Flâneur on the Beach!

There was some reason for smugness: gregarious normality finally beckoned!
After years of dodging holiday questions from colleagues and family (so as not to embarrass them nor myself – see note1) I at last wouldn’t need to remain discreet about my holidays.
I too was going to storm a beach, spending a July week with C in a cottage at the French coast. But ah – I’d gotten it wrong again, having chosen the North of France (Nord-Pas-de-Calais) , which, so I learned from bemused reactions, is not nearly Exotic or Southern enough to be acceptable as a Summer Holiday Destination. “Ecoute, je ne vois vraiment pas l’intérêt”, a genuinely baffled colleague exclaimed.

Obviously, C and I did see the interest of the place, and from our customary, widely differing perspectives at that. C was enchanted by the maritime vistas offered by the busy ship-routes in the straight between Calais and Dover. From the terrace of our temporary abode on the Wimereux-coast (in between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Calais) she could watch for hours the ships sailing by - huge oil tankers seemingly motionless on the horizon, the steady traffic of ferries doggedly going up and down the Canal, the frivolous little triangles of leisurely sailing yachts. With an annoyed grunt I ‘d look up from my book (2) whenever she would excitedly pass on the binoculars , “hey look – you can see the lights of the Dover Patrol Memorial over there on the English coast!”.

From the Jurassic to hard sour Napoleon candy

With more shared enthusiasm we explored the Cap Griz Nez landscape on foot, such as that marvellous coast from Cap Blanc Nez to Cap Gris Nez . How not to be awed by the millenary geological grandeur of those shores! Humbly seen from below on the beach, by two tiny mortals caught in between an ageless sea and towering cliffs dating from the Jurassic period. Or triumphantly standing on top of a majestic cliff (where surprisingly sweet pink flowers grew and sheep & cows calmly grazed) exulting in the view of a scintillating sea-surface stretching all the way to the white cliffs of Dover.

Man, alas, has also entertained many grand military visions here.

In the nearby planes of Boulogne-Sur-Mer, Napoleon assembled his troops, first pondering an invasion of England (which never happened) and then marching his Grand Army on from there to Austerlitz – a battle considered by some as his supreme tactical military masterpiece (and by others as just another European carnage).
A column at the site of the Boulogne camp was erected to commemorate the distribution of medals (“la légion d’honneur”) by Napoleon to his faithful warriors. Nowadays it is the familiar silhouette of the “little corporal” that is perched on top of the 53 metres high triumphal column: an almost endearing silhouette cherished from childhood as it figured on the wrappers of my favourite hard sour candy, the “napoleons”.

However, the initial statue, now kept in a building on the site, is undoubtedly closer to the pompous ways of a megalomaniac emperor. Wandering into the building, the unsuspecting visitor feels suitably dwarfed by this towering figure in coronation costume with full regalia including a laurel crown worthy of a roman emperor. A tribute-poem by Victor Hugo (yes, the Hugo of Les Misérables would also glorify France’s military prowess) is equally revealing of the delusions of imperial grandeur once harboured by the French. Delusions by which no French president, however republican, has ever been entirely untainted.

Into the bunkers!

And then, of course, all over Northern France, one can still see the traces of the battlefields of the worldwars I and II. There are the cemeteries with rows and rows of graves of young men killed in their prime (nearby the fashionable seaside resort of Le Touquet, one can visit the harrowing Etaples Commonwealth cemetery , with almost 11.000 burials of the first world war ...)

And then there are the bunkers, the many bunkers and fortifications that have pockmarked the coast of the Pas de Calais.
More often than not they were useless feats of outstanding military engineering – since invasions of course never took place how and where the cunning generals had prepared for it. The French had their useless “Maginot line” along the German border, the Germans had their inadequate “Atlantic wall” in the west , also built along the Pas de Calais.

One of these huge bunkers has been recycled as a military museum, the “Batterie Todt”, so named after the highly productive civil and military German engineer Todt. Boasting a “superb arms collection” this museum also merchandises military paraphernalia (genuinely historical! exclaims a yellowing card ), amongst which demilitarized grenades, still fearsome knives as well as rolls of vintage WWII bandages. One does wonder about the motivations of its eager visitors: what about those short cropped, blond and blue eyed Scandinavians ...? An apology for my own interest in these matters (as dubious as it is ambivalent) can be found here(3).

Many bunkers have been dynamited, their concrete debris mixed up on the beaches below with natural rocks, both covered now by shells and green algae. Yet other bunkers still stick out of the cliffs, or lay there in the fields above , abandoned, half overgrown with weeds. Cautiously venturing into one of them we were met with a penetrating smell of paint and the clicking sounds of paint spray cans - two young men (looking quite cool in their baggy jeans and leather jackets) were busy spraying tags and grotesque figures on the few areas of walls that were not yet plastered with graffiti. They looked very annoyed at our intrusion, boldly staring us off from their turf.

Ah, bunkers, graffiti... – aren’t both about aggressively claiming territory? Leaving one’s marks, appropriating space...

Oh no, not about angels again...

Post-moderns have of course extensively argued that all art is about imposing the values of the dominant classes or about selfish individual assertiveness in a never ending struggle for supremacy. I humbly (and stubbornly) beg to differ. I’m not denying that art is dependent on the means furnished by the ruling classes (be it spendthrift kings and bourgeois or compulsively consuming masses) and I'm aware that art is a profession also sometimes sought out by egomaniacs pursuing fame and riches only.

But still, I do feel that art definitely can reach beyond petty individual interests. Because it is so intricately bound up with our aesthetical and moral sense it does seem to impose laws defying banality and self-interestedness. Both in theocratic and agnostic eras, art can express the human, all too human yearning for transcendence. And only art, in its utter concentration on human sensibilities, may capture and record the subtle hues of our so fleeting sensations and emotions.

All this to introduce the two art gallery visits of my beach-holiday!

I hadn’t thoroughly researched the cultural must-sees of this beach-holiday so the “Château-Musée” of Boulogne-sur-Mer came as a surprise.
Minutes before I had still been cycling along the sunny and crowded Boulogne-quays, and there I found myself staring at an Egyptian sarcophagus, having contained the remains of a Grand Egyptian Lady (so the accompanying card read) : Nodjenmout, Grande Musicienne de la chorale de Mout, Maîtresse d’Isheroy, Joueuse de sistre, Dame du Ciel.
In another room I could peer down at a Greek vase showing the tragic moment when Ajax, “abandoned by men and gods” prepares to throw himself on a sword. Elsewhere I looked, baffled and moved, at ritual expressive masks from Alaska Eskimos , all neatly tagged : “He Who Does Not Know”, “He Who Is Sceptical" ,”He Who Is Sad”, [and what about she? ] . More usefully: “He Who Announces The Weather” and, intriguingly: “Different, Not Like Us”.

By contrast, a temporary exhibition sought to reconcile us with our transience, from Claudio Parmiggiani’s spectral afterimages (the shadowy contours of books on a wall – drawn by the deposits of soot and smoke) to Patrick Neu’s renaissance angels drawn with Chinese ink on iridescently blue butterfly wings.
The relative permanence of respectively books and ancient masters’ paintings, made hostage to the most fragile and fleeting of mediums...

But while Neu’s butterfly angels kept nagging at my failing memory (which renaissance angels did I exactly recognize?), the wooden angels in the museum of Arras (visited on the way back home) had no such torture in store.
They just smiled their benevolent smiles, like their sibling at Reims.

