francis Bacon. "Francis Bacon: Couplings " is on at the Gasogian in London until August 3, 2019. "Bacon: Books and Painting " opens at the Pompidou Centre on September 11, 2019.

Francis Bacon and Photography During a visit to Ireland a few years ago, I went to an exhibition on Francis Bacon and the fascinating contents of his chaotic London studio. After the painter’s death, everything in his famed 7 Reece Mews studio was left untouched for years and eventually all donated to Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery. Paint brushes, canvases, documents, photographs, were all carefully cataloged and moved to Dublin for the eventual reconstruction of the space in Dublin. And the Hugh Lane really did put together something special, I imagined it would be his studio space with the original contents and a few supporting documents, but with all that was made accessible, it turned out to be one of the best exhibits I’ve been to in a long time.

Portr ait of Francis Bacon, photographer Unknown. Found in Baconâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 7 Reece Mews studio. 1972 / (c) Estate of Francis Bacon

7 Reece Mews studio.

Francis Bacon photographed at his home and studio in Reece Mews, London,1985. Photo by Jane Bown.

Thousands of photographic prints, magazine reproductions, scientifi c manuals, were found littered around his London studio, ranging from images of Mohamed Ali & Marylyn Monroe, to studies of human and animal movement, war imagery, and reproductions of work by classic painters such as Velasquez and Rembrandt. Most of the images were creased, crumpled even torn and paint stained. I knew Bacon had used some photography as inspiration, but had no idea it was to that extent… A vast database of all these pictures was accessible via touch screens on the gallery’s walls, including information on how they influenced his work, a unique insight into Bacon’s approach to painting, a man who was never filmed or closely watched while painting. The database featured images that influenced his paintings, passport pictures, even holiday snaps, and countless portraits of himself by famed photographers such as Henri Cartier Bresson, all paint stained and creased, sometimes torn, and put back together… Discovering this side of Bacon was like discovering a new artist, I stayed there for ages searching through all the documents available, fascinating.

Eadweard Muybridge’s work (above), heavily influenced the way Bacon expressed the human body’s movements. The pioneering photographer developed a multiple camera system in the 1870s to record movement sequences first of animals and humans. A whole room full of paint stained, torn and crumpled reproductions of Muybridge’s work, originally found in Bacon’s London studio was on display at the gallery. Bacon would often go to the Victoria & Albert museum, just round the corner form his studio, where all the original plates were kept, he later acquired reproductions and used them extensively for core elements of his paintings.

: Bacon’s “Two Figures” – R: Muybridge reproductions found in Bacon’s studio. Bacon on Muybridge “Michelangelo and Muybridge are mixed up in my mind together, and so I perhaps could learn about positions from Muybridge and learn about the ampleness, the grandeur of form from Michelangelo. … Bacon also used a still image from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film Battleship Potemkin as an influence for his Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953 (bellow)

L: a still image from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. R: Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953 Photography played a major role in Bacon’s work. Many of the photographs found in the studio were of Bacon, his friends and various other subjects. During his lifetime, Bacon accepted only a handful of commissions. From the early 1960s he chose his closest friends as sitters, preferring to work not from life but from their photographs. He grew up in the age of photo documentary, with then new magazines such as Life in the US and Picture Post in the UK giving him a wealth of imagery which could often filter into his paintings through his unique and seemingly random or even careless treatment of photographs. But on closer inspection it soon becomes apparent that he would often engage in a complex form of pre-painting groundwork with the images that could be described as an art form in its own right. Creases, folds, tears and paint stains on photographs often appear to be Bacon’s own form of sketching. Early on, he would collect all images that he thought he could use and alter for paintings. But he became more discerning and began commissioning photographers for much more specific projects. Vogue photographer John Deakin worked with Bacon and photographed the painter’s friends and his partner George Dyer. Bacon would later go on to use a Deakin image of Dyer (his now dead partner) as a reference for a portrait of his then partner John Edwards (bellow)

When interviewed, Francis Bacon often talked about his own spontaneity in painting , about how he never sketched before painting or drew outlines on canvases. The discoveries in 7 Reece Mews shed light on how he actually worked his way towards a finished painting. For all his brilliant legacy of portraits, he only ever painted four sitters from life the rest from photographs, this allowed him the space and time for behind the scenes planning with the aid of photographs. I found the damaged, creased, torn and paint stained photographic portraits really powerful and inspiring. An exhibition in London in 2010 called “In Camera” featured many of the originals, and a fascinating book of the same name has since been published. The Photographer’s Gallery in London dedicated an exhibition earlier this year to John Deakin’s photographs of Soho. The show, entitled ‘Under the Influence’ (John Deakin and the lure of Soho) featured a photograph of a woman captioned “party goer” – The Guardian newspaper recently revealed in their article “CIA facial software uncovers the artist Francis Bacon – In drag” The resemblance is uncanny but there remains the issue of cleavage…

“Unknown woman, 1930s” by John Deakin “One question still remains. While the face is very much like Bacon’s and the mole on the model’s chest closely matches that which can be seen in the famous picture of Bacon holding two sides of meat, it is impossible to ignore the substantial cleavage.”

Franc is Bacon, 1952, by John Deakin. Photograph: John Deakin/Vogue

1990s ‘On a good day, when glimpsed from the other side of the street, he had even in his eighties the same life-long spring-heeled walk,’ John Russell recalled of Bacon in the early 1990s. The artist still approached large-scale canvases, such as Study for Human Body, 1991, with the vigour and sexual explicitness typical of his work. As dedicated to painting as ever, age 82 he remarked ‘I’ll go on until I drop.’ Bacon went on living life to the fullest and during his last years, he enjoyed the company of his new partner José Capelo. The young Spaniard appears in a number of portraits and he features— merged with the likeness of racing-car driver Ayrton Senna borrowed from a magazine cover—in the left panel of Triptych, 1991. However, despite his youthful appearance and undaunted dynamism, Bacon’s health was deteriorating. In spring 1992, Bacon travelled to Madrid to see Capelo and died there from a heart attack on 28 April.

"Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make." David Hockney

Frank Auerbach Layered Drawing Posted: November 11, 2013 | Author: zoestorer | Filed under: Documentation, Subject | Tags: Charcoal, Fine Art, Frank Auerbach, Layering | Leave a comment

I have been inspired by Frank Auerbach to experiment with layers in my drawings. I’ve started this process by drawing simple 5 minute sketches with charcoal and then smudging, I repeated this 10 times. To documented the process I have taken photos of each stage, When doing so it shows the different outcomes I could of had as I carried on layering. Here are photos a few layers made.

Frank Auerbach’s Drawings Posted: November 10, 2013 | Author: zoestorer | Filed under: Contextualisation, Subject | Tags: Charcoal, draw, Frank Auerbach, Layers | Leave a comment

After a drawing workshop into layers and lines I found the artist Frank Auerbach. This drawing was made entirely from life and could of taken around 60 settings. I can appreciate Auerbachs style of constantly drawing, erasing and reworking the piece. This way of working means that he has numerous previos attempts which he has built up to his final image. Although we can see that these images are portraits there expression and even their gender is unknown. I would like to attempt this method of working to produce layered drawings showing the history of previous works in the background.

How it's Made: Frank Auerbach Paintings Conservator Rebecca Hellen gives unique insight in to Frank Auerbach's creative process

Frank Auerbach Head of Leon Kossoff 1954 Private collection ÂŠ Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine Art Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Frank Auerbach Head of E.O.W. 1959–60 Tate © Frank Auerbach Frank Auerbach was born in 1931. Since the late 1950s he has worked in the same north London studio. Leon Kossoff, an artist with whom Auerbach has such a strong link, passed the tenancy on to him, having himself taken the studio from another artist of that generation, Gustav Metzger. All three were taught, well, in Auerbach’s opinion, by David Bomberg. Auerbach’s technique is well described, largely through a number of interviews crafted and recorded by sitters and writers. He sketches, he draws, he paints on board and on canvas, in oil, as well as to a lesser extent, acrylic. He takes a long time and key to the

process is scraping back. After each session he scrapes off the paint and begins again, regardless of the medium. Testament to this activity are a number of photographs of the artist in his studio; Auerbach is surrounded by paint scrapings, which build up around his easel, like guano. His drawings do not escape this process of redaction either; their patchwork of support, with built up layers of papers, charcoal and chalk, potent evidence of his working practice.

Frank Auerbach E.O.W. Nude 1953–4 Tate © Frank Auerbach Auerbach’s surfaces change over time, as does his palette. The wrinkled, thick, earlier oil on canvas, E.O.W. Nude dating from 1959, has some scraping back evident around the figure, but is largely left built up. This is in part why it wrinkles, an aesthetic feature the artist does not mind. The palette is subdued earth pigments, whites and blacks, as he could not afford colour at the time. ‘In common with most painters,’ he says, ‘I use all sorts of instruments (even sometimes hands) to apply the paint.’ His mark making develops over time; with brushes, palette knives, putty scrapers and sometimes paint squeezed directly from the tube.

Frank Auerbach To the Studios 1990–1 Tate © Frank Auerbach His oil on canvas, To the Studios 1981 has a tear, stabilised and repaired by the artist. It occurred in ‘the course of his long struggle with the painting’ whilst scraping down with a broader looking implement. Its palette is more colourful as Auerbach was well into a stage of his career where he could afford colours. Another work titled To the Studios 1990—1 was ‘repainted…from top to bottom hundreds of times, scraping down again and again.’ In the mid-nineties, not long after this painting was acquired, Tate conservators asked if he could describe his working practice. He could not, he said:

Painting is not manufactured. Each picture has its own history. The only constants are the fact that it always takes a long time, sometimes a very long time… Auerbach is still working on a daily basis in the same studio in north London.

TAT E B R I TA I N E X H I B I T I O N

ALL TOO HUMAN BACON, FREUD AND A CENTURY OF PAINTING LIFE 2 8 F E B R U A RY – 2 7 A U G U S T 2 0 1 8 Free with ticket for Members

Lucian Freud, Leigh Bowery 1991 Tate ÂŠ The Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Images

Capturing the sensuous, immediate and intense experience of life in paint All Too Human celebrates the painters in Britain who strove to represent human figures, their relationships and surroundings in the most intimate of ways. It features artists including Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon alongside rarely seen work from their contemporaries including Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego. Many of them lived or live

in London, drawn to the multicultural capital from around the world. Three important works by Francis Bacon will be shown in the UK for the first time in at least three decades. I want the paint to work as flesh does. Lucian Freud, 2009 The exhibition also shows how this spirit in painting was fostered by the previous generation, from Walter Sickert to David Bomberg, and how contemporary artists continue to express the tangible reality of life through paint. [I want to portray the] sensation of a page torn from the book of life Walter Sickert, 1910 Download large print guide [543 Kb] LeftRight

Francis Bacon Three Figures and Portrait 1975 Tate ÂŠ Estate of Francis Bacon

Paula Rego, Bride 1994. Tate Purchased 1995 ÂŠ Paula Rego

Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait of Lucian Freud 1964. Private Collection

Lucian Freud, Man's Head (Self-Portrait I) 1963. Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester, UK) ÂŠ The Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Images

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Coterie Of Questions 2015. Private Collection

R.B. Kitaj, The Wedding 1989-93. Tate Presented by the artist 1993

Walter Richard Sickert, Nuit d'Été c.1906. Private Collection Ivor Braka Ltd.

Melanie and Me Swimming', Michael Andrews, 1978â&#x20AC;&#x201C;9

Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002). Mr Sebastian, 1955, Oil on board , 78.8 x 63.5cm | Kiran Nadar Museum of Arts.

TATE BRITAIN Millbank London SW1P 4RG Plan your visit

DATES 28 February â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 27 August 2018

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https://www.grosvenorgallery.com/usr/library/documents/catalogues/souza_catalog ue_051008-4-.pdf

F.N. Souza, Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Anti-Establishment Artist - The New York Times

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Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, Modernist American Artist

Georgia O'Keeffe With Pelvis Series- Red With Yellow, In Desert, NM.

