School Of Fish

"Hawking, hunting, and heraldry" do not a bestseller make these days, but in the late 15th century when the printing press was the new thing, The Book of St. Albans was wildly popular. Dame Juliana Berners (there are several variants of her name and no reliable dates for her life) is said to have written the section on hunting, if not the entire volume. Treatise on Fishing (1496) is also credited to the pen of this shadowy woman, believed to have been well-born and a Prioress or, as some men have speculated, not to have existed at all.

These days, The Book of St. Albans is remembered for containing the first printed collection of "terms of venery", or collective nouns. Ever since then, making up collective nouns has been a favorite game of words, spawning most recently James Lipton's 1968 bestseller An Exaltation of Larks. A glint of goldfish, a scuttle of crabs, a school of fish (term number 132 in the Book of St. Albans), you get the idea.

We are fascinated by our fellow vertebrates floating effortlessly in their watery environment; perhaps we did so once as well. Fish have sustained us as nourishment, a task they did not volunteer for, but they have also nourished our imaginations. The images here span at least a thousand years, yet they share a wonderment at the aquatic life, an implicit belief that a fish is a marvelous creature. Christians know the parable of the loaves and the fishes, and in Japanese lore the goldfish (koi) symbolizes perseverance in the face of adversity. That may help to explain why we want to imagine ourselves into the picture, whether it be Edward Weston's 1917 photograph of Yvonne Verlaine, titled The Goldfish, or the 1920s Life magazine cover that captures a mermaid in conversation with fish.

From faithful representation and decoration to the surrealism of Max Ernst and the "thought in things" of contemporary artist Kiff Slemmons, there is a fish to feed every (aesthetic) hunger.

1. Life magazine, cover, 1920s. 2. Japanese Carp, 18th century, Musee Guimet, Paris. 3. Chinese silk fragment with goldfish, Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Musee Guimet, Paris. 4. Maghreb Fish tile, Musee de Quai Branly, Paris. 5. South Korea, Carp Jumping out of the Water, Yi Ou Choson Dynasty (1392-1910) , Musee Guimet, Paris. 6. Ernest Chaplet, Vase with Fish Jumping, c. 1883-1885, Musee D'Orsay, Paris. 7. Koloman Moser, Fish Marbled Paper, c.1904, Leopold Museum Archive, Munich. 8. H. Verstijnen, Design for Fish Cup, Ceramics Museum, Netherlands. 9. Edward Weston, The Goldfish, 1917, Getty Archive, Los Angeles. 10. Hans Reichel, Violet Fish, 1925, Pompidou Center, Paris. 11. James McConnell Anderson (1907-1998) , Fish, Shearwater Pottery, Mississippi. 12. Gabriel Argy-Rousseau, Angel Fish, 1925, Christie's Ltd., NYC. 13. Max Ernst, Les Poissons Noctambules, 1972, Pompidou center, Paris. 14. Kiff Slemmons, Fish Dream brooch, 1993, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The Curious Frog

There he is, the little frog scrambling to peer over the edge, like the bear who went over the mountain to see what he could see. He has his special place here, an example of Colette's invitation: "Regarde!"

"serene and still

the mountain viewing
frog"
So wrote Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), Japanese poet who wrung from a life filled with struggle and sorrow poems full of wisdom and joy.


Image: Kato Shun'u - Tea ceremony stand, Seto Ware, Edo period, Freer Gallery, Washington, DC.

Lazy Afternoon

"It's a lazy afternoon/ And the beetle bugs are zooming/ And the tulip trees are blooming/ And there's not another human in view,/ But us two./ It's a lazy afternoon/ And the farmer leaves his reaping/ And the meadow cows are sleeping/ And the speckled trouts stop leaping up stream/ As we dream./ A far pink cloud hangs over the hill/ Unfolding like a rose/ If you hold my hand and sit real still,/ You can hear the grass as it grows./ It's a hazy afternoon/ And I know a place that's quiet,/ except for daisies running riot/ And there's no one passing by it/ to see/ Come spend this lazy afternoon with me." - John Latouche (?1914-1956?)

Lyricist John Latouche worked with Vernon Duke and George Balanchine on the first all-black Broadway musical, the 1940 production of Cabin In The Sky. In 1954 he collaborated with Jerome Moross on the musical The Golden Apples that included the song Lazy Afternoon. Latouche wrote the libretto for Douglas Moore's 1956 opera The Ballad of Baby Doe.