Notes on holiday
(1) For years I have been cheerfully avoiding sun, sea & sand to embark instead on thematic holidays (with the themes reflecting whatever my heart and mind was pre-occupied with at the time). Thus have I travelled by train to the great port cities of Europe, did I almost devoutly visit the French cathedral cities and have I obstinately sought ways to arrive by ways of public transports (complemented at times by a rented bike) at the small French towns with Romanesque churches. European cities with hallowed ancient art museum have also consistently been a beloved target. But what really really exasperated a well-meaning family-member inquiring about my holidays, was when, after I had been visiting for two consecutive annual holidays a friend amongst the improbable ruins of Detroit, I then enthused about a recent trip to English cities such as Bristol and even, up North, Liverpool and Manchester (these paragons of lost 19th century industrial grandeur! The Parallels with Belgian formerly industrial cities! Those sublimely stuffy Victorian museums!): “why can’t you ever take a normal holiday? ”
(2) Clarice Lispector – "La découverte du monde" – I’m enchanted and intrigued, though the book I read is just a collection of columns she published in papers and magazines (perhaps accounting for an intermittent, annoying whiff of banality). But on the whole there’s a melancholic and reflective bent to her writings that makes me very eager to discover her ‘serious’ books
(3) Alarmed blog readers can rest assured – I’m not into buying WWII grenades

The sumptuous villa of an industrial tycoon, politics of oppression, veiled women, International Gothic and the spiritual quiet of a Sacra Conversazione.

(or: from hybrid reality to universal intuitions )

A disabused post modern discourse?

Is not reality a dirty tale of dominance, full of selfish sound & fury? And is not so-called high or universal art merely an expression of the dominant (obviously) base desires of the dominant class of the dominant continent?

Take that beautiful art deco villa: just the spoiled son of a Belgian 19th C industrial tycoon throwing his inherited money at a lavish art deco villa, sumptuously decorated with the most expensive materials. And that oriental flavour? Well, Mr Tycoon Senior did not only exploit European natural and human resources but also tramped about in Cairo, and indulged in an exotic fascination for the Orient.

Well, at least that sumptuous villa is now being recycled as a “Center of art and dialogue between the cultures of the East and the West”. And all that splendor now houses a politically aware exhibit about “Rituals, wigs, scarves, make-up and so many other constraints determining the life of women for Centuries, between concealment, unveiling and revealing”.

The imposed (!) modesty of the Virgin? The imposed (!) modesty of the veiled Arabic woman? Or the imposed (?) immodesty of Eve, of sensually made up pin ups. Sigh - the inescapable politics of sexual dominance and male projections about how women should dress : never clothed enough (when modesty is required) – never naked enough (when sexual desires have to be aroused). Those naked women on Renaissance paintings: mere porn for rich patrons .
Yah, obviously, whether you’re Darwinian, or Freudian, or Marxist – you have learned that all art can be deconstructed to become a dirty tale of selfish genes, repressed (or expressed? umm...) sexuality, capitalist dominance. We’re all just selfish individuals confined to our contingent provincial conditions. Da. There.

Redeemed by ‘ordinary poetics’


But however true the above disabused discourse may be - yes, Tiziano’s Venus of Orbino is a pin-up , for those who want to see her like that – those who have an “'oculus impudicus' qui ravale l’émotion artistique à la concupiscence” (Jean Claude Bologne ). So, however distressingly true the above may be, ‘disinterested’ poetry and a universal lyrical sensitivity do exist (yes, non-sexually inspired enchantment with the poetic and aesthetic sensitivity of Tizian’s Venus is possible ) – or, at least, there are still enough of us believing in it.

And therefore, wandering about that art deco villa, I can be enchanted by the space and the rhythms of the rooms, by the pure sensuousness of the materials. And I’m moved, deeply moved by the
magic worked by Maimouna Guerresi : the poignancy and stillness of those white, spectral , hieratic figures ... Levitating? Striding?

What do they remind me of? Definitely not of submissiveness. Of the oriental mystery of veiled women, then? Yes perhaps, but not as a matter of exotics, but rather like the mystery and stillness of a meditating Madonna - the “quiet spirituality of a "sacra conversatione”, done by Bellini for instance, whose Madonnas have that same aura of non-sentimental but deeply moving, contemplative concentration. “ quies - a spiritual reconciliation, idyllic or ascetic retreat into solitude”. Yes, I’m reminded of Bellini, whose pictures achieve that rare intuitive unity of poetry & metaphorical & religious meaning, not requiring analytical erudition to understand their significance.


And that levitating figure? The mystical ecstasy of a Saint? Bernini’s baroque imagination? Saint Theresa?


And those striding figures, with the elegantly dignified folds of those draperies, is there not a visual resonance with the
elongated sinuosity of the gothic international style ...

And so I wonder & ponder ... exulting in intuitive associations. Irrelevant projections? Merely revealing my own hybrid set of accidental cultural references, my own pathetic longing for some universal beauty and meaning? Well, not entirely irrelevant ..., not merely strictly personal intuitions it seems. Later on, when doing some web research on Maïmouna Guerresi, I’m delighted to find these echoes in her own artistic statement :


“As with many ancient icons, my figures in hieratic poses recall images of the Virgin, but also celebrate contemporary cultures and religions that have kept their traditions alive. This gives rise to a new and hybrid iconography [...] My work is part of a [...] transcultural expression’, where the elements of formal beauty combine with ancient African symbolic forms. I present a hybrid reality, consisting of eastern and western cultural references, in which ordinary poetics reach beyond what is represented to unite with a universal condition of beauty, mysticism and sensitivity. This kind of intuition is common to all peoples of the world” .

Post Scriptum, 6 months later
(But I am having doubts now about these "spectral, hieratical figures" - it's their "faceless-ness" which makes me feel uneasy. Because, what's an individual without the expressiveness of her/his face? What's an individual without eyes?)

"history doesn't interest me" : right / wrong / don't know

"History doesn't interest me"

For inveterate pessimists being wrong is often a cause for celebration. Because it means a good thing could happen despite the resistance of one’s own sceptical self.

This time I was proven wrong as to my long-standing aversion for historical biographies. Those piles of dates & facts..., those pages filled with human pettiness and with (worse even!)great (horrible) deeds - none of it all redeemed by beauty... (1) No thanks. What I looked for in books were the timeless qualities of Art, the illuminations of Meaning, no less. Didn’t I already have the papers for my daily dose of nasty facts?

So when I browsed through the books on offer at the entry of a museum devoted to the collections of a former burgomaster of Antwerp, I confess I quickly discarded the biography of this respected citizen (however nice his name - "Rockox" ). I was there for the paintings & their ageless sensibilities (2) not for the vicissitudes of socio-political history.

How a 'burgomaster-book' proved me wrong!

But the burgomaster-book (3) and I got a second chance, later at a Brussels bookshop, when it managed to overcome my prejudices – after all, it was written by two art historians (which always bodes well for meaningful insights(4)), it did cover a momentous epoch in European history (1560-1640, when pious protestants clashed with catholic zealots) , and there were even some pictures of paintings in it!

And so, here I am, 10 days and more than 300 pages later – captivated by this story of citizens caught amidst the turbulence of sectarian and political strife …

Of course, I had learned long ago about the horrors of the Eighty Years' war, the Iconoclasms, the Spanish fury, etc etc ... But somehow I had always passed over all that misery as merely part of the general brutish & backward spirit of older times. (5) And now this book had me reading letters of men and women of that time – so reasonable & wise , so deeply concerned about the miseries of war, so compassionate in their evocations of other peoples’ suffering, so downtrodden yet dignified when describing their own ill-fortunes – how alive and contemporary these voices sounded, how sensitive ... (6)

And as to my previous notions of Antwerp at the close of its golden age - they too were exposed by this book as being quite superficial, limited as they had been to impressions of baroque splendour & vainglory. Never had I really bothered to imagine how, perhaps even more than the Catholic propaganda efforts, it were civic resilience and a staunch dedication of local citizens to decency and culture that could resuscitate the cosmopolitan and cultivated-humanist climate of "pre-fall" Antwerp.