Tony Vaccaro / Getty Images

By Hall W. Rockefeller Updated February 29, 2020

Georgia O’Keeffe (November 15, 1887–March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist whose bold semi-abstract paintings pulled American art into a new era. She is best known for her stark images of flowers and iconic landscapes of the American Southwest, where she made her home for the latter half of her life.

Fast Facts: Georgia O'Keeffe  Full Name: Georgia Totto O'Keeffe  Known For: American modernist artist, made most famous by her close up paintings of flowers and bones.

 Born: November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin  Parents: Francis O’Keeffe and Ida Totto  Died: March 6, 1986 in Santa Fe, New Mexico  Education: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Art Students League, Teachers College, Columbia University  Mediums: Painting  Art Movement: Modernism  Selected Works: Evening Star III (1917), City Night (1926), Black Iris (1926), Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931), Sky Above Clouds IV (1965)  Awards and Honors: Edward MacDowell Medal (1972), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977), National Medal of Arts (1985)  Spouse: Alfred Stieglitz (1924-1946)  Notable Quote: "When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not." Though O’Keeffe often rejected the interpretation, her paintings have been described as the portrayal of an unleashed feminine desire, as the recesses of the flora she painted have been interpreted as a veiled reference to female sexuality. In reality, O’Keeffe’s oeuvre extends far beyond the facile interpretation of her flower paintings, and rather should be credited with her much more significant contribution to the formation of a uniquely American art form.

Early Life (1887-1906) Georgia O’Keeffe was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, to Hungarian and Irish immigrants, the eldest daughter of seven children. O’Keeffe’s parents were, to many observers, an odd pair––their marriage was the union between the hardworking Irish farmer Francis O’Keeffe and a sophisticated European lady (said to be descended from aristocracy), Ida Totto, who never shed the poise and pride she inherited from her Hungarian grandfather. Nevertheless, the two raised the young O’Keeffe to be independent and curious, an avid reader and explorer of the world.

Portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1918. Private Collection. Heritage Images / Getty Images

Though the artistic life would eventually claim the eldest Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Keeffe daughter, she forever identified with the laid back, hardworking attitude of her father and always had

affection for the open spaces of the American Midwest. Education was always a priority for her parents, and thus, all the O’Keeffe girls were well educated. O’Keeffe exhibited an artistic ability early on in life (though those who knew her in youth may have insisted her younger sister Ida––who went on to be a painter as well–– was the more naturally gifted). She attended art school at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League, and Columbia Teachers’ College, and was taught by the influential painters Arthur Dow and William Merritt Chase.

Early Work and Influences (1907-1916) O'Keeffe moved to New York in 1907 to attend classes at the Art Students League, which would serve as her first introduction to the world of modern art. In 1908, the sketches of Auguste Rodin were displayed in New York City by the modernist photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. The owner of the legendary Gallery 291, Stieglitz was a visionary and largely credited with introducing the United States to modernism, with the work of artists like Rodin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Red Poppy, 1927. WikiartVisualArt Encyclopedia

While Stieglitz was worshipped in the artistic circles of which O’Keeffe was a part at Columbia Teachers College (where she began study in 1912), the pair was not formally introduced until almost ten years after the painter first visited the gallery. In 1916, while Georgia was teaching art to students in South Carolina, Anita Pollitzer, a great friend of O’Keeffe from the Teachers’ College with whom she frequently corresponded, brought a few drawings to show to Stieglitz. Upon seeing them, (according to myth) he said, “Finally a woman on paper.” Though probably apocryphal, this story reveals an interpretation of O’Keeffe’s work that would follow it beyond the artist’s lifetime, as if the femininity of the artist were undeniable by just looking at the work.

Relationship With Alfred Stieglitz (1916-1924) Though Stieglitz had been married to another woman for decades (with whom he had a daughter), he began a romantic affair with O’Keeffe, 24 years his junior. The couple fell deeply in love, as both were moved by their mutual commitment to art. O’Keeffe was embraced by the Stieglitz family, despite the illicit nature of their relationship.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), American painter, pictured with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Undated photo. Bettmann / Getty Images

Before their relationship began, Stieglitz had largely given up his photography work. However, the love he found with O’Keeffe ignited in him a creative passion, and Stieglitz considered O’Keeffe a muse, producing over 300 images of her over their life together. He exhibited over 40 of these works in a gallery show in 1921, his first exhibition in many years. The couple was married in 1924, after Stieglitz’s first wife filed for divorce.

Mature Career 73

O’Keeffe began to receive significant praise after only two years in New York. Her work was widely written up and often was the talk of the town, as the revelation of a woman’s perspective (however much that perspective was read into the work by the critics) on canvas was captivating.

A member of staff poses for a photograph beside 'Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow' by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe at Tate Modern on July 4, 2016 in London, England. Rob Stothard / Getty Images

O’Keeffe, however, did not believe the critics had gotten her right, and at one point invited Mabel Dodge, a female acquaintance, to write about her work. She bristled at the Freudian interpretations of her work as expressions of a deep sexuality. These opinions followed her in her shift from abstraction to her iconic flower paintings, in which single blooms filled up the canvas at close range. (Dodge eventually did write on O’Keeffe’s work, but the result was not for what the artist had hoped.) Though 291 Gallery closed in 1917, Stieglitz opened another gallery, which he named The Intimate Gallery, in 1925. As O'Keeffe worked quickly and produced a lot of work, she exhibited annually in a solo show held by the gallery.

New Mexico Every year, O’Keeffe and her husband would spend the summer at Lake George with Stieglitz’s family, an arrangement that frustrated the artist, who preferred to control her environment and have long stretches of peace and quiet in order to paint.

Obra 'Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie's II' realizada por Georgia O'Keeffe en 1930. Georgia o'Keeffe Museum

In 1929, O’Keeffe had finally had enough of these summers in upstate New York. Her latest show in New York had not been received with the same critical acclaim, and thus the artist felt the need to escape the pressures of the city, which she had never loved in the way she loved the American West, where she had spent much of her 20s teaching art. When an artist friend invited her to the town of Taos, already a thriving artist colony, she decided to go. The trip would change her life. She would go back each summer, without her husband. There she produced paintings of the landscape, as well as still lifes of skulls and flowers.

Mid-Career In 1930, the Intimate Gallery closed, only to be replaced by another Stieglitz gallery called An American Place, and nicknamed simply “The Place.” O’Keeffe would also display her works there. Around the same time, Stieglitz began an intimate relationship with the gallery’s assistant, a friendship that caused Georgia great distress. She continued to show her work at the Place, however, and found that the Great Depression did not have a significant effect on her painting sales. In 1943, O’Keeffe had her first retrospective at a major museum, at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she had taken art classes in 1905. As a native Midwesterner, the symbolism of showing in the region's most significant institution was not lost on the artist.

Sky Above Couds IV at the Art Institute of Chicago.

However, her success was tainted by difficulties with her husband's health. Twentyfour years O’Keeffe’s senior, Stieglitz began slowing down long before his wife. Due to his weak heart, he put down his camera in 1938, having taken his last image of his wife. In 1946, Alfred Stieglitz died. O’Keeffe took his death with expected solemnity and was tasked with dealing with his estate, which she managed to have placed in some of America's finest museums. His papers went to Yale University.

Ghost Ranch and Later Life In 1949, Georgia O’Keeffe permanently moved to Ghost Ranch, where she had bought property in 1940, and where she would spend the rest of her life. The spiritual connection O’Keeffe had to this Western American land, of which she felt vibrations in her youthful stints as a teacher in Texas, cannot be underestimated. She described New Mexico as the landscape for which she had been waiting her entire life. Success, of course, continued to follow her. In 1962, she was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Letters, taking the spot of the recently deceased poet E.E. Cummings. In 1970, she was featured on the cover of Life magazine. In fact, her image appeared so often in the press that she was often recognized in public, though she shied away from the direct attention. Museum shows (including a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970) where frequent, as well as numerous honors, including the Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford (1977) and the National Medal of Arts (1985) from President Ronald Reagan.

Image of Georgia O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus

In 1971, O’Keeffe began to lose her eyesight, a devastating development for a woman whose career depended on it. The artist, however, kept painting, sometimes with the help of studio assistants. Later in the same year, a young man named Juan Hamilton showed up at her door to help her with packing her paintings. The two developed a deep friendship, but not without causing scandal in the art world. O’Keeffe eventually severed ties with her old dealer Doris Bry, a result of her connection to the young Hamilton, and allowed much of her estate’s decisions to be made by her new friend. Georgia O’Keeffe died in 1986 at the age of 98. Much of her estate was left to Juan Hamilton, causing controversy among O’Keeffe’s friends and family. He bequeathed much of it to museums and libraries and serves in an advisory capacity to the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Legacy Georgia O’Keeffe continues to be celebrated as a painter. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the first museum dedicated to the work of a single female artist, opened its doors in Santa Fe and Abiquiu, New Mexico, in 1997. The Georgia O'Keeffe papers are housed at the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library at Yale University, where Stieglitz's papers also reside. There have been tens of museum shows dedicated to the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, including a large scale retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2016, as well as a survey of the artist’s clothing and personal effects at the Brooklyn Museum in 2017.

Sources 77

 Lisle, Laurie. Portrait of an Artist: a Biography of Georgia OKeeffe. Washington Square Press, 1997.  “Timeline.” Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, www.okeeffemuseum.org/about-georgiaokeeffe/timeline/.

Tag: Anni Albers

Bauhaus Women/Bauhaus Bodies Posted on March 14, 2019

[Image: Ivana TomljenoviÄ&#x2021;, Bauhaus Students, Dessau, (1930). Marinko Sudac Collection] I. The year 2019 marks the centenary of the foundation of the Bauhaus. Founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus functioned as the most advanced art-and-design school in the world until its closure in 1933. The school would use advanced teaching techniques

by Modernist artist- creators such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Josef Albers, LĂĄszlĂł Moholy-Nagy, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Oskar Schlemmer. Subjects taught included architecture, painting, textile design, weaving, interior design, industrial design, theatre design, graphic design and dyeing, with students encouraged to use concepts, materials and techniques from other disciplines. The Bauhaus moved a number of times, being based in Weimar (19191925), Dessau (1925-1932) and Berlin (1932-3). The nomadic existence of the school was due to politics. When the Nazi national government came about, the Bauhaus closed completely and its tutors and students dispersed. The Bauhaus was remarkable in many respects: the combination of fine art and applied art, the interdisciplinary nature of teaching, the stress upon modernity, the embracing of advanced technology, the commercialisation of student production and the openness to experimentation. The Bauhaus is remembered as a beacon of progressive artistic and social ideas and is held up as a model of art education. There were structural barriers for female students but despite that the Bauhaus was considered progressive by staff, students, journalists and outsiders. Falling short of a perfect ideal in a setting run by individual adults who had grown up with certain traditional cultural expectations was perhaps inevitable. Gropius had doubts about the high ratio of women in the school. He implemented a limit on the number of women students and the number of female teachers declined. This has been attributed to sexism. Perhaps it was so. There is an additional reason. It seems that Gropius thought that if the Bauhaus became widely known as a female-dominated institution that it may have been taken less seriously, particularly in light of the fact that arts and crafts were treated comparably at the Bauhaus. An art school that had many female students and tutors and was also advocating for crafts to have a higher status would have looked less like avant-garde inter-disciplinary educational modernity than an attempt to feminise fine arts and design by infusing them with the handicraft ethos. Gropius may have actually considered most women unsuited for the design professions, but his actions to limit their entry into the Bauhaus was an act of contingent reputation management. This managerial motivation does not contradict or override Gropiusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attitude towards women in the arts, whatever that may have been. Bauhaus Women is a survey of 45 of the most noteworthy of the 462 female students (out of an alumni population of 1,276) who attended the institution, as well as women tutors and wives/partners of tutors.

