More Torn and Cut Paper, with Schubert

Someone said this (mostly) torn paper collage seemed summery, so given the summery (hot) day, I’ve put it up first.

The next is inspired by Joachim Beuckelaer’s Fish Market (1568), which I took in on my most recent visit to the Met Museum. Fish Market “was painted during the tumultuous times of the Iconoclasm (1566), which disrupted the art market and motivated a change from purely religious to more secular themes.” [cite]

“Which disrupted the art market” is an odd locution for what was actually going on, which was basically an anti-Catholic revolt:

In the late summer of 1566, serious public disturbances broke out throughout the Low Countries. The social unrest was driven by famine conditions in many cities but quickly took the form of a wave of Iconoclasm. Calvinist ministers drew large numbers of the common people to outdoor prayer gatherings. In August of 1566 Calvinist mobs took over local churches and smashed Catholic statues, stained glass windows and paintings. Known as the Beeldenstorm, or image breaking, the unrest spread throughout the Low Countries and became a fundamental challenge to the governments loyal to Phillip II and the Catholic Church. [cite]

Also incorporated into the collage are pages from a Carolingian Gospel Book, “Landscape with Buildings and Trees” (ca. 1800-10), an etching and acquatint by Goya, and “Boy with a Cat in His Arms Leaning against a Shop Window” (1934), a photograph by Dora Maar.

The elements included in this collage are Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s “Head of a Young Man” (1750-60), a breastplate from Fiji (early 19th C), and Alfred Stieglitz’s photograph, “The Steerage” (1907). The backdrop is from a 19th C textile.

Bits of torn magazines make up this one, with an effort to tear scraps in (mostly) single colors.

The last sets August Sander’s “Pastry Cook, Cologne” (1928), in the company of Victor Keppler’s “Housewife in Kitchen” (ca. 1940), against a backdrop of radiator images from Bharti Kher’s “The Hot Winds That Blow from the West” (2010-2011).

Listening List

Elisabeth Leonskaja performing Schubert’s Piano Sonata in C Minor, No. 19, D. 958 (1828)

Franz Schubert’s final three piano sonatas — stunning achievements that only began to grab a place in pianists’ repertoires during the latter half of the twentieth century — were all finished in September 1828, just two months before the composer died. The first of these three massive and challenging sonatas, at least as far as numbering goes, is the Piano Sonata in C minor, D. 958, sometimes called No. 19; like the other two piano sonatas of 1828, it is a work that Schubert dedicated to the pianist Johann Hummel. Hummel had a year earlier been present at a private evening of Schubert lieder and had expressed his admiration for the composer in the highest terms. The Sonata, however, was not published until 1839, a few years after Hummel’s death, and the publisher unjustly struck Schubert’s dedication from the piece and made a new one to Robert Schumann. [cite]

First movement, Allegro

Second movement, Adagio

Third movement, Menuetto/Allegro

Fourth movement, Allegro

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Credits: The sources for the quotations are cited in the text. The photographs (and underlying collages) are mine.

 

Torn and Cut Paper

At the Outsider Art Fair, we came across a booth from Main Street Gallery in Milwaukee, Wiscobnsin, featuring collage work by Della Wells. Among many other attributes, her use of torn and cut paper was a marvel, putting together all manner of shades of greens, blues, yellows, reds as the backbone of her collages, like this one, “if they peer in my house, Matisse”:

Trolling the Heilbrunn Timeline: A Goldsmith in His Shop

Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in His Shop (1449)

On returning from Italy, I decided it was high time I supplemented my scant knowledge of medieval and Renaissance art, so I gathered up a few books* on the subject. After reading said books, it occurred to me that a Renaissance art vacation extender might be available at the Metropolitan Museum, so I looked up the Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. I’d forgotten, if I really ever knew, what a rich resource this is, and trolling around the Medieval/Renaissance sections proved a time sink of the best sort. I picked out a few artworks to visit in person next time I could. Here’s one of those I visited yesterday.

When in Rome: Final Days, Part 2 of 2

Giovanni da Udine, festoon detail, Loggia di Amore e Psiche

I can only say, about our last days in Rome, that we certainly did not go out with a whimper. The opposite of anything we planned, it seems, in retrospect, that we’d been building up to this apotheosis from the moment we arrived.

When in Rome: Final Days, Part 1 of 2

View from Janiculum Hill

We settled on a new strategy for our final two days in Rome. We were again “based” in Trastevere. This time our plan was to explore only more-or-less immediate neighborhoods in an effort to minimize time spent in the logistics of finding our way around. The strategy worked better than we had any right to expect. With a minimum of time spent getting lost, we discovered a trove of Roman treasures most of which would likely not have made it to a short-term visitor “must see” list.