"Enlivening what otherwise would have remained dead"

The evocative power of this book is in fact astonishing – "enlivening what otherwise would [have remained] dead"(7). Very concrete details make one feel as if one gets a peek at daily life as it was. Well chosen extracts from documents & letters let one read over the shoulder of the local citizens, judges, poets, priests, ... The political twists & turns of the time are commented using quotes of the best historians. And the book allows one to savour the courteous, even affectionate, exchanges between the leading humanist intellectuals of those days, so much so that one ends up feeling their privileged contemporary when looking at the pictures of the paintings they ordered.

And, at times, there’s also a glimpse of the authors themselves, assiduous & sensitive historians-biographers plunging into yet another musty archive to uncover documents shedding light on their subject. One may even catch them musing, not without melancholy, about the vanity of some family-archives, which tirelessly document names & titles & possessions & litigations & marks of honour, without however having kept the slightest trace of a personal thought ...

Ending on a positive note or a glum conclusion?

But then, what about our burgomaster, Nicolaas Rockox? We got to know the events and some of the people that marked his epoch and his city. (8) We got an idea of the kind of families he and his wife came from. We can see his portrait (painted by the best artists of his time) and that of his wife. But what do we know about him personally? He didn’t leave any personal notes either....
And yet, the book’s authors have gathered so much collateral proof.... of his honesty, his faithfulness, his generosity, his love and patronage of the arts, his sense of responsibility. So yes, one does get an image of a good man, a man wanting to leave something of permanence for his city, reaching out to later generations. (9)

So this post should end on a positive note! His good intentions did make it to the 21st century: there’s his house, some of the art works and coins (10) he collected, and even certain student grants he founded still linger on.
But of course, in keeping with the spirit of this blog – here’s a glum, moralizing conclusion anyway: they don’t make men like Rockox any more ... neither in politics nor in business life.

lots of nicely numbered notes
(1) “Assuming that history is nothing but the miserable story of mankind’s eternal ups and downs, the spectacle of sound and fury “may perhaps be moving for a while; but the curtain must eventually descend. For in the long run, it becomes a farce. And even if the actors do not tire of it – for they are fools – the spectator does, for any single act will be enough for him if he can reasonably conclude from it that the never-ending play will be of eternal sameness.”” (Kant as quoted by Hannah Arendt)
(2) That crucifixion by Cornelis Matsys! The stark drama of it, with the dark clouds packed above Golgotha ... , and with the poignant contrasts amongst the spectators : the mocking crowd surrounding the crucified on the top of the hill while further down there’s not only the group of despairing faithful, supporting the fainting Maria, but also the indifferent foursome playing dice. And somehow, the distance between the mourning group and the crucifixion marks even more the desolateness and the loneliness of it all.
(3) Leen Huet & Jan Grieten: “Nicolaas Rockox – 1560-1640 – Burgemeester van de gouden eeuw”
(4) More than mainstream historians, art historians seem to be blessed with a precious mix of erudition, intuition and taste, which turns them into particularly reflective spectators. Perhaps the kind of spectators of whom Arendt could say “The spectator, not the actor, holds the clue to the meaning of human affairs”
(5) It’s a smug human bias – always attributing less sensitivity to people who are further away from us (in time or in geography). This of course conveniently allows us to live happily in a world where there has always been, and still is, too much suffering.
(6) And also , how alike these 16th & 17th scenes of sectarian discord & upheaval are to the daily reports one can read about the conflicts raging in too many parts of our world, where decent and sensitive men and women are likewise made to suffer by the violent.
(7) one of my favourite quotes of Panofsky about the task of the humanities: "The humanities [...] are not faced by the task of arresting what otherwise would slip away, but of enlivening what otherwise would remain dead. [...] they penetrate into a region where time has stopped of its own accord, and try to reactivate it. [...] thus endowing static records with dynamic life "
(8) We, as individualist romantics, would of course rebel at being summed up by just our age and our career, without taking into account our precious individual thoughts & feelings
(9) Ever so delicately, the authors choose to have “only” a sketched portrait of Rockox on the book-cover, because, as they say, they felt they could not get so close to him as to warrant a full-colour oil-portrait.
(10) Coins! Did you think old coins were boring? Not in this book! Our authors manage to combine the zest of an adventure story about a treasure of coins dug up by a poor labourer with the gravitas of an evocation of a 17th C cercle of humanist collector-friends for whom the coins' iconography leads right back to Antiquity.

Brooding about Byzantium : a dilettante confesses

Unrepentant dilettantism


Perhaps it’s only in art history & aesthetics that dilettantism has been granted a status beyond dubious dabbling. (1) Many a non-academic ‘connoisseur’ looms large in the art world. And the great art historian Panofsky admitted that the “synthetic intuition” needed to grasp art’s intrinsic meaning “may be better developed in a talented layman than in an erudite scholar” .
Because, apart from factual knowledge and erudition , appreciating and understanding art always requires an act of imaginative recreation, which is subjective.

But alas, give people a license to dabble without diligence (2), and they will abuse it. Therefore , also in the art world, earnest art historians have come to detest the exalted devotion of blithely ignorant aesthetes who wallow in their own intuitive sensitivity. (3) (4)

But, despite humbly acknowledging dilettantism’s limits, it was as an unrepentant amateur (5) that I took the train to London to indulge in one of my most cherished but unsubstantiated dilettante obsessions: Byzantium…. (6). And on that train I was defiantly reading Walter Pater, the patron saint of 19th century exalted aestheticism, who wrote so seductively and so misleadingly about art history.
As it has been put aptly: “in the uncertain twilight of Pater’s scholarship cultural history became imaginative misrepresentation”. (7)


"Imaginative misrepresentation"

Imaginative misrepresentation ….. how much of the consoling elegance and cohesion of art history itself is not due to imaginative projection, which offers a pleasing synopsis ex post? How much of the beguiling attraction of art history does not lie in the fact that, using the remaining mute artifacts as props, it pretends no less than to tell us the story of the life of the human mind (“Geistesgeschichte” )?

Winckelmann , the ‘first art historian’, having come under the spell of the "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" of the rare remaining Antique statues, and despairing at how much was irrevocably lost , wrote:
“ […] contemplating the collapse of art […] we […] have as it were only a shadowy outline of the subject of our desires remaining. But this arouses so much the greater longing for what is lost, and we examine the copies we have with greater attention than we would if we were in full possession of the originals. In this, we often […] believe [we] can see something where nothing exists. […] One always imagines there is much to find. “(8)

And then, Byzantium….! If ever there was a candidate for imaginative misrepresentation! This twilight Roman-Christian empire, flourishing in the Greek East in the wake of the fall of ‘old Rome’. A 1000 years shrinking empire now best known for its defeats: in 1204, the brutal sack of Constantinople by Byzantium’s barbarian westerns cousins who were on a crusading rampage ; in 1453, the pivotal date we all learned at school : Constantinople conquered by Ottoman Turks.

Luxurious Byzantine Byzantium.... Byzantium of the Byzantine Icons….., of which so many, (maybe the best?), were destroyed during 100 years of ruthless iconoclasm, or got lost due to human neglect & vandalism, eagerly collaborating with the destructive processes of nature and time. (9)

Oh I did diligently start reading a ‘real’ historical book about Byzantium, conscientiously tracking the imperial reversals of fortune with its military victories and defeats, with its inventory of administrative and legal achievements, with its economic and sociologic ramifications . And just as diligently, I duly peered, at the London exhibition, into the glass cases which displayed domestic objects, imperial parafernalia, jewels & more jewels and other material remains of the ‘real' Byzantine life.

Mesmerizing folds & golden ribbings

But I must confess that, of this grand medieval civilization that lasted a 1000 years, what has enduringly captured my imagination are folds …. yes the vicissitudes of folds, of “delicate gold striations defining the folds of cloth”. What gave Byzantium a lasting place in my imagination, is the fate of these golden highlights & ribbings in panel paintings & mosaics… (10)

Indeed, something as seemingly futile as how folds of clothing are rendered, is pivotal in any story of the life of the mind – because tracking the fate of these folds, shows how the elegance of graeco-roman anthropocentric and figurative art made way for the “clumsiness” of western-christian schematically-abstract and spiritual art. And it shows how at the same time some of the graeco-roman artistic formulas had some sort of afterlife in the decorative and hieratic conventions of Byzantine art, which in their turn were transformed by Italian painters into a renewed elegant naturalism, announcing the humanist-christian Renaissance.

