Here is a link to the inaugural edition of Penumbra, a Madrid-based literary magazine: http://penumbramagazine.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/inaugural-issue-online-edition/

If you “flip” to pages 18 and 19, you will see a story by yours truly. It is a quirky little ekphrastic tale, though you can’t tell it: I wrote it during a Creative Writing course in college. The assignment was to choose a photo and write a story based on it. I wish I still had the photo, although I do remember what it looked like: an oppressed-looking woman held a baby while surrounded by a passel of children. Her eyes drooped and she looked unkempt. I asked myself what her story was as I stared carefully at a red mark around her wrist, and the story grew from that. I have always been fond of the story, and I’m grateful it has found a home, especially today. What an unexpected holiday treat for me.

The whole magazine is well worth a read. I hope you’ll take a look at it.

Enjoy!

Drema

Author Iris Murdoch loved art.  In fact, she often incorporated it into her writing.  I just finished reading The Sea, the Sea this morning, and this novel was no exception: she mentions two paintings in particular.  Both paintings are in London’s The Wallace Collection.  The first is Franz Hal’s The Laughing Cavalier who is not really laughing, of course, but is certainly smiling.  The second is Perseus and Andromeda.

While it may appear that the first painting is mentioned only as a reason for the main character, Charles, to having visited the museum, in fact it is as evocative as the second:

Besides not really smiling, in all likelihood, neither was the subject a cavalier.  Charles, the protagonist of this novel, is a retired actor, thus he is used to “being” something he is not as well. That is probably the theme of this book: things are never what they appear to be.

The second painting, then, is this:

In the story, Charles sees a sea monster. He wonders if it is merely a flashback from an LSD trip, but he’s not sure. The question is, who is the monster? Who needs saving? Who is the one doing the saving? I think Charles would think HE is the one trying to save Hartley, the woman he loved and lost when he was young. When he moves to the seaside, he inexplicably encounters this woman after decades of no contact. She is married and has clearly moved on. Hartley has aged, and she is not the sort of woman Charles has been known to date. Charles, despite his age, is still a sought-after man.

There is this cycle of love where a person loves someone who loves someone else, which sounds a bit like a Shakespearean play. Fitting, isn’t it, for a stage actor?

Longing builds this novel, and I couldn’t resist blogging on it because it is such a direct example of ekphrasis. I really can’t say much more, in case you haven’t read the book. But think on these things, think about the paintings, and know that’s what Murdoch wanted you to do.

While in Paris this summer I was honored to visit the great painter Modigliani’s grave.  I stood before the flat tombstone and observed the ticket stubs, cigarette buds, and etc. that littered his stone.

I didn’t anticipate that over Thanksgiving weekend, while my family went to see that rare treat, a movie we all wanted to see, that there would be more for my eyes than the action sequences.

However, there is a missing Modigliani in the film — Women With A Fan.

But more on this later.  For now, let me say that I embarrassed to note that my first reaction was not concern for the character in the movie who was about to die, but that the painting might get blood on it.  Is this shallow?  Perhaps.

I am just grateful that the movie has returned once again to its art roots, as evidenced in the very first Bond film, Dr. No.  But in that movie it was a Goya painting that had gone missing nearly a year before the film was released.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Or is that “No.”

There are two styles of writing about art: looking at a painting and imagining a story based on it, and analyzing a painting and creating a story based on the artist’s process.

What do I mean by this, and what is the difference?  Okay, let’s look at a painting, The Old Guitarist by Picasso (image found at casasreverb.com):

One way of telling a story about this man would be to simply look at the painting and think, “Here’s an old guy with a guitar.  Hmm…I bet there’s a story in there somewhere.”  Then you start imagining what the man’s name is, and his family’s background.

But I prefer another approach.  I referenced this earlier by calling it “reading a painting.”  We can read a painting as surely as we read a book.  I should add that I am no expert, just someone who would eat art if allowed.  This is how I do it, anyway.

First, you stare at the painting.  Then you let it stare at you.  There is no room for the coy stuff here.  You open yourself to feel everything the artist means for you to feel and more.  If you are weak, forget about it.  You may even need to plant your feet wide apart.  (I have been known to faint in the presence of art.  No kidding.)

Then stare some more.  This only works if the painting calls to you.  I know it sounds over the top but I believe there is something about looking at a painting that reveals more than a little part of someone’s soul (both the observer’s and the artist’s). I know that I would likely have disliked many artists had I known them, but by seeing art rather than the artist, the man or woman does not get in the way.

