Borges' Library

L’Officine Universelle Buly From Museum to Perfume

From Museum to Perfume

In 2019, Buly partnered with the Louvre Museum in an exceptional artistic project: to bring a masterpiece alive by creating its perfume. Free from compositional bonds, eight famous noses of French perfume tradition convey mastery and emotion in the fragrant conversion of some of the greatest masterpieces. The wonderful Le Louvre Collection counts 8 Eau Triple in Limited Edition: La Grande Odalisque (interpreted by Domitille Michalon-Bertier), La Nymphe au Scorpion (int. Annick Ménardo), Conversation dans un Parc (int. Dorothée Piot), La Victoire de Samothrace (int. Aliénor Massenet), Saint Joseph Charpentier (int. Sidonie Lancesseur), Le Verrou (int. Delphine Lebeau), La Baigneuse (int. Daniela Andrier) and La Vénus de Milo (int. Jean Christophe Hérault).

EAU TRIPLE LA VICTOIRE DE SAMOTHRACE
A rich harmony of tuberose, magnolia and jasmine enhanced by the warmth of myrrh.

EAU TRIPLE SAINT JOSEPH CHARPENTIER
A deep note of cedar wood, infused with verbena, pink berries and vetiver

By the perfumer Sidonie Lancesseur

Below from the Black Narcissist Blog

This painting, created around the year 1642 is one of several tenebrist paintings by La Tour. Others include The Education of the Virgin, the Penitent Magdalene, and The Dream of St. Joseph. In all these works, a single, strong light source is a central element, surrounded by cast shadows. In both Joseph the Carpenter and The Education of the Virgin, the young Christ is represented, hand raised, as if in benediction, with the candlelight shining through the flesh as an allegorical reference to Christ as the “Light of the World.”

The word that stands out for me here is tenebrist, or great contrasts between light and dark, and Buly’s perfumed namesake is a ‘deep note of cedar wood, infused with verbena, pink berries and vetiver’, though to me it smelled more like a tender, illuminating sandalwood. 

 

Holbein, van Eyck and Kende Wiley

Holbein, 1536 or 37. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

The King's Painter: The Life of Hans Holbein
by Franny Moyle

Holbein: Capturing Character
Getty Museum Catalogue 

Portrait of Simon George of Cornwall, c. 1535-1540, Hans Holbein the Younger Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling is an oil-on-oak portrait completed in around 1526–1528 by German Renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger. London.

Portrait of Christina of Denmark, 1538 London

 

Mantegna's Madonna della Vittoria 1496. Paris 

van Eyck's The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, 1434–36 Bruge

The Brera Madonna, Piero della Francesca Milan

Fresco Piero Rimini

The Long Disputed Meaning Of Van Eyck's Painting (Waldemar Januszczak Documentary) | Perspective/VIDEOThe Tudors Through The Eyes Of Holbein

Video: A Stitch in Time in the Arnolfini Portrait

Hannah Gadsby: why I love the Arnolfini Portrait, one of art history’s greatest riddles

GIRL IN A GREEN GOWN 
by Carola Hicks

Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait: Stories of an Icon
by Linda Seidel

 

"resurrection" by alma thomas
This acrylic and graphite on canvas painting was done by Alma Thomas, who was an educator and artist in Washington, D.C. for most of her career. She was a member of the Washington Color School. This painting was unveiled as part of the White House Collection during Black History Month 2015 and is the first in this collection by an African-American woman. This painting was acquired for the White House Collection with support from George B. Hartzog, Jr., and the White House Acquisition Trust/White House Historical Association.

Brooklyn Museum/ Kehinde Wiley Napoleon Leading His Army Over the Alps

Napoleon Leading the Army is a clear spin-off of Jacques-Louis David’s painting of 1800-01 (below), which was commissioned by Charles IV, the King of Spain, to commemorate Napoleon’s victorious military campaign against the Austrians. The original portrait smacks of propaganda. Napoleon, in fact, did not pose for the original painting nor did he lead his troops over the mountains into Austria. He sent his soldiers ahead on foot and followed a few days later, riding on a mule.

The Obama Portraits Have Had a Pilgrimage Effect
One year after Kehinde Wiley’s and Amy Sherald’s paintings were unveiled, the director of the National Portrait Gallery reflects on their unprecedented impact.