Following a brief introduction, the authors give condensed biographies of the creators, including images of the creators of their work. It is impossible to encapsulate an entire life’s oeuvre in a single image but the lesser-known creators benefit from the one or two introductory images. It is impossible to assess contributions on such brief entries but there is enough to give us a flavour of the person and their creations. The bibliographic sources are skimpy, sometimes consisting of as little as an article in a specialist journal. The authors state that their selection was partly based on the amount of evidence they could gather about subjects. Many of the male colleagues of these female Bauhaus students – whose names come up in the text – have disappeared into historical oblivion. Readers will be satisfied to find a mixture of known and lesser-known names. Some Bauhaus women followed a variety of activities; these included Lore Leudesdorff-Engstfeld (textiles, fabric design, film scriptwriting, printmaking) and Marianne Brandt (metalware design, photography, painting). The single 1930 masked photographic self-portrait of Gertrud Arndt (née Hantschk) (1903-2000) reproduced in the book uncannily anticipates the work of Cindy Sherman.

[Image: Bauhaus Student ID card â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mityikoâ&#x20AC;? Yamawaki] Michiko Yamawaki (1910-2000), along with her husband, spent two at the Bauhaus before returning to Japan. The books, journals and photographs that they brought with them were eagerly scrutinised by Japanese designers and architects, spread European Modernism. The couple taught at the New Architecture and Design College, Tokyo. In 1939, the nationalist government, espousing Japanese cultural superiority, closed the progressive institution.

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944) produced abstract collages, highly stylised metal sculpture and political montages in the style of John Heartfield. Dicker-Brandeis is one of the Bauhaus women who lost their lives in the Nazi holocaust. A number of these creators died in the Nazi death camps. It is reminder of not only the destruction of historical treasures of the war but the stunting of European (and especially German and Austrian) art due to the ideals of National Socialism. Another victim was Otti Berger (1898-1944), born in Croatia, studied weaving. She proved to be a star student, popular teacher and admired textile designer. She struggled to maintain a career in Germany after 1933, but by 1936 she was unable to earn income from her patents. The following year she was offered work by a British firm. Unfortunate timing and acting against advice led to her visiting her mother in Yugoslavia in 1939. She was trapped due to the outbreak of war. Unable to leave Yugoslavia, she was eventually deported to Auschwitz along with her family, where she was killed. Architects include Lotte Stam-Beese (1903), Kathe Both (1905-1985) and Wera Meyer-Waldeck (1906-1964), who was cut down by ill-health just as her career was taking off. One of the principal routes that Bauhaus ideas were dispersed internationally was the photographs of Lucia Moholy (1894-1989). Sadly, Moholy was separated from her invaluable negatives recording the architecture, art work and individuals of the Bauhaus. While exiled during the Nazi era, Moholy did not know that her negatives had survived and were in the possession of Gropius in the USA. While others benefitted from her precise memorable photographs while she had no control, accreditation or royalties. She eventually regained the negatives.

[Image: Four ceramic objects by Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein (later Marks), produced by HaĂŤl-WerkstĂ¤tten, Marwitz near Berlin, 1923-1934. Collection of the Jewish Museum Berlin] Many German artists and architects viewed the accession of Hitler as presenting them with a direct choice. They thought they had to choose whether they should contribute support to the new regime, retire from public life, cease working or emigrate. While Jewish creators were clearly disadvantaged and had to act to protect themselves, their incomes and relatives, for non-Jewish creators (especially those without public commitment to Socialism) the choices were less clear cut. Some Bauhaus women approved of some Nazi actions, finding other actions objectionable. Protecting persecuted friends did not mean that creators also refused to benefit from governmentsponsored events and organisations under National Socialist direction. Some emigrated in protest or due to necessity, while others had family members who joined the party. Aufruf der Kulturschaffenden was a 1934 declaration of loyalty to the National Socialist government made by prominent figures in the cultural sphere. However, the list was not exclusive and attestations of loyalty did not guarantee approval from the authorities. Mies van der Rohe, last director of the Bauhaus, signed this statement. His wife Lilly Reich (1885-1947) did not sign but she did continue to work with Nazi authorities on exhibitions. She was a considerable designer and it seems she may have played an important role in the conception of the Barcelona Chair, officially accredited to her husband. Lydia Driesch-Foucar (1895-1980) was a ceramicist who was left destitute after her husband died in 1930. With young children to support, Driesch-Foucar used her skills to make and decorate biscuits. Her Lebkuchen (gingerbread cookies) are wonderfully drawn in light icing, sureness of drawing, visual wit and appropriate elaboration raise these biscuits to the level of handicraft â&#x20AC;&#x201C; something that was recognised by museums and a trade union.

[Image: Two Lebkuchen designs by Lydia Driesch. Collection of the Sammlung Driesch, Cologne] This recognition allowed her to participate in trade fairs. During the 1930s, her biscuits became a national success, which led to more orders than her workshop could cope with. Being associated with the National Socialist-supported folk art movement damaged her post-war career. Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein (1899-1990) founded the Haël ceramics firm, which produced clean-cut unadorned sets of crockery. A signature set was the “Norma” tea-set, with plain coloured exteriors and white interiors. The firm exported worldwide and thrived despite the Great Depression. As a Jew in National Socialist Germany, she was left with little choice other than to sell up – selling her moulds, premises and client list for a pittance. She emigrated to England but not able to regain her former success. The most famous name among the women creators associated with the Bauhaus is Anni Albers (1899-1994). She taught textiles at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale. Her book On Weaving (1965) is now a set text on many textile courses. Her career is covered in summary fashion here because of the numerous exhibition catalogues and books about her weaving designs, rugs and printmaking, which are already available. Her work is becoming increasingly influential and valuable; her prominence is likely to lead

people indirectly to the creations of her female colleagues. (For my review of Albers’s “On Weaving”, click here.)

[Image: Weavers on the Bauhaus staircase, 1927. From top to bottom: Gunta Stölzl (left), Ljuba Monastirskaja (right), Grete Reichardt (left), Otti Berger, (right), Elisabeth Müller (light patterned jumper), Rosa Berger (dark jumper), Lis Beyer-Volger (centre, white collar), Lena Meyer-Bergner (left), Ruth Hollós (far right) and Elisabeth Oestreicher.

Photograph by T. Lux Feininger. Collection of the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin]

II. In recent years scholars have adjudged that the way Bauhaus women (Bauhäuslerinen) saw and were seen presents a unique case history of the way women’s experiences intersected with cultural politics during the heyday of High Modernism. “Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School makes the bold claim that the Bauhaus cannot be fully understood without exploring the post-First World War culture of embodiment that was a seminal aspect of the school’s project of rethinking art and life.” The book consists of 14 essays by specialists on gender-related topics within the orbit of Bauhaus studies. The Modernist art movement is inextricably linked to social causes and a negative critique of the traditional culture. This social critique is sometimes radically subversive. The incomprehension and derision that Modernist art faced was accompanied by fear of the seismic political change.Although the Nazi opposition to Modernism was extreme, it was by no means atypical of those Germans wedded to traditional views. The Bauhaus was the prime forum for Modernist artistic experimentation in Germany. The public association between avant-garde ideas and social liberation in the setting of the Bauhaus was cemented in the popular press and the school’s own publications. To a degree, the political suspicions of conservatives about the Bauhaus were justified. In 1928 Gropius retired from directorship of the Bauhaus. His replacement was Hannes Meyer, who had a commitment to communism. His lead encouraged political activism among tutors and students. KoStuFra (the Communist Student Organisation) had an active cell in the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus was under surveillance as a centre of subversion and Communist agitation placed its future in jeopardy. Additionally, the Bauhaus’s students – with their peculiar clothing, haircuts and incomprehensible art – were “mostly foreigners, in particular Jews”, which alarmed locals. When Mies van der Rohe took over in 1930 from Meyer (who was removed by the Mayor of Dessau and who subsequently left for the USSR), he attempted to curb political excesses with decisive action.This included expelling students and banning the remaining students from joining political organisations. However, Nazi seizure of total national power could mean nothing other than the end of the Bauhaus project.

[Image: Portrait of Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein (later HeymannMarks), c. 1925. Photographer unknown. Collection of the BauhausArchiv Berlin] Not the least manifestation of Bauhaus’s modernity was its attitude to women. The overlap between gender liberation and left-wing politics is embodied in the New Woman (in the guise of the flapper, garçonne, athlete or businesswoman) was an archetype – or set of archetypes – which frequently appeared in films, newspapers and journals. The recent slaughter of German men and hyperinflation impoverishing middle-class families thrust German women into public life in a way they had not been previously. In the many photographs taken by Bauhaus students and staff we see women and men playing with gender roles. The cross-dressing and masculine hairstyles of some women echoed the adventurous New Women across Germany, enjoying the freedom of the constitution of the Weimar Republic (founded in 1919) which gave women equal rights. (It should be noted that the phenomenon of the New Woman was largely limited to younger women in urban or suburban locations, by no means universal even among that demographic.) The teachers at the Bauhaus actively promoted equality and fraternisation between male and female colleagues. In recent years there has been controversy about the gender division between students. There is testimony that women were discouraged and even strongly opposed from taking painting and industrial design courses, instead being directed to more traditionally feminine pursuit of studying textiles and weaving. The exact official policies of the Bauhaus regarding female students entering the courses on architecture, painting and industrial design are not quoted, leaving readers uncertain of what was implemented. The influence of painter Johannes Itten (1888-1967) was partly pedagogical and partly mystical. He was a follower of Mazdaznan, a modern variation of Zoroastrianism. It included elements of phrenology and physiognomy, which he applied to assessing the students as character types. His primary contribution is viewed as being colour theory, but his spiritual and psychological ideas played a part in his teaching. Itten taught the Vorkurs (introductory course) that students passed through when they enrolled. This was associated with one aspect of the Bauhaus, that of Lebensreformbewegung. Lebensreformbewegung – the life-reform movement – was a widespread response to urbanisation, industrialistion and militarism. Although it originated in the last decade of the previous century, the movement flourished widely in Weimar Germany in the wake of the Great War, especially as it was seen as complementary to pacifism. Lebensreformbewegung took the

forms of naturism, vegetarianism, naturopathy, teetotalism, communal living, eastern spiritualism (including yoga, meditation), exercise (including gymnastics, swimming and cycling), sunbathing, strict dieting and dress reform. Gymnastics and dance played a part in Bauhaus life. Gender non-conforming behaviour could be seen as linked to Lebensreformbewegung but we should not attempt to force connections. Gertrud Grunow (1870-1944) based her teaching at the Bauhaus upon Itten’s lead. Her teaching is less well known than Itten’s and differs from it in some respect, being less theoretical and more therapeutic. The text published under her name (posthumously) is adapted from her manuscript and is not a true transcript, which makes it hard to assess what she actually taught at the Bauhaus. She believed that colour and human “psychophysicality” were spiritually connected and that bodily movement was associated with colour. This falls into the area of ideas of synaesthesia.

[Image: Gunta Stölzl: 5 Chöre (1928), jacquard weave; cotton, wool, rayon silk; 229 x 143 cm. Collection of the St Annen-Museum, Lübeck] Kathleen James-Chakraborty notes that – unusually for an art school and in an era when nude sunbathing and naturism were widely practiced – there was a near complete absence of nude bodies in the art and photographs of the Bauhaus. (A confluence of asexual Mazdaznan spirituality and an emphasis on abstraction and design, possibly. One could also note the marked absence of eroticism of the Bauhaus art.) She goes on to discuss the way Bauhauslerinendressed and paradox that none of them went into the fashion industry. Most of the fabrics produced by the Bauhaus were intended for furnishing rather than clothing. Other essays discuss the Loheland dance group, political beliefs of Bauhaus staff, Klee’s images of dancers (including Greta Palucca and Karla Grosch), Bauhäuslerinen in the wall-painting department, androgynous personages in Schlemmer’s paintings, photographs with androgynous subjects, photographic double portraits and the socialism in the photographs of Irena Blühová, The work of Bauhaus administrator Ise Gropius, wife of the director, is examined. Her extensive daily chronicle of the Bauhaus 1924-8 seems to be a valuable and comprehensive source. Surprisingly, it has remained unpublished. It should be published as resource for researchers. Although Bauhaus Bodies could be classified under the rubric “Gender Studies”, that should not put off fans of the Bauhaus and art-history scholars. The book is a serious advance in studies of the Bauhaus, European/German Modernism and Weimar Republic culture. It is a compliment to the intelligence and light on the political grandstanding that often disfigures otherwise useful research in the area we describe as Gender Studies. This is a model approach: measured, informative, analytical.

