By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
In 1960, six year old Ruby Bridges was accompanied inside an all white elementary school in New Orleans by Federal Marshalls, assigned to protect her as she became the first African American child to attend an all white school in the South.
Norman Rockwell captured this scene in his painting, The Problem We All Have to Live With. Too much is going on to describe it all in a cinquain, so I have focused on the resoluteness of this tiny girl as she walked past jeering crowds. The painting depicts even more of the ugliness - a tomato thrown against the wall, the word "Nigger" scrawled on the wall directly behind her. And yet this tiny child in her little girl dress and anklets just keeps marching past it all. Her courage calls out to me each time I see this image. Please google it to get the full effect. |
By adewpearl
| Author Note: | for my friend Reggie |
| Author Notes |
In 1964 Andrew Wyeth painted a portrait of Ralph Cline, a WWI veteran, in his uniform. Cline operated a sawmill near Wyeth's summer home. In this rather dark brown painting, the old man's face is lit up in contrast to the rest of the portrait, and there is the slightest smile on his lips. He poses erect, shoulders back, with medals displayed on his breast pocket.
This painting is meaningful to me because, while I have protested more than one war, I have always honored the service of soldiers who fight bravely. My father and uncles fought in WWII, and I am proud of their sacrifice. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, painted in the 1940's, depicts his neighbor in Maine, Christina Olsen, crawling up a field of grass to reach her house. To me, this has always been such a portrait of dignity - the girl, seen from the back, seems so resolute. Nothing but her skinniest of arms hints at her crippling condition - her pose is not at all pathetic. She is simply looking straight ahead at her house on the hill as she slowly makes her way to it.
I live less than an hour from the Wyeth Museum and grew up with his beautiful art. Some more sophisticated critics relegate him to a minor role in art history as they claim he is too much like an illustrator than a fine artist, but others find much to appreciate in his "magic realism." I am among those who appreciate. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
In April of 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, German bombers, under Hitler's orders, bombed the Spanish village of Guernica, a Basque stronghold. Hitler, of course, sided with the conservative Nationalists. Many hundreds of civilians were slaughtered. Pablo Picasso painted the greatest anti-war canvas ever produced in response to this attack.
Guernica is a huge painting, all in black and white, almost 12 by 26 feet and depicts the dying moments of many figures - I doubt even an epic poem could describe all of it. I have chosen to focus on one figure, a mother holding her dead infant. This figure is on a button I bought in the 1960's that has as its caption - What about the children? From the 1950's until the early 80's, Guernica was displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, where in the 60's anti-war vigils were held. It is there I bought the pin that I still wear. This cinquain is not intended to provide a full description of the painting or even of this one figure. It is meant to capture the spirit of Picasso's observation on the horrors of war. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
Van Gogh created twelve paintings of sunflowers. The one that inspired me is the most famous, on display in the National Gallery of London. It was painted in August,1888, and shows a simple vase crowded with flowers, some wilted, some with no petals, some with partial petals. If one walked into a room with such a display, she would silently wonder why the person living there had not yet thrown them away.
And yet, in Van Gogh's hands, there is something about the composition of the arrangement, the deep vibrancy of the color, that has made this painting one of the most recognizable and reproduced artworks in the world. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to paint this portrait of a teenaged bride-to-be by her fiancee, twice her age, in 1474. Critics speculate that she was none too happy about her upcoming nuptials from the expression on her face. She is quite beautiful but lacks anything approaching joy.
In 1967 this portrait was acquired by the National Museum in Washington, D.C. for the unheard of price of 5 million dollars. A couple years later my future husband and I stood in front of this tiny painting, displayed in a plexiglass case, and both fell utterly in love with this girl. We seriously planned to name a daughter after her someday. Alas, by the time our daughter was born more than a decade later, Jennifer was too common a name, so we chose Miranda from Shakespeare's Tempest, but she knows she was almost Ginevra/Jennifer because of this haunting painting. google Leonardo da Vinci Ginevra de Benci to see her. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
Michelangelo carved the Pieta around 1499. Before his most famous statue, other pietas, statues of Mary holding her crucified son, portrayed her as grief stricken and the body as gruesome. Michelangelo instead gave her a peaceful face and Jesus a magnificent body.
"If life pleases us, death being made by the hands of the same creator should not displease us," Michelangelo wrote. If there is a more beautiful statue in the world, I am unaware of it. When in high school, I had the opportunity to visit Rome with my Latin club, and I saw this masterpiece in person. One never forgets seeing something like this. I assume most everyone will know this work, but if you need a reminder, google Michelangelo's Pieta. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
Reginald Marsh painted this scene of five people on a park bench during the Great Depression. Behind this central grouping is a throng of others, jobless, crowding the park with nothing productive to do. Marsh, a political radical in an era that drove many to his political stance, drew the indigent of the cities many times.
Today, as many are losing jobs and hoping for a solution, this painting resonates with me even more than the first time I fell in love with it years ago. Google Reginald Marsh The Park Bench to find the picture. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
Since I was a child, I've received delight from the "naive" paintings of Henri Rousseau, a man who worked in the Paris customs house until he retired early to devote himself to his magical and mystical paintings. Many of these painting depict jungle and forest scenes, otherworldly.
In this painting from 1905, a woman in formal garden dress stands at the edge of a fantastical forest of gigantic orange trees and blue daisies that tower above her head. She does not seem to acknowledge at all that she is in an unusual setting, which adds to the whimsy of the scene. This painting is on display at the Barnes Museum in my suburban county outside of Philadelphia. Others of Rousseau's paintings hang in major museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, and yet he is buried in a pauper's grave. Picasso and the avant garde were quick to acknowledge his influence and pay him homage. I just know his paintings always make me smile. To see the painting, just google Rousseau and the title. |
By adewpearl
| Author Note: | please read author's notes |
| Author Notes |
Albert Pinkham Ryder, an American painter, produced this small brownish painting of a dead bird in the 1890's. There is no background setting, just darker brown brush strokes. The painting, just four and a half inches high and 10 inches long, half the size of a piece of loose-leaf paper, has a matter-of-fact approach to it, and yet when I view it, I don't think of Ryder's feelings as detached. I imagine this rather shy, eccentric man who lived in relative isolation feeling some kinship to this flightless bird.
Many modern artists of the 20th Century paid homage to Ryder and acknowledged his influence. Why does the painting mean something to me? There was a time when I was in grad school that I collected post-mortem photographs of the 19th Century and even wrote a seminar paper in Material Culture on one. These photos displayed dead loved ones, often children, in a way reminiscent of this bird. There is a recognition that death exists, as part of life, that resonates with me. You can google Ryder Dead Bird or find this painting in the Wikipedia article on Ryder. |
By adewpearl
| Author Notes |
If you google Picasso's Old Guitarist, the very first entry will quickly take you to a picture of this painting from Picasso's blue period of 1901-1904. I have mentioned this painting before in a memory poem about an encyclopedia my father gave me when I was nine that introduced me to it.
I first fell in love with and identified with it the year after my mother died - I knew this tragic old man, bent over his guitar, felt the same mourning loss I did. I am writing about it today because a fellow writer and I were talking about using art as inspiration for poetry this morning, which has motivated me to start a series of cinquains about art meaningful to me. Not just any art, but art that speaks to me and my experience. I hope it speaks to readers also. Adelaide Crapsey, the originator of the cinquain, used titles as a significant "sixth line" in her poems, and this is written in that spirit. |
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