By Kim Sajet

The Internet Is Restaging Famous Paintings While Museums Are Closed
The Getty, Metropolitan Museum, and Rijksmuseum have challenged their followers to creatively recreate famous works in their collections. In HYPERALLERGIC by Hakim Bishara

 

Books:

The Obama Portraits
by Taina Beatriz Caragol-Barreto, Richard J. Powell, Dorothy Moss, Kim Sajet, Thelma Golden

Huntington Museum Kehinde Wiley: A Portrait of a Young Gentleman

Kehinde Wiley: Memling

Ciao, Carpaccio

Ciao, Carpaccio!: An Infatuation
by Jan Morris

 

The Annunciation of the Virgin at Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca' d'Oro 

My Goodreads Review:

This is pretty much a "perfect book." A jewel. A book to be treasured! Charming, witty, and enlightening, it is a must-read for anyone who loves Venice, Carpaccio paintings or well, I think pretty much anyone in the world would fall in love with this small gem of a book. In fact, I am not sure I’ve read too many books by Jan Morris-- but I have to say, I am now very much committed to reading as many as I can! Carpaccio is one of my favorite painters, John Ruskin was also quite fond of him --though he would declare not one but two Carpaccio paintings to be "the most beautiful picture in the world."

Like Morris, while I don't think he is one of the greatest of the sublime artists of the Renaissance--not one of the "greats" perhaps (Gombrich didn't even include Carpaccio n his famous Story of Art!) Still as Morris rightly says, his paintings are unforgettable. They are gentle, with those glorious Venetian colors, and the bestiary of enchanted animals... Bellini pups! And those pheasants and rabbits; lions and deer... While Ruskin put the Ursula painting as "most beautiful" he later changed his mind and famous declared the Two Venetian Ladies in the Correr to be the finest picture in the world... I myself would probably agree, as for me, the upper part of that picture (in the Getty) of Hunting on the Lagoon, is a painting very, very dear to my heart. Morris, for her part loves St Augustine in his study (still in situ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Aug...

Her musings about this picture are just delightful.

The book begins and ends with her personal impressions of Carpaccio's paintings. Oh, if only I could write so beautifully about art.

And yes, I must read Calasso's Tiepolo Pink! (With its titled plucked from Proust).

And oh, that little white dog!

As Jim C says below: What she says of Carpaccio, I would say of her own work – that she is an artist of "that simple, universal and omnipotent virtue, the quality of Kindness."

Don't miss this one!

Bruegel, Bosch and Company in the Kunsthistoriches

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Dutch novelist Cees Notteboom writes about seeing Bosch's Garden of Heavenly Delight at 21 and then seeing it again at 82. He asks, How has the painting changed? How has the viewer changed? Am I even the same man now? Can we moderns access the picture in the way Philip II did? Have our eyes changed so much? While it hasn't been sixty years, still it has been a long time to be in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. It was thirty years ago. I was nineteen. We stopped in Vienna on the way back from two months in India. My first time abroad. Vienna was so damn pretty.
I can vividly recall what a warm day it was and how overwhelmed I felt by the Grand museum exterior . It was not just royal but imperial and ascending that colossal double marble staircase with the statue by Canova situated in the first landing halfway up, I turned back to look at Alexis who was trailing behind me. He was staring up at the painted ceiling, called the Triumph of the Renaissance. He was as gobsmacked as I was.

At the top, the path forked: to the left, the Northern School and to the Right, the Italian School. The eternal fork in the road of European art history. Today, I definitely would take left. But being young Americans, we took right.

From that day thirty years ago, I remember that staircase. And I also remember one picture. It is as if that one picture blotted out all the others we saw that day. But what a picture it was. We stood in front of Raphael's Madonna del Prato for the longest time. I couldn't understand it. Why were there two boys? Where was John the Baptist's mother? And were those strawberry plants? Also known as the Madonna del Belvedere, the Queen of Heaven in her ultramarine robe was breathtakingly, unforgettably magnificent. Her carmine color dress the same color as the poppies signifying the Christ's sacrifice and death. It was the same azure blue and carmine red we had seen in the murals at Alchi.

"When do paintings free themselves/from the painter, when does the same substance/become a different thought?"Cees Notteboom wonders...

In the Uffizi there is the Madonna of the Goldfish. 

It is so similar to the Madonna del Prato--but instead of a cross the children play with a tiny goldfinch.n Madonna Del Cardellino, the goldfinch represents Christ's crucifixion.