Elizabeth Otto, Patrick Rössler, Bauhaus Women: A Global Persepctive, Herbert Press (distr. Bloomsbury), March 2019, hardback, 192pp, fully illus., £30/$40, ISBN 978 1 912217 96 0 Elizabeth Otto, Patrick Rössler (eds.), Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, March 2019, paperback, 392pp, 12 col./110 mono illus., £23.99, ISBN 978 1 5013 4478 7 © Alexander Adams 2019

[Image: Anni Albers, On Weaving: New Expanded Edition. Princeton University Press, 2017]

Anni Albers (1899-1994) was one of the most respected and innovatory figures in the modern craft movement. She studied at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, where she met her future husband Josef Albers, a teacher there. (Josef Albers, a pioneering abstract painter, was an influential teacher, especially on the subject of colour.) In 1933 the

couple moved to teach in the USA, first at Black Mountain College and later at Yale. In later years, living in Connecticut, she produced tapestries and weavings, as well as writing articles and books on design and textiles. She was the first designer to have a one-person exhibition at MoMA (in 1949) and became recognised as one of the pre-eminent designers of the Modern era. Two new publications give us an insight into her ideas and practice. Anni Albers’s worked by weaving on hand-looms, producing designs which used the natural qualities of materials and a limited palette to produce (mainly) hard-edge abstract patterns. Frequently in her designs, simple geometric shapes on small scale are expanded over large areas. In her wall-hangings, she took care over having borders that complemented and also completed central designs. Triangles provide textural “tooth” and indicate visual dynamic flow. Her colours are usually restrained and are rarely more than two or three per design. She had a preference for white, black, grey and muted reds. She produced many striking and sophisticated wall-hangings (illustrated in On Weaving) and was a skilled designer of original artist’s prints, especially silkscreens and lithographs.

[Image: Anni Albers, Vicara Rug I, 1959. Executed by Inge Brouard Brown. Vicara, wool, and cotton, 60 1/4 x 40 in. (153 x 101.6 cm). Neues Museum Nuremberg. © 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]

On Weaving, originally published in 1965, is a newly revised and expanded version of a classic text on the theory and history of weaving. Albers explains the principles and problems of weaving, drawing on her extensive research and expertise. She covers the manipulation of warp and weft, looks at the different looms and battens, reeds and other paraphernalia of the loom-weaver’s craft. Other topics include draft notation, weave variations, tactility, artificial fibres and tapestry. Her rigorously anti-decorative functionas-form Bauhaus aesthetic comes to the fore in her comments on embroidery: “Embroidery, on the other hand, is a working of just the surface, since it does not demand that we give thought to the engineering task of building up a fabric. For this very reason, however, it is in danger of losing itself in decorativeness; for the discipline of constructing is a helpful corrective for the temptation to mere decoration.”

[Image: Anni Albers, Drapery material, 1927. Cotton and rayon, 6 1/4 x 4 1/4 in. (15.9 x 10.8 cm). Gift of the Designer: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2018 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]

The illustrations Albers selected include images of weaving techniques and machinery, sample patterns, wall-hangings and pictorial tapestries. Close-up views and diagrams demonstrate the principles of knotting, lace, twills and other techniques. Pre-historic, historical and modern examples are taken from many cultures, including Mexico (which Albers visited a number of times), Norway, Congo and Japan; also presented are striking artist-made Modernist pieces.

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When one reflects upon the pedagogic practice of Josef Albers it is his colour instruction that likely first comes to mind. The former Bauhaus master’s 1963 publication Interaction of Color and its subsequent paperback editions have long been standard texts and the significance of his perception-based model of ‘color action’ in which visual relationships are developed rather than taken as given cannot be understated in terms of its importance both to art making and art instruction. Yet several of Albers’ students are known for their innovative use of material (like fibreglass and polyester resin in the case of Eva Hesse) despite having been brilliant colourists in their own right. This seeming anomaly can be addressed, in part, by looking more deeply at the principles that underscored Albers’ teaching. For Albers, colour was in constant flux. In his instruction he emphasised its relativity as material and its role in creating visual relationships, especially those causing optical estrangement. But in doing so Albers taught his students more than the interaction of colour; he instilled in them a general approach to all material and means

of engaging it in design. In his teaching Albers put practice before theory and prioritised experience; ‘what counts,’ he claimed ‘is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision – seeing.’ His focus was process. The Bauhaus-indebted pedagogic tenets that underlay Albers’ teaching were flexible enough so that Eva Hesse (among other of his students) could draw upon his approach to material and design in the making of vastly different work. Indeed, aside from pieces (fig.1) in which Hesse utilised a rectilinear format strikingly similar to Albers’ own iconic use of squares (fig.2), there are few immediate visual similarities between student and teacher. Hesse’s polymorphous, tactile forms that seem to confront viewers with their materiality and the process of their crafting bear little in common with Albers’ rigid compositions. Rather, affinities between the two are expressed in terms of the process-oriented, material-based mode of instruction that constituted a major aspect of the Bauhaus Preliminary Course, dominated Albers’ teaching in the United States, and was key to Hesse’s experimentation with unconventional material. How incongruous that teaching methods often tethered (albeit superficially and in some instances erroneously) to the harsh, machined aesthetic of so-called Bauhaus Modernism might have contributed to making objects so different in appearance. The significance of Albers’ teaching to this end has been largely underestimated. After discussing the genealogy of his pedagogic methods at the Bauhaus, I will show how they are materially evident in Hesse’s mature work.

Fig.2 Josef Albers Study for Homage to the Square, 1963 Oil on plastic and board support: 762 x 762 mm painting Tate. Presented by The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation 2006 Tate © The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2007 enlarge At the Bauhaus and Beyond: The Bauhaus staff included some of the most influential artists, designers, architects, and educators in the twentieth century. In addition to Albers, also teaching at (or otherwise associated with) the design school were its founding director Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Lyonel Feininger, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, among several others. Needless to say, pedagogic practice at the Bauhaus was not singular;

it was a diverse teaching environment with a shared (albeit evolving) mission to train students in the principles of the applied and fine arts as well as design simultaneously. The Preliminary Course had three incarnations roughly corresponding to the tenure of its instructors: Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy, and Josef Albers. Although its character changed significantly under each master, the course served as a creative laboratory where students were to experiment with the foundational elements of design before actually applying these methods and practices to the making of a finished product. Despite curricular, institutional, and political instability, some form of preliminary instruction remained requisite (with rare exception) during each of the design school’s manifestations in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin between 1919 and 1933. It was the core of the Bauhaus curriculum and served as a unifying experience for students and a common ground from which all began their studies; only after completing the course would they select a specialisation in specific fields such as metal, woodworking, textiles, or ceramics upon joining one of the Bauhaus workshops. Indeed, experimentation with material with this end in view was among the primary aims of preliminary instruction; at the end of each term the faculty would meet to discuss whether students should be allowed to continue their studies and if so, to which workshop they would be admitted based, in part, on their aptitudes for any given material. Johannes Itten joined the Bauhaus faculty soon after the design school’s founding and was largely responsible for establishing the tenor of the Preliminary Course at a moment when the school lacked distinct institutional and pedagogic identity. Itten had been trained in primary education and was employed as a schoolteacher before beginning formal art study with Adolf Hölzel at the Academy in Stuttgart. His instruction was informed by theories of early childhood development and, as was key to education reform and Romantic conceptions of individuality, he believed that all people were inherently creative, that the teacher’s role was to unlock students’ creative potential, and saw his task as ‘prepar[ing] and coordinat[ing] physical, sensual, spiritual and intellectual forces and abilities.’ To this end, he used several unorthodox techniques including rhythmic and improvisatory drawing as well as gymnastics among other body-based, meditative exercises meant to encourage students’ engagement with their sensual and physical selves. In 3 4 5 Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of

Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 2 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 keeping with the tone of Bauhaus instruction at the time, the training of man’s entire creative faculties (of mind, sprit, and body) was key to the instructional program. Experimentation with material was among Itten’s primary aims for the course. He had his students complete texture and composition studies involving both first-hand interaction with material and the subsequent translation of its material properties into pictorial form using a variety of methods. For instance, Gunta Stölzl created Thistle

(fig.3) in ink whereas Margit Téry-Adler rendered the rough-edged, bristly plant using torn paper (fig.4). Other students created elaborate charts to demonstrate the range of texture found in nature.

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Although Itten stressed direct interaction with the physical world and was himself quite spiritual, he did not claim spiritual value in nature study per se, as did other Bauhaus masters. Rather, he saw the study of nature as ‘above all else a study of the purely material’ through which his students ‘discovered the inexhaustible wealth of textures and their combinations.’ By representing the properties of a material in drawing or relief sculpture students did more than develop technical skill through mimesis according to the Beaux-Arts tradition of instruction. They actively engaged their senses through which, in Itten’s view, perception was filtered. Additionally, the artist claimed that through exercises dealing with materials and materiality ‘a ... new world was discovered: lumbered wood shavings, steel wool, wires, strings, polished wood, ... feathers, glass, and tin foil, grids and weaves of all kind, leather, furs, and shiny cans.’ Itten’s was a method mediated by the body; his exercises involved looking closely and intently so as to discover the world anew through sharpened and refined senses.

Fig.3 Gunta Stölzl Thistle Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin © DACS 2007 enlarge Fig.4 Margit Téry-Adler composition study, Carline Thistle, c.1920 Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar © The Estate of Margit Téry-Adler enlarge

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In marked contrast to Itten, László Moholy-Nagy was largely self-taught. Not having experienced the rigour of institutionalised art training and perhaps less familiar with contemporary discourse on pedagogy, he is known most for enlivening the Bauhaus through his interest in new technology and new media. He taught

6 7 Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 3 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 the Preliminary Course from 1923 to 1928. Believing that ‘to be a user of machines [was] to behof an industrial society (and Constructivism) rather than artistic tradition per se. And although his interest in technology might imply that his method of art instruction would be sterile, formulaic, and detached, it was in fact quite the opposite. Among his stated instructional aims was to elicit ‘spontaneity and inventiveness’ and hence, to awaken his students’ creative capabilities. Like Itten, he had students perform ‘tactile experiments’ believing that through physical engagement with the tactile, the optical would be developed. There were, however, differences between the two. Whereas for Itten engagement with the senses also involved the aestheticisation of natural material, for Moholy-Nagy it was about their actual properties and effects. He had students organise natural and industrial matter by ‘surface effect’ in elaborate tactile charts. They did so according to set categories, the most important being ‘surface aspect,’ which related to how one would use material to achieve a desired sensory result, presumably from a product one might design. It was not only important to train one’s ability to transfer nature into design, but also to distinguish variation in nature and its respective sensory qualities. Students explored both the aesthetic and the communicative properties of materials under Moholy-Nagy’s tutelage, through which they developed a design sensibility. As he said, ‘not the product, but the man is the end in view.’ In terms of design, Moholy-Nagy’s teaching was directed toward simplicity and ‘elemental expression’ by reducing variety in nature to basic properties used to create products that had agency. Josef Albers was Itten’s student at the Bauhaus, taught the Preliminary Course in tandem with Moholy-Nagy beginning in 1923, and assumed sole responsibility for the course from 1928 until the design school closed in 1933. Like Itten, he had been trained as educator and in the Academy system (under Franz von Stuck in Munich) prior to beginning his tenure at the Bauhaus, where he was one of few individuals affiliated with the design school during each of its manifestations. In keeping with the increased importance of industry at the Bauhaus, Albers’ instruction was geared toward general design principles, which he saw as a means of visual organisation. He would later describe his approach as that of creating ‘visual empathy’ through which one gained ‘the ability to read the meaning of form and order.’ Like Itten and MoholyNagy before him, he sought to engage his students’ imaginations by acclimating them to their physical environment and encouraged students to seek answers from material itself. Albers believed that one learned as a result of a direct interaction with life and required that his students become familiar with the physical nature of the material world. This was due, in part, to the influence of John Dewey, who advocated for laboratory-based education and coined the phase ‘learning by doing.’ For Dewey, ‘the conditions of daily life’ determined the ‘nature of experience’ and thus, art (aesthetic experience) was to be actively engaged. Indeed, he often praised Dewey, whose ideas were fundamental to the founding of Black Mountain College, where Albers first taught in America from 1933 to 1949. And like Dewey, his pedagogic emphasis lay in practical, concrete exercises: in the artist-educator’s own words ‘learning through conscious practice.’

