Faux-Philistine

Art, Culture, Politics and everything in between

By Maia Isabelle Woolner

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom

—Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety

Questlove, “Goodbye Isaac”

Majestic Pastoral

Willem de Kooning’s paintings, Door to the River (1960) and Rosy Fingered Dawn at Louse Point (1963), hang side by side in MoMA’s definitive retrospective of the Dutch American artist. These works, which date from the beginning of a period inspired by de Kooning’s eventual move to Long Island, are awash with pastoral overtones. As a spectator, one is invitingly drawn into world of ease and placidity by the fleshy hues of peach, the halcyon colors of blanched almond and champagne, and the whispers of cornflower blue. The tension and dissonance that is so viscerally palpable in many of de Kooning’s other works, especially those of the second series of Woman paintings, has evaporated. Instead one floats amidst clouds of sensuality, subtle eroticism, and calming, practically maternal, comfort.

This atmosphere of the idyllic recalls the locus amoenus — meaning ‘pleasurable place’ in Latin — a setting used in Western Literature to denote a space of safety and contentment, and sometimes, as a place where erotic passions could be explored freely and without constraint. Moreover, the locus amoenus was a staple of the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil. Here, as integrated into de Kooning’s pictorial landscape, one cannot help but feel transported to that land of shady glades and reflecting water.

                              

I’m neck deep and totally enthralled by Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler….Each chapter begins in a completely different, but equally mysterious, hazy setting that is slowly unfolded, unfurled, unwrapped before my imagination, surprising me more than I have come to expect from such a supreme wizard of words.

I’m neck deep and totally enthralled by Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler….Each chapter begins in a completely different, but equally mysterious, hazy setting that is slowly unfolded, unfurled, unwrapped before my imagination, surprising me more than I have come to expect from such a supreme wizard of words.

In Search of Raffaello Five years ago, while studying Italian in Florence, I planned a weekend trip to Rome with girlfriends. The plans fell through when I got sick with a strain of the flu that felt like a revamped plague, and I decided, not without much remorse, to postpone the Eternal City for another time. My friends, however, would hear none of it and left right after class on that gloriously sunny Friday afternoon while I nursed my fever and lamented my bad luck. I did get to Pisa, Cinque Terra, Bologne, Milan, Bellagio, and plenty of other towns and cities during my stay, but I never got to Rome. As I’m a die-hard fan of The Roman Holiday, I thought I would make a special effort to get there on my own in the future and to dedicate my undivided attention for a whole two weeks to the epicenter of the Roman Empire. It was this past July that I finally was able to make good on that promise to myself; I used my tax return to fund a much needed holiday after my ascetic stint at Cambridge University. What I should mention outright now is the fact that when I said, “studying Italian,” what I really meant was living my Italian  - eating gelato, going to the beach, dancing, visiting art museums, listening to opera, smiling coyly at Marcello, Alessandro, Emiliano, Georgio, etc and drinking horribly cheap, boxed Italian red wine. I should have, perhaps, spent more time memorizing verb tenses and vocabulary.  But it turns out, this time, that my linguistic clumsiness was a blessing. Not having booked ahead of time, I wasn’t able to get a guided tour of the Vatican’s art galleries, so I headed out solo, planning to read my guidebook on the way there and hopefully orient myself relatively well upon arrival.  Visiting anywhere in Italy that requires waiting in line during the summer is generally a mistake, and the Vatican was no exception. I had tried to time it right, but even in the late afternoon, the galleries were chalk full of people and I couldn’t get a handle on things. Meg Ryan and her bodyguard, for one thing, were bullying people out of the way, and I was feeling rather fed up and frustrated with the whole situation after an hour or so. I was literally being crushed by the people around me, forced into the flow of five or six different tour groups (the horrid kind that come off those buses) all trying to get to the Sistine Chapel as fast as possible. They weren’t enjoying themselves, and lost in their wake, I was struggling to find the experience pleasurable. (In fact, there’s nothing fun about being locked in by 500 sweating German tourists, lets just be honest.) It was then, thankfully, that I saw two cute guards and decided to ask them, in Italian, where I could find the Raphael Room. I thought that I had somehow missed it all together. But when I asked, I didn’t quite get it right. I smiled and said, “Dove e Raffaello?” Immediately, I realized my mistake, but it was too late. “Non cercare altrove, sono Raffaello!” (Look no further, I am Raphael!)  “No, io sono Raffaello, lui è Sebastiano!” (No, I am Raphael. He is Sebastian!)  “Che bugiardo! Sono Raffaello!” (What a liar! I am Raphel!)  “Che indiot. Non sa il suo nome!” (What an idiot. He doesn’t know his own name!) “Idiota? Chi stai chiamando un idiota!” (Idiot? Who are you calling an idiot?) “Voi! Sebastiano Guido Sausto sono un assoluto, incomprensibile asino!” (You! Sebastian Guido Sausto are an absolute, incomprehensible ass!) This exchange continued for nearly a minute longer. Finally, laughing, they swept me away, the two of them, commanding the myriad of people around us to give way. I followed, somewhat confused and very pleased. I couldn’t really be sure where they were taking me, or what, exactly, these two guards had in mind. Either way it was obvious that they, like me, had needed a bit of divertimento to liven up their long day. After following them up a flight of stairs, they brought me through a private passage way blocked off from the rest of the guests, and — having passed before most of the tour groups — out into the very room I had been looking for. The rest of my trip to the Vatican was much more plebian in nature, but nevertheless, overwhelmingly awesome.  By Maia Isabelle Woolner

In Search of Raffaello

Five years ago, while studying Italian in Florence, I planned a weekend trip to Rome with girlfriends. The plans fell through when I got sick with a strain of the flu that felt like a revamped plague, and I decided, not without much remorse, to postpone the Eternal City for another time. My friends, however, would hear none of it and left right after class on that gloriously sunny Friday afternoon while I nursed my fever and lamented my bad luck. I did get to Pisa, Cinque Terra, Bologne, Milan, Bellagio, and plenty of other towns and cities during my stay, but I never got to Rome.