Image credits:

1. Albert Marquet - Island of the Swans, 1919, Pompidou Center, Paris.

2. Aristide Maillol - By the Seine, Museum of Fine Arts, Valenciennes, France.

Cappiello's Caricatures

Remembered today for his poster art, so strikingly modern when compared to the work of the late 19th century master Jules Cheret, Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942) began his career as a caricaturist for Le Rire, and other Parisian magazines, in 1896. Born in Livorno, Italy, Cappiello moved to Paris where he made the acquaintance of Le tout Paris, at least the artsy bohemian part that became his best subject.Comparing the young bride and fledgling author, Mme Colette Willy, with that of her brilliant, wily older husband, the writer and rake, Henry Gauthier Villars ("Willy"), it is easy to see where Cappiello's sympathies lay. Whether Cappiello knew that Willy took credit for his wife's literary output before the rest of the world found out, I don't know, but his snake-like, pinched M. Willy was not intended to evoke admiration.
Willy made his name as a music critic and musicians and music-hall performers were also a staple of the Cappiello gallery. The Giacomo Puccini seated at the piano was in the midst of a creative outburst any composer woudl envy - the debuts of La Boheme (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madame Butterfly (1904).Another well known couple who attracted Cappiello's attention included the young Colette's close friend, Margeurite Moreno (1871-1948) . Moreno's long career theater and film was just beginning at the turn of the century when her performances charmed audiences at the Comedie Francaise.
Moreno was the mistress of Catulle Mendes (1841-1909), best described by the old-fashioned term "man of letters." At the same time, Mendes was married to Judith Gauthier, daughter of the writer Theophile Gauthier (Mademoiselle de Maupin - 1835). Presumably, Moreno tired of the nondevelopmental state of their relationship, as she married another writer, Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) in London in 1900. Schwob died in 1905 from the effects of syphilis. Mendes also came to a melancholy end - his body was discovered one morning in the train tunnel near Saint Germain. Investigators guessed that Mendes mistakenly stepped off the train into thin air, believing he was at the station.

For all its inventiveness, Cappiello's later works cannot match his caricatures for their sense of verissimo.

Images from the collection of the Louvre Museum, Paris.

Alice Munro

"Meaning is what you're after, resonance, some strange beauty" - Alice Munro speaking at Trinity College, Dublin, on 25 June 2009 as she accepted the International Man Booker Prize.

How to write about Alice Munro, one of the greatest living writers and one of the greatest of all short story writers? A writer who can be compared to Anton Chekhov without exaggerating (Cynthia Ozick did it), Munro adds lustre to any prize she receives and stature to her chosen metier by practicing it.

I have often thought of Alice Munro together with Joyce Carol Oates, a fellow nominee for this year's Prize. Munro was born in southwestern Ontario (1931), and Oates was born in western New York State (1938), only a few hundred miles and a few years apart. In one respect they embody the stereotypes of their respective nations: Munro writes with measured understatement while Oates employs a heightened sense of drama. Between them they have created a panoramic witness to almost a half century. Their work shares a movement out from the self to explore the world. Today, I wish I could remember which philosopher said that some people look out at the world and can see only reflections of themselves, while others look into themselves and find the world.

Alice Munro's new book of stories, Too Much Happiness, will be published in the fall of 2009.

Images are woodblock prints by Walter J. Phillips, Canadian artist, from the website http://www.sharecom.ca/phillips.

At The Shore

"No sweetie, we don't go to the beach. We're from New Jersey - we go to the shore." - Christopher Weyant, caption for a cartoon from The New Yorker 18 August 2003.

So the father explains to his little girl who listens wide-eyed, sand pail and shovel in hand, as the two stand on the beach. And so it has been since the mid 19th century as millions have flocked to seaside resorts each summer. For anyone lucky enough to grow up near an ocean, sand, salt, and a guide to the ebb and flow of the tides are the necessary accouterments of a real beach.
My mother's bright red beach bag spent the summer at the ready in the truck of the car, striped beach blanket, sunglasses, lotions, inflatable beach ball, and paperback books neatly packed. All that we needed to go was our bathing suits and the large thermos to be filled with lemonade, topped by three nesting cups - "Mama cup, Daddy cup, and Baby cup."
Just look at Winslow Homer's Eagle Head and imagine the sound of the waves. You can hear them and the gulls and smell the salt before you reach the shore. No view is quite so thrilling as that first glimpse of the horizon in Jacques Durand-Henriot's Beach Cabins at Saint-Valery.You can observe the evolution of the beach costume from Fernande Mathey at the Beach in her ruffled pink dress through Louis Valtat's black-clad Bicyclette to the tanned group in the Jantzen ad. Beach cabins from Europe to Japan allowed bathers to change clothes modestly when they reached their destination. (Read Dr. Kathryn Ferry's history of beach huts at http://www.beach-huts.com/ .)

The intertidal delight children experience at the shore is made visible in the magical underwater swimming of Babar and baby. The littoral zone, between high and low tides, a place that appears and disappears and reappears, is the ideal summer place.