So Byzantium, for me, is about images….., about the scattered artistic traces it left. Byzantium is about what it salvaged from Antique imagery, and how it transmitted this classical heritage under the form, as it were, of dried food, as mummified conventions that only needed to be hydrated by later Italian artists to spawn a renaissance. (11)

Byzantium is about these imposing hieratic images , about shimmering gold in half-dark domes ….. It is about the seduction of lost splendor as well as of a lost meaning of that splendor. Byzantium is about enchantment and mourning. Byzantium is so seductive for our imagination since so little of authentic early Byzantine art has been left, since we “can only grope for its character from nothing better than the surviving canvases of its imitators” (9)

Byzantium is about all the tragic longings which generations of poets and aesthetes have projected in it. (12) (13)

And as one who has never been to Ravenna, who has never wandered about in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and who has never been to the St Catherine monastery on Mount Sinai, I do solemnly declare being utterly enthralled by Byzantium.




A dilettante’s feverish footnotes
(1) dilettante
Etymology: Italian, from present participle of dilettare to delight, from Latin dilectare — (more at delight) Date: 1748
1 : an admirer or lover of the arts
2 : a person having a superficial interest in an art or a branch of knowledge : dabbler
(2) am paraphrasing here an erudite flowervillain
(3) Erwin Panofsky, more sternly this time : “As I have said before, no one can be blamed for enjoying works of art “naively” – for appraising them according to his lights and not caring any further. But the humanist will look with suspicion upon what might be called ‘appreciationism’. He who teaches innocent people to understand art without bothering about classical languages, boresome historical methods and dusty old documents, deprives naiveté of its charm without correcting its errors”
(4) thus the impeccably erudite Warburg detested Bernard Berenson, the flamboyant connoisseur-aesthete. Berenson indeed didn’t have any qualms to venture fanciful attributions without rigorous scholarly evidence but based mainly on “certain intuitions”. And Walter Pater, that other quintessential 19th C aesthete, produced delightfully imaginative essays, which were however “ manifestly lacking […] rigour in matters of fact “.
(5) personally I don’t see the amateur and the professional as competitors - The amateur is just that: “in the best sense of the word, a lover of [the arts and] of learning among the general citizenry “ . (Robert Darnton in a NYRB article). And the amateur will be devoted to his or her domain of predilection in a very personal way. The amateur's devotion is tinged with subjectivity, especially when it concerns a humanistic discipline (as opposed to say physics or mathematics). Because, it is laden with our very personal questions & obsessions that we (the amateurs) come to the humanities.
And in my experience the amateur will gladly accept lessons from the professional and will not mingle in scholarly discussions. But does this mean then that amateurs and professionals can never communicate on an equal level? Well, in matters of taste and personal judgment they can, of course, in their quality of thinking & judging human beings. But much less so indeed in matters of objective , scholarly purport.

****WARNING**** This picture of the humble amateur is not the whole truth though … There is a subterranean Faustian arrogance at play too, the Amateur does entertain a secret universalist yearning …
Yes, there's a hidden hubris of the Dilettante, who, at times, exults in the (deceptive) vastness & swiftness of his intuitive imagination as opposed to the slow & methodic grinding of the toiling specialist ….

(6) Exhibition at the London Royal Academy of Arts: Byzantium 330-1453
(7) Adam Phillips in his introduction to Walter Pater’s “The Renaissance”
(8) J.J. Winckelmann, History of the art of antiquity
(9) Bernard Berenson – Studies in Medieval Painting (which contains not quite scholarly correct articles about Byzantine art, but may nevertheless (or rather : therefore) offer exactly the sort of imaginative reconstruction that serves my own not-quite-corroborated Byzantium-construct…. :
“ Iconoclasts, native rebels, Bulgars and Turks seem to have participated joyously in Nature’s destructiveness […] there are in the east only fragmentary traces of mosaics before 1300 [..] Outside […] a few noted shrines such as those on Mt Sinai. […]
The pictures of eastern origin that we see in the West are all of later date. They are specimens of the mummified art to which we are commonly accustomed to apply the word Byzantine, although they date from a time when the Christian eastern Empire was dying, or dead
Until the great Venetian betrayal in 1204, Constantinople, despite many vicissitudes, was the metropolis of European and of nearer Asia civilization. There is no reason for assuming that traditions of good craftsmanship were ever lost there, as again and again they were lost in the West, or that the ideals of form were dragged down to the barbarous puerilities to which we declined in our darkest centuries. […]
Imagine that all the pictures done in Paris by Frenchmen had disappeared, and that we could grope at their character from nothing better than the surviving canvases of […] imitators”
(10) The “delicate gold striations defining the folds of cloth” Byzantine art
Byzantine art offers the fascinating spectacle of the nimble mixture of surviving graeco-roman naturalistic forms, Christian spiritualism, and Byzantine hieratic & decorative splendor. And one cannot be but moved by the awakening in early 13th century Italian painting, which started transforming these conventional Byzantine golden notations of the folds into something both naturalistic/representative and elegant.
So these Byzantine icons & mosaics with their decorative shimmering gold , with their hieratical, timeless visual incantations beyond earthly reality, not only continued as a barely unchanged & mummified Icon-tradition in the orthodox countries , but also contained the seeds of the Italian Renaissance’s elegant naturalism, harking back to the greco-roman gracefulness. In such a way that John White lyrically notes of this Italian transformation of Byzantine conventions : “
“The complicated linear symbols for the folds are caught, like chrysalids in the very act of transformation, at the moment of their softening into rich, material forms. “

(11) Panofsky : La renaissance et ses avant-courriers dans l’art d’occident – « La tradition byzantine qui, pour reprendre la comparaison immortelle d’Adolf Goldschmidt, a transmis l’héritage classique - y compris bon nombre des ‘pathosformeln’ – à la postérité « sous la forme d’aliments déshydratés que l’on hérite de famille en famille et qui peuvent être rendus digestibles par l’adjonction d’eau et l’effet de la chaleur »
(12) Yves Bonnefoy – Byzance :
« Son impersonnalité, que si pauvrement on lui reproche : elle rêve pour nous
La forme est une écriture qui, dans sa simplification, sa recherche des symétries, peut suggérer une connivence de l’universel et de l’être , où s’efface notre présence - , puis découvrant que ses gauchissements, ses flexions, ses élongations dans le canon de Byzance sont autant de refus de cette rêverie dangereuse.
Un certain faste peut célébrer la transcendance d’un lieu . De même un dénuement conscient de soi peut rappeler la forme à sa charge terrestre, la substance
Et à mi-chemin de ce dénuement et de grands rituels, il faudra définir l’élégance, qui est une des filles de la douleur er , de Ravenne à Mozart, de Botticelli à Tiepolo, hante toutes les œuvres anxieuses de l’Occident. C’est Byzance qui la première a enseigné cette ascèse, qui demande au luxe l’éveil à tous les pouvoirs de nos sens, mais ne vit en ceux-ci que pour y méditer une absence. L’art byzantin, qui a désigné l’absolu, en sait aussi la distance. Il n’est pas, comme parfois Venise et souvent Rubens, l’assez vain déploiement d’une illusion de triomphe. »
(13) WB Yeats :“But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come”

Part III of the angels trilogy : kitsch & misanthropy

I ‘d better bring this fluffy angel stuff to its close now. Not good for my street credibility at all. Although, frankly, angels dó belong to the streets, as firmly as rap-artists and hard-boiled detectives. Where else but on these mean streets, will a solitary wanderer find accompaniment in many an angelic statue?
Sure, angels are kitsch. So what, just another argument for their non-elitist street credibility! Kitsch, after all , does address (exploit?) the most genuine & heartfelt of human longings.

