In today's blog prompt, Tink has really spoken to me, by picking my favorite subject - Art. In her post she asks her readers what is our favorite type of art and who is our favorite artist. If I were forced to pick one type of artistic expression it would be a huge struggle between photography and sculpture. In the mood that I'm in today I'd like to work at moulding some clay and in so doing be able to give my thoughts and feelings shape.

As for my favorite artist, I don't think there could be just one. I do love Rodin's work and that of Camille Claudel's. But I also love much of the biblically inspired sculpture of the 13th through 17th Century. They are my photographs into a past that has long been lost. Anyway, below are the results to the quiz I took. My answer was based on my feelings at the end of my day.
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Posted by: Michele at 12:49 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I came across this beauty while cleaning out files in my old computer (click to enlarge). I took this many moons ago on a hot summer night very much like tonight. I was living in the East Village at the time and normally when I couldn't sleep I'd do one of 3 things: go running, go clubbing or go take pictures. That evening I was restless as it was too hot to sit in my apartment (my AC wasn't working so well) and I set out meandering through the streets of Manhattan to see what images I could capture in the waning sun. That night I walked from my apartment all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge, just over 5 miles, because her beauty drew me to her.

While there I thought I should cross over to Brooklyn since the night was young and the cool breeze off the bridge beckoning sweetly. Halfway to Brooklyn I turned around to look back and saw this beautiful image of contasting shapes and lines that it was almost as if the picture was set up by itself. Since then I've taken pictures from and of that bridge in a thousand different ways. Many people come to NY to visit and never get to see her this way. I figured I'd post it here for all of you to see how beautiful she is close to 200 years later. In this picture I can really see what Walt Whitman and other poets saw in her. I can also understand why a foreign investment group would want to buy her. The question now is, should we sell, lease or keep her?

[Cross-posted at Postcards From NYC]

Posted by: Michele at 08:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 Now, that's one pretty picture. The Brooklyn Bridge never looked so... Brooklyn Bridgyesque-like. Great moment fer a capture! Lucky stiff.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 21, 2006 11:58 PM (CIjrb)

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~ The Abandon by Camille Claudel

I hope you all have the opportunity to hold someone you love in your arms, perhaps while enjoying a dance or simply by embracing the peson you hold dear and saying: "I love you" before they are gone from your heart and life.

These were the very words that Camille Claudel never heard spoken from the lips of her love, Auguste Rodin, and which tortured her existence to her dying day.

Posted by: Michele at 11:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In honor of St. Valentine's, I post Rodin's most famous sculpture and monument to love. Blending sensuality and idyllic love Rodin created one of the greatest images of love based on his own love for the young Camille, whom he often called his own muse.

It is based on Virgil and Dante's visit through hell, "The Inferno". While there they saw, among those who had committed sins of the flesh, Paolo and Francesca, two individuals who had lived in the Middle Ages in Italy.

Around 1275, Francesca married Gianciotto Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. He entrusted her in to the care of his brother, the handsome young Paolo. It is said that Paolo and Francesca fell in love with each other while reading romances of courtly love. Rodin portrays them in the moment after having read the tragic story of Lancelot and Guinevere. As they realize their love for one another, Rodin captures what must have been their first kiss shortly before they are killed.

Posted by: Michele at 07:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Another of my favorite sculptures by Rodin. In this piece, Rodin shows how God moulds the human form from matter bringing the divinity into humanity from emptiness. It is also a supposed to represent a parallel symbolic image of the artist who both invents and sculpts a world from raw material.

"The Hand of God" is molding clay with the forms of Adam and Eve intermingled together, powerfully molding the matter from which two newborn creatures emerge from the divine; it is also a symbolic image of the artist who creates a world from an insipred vision.

Posted by: Michele at 09:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Danaid represents the suffering of one of the daughters of Danaus, King of Argos. In the Greek myth, Danaid was condemned to live in Hades for eternity, perpetually filling a vessel full of holes as punishment for the murder of her husband. In this sculputure Rodin captures the moment where she has thrown herself down, beside the stream, in despairing abandon at the futility of her life.

Posted by: Michele at 09:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Cosas

Pienso en umbral donde deje
pasos alegres que ya no llevo,
y en el umbral veo una llaga
llena de musgo y de silencio.

Me busco un verso que he perdido,
que a los siete años me dijeron.
Fue una mujer haciendo el pan
y yo su santa boca veo.
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Posted by: Michele at 01:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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