Beauty in the Alleyways

Albert Franck's Toronto Scenes


Sunday Morning

Here is a lovely Albert Franck scene of the back alleys of Toronto. Although this one was painted in 1965, I see exactly the same scene in today's Toronto.

For a northern city, which is associated with drab weather and even drabber colors, these town houses and alleyways exemplify the colorful and haphazard Toronto that is really underneath it all.

Talking of snow, almost all of Franck's paintings are done in the nostalgic light and colors of deep winter.

And, yes, we do get to miss it when it isn't there!

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Interior and Exterior

Rembrandt's Jan Six Writing


Rembrandt has drawn several portraits of Jan Six next to an open window, often engrossed in some activity, as his writing above. It seems that Jan Six has that rare quality of being an outdoor’s man, with introspective sensitivities.

In this drawing, there is the sense of interiors and exteriors which he captures both with the actual subject of the drawing (Jan Six Writing), and with the formal composition.

The beautiful landscape which we glimpse through the open window suggests that Jan Six is engaged in some kind of mesmerizing world of his imagination while writing this letter. Who is it to, we ask; what is it about, is Jan Six longing for something, an encounter with someone, who resembles the beauty of this exterior landscape?

Now, to the composition of the drawing.

There are many "squares" in the picture: the square of the table, the square of the window, the square of the window shade, and the square of the letter.

Jan Six, as the protagonist of the drawing, shows us his importance by round hat he's wearing (who wears a hat indoors, to write a letter?). But, we know from this round hat, different from all the squares, that he's the focus of the attention.

The squared, flat table, on which sits the squared letter, mimics the squared vertical window opening.

From this we make the association that the inner world on the table and the letter, is linked with the outer world of the countryside by these converging squares.

Rembrandt draws an abstract picture (of squares and circles) to unite an emotional and visual one to build our imagination around a small, intimate story about a young man writing a letter.

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Phantasm and Phantasy

Poggolio on the Avant-Garde Disconnect with Society

Renaot Poggolio, a theorist on the avant-garde, comes to the same conclusions I that did that Canadian avant-garde filmmakers end up by converting reality into phantasm.

Poggolio (an Italian critic, which is an important qualifier in that the Italian avant-gardists played an important role in the dissemination of the art) quotes a social critic, Christopher Coudwell:

…a dissolution of …social values…results in the art work’s ceasing to be an art work and becomes mere private phantasy.

He sees the popularity of Shakespeare as the positive end of individualism, whereas the avant-garde pushed this individualism to such an extreme that it caused the disintegration of art instead.

Somehow, Shakespeare was able to include society into his eccentricities, and the avant-garde just resorted to phantasm and phantasy.

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Modern-day Memorials

Missing the Grandeur


Berlin Holocaust Memorial

Memorials have a lot of emotions attached to them. In conventional war memorials, one feels the patriotism and symbolic triumph of the soldiers. Usually, the memorial is a sculpted representation of a soldier (or soldiers). Even memorials of individuals emanate a feeling of respect and admiration, usually once again represented in a realistic sculpture. These feelings are overwhelmingly positive.

Yet, I came across the Berlin Holocaust Memorial through internet links and digressions while reading an interview with American architect Peter Eisenman, who designed the memorial.

Eisenman’s memorial to the Jewish genocide in Germany constitutes of some 2,700 slabs of concrete steles in a huge area of land. It looks like a graveyard. The architect’s words describe it thus: “The place of no meaning”.

This memorial took more than ten years to build, wrought with controversies from the start.

But the question is: “Can memorials be built on negative emotions?"

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is built on such negativities, so much so that the architect felt it necessary to build it resembling a nameless cemetery.

Another memorial of such profound significance is the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. Protestors were so resistant to the converging shiny granite stones, again reminiscent of gravestones, that the designers had to include a sculpture of three soldiers alongside it. These soldiers apparently conveyed a better sense of patriotism and heroism that are often part of war memorials.

It might just be the problem with the modern world, where memorials no longer reflect deep, positive feelings. Instead, these very great modern ones seem to have been built to expiate our sins, or at the very least to find a quick ground to commemorate those we should be commemorating.

The grandeur and dignity no longer exists, and all we’re left with is empty feelings.

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The Synthesis of Beauty

From Strength and Kindness

Excerpt from The Death of Jacob by Rabbi Ari Kahn, via BadEagle.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not merely three highly accomplished spiritual individuals. They formed a dynasty, in Hebrew shalshelet, which is derived from shalosh, meaning "three." According to Kabbalistic thought, each of the three patriarchs created a different spiritual awareness in the world, each becoming one of the three pillars necessary to support the establishment of the nation. Abraham is identified with chesed or "kindness." Isaac is identified with the opposites of kindness, namely gevurah or "strength" and din or "justice." And Jacob is identified with the merging of the above -- tiferet or "beauty." Thus, the patriarchs represent (to borrow the Hegalian model) thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Once synthesis is achieved, the nation can emerge.

In this descriptive explanation of Jacob’s death, and his revelation to his sons of their roles in the future (as the twelve tribes of Israel), the author talks about the three patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - and how they connect with each other.

Abraham is identified with kindness, Isaac with the opposite strength, and Jacob with beauty.

In fact, Jacob is the synthesis of the two (thesis and antithesis).

That beauty is a synthesis of kindness and strength makes perfect sense.

Any work of art that is too strong will come off as harsh and unconnected

Any work that is too kind will appear weak and sentimental.

