The Power of art.

Chapter 1 : Caravaggio, Painting Gets Physical

Short Biography : Lichelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is an Italian painter of the 16-17th (1571-1610) century. He was a revolutionary and rebel painter. He revolutionized classical painting standards. He was unconventional. And despite his fame (renomme), lots of his paintings were refused by the sponsors. His taste for religious art was in conflict with his violent and brutal personality. He was always ready to fight and frequented prostitutes and men of bad reputation. His religious art was not in the taste of everybody at that time. In fact Caravaggio was against idealized beauty but for high realism. This was blasphemous in the 18th. For example his representation of the Virgin Mary in the famous painting Death of the Virgin was highly criticized because of the chosen model who was a prostitute on the one hand, and on the other, her position. In fact, the Virgin was laid out in a poor manner and surrounded by mourners who considered her poor. For him, death, which is present in some of his painting, played an important role and was part of his own life: his parents have died of plague (?) and he killed the member of another gang so he had to run away until his death. Historical and artistic context : When he arrived at Rome, it was a city under influence of Council of Trent and Catholicism. And were art was essentially Baroque. Discuss the works reproduced in the chapter : Boy bitten by a lizard The sick Bacchus The calling of St Matthew The martyrdom of St Matthew Doubting of St Thomas The beheading of St John the baptist Link the chapter to the title of the book : Caravaggio was a very violent person who didnt hesitate but got physical with people. In his painting the charachters are often shown naked, the body being exposed in their full glory (the musceld, the bones, the hair, the texture) and Caravaggio chose their for very realistic approach. Last but not least people who look at the painting are forced to stare at it. No one can just take a glimpse and walk away. The paintings leave an almost physical trace on anyone who dares look at Caravaggios paintings.

Questions 1. Explain the title of this chapter Painting gets physical = 2. What are the 2 things to know about Caravaggio to start with? OK He made the most powerfully physical Christian art that has ever been painted He killed someone (in a duel) 3. What is peculiar (particulier) about Caravaggios self-portrait as Goliath? P.17 OK He painted himself as an ogre, his face is a grotesque mask of sin (pch). Its an image of unsparing (impitoyable) self-incrimination that makes you wonder. 4. What is meant by the viewer (le spectateur) responds to Caravaggios pictures physically? P16-18 The viewer is in the same situation as the figures. He can have one of the object which was in the painting of Caravaggio De Laurence. 5. According to his earliest biographers, where did Caravaggio usually paint? What kind of models did he use? P18 OK He painted in situ (= in the space of the space he wants to paint). He uses live models, life-sized (grandeur nature). 6. In The Beheading of St John the Baptist what are the keys the symbol of? To what effect are they used? OK Key = symbol of incarceration. To ramp up the nightmarish (cauchemardesque) claustrophobia. (L) So he had posed his model and perhaps asked for a set of keys to hang from the mans belt. 7. What had been the breakthrough (progrs, dcouverte capital) of Renaissance painting? P18 OK Perspective 8. To what further step does Caravaggio take painting? ? (L): He is more interested in where we are, in the space in front of the picture plane which he made a point of invading. In other words, the viewer has his own space invaded by the painting. 9. Who was Giulio Mancini? P20 OK The doctor who treated him and became his first contemporary (contemporain, du mme ge) biographer. 10. Why might Caravaggio have used himself as a model? P20 OK He was the only model he could afford. (L) : But for Schama, Caravaggio had his friends to pose for him. 11. What other reason for his self-dramatization does Schama give? OK It was a calculated gesture, to challenge the conventions of art.

12. In which paintings has Caravaggio represented himself? P20? OK - Sick Bacchus - Boy bitten by a lizard - The head of Medusa (the serpent-coiled face of the monster Medusa at the moment of her death). - The musicians (as a come-hither horn player at the back of a group of winsomely clad musicians) - The Martyrdom of St Matthew (as a frantic bystander getting out of the way of St Mattews brutal killing). - David with the head of Goliath (as the monstrous head of Goliath) - as the curious holder of a lantern that sheds light so that wickedness can be done and destiny fulfilled 13. What do they have in common? ? (L): Every appearance that he made was in the guise of sinner. Because he was opposed to the painters that had represented themselves as masters of learning, socially and morally ennobled by their calling. 14. Name some other painters that represented themselves as actors in their own paintings. P20 OK Michelangelo: as the flayed (corch) St Bartholomew in the Sistine Chapel Giorgione: as David with the head of Goliath. 15. At the time what were the respective positions of Catholics and Protestants towards images? P21 C(?): Images were available to all believers, enabling literate Christians to have a direct, unmediated personal relationship with their Saviour. P(?): They perceived images as institutionalized deception. The idols were a painted mummery to keep credulous infantile, to held them in thrall by the Pope and his minions. With the secret distribution of vernacular Bibles, there was a revolution with the destruction of images. 16. Which Christian doctrine had Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raphael been able to show through their works? Give examples. P22 They were able to express in sculpture and painting one of the Churchs central doctrines: that the meaning of Gospel (Evangiles) was Gods compassion, embodying his son in human flesh so that his sacrifice could redeem (racheter) the sins of mankind (lhumanit). (L): Inseparable from this core belief was the emphasis on the Incarceration and Passion as physical experience. They were both capable of reconciling the representation of mortal flesh and immortal spirit. Example: Michelangelos Piet of 1500 17. What is the meaning of The Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593) painting by Caravaggio? P25/P26 ? (L): it was a northern Italian tradition to represent a basket of flowers. But C. wasnt fond of this topic, neither did he like conventions. So, he decided to play

by painting this image with a twist, ie the cloying fruit and his friend who looked disgusted.

18. How can you read the Boy Bitten by a Lizard? Which technical skills does it show? P27 As a warning against sexual mischief. You need to know jargon of this period. Lizard = penis (slang). The wounded inflicted with the flower = social disease transmitted by sex (?) (L) Illusionist naturalism. He made the image look so real (the waterbowl, the facial features contorted in pain, ) 19. What is new in the Sick Bacchus? How does it change conventions? P27 Caravaggio turned Bacchus (god of wine, revelry, dance and song) into a literally sick joke. He painted himself as overdressed party animal the morning after. He took the mythical deity and turned him into a dressed-up mortal. It a picture of decay (not of immortality). He did the opposite of his time. (L): Instead of turning a human model with his imperfections into a god that represents perpetual youth, beauty and pleasure, he turned the mythical deity Bacchus into the opposite, a human looking sick and pale. Its a picture of decay, he showed by that painting, his opposition to the conventions. 20. How did Caravaggio dramatize his paintings? P28 Instead of the raucous (bruyante) comic crowd, he took a very small cast of characters and painted them near life-size (grandeur nature) so that they dominate the picture space rather than being swallowed up by a picturesque interior. Instead of dwelling on the crudeness of the characters, Caravaggio washes them in the pellucid glow usually reserved for saints. 21. What was Caravaggios position towards drawing (dessin)? P30-31 He dispended with preparatory drawing. Caravaggio did not do drawing before painting. Because of his phenomenal eye-hand coordination and his methodological insubordination. Disegno = conveyed both the act of drawing and the conception of a larger design. It was not usual at this time in Rome. 22. Who was Francisco Maria del Monte? What role did he play in Caravaggios life? P31-33 Was a richest cardinal, a diplomat and a collector of Italian art in Rome who worked for the Medici Grand Dukes of Florence. Urbino was the brightest and most sophisticated Italian court and one way in which the cardinals of Rome established their place in the aristocratic pecking order was by cultural taste and patronage. So Del Monte was on the look-out for promising talent. He saw The Cards Sharpson the street, and Caravaggio was made an offer: Board and lodging (le couvert et le gte) in a studio of Del Montes Palazzo Madama

Patronage by the network of grandees

23. What is The Musicians about? P33 Four barely dressed ( peine habill) boys shoehornd into an impossiblibly tight picture space. Its an outrageous flirtation. (L): The aim of Caravaggio is to give an awkward physical proximity between the musicians who look too big for the canvas. Its contact painting; theyre all doing something. The boy on the left has Cupids wings but its only a nod to allegory because he stands in a cardinals residence. The boy in the back and staring at us is Caravaggio himself playing one more time with us in a three-way game art played by himself, his subjects and us. 24. What are the parties in the three-way game that art was for Caravaggio? - himself (Caravaggio) - his subjects - and us (the onlookers) 25. What did painters use mirrors for? P35 It was a requirement (ncessit) for any artist to master (matriser) the affeti, the passions, to rehearse (repeater) expressions that could then be used in history paintings. For Caravaggio, it helped him to focus his images, but also to focus his mind 26. What is the myth of Medusa? What was at stake (en jeu) in Caravaggios undertaking (engagement/promesse) of that painting? P36 The Gorgon Medusa was a female monster whose gaze (regard) turned men to stone. Perseus, a hero protected and equipped by the goddess Athena with a mirrored shield that froze the monster in her own horrified gaze long enough for him to slice off her head. A chance of competing with Leonardo Da Vinci, who painted another Head of Medusa before Caravaggio. 27. Who posed for his painting Mary Magdalena? What was the problem with that? Why would it have been appropriate? P38-39 Fillide Melandroni, the most famous, desirable, and dangerous prostitute in Rome. There were specific Church bans on the painting of women of ill repute (de mauvaise reputation), especially in history paintings. 28. Who posed for Catherine of Alexandria? P39 Fillide Melandroni 29. What is the context in which Caravaggios paintings at the church San Luigi dei Francesi were created?

Pope Clement VIIIs Holy Year (Anne Sainte) was approaching : a year of fervor, pilgrimage (plerinage) and grace, when absolution would be extended, indulgently, to sinners who normally would have been denied salvation sinners like Caravaggio. From a historical point of view, there was a lot of poverty in Rome. People were ravaged by the plague, burdened by taxes and didnt have enough food. Besides the Tiber flooded and broke a bridge. So Rome was in need of wonders. Lets move on reasons why C. painted the church, He was instructed very strict rules that felt like chains. Caravaggio gave up on the The Martyrdom of St Matthews and broke free to work facing wall where he had greater conceptual liberty to paint The calling of St Matthews. Thats what gave him the inspiration to after all paint the first painting.

