by Jean Marie Carey | 6 Dec 2012 | Animals in Art, Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism, Italian Greyhounds, Stuff Found in Library Books
Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Briefwechsel : mit Briefen von und an Gabriele Münter und Maria Marc
…After several years of seeking this book and not being able to find it, or finding it and having it be a million Euros or something, I was surprised to locate it in a German used bookstore’s inventory and not too crazily dear. It came in a package from Frankfurt am Main with probably the most Luftpost and other sticker adornments ever in the history of mail. I liked the wrapping so much that I just left the book in it for like a month and kept admiring it. Finally I actually needed to look something up and I had this week to open it. I was beyond thrilled to see that it had a dust jacket with fantastic 1980s typography and an X-acto bladed cutout of the “Show Him the Picture!” photo. The pages aren’t highlighted or written in, but they are pretty beat up and smell like bourbon and tobacco; I am always happy to find someone has really been reading a book hard.
I have been reading, listening to Bayern 2, and conversing with my two patient friends auf Deutsch a bit more diligently and was very pleased to be able to just sit down and read the book without too much difficulty, a far different experience from when first I met it. There are a lot more references to August Macke than I remember, and to AM’s influence…FM was always agitating on AM’s behalf.
I see from looking in Worldcat that this is something of a rare book (rarer now that the Little Mermaid dragged the USF copy to the bottom of the ocean or something – way to stay classy). I wonder why Piper never issued another edition, because in addition to the text of the letters there are extensive notations about the context of the references in the letters, and, very helpfully, descriptions of what was on the obverses of the postcards FM sent that he didn’t make himself. Between the paint, the content, and the terrible writing and incomplete addresses, FM was a real terror to the kingdom’s postal service – they regularly sent his stuff back or just handed it back and refused to deal with it – and they must have been relieved to see just normal “art” postcards such as people send today.
The other text I came across when I was organizing some shelves of books was this: The Decipherment of Linear B. I have always been very fascinated with cuneiform and with the work of Michael Ventris. The author, John Chadwick, was a friend and colleague of Ventris and though this is a very staid account of the process of identification and transcription of the cuneiform characters as both compared with Phoenician and Egyptian and deductively derived, Chadwick mentions Ventris’ untimely death in the introduction. I snatched this book from the trash and am very glad to have it now.
by Jean Marie Carey | 8 Oct 2012 | Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism
After being “back” for only a week I find I am already struggling a bit to remain in the cocoon of wellbeing spun by having been “home” the week previous…so I decided to quickly tell a couple highlights of my adventure in the interest of hanging on, at least in words.
The citizens of Würzburg, in the center Bayern Inferioara not Hessen, determinedly identify with their neighbors on the Main in Frankfurt as opposed to affiliating with the residents of the Kingdom with whom they actually share statehood. One citizen explained to me that Oktoberfest was not celebrated in Würzburg, “only in Bavaria.” (Just to clarify, Würzburg is in Bavaria.) I cannot be exactly sure why this is, since, while it is certainly not as wacky and zany as any place in UB, it is very agreeably weird in its own way. I will investigate further in the future.
In any case, a number of amazing things happened while I was there. The first one was that suddenly, I could speak German. After the fiasco of this past summer, I had really only been studying haphazardly, by which I mean listening to the “party music” programming on Radio Bayern 2, reading just a couple pretty easy books, and practicing with my friend the idiosyncratic new language based on 30 percent German and 70 percent JDilla.
However it became obvious even in the short distance between the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and the Würzburg hauptBahnhof that an increased level of proficiency was going to be necessary and that filling in the unknown vocabulary with French, Italian, Dutch or Lupe Fiasco would be both impossible and sociologically ill-advised. For some reason I was not very worried, probably because when you are fortunate to be on a train in Germany in Bavaria and it is cold enough to wear a hat, scarf, and gloves, there is not really anything to worry about. When I got to the hotel, the lobby of which doubles as a Mexican restaurant (see I told you this place is afterall in Bayern), for some reason without really thinking anything about it I just asked (bitte) for die Schlüssel zum Zimmer zweihunderteins? A few minutes later, looking out the window of said room, I realized something must have gone horribly wrong since in the past I rarely get articles and never numbers right on the first try in conversation.
Yet this was not an accident or aberration ( at least for the week or maybe the whole thing was). After that, I just could speak German. I know it sounds like some sort of miracle but actually I should be able to speak German, I just hadn’t been able to until this very moment. After I tested out this new ability over the next few hours – getting directions, getting a magazine at a newstand, chatting with some people who were also standing by the Main admiring the swooping bats and rain on the river – I was convinced of its existence.
At that point I was suddenly overcome with one of the greatest senses of ecstasy I have ever known. (more…)
by Jean Marie Carey | 26 Aug 2012 | Animals in Art, Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism, Music, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
Apollinaire was very popular in Bonn and in Berlin, where he befriended Herwarth Walden, who, among other things, occupied a societal role similar to that of Apollinaire. Apollinaire also wrote and drew quite prolifically, of course, in addition to being a tastemaker around whom a circle of other artists and authors coalesced.
In early 1913, August Macke was very excited when not only Apollinaire but Robert Delaunay (and later Max Ernst) came to hang out at his place. Apollinaire spoke German very well, also. Anyway, AM just loved these guys, and generally began trailing them around and writing to them all the time and so on.
There is much more to this story, some of it very exciting, and be assured I will get to it all shortly…
However not everyone was enchanted by Apollinaire. That “not everyone” included, well… for the immediate subject at hand, Franz Marc. FM actually had little use for Delaunay, after a (short) while, either. During 1913, FM pesters Delaunay with tons of perplexing, unsolicited criticism, finally in one outburst declaring that RD wasn’t a very good writer, either.
Apollinaire did like FM’s work, but FM kept a distance. Today upon discovering that it is Apollinaire’s birthday, well, what can I say? It explains a lot. Here is a very comprehensive if somewhat outdatedly designed Website about Apollinaire.
AM finally told FM, basically, to stop embarrassing him in front of his cool new friends. FM pointed out that it was he who had introduced these three to one another, and, that also, RD was kind of a jerk, refusing to give AM anything but a scrap of used drawing paper (like literally AM was begging for any type of memento and that was what RD let him have!). Anyway, RM and AM fought all the time as it was, so this altercation of course could not be resolved swiftly or in a few words and continued over the course of some petulant correspondence and huffy silences…full citations to come. FM was jealous, of course, but also he hated to see AM fall in with people he thought embodied the worst characteristic of all, that of being fake.
Fortunately, since everything that has happened before will happen again, this throwdown has been re-enacted by two parallel characters in one of the most important documentaries of our time (it had to be peddled as fiction because of the potency of its truth), Mean Girls (2004).
Above is the epic scene in which Janis Ian (as FM) confronts Cady Heron (as AM) [we won’t even get into the whole LiLo thing here, or about… nevermind) about being plastic…
With a special guest appearance by Damian as Helmuth Macke.
by Jean Marie Carey | 5 Aug 2012 | Animals in Art, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism
Le lendemain revint le petit prince.
– Il eût mieux valu revenir à la même heure, dit le renard. Si tu viens, par exemple, à quatre heures de l’après-midi, dès trois heures je commencerai d’être heureux. Plus l’heure avancera, plus je me sentirai heureux. A quatre heures, déjà, je m’agiterai et m’inquiéterai; je découvrirai le prix du bonheur ! Mais si tu viens n’importe quand, je ne saurai jamais à quelle heure m’habiller le cœur… Il faut des rites.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Briefwechsel : mit Briefen von und an Gabriele Münter und Maria Marc
