Still Life - Joan Lennon

BBC 4 documentaries - I love them.  Even the ones where the voice-over narrator repeats what the expert has just finished saying, only less well.  Even the ones where they get the background music totally wrong.  Even the ones where they disappear from iplayer just after I've discovered them, but before I can show them to anybody else.

Luckily, I found this - Apples, Pears and Paint - on youtube here - so I was able to watch again, recommend it to you, and write about it here.  

I've seen still life paintings before - everybody has - but I just hadn't paid attention to them.  While watching the programme, I learned that still lifes (somehow "still lives" doesn't seem right) are most frequently lit from the left.  That elements of the pictures often overlap the edge of the table, as if just about to topple.  I learned that the vanitas element was there in the bugs and the blemishes, not just in the skulls.  I learned that musical instruments in a still life were there because they, too, were emblems of mortality and transience - before the invention of recording, a sound only lasted as long as a bow or a breath and then it died. The story behind the 17th century Dutch still life industry was fascinating.  

And then, the programme turned to the paintings of Juan Sanchez Cotan, of whom I had never heard, and I was blown away.

Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber (1602)

   

Still Life with Thistle and Carrots (about the same time)

So stark.  So incredibly modern.  That bare stone frame and the blank black background and the harsh lighting (from the left).  It wasn't uncommon to suspend fruit and veg from strings to keep them from rotting at the points where they touched each other, but that swoop from top left to bottom right has nothing to do with storage techniques and everything to do with the way the eye moves.  Or top right to bottom left and back again, from blackened carrots to alien thistle.

Wow.

I have a whole new favourite artist in my life - and a new genre - and that would have plenty, but then the programme gave me one last fillip.  It introduced me to Ori Gersht.  Here is his response to Cotan ...

 Pomegranate (2006)

Two other Gersht works I really like can be seen here, and here - see what you think.

And thank you, BBC4.


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

Vermin and Vellum - Joan Lennon

It's no secret that I find having a sleeping cat near me when writing to be both soothing and inspiring, in equal measure.  When I've read about how, in medieval scriptoria, monks shared their literary space with cats, I've thought, Aw, that's sweet - them and me and our furry muses ... not thinking about any other reasons to keep a cat.  I know the Pangur Ban poem which begins - 

I and Pangur Bán, my cat 

'Tis a like task we are at; 

Hunting mice is his delight,

Hunting words I sit all night.

and still I didn't twig.

It's obvious, of course.  Medieval monks, working away at their beautiful illuminated manuscripts, had enemies other than just Nordic types going a-viking.  They were painstakingly inscribing their letters and images onto lunch.

                                                      (© Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS 214, fol. 122r)

That manuscript has been thoroughly gnawed and nibbled on.  (Though the mice have shown a certain restraint.  Or is it just a question of generous margins?)  It was, therefore, an excellent idea to have in your scriptorium at least one cat.  Some, perhaps, larger than others ...

                                                                 (image from wikipedia)

(Okay, I know, I know, it's a lion and it's there because St Jerome took a thorn out of his paw - but it's such a lovely picture ...)

But, as anyone who's ever tried to shoo a cat off a keyboard will know, cats and writing do not always go together so peacefully.

(image from National Geographic)

Inky paws skitter across the page - or sometimes something worse ...

                                                        (© Cologne, Historisches Archiv, G.B. quarto, 249, fol. 68r)

Make the image a bit bigger - that's a cat the cheesed-off monk has drawn, not a donkey, and those accusing fingers are pointing at potent, pongy, moggy pee.  It's enough to make a good man curse.

Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt.

Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.

Well, it's good advice.  Vermin and vellum may not mix, but cat pee really doesn't enhance anything at all.

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.


P.S.  It was not only monks who had grudges against cats.  If, instead of nibbling the vellum, the vermin had engaged in some art work of their own, they might very well have come up with something along the lines of this 18th century Russian print -

(image from wikipedia)

I'll not be showing this to my cat.  She's a sensitive soul.

January: a Whistle Stop Tour - Joan Lennon

It's January, when many of us heave a sigh of relief that the (relentlessly) festive season has passed again, more or less successfully, and we can subside, stroll or leap (depending on mood) back into the arms of whatever it was we've had to set aside.  But, while waiting for the coffee to brew, spare a moment for the month herself, and how artists have been seeing her down the years ...

January from Les Tres Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry 
(between 1412 and 1416)

Aquarius in his pants 
(from a medieval book of astrology)

                 Woodcut illustration of Aquarius by Johannes Regiomontanus, 1512. 
                              (clothed.  So much more comfortable.)

                   Woman Walking in the Snow, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1787-1861.

Skating 
(early 1820s)

1920 New Year's Greeting Card 

(did no one wonder which month exactly the year had a sex change?)

January by Grant Wood 1940 

(painter of American Gothic and a complete surprise to me!)

There, the coffee's ready.  Off you go now.


P.S. I also learned the following:

January starts on the same day of the week as October in common years, and starts on the same day of the week as April and July in leap years. In a common year, January ends on the same day of the week as February and October in a common year, and ends on the same day of the week as July in a leap year. In all years, January begins and ends on the same day of the week as May of the previous year. (Wikipedia)

I find this interesting, not in itself, but in the fact that someone thought someone else out there might actually want to know.  Dear geeks, we love you all.

  

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.