30. How did the Flemish painter and poet Karel van Mander describe Caravaggios work and way of working? 47 ? Caravaggios kind of art is the contact painting. His paintings get to us directly. He doesnt let us any distance with his painting were forced to stare at it. His way of working was odd. According to van Mander it was impossible to get along with him because he was always ready to argue or to fight with anybody. But some rich people protected him because of his talent. 31. What does the dramatization in Caravaggios paintings depend on? Proximity , not identification. The closeness of the viewer with the canvas creates the drama. The distance between observer and event never more successfully annihilated. Besides, the way C. chose to represent Peter, with his visible suffering, contributed to the drama. 32. How do Caravaggios mischievous life and his art combine the ideas of sin and redemption and fit in with the Christian concept of humility born out of the Counter-Reformation? The Church wanted the believers to experience the scene (for example the crucifixion of St Peter) and they wished that ordinary people feel implicated in the sin at the same time as feeling assured of salvation if they were obedient to the Christian concept of humility. 33. What happened to the Death of the Virgin after its completion? Why? The Church thought it was indecent to use a prostitute to represent Marys body and a lot of other element as her bare foot shocked them. Peter Paul Rubens bought it for the Duke of Mantua 5 years later. He was so impressed by the painting that he exhibited it for a week before it was sent to Mantua. 34. What happened in Caravaggios life in May 1606? P63

There was an homicide, he killed Ranuccio Tomassoni. Caravaggio had had runins before with the Tomassoni brothers, sons of the captain of the guard of the great papal-aristocratic clan of the Farnese. The cause of the quarrel is not precise: some say that it was all about a game or a bet; others that it was just a convenient location to settle a row after Caravaggio took offence at something Ranuccio had said about his girl, probably Lena. It ended when Ranuccio took a slashing wound, after which Caravaggio stuck him in the belly or in the groin. Caravaggio was himself badly wounded but managed to escape. 35. What was his link with the Knights of St John? P65 He found hospitality in Malta where the Knights of St John (military monks) overlooked his crime and gave him the chance to become one himself. He paid for his admission into the Order with The beheading of St John the Baptist. 36. What do the muscled nudes in the Martyrdom of St Matthew and the Beheading of St John theBaptist represent? The figure of gravity and authority. The trophy carrier of murder. The association of beauty with violence and butchery. 37. How do the Crucifixion of St Peter and the Beheading of St John the Baptist integrate time? P69 The figures constitute a chain of action that since it is yet to be initiated, becomes completed in our own horrified imagination and so goes on and on in an unsparing perpetuum mobile of savagery. 38. What is the place of redemption in Caravaggios art? The ultimate meaning of the martyrdom itself, a foreshadowing of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ and thus the means of rebirt 39. How is young David usually depicted in art? Either in marble or paint. 40. Who were the models for the two characters in David with the Head of Goliath? Explain. A double self-portrait: his youthful upper body in the light. David is the blessed Caravaggio in his prodigious beginnings, the maker of Christian beauty. The same light flows downwards on to the face of the ogre, the Caravaggio that is, the bisexual goat, the murderer, the immense encyclopedia of wickedness. 41. How does Simon Schama imagine the reaction of Cardinal Scipione Borghese to Caravaggios last painting? To this ultimate attempt of forgiveness and absolution, Schama imagine the reaction of the Cardinal saying: Sorry; tremendously sorry, but youre too late.

Chapter 2 : Bernini, the miracle worker

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, dit Le Bernin ou Cavaliere Bernini (Naples, 7 dcembre 1598 Rome, 28 novembre 1680), sculpteur, architecte et peintre italien. Il fut surnomm le second Michel-Ange. Son art, typiquement baroque, est caractris par la recherche du mouvement, la torsion des formes, le spectaculaire et les effets d'illusion. Il se concilia par son talent prcoce la faveur du pape Paul V. Favori des papes, il devient l'architecte de la basilique Saint-Pierre. Il fut employ sans interruption par les pontifes : Grgoire XV le nomma chevalier ; Urbain VIII le combla de richesses ; plutt en disgrce sous le pontificat d'Innocent X il n'en conut pas moins la fontaine des quatre fleuves de la place Navone. On lui doit le baldaquin aux colonnes torses du matre-autel et le dessin de la majestueuse colonnade et des statues qui encerclent la place devant la basilique Saint-Pierre. Ses fontaines

monumentales, dont celle des Quatre Fleuves, offrant la vue de tout le dchanement des forces vives du baroque, exerceront une grande influence sur l'urbanisme romain et sur l'organisation des places publiques dans les autres capitales europennes. Charles Ier d'Angleterre lui fit faire sa statue. (Source : wikipdia) 1. Explain the title of the chapter. The miracle worker (le faiseur de miracle, le gurisseur). Bernini took the stat (the Latin for their usual condition of standing ) out of the statues. His figures break free from the gravity pull of the piedestal to run, twist, whirl, pant, scream, bark or arch themselves in spams of intense sensation. Taking breathtaking chances with risky drilling, Bernini could make marble do things it had never done before. He made it fly and flutter, Stream and quiver. His figures, liberated from the block-like spirites, charge into hectic action. Most of them are naturally yeasty, on the rise, and their natural drift is into the air and light. Add the rush of water, Bernini did with his dazzling, exuberant fountains, and the artist becomes a second Lord of Creation, the supreme play-master of the elements. Examples : On Romes Ponte Saint Angelo, berninis angels trip into the sunlight. Within the basilica, his bronze columns supporting the canopy (the baldacchino) over St Peters tomb, arent static; they writhe and seethe with organic life, bees and leaves teeming on their surface. Its magic. To break free : se librer ; gravity pull : lattraction gravitationnelle ; whirl : tournoyer ; taking breathtaking chances : prendre des risques couper le souffle ; drilling : le forage ; the block-like spirites : lesprit des blocs de pierre ; hectic : trpidantes ; yeasty : lev ; drift : drive ; dazzling : incroyable ; writhe and seethe : se tordent et bouillonnent. 2. How was, in the early 17th century, the yearning of the soul for possession by the divine always understood? In the early 17th century, the yearning of the soul for possession by the divine was always understood as working through the extrme sensations of the body. The poets and writers were obsessed about the union of body and soul. Yearning : le dsir ; Through : par le biais 3. What did St Theresa of Avila say about this? After her denial that her exprience with the angel was physical, Theresa herself adds that the body has a share in it, even a considerable share. The body has a share in it, even a considrable share. : Le corps a une part de lui, mme une part considrable

4. What did the Chevalier de Brosses say about Berninis sculpture The Ecstasy of St Theresa? Brosses, Charles, chevalier de: (1709-1777) French magistrate and author. Famous mainly for the erudite and witty letters he wrote during a journey through Italy (1739-1740) and published after his death. He said : Well, if thats divine love, I know all about it. . The Chevalier may have understood more than he affected to know : that the intensity of Theresas exctasy, the reprsentation of the transport of the soul, in fact, had everything to do with carnal knowledge, especially berninis own.

Carnal : charnel 5. What had been the preoccupation of sculpture before Bernini? Give an example. Before Bernini, sculptures preoccupation had been with immortality: it was a translation of mortal humanity into something purer, chillier and more enduring: gods and heroes. Beauty was the form by which celestial ideals otherwise hidden from mere mortals were made visible. The vocation of art was to give that beauty form ; the point of sculpture in particular was to make it weightily tangible, monumentally imperishable. Example : Michelangelos mission was to tease out from the marble those ideal forms he believed lay trapped within it. So the heroic power of his David, 1504, lies precisely in its inhumanity frozen immobility. Chillier : plus froid ; enduring : durable ; otherwise : par ailleurs ; mere : simples ; weightily tangible : gravement tangible (perception par le toucher) ; To tease out : faire ressortir 6. What was likeness for Bernini? He redefined likeness as more than appearance. True likeness (what he wanted to capture in his sculpture) was the animation of character, expressed in the movements of bodies and faces. Because Bernini was also a formidable gifted painter, he rendered the perennial dispute between the two art froms moot. If pictures could generate sense of being in a warm-blooded, living presence, so he thought, could sculpture. Stone could pulse with natural action. Out of the smooth, chill marble would spring human drama. Likeness : ressemblance ; gifted : dou ; to render : rendre; perennial : perptuel ; moot : thorique ; out of the smooth : hors du lisse ; 7. What is meant by Bernini took the STAT- [...] out of statues? Statue: from the Latin stare = to stand. Bernini took the stat (the Latin for their usual condition of standing ) out of the statues. His figures break free from the gravity pull of the pidestal to run, twist, whirl, pant, scream, bark or arch themselves in spams of intense sensation. Taking breathtaking chances with risky drilling, Bernini could make marble do things it had never done before. He made it fly and flutter, Stream and quiver. His figures, liberated from the block-like spirites, charge into hectic action. To break free : se librer ; gravity pull : lattraction gravitationnelle ; whirl : tournoyer ; taking breathtaking chances : prendre des risques couper le souffle ; drilling : le forage ; the block-like spirites : lesprit des blocs de pierre ; hectic : trpidantes 8. What were the two main objections of the classicists to Berninis art? According to Sir Joshua Reynolds ( master of Turner), Bernini was a cheap sorcerer, a specialist in theatrical trickery, who for the sake of wowing the worshipper had debased the purity of his chosen material. The 2 classicist gripes against the Baroque Bernini were that 1. He was emotionnaly overloaded (a sin against classical restraint) 2. and that by going to such great lenghts to imitate the surfaces and textures of other materials - steel, fur, skin- he had betrayed the integrity of stone. The more he made impersonate some other substance, the critics complained, the further form the sublime he took the beholder and dragged him down to earth.

A Cheap sorcerer : un sorcier bas prix ; theatrical trickery : ruse de thtre ; the sake of wowing the worshipper : la raison dtonner ladorateur ; debased : avili ; gripes : attaques ; overloaded : surcharg ; a sin : un pch ; restraint : la retenue ; steel, fur, skin : acier, fourrures, peau ; had betrayed : il avait trahi ; Il a usurp lidentit dune autre substance et par cette forme du sublime, il a pris le spectateur et la ramen les pieds sur terre. 9. What is one of Berninis trademarks (sa marque de fabrique)? Explain. Bernini had the miraculous gift of translation. His work was indeed a denial of the unyielding rigidity of stone, and he was unapologetic about his dtermination to make it supple and elastic. Bernini liked to boast that in his hand marble could become as impressionnable as wax and as soft as dough. Berninis marble does indeed seem to mutate into other substances : fibrous rope ; brilliant steel ; locks of hair different textures of hair, even, from coarse and thick to fine and silky. All of this made Bernini an exceptional dramatist. His contemporaries marvelled at this virtuosity, and believed that his unearthly powers as the Great Transubstantiator were a sign that he must have been kissed by God. Unyielding rigidity : ; unapologetic : ; supple and elastic : souple et elastique ; impressionnable as wax and as soft as dough : aussi impressionnant que la cire et aussi doux que la pte ; fibrous rope, brilliant steel, locks of hair : corde fibreuse, acier brillant, mches de cheveux ; coarse and thick to fine and silky : grossire et paisse fine et soyeuse ; dramatist : dramaturge ; marvelled : merveills ; unearthly : surnaturels. 10. How might the sculpture of Aeneas and Anchises relate to Berninis own life? Aeneas & Anchises: mythological ancestors of Rome, heroes from the epic the Aeneid by Latin writer Virgil. (lpope dEne) Aeneas is a Trojan prince, son of Anchises and the goddess Venus, who manages to escape Troy when it is seized by the Greek. He takes with him his young son Ascanius and his father whom he has to carry on his shoulders. After travelling through the Mediterranean Aeneas lands in Italy where his descendants will found the city of Rome. Bernini, paraded and promoted by his father, was singled out as extraordinary. Brought before the Borghese Pope Paul V, the eight-year-old did a shrewdly ingratiating lightning sketch of Saint Paul with free bold strokes, that moved the astonished Pope to hope that he was looking at the next Michelangelo. Twelve silver medals, as many as the Small boys hand could hold, were then dropped into his palm. To nurture his talent, Paul V appointed Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to Watch over the Young Bernini and to shape his education. The cardinal was so smitten that he remarked to Pietro (the father of Bernini), Watch out, Signor Bernini, the pupil will supass his master , to which the proud father replied, without any apparent testiness in that case, your excellency, why should I care, for the loser then also wins ! This father-son bond, with all its ambiguities and shifting weights of pride and obligation, may have made Gianlorenzos virtuoso sculpture of Aeneas fleeing the bruning city of Troy, with his father Anchises in his arms, more than just an espisode from the Trojan War. Singled out : choisi ; brought : amen ; shrewdly ingratiating lightning sketch : un croquis astucieusement lumineux des bonnes grces de St Paul ; with free bold strokes : avec des traits libres et gras ; dropped into : abandonn dans ; to

nuture : pour nourrir ; to shape : faonner ; testiness : sans irritation ; bond : relation ; shifting weights : les dplacements de poid ; fleeing : fuyant.

