poetics of life.
venus went on walkabout today. she traveled between us and the sun -- a cosmic tour she hasn't taken since 1882, and the stress and strain will be so taxing she'll need a 100 year nap before she does it again -- just like sleeping beauty. to us, she's a mere chocolate chip in the sky, a mole on the cheek of the sun. to watch her on her heavenly hajj would mean a certain forfeit of vision. too much light, too much to know, too much left unobscured always comes at a price.
she sent herself packing this afternoon, on a celestial transit. i took my own transit -- muni 33 to 33rd avenue and geary, then the 18 to the legion of honor, to see the cult of beauty before it evaporates on the 17th of this month. aside from giving birth to a cupid or surfing a clamshell of cartoonish proportions to the shores of ocean beach for a dramatic, aphroditic rebirth...how better to evoke the moods of venus than to observe acrylic depictions of beauty in an urban palace-- laced with french words and rodin's thinker at the gates -- high on the cliffs of a foaming sea, with pearls of the aesthetic movement breifly tucked inside?
the cult of beauty began with getting lost. i found men in bushy black wigs looking annoyed, plenty of plucked chickenish baby jesuses in the arms of crusty-giving diabolical marys, grandfather clocks with melted pendulums, and dead pheasants stuffed in ratty baskets surrounded by fruit and feral children.
lunch was calling.
lunch was a salad called dame edna. the man who sold it to me looked like an escapee from the ice cream shop in disneyland -- red and white checkered shirt with a red and white-striped aprion. i sat in the garden, in speckled light, where the bellows of a wild 4-year-old had to traverse afar in order to reach my sensibilities.
dame edna came 15 minutes after i ordered her, my number was 22. it usually is.
after dame edna was banished from sight, i watched an older chinese man watch me, an older, school bus-driver looking woman take pictures of the sky and knit a lapis-blue pot holder. i heard two women lament the wind, the cold.
the cult of beauty was like a souffle left to cool in the kitchen -- waiting, melting, imploding with every passing second.
as i passed between silent onlookers, main-attraction hoggers, vapid old ladies with dandelion bouffants and hyperactive yorkies, i decided only to look at what seemed relevant to me in that very moment. to be thorough, i read the introductory plaque at the entrance -- i was about to enter the world of the "aesthetes" -- painters, artists + provocateurs who gasp -- made art for art's sake. apparently, this was a rather shocking and french thing to be doing in victorian england. fortunately, not everyone lived in england at the time, so the shirts came off, the ladies reclined, and fleshly apples were replaced with fleshly flesh. most human depictions were clearly of the female persuasion -- though many were neutrally gendered and unconcerned about it. clothes were loose -- one esther had turned her mustardly overcoat inside out and began ripping the pearls from her hair -- in preparation to reveal her true roots to the man in charge. evidentally, the chinese exported to persia in the days of xerxes, and esther had her hands on hottest haute couture from the orient.
pavonia -- peacocks -- abounded..eth. one designer, whistler, was commissioned by a shipping baron to create a display room in said shipping baron's house where he could display his baronly blue and gold crockery for all to see. whistler made the room one big indigo ode to the peacock. the baron did not approve. whistler needed this deal to go well because he was on financial rocks and when the baron decided he wouldn't pay him for his peacockery, whistler painted a parody of the baron dressed as a peacock, pounding on a piano, and sitting on a miniature version of the house that whistler sullied, without compensation. the title of the sheet music reads "the gold scab: eruptions in filthy lucre" as a welcoming banner to the creditors who then seized whistler's property and possessions when he lost his battle with the baron and plunged into insolvency.
it's the pieces that i remember now, hours later, still searching for the beauty mark on the face of the sun -- tempted to run next door to the old folks' home to borrow a pair of solar shields.
i remember one life-sized painting of a fat-bottomed woman -- a gypsy, i'd imagine -- running up two steps and into a starry night -- pausing to glance over her shoulder at whomever was chasing her to recover their filthy lucre. i couldn't find any title or placards to go with her, so she is just the gypsy under the stars, escaping the shelter of an indoor life for the chance of survival on the outside.
i also remember leighton's bath of psyche -- a woman who would be called fat in 2012 was the subject of dangerous beauty, conjured from greek mythology and placed in a long, rectangular frame. she was plump as a grape, sensuous as a sun-warmed peach, good enough to bite even in two dimensions. she was wrapped in a purple satin sheet, standing near a pool...as myth would have it, she was so nerve-fryingly beautiful, she often deterred would-be suitors with her looks alone...the original and accidental aesthete.
and of course, the essential "midsummer". two ladies fanning one special lady dozing in a chair -- a throne it seems -- draped in monk orange robes. marigolds are strung across her chair -- like an indian bride -- suggesting feigned napping in order to evade arranged nuptials. the two fanning ladies seem mildly perplexed, should we wake her up? oh it's too hot...let her sleep."
paintings, garden chairs, tea pots, japonisme -- remnants from an era that sought to "evoke a mood" and "prompt vague associations" ...no more strict and lucid narratives adhering to a plot or plan...just prettiness on a page that unnerved a public set adrift from traditional signposts of content.
