Write... Edit... Publish... December 2021 : Narcissus

 

Hi, folks! I have been a stranger to my own blog for the past few weeks :)  Life offline has been super but super busy too -  niece got married last month, big fat Indian wedding - lipstick on my party masks and all that, anyway that was pencilled in long back in the planner.  But also there was a sudden breakthrough in the matter of the parental property, did that consume a whole heap of time or what? Upshot - stranger to blogging! - life can spring pleasant surprises and rev up even during a miserable pandemic with never ending variants. 

Anyway, here I am for the last 2021 gathering of the WEP clan. With another retelling - this last a Greek classic. 

Let me also take this chance to wish you  peace and joy and a merry Christmas if you're celebrating. To your good health and the world's for the remainder of 2021 and to better times all around in 2022. Check out the Challenges 2022 page for even more luscious prompts in the New Year. Keep fit and keep writing. See you there!

Reflections

I and the public know,

What all schoolchildren learn,

To those whom evil is done,

Do evil in return. 

~ W.H. Auden

Once upon a time and place far away – but close enough still to rattle, so don't get too comfortable  – once upon such a time and place, an unclaimed child grew up in the blind lanes of human indifference. Like a weed he took root in the cracks in the paving stones of ruthlessness and grew on a staple diet of mockery and offhand cruelty – daily kicks and cuffs and brushoffs. He was soon adopted by a petty vendor on the lookout for free labour in exchange for the meagrest of keep.

 

Write...Edit...Publish... + IWSG August 2020 : Long Shadow

Write...Edit...Publish... is sticking to its Lite version for now...and I am sticking to the essay format...

Breath and Shadow

A human being is only breath and shadow. – Sophocles. 

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The mind is a shape shifter. Like a shadow – squat at midday, long by sunset. One minute it is a grasshopper, all chirpy multitasking cheerfulness, juggling a million thoughts per second, leaping off one to the other, unable to stick with just a single. The next it is a bulldog, just lugubrious folds and salt-of-earth tenacity, focussed sharp and a serial stickler for one at a time.  Yet again it is a pigeon, slicing through the fluff and zooming home to what matters.  As mercurial as a drop of water on a lotus leaf, huddled into its own rounded self, concise and self-contained and tiny, unable to wet anything yet reflecting a whole skyscape of clouds above it.

The mind can contain a whole skyscape of grief and loss and stressful pandemics, yet go about working cell by cell on spreadsheets, or writing word by word, an essay sparked by a prompt. It can imagine the universe is its oyster, it can blithely go about seeing multiverses in a grain of sand.  Smoothly glide back and forth along the continuum of time from history and art history to sci-fi and fantasy. Between truth and fiction, between the abstract and concrete, between the painfully personal and the monumentally universal. There is no end to its skittering about.

Today it’s vaulted back to the first seat of Western higher learning, to Athens. That’s where the history of the cast shadow in Western art goes back to - ancient Greece. They were the first to develop and use ‘a geometry of light’ and cast shadows in art. Apollodorus, an Athenian artist, introduced a shading technique called skiagraphia (lit shadow-painting) to create the impression of volume, depth and space on a flat plane. However, in the Allegory of the Cave, Plato set up a shadow-reality dichotomy that continues to influence all spheres of Western culture even today. That Greek perception of shadow was negative – associated with ignorance, illusory, unreal. 

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A counterpoint can be found in the Natural History  in which Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian, recorded the Greco-Roman origin myth of Western art: a young woman – the clay modeller Butades’ daughter, who captured her lover’s shadow on a wall as he slept on the night before his departure as a romantic keepsake. This was a far more positive angle, a love story, but it could not throw off the Cave’s, um…long shadow. Cast shadows in art dwindled from the classical period onward, with their dodgy impression of ugly, gloomy, negative, deluding the viewer with trickery and deception. Shadows in art remained a no-no for centuries. Till the Renaissance upended everything. 

***

Darkness is the absence of light. Shadow is the diminution of light. – Leonardo da Vinci.

The grasshopper meanwhile, as is its wont, has leapt down a rabbit hole. What exactly were the Easterners doing to their shadows? Eastern art, the Chinese, Japanese and Indian traditions are deep and ancient, but they always were more stylised than Western art. No space for cast shadows there historically. From the Renaissance onward Western art explored the exact representation of experienced reality through linear perspective, shading and shadows.  Eastern art by and large remained moored in tradition however, and experiments with realism came later, mainly due to European colonisation. But the converse is also true, Eastern art diffused into Europe and inspired Western artists too. In particular, Japanese art crossed the oceans and left its indelible mark on one particular, much celebrated artist.

A landmark Renaissance work, where  linear perspective and cast shadows were first used, was a fresco in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. The artist, Masaccio (1401-28) was one of the pioneers in Renaissance art - he used cast shadows masterfully. 

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In another Masaccio artwork – St Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow, the shadow of the saint dominates the core message, but visually the shadow does not hide the sick. 

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The vocabulary of shadows continued to develop through the work of later artists - Caravaggio, Bernini, Gianlorenzo and others.  By the time of Rembrandt and Vermeer, the techniques of perspective, chiaroscuro and cast shadows were quite established. And then Impressionism with its soft brush strokes, stunning colours, subtle movement and shimmery reflections  shredded all the rules again.

***

Like a shadow, I am and I am not. – Jalaluddin Rumi.

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An evolution of light. Looking at the body of work this artist left in his short career, there seems to be a progression from the shadows into light, both literally and figuratively. In his early works, he used chiaroscuro to marvellous effect. His palette and perspective changed radically midway when he came to Paris. There he encountered two forces which would change his art. One, the Impressionists, and second, Japanese woodcuts. His palette became lighter, brighter, more colourful. His perspectives became flatter, and his art avant-garde,  by repurposing the ancient.

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Japanese art was a major inspiration for Vincent, he wanted to find a take-off point for a more modern, more stylised vibe, and Japanese prints – with their bold patches of colour, prominent contour lines, lack of horizons and shadows, truncated frames and focus on nature – fitted admirably. He went south to Arles looking for the “clearness of atmosphere” and “colour effects” of Oriental prints. Even his idea of an artist’s commune was based on Japanese monks living and working together. His painting of his bedroom at Arles is the epitome of the Japanese influence – bold colours, a subtly distorted perspective and removal of all cast shadows. 

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Unfortunately, what happened on canvas did not translate into personal life. The more his external work exploded with colour and creativity, the greater was the turmoil in his inner workings. The artists’ commune did not materialise, Gauguin came and left after a major disagreement. Vincent had a series of mental breakdowns. His neighbours petitioned for him to be removed on account of ‘insanity.’ An abject sense of failure dogged him. Like some Gothic horror story come eerily to life, for every burst of brilliance on the easel, his life seemed to become a couple of shades darker, regress into the terrible shade of mental illness. Despite his efforts, he was wholly unable to shake that off. Till all that remained was a shadow, without breath.

WC - 1051

FCA

Read the other entries - 

Y is for ...Yellow ... n ... Yaman ...

First I've a band called The Yellow Diary, relatively young, from Mumbai with a number titled Rab Rakha. Formed about five years ago and already making waves with their style of music which they dub poetry with rock. Take a listen -

Next is a band called The Yellow Bucket, yellow is clearly a popular shade with alternative bands, I know! I had no idea either! :)

And finally something a little different - the raga Yaman played on a guitar and accompanied by the traditional tabla. I found this rendition quite delightful. Enjoy!