11. What do Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Bernini have in common? For all three of the great masters of 17th-century dramatized realism Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Bernini the Mirror was almost as important a tool of their work as the brush, etchers needle or chisel. The aim was unfreeze the expression of the passions from the artificial restraints imposed by classical models ; to lend to the natural mobility of the face and the movements of the body the greatest possible authenticity. And while they were being their own models for this proces of reanimation, they discovered the intensity of their own identification with the story. Self-dramatization made the artists simultaneously actors and audience, the Producer and consumer of the performance. Tool : outil ; brush, etchers needle or chisel : brosse, graveur, ciseau ; the aim : lobjectif ; unfreeze : librer ; to lend : de prter 12. What is the link between Bernini and his sculpture of the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo? Bernini made his first experiment in this ego-play, The Martyrdom of San Lorenzo. St Lawrence was the librarian and archivist of the early Church, who had been roasted Alive on a red-hot griddle. Since the saint was Berninis namesake, the project was personal, but he took this identification to extremes by placing his own leg against the side of a hot brazier. Either he looked in a Mirror while he was performing the exercise in tutelary masochism, or he had someone hold it as he sketched the expression of pain on his own face. But the look of St Lawrence is a peculiar mix of agony and ecstasy because Bernini is trying to catch a literal turning point in the story of martyrdom. Maryrdom : le martyre ; early : primitive ; namesake : ponyme (qui donne son nom ) ; either : soit ; peculiar : curieux ; literal turning point in the story of martyrdom: un point majeur dans la lettre du rcit du martyre. 13. What did Bernini do for his sculpture the Damned Soul? Why? Theres something almost perverse about the way the prodigy loved playing with fire. Bernini scorched himself again, this time on a forearm, so that he could get the expression of tongue-rolling, screaming horror on the face of The damned soul (his own face) as he glimpses the burning hell to which he has been condemned. Fire, the natural medium of the sanguine humour (which was certainly berninis), played a critical role. That had been the element that champions of paintings superiority over sculpture had bragged could never be reproduced in stone, which is why the teenage Bernini went to such lengths to render the licking flames so realistically that the coals seem in our minds eye to glow red. Scorched : brul ; forearm : avant-bras ; tongue-rolling : la langue roulante ; screaming horror : hurlant dhorreur ; glimpses the burning hell : il entrevoit lenfer brulant ; humour : humeur ; had bragged : setaient vant ; That had been the element that champions of paintings superiority over sculpture had bragged could never be reproduced in stone, which is why the teenage Bernini went to such lengths to render the licking flames so realistically that the coals seem in our minds eye to glow red : le feu est llement que les champions qui vantent la supriorit de la peinture sur la sculpture, quil ne pourrait jamais tre reproduit dans la pierre, ce qui explique pourquoi le jeune Bernini est all jusqu de telles

extrmits pour rendre les flammes lchantes de faon si raliste que les charbons semblent dans l'oeil de notre esprit rougeoyer rouges. 14. What are the Palazzo Barberini and the Villa Borghese? Why are they so magnificent? The Palazzo Barberini and the villa Borghese are two villas which belong to two rich men. The learned and rich Maffeo Barbeini, whose palazzo was being decorated on a scale to rival those popes and Kings, had been, deputed to Watch over Bernini ; but once the Young mans gifts had been established, he was outbid (for the moment) by Scipione Borghese, who had the advantage of being nephew and close adviser to the pope. Up on the Pincian Hill above the Piazza del popolo, Scipione was building a spectular villa, in conscious competition with the Palazzo Barberini. A scale : une chelle ; gift : don ; outbid : surenchri 15. Who was the male model for Berninis sculptures The Rape of Proserpine, Apollo and Daphne and David? Benini. He once again used his own face and body as model. 16. Explain Michelangelo (Buonarroti) wanted to make god-men; Bernini wanted to make men-men. Micheangelo wanted to make men looking like god unlike Bernini. This is the reason why The cardinal was looking like himself. Il le represente vraiment meme avec ses dfauts. Bernini, with the bust of the Cardinal Scipione, had made a revolution. But this revolution was also embodied. Although Bernini worshipped Michelangelo, the philosophy of this bust is the opposite from the Renaissance masters heroic idealism. Bernini had represented the bust of the cardinal in a charnel way, whereas Michelangelo wanted to make god-men. 17. How were people asked to pose for Bernini? Bernini sitters didnt sit. Rather like the best modern portrait photographers, the sculptor wanted them to speak and move, convinced that any kind of conscious pose froze their personality. Conversely, the more animated the figures were, especially in mid-speech, the more accessibly visible their character became. Conversely : inversement 18. What is peculiar about the eyes of Scipione Borghese on his sculpture? The eyes twinkle. Bernini achieved it by cutting very deeply at the contours of the iris so that the shadows created make the minute pupils appear to hold a catchlight. Catchlights in the eye were, of course, the speciality of the most talented painters. Twinkle : scintiller 19. Why are there two version of the bust of Scipione Borghese? Bernini was by temperament a risk-taker, and there were times when he paid for it. Ironically, in a portrait bust so packed with delicate effects, it seems to have been a straightforward hammer tap with the chisel that produced a sudden terrifying crack right across Scipiones forehead, extending all the way round to the back of the neck. It was the virtuoso sculptors nightmare, and there had been no way to predict the disaster. Millennia before, when strata of primordial limestone were being transformed by colossal forces of heat and pressure into

marble, particle shifts had made for interior instability. Bernini had just found one of these faults. He brooded on ways to disguise the crack, which gave the cardinals head the appearance of a freshly tapped boiled egg, but to no avail. In the end there was nothing for it but for him to make a replica. The orginal had taken him months ; the second Scipione was done over 15 days and nights, almost non-stop. 20. How does Bernini proceed to seize an instant? Give examples. He was looking at him in a Mirror. He becomes his stautes. He tensed his muscle. Example : Berninis David is an all-action hro, caught just before the instant of the slings release (the rendering of that sling and the braided fibres of the rope are a tour de force of illusionnist chiselling and drilling.) 21. What did Cardinal Barberini become after 1623 and what did he want from Bernini? In 1623, Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII he pounced and, unlike Apollo, got his way. Bernini was called into the papal apartments and given a famous acclamation : it is your great good luck, cavalire, to see Maffeo Barberini Pope, but we are even more fortunate in that the Cavaliere Bernini lives in the time of our pontificate. What Urban VIII had in mind for Bernini was nothing less than the remaking of Rome its secular buildings, churches and fountains always in the busy-bee emblem of the Barberini on it. 22. Describe how Bernini worked. He was working days and night, didnt slept eat or drink. He was absorbed in his work But it was impossible for him to work alone and he had to take on staff. Sometime they were not good. The self-portrait suggest just how conscious he was of the power of the concentrated stare, especially since his eye was spirited and lively, with a piercing gaze beneath heavy eyebrows . When giving orders to assistants, he terrified by his gaze alone. We know that Bernini could be witty and easy-going ; after all, he was the prakster who wound up Scipione, and the theatrical impresario who loved to terrify an audience in, for instance, his play, The flooding of the Tiber, by making the river appear as though the waters were about to cascade over the stage and drench the audience. But the image he wanted to project was of someone who was consumed by the sacred demands of his vocation. Once embarked on a work, bernini gave everything he had to it : going without food, drink or rest, and becoming totally absorbed in the creative effort. His assistants would try to drag him away in his own interests, byt were often deterred by their masters notoriously short fuse. He liked to talk of himself as burnt by that fire he had carved in his early work. It was the heat, he said, that made him angry ; he declared that the same fire that seared him more than others also impelled him to work harder than people who were not subject to the same passions. 23. Tell his affair with Costanza Bonarelli. What is peculiar about her bust? He was deaply in love with her. She was the wife of one of his assistant ? This is a bust that is not of emperors. This is the first portrait of an intimate and we can feel the desire in it. He depicted her with a lot of frankness ( franchise). But this woman was also sleeping with his little Brother.