venus went on walkabout today. she traveled between us and the sun -- a cosmic tour she hasn't taken since 1882, and the stress and strain will be so taxing she'll need a 100 year nap before she does it again -- just like sleeping beauty. to us, she's a mere chocolate chip in the sky, a mole on the cheek of the sun. to watch her on her heavenly hajj would mean a certain forfeit of vision. too much light, too much to know, too much left unobscured always comes at a price.
she sent herself packing this afternoon, on a celestial transit. i took my own transit -- muni 33 to 33rd avenue and geary, then the 18 to the legion of honor, to see the cult of beauty before it evaporates on the 17th of this month. aside from giving birth to a cupid or surfing a clamshell of cartoonish proportions to the shores of ocean beach for a dramatic, aphroditic rebirth...how better to evoke the moods of venus than to observe acrylic depictions of beauty in an urban palace-- laced with french words and rodin's thinker at the gates -- high on the cliffs of a foaming sea, with pearls of the aesthetic movement breifly tucked inside?
the cult of beauty began with getting lost. i found men in bushy black wigs looking annoyed, plenty of plucked chickenish baby jesuses in the arms of crusty-giving diabolical marys, grandfather clocks with melted pendulums, and dead pheasants stuffed in ratty baskets surrounded by fruit and feral children.
lunch was calling.
lunch was a salad called dame edna. the man who sold it to me looked like an escapee from the ice cream shop in disneyland -- red and white checkered shirt with a red and white-striped aprion. i sat in the garden, in speckled light, where the bellows of a wild 4-year-old had to traverse afar in order to reach my sensibilities.
dame edna came 15 minutes after i ordered her, my number was 22. it usually is.
after dame edna was banished from sight, i watched an older chinese man watch me, an older, school bus-driver looking woman take pictures of the sky and knit a lapis-blue pot holder. i heard two women lament the wind, the cold.
the cult of beauty was like a souffle left to cool in the kitchen -- waiting, melting, imploding with every passing second.
as i passed between silent onlookers, main-attraction hoggers, vapid old ladies with dandelion bouffants and hyperactive yorkies, i decided only to look at what seemed relevant to me in that very moment. to be thorough, i read the introductory plaque at the entrance -- i was about to enter the world of the "aesthetes" -- painters, artists + provocateurs who gasp -- made art for art's sake. apparently, this was a rather shocking and french thing to be doing in victorian england. fortunately, not everyone lived in england at the time, so the shirts came off, the ladies reclined, and fleshly apples were replaced with fleshly flesh. most human depictions were clearly of the female persuasion -- though many were neutrally gendered and unconcerned about it. clothes were loose -- one esther had turned her mustardly overcoat inside out and began ripping the pearls from her hair -- in preparation to reveal her true roots to the man in charge. evidentally, the chinese exported to persia in the days of xerxes, and esther had her hands on hottest haute couture from the orient.
pavonia -- peacocks -- abounded..eth. one designer, whistler, was commissioned by a shipping baron to create a display room in said shipping baron's house where he could display his baronly blue and gold crockery for all to see. whistler made the room one big indigo ode to the peacock. the baron did not approve. whistler needed this deal to go well because he was on financial rocks and when the baron decided he wouldn't pay him for his peacockery, whistler painted a parody of the baron dressed as a peacock, pounding on a piano, and sitting on a miniature version of the house that whistler sullied, without compensation. the title of the sheet music reads "the gold scab: eruptions in filthy lucre" as a welcoming banner to the creditors who then seized whistler's property and possessions when he lost his battle with the baron and plunged into insolvency.
it's the pieces that i remember now, hours later, still searching for the beauty mark on the face of the sun -- tempted to run next door to the old folks' home to borrow a pair of solar shields.
i remember one life-sized painting of a fat-bottomed woman -- a gypsy, i'd imagine -- running up two steps and into a starry night -- pausing to glance over her shoulder at whomever was chasing her to recover their filthy lucre. i couldn't find any title or placards to go with her, so she is just the gypsy under the stars, escaping the shelter of an indoor life for the chance of survival on the outside.
i also remember leighton's bath of psyche -- a woman who would be called fat in 2012 was the subject of dangerous beauty, conjured from greek mythology and placed in a long, rectangular frame. she was plump as a grape, sensuous as a sun-warmed peach, good enough to bite even in two dimensions. she was wrapped in a purple satin sheet, standing near a pool...as myth would have it, she was so nerve-fryingly beautiful, she often deterred would-be suitors with her looks alone...the original and accidental aesthete.
and of course, the essential "midsummer". two ladies fanning one special lady dozing in a chair -- a throne it seems -- draped in monk orange robes. marigolds are strung across her chair -- like an indian bride -- suggesting feigned napping in order to evade arranged nuptials. the two fanning ladies seem mildly perplexed, should we wake her up? oh it's too hot...let her sleep."
paintings, garden chairs, tea pots, japonisme -- remnants from an era that sought to "evoke a mood" and "prompt vague associations" ...no more strict and lucid narratives adhering to a plot or plan...just prettiness on a page that unnerved a public set adrift from traditional signposts of content.
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