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Similar notions, including the Montessori method as well as those of Froebel, Pestalozzi, and others key to discourse on early childhood development were fundamental to the educational programme of the Bauhaus. Considering that both Itten and Albers had been trained as schoolteachers and the degree to which education served as a means for social change at the Bauhaus, devising methods of instruction akin to how it was believed one learned was essential to preliminary instruction. Learning how the parts constitute the whole through active engagement with material underscored all of Albers’ teaching. In his preliminary instruction he emphasised that the student must experiment with material in order to truly understand its potential use and limitations in design and, like Itten, he encouraged his students to work with a wide variety of material including cardboard, wire, glass, straw, rubber, matchboxes, and razor blades and would often charge them to explore the properties of a singular material, specifying which tools, if any, could be used to this end. As such, the student would discover a material’s inherent design qualities by using it to create a new structure. This approach is best exemplified by exercises in which students were to explore the properties of paper (fig.5), and only allowed to cut or fold it so as to create forms that highlighted its structural potential. About these exercises Hannes

Beckmann recalled: 8 9 10 11 Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 4 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 I remember vividly the first day of the [Preliminary Course]. Josef Albers entered the room, carrying with him a bunch of newspapers. ... [and] then addressed us ... 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are poor, not rich. We can’t afford to waste materials or time. ... All art starts with a material, and therefore we have first to investigate what our material can do. So, at the beginning we will experiment without aiming at making a product. At the moment we prefer cleverness to beauty. ... Our studies should lead to constructive thinking. ... I want you now to take the newspapers ... and try to make something out of them that is more than you have now. I want you to respect the material and use it in a way that makes sense – preserve its inherent characteristics. If you can do without tools like knives and scissors, and without glue, [all] the better.' In both his material and later his colour studies, Albers' concern was that of finding solutions to problems – his pragmatism was very much that of an artist who thought in terms of design.

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Fig.5 Assessment of work from Albers’s Preliminary Course, 1928-1929 Photo by Umbo (Otto Umbehr) © The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2007 enlarge At its core, preliminary instruction was meant to be widely applicable. All Bauhaus students, be they joiner, bookbinder, potter, weaver or stage designer received the same instruction, which stressed experimentation with material so as to understand its potential use. But more, they didn’t make products out of paper at the Bauhaus; paper wasn’t the point. It didn’t really matter if you crafted your thistle in pen and ink or as collage. These were exercises, merely examples of an approach. They were a means to flexible thinking that would attune students to the material of their environments and result in an innovative use of material in design. As Howard Singerman has mentioned, this key distinction has been largely confused in America, where aspects of a curriculum intended to train designers were taken up at art schools and by students who saw themselves as artists. Bauhaus pedagogic practice should be seen as it was: a training method in design. Instead, it has been too often subsumed by notions of so-called Modernist art teaching, of which Albers has long been emblematic and against which artists and critics have railed. It has been common to conclude that instructional methods originating at the Bauhaus were ‘based on the reduction of practice to the fundamental elements of a syntax immanent to the medium’ and if its methods function today, they do so ‘in spite of themselves.’ The conflation of Bauhaus methods with the medium-centric concerns of art criticism, however, has obscured the range of their significance as approach, process, or way of thinking in the twentieth century and, importantly, how these actual instructional methods may have been influential to artists like Hesse trained in a Bauhaus-indebted tradition. Although Albers developed his colour course subsequent to his emigration to the United States, it reflected a Bauhaus-indebted approach to material instruction nevertheless, as did his instruction generally. Students used foliage (fig.6) and Color-aid paper in their studies, employing materials available to them to study the material of colour itself; they did

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not mix pigments to create a new, composite colour. In his colour course the former Bauhaus master created a structured environment in which he encouraged students to experiment with colour by assigning exercises (problems to be solved) meant to attune students 12 13 14 15

Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 5 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 to perceptual phenomena and by extension, the interaction of colour. One came to appreciate the relativity of colour upon completing Albers’ course; but more, the means to the end were in themselves significant. Students met Albers’ charge to use colour relationships to create the illusion of volume, numerous surface effects, or the appearance of transparency (fig.7) through a process of trial and error, often by placing countless pieces of paper in juxtaposition with one another until arriving at the desired effect. Above all else, his colour instruction was meant to challenge students to discover the potential (and limitations) of colourasmaterial and its use in the design. And like all his instruction it was not geared toward a prescribed end; students ultimately were to make use of his methods on their own terms.

Fig.6 Eva Hesse Free Study with leaves Plate XXV-I, Interaction of Color, 1963 © Yale University Press enlarge Fig.7 James McNair Color mixture and illusion of transparence Plate IX-I, Interaction of Color 1963 © Yale University Press enlarge

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Fig.8 Josef Albers and Eva Hesse, Yale University, c. 1958 © The Estate of Eva Hesse. Hauser & Wirth Zürich London and The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2007 enlarge After Albers: Eva Hesse had little praise for her Yale education and Albers seemed aware of this. Upon her death he sent a photograph of himself with Hesse (fig.8) to the Fischbach Gallery asking if her heirs might want to have a picture ‘showing her with me as her painting teacher ... despite [my emphasis] my being in it.’ Although she

Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 6 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 was among Albers’ favourite pupils, Hesse disliked him in so much as his views were not in keeping with her then expressionist painting technique and by extension, for what she perceived as the restrictiveness of his approach. Upon hearing a lecture by her teacher she wrote in her diary: ‘He is terribly limited but really maintains one point of view throughout. This is a paradoxically strong and weak attribute and shortcoming.’ Many scholars and critics have addressed Hesse’s stated frustration with Yale University and Albers as part of diverse arguments about the artist, her work, and Modernism. Yet Linda Norden is one of few who has discussed Hesse’s formal education in depth and to my knowledge no one has written extensively about how (in a pedagogic sense) she was trained. Hesse’s work is intriguing because she studied with Albers, who along with Moholy-Nagy was largely responsible for the dissemination of Bauhaus-indebted teaching ideas in the United States – ideas to which Hesse likely had been exposed prior to her studies with the former Bauhaus master directly. In 1952 Hesse graduated from the School of Industrial Arts (today the High School of Art and Design) in New York, a school intended to train commercial artists and at which she studied window display. In 1952 and 1953 she attended courses in advertising design at the Pratt Institute, at which Albers had been visiting professor in 1949, prior to assuming his duties at Yale. In addition to painting, Hesse studied ‘two-dimensional and three-dimensional design’ at Pratt but did not complete this course of study. From 1954 to 1957 she studied design at the Cooper Union, where former Bauhaus student Hannes Beckmann (quoted above) taught along with Neil Welliver, another Albers’ student and later a member of the Yale faculty who taught an ‘Albers-oriented color course that really jarred all of us’ according to Hesse’s classmate Camille Reubin Norman. And then there was Yale and Albers, with whom Hesse studied colour and ‘advanced’ painting. Finally, upon graduating from Yale she worked briefly for Boris Kroll as a textile designer and thus, in an applied art central to the Bauhaus curriculum and dominated by its legacy, especially the work, teaching, and writings of former Bauhaus student and Josef’s wife, Anni Albers. Indeed, a common thread uniting each of Hesse’s educational experiences is that of instruction in design and by extension, the Bauhaus and Albers. In light of the process-oriented, material-based approach to design instruction propagated at the Bauhaus and its subsequent importance (largely because of Albers) in America, it would be legitimate to propose that Bauhaus-indebted pedagogic methods and practices may have been a formative influence upon Hesse (in an epistemological sense) in terms of her approach to matter

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generally and especially her experimentation with its design properties. Hesse defined the word ‘schema’ as ‘synopsis, outline, diagram. general type, essential form, conception of what is common to all members of a class.’ While the evenly-spaced, balanced grid of her eponymous sculpture (fig.9) may be read in terms of Hesse’s definition, her interest in ‘diagram’ and ‘essential form’ are also expressed in the meticulous planning and rigor with which she approached its design, including her choice of material. In addition to drawings, Hesse made numerous ‘test pieces’ (fig.10) prior to the execution (by her own hand or otherwise) of many of her works. She used these ‘material studies’ to experiment with the structural properties of rubber, papier-mâché, Sculp-Metal, and other matter so as to determine, in part, their potential usefulness in crafting specific forms like hemispheres, cylinders, and various vessels. For Schema, she chose to work in latex, as she did many of her sculptures dating from the late 1960s and about which she stated: ‘the materials I use are really casting materials, but I don’t want to use them as casting materials. I want to use them directly, eliminating making molds and casts ... I am interested in the process, a very direct kind of connection.’ Indeed, the building up of latex surfaces in layers intrigued Hesse, but her experimentation with material prior to determining that latex suited her purposes was an extension of Albers’ exercises. As had been the case at the Bauhaus, Albers’ students were to seek answers from material itself; his hands-on exercises informed the process through which Hesse arrived at her final forms as well as her inquisitiveness regarding the potential of unconventional artistic matter. 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

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Fig.9 Eva Hesse Schema, 1967-68 Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of Helen Hesse Charash 1979 © The Estate of Eva Hesse enlarge Fig.10 Eva Hesse (test pieces), 1967 University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, gift of Helen Hesse Charash 1979 © The Estate of Eva Hesse enlarge That meaning lies in how Hesse engaged material has been part of the artist’s critical reception from the onset of her work in sculpture. Rosalind Krauss, for instance, has characterised Hesse as working counter to the ‘formalist dialogue of the 1960s with the message of expressionism ... ‘manifested through the experience of matter itself.’ In 1968 Robert Morris included the artist in his Anti Form exhibition at the Castelli warehouse know as ‘Nine at Leo Castelli.’ Morris showcased work generated through a ‘direct investigation of the properties of ... materials’ for which there was no predetermined form and thus, ‘random piling, loose stacking, [or] hanging [gave] passing form to material.’ Hesse contributed Augment and Aught, the former (fig.11) consisting of nineteen sheets of latex-infused canvas layered upon one another and installed on the warehouse floor. Also represented in the show was fellow-Albers-student and Hesse’s friend, Richard Serra, who created his legendary piece Splashing (fig.12) for the exhibition by throwing molten lead against a wall, allowing the work to assume its own form. According to Robert Pincus-Witten, in the late 1960s Serra was teaching at Queens College. About his teaching method, Pincus-Witten recalled what to my ear is at its core quite reminiscent of Albers and Bauhaus pedagogic practice. He stated: Serra’s teaching ... deals with an elementarist analysis of the physical properties germane to any given material. It minimizes–almost to extinction–any valorized finished product, but instead stresses those issues and procedures which are central to the execution of any specific act, or set of acts, in as clear and [as] didactic a way ... possible. He continues, claiming, ‘the implications of this [approach] in terms of many of the features of Serra’s own work are self-evident.’

