Lettres Mortes. Manet's letters to Isabelle Lemonnier

A Isabelle 

Cette mirabelle

Et la plus belle

C'est Isabelle

1 A plum poem, letter to Isabelle Lemonnier

2 Venetian lanterns, letter to Isabelle Lemonnier  3 Watercolor of Isabelle Lemonnier bathing at Luc-sur-Mer 4 Boots & fashion accessory, letter to Madame Jules Guillemet ,  R.M.N.  Paris,  Musée du Louvre (fonds Orsay).

Manet wrote these letters to Isabelle Lemonnier during summer 1880, three years before his death. He was but fifty then and secluded at Bellevue for a water cure supposed to root out the first stroke of syphillis forcing him to walk with a cane. The summer passed in a blur of shower, baths, pummeling massages and rare visits. It was a wet summer and the rain made Manet peevish. He had not the strength to paint. So to stave off boredom he wrote flirtatious letters to his many female admirers. The debutante and last modele, Isabelle Lemonnier is reported to have found him tiresome and will not answer his dainty notes filled with rhymes and sketches. Manet's last words sent to the young lady were: 

14 juillet 1880

Vive l'amnistie

Je ne vous écrirai plus, vous ne me répondez jamais. 

Lettres illustrées, Bibliothèque de l'image, 2002. Introduction Arnauld Le Brusq.

Jacques Henric, Dormez mes bien-aimées, Flohic editions 1995.

Manet's disease, fiction on line by Leslie Patterson

Papier (1) Choi Byung So [최 병소] à IBU Gallery

1 IBU “Season’s thoughts” 1949, réinterprétée par Athéna Poilâne 2011, IBU GALLERY EDITION ®

2 Choi Byung So [최 병소], oeuvre sur papier, stylo bille, courtesy IBU GALLERY

3 Choi Byung So [최 병소], oeuvre sur papier, courtesy IBU GALLERY

La galerie IBU dans les jardins du Palais Royal est un lieu singulier et habité. La sélection rigoureuse de la galerie dégage une très forte émotion, émotion qui vient sans doute du fait que la plupart des artistes choisis sont ceux que l'oeil d'IBU avait retenu depuis longtemps ou qu'elle aurait aimé et soutenu. Créatrice américaine d’origine ukrainienne, IBU utilisait ses initiales comme nom d’artiste. Architecte, elle dessinait les bijoux et sculptait le bronze, toujours à la recherche de la perfection du geste et de l'harmonie profonde des matières. Dans le respect de la vision de l'artiste, la galerie continue de privilégier la manufacture d'excellence et la force du trait en exposant des artistes aux sensibilités et aux inspirations proches de l'esprit d'IBU. Dans les années 1980, IBU s’est intéressée à l’art contemporain sud-coréen. Elle a parcouru le pays, rencontré les artistes et découvert des oeuvres fortes qui n'ont cessé de la hanter. Dès l’ouverture de sa galerie, en juin 2000, IBU avait imaginé une série d’expositions qui seraient des conversations entre les œuvres de ces artistes et ses propres sculptures fonctionnelles en bronze. Ce projet a été repris par Cyril Ermel, ancien proche collaborateur d'IBU et responsable de la galerie sous l'impulsion de ses deux filles, Apollonia et Athéna Poilâne. 

Il y a plus de 30 ans que Choi Byung So, artiste sud-coréen a entrepris de raturer jusqu'à l'obsession impassible les feuilles de journaux coréens à l'aide d'une mine de plomb ou d'un stylo bille. Son geste qu'il qualifie de "non-sens" donne son sens à un objet doublement dénué de sa valeur, le journal est périmé et la censure omniprésente. Le geste patient et acharné de l'artiste  transforme le papier support fragile et éphémère en fines pellicules qui semblent prêtes à s'éparpiller au moindre souffle. Sous la pression des outils pointus, le papier s'amincit, se déchire par endroits comme pour lever le voile sur une censure implacable. "Sans ce rappel de la date et du lieu de leur provenance, ces oeuvres tiennent par le geste qui unit la rature et l'écriture, la disparition et l'apparition, la ligne et le plan, le cri et le silence. Après plusieurs années de silence réel, Choi Byung-So a repris le travail. Maintenant il ne commence pas forcément par raturer des mots. Il travaille aussi bien sur une page imprimée que sur une feuille blanche. Mais il  a toujours le même geste qui dénie les traits particuliers et les marques personnelles."   