His assistant, Matteo Bonerelli, had a wife. His wife Constanza was, however, evidently no angel, nor especially constant. The affair between her and Bernini was apparently not his first, since Baldinucci writes the romantic adventures, very much in plural, of his youth. The youth, however, was by now nearly 40, and his liaison with Constanza Bonarelli was obviously more than just a fling. He was, as his son Domenico candidly wrote, fieramente inamorato with her. It was a real passion, which was really eloquent : a portrait bus of Costanza, created at the height of their affair in 1637, that was like none that had ever been sculpted. It was the frist portrait made of an intimate, and everything about it is marked with intense and possessive desire. Through Berninis capacity for rendering different personal qualities at different angles of viewing, Costanza becomes more than an idealized embodiment of adoration she is, rather, a richly complex object of consuming love. But Berninis affair ended in a bloodys end. 24. What happened to the campanile Bernini built for St Peters church? Why? He changed the tower. He wanted to make them biger but to big.. It bring the faade down. He wanted to make them higher and it cracked. The work was cancelled and another tower suspended The reason where as well fincancial It was a controversial work and as well ennemies were coming to Rome, he need money for the army Finally the pope V died and the succesors wanted austherity. The tower were to excessive. The crack was big. Risk of the faade collapsing Berninis rputation and authority = destroyed. The new pope decide to dismanteld the tower The 2 years with Costanza had also been the time when Bernini had been engaged on a project for St Peters that matched the baldacchino for lofty ambition, and that attracted the same muttering. 1612, Pope Paul V had decided that a bell-tower should be built at each end of the faade of the basilica, framing the dme and summoning the faithful. Carlo Maderno was designed and Bernini succeedeed to him. But, as usual, Berninis imagination when he took over the project in the late 1630s inspired him to think higher and grander. He declared that hi bell-towers would be three storeys High, over 200 feet above their pedestals, soaring to frame the dme. But they would have to be built on unstable, swampy subsoil, and once again Bernini was Under pressure to erect them in a hurry : by 29june 1641, the feast day of st peter and st paul. 2 months after the unveiling, a visitor reported : they say that the Cavaliere Bernini who has undertaken to build a campanile at st peters has failed and that the great weight of the tower will bring the faade down. This having come to the notice of the Pope, he called Bernini to him and severely reprimanded him for not having wanted to take the advice of anybody. Not only Did Bernini seek advice, he got plenty of it from people whom Baldinucci describes as master builders , all of whom assured him there would be no trouble with the foundations, nor with the weight and height of the towers. But the crack happened. Work was cancelled on one of the bell-towers and suspended on the other, which had progressed to the top storey. The reasons were partly financial : In 1664 Urban VIII died and his successor, Innocent X, ascended the throne of St Peter, accompanied by a rputation for austerity and a well-know dertermination to undo the excesses of his profligate predecessor. By the end of 1645 there were three cracks in the faade of St Peters. There seemed no danger of the tower, much less the entire faade, collapsing, but Berninis rputation and authority were destroyed.

25. What was the context in which the Cornaro chapel at Santa Maria della Vittoria was built? We were in a period of austerity. By no means everyone in Rome had given up on the Cavaliere, notorious adultrer, incomptent master builder and has-been sculptor though he might have seemed in the late 1640s. 26. Who was Theresa of Avila? A reformer of convent that imposed austerity and simplicity. the last modern saint that doenst have a chapel in Rome Her grandfather was jewish. She liked perfumes, clothes, He gave her the choise : you marry, your go the the convent. She decided the convent ( to be free instead of being married) It was not a happy choice and then she decided to vomit all she was eating. They thought that she was Dead. When she was 40 after praying all day, she receive the divine spirit Theresa of Avila had died in her native Spain more than a half century earlier, in 1583, but she had been canonized only in 1622 by Urban VIII. Even so, she was the last of the modern saint still to be without a dedicated chapel in Rome. For even after her death as during her life- there was always something slightly worrying about Theresa : her emotional extremism, the contortions of her body graphically described in her autobiography, those raptures in which she had levitated up the walls of her cell with nuns hanging on to her habits. Now this was something that Bernini, the supreme dramatist of body language, could work with. He knew perfectly well that Theresa went on to be a famous reformer of convents, imposing austerity, poverty and simplicity on her Carmelite sisters, endlessly on the road, tangling with the Church to get her convents established. 27. What was the conceptual philosophy of sculpture for Bernini? His entire conceptual philosophy of sculpture was a breaking free from weighty immobility. 28. How has Bernini created a bel composto around The Ecstasy of St Theresa? Bel Composto was an artistic theory developed by Bernini during the Baroque. The theory involved unifying the arts of painting, sculpting, and architecture. One example of Bernini's use of Bel Composto is the Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, where Bernini embedded sculptures into the church's architecture. He fasten her to the chapel wall so that she could fly Risk of another crack disaster Everything that Bernini has ini his rpertoire is summoned to create what Baldinucci calls a bel composto a beautiful, perfectly integrated fusion of all the arts : colour, motion, light, even a sense of the heavenly choir pouring music down on the scene. And the talent for which he has been most criticized, the one that has brought about his disgrace architecture- becomes, in the Cornaro Chapel, a vindication thrown back in the theeth of his critics. 29. What did Bernini do to materialize this ecstasy? He read what she was saying about Her clothes are the respresentation of whats happening in her soul

30. What is said about the birth and meaning of the Fountain of the Four Rivers? P120 ? Borromini and Bernini. When the two of them competed around the same time that Bernini was working on the Theresa over a fountain in Innocent Xs proprietorial square of the Piazza Navona, the comptition was almost painfully unequal. And this fountain couldnt have been more crucial. It was to be the setting for a raised Egyptian obelisk that, in the Holy Year of 1650, would be crowned with the Popes dynastic device of the dove of the Holy Spirit, a symbol of the triumph of the Church over paganism. 31. Mention another fountain made by Bernini. The triton, done for Uban VIII, in which Bernini showed that he could marry power and play. 32. Who else than popes and cardinals did Bernini serve? Foreign monarchs, such as Queen Christina of Sweden and King Louis XIV of France. 33. Mention other Roman works. The Ponte Sant Angelo, the esquestrian statue of the Emperor Constantine, the Cathedra Petri. 34. What happened to his rival Borromini? Why? Borromini, too, built churches of head-spinning beauty, created from contrapuntally musical forms that swim and undulate, but in austerely undecorated marble while Berninis churches are shmelessly profuse and ruch with colour. Although he went on working after Innocent X died, Borrominis moment had passed almost before he had properly seize dit. Eaten up with paranoid bitterness that he had his just deserts, he ended up committing suicide, botching the attempt but dying all the same. 35. Compare the two church ceilings made one by Bernini, the other by Borromini reproduced in the book. Borromini, too, built churches of head-spinning beauty, created from contrapuntally musical forms that swim and undulate, but in austerely undecorated marble while Berninis churches are shmelessly profuse and ruch with colour 36. Why was the Blessed Ludovica Albertina sculpted? How much was Bernini paid for it? Close to the end of a long career, a ghost from his time of trouble unexpectedly returned to haunt him in the incorrigible form of his now middle-aged Brother Luigi, arrested in 1672 in the precincts of St Peters in the act of violently sodomizing a Young man. The scandal was such that Bernini agreed, as an act of family pnitence, to carve the tomb of another nun, The blessed ludovica Albertoni, in the Church of San Francesco a Ripa in the poor Roman quarter of Trastevere. To help the sullied cause of the Bernini family with Pope Clement, he would do the work gratis. 37. What does the author mean by the visualization of bliss? Which is not to say that Theresa is caught in a mere erotic spasm. Its precisely because this ecstasy is not just an anatomical effect, but a fusion of physical craving and (choose your word) emotional or spriritual transcendence that the

sculpture prossesses us more and more the longer we gaze at it. So perhaps that French connoisseur of the arts wasnt being sly at all when he remarked if thats divine love, I know all about it , but actually doffing his hat to Bernini for using the power of art to achieve the most difficult thing in the world : the visualization of bliss.

Chapter 3 : Rembrandt, Rough stuff in the halls of the rich.

1. Explain the title of the chapter Rough stuff in the halls of the rich Rembrandt is a painter who express feeling trough his paints. He made many paints which didnt fit with the clacissism of his era and his commissioneers. Its

often when hes at his roughest and freest that Rembrandt engages our sympathies most fully, managing to coney the illusion of close familiarity. In Rembrandts hands it had been liberated from the stifling (touffant) decorum of classicism, a manner meant for the declaration of a cultivated elite. 2. What is the worst thing that can happen to a painter according to Simon Schama ? The worst thing that can happen to a painter is to have to mutilate your masterpiece (chefs-duvre), the bravest thing youve ever tried. Thats what happened to Rembrandt in 1662. 3. What kind of city was Amsterdam in Rembrandts days ?

Amsterdam was at this moment the richest city in the world. 4. Who were the ancestors of the Dutch ?

The ancient Batavians. Batavian are the ancient people who lived in a territory that is now Holland, ancestors of the Dutch. The Batavian leader is Claudius Civilis. 5. How is their history said to have begun ?

Their history began with an act of victurious insurrection against the arrogance of the Roman Empire. Claudius Civilis is a Batavian member of a royal family who had been given Roman citizenship. The Latin writer and historian Tacitus reports his story. His real name was Gaius Julius Civilis and, like Hannibal, he had lost one eye. According to Tacitus he was unusually intelligent for a native . 6. What are the characteristics of Rembrandts storytelling paintings ? In his painting over The Conspiracy of Batavians Under Claudius Civilis Rembrandt pulled out all the stops. Everything he had ever learnt about painted storytelling : The scooping of deep space (copage) The drama of selective lighting The emotive weight of loaded (charg) pigment The result was a history painting : an attack painting, raw (cru, brut) and barbaric, with coats of paint (couche de peinture) trowelled on (trueller sur), allowed to puddle (flaque) and crust (crote), then gouged back. 7. Compare the light in Vermeers paintings and in Rembrandts ?

Its a picture above all of light : but the opposite kind of light from Vermeers Crystal visions that bathe (baigner) the humdrum (monotone) in pellucid (claire, lucide) grace. Rembrandts sallow (jauntre) light burns dangerously, phosphorically. Its a light from which to stand back or risk scorching (se brler).

8. How did the Conspiracy of the Batavians Under Claudius Civilis come into existence ? The Conspiracy of Batavians Under Claudius Civilis (p176-177). In 68-70 AD Claudius Civilis assembled at a sort of banquet the chiefs of the (Batavian) nation and the boldest spirits of the lower classes . Together they conspired to rebel against Rome and emperor Nero. Civilis bound the whole assembly with barbarous rites and strange forms of oath (serment) . The plot was discovered and Civilis imprisoned. He managed to be friend Neros successor Vespasian who released him. Claudius Civilis then returned to the marshes of his homeland to organize a planned revolt that extended into larges parts of Belgian Gaul and almost succeeded in creating a kind of Kingdom of Gaul. The usual quarrels among Galic tribes foiled (djou) this plan and the rebellion was defeated. Civilis, though, managed to come to an agreement with the Romans giving the Batavians some advantages. He then disappears from history. 9. What did the authorities of Amsterdam do with it ?

The Masterpiece of Rembrandt about The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis ordered by the authorities of Amsterdam was not, after all, wanted. He received not a penny for his paint. 10. What did Rembrandt do with it when he got it back ? Why ? His painting had been custom-designed to fit precisely into an arched space in the Professional gallery running around the great Ceremonial Hall of the Burghers. It was much too big for even the grandest reception room of a private Amsterdam canal house. If Rembrandt wanted to rescue something from the shambles by finding a buyer, he would have to cut it down to residential scale. Under the blade it went. In fact, artists in the 17 century were a lot less squeamish (dlicat) than their modern counterparts (homologues) about the physical sanctity (saintet) of their work. It was not that unusual to cut away pieces of canvas to fit a hanging space. In his impoverished desperation, Rembrandt had to sacrifice four-fifths of the surface area of the painting. 11. Explain the naer het leven aspect of the Dutch painting. To a degree unthinkable anywhere outside the Netherlands those pictures tell the truth, done as they are naer the leven from life rather than from a preconceived (prconues) notion of ideal form. Which was just as well, since Rembrandt seldom (rarement) did peachy-smooth beauty. It bored him. Instead he did the rough truth of our rumpled impurity (impuret froisse). His obstinate devotion to unedited (indit) human nature would be his greatest claim to glory. But it would also cost him dearly. He painted the world who he really is and not as people wanted to see it. 12. What was, according to Constantijn Huygens, the genius of Rembrandt ? According to Constantijn Huygens, Rembrandt van Rijn, the millers son, and his friend and rival Jan Lievens would be the pair who would finally put an end to the Italians patronizing the Netherlanders as ingenious masters of naturalist illusions, incapable of reaching the noble summits (sommet) of history painting. To Huygens, Rembrandts genius lay precisely in his gift for bringing together earthy nature and exalted drama. There was no disputing his gift for rendering the surface and texture of material life.

