v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Miami Vid

The Suicide of Bonvin

Incredible watercolors by Leon Bonvin at The Walters Art Gallery:

In the five years leading up to his suicide in 1866, Léon Bonvin created a series of melancholy yet luminous watercolors of flowers, fruits and the countryside around his café-bar on the outskirts of Paris. Burdened by debts, at the age of just 32, Bonvin hung himself in woods near his home. Within days, the prices of his paintings doubled and continued to rise as collectors, including most prominently William T. Walters, sought to acquire the few remaining works available on the market.

The decades that followed saw a myth develop that told of a tragic and misunderstood artist, self-taught and laboring against the odds to pursue the art he loved. That myth endures, but we are now in a position to reevaluate it. Although the truth about Bonvin’s life cannot be recovered from surviving documents, new research suggests that, far from working in isolation, the artist communicated with the Parisian art world and that his work was in tune with contemporary artistic trends. Rarely shown because of the delicacy of the medium, this exhibition showcases 19 exquisite watercolors selected from the leather-bound album in which Walters lovingly enshrined them. Thanks to Walters’ enthusiasm for the artist, the Walters Art Museum has the largest holding of Bonvin’s works in any public collection.

From The Blue Lantern:

Since I posted an article  about the French artist Leon Bonvin (1834-1866) a year ago today, I have kept searching out his work and now have more to share.  Using watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink, Bonvin managed to create pristine lines and colors both delicate and buoyant, that are realistic while conveying something of his hunger to create, to get it all down on paper.  Bonvin felt keenly his inability to afford oil paints but we find no lack in the watercolors and charcoals he created.

Life was hard for the Bonvins,  a large family.   Francois (1817-1997) was  the first child, born in Paris to a policeman and a seamstress.  After his mother died when he was four years old, the father remarried another seamstress and there were nine more children   Leon, the family caboose, grew up at an inn the family ran in the village of Vaugirard (now a suburb of Paris).  

Both boys showed an early desire to draw, but Francois, who grew up in Paris, was able to spend time at the Louvre, even though apprenticed to a printer at age thirteen.  Not especially healthy and never well to do, Francois helped his younger brother as he could, encouraging Leon to keep at his art.

The work of an innkeeper is never-ending, no matter how modest the inn, and the time that Leon Bonvin could devote to his art was limited to  early morning and sunset.  The figure in the garden, immersed as he is his surroundings, is surely Bonvin himself.  Less certain is the identity of the woman sweeping, alos with her back to us.

More

Anne Mette Iversen's Poetry of Earth

 

Vallejo Nocturno 2012- Dan Tepfer, Anne Mette Iversen, Christine Skou, Maria Neckam, John Ellis

Subtle and disonant in it own romatic way-Iversen's music and ensemble were meaningful and fun tonite at An Die Musik.

Eaten by Intruders

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- the art of culinary philanthropy

Broadway Deep and Dark

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- Thursday night

 SONG
           
           
   I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab
   which is typical
   and not just of modern life
             
   mud clambers up the trellis of my nerves
   must lovers of Eros end up with Venus
   muss es sein? es muss nicht sein, I tell you
   
   how I hate disease, it's like worrying
   that comes true
   and it simply must not be able to happen
   
   in a world where you are possible
   my love
   nothing can go wrong for us, tell me


   [1960] frank O'Hara

A detailed knowledge

 

 

Visitación

Dejé al demonio encerrado
en un cajón
en su pequeño lecho de crespón

afuera el ángel vuela
toca la puerta
espera

en una mano la rima
como una lágrima
en la otra el silencio
como una espada

échame de mi cuerpo
son las doce
sin sol ni estrellas

Blanca Varela

More soul

Vallejo nocturno 2011- Lima afternoon, mother departed. . .

Meche 1917-2011

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- Mother, Dear

 

On the 25th of October, this Monday, my mother passed away after almost 92 years of great health and 2 of difficult and unstable health conditions. Throughout her life she was a strong woman in male dominated world and she was always true to her better instincts. She had traveled the world and seen how different cultures dealt with their day to day realities. She always understood and tought us the importance of the family and independence. Her humor and compassion made a lot of us stronger and better. Oh, and style. Always do things with the right mix of style. . .

The Soul Inside

"In a Village Voice review of the reality show "Platinum Hit"-- a sort of "Project Runway" for aspiring songwriters-- Mike Barthel hits on something basic about the way people look at pop. "The way music is discussed," he writes, "seems to reject the idea that it could have emerged any way other than directly from God's lips to your ears. When people don't like music, it's dismissed as being 'manufactured' or 'fake'; the adjectives 'real' or 'organic,' meanwhile, are positive."

I'd make one major revision to that idea-- I think the source people look for is not God so much as the artist's "soul." This, after all, is why so much press about musicians focuses on their back stories, heartbreaks, and tragedies: We like to imagine that the sounds they're making are some raw, uncalculated outpouring of the soul inside. (This is also part of why we marvel at voices-- the literal breath from someone's body-- in ways we could never marvel at, say, keyboard-playing.) Most commenters making bold declarations about Kreayshawn's background have come to their conclusions based on exactly two pieces of evidence about her: a song she recorded, and a video of her performing it. But if the purpose of those two aesthetic texts is to communicate Kreayshawn's Soul and Identity to your ears, and what's hitting your ears seems false, then... she herself must be lying, right? Unconvincing doesn't just mean an unconvincing artist, it means a fake one. Right?

As a way of thinking, this is surely a fallacy of the highest order. But people think this way because making pop music-- more than almost any other art-- sits right at the intersection between being yourself and finding something better than yourself to be. This, in the end, is what we're looking for: Someone who can devise some fantastically compelling version of herself to act out, while still seeming as if she's... being herself. Musicians are expected to write a great part and convincingly act the role at the same time. And even after that, we're not really judging them on how compelling the identity they're offering us is-- we judge them based on which types of identities we personally need or aspire to at the moment. There is no identity politics quite as nuanced or complicated as people arguing about music."

Nitsuh Abebe, June 24, 2011 Pitchfork

Phillip Levine

What Work Is
Phillip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work
You know what work is — if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.