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Fig.11 Eva Hesse Augment, 1968 Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Sammlung Helga und Walter Lauffs 1970 © The Estate of Eva Hesse enlarge Fig.12 Richard Serra Splashing, 1968 Installed Castelli Warehouse, New York 1968 (destroyed) © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2007 enlarge Throwing lead, polymorphous Fiberglass forms, and painted latex: nothing to do with color, nothing indeed. But unlike Sol LeWitt’s quip that ‘Hesse’s avoidance of color probably [had] everything to do with [her] being a student of Albers,’ one must bear in mind that Albers taught his students far more than colour, even when teaching colour. He instilled in his students a general approach to artistic material by encouraging directed experimentation with the properties of any given material. How they, as artists, chose to make use of his instruction is altogether another (and individual) matter. In fact, Albers likely would not have approved of work involving (in the case of Splashing) an arbitrary element; it was antithetical to his approach to design as that

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embracing ‘all means opposing disorder and accident.’ But whether Albers approved of Hesse, Serra, or any of his students’ work (and vice versa) is beside the point. The two are united as students of Albers and by extension, the process through which each came to understand and engage their respective creative materials. Forging relationships between teacher and student is nothing new to art history. Giorgio Vasari speaks not of Michelangelo without acknowledging Ghirlandaio as his teacher in Le Vite (1550) and Ingres’ petulant fancy is seen in more charming relief in light of his studies with the academician David. Indeed, it has been preferable that pupil defy master, thus fueling the symbolic wheels of progress and change that propel many art historical narratives. While a lack of equal access to instruction has been noted as one of several factors that historically excluded women from professional art practice, studies of pedagogical methods within these exclusive institutions have been slow in coming, especially those that move beyond stylistic classification and direct comparison between student and teacher. Pedagogies act as does ideology: surreptitiously and often without notice. They help structure how we think, let alone how we learn whether we realise it or not. As is clear when one views Eva Hesse’s work in light of Albers’ teaching methods, pedagogy can affect art practice in myriad ways. Perhaps there is no better reason than this for artists to view teaching as an imperative.

35 36 37 Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 9 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 Notes Subsequent to my first presentation of this paper several major texts on Eva Hesse and Josef Albers have been published including: Briony Fer, ‘Eva Hesse and Color’, October 119, Winter 2007, pp.21-36, Catherine de Zegher ed., Eva Hesse Drawing, New Haven and London, 2006; Elisabeth Sussman and Fred Wasserman, Eva Hesse Sculpture, New Haven and London, 2006; Renate Petzinger and Barry Rosen ed., Eva Hesse Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 2006; Griselda Pollock and Vanessa Corby ed., Encountering Eva Hesse, Munich, 2006; and importantly, a monumental text devoted to Albers’s teaching, Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, London, 2006 as well as the catalogue from Tate Modern’s eponymous exhibition, Achim Borchardt-Hume ed., Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World, London, 2006. I have incorporated the views of many, but not all of these authors above and in my notes. 1.Despite her avoidance of color in her later and more widely known sculptural work, many of Hesse’s drawings and wall sculptures show the degree to which she was a brilliant colorist. 2. Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, New Haven and London, 2006, pp.1–2. 3. See Rainer K. Wick, Teaching at the Bauhaus, Ostfidern-Ruit, 2000 for the most comprehensive text on Bauhaus pedagogy. 4. I have limited my discussion of preliminary instruction to the importance of material studies therein (and even at that, it is cursory) as well as to Itten, Moholy-Nagy, and Albers. In actuality the course was far more complex and each instructor addressed numerous themes, the length of preliminary study (and how it was organized) varied throughout the history of the Bauhaus, and at different moments other courses (notably those of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee) fell under the umbrella of preliminary instruction. 5. Johannes Itten, Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus, New York, 1963, p.12. 6. Ibid, p.46. 7. Ibid, p.45. 8. László Moholy-Nagy in Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, Cambridge and London, 1950. For

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an overview of Moholy-Nagy’s teaching see László Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision, New York, 1946. 9. See Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, London, 2006 for a comprehensive and richly illustrated study of Albers’s teaching of design, drawing, color, and painting at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale University. 10. Josef Albers, Search Versus Re-Search Hartford, 1969, p.10. 11. John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York, 1934. Rainer K. Wick notes that Dewey’s The School and Society and Democracy and Education were published in German translation in the first two decades of the twentieth century and that Dewey’s ideas were known generally at the Bauhaus in his Teaching at the Bauhaus, OstfidernRuit, 2000. Albers came to know Dewey in detail subsequent to his emigration to the United States and his ideas underscore many of the artist-educator’s essays on art and education, notably his essay ‘Art as Experience’ (1935). 12. Hannes Beckmann, ‘Formative Years’, in Eckhard Neumann ed., Bauhaus and Bauhaus People, New York, 1970, p.196. 13. Howard Singerman, Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University, Berkeley, 1999. 14. Thierry de Duve, ‘When Form Has Become Attitude – And Beyond’, in Stephen Foster and Nicholas de Ville ed., The Artist and the Academy: Issues in Fine Art Education and the Wider Cultural Context, Southampton, 1994, pp.23–40. 15. This was particularly the case in Albers’s design instruction. For a discussion of Albers’s material and materie studies (as well as distinctions between the two) see Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, London, 2006. 16. Josef Albers to Fischbach Gallery, letter dated 29 December 1970: The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Archives, Bethany, CT. 17. Diary entry dated 15 April 1959 published in Helen Cooper, ‘Chronology’, in Helen Cooper ed., Eva Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 10 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 Hesse: A Retrospective, New Haven and London, 1992, p.21. 18. Lucy Lippard discusses Hesse’s numerous anxieties at Yale in Eva Hesse, New York, 1976. Rosalind Krauss asserts that Hesse ‘bridled at Albers’s limitations, his rules, his dicta, at the monomania of an art "based on one idea"’ in ‘Hesse’s Desiring Machines’ (1993) and Anne M. Wagner discusses Hesse’s relationship to Yale University in terms of gender in ‘Another Hesse’ (1996), both republished in Mignon Nixon ed., Eva Hesse, Cambridge and London, 2002. Subsequent to my first presentation of this paper Benjamin H. D. Buchloch has written about Hesse as working to ‘exorcise the legacies of Albers’s stereometrical models ... and his rationalist demands’ in ‘Hesse’s Endgame: Facing the Diagram’, in Catherine de Zegher ed., Eva Hesse Drawing, New Haven and London, 2006, pp.119-151. 19. I too have not completed the requisite primary research in the Hesse archives to do so comprehensively. See Linda Norden, ‘Getting to "Ick": To know what one is not’, in Helen Cooper ed., Eva Hesse: A Retrospective, New Haven and London, 1992. Subsequent to my first presentation of this paper Mignon Nixon has explored how ‘Hesse exploited her education to invent her art’ as part of her essay ‘"Child" Drawing’, in Catherine de Zegher ed., Eva Hesse Drawing, New Haven and London, 2006. 20. School of Industrial Arts Yearbook, New York, 1952. Courses of study at the School of Industrial Arts included Advertising Art, Ceramics, Costume Design, Fashion Illustration, Illustration, Industrial Design, Jewelry Design, Photography, Sign and Showboard, Silkscreen, and Window Display. Under Hesse’s name one finds several distinctions including: Miss School of Industrial Arts, Professional Art Honor Roll, Attendance Officer, and Class Secretary. 21. Cindy Nesmer, ‘A Conversation with Eva Hesse’ (1970), in Mignon Nixon ed., Eva Hesse, Cambridge and London, 2002, pp. 1–24. Dated inscriptions and stamps on the verso of some still life paintings Hesse completed at Pratt read ‘Foundation Year Color’ and ‘R’ or ‘Miss Taylor’ suggesting that Hesse participated in a

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foundations course at Pratt. The works are not in keeping with an Albers-oriented approach to color per se. See Renate Petzinger and Barry Rosen ed., Eva Hesse Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 2006. 22. During her first year of study at Cooper Union she took courses in architecture, drawing, lettering, sculpture, graphic techniques, and photography. Among her teachers were Nicholas Marsicano, Neil Welliver, Will Barnet, Victor Candell, and Robert Gwathmy. 23. Lucy Lippard, Eva Hesse, New York, 1976, p.9. 24. By her own account, there was considerable tension among the faculty at Yale during Hesse’s tenure, a fact she claimed contributed to her dissatisfaction with the institution. She also studied with Rico Lebrun and Bernard Chaet, both of whom worked in a manner quite different from that of Albers. 25. Catherine de Zegher has expanded upon this point recently by positing affinities between Hesse and Anni Albers in ‘Drawing as Binding/Bandage/Bondage or Eva Hesse Caught in the Triangle of Process/Content/Materiality’, in Catherine de Zegher ed., Eva Hesse Drawing, New Haven and London, 2006, pp.59–115. 26. I haven’t completed the research to know whether, and if so how closely the School of Industrial Arts’ curriculum incorporated Bauhaus ideas. It would not surprise me if this were the case give then prevalence of the views of Albers and Moholy-Nagy regarding education and the industrial/applied arts at this time. 27. Entry in Eva Hesse’s notebook, as cited in Bill Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, New York, 1989, p.156. 28. Hesse’s drawings and notebooks reveal numerous preparatory sketches for her sculptures. See Elisabeth Sussman, ‘Works on Paper/Works in the Papers’, in Catherine de Zegher ed., Eva Hesse Drawing, New Haven and London, 2006, pp.153–179. 29. Interview with Cindy Nesmer as cited in Helen Cooper, ‘Chronology’, in Helen Cooper ed., Eva Hesse: A Retrospective, New Haven and London, 1992, p.44. 30. Rosalind Krauss, ‘Eva Hesse: Contingent’ (1979), in Mignon Nixon ed., Eva Hesse, Cambridge and London, 2002, pp.27–32. 31. Robert Morris, ‘Anti Form’, Artforum, vol.6, no.8, 1968, pp.33–5. In 1969 Hesse contributed work to similarly-themed exhibitions, including ‘Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials’, a group exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art organized by Marcia Tucker and James Monte and Harald Szeemann’s

Tate Papers - Josef Albers, Eva Hesse, and the Imperative of Teaching http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/saletni... 11 of 12 31/01/2012 12:35 ‘When Attitudes Become Form: Works, Concepts, Processes, Situations, Information’ at the Kunsthalle Bern. 32. Serra studied at Yale between 1961 and 1964 and thus, subsequent to Albers’s retirement in 1958. He was, however, Albers’s assistant in preparing the volume Interaction of Color (1963), for which Hesse provided many of the illustrations. 33. Robert Pincus-Witten, ‘Richard Serra: Slow Information’, in Richard Armstrong and Richard Marshall ed., The New Sculpture 1965-75: Between Geometry and Gesture, New York, 1990, pp.152–5. 34. Ibid. 35. Linda Norden in conversation with Sol LeWitt. See note 32 in Linda Norden, ‘Getting to "Ick": To know what one is not’, in Helen Cooper ed., Eva Hesse: A Retrospective, New Haven and London, 1992. 36. Josef Albers, ‘On Art and Expression’, Yale Literary Magazine, May 1960, p.49. 37. Carl Goldstein has suggested that the means through which one came to understand and engage material in Albers’ instruction became an end itself by relating Albers’ teaching to the work of Robert Rauschenberg, his student at Black Mountain College and who although a skilled colourist is known more for having applied a variety of material like newspaper, photographs, and neckties to his canvases. See Carl Goldstein, Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers, Cambridge, 1996. Goldstein discusses Hesse’s work as well, but in terms of her

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working against Albers’s ‘rules’. See also his ‘Teaching Modernism: What Albers Learned in the Bauhaus and Taught to Rauschenberg, Noland, and Hesse’, Arts Magazine, vol.54, no.4, 1979, pp.108–16. Acknowledgements A version of this paper was first presented at the College Art Association 94th Annual Conference in February 2006. It was expanded in June 2006 for the panel discussion ‘Albers and Moholy-Nagy: The Imperative of Teaching’, a program in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Albers & Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World’ at Tate Modern. The author thanks Harper Montgomery, Christina Normore, Christa Robbins, Dawna Schuld, and Anne Stephenson for their generous and perceptive feedback. Jeffrey Saletnik is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. Tate Papers Spring 2007 © Jeffrey Saletnik

Λίλια Μπρικ: Η απόλυτη Μούσα ή απλά μία Σοβιετική Σειρήνα Lilya Brick ... Absolut Muse or just a Soviet Siren? 16/06/2019

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Lilya Brik, 1920

… I won’t throw myself downstairs or drink poison nor can I put a gun to my head. No blade holds me transfixed but your glance… Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lilichka Γράφει η Λιάνα Ζωζά

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Το ποίημα Lilichka, o Vladimir Mayakovsky, το έγραψε για την απόλυτη μούσα του, που δεν είναι άλλη από την πολυτάλαντη Lilya Brik και αποτελεί ένα συνοθύλευμα έντονων συναισθημάτων, σε μορφή ξέπνοου μονολόγου.

