Camille Paglia on Pre-Raphaelite Art

The Golden Stairs, Edward Burne-Jones, 1876-1880, Tate Gallery

 

The Wheel of Fortune, Edward Burne-Jones, 1863, Musée d'Orsay

"Burne-Jones' transsexual world is populated by one incestuously self-propagating being. We are in another Late Romantic bower, shadowless under a grey sky. The ritual limitation on his sexual personae is a Decadent closure, denying our eye right of access to other human types.  The Golden Stairs (1880) expands Rossetti's triplets and quadruplets. We drown in a shower of identical women, eighteen in all, cloning themselves and assaulting the eye. Beauty in excess makes Decadent dyspepsia. The sadomasochistic tableau of The Wheel of Fortune multiplies the male. Giant Fortuna turns her torture wheel, chaining a row of beautiful young men, male odalisques in Michelangelo's troubled late style. Each seems languid twin of the next, limbs stretched in sensual suffering.

   "Burne-Jones' embowered nature begat Art Nouveau, which flourished from the 1880s to World War I. Then modern machine culture geometrized Art Nouveau's organic patterns into Art Deco. So Spenser's dynasty, extending through High and Late Romanticism, unexpectedly ends in the Chrysler Building and Radio City Music Hall. Burne-Jones' serpentine line comes from Blake, whose rapacious flamelike flowers reveal the covert sexual meaning of Art Nouveau's arabesques. The copious histories of Art Nouveau lack psychological insight. Twenty years ago, I was struck by Art Nouveau's popularity among male homosexual aesthetes, for whom neither it nor Beardsley had to be revived, since they had never been forgotten. In every star, style, or art work celebrated by these Alexandrine homosexuals, there is always a secret hermaphroditism. So with Art Nouveau, the most epicene style since Mannerism."

.....read the rest by Camille Paglia.

 

Chant d'Amour, Edward Burne-Jones, 1866-1873, Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

The Depths of the Sea, Edward Burne-Jones, 1887, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

The Perseus Series, The Doom Fulfilled, Edward Burne-Jones, 1884-1885

 The Tree of Forgiveness, Edward Burne-Jones, 1881-1882, Liverpool Museum

Words you'll like

One app I enjoy on my iphone is called Slango---each day it gives me a new word from the Urban Dictionary.  Today's word is cell phone samba, "the erratic movements of a person trying to get better cell phone service.  Example:  The other day, a man ran into me while doing the cell phone samba in the grocery store."  (You can get the word-of-the-day on the Urban Dictionary web site as well.)

Another (real) word I came across a few months ago struck me as so funny I wrote it on a post-it:

The Dunning-Kruger Effect  When someone's incompetence denies them the ability to recognize their own incompetence.  Named by two psychologists (and if you guessed Dunning and Kruger you'd be right), you can read the interesting history of this word here.

So this morning I was quite entertained to read Douglas Coupland's op-ed in the New York Times entitled "A Dictionary of the Near Future", his choice of words we need to describe our modern lives.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Deselfing  Willingly diluting one’s sense of self and ego by plastering the Internet with as much information as possible. (See also Omniscience Fatigue; Undeselfing)

 Portrait of Katie Lewis, Edward Burne-Jones

Fictive Rest The inability of many people to fall asleep until after reading even the tiniest amount of fiction.

Frankentime  What time feels like when you realize that most of your life is spent working with and around a computer and the Internet.

Intraffinital Melancholy vs. Extraffinital Melancholy   Which is lonelier: to be single and lonely, or to be lonely within a dead relationship?

 The Mirror of Venus, Edward Burne-Jones

Limited Pool Romantic Theory  The belief that there is a finite number of times in which one can fall in love, most commonly six.

Memesphere  The realm of culturally tangible ideas.

Rosenwald's Theorum The belief that all the wrong people have self-esteem.  (added by me: these people might also suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect).

Undeselfing The attempt, usually frantic and futile, to reverse the deselfing process.

I wonder if Morris made up words?  It's hard to believe he wouldn't have given his extraordinary creativity with language.

Green and blue never looked so good together....