13. What is the stupendous miracle in the story of the Dutch republic ? The story of the Dutch republic itself : the stupendous miracle by which the ordinary had become extraordinary. (Under the dispensation of God Almighty, and after decades of resistance to the Spanish overlords). 14. How it is translated into Rembrandts painting ? The young Rembrandt was the instinct to make something morally noble, something profound, from low materials, the common stuff of life. Street people, toothless and grimy (crasseux), the stubble (chaume) grey on their chins, their eyes rheumy (chassieux) and their noses crusty, were turnered by Rembrandts hand into apostles (aptres) and Pharisees (pharisiens). 15. How does the Artist in the Studio show what art is all about ? What is it for Simon Schama ? He might well have recognized it as a big little thing, a work whose artful complexity and philosophical power are belied (dmenti) by its apparent simplicity. The feeling that in this elementary, empty room something momentous is coming to light. The place were a young man comes, recently, to an old and solemn thing : the king of art. Its show-and-tell. Through the exercise of its own handcunning (la main ruse), the painting both proclaims and demonstrates, with stunning (tourdissement) economy, what art is all about : the union of craft (artisanat) and imagination. 16. Name some of Rembrandts contemporary rivals outside the Netherlands. Only the Catholic enemies. Rubens in Antwerp and Velazquez in Spain. 17. What is the old caricature of the Netherlanders ? Mud (boue)-and-money-folk, their boots on the ground, supremely competent but ultimately prosaic artisans, terrific at cattle (bovins), cottages and cheese. 18. What is at the heart of the matter in Samson and Delilah ? Samson and Delilah : Biblical characters. Samson was a Hebrew whose formidable strength resided in his long hair. His lover Delilah betrayed him and cut his hair while he was sleeping, leaving him powerless so that he could be blinded and was no longer a threat for the Philistines, ennemies of the Jews. However, when his hair had grown back he managed lind though he was to destroy the palace of his enemies. Hercules : ancient Greek (Herakles) and Roman mythological hro possessing prodigious strength that enabled him to perform twelve extraordinary tasks or labours . In his Samson and Delilah, instead of the standard naked beefcake Samson, a figure usually modelled on classical scluptures of Hercules (glutes from Olympus), the counterintuitive Rembrandt covers up his juvenile lead who is in any case a far cry from SuperJew. Somehow, the dressed Samson seems more, not less, vulnerable than the nude stereotype. That is disconcertingly un-hulking late adolescent might yet be a sleeping lion is suggested by the careful tread and apprehensive gaze of the Philidtine soldier tiptoeing down the stairs, terrified of a betraying (trahir) creak, his veins bulging (renflement)with the tension.

The heart of the matter for Rembrandt : the tragic inseparability of amorous tenderness and brutal betrayal. Emotional conflict. 19. Describe Amsterdam around 1630. Around 1630 the boom city was in metamorphosis a backwater Herring (hareng) and grain port was turning into the supermarket of the world. Amsterdam had already become the hub of the first global economy, extending from the East Indies to Brazil. Amsterdam was the place for mass-market. By 1630 the city was awash with money. 20. What were Rembrandts occupations on his arrival in Amsterdam ? Rembrandt went and got it, doubtless driven by the certainty, shared by tens of thousands of immigrants, that he would be living in the next Venice. The Dutch were living through one of tose mysterious moments when raw wealth gest converted into a surge of cultural creativity. It was a fresh beginning for art. Rembrandt seized the commercial moment. When he arrived in Amsterdam in 1630 it was in the guise of entrepreneur and investor as much as painter, and he soon hitched up with the dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh. 21. Why, according to Dutch patriotism, had God given them victory over Spain ? The Dutch even Asmterdammers with heir conspicuous (visible) relish (got) of the good things in life were proud of not being idle (ralenti), overdressed nobility. The Almighty, the patriotic legend went, had blessed them in their long war against Spain precisely because of their old-fashioned modesty, frugality and sobriety. Complacent luxury had brought down empires before them woe betide (malheur) those wallowing (vautrer) in vanity lest they go the way of Babylon ! 22. What were the two contradictory tasks Rembrandt had to perform to oblige his patrons ? If Rembrandt was to blige his wealthy, pious patrons to the utmost of his ability, he had to perform two apparantly contradictory tasks at the same time : he must celebrate, but he must also caution. 23. How did he proceed to do so ? He had to take all his peerles (hors pair) skill in rendering the stuff of wealth lace, silk, linen to make those surfaces rich in reflection and sensuous texture. Face and body language needed somehow to undercut the vanity of dress and to embody the redeeming virtues humility, chastity, civic energy, conjugl fidelity, grace, thrift without which not just individuals but the Republic itelf would be doomed. Rembrandt understood that social comportment was a costume drama. 24. Describe Rembradts house around 1640. He was the owner of a property located in the street Sint Anthoniesbreestraat. The handsome house proclaimed status, fame, honour. It was of three storeys, with a classicized stone-faced entrance. Through the doorway the hall was lined with classical busts and a display of Small landscapes and genre scenes of tavern carousing. A room leading off the hall was an art gallery in itself, with dozens of pictures by Rembrandts favourites. On the next floor were Rembrandts own northfacing studio, a smaller workshop and a room devoted to his astonishing cabinet of art and curiosities . 25. Rembrandt understood that we read each other emotively : explain how he proceeded to show this understanding.

No painter had ever made those ordinary faces become so materially, so fleshily, so present. This is never mere anatomical inventory. Rembrandt understood that we read each other emotively : that arc of an eyebrow, the angularity of the chin, the prominence of cheekbones hammer on an already tuned Keyboard of sympathies and distastes. Although he had at his command the full repertoire of technique, from the slickest finesse to the broadest brush, with which to register these nuances, its often when hes at his roughest and freest that Rembrandt engages our sympathies most fully, managing to coney the illusion of close familiarity. 26. Compare Rembrandts position on material life to that of Turner and Picasso. Show this trough the pictures of Saskia. At various times both Turner (unmarried, mistress on the side) and Picasso (unhappily married, mistress on the side) let it be known that they thought art and mariage were bad for one another. Not Rembrandt, for whom, during the brief eight years of their life together (with Saskia), image-making and familymaking evidently sustained one another. So we have multiple Saskias paintings Saskia looking askance, Saskia hand on brow intently returning her husbands scrutinizing gaze, Saskia asleep inbed, Saskia awake in bed, and Saskia in her last year, her face drawn by sickness. He liked painting Saskia not as a demure huisvrouw , but as a gentle force of nature, his flower child. 27. What was the place of group portraits in the Netherlands at the time ? Around 1640 Rembrandt landed the enviable commission to paint one of the militia of harquebusiers for their new headquarters (siges) and shooting range. This was the High point of his public esteem, for Amsterdam was a corporate city, ruled from town halls and board rooms rather than from palaces. And there was a larger sense in which group portraiture represented Dutch painting par exellence because the Republic was not an absolute monarchy, but a Commonwealth of collectives : town councils, guilds, regents of poorhouses and orphanages, militia companies of Citizen-soldiers. Grandiose portraits of princes were an insignificant genre in the Netherlands : it was group portraits that proclaimed who the Dutch were. 28. What were the difficulties involved in that kind of painting ? Artists had to earn their status and their substantial fees. Their firts responsability, if they were to be paid, was to produce acceptable individual likenesses. Artists had also to negociate the delicate matter of the pecking order of the patricians. There was also the issue of wether or not to show figures interacting, however stagily. There was a vaguely understood obligation for the artist to represent, somehow, the shared ethos of particular company, whether of philanthropic benevolence or martial energy. Respecting the precedence rank, made credible human interaction, made the task of enlivening (animer) a civic image is difficult and sometimes almost impossible. 29. What was new for Rembrandt at the reception of the Night Watch ? Rembrandt had taken a tremendous (norme) gamble (pari) that, although his great painting was like no militia piec that had ever been made before, the sheer(pur) spectacular force of it would give the officers the illusion that yes, this was always what they had really had in mind. But while The Night Watch did not run into the Storm of complaints of legend, and while Banning Coc at any rate

liked it enough to have a copy made, Samuel van Hoogstraten, a precocious 15year-old in Rembrandts studio at the time, later remembered that not everyone was uniformly thrilled by the masters piece of visual theatre. It was in fact that year, 1642, that the climate of reception for Rembrandt went from invariably warm to tepid. 30. What was the political situation of Holland around 1650 ? Holland was undergoing a cultural seachange. After 80 years of war,a peace had been signed with Spain that finally recognized the independence of the Republic. Although a maritime war with England would follow, there was still a sense that Dutch Republic, and Amsterdam in particular, had come into its own historitical moment : the hub of formidable global empire. A second gnration of patricians, less devoted to piety and simplicity, were coming of age. They had travelled more widely in Italy and France and were more attuned to cultivation of classical taste. Fort the first time the gravity and decorum of the classical tradition was prized above simplicit, energy and piety. 31. Compare how Rembrandt represented a cow (oc) with how society painters such as Aelbert Cuyp represented it (or cattle) In the hands of society painters such as Aelbert Cuyp fine, fat cattle are fashion accessory of the well-bred horsemen who encounter tem on perfectly groomed (dams) steeds. The cattle (bovin) graze ; the late afternoon sky ripens (mrit) into golden effulgence (rayonnement). The scene is landowners bucolic, slick with charm. Now consider what Rembrandt does with an ox (un buf): he turns into a raw meat, then uses his palette kniffe like a butcher, opening up the carcass, exposing ribs and sinew and hanging bags of glistening fat. Bloodstains streak the trunk, and the legs are roped and splayed in an animal martyrdom. Eat of my body, says the slaughtered trunk. Butchers shops had been done a century earlier by Netherlandish painters, but never with this savage gleefulness ; its as if Rembrandt was taking agressive pleasure from rubbing their noses in the plain truth. Many of the well-heeled preferred to avert their gaze.