Yeah – angels are definitely all-inclusive symbols and can be substantiated with quotes ranging from Pico della Mirandola (1) to Robbie Williams (2) !

But there’ s something very pessimistic and misanthropic about angels too…. There’s a whole brooding tradition which pitches angels & their qualities against the woeful limitations of mere men & women. Montaigne did that (3), Pascal (4) did it and even Robbie Williams (2) does it. (5)

Then again – angels in the Robbie Williams version are of course nothing but fantasies of outcasts looking for something to fix their spurned affections on. But darn you reader, if you’re going to be disdainful about that. Lookin’ fer sumtin’ an someone ta love in an unfriendly world – why, this is not merely about teenage tearjerkers!

Anyone who, for whatever reason, does not quite fit into the dominant discourse of his or her environment, knows the dilemma - either go for the full integrity of the self, go for the self-assertion of the right to be and to be as one is(6). No compromises. And remain a proud misanthropic minority of one.

Or compromise, be selective in what you show, do not flaunt the full self. Accept being loved not for your full self but rather despite your true self (and for everyone’s sakes, don’t be bitter about that). And (the single redeeming feature of this charade), seize the opportunity (however warped, however imperfect) to love back.

As James Baldwin movingly wrote (7) , in an altogether different political context of revolt against white Western dominance, (as if he had to justify any lapse in unwavering aloofness vàv the dominant system):

“Whoever is part of whatever civilization helplessly loves some aspects of it and some of the people in it”.

fluttering footnotes
(1) See comments to part II of the Angel Trilogy
(2) See comments to part I of the Angel Trilogy
(3) « [les hommes], au lieu de se transformer en anges, ils se transforment en bêtes, au lieu de se hausser, ils s’abaissent » - « [men] instead of transforming themselves into angels, they transform themselves into beasts, instead of raising themselves, they lower themselves »
(4) “L'homme n'est ni ange ni bête, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête. » - “man is neither angel nor beast, and as ill-luck would have it, he who strives to be like an angel, acts like a beast”
(5) Now, quite apart from my own angel-spielerei here – and speaking as the earnest humanist I am: Montaigne may be more of a pragmatic & tolerant humanist than the crypto-catholic Pascal… Indeed, to Montaigne man has his dignity, precisely as man, i.e. as neither angel nor beast. As he states in the introduction to his essais: “ ma conscience se contente de soi, non comme de la conscience d’un ange ou d’un cheval, mais comme de la conscience d’un homme » - « my conscience will stick to itself, not as the conscience of an angel, nor as that of a horse, but as the conscience of a man” - But on the other hand, how modern this observation of Pascal, that a fundamentalist striving for absolute virtue turns men into monsters …
(6) Think I am paraphrasing Pat Barker here.
(7) Found the quote in a New Yorker review

solicitous angels

Its melange of naivete and erudition (1), yes that may well be what I love best about art history.

This naivete is to be found in even the most sophisticated art historian, in as much as he or she can’t help being aesthetically and sentimentally moved by a work of art. (2)
Apart from some sour iconophobic postmodern specimens (3), I haven’t yet read an art historian who didn’t at some point lapse from scientific erudition & distance into genuine love for the art works they research.

More, art historians’ sheer devoted erudition can be endearingly naïve. Meticulously tracking down the ancestry or the afterlife of a certain image throughout the ages, accumulating documentary evidence from musty archives: what could be more devoid of utilitarian cynicism? What could be a greater testimony to that discredited humanistic notion that the evolving formal expressions of human concerns have a value as such, even after the societies that have spawned them have collapsed. (4)

But still, there’s the question – how much cultural background information do we need to process in order to properly enjoy a work of art. And what is “properly enjoying”? Is it about grasping the “meaning” of a work of art, recreating the initial intention of the maker? (5) Is it about formal aesthetical enjoyment? Is it about a naive, uneducated emotional response? Or do I need to be familiar with the bible and with medieval scholastic thought & iconography to appreciate a 12th century relief from a French cathedral? (6)

Did I pin the above image on my kitchen wall because of its religious significance? Because I like to be reminded of the angel-assisted resurrection of the Virgin Mary while devoutly drinking my morning tea?
Or because, in general, I dote on statues of winged creatures gathered around a dead body?

Eh, no, that’s not it. Well then, why do I love this image?

Oh, because I found it in a second-hand book , a lovely bundle of essays by the French art historian Emile Mâle who at the turn of the century set out (not without French-chauvinistic and Christian-religious zeal) to restore the fame of French roman-gothic imagery.
And because he wrote so engagingly and affectionately about these swift & gentle angels. (7) .
And because this tympanum relief was so expertly sculpted by an anonymous artist in the 12th Century.
And mostly I love this image, because, in that tumultuous & harsh age, someone took the pains to lovingly represent an image of unalloyed gentleness & solicitude.

suitably naïve notes
(1) self-consciously post-modern readers may now sigh and click on to less naive blogs
(2) Roland Recht in « L’historien de l’art est-il naïf ? » :
« Le spectateur peut se trouver place à différents degrés de “naiveté”, à savoir d’illusions sur la plus ou moins forte implication de son propre équipement culturel dans l’appréhension des œuvres du passé »
But the art historian would then not be naive, because he is aware of the cultural distance, and should be able to dissociate naive aesthetic enjoyment from a cultural & intellectual interpretation of the work.
« Une ligne de démarcation entre une forme « sentimentale » de l’appréhension de l’œuvre d’art et une forme intellectuelle qui se définit (entièrement) par la conscience de l’histoire sous sa forme la plus élémentaire : la conscience de la distance »
(3) A sure sign of this sourness is the lack of reproductions/images in these postmodern art history books, which excel in ironical and conceited meta-discourses-about –the- historical - art historical-discourses
(4) E Panofsky in “the history of art as a humanistic discipline” : “from the humanistic point of view human records do not age"
(5) E Panofsky, Ibidem. "Thus, in experiencing a work of art aesthetically we perform two entirely different acts which, however, psychologically merge with each other into one Erlebnis: we build up our aesthetic object both by re-creating the work of art according to the “intention” of its maker, and by freely creating a set of aesthetic values comparable to those with which we endow a tree or a sunset
[…] the sensual pleasure in a peculiar play of light and color and the more sentimental delight in « age » and « genuineness, » has nothing to do with the objective, or artistic, value with which the sculptures were invested by their makers. "
(6) I’d like to refer here to all the libraries which are filled with highly enjoyable erudite tomes about this ‘what is art’ question. But, sorry, I really can’t go into all this right now. I have to leave for work in about 1 hour and, well, the whole point of this post was just to reproduce a beloved image of solicitous angels, so I’d better get on now.
(7) Emile Mâle - Art et Artistes du moyen âge : recueil d’articles publiés à des dates s’échelonnant de 1897 à 1927. La première édition est de 1927, la quatrième est de 1947.
The reproduction is from the essay about « Le portail de Senlis et son influence »
« Puis, les anges viennent ressusciter ce corps sacré et le tirent doucement du tombeau.[…] La résurrection du corps de la Vierge par les anges est une scène nouvelle dans l’iconographie religieuse et pour laquelle [les artistes de Senlis] n’avaient aucun modèle : ils en ont fait un chef-d’œuvre de vie et de grâce . […]La belle pensée de Senlis .[…] C’est à Senlis que se forme l’iconographie de la résurrection […] de la Vierge . La légèreté, l’allégresse des anges de Senlis […] ».

little ode to provincial museums

Provincial(1) ...!

All the energy people spend so as not to appear provincial! Cosmopolitan, sophisticated, cynical, world-wise and post-modern city dwellers on top of the latest global trends (phew) – isn’t that what we all should want to be? Whereas local, unsophisticated, unfashionable, simple, outmoded surely are the kind of adjectives one definitely would not want any of one’s posts to be tagged with?(2)

But look, since we now know that we are all “lonely provincials” (3) anyhow, that none of us lives in the center of the world, why not also succumb without qualms to the genuine charms of provincial museums?

