Petruschki's Journey Into The Blue - Chapter 10 - The Next Nine
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Suzanne Valadon, La Chambre bleue, 1923
So today I will talk about what you will see and read in the next chapters.
Two chapters, I not jet know when they will come out. Its my journey with Jango Edwards, the great wonderful clown and teacher, his wife the great female clown Cristi Garbo and Claudia Cantone, also a wonderful teacher and female clown and the Nouveau Clown Institute. Thie is important to me and should become an entire blog post. I'm still hesitant, but maybe there will soon be a glimpse of Petruschki in the clown family.
I also would like to talk about the Jarman Arwards, the award to British filmmakers that has existed since 2008. There I discovered extraordinarily exciting things, I never heard of before. After all, Derek Jarman led me to this journey.
So soon the two chapters will somehow jump in between the rest.
Now to the 11th chapter of this blog.
Hartung and the Beatles
How might that be related ... Above all, it's about the painter Nicolas de Staël
Nicolas de Stael - Fleurs dans un Vase Bleu (1953) by Cea. is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Chapter 12 - Should have been a little interlude in Paris on this trip, but now there are already so many intermezzi and side tracks, the trip is no longer stringent at all and happily bounces back and forth, so that it can be its own chapter.
Chapter 12
Interlude. On the way to El Greco
The golden afternoon in Paris continues. From Hans Hartung in the Palais de Tokyo we walk to the Greco exhibition in the Grand Palais, strolling, amazed. A few times we cross the glistening, winding, shimmering river, the Seine.
Green blue mother-of-pearl, fish restaurant
A fish restaurant we didn't eat at. But it looked nice on this winter afternoon in Paris. Green, mother-of-pearl, blue and gold. From the giant Dôme des Invalides we passed a tiny snack bar on Rue Fabert. We were the only guests and the old man spoke with a lot of wit about himself and his shop, which had been around for decades. When Paris was different. We ate in the midst of countless photos of film actors from the 1950s and 60s. The old man himself had a furrowed and impressive film face.
Chapter 13
El Greco Crackling colors and the celebration of the vertical
Penitent Maria Magdalen 1584 Detail
Than we arrived at the Greco exhibition in the Grand Palais. Outside stood the paddy wagons with blue lights. Apart from the impending strike, there was a super event from Chanel with a lot of cameras. Crazy and surreal how these people in their evening gowns strolled between the police cars.
Gates were set up to guide all the people who wanted to see the exhibition. That day there weren't that many, we lost ourselves in the gates like stray sheep. Perhaps some of the visitors hadn't even gotten to Paris and the next day there were no subways and no trains and the airports were on strike.
It was wonderful, woundrous, wonderbar to see Greco's paintings. Even if the exhibition space was very small and the paintings where hung very close together . We started to float slightly. Up, up.
Chapter 14
El Greco The long limbs dance in light and shadow
El Greco The Opening of the Fifth Seal (or The Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse or The Vision of Saint John), until he beginning of the 20th century: Amor divino y amor profano, - divine and profane love.
We continue with El Greco - you can only say it's madness. What a swirling movement, how dynamic, how much momentum and incredible colors. He, too, was forgotten with his own unique style that had never existed before. And for a long time there shouldn't be anything comparable. For centuries. When a museum bought a picture of him in the early 20th century, those responsible were declared insane. Eventually the Expressionists rediscovered him. I will talk about that in the two Greco chapters.
Chapter 15
Plautilla Nelli - Pray for the paintress
Plautilla Nelli, The last supper 1560
She was not part of this trip, but through this trip I learned of her when I was researching contemporaries of El Greco. Plautilla Nelli is considered to be the first female Renaissance painter. Here we see a detail from The Last Supper from 1560. This picture is 7 meters long and two meters high. It's breathtaking. We already have seen it with Artemisia Gentileschi and even Hilma af Klint that large formats were downright disreputable for women. For a long time this painting lay rolled up and forgotten in the warehouses of monasteries, until a flood damaged it and washed it back into the light. Plautilla Nelli was forgotten for centuries.
Chapter 16
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec “You have to be able to endure yourself”
Henri de Toulouse -Lautrec
“To think that I would never have painted if only my legs were a little longer…” said the small and very young man. For a long time I saw Toulouse-Lautrec somehow between cute and old. But he was a very young person who led a wild life and fought for his art. Atonement, great artist. I always found what he painted beautiful, the view of the people, the loneliness that he showed in the tumbling goings-on. I just wasn't aware of the depth and extent of his art.
Chapter 17
Suzanne Valadon The Lover of Live
Suzanne Valadon self portrait
She wanted to become a trapeze artist, she had worked as a waitress, a market woman and also as a model for many painters in Paris at the end of the 19th century. Suzanne Valadon started painting herself and created a great work. Among them were nudes that went far beyond what was painted at the time, especially as a woman. "... When I set up my canvases I invent the shapes, but nature is the yardstick by which I measure the veracity of my paintings, always stimulated by my affection for life itself." (Suzanne Valadon)
Chapter 18
Paris - Roaming around on the day of the general strike
Paris general strike 2019
The beautiful blue was gone, but the gray sky also had its charms. There are impressions from Paris and from the general strike in December 2019. Even with original sound. You will hear people on a bus sing a fighting song.
Chapter 19
Félix Fénéon artist collector anarchist
Signac Félix Fénéon
What we couldn't see on the trip: Félix Fénéon - Les temps nouveaux. Paul Signac portrays Félix Fénéon as a magician. And indeed, he conjured up a lot. What an amazing personality. This painting was also the cover picture of the exhibition: Félix Fénéon - Les temps nouveaux in the Musée de l´Orangerie. We couldn't see it because of the strike. But I would like to tell you about his story and what he has achieved. He worked in the War Department and he was an anarchist, he might even set off a bomb. He was a publisher and he brought out Joyce and he discovered writers and published them. He was a man of letters and a journalist. He built up an important collection of African art. And was involved in anti-colonialism early on. Did I forget something? He promoted the neo-impressionist group of artists. And there is a lot more in the chapter about him.
And then it will go on, with Bacon, Van Dyck, Sofonisba Anguissola, Werefkin and many others.
But first you read in the next chapter about Hartung and the Beatles.
