Category: Culture

…or Il Dolce Far Niente, as the Italians would have it — and why not? it’s about as Italian an attitude as one can get, where there’s an alternative to being busy.

I consider myself something of an expert on the activity, because for example nothing spells “vacation” better than lying on one’s back, emptying the mind of, well, everything and just looking at the sky.  I can and have done that many times in my life, and only some vestigial Protestant work-ethic guilt keeps me at all busy.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

Instead, I want to point you to English artist John William Godward, who exemplifies to me the late-Victorian art movement that bypassed the strict Puritanism of the era, simply by virtue of the fact that one could show the naked or semi-naked female form without censure, provided that it was couched, so to speak, in some kind of Classical allegory.  (“Venus In The Mirror”, for example, has been used as an artistic fig leaf for centuries.)

Well, Godward’s family didn’t much care for this attitude, and when he went to live in Italy with one of his models, they pretty much erased all memory of him out of their lives (literally;  they cut him out of all family photographs;  and as such, there are apparently no photos of him in existence).  Anyway, they wanted him gone out of their lives, and he granted their wish by committing suicide at age 61.

Godward is famous for his painting entitled Il Dolce Far Niente, and in fact used it as a theme for a great many of his later works.  Here’s the first:

And a few other examples in the same vein:

I love that he captures the feeling of dreamy indolence of a summer’s day in Italy — note the classical clothing and setting of each — along with a subtle underplay of eroticism.  (In turn-of-the-century Britain, by the way, there would have been nothing at all “subtle” about it, hence the scandal.)

Of course, he didn’t stop there.  Still in that disguise of Classicism, here are a couple more daring visions:

And of course, there were those works which threw away all pretense at Classicism (and clothing too):

To modern eyes, Godward’s style might seem stilted and unrealistic, perhaps.  But at the time he painted them, that’s about as “modern” as they got.

I like just about every work he ever created.

Normally, I change the wallpaper on my laptop about every week.  This one, from Alan Fearnley, has been there for nearly two because I find the whole tableau incredibly appealing:  restful, old-fashioned, a beautiful car and a pretty lady… what more could one ask for?

Right-click to embiggen.

I don’t know when I developed my fascination for the human form when it’s been contorted or twisted, for whatever reason or by whatever force.

Maybe it was at the Rodin Museum on an icy late-December day in Paris, where I saw this:

It depicts the fate of Ugolino the Count of Gherardesca, who while immured in Pisa’s Muda Tower, was driven mad by hunger and ended up eating his own children to survive.  I remember standing there, frozen to the bone, but unable to escape the tragedy.  (Nice story, but pure fiction.  When Ugolino’s bones were exhumed and examined for DNA traces of cannibalism, none were found.)  Of the Burghers Of Calais, we will not speak:

In warmer climes (Vienna, also in December but indoors), I saw a couple of paintings by Austrian Egon Schiele, who after WWI was unable to see any kind of future for mankind, and his artistic vision was distorted thereby in his depictions of people:

That’s The Lovers’ Embrace, and one has to have pity on them — which was his intention.  Even his own wife Edith wasn’t spared:

…nor his mistress, Wally [sic] :

And so to the modern day, where others — perhaps sharing Schiele’s attitude, or maybe just having their own mordant view of the human form, have produced works such as this:

I don’t know who the artists are, but their work fascinates me still.

I was not familiar with 19th-century artist Giovanni Segantini, but I like his story, for obvious reasons:

In the spring of 1865, his mother died after spending the past seven years in increasingly poor health. His father left Giovanni under the care of Irene, his second child from a previous marriage, and again traveled in search of work. He died a year later without returning home and leaving his family nothing. Without money from her father, Irene lived in extreme poverty. She was forced to spend most of her time working menial jobs while leaving Giovanni to maintain on his own.

Irene hoped to better her life by moving to Milan, and in late 1865 she submitted an application to relinquish Austrian citizenship for both her brother and her. She either misunderstood the process or simply did not have enough time to follow through, and although their Austrian citizenship was revoked she neglected to apply for Italian citizenship. As a result, both Segantini and his sister remained stateless for the rest of their lives.

Segantini met Bugatti’s sister, Luigia Pierina Bugatti (1862–1938), known as “Bice”, and they began a life-long romance. Although Segantini tried to marry Bice the next year, due to his stateless status he could not be granted the proper legal papers. In opposition to this bureaucratic technicality, they decided to live together as an unmarried couple. This arrangement led to frequent conflicts with the Catholic church that dominated the region at this time, and they were forced to relocate every few years to avoid local condemnation.

And they stayed together for life — and the hell with both the Church and the bureaucracy.  As for his paintings, I like these ones the best:

Lovely stuff.  And like Delacroix (two weeks ago), Segantini’s work proved to be a bridge, only this time between Divisionism and Impressionism.  I get the idea, though, that style or “school” was unimportant to him:  he painted according to his own mood and feeling, blazing his own path.

My kinda guy.

Everyone knows about French artist Eugène Delacroix, who painted so many works which later became iconic that his value to Fine Art (not to mention civilization) is pretty much unchallenged.

Liberty Leading The People

And yes, many feel that he was the bridge, artistically speaking, between Classical and Romantic art and is therefore Very Important:

Massacre At Chios

Me, I just like the way he painted women:

Mademoiselle Rose

Death of Sardanapelus

Medea About To Kill Her Children

Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi

Louis of Orleans Revealing His Mistress

Delacroix’s style, to my eyes anyway, changes from piece to piece, from Classical to Romantic to almost-Impressionist — all depending on the topic he’s depicting.  Heck, the Louis of Orleans  painting above is almost Rococo in its playfulness.

And considering that he lived and worked during the hidebound early nineteenth century, that is one hell of an achievement.

Barque of Dante