A partir du 29 mars et jusqu'au 9 juin, la galerie présente pour la deuxième fois le travail de Choi Byung So.

VERNISSAGE,  jeudi 29 mars 2012 de 18 à 21h.
IBU Gallery
Jardins du Palais Royal 
166 Galerie de Valois, Paris 2°

"Le temps retrouvé" de Cy twombly

1&2 Twombly's home at Gaeta photographed by Horst in 1966 for Vogue. Click here to see more of this, Mondo-blogo.

3,4&5 Cy Twombly: A Painted Word by Dodie Kazanjian photographed by Bruce Weber for Vogue, at Gaeta, 2001. Click here for more, Vogue, archives.

6 Cy Twombly The Artist's Shoes © Schirmer/Mosel Verlag - Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. For more information on Twombly's polaroïds, you may read Philippe Dewolf's article.

Lost in time. A shared fixation about the passing of time inspired English visual artist Tacita Dean to make a filmed portrait of Cy Twombly. Twombly has made the ancient world of the Mediterranean his own. He used to say that he has no sense of time. "Sometimes when I am writing the date on a letter, I have to ask what year it is." After Le temps retrouvé, the deeply moving exhibition giving a carte blanche to Cy twombly  and organized by the Collection Lambert en Avignon last summer, there is still a chance to see Twombly's photographs and to discover Tacita Dean's film at Bruxelles. 

Cy Twombly, Photographs 1951-2010. Bruxelles, Bozar, jusqu’au 29 avril 2012.

Ecritures (3) Gertrude Stein's "Life in the City of Words"

Gertrude Stein by  Carl Van Vechten

Gertrude Stein by Cecil Beaton

Cecil Beaton - Gertrude Stein ; Alice B. Toklas, 1936 - Bromure, 24 x 23,7 cm  Londres, National Portrait Gallery  © Courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s 

"For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entirely new recasting of life, in the city of words." Sherwood Anderson

"And now what does a comma do and what has it to do 

and why do I feel as I do about them.

What does a comma do.

I have refused them so often and left them out so much and did

without them so continually that I have come finally to be indifferent 

to them. I do not now care whether you put them in or not but for a 

long time I felt very definitely about them and would have nothing to 

do with them.

As I say commas are servile and they have no life of their own, and 

their use is not a use, it is a way of replacing one’s own interest and I 

do decidedly like to like my own interest my own interest in what I am 

doing. A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and 

putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as 

you should lead it and to me for many years and I still do feel that was about 

it only 

now I do not pay as much attention to them, the use of 

them was positively degrading. Let me tell you what I feel and what I 

mean and what I felt and what I meant." 

Extract from Gertrude Stein on Punctuation, 

Lectures In America, Beacon Press, Boston, 1985, pages 214-222. Originally published in 1935 by The Modern Library, Inc.

Fantaisie (1) Charlotte Mann's Bespoke Murals

1 Mural-maker Charlotte Mann in the hallway of writer India Knight's home

2 A life-size bike at London School of Life

3 Unknown

4 Unknown

5 Peter Jansen's showcase 2010

Charlotte Mann is a young British mural artist who creates  trompe l'oeil drawings in 1:1 scale with only a pen or a black marker. “I’m fascinated by the paradox of attempting to represent an environment with depth, life-sized but in two dimensions." She explains that creating that kind of scale-drawings comes from her childhood. "I am from this little town Bringay in Suffolk, where you can get free rolls of paper because the big industry there is bookprinting for Penguin Books. So every time my parents had a party, we would get this paper, staple it to the walls and ceilings and just draw over it." from www.wmagazine.com/w/blogs/editorsblog/2010/02/12/peter-jensen.html

Portrait sensible (1) Les portraits d'intérieurs de Yvan Terestchenko

Eh quoi! Tout est sensible. 