32. How does Arisotle contemplating the bust of Homer relate to Rembrandts own life ? Rembrandt for a Sicilian collecor, Signor Ruffo, painted a meditation on the mixed feelings of the patronized : Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. Its a painting that invokes an archaic rough music against the thin proprieties of classicism. When Rembrandt sent the Sicilian connoisseur a second image of the Blind Homer, mantled darkly tragic gold, his mouth open in the act of teaching, the sightless eyes black, just like the artists version of his own at the very outset of his career, Ruffo refused to pay on the grounds that he believed the thing was unfinished. Rembrandt wrote back contemptuously that it was obvious that no one in Messina knew much about art. It was the patrons, the critics, who were really blind. 33. What happened to Rembrandt between 1656 and 1658 and how does he represent himself at that time ? In 1656, citing losses at se , he was forced to endure the humiliation of a cessio bonorum, a form of bankruptcy that, by surrendering his property to the comissioners, Drew a line around the extent of his creditors claims. The commissioners would then auction off hiss property to satisfy those debts. Auction by auction, hammer blow by hammer blow, everything execept his talent was taken from Rembrandt. He paint himself at this moment like a sovereign,

lustrously robed, enthroned. Hes hardly the image of of the humbled and dispossessed. 34. Why was a new town hall built in Amsterdam and what was it like ? In 1648 a decision was taken to replace the old building with a structure more suited to Amsterdams sense of its grandeur. Four years later the building burnt down. Rembrandt, who was much fonder of Gothic ruins than neo-classical colossalism, Drew the ruin shortly after the fire. He never sketched (esquiss) the new town hall. It was the faade that was the brag, with its Maid of Peace holding her optimistic olive branch over Dam square, and the rear pdiment carved with figures bringing the tribute of the four continents to the city. Within the building, in every chamber on every wall were the sober warnings from history some carved, some painted, from the Bible or ancient Rome against complacency, corruption and hubris. In the room where magistrates pronounced the death sentence was a sculptural relief showing the Roman consul Brutus ordering the death of his own sons fro plotting against the Republic. And paints over Batavians everywhere made by Govert Flinck. 35. How did Rembrandt come to have the commission for the Oath of Claudius Civilis ? In 1660 Flinck who was the perfect painter for all paints about Claudius Civilis and the Batavians for the Comission died. Everything changed. The scope of the Batavian cycle was reduced to four, each painting to fill one of the lunettes at the corners of the gallery. Lacking another Apelles, the burgomasters decided to distribute the commission among four artists, one being Rembrandts old colleague from Leiden, Jan Lievens, who after working in England for the Stuarts and in Antwerp, had come back to Holland. But for the dramatic moment of the oath-swearing, against all the odds they turned, after 18 months of procrastination, to Rembrandt van Rijn. 36. Compare the sketch made by Flinck with the one made by Rembrandt and with the latter s painting of the Conspiracy of the Batavians Under Claudius Civilis. Instead of the respectable, solemn gathering of elders and arriors that featured in Flincks drawing and in earlier prints of the famous scene, Rembrandt has gathered, in what looks distressingly like a brigands lair, an outlandishly (saufrenus) motley (htroclyt) crew. It features swarthy (basan) Orientals ; a grinning old man, mouth uncouthly agap, evidently deep in his cups ; a druid-like High priest ; and a handsomely whiskered (moustachu) Young man. And in their midst Rembrandt perpetrated the greatest outrage of all : Claudius Civilis, the bandit-king, ith the cicatrice of his blind eye, the eye that was supposed to be hidden behind a discreet profile, aggressively flaunted (taler) in the face of the Spectator. He is the main-mountain up whose cliff face the eye must ascend, the summit made even loftier by the piled-up tiara of his headdress. At the center of its band Rembrandt has painted an opaque golden circle, like a third seing eye the organ of imagination. 37. Why did the Conspiracy of the Batavian Under Claudius Civilis not please Rembrandts patrons and comissioners ? Rembrandt had given the High-ups at the town hall a republican altarpiece, the greatest group portrait imagienable. But that wasnt at all how they wished to see themselves, or their ancestry. To be sure, they liked mouthing their defence of liberty (against the Kings of Spain, France and England, even against the overweening princes of Orange). But they were themselves co-opted oligarchs,

not democrats, and if rebellion was a useful myth., it needed careful de-fanging so as not to bite them back. So of course there must have been any number of objections to Rembrandts explosion of painting : its undiplomatic representation of a titanic hero when the Gentlemen-oligarchs were trying to govern without the Stadholder-Prince of Orange ; the incomprehensible coarseness (grossiret) with which the characters were depicted, so very unlike their High Mightinesses. After living with the shock of it for a while, it was determined that i twas, all in all, not something suitable for the noble place in which it was displayed. 38. What was rejected through the rejection of the Conspiracy of the Batavians Under Claudius Civlis ? For what ended abruptly with the rejection of the Claudius Civilis was the reinvention of history painting. In Rembrandts hands it had been liberated from the stifling (touffant) decorum of classicism, a manner meant for the declaration of a cultivated elite. Instinctively, Rembrandt had not only opened it up to the depiction of ordinary people ; he had, in the sheer visceral fury of his storytelling, made it something that Amsterdammers might, had they had the chance, have come to cherish and identify with, at least much as the more difficult Night Watch. 39. Who were in the 19th century his inheritors in history painting ? Rembrandts 19th-century admirers were not, for all their Romanticism, entirely wrong about him and his inseparability from the experience of common humanity. And when, finally, in the hands of Goya and Delacroix history painting did get reinvented, their god, Rembrandt, was to some extent always standing behind them.

Chapter 5 : Turner, Painting up a storm.

Summary:

In the middle of the 19th century in England, the biggest painters should be the most realistic ones as Landseer. In this context, Turner was seen as a bad painter who made horrible things, just like accident of kitchen with mustard and tomato. In this time the Art Union was the mouthpiece for new British painting. The Art Union saw Turner as a bad painter. Some critics even saw him as a menace for the future of British painting! This was for one of his painting: the slave ship. But in the same style, turner made the fighting temeraire tugged to its last berth to be broken up and this one was acclaimed by everyone. But why? The 2 have a marine subject, with the same style but the first one was made to unsettle, the other was made to reassure. In fact we see a steam boat in the fighting temeraire and Turner want to glorifying technology as the future and the pride of England. Nothing truly attracted him more than British geography and history. When he gathered the 2 in one picture, its was most of the time a very good painting, like in Dolbadern castle. Turner began to paint in Coven Garden, the artistic area in London. His first drawing teacher who was painting for theatre and was also painting architectural stuff: Thomas Malton. It was perfect for him because he learned the mathematical rules of painting with the architectural side and the smoke and mirror technique with the theatre one. Philippe de Loutherbourg was his real but indirect teacher for the representation of the sensation from epic disasters but the building where he was studying became destroyed by a fire. After that, one year after de American Revolution, the people needed reassuring pictures. The market for landscape painting became very important. Turner went out of London and went to Brentford and after to Bristol where I became an addict of the tramps (promenades). So, sometimes, I went for a walk with his tools for painting and sketched the nature. I was fascinated by the sky and later we should find the most sensational parts of his pictures in his skies. He was good enough to give his father good hopes and to be admitted to the Royal Academy as student. Turner painted in the Academy, we are in the middle and late 1790s. in this time, the riches wanted pictures to be the mirrors of their own success and good taste by showing houses and park. And so, in the Academia, it was what the student were learning. But Turner when he was 19 (in 1794) went to another academy in Bedford square run by dr Thomas Monro. Yes, a doctor. A doctor who carried on Turners sick mother and who at this time, had another patient: the painter Cozens. Cozens was one of the most modern painter in England and Turner was amazed by his paintings. He copied it and analysed the genius of watercolours Monro to express atmosphere and sensations. Suddenly, it was the academic good paintings which seemed to be tasteless. After that, he went to poetic places as abandoned abbey and tragic histories played on his imagination. There were a lot of romantic painter but only Turner by ignoring some details and going directly by the sensation of light and colours managed to deliver the instantaneous rush of rapture. In this time Turner made his only adult self portrait. In 1804, he opened a gallery to show his work. I made his father come to watch his work because he was very close of him but his father who was watching on familial interests let him know that he didnt thing that art could be a good job. He had two sons from a mistress and Turner liked sex as much as paintings.

Turner was one of the light effects master but he didnt effect for aesthetic reasons but to bring specials feelings in his picture. Turner was always and never of two minds and moods. One time he was happy and joyful and had a much darker mood on the other time. With the Battle of Trafalgar, Turner made again a painting in a different way compare to the others painters. In fact, those painted the ships, for example, with a plenty of details to allow the spectators to recognize the boats and read the painting. Turner tried to paint the atmosphere of the battle and didnt insist on the details of the boat but more on the lightness and the atmosphere. But art authority didnt agree to the fact that because the battles are chaos, the paintings of battle should be chaotic too! And so, Turner had difficulty to find some favours. But Turner found a collector how loved his paintings in 1808: Walter Fawkes. Walter was a modern thinker how wanted a reform of the British state. But his friend Turner was not interested in politics. Turner thought that words and images could effectively work together. In his forties, Turner was an opportunist and a provocateur. He had several property and so had a good fortune Turner didnt want to paint a world which respected the physical rules. His goal in his paintings is to recreate the visual sensations. For example the blindness created by the sun shining In conclusion, turner had always trouble with critics and academicians in the end and only a few figures of his contemporaries liked his work(in the beginning of his career he had success and was even a teacher in the royal academy of art). Even if at first he painted as the academician rules wanted, he started to paint paintings of atmosphere when he became old. Its difficult to speak about the feelings and the results of Turners work. Turner made painting which have to be seen in real to really feel the talent and the atmosphere that the painter brought in it. V. Turner - Painting Up a Storm : questions 1. Explain the title of the chapter. Why a storm? Because most of turners painting subjects were scene with special atmosphere. More exact, turner created special and impressive atmosphere in his paintings. Those atmospheres were the subject of his painting, much more than the real subject, announced in the title of his paintings. Those atmospheres were so impressive that it leaded all the elements of the paintings, erasing details under a sun shining, covered it under the black smoke of a burning fire. 2. What did King George V and Queen Victoria say of Turner? He was mad 3. What would Queen Victoria probably have enjoyed more than Turner on the 1840 exhibition of the Royal Academy?

