An Ekphrastic poem by Charles Tarlton

James McNeill Whistler’s Red and Black: the Fan (1894)  and Kenneth Paul Block’s Drawing for the cover of James Brady’s novel, Fashion Show (2009)

All good colors are equally beautiful;  it is only in the question of their combination that art comes in.

                         -- Oscar Wilde

In the austere harmony of red and black there is at once both contradiction and beauty.  Where red is nearly all, the thinner black slithers up, punctuates the shape of red.  Oh, that long black feathered line down the middle of her red dress!  On the right, the black dress flaunts a splash of bright red flowers or ribbons in the décolletage, and catches our eye, the black dress slinky as the boa on the red.  I would make metaphors of these two, and have each contemplate the other in her gaze.

strike me a Grecian

coin between hard iron dies

a silver drachma -

heads, the goddess Athena

a wise old owl comes up tails

my lady in red

leans forward in the mirror

dreaming of a black

gossamer frock dotted red

dreaming herself into it

see the girl inside

that black dress.  What does she crave?

to hang on a wall

where the museum displays  

its admired Whistler women

An annotation for Cy Twombly

 "                    ....  Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made."
                                     from Wallace Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West," from 1934


I have been reading Patricia Meyer Spacks's annotated Pride and Prejudice. I was worried that she might include too many instances of mere "translation":  Bingley's "design" means his "plan," that sort of thing.  And there are a few simple explanations... but principally what matters to Spacks is her observations.  She discusses the importance of the "visit" -- acquaintances must begin, yet only a man may visit another man, and that first visit should be made promptly (p. 31, note 13) -- I feel these notes are very useful to twenty-first-century readers, who do not "visit."   About a request from her father, "What say you Mary? for you are a lady of deep reflection..." that poor Mary is unable to answer, "Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how," Spacks says this: "Austen's capacity at least momentarily to solicit sympathy for foolish Mary, as earlier for foolish Mrs. Bennett, suggests the breadth of her comprehension" (p.37, final sentence of note 17).  It isn't simply vocabulary, or story ... it is the very nature of the author's "comprehension."

This got me wondering about the nature of annotation, and, beyond its meaning an explanation or comment,  the origins of the word: it comes from the Latin annotare, "to mark."  And I thought how used we are to annotating texts and reading marginal notes in texts; but we are not at all used to the idea of annotating a painting. Museum and gallery labels inform, but distract from the thing itself. Perhaps words are not the useful thing to comment on painting. Maybe we need to go back to Stevens's "Idea of Order": creative marks may be made to comment on other creative works... paint and pencil annotate paintings and drawings. So here is an annotation for Cy Twombly from me, a drawing called "Orange Slices":

and travelling around with a sketchbook....

And Alice said -- wasn't it obvious -- "we're eating the Cezanne."

(when asked by a neighbor how they were faring in wartime... Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein gestured to their reasonably lush plates of food....)

"Drawing is Taking a Line for a Walk" Paul Klee; line and color

Yesterday's excellent Print Fair, at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (SJICA), presented selected artists who make monotypes; it was a beautiful day and we had time to meet each other and see one another's (sometimes very different) styles of print-making.

When critics discuss painting, Matisse is often associated with color, and Picasso with line... I had not thought about this distinction in terms of print-making until yesterday's show at the SJICA.  I could be slotted in under the "color" column:

... but other people whose work was on show yesterday would be ... taking lines for a walk.  So it got me thinking, and looking at line. I took a Jasper Johns print (photogravure and collage) called "Untitled" (from 1986-2002) and drew it, rather loosely,  just to see:

And then I drew some lilacs, imaging that they might be trying to fill the room:

It can be done! And Jasper Johns, incidentally, is a good role model for combining BOTH color and line....