4 posts tagged “jewels”
I pass by two rivers every day.
In the morning, I will hear one as it carves a liquid path from behind the inhospitable walls guarding the backyard of a blank, unmemorable house. Arms of green branches - swathed in garnet colored jewels, parures of blossoms - thrust over residential parapets. The water sounds are rich and melodic; cool fingers that play on stones like a submerged keyboard. The chill rising from the plaits of rivulets thins nd comforts the thick summer air.
This must be some corner of a forest, full of charcoal shadows smudged by unknown fingers, sliced from its parents' living breast - thriving with chlorophyll - and transported to that little backyard. The trees must be huddled together for fear of the city, linking branches to form a brotherly, woodsy web. The bark is slashed into deep wounds, curved and lengthy, reflecting the shape of the river that glints between the roots that clutch and dig at the soil like talons. I don't know the source of this river. Perhaps it bleeds up from the lacerated earth.
In the evening, walking home on a different street, I see the second river. It is a voluptuous stripe of gold that writhes along the gutters of the street, pooling around the massed tires of parked cars. I imagine the prospectors of '49, with hands that are gray and split like diseased lumber, huddled around the drains and dipping their pewter trays into this river until the gilded arteries are bled dry.
Once more, I wondered about the source of this river. But this time I found it: in the trees that cast perpetual dusk ovr this slender current that was colored like melted sunlight, thick and congealed like discarded paint. Scattered throughout their branches were citrine bouquets of blossoms.
Every time the wind awoke from its summer drowsiness, it would whisper its congratulations. And with each invisible word, a bridal veil of yellow petals would fall like a filigree of tears, weaving a cloth of gold before making its bed in the sewer.
"I believe neither in what I touch nor what I see. I only believe in what I do not see, and solely in what I feel."
What happened when the invisible needles pierced your eyelids and sewed them shut? Did your vision reach beyond that monstrous embroidery? What happened when your fingers, your hands, your skin, dissolved into powder? Did the living dust reassemble in another dimension? Did you dream of definitions, images, descriptions that were wrapped in a chrysalis? Were you only able to paint the silhouettes of embryonic butterflies?
Gustave Moreau was a Symbolist painter: for him, implication hid behind curtains that shifted color like a borealis. These fabrics of life, these meanings that rode metaphors like horses beneath the amending oceans and stirred visions like a slotted spoon in a glass of green poison were caught and laid onto canvases of obsession, decadence and voluptuous oblivion.
In 1895, when Verlaine lay fainting in the slums, when Wilde was convicted and condemned, when Beardsley began his final, dying year, Moreau painted Jupiter and Semele - a myth of realism's hidden betrayal. Jupiter had taken Semele, a mortal, as a lover. His jealous wife, Juno, set aside her cloaks - bloody with the sacrifices laid at her feet - and disguising herself as a nurse, befriended Semele, pretending not to believe her guilty secret. Has she never seen her lover on his throne, surrounded by light and falling stars?
Semele demanded that Jupiter reveal himself in all his glory. When he refused, she persisted - until he agreed. But mortals cannot look upon Jupiter without perishing. Moreau chose the moment when Semele was consumed by his splendor and fell back, white and collapsing, about to explode into shards of ivory.
Jupiter, however, is a tattooed icon alive in an ecstatic jungle: flowers swim in the melting air, columns of architecture tremble as fruit and vines choke them like jeweled parasittes. Gardens of offerings gild his throne of embossed marble and seethe down the pleasurable stone. Beneath him goddesses with towering wings built into their ribs bow their heads. The eagle of Jupiter arches its limbs like the shadows of blades slashing into the drizzling, dazzling light. Close by is Pan, mourning in the shadows, weeping for a denizen of his beloved earth. Finally, there are the creatures of the Underworld; a frieze of woe, glimmering through the thick shadows - rubies, sapphires and opals folded into Hades' black velvet sleeve.
Moreau's painting is a thick, indulgent tapestry. Colors drip from molten glass. Patterns are so delicate, it seems as if he pressed pieces of lace into the hot, teeming paint. It is a tactile, passionate vision: a river embedded in gems that wink from the mud, whose source can never be found.
A while ago, Vox asked me if I would have preferred the past or the future as my living quarters. I answered - as I recall quite verbosely - in favor of the past. The question made me think of delicious mouthfuls of time I wanted to taste...but never biting off more that I could chew.
Anyway, that seemed to be that.
But I couldn't help thinking: what about the minutes, the tiniest of seconds? Is there a swiftly passing frame of the past I wish I could have stayed? Something small, acting as a microcosm of something great - the droplet of water which suggests the storm? I wouldn't want to be greedy and move my life into another's timeline...but what moment of history do I wish I'd have seen - as the classic fly on the wall, the face in the crowd?
Well, I do have a few requests:
January 15,1559. London is cold and frosty, but the people line the street, their jostling feet turning the fallen snow into an unwieldy mush. They lean from the windows of their homes. Colorful banners and streamers of fabric are taut in the cold wind, brightening crooked, wooden houses - handmade and imperfect.
Everyone is waiting for the Princess. Elizabeth Tudor, 25 years old, was riding in state - reclining inside a gold and silver litter which must have been shining like a beacon in the distance, its blaze cutting through the falling snow. Elizabeth was on her way to Westminster Abbey, where she would be crowned Queen.
People who were there, writing their notes, their messages, their memoirs, commiting to memory an unforgettable sight, agree on the look and the behavior of the bronze-haired girl of that day. She waved to the cheering people and thanked them for their good wishes. Her face was wan, and her long hair lay unleased across her shoulders. She wore a dress of thick gold brocade, a wreath of jewels and pearls, and heavy ermine coronation robes.
