Gilding Gelsey

The first and last time I saw Gelsey Kirkland on stage was at Northrop Auditorium on the campus of the University of Minnesota. It was a tradition, now broken, I believe, for the Metropolitan Opera and the American Ballet Theater to take summer tours to a few locations around the country. On this particular occasion, Louise and I bought tickets for Swan Lake, with Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov as principal dancers. I had heard of Baryshnikov but not a whisper about Kirkland. I won't recite her long career and successes here. You can look them up yourself online. What I do want to say is that I fell madly in love with her. I had never seen such a supernatural creature dance. She could leap all the way to the sky and then float back to the stage. It was as if she was defying gravity. It was nothing short of miraculous. When the two dancers finished the ballet, with its dramatic finale, I was in tears. Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov were my heroes. 

This is all by way of introduction to my newest attempt at art. Louise and I have seen Klimt's painting, Adele in both Vienna and New York, where it now resides. It's a stunning piece, and I began thinking about gold leaf, and have since watched several videos on the art of applying gold leaf to a painting or to an object. My first attempt tonight was to create Gelsey Kirkland in gold leaf in the style of a Giacometti sculpture. My reason: it's a whole lot easier than doing a more finished piece. 

Now that's a lot of blather, but the background may make more sense to you now. 

Femme avec le Chapeau

If I didn't love to paint so much, I think it might drive me insane. I bit of a curve here, a smidgen of color there, a change of costume all over. And after about three weeks, out comes the woman with the hat, Femme avec le Chateau. Is she any good? I don't know. I just know she's finished, that I have poured everything I have into her. And now, like a bird leaving the nest, she sails into the sunset to make her way wherever.

On the subject of art and morality

I just ran across this piece while looking for new materials on Picasso. I find it sobering, profound, and quite possibly true.

Thoughts on Painting "The Sigh"

In an ensuing conversation on Louise's post on Klimt's painting, "Adele," Jeffrey Baldwin-Bott wrote, "The Scream has already been painted, but I think you should ask Tom to take a shot at painting The Sigh. I'm sighing right now too, and it feels borderline expressionist."

Well, Jeffrey, I take all such suggestions seriously. I'm always at a loss for new subject matter, especially subjects that offer interesting visuals, so I went right to work. I first Googled "The Sigh paintings," and came up with numerous sites on "sign painting." Eventually I came upon an article from Psychology Today titled "Why Do We Sigh?" The author reported on Scandinavian studies, where I can only imagine those long winters give rise to a lot of sighing. He concludes, "Depending on who's sighing--and in what context it can be perceived differently by others." Using the author's prompts I came up with a list of times when one might sigh:
Resignation, as in old age (this one hits right close to home for me)
Frustration
Discontentment
Wishful thinking
"What if" or "if only" thinking
Sadness
Failed romance
Passivity
Surrender

But then I stumbled on a particular cartoon character who is adept at sighing. Do you know who it is? Cover your eyes for a moment before reading on.

Yes. It's Charlie Brown. Charles Schultz was merciless with poor Charlie Brown, the perpetually plagued passive victim. Here are some moments of Charlie Brown's sighs:

It's one thing, however, to capture Charlie Brown in moments of sighing, and it's another thing to come up with a painting that depicts sighing and that has any interesting visuals. Not impossible. But challenging. So my mind spins on.

But I do have one idea, Jeffrey Baldwin-Bott. Why don't YOU have someone in your household take a picture of YOU sighing, and I'll paint YOUR portrait and call it "The Sigh"? How about that? All if favor?   

La Danseuse

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:

The Cafe Central in Vienna

One of my favorite restaurants in Vienna is the Cafe Central. In the late 19th Century, it was the meeting place for intellectuals and writers. I cannot say that it fell into disarray in the mid-to-late 20th century, but it needed a facelift. And it got one. It is now a place where people, tourists and natives alike, dine to savor the old empire. The decor is premier Viennese, the menu offers the best of Austrian light deli foods and pastries. A picture may help a bit:

I tried to capture a feeling for cafe patrons in my portrait of this woman in the Cafe Central. The diners reflect nothing of our fast food clientele. Of course America has elegant restaurants. But it's harder to find elegant restaurants in America with the same diners one sees in Europe. 

Sometimes you wake up and look in the mirror . . .

...and you think, WHOAAAA.