A Quiet Life

The humble still life, presenting the simple objects of daily living, is an occasion for contemplation, aesthetic and otherwise. Almost six centuries separate Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1399 - 1464) and Heinrich Kuhn (1866-1944), yet their works are comprehensible together.
The amazing clarity of the carafe on the fireplace ledge is a bit of a cheat - it is a detail from van der Weyden's Annunciation (15th century), but it can stand alone as a vignette, the pleasing roundness of the carafe mirrored in the onion and the orange.

Thanks to the vagaries of early 20th century photographic processes, the oranges in Henrich Kuhn's photograph present a different aspect, their deeply saturated hue is perhaps an objective correlative of their intense flavor. Here the carafe - and glasses - appear placed as part of a deliberate composition offered to us, whereas in van der Weyden we have a found moment, discovered by the viewer.

The Romance Of The Hotel

Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo has been gone now for almost as long as it existed (1923-1968), yet it looms large in Wrightian mythology. Finished just in time to weather the great Kanto earthquake, waters from the reflecting pool enabled firefighters to douse the fires that threatened it as a result of the quake. Wright encouraged the notion that his building was unscathed; in truth, his floating foundation was a conductor for seismic tremors that caused interior buckling.

The undated photograph of Wright, sitting in the hotel's lobby, shows a man whose confidence at least equaled his talents. A major collector of Japanese art, when Wright came to design a hotel funded by the Imperial family of Japan, he chose a style that could be described as Mayan Revival. Romantic, to be sure, but there is something subversively romantic in the very notion of a hotel, the mixing of an ever-changing cast of transients, meeting promiscuously, observed only by the group of strangers that constitute the hotel's staff.
If there is not, somewhere, a book about the hotel as novel, it is merely an oversight. The Edwardian novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) wrote two novels, Grand Babylon Hotel (1902) and Imperial Hotel (1930), that are thought to be based on London's prestigious Savoy Hotel where Bennett often stayed after he became a successful writer and where an omelette named for him is still on the menu. Austrian novelist Vicki Baum (1888-1860) became one of the earliest of international bestselling novelists based on her 1929 Menschen im Hotel, which in turn became the film Grand Hotel (1932) starring John Barrymore and Greta Garbo. It is Garbo's character, the ballerina Grusinskaya, who utters the words often attributed to Garbo herself: "I want to be alone."

A good hotel novel is like a banquet, offering an array of stories to feast on and the genre is cross-cultural. The Bengali writer Mani Shankar Mukherjee's delightful 1962 novel Chowringee, only recently published in English, revolves around Shankar, a young man working at the reception desk of Calcutta's Hotel Shahajahan. A servant knows more about the masters than the masters know about the servants, as Shankar understands. "When I had checked in here, it was filled with known and familiar faces. Some left after breakfast; a few disappeared after lunch; others went away after tea. Now it was time for dinner, and no one was left ... I, the patriarch, seemed to have sat down at an empty table."
At one point, Shankar assures the reader, "At least a dozen novels about hotels are written in this country every year." Who knows? There may be one about Wright's Imperial Hotel.

Images are from the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, with the exception of the frontispiece, from the Getty Archive.

Our Summer Number Begins Here

Unknown Artist - To Tomita Beach, 1936, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Dreaming of Pomegranates

"Go, little book,
To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,
Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:
And bid him look
Into thy pages: it may hap that he
May find that golden maidens dance through thee. " - A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde

Dreaming of Pomegranates by Felice Casorati, 1913, Galleria della Scudo, Venice, Italy.

His name translates into English as "Happy", a felicitous description for the paintings of Felice Casorati (1883-1963). A native of the Piedmont region of northern Italy, Casorati's first love was the piano. He wanted to become a musician but, during a long illness, he received a paintbox and it changed everything. I do not know if the artist was inspired to paint Dreaming of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde's poem, but the two go together well.

The Other Raoul Dufy

In the interests of sheer perversity, I developed a sneaking fondness for the paintings of Aristide Maillol (See Aristide Maillol: A Neglected Painter here 04 June 2008). Yes, I recognized the beauty of his classical sculptures, but Maillol was fifty years old before he began sculpting and the difficulty of finding pictures of the paintings and tapestries that occupied the artist for decades only made me more curious.

And so it is with the works of Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), only more so. For the most part, Dufy's paintings of the bourgeois social scene do not speak to me, so let them be. But the decorative aspects of his work, when applied to tapestry or ceramics, are charming. Both works shown here date from 1925, so they may have been shown at the International Exposition of Decorative Arts and Modern Industry, held in Paris. Bridge Party at the Casino (Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris) is a stronger composition than usual from Dufy, with its broad underlying bands of subtle tones anchoring the scattered group of figures. The eye moves with pleasure rather than confusion across the surface. The three dimensional form gives the Seashell Vase cohesion; the surface is covered with shells without appearing cluttered.

And finally, my favorite painting by Dufy, a 6,450 square foot History of Electricity, created for the 1937 Paris World's Fair. Yes, it is one of the biggest paintings ever made. (Photo credit: PierrePaul43@flickr.com)