Art – Western Marches

(This post is part of a much longer one on Dark Romanticism that I will finish ONE OF THESE DAYS.)

Wojciech Has’ Saragossa Manuscript (1965) is easily on my top ten all-time favorite movies.

Jerry Garcia instigated the restoration of the movie through the Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley. It took them two years to find a complete copy, and Jerry died just a few days before they could inspect it. Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola took up the project, funded it, and saw it through to completion, dedicating the restoration to Garcia.

The movie is a collection of vignettes that loop back on themselves and involve all manner of supernatural, demonic, erotic, Surrealism. The manuscript tells the ostensible life-story of the grandfather of a man seen only briefly at the beginning. By the end of the movie, the final loop-back drives the protagonist (his grandfather?) mad; on the other hand, maybe it just sets in motion the next loop. (This ending was created by Has who has taken Potocki’s book and turned it into a modern, Surrealist masterpiece.)

In Alan Trist’s (head of Ice Nine Publishing, the Greatful Dead’s publishing arm) memoir on Jerry Garica and The Saragossa Manuscript, he notes that Garcia spoke throughout his life of the The Saragossa Manuscript as a favorite movie, and influence.

Scenes like where the guy keeps moving his bed around so that death cannot stand at the foot of it, and dialog like:
– “Captain, the enemy is surrounding us. What shall I do? Close the door fool, it’s drafty. Can’t you see I’m admiring these drawings?” and;
– “Woe to him in his pernicious obduracy refuses to confess his sins …” and;
– “I understand your mind is rebelling against improbable phenomena …”

“Jerry couldn’t get enough of such a take on life. It held some pivotal meaning for him, perhaps its tone and attitude in the face of the dramatic absurdities of life. […] as a work of art its [the movie] texture and structure informed him in ways recognizable in his music. The movement of the film is like the mellifulent line of his guitar playing, always seeking the opening of new doors. Certain modes of Krzysztoí Penderecki’s [musical score] in the most dreamlike visual sequences are identical in feeling and arrangement with the musical “space” to which Jerry always returned with the Grateful Dead.”

(Adapted from DVD liner notes of the Cowboy Pictures release of The Saragossa Manuscript.)

There are fairly extensive liner notes in this release of the DVD that attempt to unravel the story. I do not suggest reading them first – just immerse yourself in the movie and enjoy its surrealistic impact. Then ,if you are so motivated, go back to the plot deconstruction in the liner notes.

By the way, from Martin Scorese’s point of view, this film is part of his ” masterpieces of Polish cinema” project. (See http://www.mspresents.com/ and http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/16/martin-scorsese-passion-polish-cinema )

Jan Potocki was an 18th c. Polish count, polymath, and adventurer, and dark romantic (he made a silver bullet from melted down household items, had it blessed by a priest and then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head using the bullet). Potocki ‘s book Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie (The manuscript found in Srargossa) is the basis of movie The Saragossa Manuscript, a dark romantic, Surrealist movie by the Polish director Wojciech. This movie has influenced Luis Buñuel, Jerry Garcia, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Neil Gaiman.

As the movie opens, there is a war in progress and an officer of one side enters a building to capture an officer of the other side. However, the two become so interested in a old book that is in the building that they forget the war and start going through the book.

His grandfather, a Captain, is on some sort of a quest.

At that time the mentioned area was populated with robbers and gypsies, of whom it was said would eat the corpses of killed wanderers.

Here the movie jumps into the scene in the book …. (The story is told from the point-of-view of his grandfather as a young officer.)

Their destination is an Inn that shows up several times in the loops of the story.

But he is not really prepared for the worst ….

Toward the end of the movie, after a mysterious dinner where the Captain is fed a potion, he sees his double leaving with the two foreign (Islamic / Moorish) beauties that he has met several times (and had an orgy with) in earlier “loops” in the story.

At the end of the movie, he is again / still / for the (altered) first time trying to make the mountain crossing … This time armed with the manuscript thinking that he can make sense of what is going on …

They make it to the Inn that was their original destination ….. where he learns that “two foreign ladies … would like to invite you for supper”

As he confirms his worst nightmare – they are the same women – …..

madness creeps into his eyes…

And he succumbs with maniacal laughter ….

Throwing the book away he rides off madly toward the same gallows seen at the beginning.

Florence, June 21, 2015

Greetings from Florence! (Lunch)

My primary reason for visiting Florence was to see the ‘Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World’ which I learned about in a typically excellent Financial Times review:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/972e0b8e-dd19-11e4-975c-00144feab7de.html

This exhibition is a joint project of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angles, Foundazione Palazzo Strazzi, Florence, and the National Galley of Art, Washington, DC in collaoration with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana.