Ηθοποιός, χορεύτρια, ποιήτρια και γλύπτρια, αλλά κυρίως μια “σειρήνα” που γνώριζε άριστα την τέχνη της αποπλάνησης και υπήρξε το αντικείμενο του πόθου πολλών διανοούμενων, η “μούσα της ρωσικής avant garde”, όπως την αποκαλούσε ο Pablo Neruda. Ο σοβιετικός κριτικός και συγγραφέας Viktor Shklovsky γράφει για εκείνη: “Ήξερε πώς να είναι θλιμμένη, θηλυκή, περίεργη, με τα καπρίτσια της, περήφανη, ανεκτική, ευμετάβλητη, έξυπνη, ερωτευμένη. Σαν γυναίκες από τις κωμωδίες του Σαίξπηρ. Είναι όμορφη, με καστανά μάτια. Έχει μεγάλο κεφάλι, κόκκινα μαλλιά, είναι ευχάριστη και θέλει να γίνει χορεύτρια.”. H Anna Akhmatova, με τη σειρά της, χαρακτηρίζει “μπουρδέλο” το σαλόνι της Lilya, αλλά κάθε απόγευμα, αυτό είναι γεμάτο από λόγιους και καλλιτέχνες που επιθυμούν διακαώς να δεχθούν μια πρόκληση για να συμμετέχουν στις ενδιαφέρουσες συγκεντρώσεις της. Εξάλλου, λέγεται πως η ίδια δεν δίσταζε αρκετές φορές να περιφέρεται γυμνή ανάμεσα στους καλεσμένους της. Η Lilya Brik, διέθετε όλα εκείνα τα στοιχεία που την έκαναν να βρίσκεται πάντα στο επίκεντρο της προσοχής, μια γυναίκα που θα έλεγε κανείς πως ήταν γεννημένη πρωταγωνίστρια. Έτσι, ο Mayakovsky, το Κουτάβι, δεν είχε άλλη επιλογή από το να ερωτευθεί παράφορα τη Γάτα και να γίνει για εκείνον η αιώνια αγαπημένη, χωρίς να τον εμποδίσει καθόλου το γεγονός πως όταν, τη γνώρισε, εκείνη ήταν ήδη παντρεμένη με τον Osip Brik, που του παραχώρησε ευγενικά τη θέση του στη καρδιά της και στο σπίτι του, σε μια “τριγωνική” σχέση ζωής που κράτησε δεκαπέντε περίπου χρόνια.

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Alexa nder Rodchenko, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Raisa Kushnir, Lilya Brik’s mother, and Lilya Brik, Norderney, 1923 Η Lilya Kagan γεννήθηκε στις 11 Νοεμβρίου του 1891, στη Μόσχα και ήταν το μεγαλύτερο από τα δύο κορίτσια μιας εύπορης εβραϊκής οικογένειας. Με πατέρα δικηγόρο και μητέρα δασκάλα πιάνου, τα παιδιά είχαν εξαιρετική εκπαίδευση που περιελάμβανε την άριστη γνώση γαλλικών και γερμανικών και βέβαια μαθήματα πιάνου. Επιπλέον, η Lilya σπούδασε Αρχιτεκτονική στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Μόσχας. Οι δύο αδελφές ήταν γνωστές για την ομορφιά τους και πολλοί ήταν οι ζωγράφοι που τις χρησιμοποίησαν σαν μοντέλα στα έργα τους. Ανάμεσά τους, o Henri Matisse και ο Marc Chagall. Στα δεκατέσσερα της συναντά τον 17χρονο τότε Osip Brik και τον παντρεύεται στα είκοσι της, ενώ η αδελφή της Elsa παντρεύεται τον Louis Aragon, πρωταγωνιστεί στα γαλλικά σαλόνια και γίνεται η πρώτη γυναίκα που της απονέμεται το βραβείο Goncourt. Από την αρχή του γάμου τους, ο φουτουριστής συγγραφέας και κριτικός Brik, δέχεται τον “ανοιχτό” γάμο που του προτείνει η φιλόδοξη ή ίσως ανεξάρτητη και προχωρημένη για την εποχή της, Lilya και μάλιστα φαίνεται να απολαμβάνει τις συγκεντρώσεις της ρώσικης avant garde διανόησης, με επίκεντρο την ίδια, στο σαλόνι τους και τον μποέμικο τρόπο ζωής τους.

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Ale xander Rodchenko, Portrait of Lilya Brik, 1929 Το 1915, η αδελφή της Elsa γνωρίζει τον πολλά υποσχόμενο νεαρό ποιητή Vladimir Mayakovsky και τον προσκαλεί για να απαγγείλει ο ίδιος το Σύννεφο με παντελόνια, στο σαλόνι της αδελφής της. Αν και είναι ήδη εραστής της Elsa, o Mayakovsky μαγεύεται από τα μεγάλα καστανά μάτια της Lilya, “σκαμμένα σαν να ‘ταν δύο τάφοι” και ακολουθεί μια ερωτική εμμονή μαζί της που θα τελειώσει μόνο με το τραγικό τέλος του. Ήδη, o Ρώσος ποιητής ο Nikolai Aseev είχε γράψει για τα καστανά της μάτια: “Η οικοδέσποινα με τα μεγάλα εκφραστικά καστανά μάτια που έπειθε και εξέπληττε με την αυθεντικότητα των απόψεων της. Εντυπωσιαστήκαμε από τα μάτια της και τις απόψεις της που ποτέ δεν πίεζαν κανέναν αλλά πάντα συνόψιζαν την ουσία των συζητήσεων μας.”. Η Lilya, ομολογεί στον Brik πως το ίδιο βράδυ κοιμήθηκε με τον Mayakovsky και η απάντησή του είναι: “Πώς θα μπορούσες να αρνηθείς τίποτα σε αυτόν τον άνθρωπο?”. Όταν, ο ποιητής μετακομίζει στο σπίτι τους, το 1918, ξεκινά η ιδιόμορφη σχέση τους που θα προκαλέσει και θα δημιουργήσει ερωτηματικά στην κοινωνία της εποχής, αλλά

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και στο σοβιετικό καθεστώς, που δεν μπορούν να κατανοήσουν την ιδιαίτερη αυτή συγκατοίκηση.

D. Auksmann, Lily Brik, Saint-Petersburg, 1916 Η Lilya, περιγράφει την καθημερινοτητά τους στο ημερολόγιό της: “Συνήθως ο Vladimir ξυπνούσε πρώτος. Περνούσε από το δωμάτιο του Osip κι αν άκουγε πως είχε ξυπνήσει του ζητούσε να έρθει αμέσως για πρωινό. Είχε ετοιμάσει το σαμοβάρι κι έφτιαχνε ένα βουνό από σάντουιτς –βούτυρο, αβγά, λουκάνικα- καθόμασταν στο τραπέζι, τρώγαμε, πίναμε τσάι και διαβάζαμε τις πρωινές εφημερίδες. Το πρωινό ήταν η αγαπημένη του στιγμή της μέρας. Το πρωί ήταν πάντα καλοδιάθετος και κάθε πρωί το περνούσαμε έτσι. Ο Osip του μιλούσε για όλα αυτά που διάβαζε. Ο Mayakovsky σπανίως είχε χρόνο να διαβάσει. Έγραφε συνεχώς. Αλλά τον ενδιέφεραν τα πάντα. Μετά από αυτές τις συζητήσεις, ο Mayakovsky συχνά φιλούσε στο μέτωπο τον Osip και του έλεγε: φιλώ τη μικρή σου καράφλα.”

ΑΝ Μ’ ΑΓΑΠΑΣ ΕΙΣΑΙ ΜΑΖΙ ΜΟΥ, ΓΙΑ ΜΕΝΑ, ΠΑΝΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΝΤΟΥ, ΚΑΤΩ ΑΠΟ ΟΠΟΙΕΣΔΗΠΟΤΕ ΣΥΝΘΗΚΕΣ. ΔΕΝ 118

ΜΠΟΡΕΙΣ ΝΑ ΕΙΣΑΙ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΟΝ ΜΟΥ ΠΟΤΕ. ΟΣΟ ΑΔΙΚΟΣ Ή ΣΚΛΗΡΟΣ ΚΙ ΑΝ ΕΙΜΑΙ Αν και η σχέση τους περνά σκαμπανεβάσματα, με παράλληλες ερωτικές σχέσεις και περιοδικούς χωρισμούς, δεν μπορούν να αποχωριστούν ο ένας τον άλλο. Εμφανίζεται, όμως, ανάμεσά τους, ανίκητος εχθρός, η κατάθλιψη και οι τάσεις αυτοκτονίας του Mayakovsky. Η Lilya και κατ’επέκταση η ταραχώδης σχέση τους, πιστεύεται από πολλούς, πως τον οδήγησαν στην αυτοκτονία, με την ίδια να αποκαλύπτει πως ο ποιητής είχε ήδη επιχειρήσει να αυτοκτονήσει άλλες δύο φορές και εκείνη τον έσωσε.

Alexa nder Rodchenko, Portrait of Lilya Brik, 1924 Η Lilya Brik, στην πραγματικότητα, υπήρξε ένα ανήσυχο πνεύμα που δεν μπόρεσε ποτέ να δεσμευτεί ολοκληρωτικά. Οι σημειώσεις της, που αναφέρονται στην αυτοκτονία του Mayakovsky λειτουργούν ίσως απολογητικά, ίσως λυτρωτικά, στον επίλογο που εκείνος, επέλεξε να δώσει. “Ο Mayakovsky έτσι την καταλάβαινε την αγάπη: αν μ’ αγαπάς είσαι μαζί μου, για μένα, πάντα και παντού, κάτω από οποιεσδήποτε συνθήκες. Δεν μπορείς να είσαι

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εναντίον μου ποτέ. Όσο άδικος ή σκληρός κι αν είμαι. Ο παραμικρός δισταγμός, η παραμικρή αλλαγή μεταφράζονταν ως προδοσία.

Osip Brik, his wife Lilya and Vladimir Mayakovsky Η αγάπη οφείλει να είναι μόνιμη και παντοτινή. Σαν ένας νόμος της φύσης. Χωρίς εξαιρέσεις. Σύμφωνα με τον Mayakovsky η αγάπη δεν ήταν μια πράξη ελεύθερης βούλησης, ήταν η κατάσταση της ζωής. Σαν τη βαρύτητα. Υπήρξαν γυναίκες που τον αγάπησαν μ’ αυτόν τον τρόπο; Ναι. Τις αγάπησε κι εκείνος; Όχι. Τις θεωρούσε δεδομένες. Αγάπησε εκείνος καμία μ’ αυτόν τον τρόπο; Ναι. Αλλά εκείνος ήταν ιδιοφυΐα. Η ιδιοφυΐα του ήταν μεγαλύτερη από τη δύναμη της βαρύτητας. Όταν διάβαζε τα ποιήματα του το έδαφος σηκώνονταν προς τα πάνω για να ακούσει καλύτερα. Φυσικά αν κάποιος μπορούσε να βρει έναν πλανήτη αδιαπέραστο στην ποίηση… αλλά δεν υπήρξε τέτοιος πλανήτης.”.

