Spoleto and Umbria

Assisi: Basilica Di San Francesco: Cimabue, Giotto's game-changing frescoes, and others.

Spoleto's Duomo with frescoes by Lippi.

Others are in conversation as well. This in the Spoleto modern art gallery. Nice room here by Sol Lewitt.

A sacra conversazione in Montefalco.

The view from Montefalco, Balcony of Umbria.

No cameras allowed in the Uffizzi (many wonderful examples of the sacra conversazione - Piero della Francesco so great to see again) or at the Academia (the David, the unfinished slaves). The human scale of Florence is welcome after Rome's overpowering, hectic commerce.

Technical trouble.

Thick walls, stone floors ... wifi cannot penetrate. Unless I discover a fix, updates may have to wait until after Oct. 8. Loading photos is the problem. Check in again to see if I have found a solution.

Act 5

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1, on April, 10, 2013.
To access all scenes, scroll to the blog archive at the bottom of the page.

It seems ridiculous. It is ridiculous. I am sitting in bed, looking across the hall at my camera bag, my small backpack, and my suitcase, all standing in a neat row against the wall, almost ready to be lugged to the limo that will take us to the airport ... eight days from now.

I have been planning this visit to Italy for the better part of two years now. For all that time, this trip has been the carrot at the end of the stick that is daily routine. And ridiculous as it is, I started packing a few important things several days ago. Could I be a bit excited?

My partner, seems to be grateful that I have approached the adventure with such enthusiastic obsessiveness. She knows that our flights and hotels have been booked for nearly a year. As soon as the functional windows opened for other things, I booked those too. Train passes, for example, would have expired had I ordered them too early. Ditto for city passes (museums and transit) for Rome, Florence and Venice. We have tickets for the Vatican Museums, tickets for a performance in Rome of Coppelia,  tickets for a program at a small church in Florence of famous opera arias. I have reserved a rental car, I have maps printed for every conceivable permutation of our week on the road in Tuscany and Umbria. You get the idea.

And at some point, this trip (and more specifically this blog) became an integral part of the exhibition of my recent paintings that opens in March next year, at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham Ontario (Canada) and then travels to The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford BC in 2015. My interest in art as conversation has motivated my work in the studio, and has also become manifest in the form of this blog. While in Italy, I'll be seeking out examples of the Renaissance convention of the sacra conversazione. These won't be hard to find.

From previous visits, I am somewhat familiar with Florence and Tuscany, Umbria, and Venice. And although my most recent trip to Rome was in 1975, with eighteen teenage high school students and my then recently retired father in tow, I still retain a good deal of what I learned at that time, and between about 1970 and 2000 while teaching unnecessarily detailed art history lessons to thousands of (mostly) forbearing art students. The map will illustrate how much more there is to see, but this trip will focus on the areas I mentioned above.

http://www.planetware.com/map/italy-italy-republic-map-i-i37.htm

So here we are in Act 5, and for the next little while, I have decided to dispense with individual scenes in favour of posts that will, for now at least, concentrate on the reality of our upcoming adventure in Italy. Who knows though? When we do arrive in Rome, Florence and Venice perhaps the characters who enlivened the first part of this blog will reappear with more insights, or perhaps in friendly barroom brawls. I am content to let the blog lead me, and together we'll find out what happens. See you in Rome in a week or so.

Act 4, Scene 2

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

The late afternoon sun bursts in watery flashes across Venice's Canal Grande and beyond. Newkirk finds himself strolling along the Riva degli Schiavoni with the young dancer, Marie van Goethem. Never having ventured much beyond Paris, she is fascinated by everything Venetian. She chatters enthusiastically while tearing away chunks of a pastry, oblivious as flakes fall onto her blouse and scatter on the pavement each time she takes a bite. To the south and west, the shadows of Santa Maria della Salute lengthen. 

Gondole and assorted other boats bob quietly at their moorings; a seagull pecks at a discarded and unopened bag of pasta that floats along beside the frustrated bird.