She was fond of dogs. And a painter, Edwin Landseer, made dogs paintings, for example the trial by jury or laying down the law 4. What did Turner present at this exhibition and what were the reactions to it? The slave ship, a painting about a slaver which broke down. The critics made jokes about it, as it was a kitchen accident. 5. What were the criticisms against both Turner and abstract painters a century later? The criticisms said that it was fraud madness and infantilism paintings. 6. Why might the accusation of madness have particularly hurt Turner? Mary turner, his mother suffered of a mental illness. 7. What was said of Franois-Auguste Biards painting the Slave Trade? The critics were very enthusiastic! They said it was a perfect representation of pathos, much more efficient than any tract. 8. How did Turner react to his critics? He became very depressed 9. What was and has been the reception of The Fighting Temeraire tugged to its last berth to be broken up? Everybody acclaimed this painting as a masterpiece! 10. What are the common points and differences between these two paintings by Biard and by Turner? Both were british marine historical paintings, both turned on a drama of life and death, both enacted their scenes beneath a flaming sunset but its wall for the resemblances. The fighting temeraire was designed to reassure, slave ship to bring unsettle. 11. What is for Edmund Burke the genius of English history? Explain. Its a mystical marriage of past present and future. It represents 3 different times on the same painting. 12. Where can Britons see Turners great historical paintings? How does Schama explain this? In Cleveland, Ohio and in philadelphia, you could see the 2 paintings about the burning of the house of parliament.only the field of Waterloo can be seen in Tate Britain. Its like Turners paintings were a bit of clunker to critics and curators alike. 13. How did Turner see himself and what is he best known for? He saw himself as a british patriot painter and he is remembered for the fighting temeraire and Rain, steam and speed and for Venetian deliquescence.

14. How did Turner transform the ruin and the surroundings of Dolbadern castle in his painting? He drank in the Gothic legend of the Welsh prince Owen Goch, imprisoned in the fortress and then took scenic liberties for liberty.(pour une description complete de la peinture, voir page 245 en dessous du chapitrage 3. Parce que cest long sans dconner). 15. What was Covent Garden Piazza like when Turner was young? A perpetual Carnival with his parade of hucksters and whores, chancers and dancers, freaks and charlatans, beggars and marks, society on the look-out for pleasure, and plenty of players ready to give them a nice old dose of it. 16. What does Schama say about Philippe de Lauterbourg? That he was Turners indirect tutor in the sensations of epic calamity.all the representations of disasters were Loutherbourgs bread and butter. 17. What was Turners first job? When? How long did he do that? How did he react to this? At sixteen, he painted drops and sets for the Pantheon in Oxford Street, a theatre-cum-opera house during five months. But then, a fire destroyed the building and Turner sketched the smoking ruins.

18. What did Turner do after this? How did this fit with his time and age? He painted calm landscape from the deep England. It fit with this time because it was the period after the American Revolution and Englishmen needed calm and peaceful paintings. 19. What did rich patrons expect from their appointed painters? . in this time, the riches wanted pictures to be the mirrors of their own success and good taste by showing houses and park. And so, in the Academia, it was what the student were learning. 20. What was Turners private life like? He made a lot of summer country tramps, and walked in the nature, sketching landscape. He never married but had a mistress, Sarah Danby with who he had 2 daughters, Evelina and Georgiana. Turner relished sex quite as much as painting. 21. How did A First rate taking in stores come into existence and how do we know about it? Alors la javoue que celle la je sche compltement

22. How did Snow Storm : Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps come into existence and how do we know about it?

Turner took Hawkey into his confidence at the start of the creative process of the painting, in 1810. He saw a storm in Yorkshire and sketched it. And it was the start of his painting about Hannibal.

23. Compare Turners history paintings with Poussins. Poussins historic painting had plagues and deluges but it was not the center of his painting, a dcor less important than the historic subject. Turned made his atmospheric elements the center of his painting, and all the historical subject became transformed and deformed by his storms and his plagues. 24. How could Snow Storm : Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps be seen as an answer to Davids equestrian portraits of Napoleon? Because davids equestrian portraits of Napolon represented him as huge and important, the center of the painting, as a great emperor. Turner represented Hannibal by a little shadow of elephant in his painting, that we could assume it could be Hannibal. And this Hannibal figure could be a representation, a warning about Napolon for the English. And so he made his atsmohpere the center of the painting, not Hannibal anymore. 25. In what ways is Turners Field of Waterloo different from traditional battle paintings? He rejected every conventions. Instead of an important moment in the battle, He represented a carpet of dead bodies, and people couldnt tell which soldiers from which side the dead bodies were! 26. What was the center of Walter Fawkes exhibition at Grosvenor Place in 1819? 60 of turners watercolors masterpieces on paper. 27. Turners art shifted towards a representation of vision, not a reproduction of the physical world. Explain. In Turners painting, the things didnt respect the physical laws of our world but seems to be as our eyes see it. For example, stones, moneys seem to be dissolved in the sunshine of Venise. And so, Turners goal was not paint the world as it was but as it looked like. 28. What did he say in 1811 about Rembrandt? Explain. He wrote that sometime it would be sacrilege to pierce the mystic shell of color in search of form. For Turner, the work on colors, on the light allow to reach a poetic world playing on feeling and impression in the opposite of the real and physical world with its own fixed forms. 29. Situate Turners indistinctness in the Victorian age. The victorias age was governed by engineering, proportions and numbers. In this time Turner painted. He wanted first to sketch the atmosphere despite of the forms. And that is why collector said his paintings were indistinctness.

30. What kind of paintings did he make at the estate of his patron, lord Egremont? He had to paint view of the estate. He painted a picture in the Turner Style with de predominance of light and optic feelings. But this painting was rejected. 31. What happened in London in October 1834? What meaning could be seen in this event? How did Turner react to this? There was a fire in the house of lords and commons. This could be seen as the symbol of a punishment against the unfair politic order of this time. This is what the chartists said. Turner reacted in taking a boat to be as close as possible to the fire to sketch it in his way, trying to paint the burning atmosphere. 32. What did Turner usually do at varnishing days? He showed his own version of the burning and became the first royal academician painter to paint the masses!

33. What happened to the ship Amphitrite? This ship carried prisoners, only women and children. During the trip between Australia and Boulogne, he broke up. The French authorities offered to land the passengers but the captain refused. At the end of the trip, the crew survived but a lot of prisoners had died. 34. How and when did slavery end in the UK? How did the world react to that abolition? In 1838. The original law against slavery was enforced in 1833 but after it, there was a transitional period for slaves and slave owners. That had broken down in dangerous conditions of near-revolution in the Caribbean, accelerating the timetable. In the entire world new abolitionist campaigns came up. The abolitionists looked at England at an example and a beacon of hope. 35. After the passing of the abolition law what did Royal Navy cruisers of the African squadron do to slavers (i.e. ships transporting slaves) and how did these react? The Royal Navy cruisers of the African squadron pursued the slavers. But those was well knew to dumped their slave into water to win speed and to make their crimes disappear 36. Where are hope and hopelessness situated in the Slave Ship? We can see hope on the right on corner in open white sky. This hope could be the new abolition law. The hopeless is clearly in the see, between the cannibal fishes and the bleeding bodies. 37. What did Turner do after painting the Slave Ship? Df

He went to Venice to take some rest and to paint without the pressures of critics and Academicians. Then, he went back to Britain launched himself on pure painting. 38. How might the apparition of photography have influenced Turner? He became at first fascinated by the daguerreotype, because its capturing the vision of things, not how the things should be! And it was pretty similar to what Turner wanted to sketch in his paintings

39. What did Ruskin say of Turner? That he was a misunderstood genius. Everybody had described him as coarse, boorish, unintellectual, vulgar. But I found him eccentric, keen-minded, gentleman, good natured evidently, bad tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, the power of mind not laid out with any intention of display but flashing out occasionally in a word or a look 40. Explain why the author can say that the Slave Ship is simply the greatest union of moral power and poetic vision that British art ever accomplished Because first, Turner his defending a moral cause in the abolition of slavery. He represented the horror of it to make the people reach his point of view. And poetic because he made also a great painting, playing as usual on light and visual colors sensations, making with his painting a poetic vision of the reality.

Chapter 6: Van Gogh, Painting from inside the head.

1. Explain the title of the chapter. 2. What was the reception of Van Goghs paintings around 1890? By 1890, Van Gogh was no longer neglected. Everything seemed to be going right for him : his paintings were shown alongside Works by Cezanne, Renoir, Some were also shown in the Salon des Indpendants. One was sold for 400 francs. The critics and the other famous painters (Gauguin) were very enthusiastic about his work. 3. What does Van Goghs painting do? According to Gauguin, Van Goghs painting were a well-balanced work done without scarifying any of the feelings and warmth demanded by a work of art. 4. What were his health problems? He had psychic Storm => he had psychological problems. He was prone to self-destruction. He was bipolar and epileptic and swung between elation (=exaltation) and desolation. He received treatments to cure this illness, which was threatening to engulf him.

5.What was his mood around the spring of 1890 as he presented it to his mother and sister? He said he was in a mood of almost too much calm, the mood needed to do his paintings (=> wheat fields). He was absorbed by the immense plain with wheat fields. 6. How were his last paintings interpreted? Is there another possible interpretation? In 1890, Van Gogh died from a self-inflected gunshot wound. His last paintings were interpreted like a suicide notes, like an expression of despair at the failure of his career. But actually, it wasnt the same thing as suicical despair over the failure of his art because Van Gogh knew he had transformed landscapes and portraiture. Whatever it was that made Van Gogh pull the trigger may have been unconnected with his paintings. 7. What did he want his art to be? He wanted his painting to be charged with the visionary radiance that was supplied by Christianity. He wanted modern art to be a gospel, a bringer of light that would comfort. He wanted to turn the grim and dusty toil(=labeur) of the industrial society into a communion with nature. He also wanted his work to be accessible enough to become part of daily life. To him modern paintings should be acts of friendship, a visual embrace. 8. What was the place of colour in his art? His art were blazed with colour, which marked the presence of the divine. The colours were pure and ad the intensity of childrens art. The colour was laid on (=tale) excited short streaks ( traines ), dashes (= touches) and coils. 9. What were the links of his family with art? His uncle (Uncle Cent) was in art. He sold stakes in the gallery of Goupil&Co and had enough influence to open the doors for his nephew. But what Goupil sold was not what Vincent Van Gogh considered to be art (=> He had high standards for what decoration should be : a glimpse of paradisiacal nature, the burgeoning life force of flowers and fields) 10. What were his readings around the age of twenty? He discovered Shakespeare, George Eliot and Dickens. He compulsively and and relentlessly talked and thought about poetry and literature. 11. What were his first jobs? He was a priest in Richmond. Then he worked for brief spells ar the Goupil Gallery in London and Paris but despised the kind of art sold over there so left and became a teacher (French, German and maths teacher) in Ramsgate. Then he worked in a bookshop in the Netherlands. 12. What were his links to religion? After a disappointment in love Van Gogh want straight into the arms of Jesus. He cast himself as a missionary to the destitute. He read Zola, Hugo, Bunyan, Dickens. He compared himself to a pilgrim who could bring light to those in darkness. 13. At what age did he decide to become an artist? Van Gogh was looking for a modern industrial hell. The borinage (the coal-mining region of southern Belgium) was perfect. Vincent stayed and lived with them (even if, after 6 month of probation, they declined to renew his contract and was