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Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lilia Brik

Η προέλευση του κόσμου Από τη Βικιπαίδεια, την ελεύθερη εγκυκλοπαίδεια

Η προέλευση του κόσμου

Ονομασία

Η προέλευση του κόσμου

Δημιουργός

Γκυστάβ Κουρμπέ

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Έτος δημιουργίας

1866

Είδος

Ελαιογραφία σε μουσαμά

Ύψος

46,69 cm

Πλάτος

55 cm

Πόλη

Παρίσι

Μουσείο

Μουσείο Ορσέ Σχετικά πολυμέσα

δεδομένα

Από το 1995 ο πίνακας ανήκει στο Μουσείο Ορσέ

Η προέλευση του κόσμου (L'Origine du monde) είναι ελαιογραφία ζωγραφισμένη από τον Γάλλο καλλιτέχνη Γκυστάβ Κουρμπέ (Gustave Courbet) το 1866. Πίνακας περιεχομένων 

1Περιγραφή

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2Συμβολισμός

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3Θεματογραφία και περιπέτειες

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4Παραπομπές

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5Βιβλιογραφία

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

6Φιλμογραφία

Περιγραφή[Επεξεργασία | επεξεργασία κώδικα] Πρόκειται για ελαιογραφία σε μουσαμά νατουραλιστικής τέχνης. Εικονίζει το σώμα μιας ελαφρώς ευτραφούς γυναίκας που είναι ξαπλωμένη επάνω σε μετάξινο ύφασμα στην άκρη ενός κρεβατιού ή καναπέ σε ύπτια στάση με ανασηκωμένο το πέπλο. Η έμφαση δίνεται στην κοντινή προβολή της δασύτριχης ήβης με το ελαφρώς ανοιχτό αιδοίο, των μηρών και του οπισθίου, καθώς και της κοιλιάς. Το αριστερό πόδι είναι προτεταμένο στο πλάι. Η οπτική γωνία που έχει επιλεγεί δεν κάνει ορατό το πρόσωπο της γυναίκας, αφού η εικόνα τελειώνει στο δεξί μαστό με προεξέχουσα τη θηλή επιτείνοντας τον ερωτισμό του έργου. Το σκοτεινό υπόβαθρο σε φαιούς τόνους κάνει οπτική αντίθεση με τη λευκή στιλπνή επιδερμίδα και τα άσπρα μαλακά υφάσματα.

Συμβολισμός[Επεξεργασία | επεξεργασία κώδικα] «Η Προέλευση του κόσμου» αναφέρεται στη διπλή φύση του γυναικείου σώματος: από τη μία πλευρά, το αντικείμενο της σεξουαλικής επιθυμίας και το σημείο εισόδου για ζευγάρωμα, από την άλλη πλευρά, στην έξοδο κατά τη γέννηση, το σημείο από το οποίο ένα παιδί βλέπει για πρώτη φορά ένα κόσμο στον οποίο ανήκει. Σε μια μεταφορική έννοια, η εικόνα συμβολίζει την προέλευση της ύπαρξης, την εικόνα και την αντίληψη του ανθρώπινου κόσμου. [1]

Θεματογραφία και περιπέτειες[Επεξεργασία | επεξεργασία κώδικα] Τελευταίος ιδιοκτήτης του πίνακα ήταν ο ψυχαναλυτής Ζακ Λακάν που τον αγόρασε (1955) σε δημοπρασία για 1,5 εκατομμύριο γαλλικά φράγκα. Μετά το θάνατό του, το 1981, το γαλλικό υπουργείο Οικονομίας και Οικονομικών διευθέτησε τον φόρο κληρονομιάς με ειδικό νομοσχέδιο, μέσω της αγοράς του συγκεκριμένου πίνακα, μια πράξη που ολοκληρώθηκε το 1995. Έκτοτε ο πίνακας αυτός ανήκει και εκτίθεται στο Μουσείο Ορσέ (Musée d'Orsay). 

Τον Φεβρουάριο του 1994, το μυθιστόρημα Perpétuelles (λατρείες) του Ζακ Ανρίκ (Jacques Henric), που είχε ως εξώφυλλο τον πίνακα «L'Origine du monde» είχε ως αποτέλεσμα συχνές επισκέψεις της αστυνομίας σε γαλλικά βιβλιοπωλεία για να αποσύρουν το μυθιστόρημα από τις βιτρίνες τους.

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Στις 23 Φεβρουαρίου 2009 παρόμοια κατάσταση σημειώθηκε και στην Πορτογαλία, όταν η αστυνομία κατάσχεσε τα βιβλία της Catherine Brellap, που χρησιμοποίησε το θέμα του πίνακα ως εξώφυλλο του βιβλίου της.[2]

Παραπομπές[Επεξεργασία | επεξεργασία κώδικα] 1.

↑ Savatier Th. L’origine du monde: histoire d’un tableau de Gustave Courbet, p.17 Παρίσι edit. Bartillat, 2006

↑ περ. Lusa, 23 Φεβρουαρίου 2009

Βιβλιογραφία[Επεξεργασία | επεξεργασία κώδικα] 

G.Lemonnier, Gustave Courbet et son oeuvre, Παρίσι 1968

Φιλμογραφία[Επεξεργασία | επεξεργασία κώδικα] 123

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Jean Paul Fargier, L'Origine du monde, 1996, 26 λεπτά

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The Man Made Mad with Fear, Gustave Courbet, 1843, man, painting, wall art

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Gustave Courbet "L'Extase (The Ecstasy)"

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Self Portrait with a Black Dog by Gustave Courbet |

Family: Father: Régis Courbet Mother: Sylvie Oudot Siblings: Juliette Courbet

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Died On: December 31, 1877 Place Of Death: La TourDePeilz, Switzerland Cause Of Death: Liver Disease More Facts

Gustave Courbet was one of most remarkable French artists of the Realism movement during the 19th century. He was known for his unique style of painting (especially during the 1840s), and was an inspiration for the impressionists and cubists. Though he joined art studios during his youth, he was mostly a selftaught artist who practiced by copying the work of the masters. He did not believe in the traditional art techniques of his time. The subjects of his paintings included still lifes, nudes, landscapes, and hunting scenes. He was against the Romanticism in the art and instead, insisted on painting only what could be seen. He was an independent and bold artist who went against the conventions of the time. Traditionally, only historical and mythological subjects were depicted on grand scales, but he often portrayed common folks and mundane everyday activities using large canvas. His later work reflected a sensuous style. He often courted controversies with his rebellious attitude. He was a socialist and participated in the political activities for which he served prison sentence. Later, he went into a selfimposed exile to Switzerland, and lived there till his death in 1877.

Image Credit

Childhood & Early Life Courbet was born Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet on June 10, 1819, in Ornans, eastern France, to affluent farmer parents EléonorRégis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet. He was the only son with three younger sisters. Initially, he made paintings of his sisters, Zoé, Zélie, and Juliette, and regularly portrayed his native, Ornans, in his paintings. After moving to Paris, he often returned home for inspiration.

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At 14, Courbet received art lessons from a neoclassical art teacher ‘pére’ Baud. He went to Besançon in 1837 to study at the studio of a follower of painter David. As per his father’s wish, Courbet went to Paris in 1840/1841 to study law, but he soon left the law school and joined the studio of Steuben and Hesse/Suisse. Soon he left the studio, and studied the art by himself by copying the work of masters, including Peter Paul Rubens and Caravaggio at the Louvre. He studied the Dutch and Venetian paintings of Hals, Titian, and Rembrandt. He admired his contemporary French artists Delacroix and Géricault.

As an Artist Initially Courbet painted figures (Odalisque) inspired from the literary works of Victor Hugo and George Sand. But soon after, he stopped doing imaginary paintings, opting for art based on reality. During the starting years, he made several selfportraits, including ‘Man in Despair’ (1841), ‘Courbet with a Black Dog’ (1842), ‘The Wounded Man’ (1844), ‘The Man with the Leather Belt’ (18451846), and ‘Man with a Pipe’ (18481849). During 18461847, Courbet toured around Belgium and Netherlands; he was inspired by Dutch artists Hals and Rembrandt, and the art that presented daily life events. He also toured France after 1850. Courbet tried submitting his work at the ‘Salon,’ the annual art exhibition in France, but was not accepted initially. His selfportrait, ‘Courbet with a Black Dog,’ was taken in 1844, after which he again faced rejections. His art found support from Neoromantics and Realists, and critics, such as Chamfleury. With his ‘After Dinner at Ornans,’ Courbet received appreciation and success at the ‘Salon’ in 1849. The state bought the painting, awarding him a secondclass gold medal. This allowed him exemption from selection procedure till 1857 (The rules changed that year). His next paintings that fetched a lot of attention were ‘The Stone Breakers’ (1849), and ‘A Burial at Ornans’ (1849 1850). During that period, conventionally only the historic, biblical or mythological paintings had large scale canvases. Going against the tradition, Courbet portrayed everyday domestic life into large paintings. Though historic paintings were considered important for an artist, he believed that the artist’s own experience is the best source for art. Courbet’s paintings of peasants, workingclass people, and rural middleclass scenes were thought as vulgar, so his work often created controversy. The art of Courbet,

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JeanFrançois Miller, and Honoré Daumier was recognized as ‘Realism.’ ‘A Burial at Ornans’ invited admiration as well as criticism, as it was a large painting showing over 40 human figures with mundane rituals as the subject. An artcollector, Alfred Bruyas, became Courbet’s patron and his art found recognition in Berlin and Vienna. He received fame during this period. In the early 1850s, Courbet painted more common subjects, such as ‘Village Damsels’ (1852), ‘The Wrestlers’ (1853), ‘The Bathers’ (1853), ‘The Wheat Sifters’ (1854), among others. The bestknown work of Courbet was ‘The Artist’s Studio’ (18541855), a vast painting of nearly 4metersX6meters. He gave it the subtitle ‘A real allegory summing up seven years of my artistic and moral life.’ It showed Courbet in the center, working on a painting, surrounded by people. Courbet submitted a total 14 paintings at the 1855 ‘Exposition Universelle,’ of which 10 were selected. ‘A Burial at Ornans’ and ‘The Artist’s Studio’ were rejected because of their huge size. This rejection drove Courbet to arrange his personal exhibition gallery, ‘The Pavilion of Realism,’ alongside the ‘Exposition Universelle.’ He displayed 40 of his paintings, including the rejected huge canvases. ‘The Artist’s Studio’ was not appreciated much by the people of that time, but critics and artists, including Delacroix, Champfleury, Baudelaire hailed it as a masterpiece. It became an inspiration for the impressionists. In 1857, Courbet earned praise with paintings such as ‘Young Ladies by the Seine,’ which was exhibited at ‘Salon.’ He also created landscapes, hunting scenes, still lifes, etc. He faced controversy with ‘Return from the Conference’ (1863 – about a drunken priest) and ‘Venus and Psyche,’ which was rejected at ‘Salon.’ In the 1860s, Courbet created several erotic canvases, including ‘Femme nue Couchée’ and ‘Sleep.’ The most provocative and controversial one was ‘The Origin of the World’ (1866) – a painting of female genitals, which was not made public till 1988. In 1869, while spending a summer at Etretat, Courbet created ‘The Wave,’ and ‘The Cliff at Etretat after the Storm.’ These two art pieces earned him accolades. In 1870, Courbet was awarded the ‘Legion of Honor’ by the government of Napoleon III, but he refused it. After the French were defeated in the FrancoPrussian war, the ‘Paris Commune’/‘Commune de Paris’ came into power on March 18, 1871, though only for a short while. Courbet was made the president of the ‘Federation of Artists,’ and was asked to reopen art museums, and organize the ‘Salon.’ He was a member of the Commune, but didn’t participate in any activity.

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Earlier, in 1870, Courbet had proposed (to Govt. of National Defense) to remove the column in ‘Place Vendôme’ that was built by Napoleon I to commemorate French victories, but no action was taken then (Courbet probably meant only to move it). The Commune destroyed the column on May 16, 1871. Later the Commune government was overthrown by the Army of Versailles, which took charge from June 1. Courbet was arrested on June 7, for instigating the destruction of the column. He was fined 500 Francs and 6 months imprisonment. Later, he took ill in the prison and taken to a clinic. Courbet was charged a fine of 300,000 Francs (1873) as the cost of reconstructing the column. As he couldn’t pay it, he went into exile to Switzerland, where he lived in 3) La TourdePeilz till his death. He continued to paint, and also created sculptures, but took to heavy drinking. He died of liver problems on December 31, 1877. Many artists, including Claude Monet, were inspired by Courbet’s style of painting. Presently, the collections of his paintings are displayed at Musée d’Orsey (Paris), National Gallery (London), Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and other galleries.

The Clairvoyant or The Sleepwalker 1845 131

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