Pythagore

Souvent dans l'être obscur habite un Dieu caché; 

Et comme un oeil naissant couvert par ses paupières, 

Un pur esprit s'accroit sous l'écorce des pierres.

 Gérard de Nerval, Les chimères

Toutes les photographies sont de Yvan Teretschenko et sont reprises de son blog.

1&2 Loulou de la Falaise dans son appartement à Paris

3 L'extravagant Monsieur P

4&5&6 Parvine Curie

7 Le boudoir de Marie Victoire Poliakoff

Les maisons ont-elles une âme? Les maisons, mais aussi les objets, les lieux, les paysages.

A n'en pas douter et seuls quelques rares photographes ont le pouvoir de les capter. Je ne peux m'expliquer la magie de la photographie de Ivan Terestchenko autrement. 

Ses images sont vivantes, sensibles, organiques. Elles vivent de leur propre vie, plus on les regarde, plus elles nous parlent et nous racontent des histoires, des histoires de vie, des histoires de temps dans une langue qui n'est jamais ni tout à fait la même ni tout à fait une autre et qui semble faite de la texture propre au rêve des maisons. Des photos qui respirent le parfum des lieux, qui donnent à toucher et à ressentir. Son blog est une invitation au voyage intérieur.  

Papillons (1) Transcending "naïve realism"

"Blauwe spinner". The body of this butterflyis made of thread
(w:18 h:50 d:5.5 cm)

"De draadspanner". A construction of a butterfly wing with thread and pins
(w:17 h:14 d:5.5 cm)

"Zwart vlek vlinder". With two upper embroidered wings
 (w:17 h:14 d:5.5 cm)

"Landkaart". The wings are partly made from maps where the butterfly originated. (w:26 h:20 d:5.5 cm)

Anne Ten Donkelaar is a Dutch visual artist who lives in Utrecht. In her 2011 work "Broken butterflies," she presents butterlies  repaired with new wings and bodies.

Rose Sanderson

Zygaena Kappadokiae, acrylic on book cover

Rose Sanderson

Papilio Glaucus, acrylic on book cover

Rose Sanderson is a Bristol based artist. "Current work focuses predominantly on the fragility of life, bringing to light many issues to do with human understanding. The object of death is seen not as a morbid obsession created to shock or offend but as an appreciation of what once was: to honour and celebrate its existence. Expressive backgrounds that give a feeling of decay (peeling layers of wallpaper, cracked surfaces, aged and 'distressed') are combined with fine attention to detail in the subject matter." Bo lee Gallery

A butterfly drawn by Nabokov in a book given to his wife, Vera. 

 Hand-illustrated butterfly by Nabokov on a copy of Lolita.

How I Loved the Poems of Gumilyov!

Poem in Russian ("Kak lyubil ya stikhi Gumilyova!").

Written July 22, 1972.

HOW I loved the poems of Gumilyov!
Reread them I cannot,
But traces have stayed in my mind,
such as, on this think-through:

"... And I will die not in a summerhouse
from gluttony and heat,
but with a heavenly butterfly in my net
on the summit of some wild hill."

A Job for Eternity

From "Prof. Woodbridge in an Essay on

Nature Postulates the Reality of the World"

Review of Frederick J. E. Woodbridge,

An Essay on Nature (1940).

THAT philosophers are essentially diurnal creatures (no matter how late into the night their inkpots and spectacles glitter) and that space would not be space if color and outline were not primarily perceived are suppositions that transcend the author's "naïve realism" just at the point where he seems to be most securely hugging the coast. But is visibility really as dominant as that in all imaginable knowledge of Nature? Though I personally would be satisfied to spend the whole of eternity gazing at a blue hill or a butterfly, I would feel the poorer if I accepted the idea of there not existing still more vivid means of knowing butterflies and hills.

[New York Sun, December 10, 1940]

Copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. 

For all lovers of Nabokov, I strongly recommend  the online version of Father's butterflies by the The Atlantic Monthly on line.