 Circe Invidiosa by J. W. Waterhouse, 1892

(in the Art Gallery of South Australia)

One of the first images from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in February on a five year mission to study Sun's magnetic field (false color image, blues and greens above 1 million kelvin in temperature).

Perseus and Andromeda, 1876, Edward Burne-Jones

 (in the Art Gallery of South Australia)

Aurora borealis over Eyjafjallajokull volcano/glacier in Iceland....possibly even caused by the solar flares seen in sun picture above?  Photo by Albert Jakobsson.

How can I have enough of life and love?

The Earthly Paradise....Live.  Tomorrow (Tuesday) the BBC Symphony Orchestra will broadcast a new piece by Ian McQueen based on William Morris's great work The Earthly Paradise.  This was the collection of poetry that brought Morris widespread fame and popularity and resulted, upon the death of Tennyson, in an invitation to be England's Poet Laureate.  (He declined, I wish I knew why.)  From the BBC: "The search for the land where 'none grow old' guides the twists and turns of William Morris's The Earthly Paradise. Ian McQueen's work for chorus and large orchestra evokes the poem's extraordinary world, surges with erotic charge, and conjures up Morris's magical vision of Iceland's landscape and sagas."

From my reading of the BBC website, the performance will be broadcast live at 19:00 GMT which according to my detailed calculations will be 2PM on the East Coast (adjust to your time zone).  Going to the BBCRadio3 website and clicking on the LISTEN icon in upper right should work (hopefully).

The Earthly Paradise follows the story of a band of (erotically charged?) medieval wanderers searching for a land of everlasting life, but instead they discover a lost  colony of Greeks with whom they exchange tales.  While Morris illustrated the published edition of his stories in his typical style (see excerpt above), his friend Edward Burne-Jones painted scenes from the many stories.

Here is Perseus and the Graiae painted by Burne-Jones in 1892.  His Perseus looks a whole lot sweeter than Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans (below) although they do appear to be wearing the same outfit.

Burne-Jones also seems to have envisioned the three witches quite differently.  I'd much rather be a Burne-Jones witch.

An earlier Earthly Paradise post about the love story of Cupid and Psyche. In case you need a refresher on your myths....another earlier post. I think I'll go see the movie.

Trinity Church, Copley Plaza, Boston

I recently ducked into Trinity Church to take a look at the Edward Burne-Jones stained glass windows that were commissioned from Morris & Co. in 1882.  Trinity Church is a Boston landmark, the building that established Henry Hobson Richardson as one of the leading architects of his day.  Indeed, the style of this building, characterized by polychromatic rough stone, heavy arches, towers, and clay roof became known as Richardsonian Romanesque and was a uniquely American architectural style.

The late afternoon sun was shining directly on the main altar setting all the gold paint aglow.  Murals covering over 21,000 square feet (about 2,000 m²) of the interior were painted by John La Farge, an artist and worker of stained glass whose reputation was also established as a result of this commission.

Four Burne-Jones windows were installed, three of which (showing scenes from the Nativity) were very high up and hard to photograph.  Here's one....

The most beautiful window depicts "David's Charge to Solomon" and is on the first floor.  The window is on the east wall so it would be better viewed in the morning.

So lovely....

Le Farge's murals....the truth shall make you free....

Vinland Estate, Newport Rhode Island

My second stop on the Newport "summer cottage" tour was the Vinland Estate (1882) which now serves as an administration building for Salve Regina University.  I was very excited -- it had been designed by the firm of Peabody and Stern in the Romanesque Revival style perfected by H. H. Richardson, a style I happen to love.  According to wikipedia, the interior included design elements by William Morris and windows by Edward Burne-Jones.  The house was named Vinland in romantic reference to the Vikings who were believed to have come ashore here and the Morris & Co. windows depicted Norse legends.

The exterior did not disappoint (although the overcast day and flat light did).  Here is the porte-cochere with a second century Roman Dolium on the lawn given to the original owner, tobacco heiress Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, in 1884 ("The Bean Pot" in local student parlance).  The red sandstone is carved with intricate floral designs purportedly derived from Celtic manuscripts from around 1000 A.D., the alleged time of Viking settlement.  (You know the old joke...Columbus was the last person to discover America.)

 beautiful...

  gorgeous...

 peaceful....

 sweet....

exquisite.....

 then....

 huh???