Beautiful works of art need to combine harshness and sentimentality to bring us closer to an authentic feeling, that is neither too cold nor too mawkish, in reaction to the work.

So, Jacob as beauty (work of art) must have been just the right combination of strength and kindness to produce the authentic tribes of Israel.

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Vogue Cover Illustrations

The Legacy of Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Beardsley lived a short life of twenty five years. His drawings, many used to illustrated books and posters, had a sense of foreboding about them, often with androgynous figures with cruel expressions. Kenneth Clark, the art critic and writer says that Beardsley knew about Evil.

His many illustrated books included: Oscar Wilde’s play “Salomé”, an art an literary magazine called “The Yellow Book” of which he was the art editor, and Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”.




Close to his death (due to tuberculosis) he converted to Catholicism and died at the very end of the nineteenth century.




These Condé Nast Publications for Vogue Magazine covers reminded me of Beardsley’s illustrations. Most of them are from the turn of the twentieth century (1912-15). Beardsley’s beautiful (but disturbing) illustrations have found their true place. Decorating the women he tried so much to put in a favorable light.

Beardsley Illustrations: From top
The Black cape; Cover design for Smithers catalogue of rare books; Isolde; La Dame aux camelias; The peacock skirt.

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Family Portraits

Adolf Wissel vs. Norman Rockwell

While doing research on color and the history of modern art, I came across this website which talks about Hitler's abhorrence for modern art, so much so that he would set up degenerate art exhibitions to ridicule these painters.

Instead, he wanted art that glorified his Aryan concept.

Now, this type of commissioned art had nothing to do with 'artistic' requirements, but rather with ways to decimate Nazi propaganda.

Here is a strange, claustrophobic, family portrait, which is certainly meant to promote the 'happy, Aryan family life.' It fails on many levels, although artistically, it is an exquisitely designed piece.

Farm Family From Kahlenberg. By Adolf Wissel, 1939

The strangest thing about this portrait is the little boy, who is not quite in the center, and who looks directly at the viewer. Normally, one associates such a bold stare with a mature or heroic character. Not a disconcertingly young, and audacious boy.

But there are many more things going on in this picture:

1. There is no grandfather in the painting, which I'm sure is quite a deliberate omission. As though to say, we don't need our past, but must look into the future alone. It it the child-bearing women (the grandmother is present) who seem to matter more. In other words, create the world anew, by destroying it first - quite in league with the götterdämmerung for a new dawn.


I have manipulated the top picture to centralize the boy.
The bottom picture is the original.
(Click on images to view larger sizes without lines)

2. The boy is not really in the center of the original painting. If he were 'designed' thus, he would be visually separate him from everyone else. He would not fit in with his protective father, nor with the nurturing mother, but remain as a direct and lonely focal point

Ironically, the picture with the centered boy is also the more claustrophobic, and it is the less successful design of the two. The artist was correct to compose his painting in the original manner.

Yet, this original composition, as well as being true to design, is really true to sentiment and psychology as well.

As the visually centered character, the boy would then really be on his own. I would suspect that the painter is projecting his own immaturity and lack of independence by avoiding this central position for the boy. But the painter still doesn't underestimate the aggressive and audacious character of the boy, making him stare at us with a bold and insolent stare.

This goes quite well with the National Socialists, who never wanted the father figure too far away, being unable to mature into independent and responsible men. But, they were aggressive, demanding and ruthless little boys at heart.

3. The women seem to have an even stronger presence here. The father's connection is with the old woman, presumably his mother. Not with his father, who is absent. And the rather burly young girl on the left is busy with her books, suggesting the rather masculine role many Nazi women were to play later on. Of course the wife is the child bearer, producing both the young boy (future leader) and the young girls (a future feminist and a future mother).

4. There is no centered visual hierarchy of people here. Although the father dominates a mini-pyramid of his daughter (to the left) and his son, he is in the background. His wife seems to have some more prominence, being in the foreground. And the father's timid eye-contact with the grandmother seems to make her his center. As mentioned, the young boy seems to dominate the scene.

5. The colors are warm browns and yellows, and there appears to be a lively dusk sky behind. But any warmth has be negated by the claustrophobic arrangements of the people in their dark clothes and dour expressions. It really is to close the end of the day/world.

6. For a farm family, there is very little farm food around. Whatever is displayed is consigned to the small left-hand corner of the picture.

7. The horizon seems to have been flattened out as though we’re in some stage-set interior with a backdrop, full of fantasy and manipulation.

Now contrast this with the Rockwell painting.

Freedom from Want. By Norman Rockwell, 1943

1. The grandfather is the center, both pictorially and actually - there is no ambiguity about that.

2. The picture is designed in the classic pyramidal fashion, with the important figures at the top of the pyramid (grandfather and grandmother) and the rest of family widening out to the base.

3. Unlike the Wissel whose nature which we cannot seem to reach, Rockwell has brought nature into to the family, with the turkey, fruits and vegetables all laid out on the table. Rockwell's Nature is really abundant.

4. All the food follows the central and important axis, with the grandfather at the top. A true thanksgiving for the abundant fruits of the land.

5. Although we are indoors, there is a sense of space and light. The elongated perspective of the white table connects with the bright window at the back which promises to take us out into the sunny mid-day exterior.

6. Finally, this family seems to be fully enjoying the moment. And even the one person looking at us is doing so with a sense of fun and mischief.

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