Many of those museums tend to live in a time-warp – embodying still a 19th century European Romantic spirit, oozing this outmoded stern respect for Antiquity & History & High Art but also being plain um, provincial, in their endearing urge to display local artists of dwindling repute.

Broadly speaking, these provincial museums come in two sorts: with and without pretension.

Provincial museums with pretension

Though usually harshly critical towards any kind of pretense – I do make an exception for pretentious provincial museums, because theirs is such a bygone pretense, such a threatened pomposity.
There we have these bloated buildings with neoclassical pillars, grand staircases and pompous statues of self-important (now mostly forgotten) white males. The rooms with either a creepily creaking parquet or a dusty musty carpet (often dating from a renovation-stint several decades earlier). (4)
And if one’s lucky – these rooms still have those old, oval-shaped central seats in the middle of the room, with faded upholstery, upon which many a lady and many a gentleman have rested during their promenade through high culture’s temple.

These rooms then are usually filled with works carefully chosen to flaunt specimens from every art historical period - blithely glossing over the fact that too many of them are second rate.

But shhh …. I’m being excessively unkind here! Perhaps these minor works set off all the better the dozen or so “masterpieces” these museums usually do harbor and to which the ambling visitor at least can devote the attention they merit (undisturbed by thronging fellow visitors and hundreds of competing masterworks) .
And besides, “minor works” or “second rate” are unduly condescending terms - it are not only the ‘universally validated’ masterworks of a certain era that can capture our imagination.

These “minor masters” plied themselves with great skill and dedication to their trade, thus exemplifying how their age saw and represented reality. And sometimes, precisely because they did not create “undisputed masterpieces” – we feel less awed, less boxed in by art historical formulas and we can freely savor this scarcely known painter’s sensitivity to light, or that secondary painter’s obsession with blue skies. Somehow they make us feel more entitled to personal affinity and even affection.(5)

Provincial museums without pretension

Now here the ode becomes an outright love letter … These little, struggling museums (6) with just a couple of rooms, with their “slightly embarrassed antiquities” (7) stemming from local archeological finds , their humble paintings’ collection based on gifts from the town’s richest businessman or from the local artist himself. With these endearing cards accompanying each work – typed in 70s fonts – carrying thoughtful commentaries by a local curator who has spend his or her entire life (oh well, at least a number of years) studying and cherishing these works .

Take the Beaune Musée des Beaux Arts – where I discovered a painter of whom I’d had never heard before. A Hippolyte (8) Michaud (1823-1886) – who of course painted within all the cliché 19th C categories: exalted-historical ; haunted-symbolical ; romantically tormented. But beyond musty historical categories, a vividly moving personal presence emanated from these paintings.



And not in the least from that fascinating self-portrait : a bold modeling and chiaroscuro making for a very tactile presence, a sensitive observation and rendering making us lock eyes with this inquisitive but shy looking young man – wondering about that soupcon of hurt, of despair in his eyes.

And blessed be the considerate curator who has noted some biographical facts for us: only after years of poverty and struggle this Michaud attained “a relative serenity, after his nomination as curator of the Beaune museum” (9)

There’s also an intriguing portrait by his hand of a woman – “in between two ages/ entre deux ages ” as the accompanying card nicely notes. And one cannot but agree with the curator incisively remarking upon the painter’s “subtlety of which he is capable when he is moved by a face” .

And then that arresting pathos in a painting of the dead Christ, which far from being melodramatic sentimentality, may rather be a sign of deep commiseration (10) – the curator again (11) : “a bathos witnessing of his sensibility”.

They’re strangely moving – these unexpected affinities found in small museums – these encounters with unknown dead painters and anonymous curators …

The usual full set of fake scholarly footnotes
(1) provincial
1: of, relating to, or coming from a province
2 a: limited in outlook : narrow ; b: lacking the polish of urban society : unsophisticated
(2) Um, yes I have this thing for Microsoft Word’s list of synonyms
(3) Richard Rorty : “lonely provincialism” [...] stemming from the “admission that we are just the historical moment that we are, not the representative of something a-historical” . According to Rorty the bourgeois postmodern individual cannot but be a lonely provincial with continuing self-doubts, aware of the relativity of his or her perspective. Deeply aware of the fact that no cultural Canon, no way of life can claim any binding or lasting authority.
(4) Sometimes these rooms attempt a reconstruction of epoch furniture and decoration - which in France of course means a room full of Versailles- like pomp & frills - epoch curtains, mirrors, tapestries, do-not-touch tables & stuffed chairs on precariously thin legs– the whole lot often exuding a stale, moldy smell which, I’m afraid, puts off from future museum visits entire generations of whining children (dragged along by their parents).
(5) Examples in this category, starting with those who are located in a ‘province’ but whose collection is scarcely provincial: Antwerp, Lille, Liverpool. (not sure whether I should add Brussels – how provincial is Brussels? Hmmm). Then those with less Major Names on display: Bristol, Manchester, Caen, Reims, Rouen, Dijon, Ghent . & j’en passe.
(6) Cherished examples of small museums without pretence: Bath, Verviers, Laon, Chartres, Autun, Beaune, …
(7) Credits go, again, to Moss for this lovely expression
(8) I so regret that the first name “Hippolyte “ has fallen in disuse
(9) « une relative sérénité, après sa nomination au poste de conservateur du muse des Beaux Arts de Beaune »
(10) perhaps quite incongruously it reminded me of Bellini’s « dead Christ supported by angels”
(11) “effet de pathétisme qui témoigne de sa sensibilité” - don’t know who he or she is, but I’m filled with loving respect and gratitude for the person who wrote those thoughtful notes.

What kind of blog-posts could an Easter-Monday yield?

1) The frivolous option

Well, I could have a go at a blatantly frivolous post – filled with grinning Easter bunnies & melting chocolate eggs. But, um, 't was rather the snow that was melting this morning, when I cycled through the wintry park, which was incongruously full of spring flowers and twittering birds. And with big blobs of wet snow falling off the tree- branches, and a wet frosty air one could get drunk on, while swoosh-ingly riding uphill.

2) The tragic option

But on the other hand. Easter! Such an opportunity for deep & doom-laden reflections! With its great tales of Suffering, Passion and Resurrection … And yes, later this day I may still very well switch off the phone, draw shut the curtains and immerse myself once again in one of Bach’s passions, these heartrending and ultimately redeeming reenactments of intensely humane passions - anguish, humiliation, treason, guilt, pain, love, sorrow , hope …

How not to feel moved by the Agony in the Garden - when this man, utterly forsaken and alone, prays to “let this cup pass from me”. How not to shudder at the torture of this “man of sorrows” , “derided, mocked and spat upon”. It is of course telling that, a few years ago, while contemplating a 15th century print of “the Mocking of Christ” (1) , I actually recognized the expressions of cruel glee on the faces of the persecutors: it were the very same expressions of sadistic delight as one could see on photos that circulated at the time, photos of the torturing at the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib.

So yes, the human condition being what it is, I can quite relate to the need for redemptive stories about a god who sends his son to partake, up to and including his very death, in agonizing human suffering.

3) The true story option

But of course I can also quite understand the need to celebrate budding flowers, fertile bunnies and tasty chocolate eggs. So for once, I might try not to give in to my penchant for ponderous posts.