The inside appeared to be one large green, gold, and white French chateau gone bad (the fact that many rooms served as classrooms also didn't help the ambiance).   Now I know some people may like this but it wasn't what I hoped for or expected.   I searched in vain for stained glass windows and an office worker eventually assured me she knew of none in this building.

 Nothing looked "Morrisy" however I did like these carved cherub wall sconces.  I like the fact that the lower one is looking up at the socket wrapped in electrical tape and giggling.

What had happened?  A few days later I went back to the internet and found out some interesting things.  First, in an archive directory at J.R. Burrows I found copies of letters between William Morris  and the Vinland decorators outlining Morris's research and recommendations on which Vikings should be immortalized in the stained glass windows he and Burne-Jones were commissioned to make (note to Freydis, if you hadn't been such a horrible wretch maybe you too would have been immortalized a millennia onward).

Merton Abbey, Surrey
April 11th, 1883
Newport. U.S.A.

Dear Sir:
I have been talking over the matter of Miss Wolfes window with Mr. Burne-Jones, and he quite agrees to the sort of subjects. On reading over the sagas again, I find that Ericke Rau_i [Erick the Red] was never in America, and that all the people who had to do with Vinland Thofinn Karlsefne seemed to be closes connected with it: I should suggest the representing of him and his wife Gudridr instead of the old man and Freydis: which latter was a horrible wretch according to the Leifs' saga whereas Gudridr has something pleasing and womanly about her. It is true that in Thofinn Karsefnes' saga Freydis is softened into a courageous amazon; but that story is visibly untrustworthy compared with that of Lief Heppin and is very late in composition. I propose Odin Thor and Frey the 3 great Gods above the adventurers of Vinland; & in the small lights, a ship the middle, & on each side a scroll, with the passages from Hávamál (Edda) about undying fame on it: proper enough on this occasion since the poor fishermen & sheep farmers of Greenland & Iceland have so curiously found a place among the worthies connected with the great modern commonwealth [America]. Over leaf I make a diagram of the window.
May I ask as a matter of business if we may consider the window ordered and go on with it: I am vexed that any delay sould have taken place, but it has not been owing to any neglect of ours.

I am
Dear sir
Yours faithfully,
William Morris

 A few more interesting letters and articles can be read here and clearly the windows had once been in the house.  Then I found this article by A.C. Sewter that said that the seven Burne-Jones windows were removed in 1934 and sold in 1937 to the Cohen Brothers of Baltimore.  One panel, Leif the Lucky, is now owned by Mr. Otis Beall Kent of Maryland.  The rest are untraced!  Maybe we can find them --- I just need the readership of this blog to increase by about two orders of magnitude.  It can be like America's Most Wanted for famous arts and crafts relics.

Finally, I was still left wondering about the decor.  The house changed ownership in 1896 and a decade later they "recreated" the interior with the services of Ogden Codman, Jr. another famous architect and interior decorator known for his strong French influence.  Such are the fickle winds of fashion.

I am certain there are experts who know much more about this estate than I -- if you read this, please feel free to leave us some more info!

Next, my third and final stop....Ochre Court.

Edward Burne-Jones' Magical World

The Beguiling of Merlin, 1874

Burne-Jones, on his art:  "I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no one can define or remember, only desire - and the forms divinely beautiful - and then I wake up"

Love among the ruins, 1894 

Phyllis and Demophoön, 1870

Head of Nimue, c. 1873

 Pan and Psyche, 1874

St. George and the Dragon, 1866-1893

 Sleeping Beauty, 1870-1890 

 Edward Burne-Jones (1833 - 1898) was the de facto equivalent of William Morris's freshman college roommate.  They met as teenagers at Oxford and remained close friends for their entire lives.  In 1998, on the 100th anniversary of Burne-Jones's death, a huge retrospective of his work was exhibited at the Musee d'Orsay, Paris.  I fell in love.