The painter, flushed with pride from the achievement of turning Venus de Milo in to flesh before he posed her in a meadow, finally recog- nizes his hubris when the shadow that has started following him everywhere makes him aware that any statue can stand still for long enough to have a beard & mustache painted on them.
We lived in a house full of models for, & details from, paintings. Inside & out. My father showed me how to use the wings he built by teaching me how to ride a a horse & wield a whip. Everything so large when I was young, save for the Sun which seemed so far away.
Has he taken a bite from the side of the apple we cannot see? Is that what he is tasting? Or is there an additional something — let's say a piece of butter- scotch to give it a whisker of substance — hidden in behind that apple, another entity which will be either visible or invisible depend- ing on the side of the apple the observer finds themself at a particular point in time? "Here we have the apparent visible, the apple, hiding the hidden visible, the person’s face." R.M.
  |
Today the post- woman brought me an already ex- pensive castle in the Pyrenees. If I had added the optional extra of that giant bird found in some Magritte paintings it would have cost me an arm & a leg on top of a basic price I can't really afford. & since Ma- gritte is dead, I don't trust the vendor's guarantee that the artist will paint any missing limbs back on me, just like he did to the model in Attemp- ting the Impossible. |
It appears as if birds with ancient lineages find it difficult to deal with the present on its own terms unless they have some well- worn article from the past to comfort them.
The bilboquet is monocular, a cyclops in an uninhabited land- scape whose presence does not change the land around even if it does add some life to its sur- rounds, even if the addition ofa cloak brings more humanity. Elsewhere, the ruined watch- tower is in the act of changing, those roots insinuating a future tree, even if il y a belle lurette, even if that started a long time ago.
From Amazon in Belgium I can order this as a "Canvas Wall Art Print for Living Room Home Decor Ready to Hang (90 x 117 cm (31.5 x 46.1 in)), Framed" for just €191.26. I think of buying it, to see if it does for me what another portrait did for Dorian Gray. But then, but then. At 81 it's probably too late to weave any magic it might have had on me, even though the web- site says it's a great gift idea for Valentine's Day which just happens to be today. What finally turns me away is a sudden vision of the aging process occuring — since we have no attic — in the back garden shed, the teeth at first, then the lungs, the hearing, the knees. It's not the actual deterioration, rather the caveat from the vendor: that spare parts are not available nor provided.
For once the tie's knot fills the collar. The pipe, more merlot than the indian red of the tie, still manages — through the medium of the lips — to blend in with it. It's taken sixty or so years; but the man's finally got some dress sense.
Without the feather, the tower would fall down. Without the tower, the building blocks of the universe would have no- thing to hold them in place. Without the building blocks of the universe, Magritte would not exist. Without Magritte, the invis- ible would never be rendered visible & we would never know what direction we should follow.
Begin with the bowler hat. It doesn't have the ebullience displayed by Astaire in his rendition of that Irving Berlin song but can be relied upon to fill its allotted rôle with some semblance of style. Re- ceives an appropriate round of applause. Then come the birds. Brought on early be- cause they're flighty & might take off at any moment. (Save for that eagle in a stony pose somewhere in the Pyrenees.) The bit players follow — weight- lifters, lions, fish, rocks floating in space, dogs, lost jockeys, the odd unicorn. Elsewhere invisible, but here most definitely on show. Now the cloud chorus steps for- ward to take their bow, bringing with them one of the many scenes in which they appear. This one repeated often, with different colors & different media, usually with a different name, La Joconde, the happy one, the Mona Lisa. Which is a hint of what's to follow. Tension builds as we wait for the muse. So many aspects & images of her life depicted across so many years & now awaiting her final curtain call. Georgette, sine qua non.
This time the jockey isn't lost, just perplexed to find a set of wellworn curtains standing upright on the sand. As is the horse, paused midstep in its littoral dressage routine. All up an unexpected tableau, made more complex by the fact the sun seems to be falling rather than setting. Loss of gravity; & everything is red-cast as the human condition deteriorates. Organ failure ensues. Night will not see the light of day again.