And I might try to fill the page with more lively stuff, eg with an account of last Saturday’s pilgrimage, together with a friend, to Oscar Wilde’s and Marcel Proust’s graves at the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Yes, I could tell about Saturday’s photo-shoot adventures with M. in Paris! About the transportation of a tripod and a bag full of cameras in crowded metro-cars . About a raincoat (not mine!) carelessly cast aside in a downpour, only to be appropriately attired (il faut souffrir pour l'art) for a frivolous tribute to dear Oscar: a pink-glossed lipstick kiss pressed on his slightly pompous white tomb (again: not my lips!). Or about the waiting for the errant sun to break through the clouds so as to be able to take a photo of a shadow falling on Proust’s grave (quite a modest black stone), but for lack of enduring sunlight we had to resort to a black umbrella silhouette picture instead (yes, my silhouette and my umbrella this time). Or I could tell about the two cute and obliging boys with a map, who helped us to locate Sarah Bernhardt’s tomb, far less flamboyant a tomb than expected. And about M. bravely soldiering on with her dandy-esque boots, limping on the cemetery’s pathways paved with cobble stones.

4) Degenerating anyhow into needlessly ponderous ruminations

Ay, but can I just like that put M. in a story of mine ? I must confess here that I suffer from an outrageous kind of almost superstitious discreetness: thou shall not make likenesses of living people – thou shall not appropriate other people’s existences for your stories.
And surely that’s why, though an avid street photographer, I rarely take photos of people in the street: who am I to think that I could sum up what they really are about? Or, alternatively, who am I to merely take a photo of their appearance in a brief moment of existence, without bothering to capture their essence? And if I could capture other people’s souls, who am I to publicize them on my blog? So this blog as well as my Flickr-photo-pages are to remain eerily depopulated … ?

Ah, portraits …. Whether it are pictures in papers or magazines, taken by a professional photographer, or just snapshots, it’s rare that, starting from a mere portrait of someone I do not know, I feel able to fathom that person’s soul. I’ve often gazed at photos of unknown people– but however accurately they render each physical detail , however long & intensely I stare, I cannot make out who is behind that face. Maybe painters can do it, have the outer form reflect the inner workings of the soul? Like Rembrandt’s self-portraits – where every wrinkle and fold of his ravaged face cries out to our hearts.
Well, perhaps self-portraits are always more telling, expressing what the artist or the photographer wishes to express about her- or himself?

Oh and then there are the photos of people I do know personally, of people I love …. How evocative and poignant the portrait then becomes! Because the portrait then is a reminder, a token of everything we love and appreciate in that person. And because it allows us to sense the whole of the person in one intuitive, instantaneous grasp that no literary description could ever offer.


(1) the picture is not Schongauer’s “Mocking of Christ” (did not find a reproduction of that one) , but his “Carrying of the Cross” , scanned out of the Colmar-museum catalogue

And now for a real city ....

After the bucolic & ecclesiastical delights of Salisbury and the neo-classical nobilities of Bath – it was about time to get a dose of real city grittiness. But without, of course, letting slacken my keen interest in traces and traditions of the past.

No really, I’m endlessly fascinated by the different layers of life a city has on offer. Not only in terms of the available range in contemporary life-styles but also in terms of the past modes of thinking and living that have shaped a city.

And Bristol surely is a fascinating case in point. Now I only spent a day there, so I can merely relate the most fleeting of impressions, which are set in a framework consisting of a few haphazardly collected commonplaces about Bristol and a personal penchant for cities marked by the 19th Century.
So, armed with these prejudices, I boarded the train from Bath to Bristol. Upon alighting there I was met by the invigorating hustle & bustle of a busy station on Saturday (clearly to be distinguished from the commotion on a Workday! Oh yes, even without calendar one could sense the typical mood of a “station-on-Saturday”, just by the sheer expectant joyousness thrilling in the crowds).

A guide book had already alerted me to the fact that the Old Station nearby had been designed by the flamboyant 19C engineer Brunel and overall I knew that Bristol had triumphantly come upon prosperous times again, after struggling with the inevitable decline of a port city that acquired its riches with 18C trade (including the ignominious slave trade) and 19C industry.

And you just have to leave the station and walk for a mile to see it all with your own eyes – the pompousness of a station that resembles a medieval castle, part of the original station now housing a British empire and Commonwealth museum hosting an exhibit “empire and us” with huge photos outside of smiling contemporary people those who might have second thoughts about said empire (ie a skeptical looking black man, an innocently smiling white girl and other non-whites and/or non-males).

Walking on there’s a desolate feel for 5 minutes or so – the comprehensive urbanistic program has not yet managed to domesticate this piece of no-man’s land: a fenced off burnt-out gas station, weeds growing in cracks in the concrete, deserted warehouses not yet converted into something trendy or entertaining, hideous 70s buildings and road works which force pedestrians out onto the road with cars speeding by. But this impression or urban desolateness doesn’t last long – one soon is met by friendly tourist signs pointing out the sites and giving directions. Pavement & road & sidewalks become trim & neat, all houses seem recently renovated.

And then there’s already the Queen’s Square – a stately and charmingly green square, with signs to alert the innocent pedestrian to its momentous history. Just before getting to the real heart of the city there are the quays – old docks duly reconverted into a leisure paradise – with walking- & cycling-paths and terraces and a tourist office and bars bars bars.
Now of course I welcome this kind of positive urban development, resurrecting docks and buildings fallen into disuse – there’s just a sense of wonder, musing about how all the toil & sweat & suffering of the Industrial Revolution has permitted us to now drink frivolous cocktails and go on pleasure trips in former industrial areas.

Well, I didn’t drink a cocktail, and just ate a proletarian sandwich and drank a sensible cup of tea to fortify myself for the steep uphill climb through a busy shopping street towards the City Museum and Art Galleries . On my way there I was charmed by this typically English cathedral, in grey-brown stone so well-matched with the leafy square in front of it. (autumn really suits English cities! ). And of course I gaped at a posh hotel, so sturdy and solid and with, richly decorated lamps (obligingly lit) behind the bay-windows.

And so many young people around here! and this pervasive sense of activity and optimism! yes an engaging city indeed. But my heart only really did a flip flop upon entering the City Museum – ah, truly a quintessential Victorian museum building!

With just the right measure of pompousness and spaciousness and many stairs and galleries and landings from which to look down and up and sideways. And gleaming copper balustrades, and wide staircases and arches and the names of great painters in bas relief on the walls, surrounded by sculpted laurels. And of course a universal museum: going from Dinosaurs to British Mammals over Assyrian and Egyptian artefacts to a fine collection of Old Master paintings. And how cozy this grand building felt: the radiators oozing warmth, the lamps illuminating dusky interiors, kids swarming about (yeah, when there are dinosaurs to be seen!), people come to see an exhibit on the abolition of slavery also wandering off to the galleries with paintings of dead white males. Yes, a heartwarming museum …

Now I did not go to see the British Mammals nor the Egyptian mummies, I just roamed about the art galleries, enchanted by their dusty Victorian feel : the fading velvety wall-coverings (there is a green room, a bordeaux one, a yellow and a blue one), the creaky wooden floor boards, the shining wooden benches …. The air of genteel poverty in these sublime rooms…. And the quality of those paintings, which this museum hardly touts – no postcards, no catalogue – so one just has to confine to memory those rhythmic contour lines of Holbein, that limpid Venetian landscape on the background of a Solario alterpiece, the Jesus descending into limbo from Giovanni Bellini, that lovely domestic scene from Isenbrandt , the Venetian veduta’s … and much much more.…

So I hardly had any time left for the lovely (& again: deliciously yellowy-leafy) Georgian streets, the laid-back and trendy atmosphere in Clifton (a mix of bohemian chic, student life, and gently decayed bourgeois houses) and the awesome Clifton Suspension Bridge : this amazingly elegant bridge, designed by Brunel, spanning a valley whose depths kindle a dizzying vertigo and whose coloring trees make one sigh yet again with sweet autumnal melancholy.

Yes, Bristol has charmed me, with its regained confidence, with its acknowledgment of its history, with its beauties, with its range of sights & sites, with its bustling activity. A real city indeed.

A Medieval Autumn

Salisbury, the medieval cathedral city . How lovely the contrast when you go there from Bath, with its Georgian calm & grandeur, and its whiff of social sophistication. No such pretenses for Salisbury, its very townscape reflects medieval industry & spirituality.

