A friend asked me to tell her about this painting. I suppose a blog is the appropriate place for it. It began with an inspiration from the "Triadisches Ballett," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87jErmplUpA which you can see on YouTube. I saw the original black and white film in Berlin in 1973, and I've never forgotten it. Oskar Schlemmer, the creator, was part of the Bauhaus movement. There's another reference in the painting to Olympia in Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffmann." Olympia is a robot, with whom Hoffmann falls in love. I love this Olympia by Kathleen Kim at the Metropolitan Opera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9emRjIMZsVk. I have taught the original literary texts by Hoffmann (German, although the opera is in French). A central theme has to do with "seeing" what is real and what is art and deception and both text and opera develop layers of themes around that. That's why in the YouTube video of the opera there's a moment with eyes everywhere. So yesterday I was thinking about her eyes, turned to T.S. Eliot and ran into the line about daffodil bulbs and eyes:
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
In short, it's an autobiographical piecemeal of snippets of my education.
Detail of the eyes:
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