Just as one does when reading a novel, one can read in many different ways.  I love color, and I will often trace the colors.  Obviously blue is an important color in this painting.  Starting at the top there is a strata of blues that seem to weigh on the character’s head which we quickly notice is cocked at an unnatural angle, suggesting perhaps that the character is dead.  That he looks like a saint adds to this thought.

The blue of the wall behind the guitarist is in a couple of wide bands of the same color that his gown is.  Everything is blue.  Of course blue immediately suggests sadness.  But it could also mean dusk.  Again, his age also suggests the setting of the sun of his life.

The man is folded in upon himself in a protective way.  He is in his own world and wants to stay there.  The cut of his clothing hints at poverty, but he is clueless of it since he is lost in his world of music. The guitar, a light brown to beige with a normally somber brown neck actually looks like a light source compared to the shadows of the blue.

Now, this is only one way to read the painting.  Of course I wouldn’t use what I just actually wrote in a piece of fiction based on the painting, but I would use what it has told me about the painting to build the story.

I would go further and study the brushstrokes, the shapes, the light source.  I would speculate on why there are both patches of blue and light on his forehead and legs and I would make much of it!  Picasso has told us more than enough to understand this man.  But had I not studied the painting, my story might have begun with this:

“The old man was cold, but on he played.”

AFTER studying the painting, I would be more likely to say something like:

“He didn’t much mind that he was dying, since he found his fingers played almost as well as they always had.  The closer he approached the place of blue the faster he played, as if redeeming something of his bloodstream.”

Getting INSIDE of the painting is vital to understanding it and allowing it to suggest a story.

If you haven’t read Tracy Chevalier’s novel “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” perhaps you have seen the eponymous film.  Or perhaps you have been residing under a large rock.  Well, here is our (because I want to see it too!) opportunity to see the painting that inspired them both.

Not much is known about the painting, other than that it was painted by Johannes Vermeer.  We don’t even know the year he painted it (circa 1665) and whether or not it was commissioned, though recent evidence seems to suggest it is meant to be a “tronie,” which is a Dutch term for a painting of a head not meant to be a portrait.  Intriguing.

The painting now gleams after the 1994 restoration work:

Photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring?vm=r

The restoration work indicated that the background was meant to be a deep green, but that the background darkened significantly over time.

The exhibit, “Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis,” features 35 important paintings by Dutch Golden Age masters including Vermeer, Rembrandt, Fans Hals and Jan Steen and will be stopping in the United States first at the de Young Museum in San Francisco from January 26 to June 2, 2013.  Then the paintings will next go to Atlanta’s High Museum of Art from June 22, 2013 through September 29, 2013.  From there it will make its last stop at The Frick Collection in New York City from October 13, 2013 to January 12, 2014.  After that they will make their way back to the newly renovated Mauritshuis in the Netherlands.

Other paintings in the collection include: Johannes Vermeer, “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” ca. 1665, Carel Fabritius, “Goldfinch,” 1654, Rembrandt van Rijn, “‘Tronie’ of a Man with a Feathered Beret,” ca. 1635, Jan Steen, “The Way You Hear It, Is The Way You Sing It,” ca. 1665, Jacob van Ruisdael, “View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds,” 1670–1675.

I don’t know about you, but I intend to move heaven and earth (or maybe it will just take moving my car) in order to see this exhibition!

Why couldn’t it have happened to me?  Well, at least it happened to someone so that ALL of us could benefit: a woman bought a box of stuff at a flea market, rooted around in it and noticed a framed painting that caught her eye.

Upon closer examination she realized it was signed “Renoir.”  Experts have said that yes, indeed, this woman who chooses to remain anonymous has found a painting believed to be lost: Renoir’s Paysage Bords De Seine, a scene painting along the Seine River — a river my husband and I walked along several Paris days and nights in July of this year.

Source: http://www.inquisitr.com/325124/woman-buys-possible-lost-renoir-painting-at-flea-market/

The painting, sold in France in 1925, was later sold to a Maryland collector, Herbert May.  But just how the painting got from Mr. May to a box of junk sold for under $50 in Virginia is unclear.

The painting will be auctioned September 29.

This is a case where a painted that wasn’t even known to be missing turned up, so maybe there is still hope for those paintings we are still looking for!

In any case, I think all of us will be taking a closer look at boxes of bargains at flea markets and garage sales near us.

Soon let’s do a blog soon where we “read,” a painting, shall we?  Perhaps we can revisit this one and as mentor of mine says, “See what there is to see.”

UPDATE: The auction did not happen.  Why not?  Because it was discovered that this painting was stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951.  Well, even though the painting will likely not net a financial boost for the “lucky” finder, it does return a piece of art to the world.  She can be proud to have been a part of the process.