Walking via a winding road from the small station to the centre, there’s the vivid impression of lots of “busy little things” – narrow streets & alleys fanning out, lopsided one story houses, little shops – yes, this is a piously industrious medieval market town. But, finely drawn against the grey sky, there’s the silent slender silhouette of the Cathedral spire to remind us of things more spiritual.

Despite dominating the town, the Salisbury Cathedral is clearly separate from it. You have to pass a Gate to get to the calm of a Close that is located in its own space with a square and a lawn. The houses of the Close are placed at a respectful distance of the cathedral and convey an air of tranquil gentility. Discreet dwellings that do not disturb the autumnal enchantment of the place: a silent sturdy cathedral, mixing its beige-greys with the autumn hues of the adjacent old trees. A soft drizzle envelops everything in an in-temporal haze…..
How it all fits, one muses, standing on the wet lawn, taking it all in: the mellow grey sky, the black dots of a flight of birds, the old trees, the even older cathedral, the silence ….. It could be autumn here always …. .

Not a bad moment to recall these lines: “come autumn, so pensive, in yellow and grey, and soothe me with tidings of nature’s decay” . And in this case also: tidings of human zeal creating works of art whose relative permanence does not only console the faithful .

A noble paragraph to end with, isn’t it? With an ever so slightly hint of romantic exaltation …
So I’d better not go on then describing the lovely walk to Harnham Hill, along a river path, through gardens and with an idyllic view of the cathedral across the meadows. With sheep grazing (or whatever sheep do in meadows) peacefully, a fisherman throwing out his line in the river, swans congregating at a lock . Etc. Etc.
All very bucolic indeed, which is not my natural blogging mode at all!

The “Bath Season”

Stepping out of the train to Bath , the first of my senses to be delighted was Smell. That crisp autumnal air … spiced with a leafy fragrance…. Ah…. How exhilarating pure air can be! With every deep breath I took, I just felt the London stress seep out of me.

Then my Eyes were to be dazzled: those honey-colored houses, bathing in limpid autumn light and set against a background of lavish old trees with changing colors – patches of golden yellow, soft brown and deep red amongst the tender decaying green. Oh, and hazy hills in the distance, and a bridge over a river! And there: stone stairs flanked by sculpted banisters leading to a park, with elegantly traced paths and full of well tended flower beds.

And more was to come – like the calm & harmonious Great Pulteney Street with its beige neo-classical façades, drawing the eye to the imposing porch and columns of the Holburne museum at the end of it .

But since straight lines, as calmly neo-classical as they may be, can still be too harsh on the eyes of an exhausted urbanite – the Bath architects, in all their wisdom , introduced Curves and Crescents in the cityscape. According to the guidebooks, we owe these curves to the eclectic interests of the leading 18th century Bath-architect, John Wood , who was not only formed by neo-classical tradition but also passionate about Celtic and Druid culture – centered on the Moon and magic circles etc).

And what a soothing delight it is, to take in those gentle curves and those subtly varied neo-classical façades. Be it on a square (well a round square) dominated by a giant plane tree (the Circus), or on a curving street (the Royal Crescent) looking out over an undulating lawn …. One wanders about, feasting one’s eyes, futilely brandishing one’s camera to capture the delight of rhythmed space . Yes, this truly is “architecture of happiness” !

And how about the sense of Touch? Oh it is stimulated all right, and tantalizingly so …. There is something so tactile about that soft limestone used in the Bath houses. Now as to Taste: hmm, I will not comment on the English Cuisine, so suffice it to say that it is lovely to drink English Tea in a refurbished Georgian tearoom.
Exhaustiveness now demands I cover all the senses - So there: Hearing, well, actually: the silence! The relative silence of course, in comparison with other, car-infected cities. And the joy to hear the echoing cries of a couple of seagulls (seagulls yes, would they follow the river land-inwards from the sea?)

And the Sixth Sense! Well, if that is the sense of imagination, of Memory & Desire, then Bath’s the place to be. You can imagine Romans taking their Hot Baths or worshipping in their temple (the “Roman Baths" – a fascinating trip into history).
Or, just walking around in town, you can imagine a Jane Austen character strolling about – pensively (if it’s Persuasion’s Anne Elliot who “watched, observed , reflected” – or full of eager delight (if it’s Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland who “was come to be happy, and she felt happy already”). Truth be told: according to Austen scholars, Jane Austen herself, despite enjoying previous visits there, did not like actually living in Bath.

Anyway, you could also flash back to the consummate Dandy and 18th Century social trend-setter Richard “Beau” Nash . Or you could just walk and walk and breathe and look and see and stop brooding and just picture yourself as a happy person enjoying the “Bath season”.

A slice of Paris life: listening to a leaf falling down.

Forget the crowds in the Musée Orsay and get your impressions elsewhere, hassle-free.

Imagine Paris on a brilliant autumn day …… and picture yourself sitting in a quiet garden, sipping your tea while a whiff of Chopin drifts by. This is possible, also for the communs des mortels, in the Musée de la Vie romantique (“Museum of Romantic Life”).

To go there, I advise you (by way of contrast & to augment your subsequent pleasure) to get out at the Pigalle metro-stop. Take in the traffic-noise, savor the shabby looks of all the sex-shops & cabarets congregated there (& gaudy neon lights do look particularly pathetic in crisp autumn light). Cast a pitiful look at the bleary-eyed tourists having their petit déjeuner amidst the exhaust-fumes, and head then down the Rue de Pigalle.

Following the signs to the museum, you’ll soon end up in the Rue Chaplet, where you will see a big old tree sheltering an alley. Going through the cobble-stoned passageway you’ll then find yourself in the quiet of a courtyard, looking at a charming little house with green blinds and awnings. It’s the house of a French romantic painter (Ary Scheffer) who received fellow romantic artists there such as the composer Chopin, the painter Delacroix, the writer (and his neighbor) George Sand.

Ah, George Sand – such an icon of artistry, romanticism and feminism alike. George_Sand. ....A woman strolling about Paris in men’s clothes, writing a host of novels, having affairs with Chopin, Liszt .... So it’s only fitting that this house, now turned into a museum of the Romantic Life, dedicates most of its rooms to souvenirs, portraits and furniture having belonged to her.

And don’t anybody now dare to imagine a stuffy boring old-fashioned museum! Even those who’ve never heard of George Sand will not fail to fall under the spell of this lovely little house. It is a spell of romantic make-believe – light softly filtering through the blinds, creaking wooden floors, pastiche époque decorations on the wall …. . The eye is seduced by flickering candle light (the candles are electric, but they do flicker! and I swear there’s a true candle smell hanging about …) and mysterious reflections in gilded mirrors. The heart is stirred by cascading piano-notes – Chopin nocturnes & berceuses playing on the background.….

This enchanted place also offers a garden – a “Salon de The” with iron tables & wooden chairs, where you can sit and meditate & imagine George Sand opening the blinds while Chopin plays the piano ….

Now maybe you think that one enchanted garden is not enough to redeem stressed out & noisy Paris city life. Well, there’s yet another isle of calm to discover - this one situated in the busiest district on the left bank.

The Rue de Furstenberg is right off the devilishly hectic Boulevard Saint Germain. Behind a little church you’ll find a street and a little square dominated by a tree – and with an almost magical atmosphere of quiet . At nr 6 is a small Delacroix-museum, housed in his former atelier. The house is renovated, the collection competently curated (though not that many noteworthy pieces are on display) – in all its neatness it somewhat lacks the playful charm of the Vie Romantique Museum. But it has a garden,...…. with big trees, and walled in by other houses – all blocking out urban noises. A delicious place to go and sit on a bench, look at the clear blue sky and listen to a leaf falling down….

Tips on other isles of calm in Paris are of course very welcome – we could then compile “un guide parisien du calme (et du luxe et de la volupté) ”