As I’m a die-hard fan of The Roman Holiday, I thought I would make a special effort to get there on my own in the future and to dedicate my undivided attention for a whole two weeks to the epicenter of the Roman Empire. It was this past July that I finally was able to make good on that promise to myself; I used my tax return to fund a much needed holiday after my ascetic stint at Cambridge University.

What I should mention outright now is the fact that when I said, “studying Italian,” what I really meant was living my Italian  - eating gelato, going to the beach, dancing, visiting art museums, listening to opera, smiling coyly at Marcello, Alessandro, Emiliano, Georgio, etc and drinking horribly cheap, boxed Italian red wine. I should have, perhaps, spent more time memorizing verb tenses and vocabulary. 

But it turns out, this time, that my linguistic clumsiness was a blessing. Not having booked ahead of time, I wasn’t able to get a guided tour of the Vatican’s art galleries, so I headed out solo, planning to read my guidebook on the way there and hopefully orient myself relatively well upon arrival. 

Visiting anywhere in Italy that requires waiting in line during the summer is generally a mistake, and the Vatican was no exception. I had tried to time it right, but even in the late afternoon, the galleries were chalk full of people and I couldn’t get a handle on things. Meg Ryan and her bodyguard, for one thing, were bullying people out of the way, and I was feeling rather fed up and frustrated with the whole situation after an hour or so. I was literally being crushed by the people around me, forced into the flow of five or six different tour groups (the horrid kind that come off those buses) all trying to get to the Sistine Chapel as fast as possible. They weren’t enjoying themselves, and lost in their wake, I was struggling to find the experience pleasurable. (In fact, there’s nothing fun about being locked in by 500 sweating German tourists, lets just be honest.)

It was then, thankfully, that I saw two cute guards and decided to ask them, in Italian, where I could find the Raphael Room. I thought that I had somehow missed it all together. But when I asked, I didn’t quite get it right. I smiled and said, “Dove e Raffaello?” Immediately, I realized my mistake, but it was too late.

“Non cercare altrove, sono Raffaello!” (Look no further, I am Raphael!)

 “No, io sono Raffaello, lui è Sebastiano!” (No, I am Raphael. He is Sebastian!)

 “Che bugiardo! Sono Raffaello!” (What a liar! I am Raphel!) 

“Che indiot. Non sa il suo nome!” (What an idiot. He doesn’t know his own name!)

“Idiota? Chi stai chiamando un idiota!” (Idiot? Who are you calling an idiot?)

“Voi! Sebastiano Guido Sausto sono un assoluto, incomprensibile asino!” (You! Sebastian Guido Sausto are an absolute, incomprehensible ass!)

This exchange continued for nearly a minute longer. Finally, laughing, they swept me away, the two of them, commanding the myriad of people around us to give way. I followed, somewhat confused and very pleased. I couldn’t really be sure where they were taking me, or what, exactly, these two guards had in mind. Either way it was obvious that they, like me, had needed a bit of divertimento to liven up their long day. After following them up a flight of stairs, they brought me through a private passage way blocked off from the rest of the guests, and — having passed before most of the tour groups — out into the very room I had been looking for. The rest of my trip to the Vatican was much more plebian in nature, but nevertheless, overwhelmingly awesome. 

By Maia Isabelle Woolner

The body of woman is one of the essential elements in her situation in the world. But that body is not enough to define her as woman; there is no true living reality except as manifested by the conscious individual through activities and in the bosom of society. From The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir 

The body of woman is one of the essential elements in her situation in the world. But that body is not enough to define her as woman; there is no true living reality except as manifested by the conscious individual through activities and in the bosom of society.

From The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir 

I would sleep, borrowing the sleeve of the scarecrow. Midnight frost. - Basho

I would sleep,
borrowing the sleeve of the scarecrow.
Midnight frost.

- Basho

Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494) was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect from Emilia, Italy. He is most famous for his fresco paintings in which he deploys a technique called foreshortening - an optical illusion that makes an object or distance appear shorter than it actually is because it is angled toward the viewer. This fragment, of a musician-angel, is part of a larger fresco entitled “Christ in Glory between Angels and Apostles,” which once covered the apsidal conch of the Church of Saint Apostles, near Venice Square. This fragment, along with others, is now part of the Vatican Museum.

Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494) was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect from Emilia, Italy. He is most famous for his fresco paintings in which he deploys a technique called foreshortening - an optical illusion that makes an object or distance appear shorter than it actually is because it is angled toward the viewer. This fragment, of a musician-angel, is part of a larger fresco entitled “Christ in Glory between Angels and Apostles,” which once covered the apsidal conch of the Church of Saint Apostles, near Venice Square. This fragment, along with others, is now part of the Vatican Museum.

Putin/Rasputin Redux

“In his spare time Surkov writes essays on conceptual art and lyrics for rock groups. He’s an aficionado of gangsta rap: there’s a picture of Tupac on his desk, next to the picture of Putin.”