Like the story of the mountains at Montserrat in Spain that rose from the earth at the precise moment that the Christ was crucified, there was a legend that the goldfinch received its red spot at the time of the crucifixion. The bird " flew down over the head of Christ and was taking a thorn from His crown, when it was splashed with the drop of His blood."

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Bruegel Room

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Top painting by
Robert Raschka (1847–1908) 
Medium Pencil, watercolor, heightened with opaque white on paper

 

 

 

 

Painted Around 1500

 

Christy Lee Rogers

Christy Lee Rogers

The Baroque

Wonderland

New Work/Apple

Amida pulling a reluctant believer to heaven

阿弥陀鉤召図. Amitabha pulling in a reluctant devotee to the Pure Land. Heian period Japan (794–1185).

 

平安時代

縦52.7㎝ 横98.6㎝

一双

文化庁分室 東京都台東区上野公園13-9

国（文化庁）

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本図は、あらゆる衆生を引き寄せ済度するという阿弥陀如来の本願に基づき行われる密教修法「阿弥陀鉤召法」の意義を戯画的に描いたものである。暢達した墨描により、盲目の僧を力強く引き寄せようとする阿弥陀如来、僧を蓮華茎で押す観音菩薩、その光景を眺める勢至菩薩の姿が大画面に巧みに描かれる。
　本図裏面には、平安時代末に高野山を中心に密教図像の収集、書写に努めた玄証（１１４６～１２２２頃）の墨書がある。玄証の花押や墨書を有する図像は、高野山月上院を経て京都・高山寺に多く伝来し、指定品を含めた二十点ほどの現存作例を数える。本図も鎌倉時代以降、高山寺に伝来した可能性が高く、これらの玄証所縁の図像中でも特に優れたものである。
　本図は、平安時代に遡る大型の白描図像として、またその画題の特殊性から、仏教絵画史上のみならず、国宝「鳥獣人物戯画」等の我が国における白描戯画の成立を考える上でも、文化史上貴重な位置を占める作例といえる。

Seen from behind

Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art
by Patricia Lee Rubin

In Freud's Trip to Orvieto, writer and art historian Nicolas Fox Weber wonders how Freud must have felt when looking at male nudes in all directions in the chapel in Orvieto. Overpowering, like being in a male locker room, Weber says... it reminds him (Weber) of a male orgy. Freud must have been floored, suggests Weber.

Maybe..

That Freud was deeply impressed and moved by the frescoes is a fact--but no one will ever know exactly in what way. We do know he had his famous memory episode, whereby, for the life of him, he could not remember the painter's name... though Freud had declared Signorelli to be his favorite painter... A strange choice, if you think about it. But Freud said that Signorelli was an artist who, in his opinion, had created the finest paintings he hadever  seen.

Wait--is Freud being humble here? Qualifying his opinion in terms of his limited experience? And then to forget--not once--but three times the painter's name....?

This Freudian slip became forever after known as the Signorelli Parapraxis. 

Freud has his story of what happened. But Weber has another theory--related to insecurities over his Jewishness and his sexuality.

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It is true that the male bum is everywhere in Orvieto. 

Apparently, Em Forster, in his diary in 1907 "jotted down a list of names suggesting a sort of gay lineage – Pater, Whitman, Housman – and added ‘Luca Signorelli?’ Alan Hollinghurst goes on, "I assume he had seen his frescoes in Orvieto Cathedral, in which the naked male backside is a pivotal feature, and jumped to his own conclusions."

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But, Signorelli, though he studied under Piero della Francesca, painted in the style of Donatello. That swagger! Hand on hip, leg turned out.... It was the Renaissance male pose par excellence... made famous by Micgelangelo... who is known to have stopped at Orvieto for a few days, but became so entranced by Signorelli's frescoes that he stayed several weeks. Rubin's book, Seen from Behind: Perspectives on the Male Body and Renaissance Art--puts everything in context! I can only imagine how fun it must have been to write...

Highly recommended if you love Michelangelo, Signorelli or Donatello. 