The people loved her: their adulation was unrestrained and boisterous. She represented youth, health and fertility - in a Queen this trifecta meant protection against their greatest fear, royalty without issue. (Little did they know.) She represented liberation from her predecessor, a close-minded, sad woman who would forever have the word 'Bloody' attached to her name.
One elderly man, with a voice strong enough to be heard by Princess and chroniclers alike, called out "Remember old King Harry the Eighth!"
Her face up to then had been pleasant, but stiff. But at the man's joyful admonition, her face relaxed into a broad smile. She would remember.
The moments would be few, when she would let herself be so open, so seemingly approachable again. I would have liked to have seen that moment.
Fast forward to August 9, 1902. This time it was a King who would be crowned in The Abbey: Edward VII - large, ruddy and self-indulgent; but just as popular as the pale waif-like creature who had been crowned there nearly 500 years earlier.
He has been quoted as saying that the most memorable part of the glittering ceremony - weighed down with tradition as well as jewels - was when his wife, Alexandra, was crowned. At the moment that the diadem was placed on her lovely and subdued head, all the peeresses in atttendance lifted their own tiaras to place on their heads: repeating perhaps their own crowning glory.
Edward was entranced with the movement, ballet-like, of the hundreds of white arms "arching over their heads" as they raised then lowered their coronets, flashing with diamonds; he was in love with the sudden, sleek sound of rustling robes. The act was imbued with historical significance: each lady representing hundreds of years of landed wealth, but for that split second of grace they were beautiful as well.
The elegant symbolism must has been spellbinding. I would have liked to have been there, just for that one brief synchronized, aristocratic, performance.
Now, before the coronation, the Marchioness of Londonderry had withdrawn to the peeresses' lavatory. Stooping to adjust her train, she lost her massive tiara in the 'pan'. The only way to retrieve it without damaging its layers of jewels was by using a gynecological forceps. I doubt if such a thing would have been available 'in house' so some time must have passed before the instrument was delivered.
So...what did she do? Would she have blushed? Did she swear? Shout? Stamp her foot? How would such a stately lady have expressed her embarrassment and frustration? This type of thing really doesn't happen every day...yes, I would have liked to have been in on this, too. Well, perhaps just waiting outside the door.
This is the Marchioness at the Devonshire House Ball in 1897, dressed as the Empress of Austria. The offending tiara is the circlet forming the base of her crown. Little did she suspect that in 5 years it would have to be fished out of the toilet with an instrument typically used for plumbing...an entirely different type of plumbing.
Studying history is like beachcombing. No matter what you find - be it little or large; whole or fragmented; dull or colorful; old and faded or recently washed up...it's all real, it all played its part in a larger world.
And it should always be dusted off and taken home.
Edmund Dulac painted scenes which came from dreams, fairy tales…all kinds of wishes. He was the contemporary of Arthur Rackham, Kay Neilsen and W. Heath Robinson – he was part of a very wonderful period: it was still before the war, ladies were taking off their corsets, Klimt was painting, seemingly, in pure gold, and the illustrators of story books were elevating that genre to something rich and magical. Viewing the illustrations from that time was like closing your eyes and falling back onto velvet pillows whose lushness seemed to go on forever.
The illustrations of Dulac were engulfed in beauty; silken and sensual, sparked with stars, dotted with light – the colors are soft yet passionate. I’ve read that doctors in the 16th century would treat an abscess with a poultice of crushed emeralds. I believe that Dulac painted with crushed jewels – rubies, jade, onyx, sapphires, amber, coral, garnet: a glowing rainbow of decoration. The colors are that deep and varied.
Skies are beige and overcast. Or pale blue, like melted ice. Or the blue of dusk, before it deepens into a cobalt sky. No primary colors; shades are split, and split again - achieving, no, creating subtletites of color that are deep and delicate.
He painted ladies with dark hair and pearl skin. Eunuchs asleep outside their mistress’ room. Cream colored stallions. Genies towering over an Arabian ocean. Maidens of ice, of fire, of air – all the elements.
Light was never stark, throwing shadows into sharp relief. Instead, it was diffuse, smoky. Shadows always dissolve gracefully into the forests, mountains, castles and oceans of his illustrations. Take one of his illustrations away from the protection of its page, and I believe it would melt back down into the original daubs of his palette.
I've included three examples here, and believe me, choosing just three was NOT an easy task.
With paper-thin wings of pale turquoise, she is resting on a cloud of the same color. The background is an array of colored smoke, blending together into a million shades. Her tunic is ice-blue, with a taffeta skirt embroidered with dazzling white sequins. One white hand pulls back the heavy velvet drapes of the bed. Is Beauty awake?
This woman. With a gaze as fierce and forthright as that of the panther she is walking. Her fabrics are purple and auburn, with color washes layered one atop the other to create depth, yet to hold onto the fragility and delicacy of the finest silk:
This one is my absolute favorite:
One color: a fantastical green/blue/gray, investigated thoroughly. From the lightness of her cheek, to the shadows within the folds of her starry gown, this color no longer has any secrets. Resting on clouds, she looks on earth through thoughtful, half-shut eyes:
Edmund Dulac painted scenes from the most romantic of imaginations. He discovered colors as exotic and fragile as any gem mined from the earth. And like the most experienced diamond-cutter, he divided those colors until the subtleties were myriad. And that's just what I fancy.