Marie, speaking rapidly

M. Degas is a bit difficult to work for, but he pays me well and on time, as he should! Some days I must hold a pose for him for hours. This is difficult even for a strong young, dancer. It took some time to get accustomed to posing without clothes (shrugs nonchalantly), but now, how do you say it? It is no big deal. My friends who also know artists have seen how these men, and even women painters – you have heard of Mlles. Morisot and Cassatt? – they lose themselves when they work. I sometimes think that M. Degas does not know or care that I am naked. He does get grumpy though. Oh, mon dieu, it's a wonder any of his friends still have anything to do with him. He argues all the time. But I like the pictures he makes of me; they are different from the pictures made by others, non? And then there are the bronzes (smiles broadly). I like these very much. The strange one with clothes on it is like looking at myself, and I will always be a proud little ballerina in that sculpture.

Act 4, Scene 1

The narrative began with Act 1, scene 1 on April 10, 2013.

To access all scenes, scroll to blog archive at the bottom of the page.

Without warning, the room fills with women – all of them adopting rather stern poses, hands on hips, or arms crossed – intently focussing their gazes on the one man present. Newkirk slowly gains control of himself, snaps shut his open mouth, nervously clears his throat.

Newkirk

Uh ... hello everyone ... ? I didn't expect ... I mean how did you ... ? Uh, welcome. He looks around the room, now beginning to recognize some of these women. Helen Frankenthaler leans against the wall at the rear of the crowd, quietly smoking a cigarette (in this non-smoking building!). Looking like a granite monument to Golda Meir and staring out the big window is Gertrude Stein. Berthe Morisot, Lee Krasner, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe, Käthe Kollwitz, Lee Miller, Louise Bourgeois, Elaine de Kooning, Agnes Martin, Kara Walker, Colette Whiten, Shary Boyle, Joan Mitchell, Bridget Ryley, Faith Ringgold, Daphne Odjig, and several others Newkirk does not recognize stand shoulder to shoulder. Things looks a bit scary, from Newkirk's point of view. And something strange is happening to the faces. He must be imagining this, but it seems that each time he glances up, some of the faces have changed; other women appear and disappear; the group is not static. They fade in; they fade out. He becomes the cliché of a befuddled man, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head.

The woman who just a moment ago so abruptly interrupted his revery (no ... it couldn't have been her ...) seems to have disappeared.

Now making her way through the crowd toward where he sits (cowers?) in what has begun to feel like a child's swivel desk chair, is a petite young woman with extraordinary posture and physical presence. This, he realizes, is Marie van Goethem, the model for Degas' bronze, La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans.

Marie, in a voice as silky as olive oil and with a mesmerizing French accent:
Bonsoir, M. Newkirk. You luke a beet pale. I 'ope you are feeling okay? 

Newkirk
Uh ...

Marie
We have come here to suggest that perhaps it is time to leave alone this legacy of white men that you have been writing about, non? Do you really want to continue to make these small lessons of history, these lessons about white men who think that it is important to pay homage to other white men?

Newkirk (speaking rather too rapidly and nervously glancing from face to face)
Uh, well ... I did have a few more artists I wanted to mention. You see my plan was to trace an artistic legacy right up to the present. AND ... and, I was going to get to some wonderful women artists, really I was, and (with a note of panic) some First Nations artists, and some African American artists, and ... he sounds pitiful, and he knows it.

General murmuring and shuffling of feet in the room.

Marie, with terrifying sweetness
Well ... okay, how about you do this: take a moment to make the rest of your list. Go on. We wait while you do this. But you will dispense with all the blah, blah, blah lessons in history, non? (She glances around at the changing group of other women, many of whom grudgingly nod their assent). You make your list; you make this list with, how do you say, links, oui? and then everybody can look at these links and be happy to know everything! (She smiles broadly now, but Newkirk notices that, as hers is still the only smile in the room, it affords little comfort.) And then maybe ... maybe one day soon you will again talk with some of these people on your list, as you did at the start, non? And then you can tell us again some interesting stories about them if you like. This sounds okay for you?

Newkirk
Uh ... well, uh ...

Marie
Bon! (She claps her hands together in apparent delight). And then we will have a nice talk, okay? Maybe first we talk about me! (she lights up) and Monsieur Degas.

Newkirk squirms, and attempts his own smile. He fails.