 

Dürer’s Rhinoceros: Notes

Books:

Sotheby's The rhinoceros from Dürer to Stubbs, 1515-1799 Hardcover – 1986
by T. H Clarke

The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium: An Essay in Natural History, By Juan Pimentel

"The Rhinoceros" in An Elemental Thing, by Eliot Weinberger

Umberto Eco, Theory of Semiotics (I read about it here though)

A Gandhari Version of the Rhinoceros Sutra
British Library Kharo~!hI Fragment 5B
Richard Salomon
with a contribution by Andrew Glass (PDF)

Chapter Five "The Ill-Fated Rhinoceros" in The Pope's Elephant, by Silvio Bedini 

The Medici Giraffe and Other Tales of Exotic Animals, by Marina Belozerskaya

Dali's Diary of a Genius

Animals Strike Curious Poses Hardcover 
by Elena Passarello

 

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Haven't read it yet, but there is a novel: The Pope's Elephant, by Lawrence Norfolk

 

Online Articles:

Thought Co: Japanese Conception of Red: Is Red the Color of Love?

And Dali's Fascination with the Rhinoceros

 

Inscription:

In the year 1513 [Sic] upon the 1 day of May there was brought to our King at Lisbon such a living Beast from the East-Indies that is called a Rhinoceronte. Therefore, on account of the wonderfulness I thought myself obliged to send you the Representation of it. It hath the Colour of a Toad and is close covered in Scales in size like an Elephant…. The elephant is terribly afraid of the Rhinoceronte…, for he gores him always, where-ever he meets an elephant; for he is well-armed, and is very alert and nimble. This beast is called Rhinocero in Greek and Latin, but in Indian, Gonda. It was fortuitous that Dürer made his woodcut because the Ganda would not survive the trip to Rome. “Unhappy Ganda,” as the creature would be called, perished in a shipwreck after stopping at an island off Marseilles, where the French King Francis and his queen paid a state visit to see the creature. The court had staged a mock battle with the Portuguese ship firing oranges at them in place of cannonballs. Caught in a sudden storm, the ship went down off the Ligurian coast of Italy.

English translation the work of Dr James Parsons (1705-70) published in the Philosophical Translations of 1743

 

 

 

A Childhood Memory by Piero della Francesca

On a recent trip to Italy, Vasari's master narrative was in full play-- we could not escape from the "Venetian colors" versus "Florentine drawing" dichotomy. It was everywhere in play--especially in Venice this trope is trotted out everywhere. Not to say it is false-- but only that it really does "color" the way we see Venetian art. For Vasari not only created the field of European Art history, but he wrote the dominate (domineering) narrative on the Italian Renaissance.

Another of his great tropes is concerning Leonardo and Piero--two boys, suggested Vasari, who were not raised by their fathers and who because of this male-absent childhood, were incapable of completing work.

Freud famously took this trope and ran with it with his "Leonardo's Dream." Leonardo recounted in his notebook that as a small child he dreamt in his crib of a vulture. And in the dream the bird put its beak in his mouth. Freud takes this to imply the dream was about breastfeeding and then he leaps to homosexuality and then thereby makes the biggest leap of all to see his repressed/thwarted sexuality as explaining Leonardo's inability to stick with his work.

It is annoying least of all because it was based on a mistranslation--the bird was more like a tiny kite. Freud was harshly criticized for his faulty theory.

In this book, French philosopher Damisch, playfully turns the tables on Freud to look at Piero. What he is intending is to call attention to the way tropes function in constructing our understanding of a picture and to try and deconstruct the way that supposed memories (almost always apocryphal) are used to construct and determine our understanding of the artist and the meaning of their work.

In Piero's Madonna del Parto, Damisch proposes aa childhood memory of wondering where babies come from. We have before us a very pregnant Madonna--rare in art history-- who appears to be about to give birth any second. In what he repeats is an unprecedented hand gesture, the Madonna opens her outer garment to create an opening that hints at the coming birth. In fact the entire fresco is itself an opening. We have no frame --just the parting curtains for the birth of God.

I loved the chapter on the Virgin as a tabernacle. It was a new image for me. I was fascinated by the images of the Ark as sheltered in the pavilion (Latin Butterfly). This pointed movable tent is also seen in his True Cross Fresco in the Constantine dream fragment. Here though, the Virgin stands on a dais underneath what can only be called a tabernacle created the Virgin as Ark-- as a cult object.

Art historians have paid so much attention to the painter's Flagellation. But the madonna del Parto is probably the most loved, the most popular of his works. Even now, you can see the prayers that women leave at her feet --they put them in a basket right in the museum. It is one of my favorite pictures in the world and I loved Damisch's book-- challenging but worth the effort to read three times so far...

A Childhood Memory by Piero della Francesca
by Hubert Damisch, John Goodman (Translation)

Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson

The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art
by Ingrid Rowland, Noah Charney