“Is it possible that the apotheosis of Western sculpture was achieved over 2,000 years ago and it’s been all downhill since then? A new blockbuster exhibit, ‘Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World,’ strongly buttresses this view.”
(WSJ – http://www.wsj.com/article_email/blockbuster-power-and-pathos-exhibit-to-open-in-florence-1426093935-lMyQjAxMTE1NjI4MzkyMzM2Wj )

Well, no, and I will comment more below about comparing Hellenistic sculpture with, e.g., Rodin, below.

Here are some of my favorites from the exhibition.

Power

The classical, ideal Greek male body: the athlete. (Larger than life size.)

Another athlete (fragments of a discus thrower).
(Life size.)

Pathos

A weary Herckles. (1/4 life size.)

By “pathos” they frequently mean “the weight of life” as reflected in the furloughs and lines on the face.

Portraiture

They also do portraiture.

An aristocratic boy.

(Though most photos of these statues are face-on, many of these – especially this one – look even more life-like in profile or 3/4 view. That was definitely the case for this one. (I could not sneak a photo because the were photo cops in every room of the exhibition. I had aleady been caught taking the discus thrower photo, and was afraid they would throw me out if they caught me again. )

BTW, this exhibit will be at the Getty in a few months and I will try and organize an expedition to see it.

Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon, Gianfranco Adornato

The exhibition catalogue contains a number of essays, one of which talks about the ways in which Hellenistic art explored “explored new iconographic themes and sculptural models in a manner that was not different from what was happening in other fields, such as literature, in which the poetic canons underwent alterations, changes, and inversions. Hellenistic works of art explore and expand a thematic repertoire that was completely foreign to the mentality of the citizen of the Classical polis. We see terror in the gaze of Marsyas (fig.) modest and intimate poses in a crouching Aphrodite, erotic abandon in the position of a sleeping Faun, bitter smiles on the faces of toothless old men, affectionate gestures directed towards plump children like an Eros fast asleep on a rock (cat. 20), skeletal and deformed bodies of the diseased and of dwarfs (fig.). These are portraits that faithfully reproduce facial features playing upon the emotional and psychological feeling of involvement and integration the work of art can arouse in the observer. (“Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato)

Emaciated man, early Imperial Roman copy of a Hellenistic statue, c. second century BC. Bronze, h 11.5 cm. Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection, inv. no. 47.22. (From "Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World" by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, "Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon" by Gianfranco Adornato.) — Emaciated man, early Imperial Roman copy of a Hellenistic statue, c. second century BC. Bronze, h 11.5 cm. Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection, inv. no. 47.22. (From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, “Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato.)

Hanging Marsyas, detail of the face, Imperial Roman copy of a late Hellenistic sculptural group; from the Auditorium of Maecenas, mid-second century AD. Marble, h 266 cm. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. no. 1077. (From "Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World" by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, "Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon" by Gianfranco Adornato.) — Hanging Marsyas, detail of the face, Imperial Roman copy of a late Hellenistic sculptural group; from the Auditorium of Maecenas, mid-second century AD. Marble, h 266 cm. Rome, Musei Capitolini, inv. no. 1077. (From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, “Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato.)

Boxing dwarf, second century BC or early Imperial Roman bronze. h 11.1 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. RES.08.32k. (From "Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World" by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, "Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon" by Gianfranco Adornato.) — Boxing dwarf, second century BC or early Imperial Roman bronze.
h 11.1 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. RES.08.32k.
(From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue, “Aletheia / Veritas: The New Canon” by Gianfranco Adornato.)

Comparison

Looking at Rodin as a modern counterpoint, his focus was less on the idealized stereotypes/idealizations of the Hellenistic sculptures and more on capturing the Gestault / psychological essence of the situation:

The Kiss

The (condemned) Burghers of Calais (coming out to meet their fate and deliver the keys of the City to the British.)

However, Rodin was fully capable of the highly realistic sculpture of the ideal form, as in the Age of Bronze.

When the “Age of Bronze” was first exhibited in Paris, the “establishment” artists accused him of taking a plaster mold of the young man and casting it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rodin’s model was a mature, 22 yr old Belgian soldier. The artistic result was a perfect/idealized 17 year old boy.

(One does wonder if Rodin ever saw “Terme Ruler” in Rome:)

Terme Ruler. Statue of a Macedonian Prince, from the Quirinal, Rome, third-second century BC. Bronze, h 222 cm. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. no. 1049. (From "Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World" by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalogue.) — Terme Ruler. Statue of a Macedonian Prince, from the Quirinal, Rome, third-second century BC. Bronze, h 222 cm. Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. no. 1049.
(From “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” by Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Exhibition catalog.)

RA’s Bronze

Several of the works in Power and Pathos also appeared in the Royal Academy’s monumental exhibition “Bronze,” that I will talk about in another post. This was an exhibition that was unique in its scale and scope, and it will probably never be repeated. (The estimated value of the art on display was $1 to $2 billion and no one would insure it. The British Government agreed to indemnify the exhibition, but the major lenders did not really believe this. In the end that pulled it off and the result was astounding.)