now more impoverish than the people to whom he was ministering). He found a way to survive : he drew the miners and sold them to have money. These first drawings were amateurish bwut they moved him, at 27 years old, to a decision : he would be an artist 14. Who did he paint for? He believed that art shouldnt be content with the self-satisfaction of the bourgeoisie but it should rather represent the ordinary labouring people at work. So Van Gogh wanted his work to be for those people, as well as about them. To do so, his art had to do more than reproduce their poverty and misery. It needed to restore a sense of child-like wonder from which most adults had been cut off by their poverty. 15. What were Vincents romantic experiences like? In Holland Van Gogh thought he had found his soulmate (a widowed cousin), Kee Vos. His courtship failed and Van Gogh was banished from the Amsterdam House. He was desperate for affection. In Claesina Hoornik, he met a whore, Sien, who became his experiment in mutuality and who modelled for him in exchange of being the good spouse and father. Sorrow (p305), a portrait of her, combines an image both spiritual and physical. Van Gogh transformed Sien into an image of noble emotion. 16. What was he physically and metaphysically around the age of thirty (1883)? He looked ten years older and already felt short of time to accomplish something full of heart and love. He wanted to reach an art that would teach and preach but without seeming preachy and teachy. He drew some paintings very powerful but nobody bought them and at that time he also had problems with his family. 17. What was his first masterpiece? Why is it a masterpiece? Van Gogh got to work on images of weavers (= tisserands) and in 1885, at long last, it happens : the first indisputable masterpiece in a career that would last another 5 years. The Potato Eaters (p310) is a synthesis of everything van Gogh had felt and thought about art up to this point. He accentuated the ears, the noses,creating something genuinely monumental. The coarseness (=grossiret, rugosit) is applied pictorially but also philosophically, to say something => to attack the polite materials of art. The brown he used is the material from which the people are themselves constituted. Its also the brown of the dusty potatoes: they are what they eat. What Van Gogh tried to bring out is the idea of a meal honestly earned. Van Gogh did his utmost (= son possible) to paint like a clod doing his own manual labour. He sent this painting to his brother, Theo, but his enthusiasm failed with his brother who said it would be impossible to sell a dark painting in Paris, where everything is so bright. 18. What was the artistic situation in Paris when he arrived there? The impressionists (brilliance, colours) were holding their last major exhibition. The Impressionist was also taken with pointillisme : a less ephemeral and with colour-coded dots set down according to scientific laws and then mixed in the eyes. 19. Contrast this situation with his own.

The extremely calculated procedures of the impressionism and pointillisme were odds with (= en dsaccord avec) Van Goghs work : adrenalin and impulsion. Van Goghs art would be stronger, truer: much more like his own life. The notion that painting was nothing more than light plays and artful arrangements of colour and form repelled him. 20. What is pointillisme? Pointillisme advertised itself as a less ephemeral art with colour-coded dots set down according to scientific laws and then mixed in the eyes. 21. Compare Van Goghs Wheatfield with a lark with Monets Poppies in a meadow. In poppies in a meadow (les coquelicots) Monet take a high vantage point (=perspective) drenching (=submerger) the image with light. But in the Wheatfield with a lark, van Gogh took the fiedmouse level : the tall grass screens the view. The flight of the single lark (=alouette) transcends the countryside clich to become a escape into the empyrean => van Gogh turned a greetings card into a moral drama. (Van Gogh found is own way to lay down brilliant colour, with personal, direct and aggressive streaks. Every stroke was a letter to the beholder, wanting us to feel them as if they had been laid down just seconds before.) 22. Why did he leave Paris for the Provence in February 1888? He had been living with his brother for 2 years and now painters were expressing interest to his work so it was a sudden move. But his neurotic mood swings had become unbearable for his brother. Also Theo was going to get married and set up his own home so Vincent had to leave. Also, some of the impressionists started to be courted by fashionable galleries, regarding Van Gogh as an eccentric and crazy. 23. Tell the story of the friendship between Van Gogh and Gauguin and compare their vision of art. Gauguin liked the work of Van Gogh. He gave him one of his paintings and in return, van Gogh gave 2 paintings. These 2 paintings, side by side, were announcing the arrival of a great art double act: Vincent and Paul. Both of them hated the Parisian Art world. They dreamed of a less corrupted place where they might live comradely affinity and pooling the proceeds from sales (= mettre les recettes en commun). But the problem is that they had different ideas about where such a place might be. Gauguin went west to Pont-Aven in Brittany and Van Gogh went south (in search of what had made Monticelli shine and, as usual, inspired by Japan). The differences between them were not just temperamental (Gauguin = cynical, self-conscious >< Van Gogh = hyper-emotional, sincere) but their philosophies of art were also fundamentally different too. For Gauguin, the purpose of art was to detach itself from the reality and, through arrangements of colours, take the beholder into a consciousness. Gauguin was the first artist to talk about abstraction. For him art should be a swim in pure sensation. For Van Gogh, there was no possibility of joy without sweat. The work of painting was blood and blisters. His art was earthy : embedded in the natural world. Gauguin wanted to take off, Van Gogh wanted to pull the heaven down. 24. What did Van Gogh first paint on his arrival in Arles?

When he arrived at Arles, he took a room in a cheap hotel. This is where he saw something that spoke to him : a peach tree standing in the snow, its boughs laden with blossom (=fleurs). 25. What did he want to create there? A parade of blossoming fruit trees, an hymn of rebirth. (?) 26. How did Van Gogh link the act of painting with pleasure? Van Gogh said that his paintings were a jouissance, an ejaculation of emotional energy in paint. He said his paintings were like coitus, like a moment of infinity. It was also a kind of blinding moment when the mind is simultaneously paralized and energized. 27. Contrast the Night Cafe in Arles with the pictures of the Roulin family. Night Caf in Arles descirbes a place of alienation where one can destroy oneself go mad or commit a crime. The colours (green, yellow, red) express the power of darkness in a tavern. This painting is the opposite of his family (the Roulin) : a happy family with an honest father and a generous mother. The portraits of the Roulin (Armand, Jospeh (father), and la berceuse(mother) are made with tenderness. He wanted to paint them with a touch of the eternal. 28. What was the Yellow House in Arles? His house, with 12 chairs => an act of faith that the Yellow House would become home to a little community. (?) 29. What did Van Gogh do when he realized that his friendship with Gauguin was over? He started depressing. Every time he tried to build a nest, it went wrong. He was also beginning to hate the faithless friend who had been Gauguin. p He cut one of his ears (?) 30. What were the consequences of this? He was diagnosed as a mentally unstable menace to the district (?) 31. What was Van Goghs state of health the last two years of his life? Some people said Vincents mania was the condition of his most original creativity. But he said that he didnt paint like that. He wasnt even sure he was mad or was epileptic. In between the attacks, van Gogh seemed possessed by clarity and strengths. He said he was in a perfect physical and mental health. 32. Who was Dr Paul Gachet? A painter, engraver, collector, specialist in melancholy, and champion in homeopathic cures who took Van Gogh under his wing. 33. What happens to perspective and the emotional message in Van Goghs last paintings? Field of Spring Wheat at sunrise (p 338) is the frontier between one kind of picturing and another, between traditional and modernist. In Undergrowth with two figures (p342), we can see that is no vanishing point (=point de fuite) at all. There are multiple perspectival paths. With the fields of spring Wheat, the usual conventions are reversed with the maximum point of optical concentration at the front rather than the back of the picture. Like perspective, the emotional message has got lost : these compositions decompose every known rule of landscapes but they are so cunningly (=

ingnieusement) conceived that they cant possibly be the product of a mind in disintegration (?). Also, these last pictures are so complicated that they required a lot of concentration. Tree Roots and Trunks is another painting of his moment of modernism.

34. What was, according to Simon Schama, Van Goghs contribution to modernism? His obstinate attachment to the material reality of life saved modern art from going in the direction of abstract self-patterning. He understood that there were other ways to apprehend the reality of the world than the optical machinery of perception.

Chapter 7 :Picasso, Modern art goes political

1) Explain the title of the chapter: Modern Art Goes Political At the beginning, the art of Picasso was only aesthetic and he wanted to make art without the preoccupation of whether it humanizes life. According to him, the goal of art was to paint and nothing more. He was indifferent to emotive judgements in art. The good, the true, the useless and the useful doesnt matter, thats not the business of art. He didnt like the idea that art might be political. But in the 1930s and 1940s mass murder became ordinary. Picasso came to believe (en est venu croire) that the work of art was to resist the presumption that this was the way the world was, and would ever be. The turning of Picasso from amoral aesthete to moralist was perhaps the most unlikely (improbable) conversion story in the entire history of art. So, Guernica shows the opposite of indifference. It calls for the obligation for modern art to reinsert a sense of humanity. Graduelly, he took a very clear political position, supporting the Republic and fighting against the General Franco. 2) Describe Picassos life around the winter of 1941 Pablo Picasso was living and working at the top of an old house in the rue des Grands Augustins in Paris. Picassos Left Bank life during the Occupation was rather bohemian, more than he would have wished. It was cold and the electricity was unreliable. Only an old-fashioned stove (pole) and his latest lover Dora Maar kept him warm. His painting was becoming gloomy (sombre) and repetitive: jagged-headed (ttes irrgulires) women weeping (versant) tears like steel beads (perles dacier) or flayed (corch) head of sheep (mouton). He fancied himself as (il se prenait pour) a Surrealist playwright (dramaturge). 3) Where was the painting Guernica then? Guernica is the painting that had made him the most famous artist in modern world. The Germans didnt like it very much but in the nick of time (juste temps) Guernica had been shipped off (a t expdie) to New York by boat, like a refugee. It was installed in the Museum of Modern Art and had become more than just a picture of horror. Guernica was a billboard (panneau daffichage) of moral indignation; a site where people gathered to remind what had separated them from fascist cruelty. 4) What is the anecdote about the German officer visiting Picassos studio? One day, a German officer, both ( la fois) bully (tyran) and secret admirer, visited Picasso in his studio? Picking up one of the Guernica postcards, he asked Picasso accusingly: Did you do this?, Oh, no. you did! said Picasso. That was a smart come-back.

5) What had been before the 1930s Picassos position on the role of art? Picasso has a stubborn (acharn) indifference to emotive judgments in art. The goal of art, he said apropos Cubism, was to paint and nothing more. Neither (ni) the good nor the true, neither the useful nor the useless were any business of art. He shrugged off (ddaigner) any suggestion that painting might be political (that was 5 years before he painted Guernica). He said that he would continue to be aesthetic, to make art without preoccupying himself with the question of whether (si) art humanizes life. 6) What was his conversion towards the end of the 1930s? In the 1930s and 1940s mass murder became ordinary. Picasso came to believe (en est venu croire) that the work of art was to resist the presumption that this was the way the world was, and would ever be. The turning of Picasso from amoral aesthete to moralist was perhaps the most unlikely (improbable) conversion story in the entire history of art. So, Guernica shows the opposite of indifference. It calls for the obligation for modern art to reinsert a sense of humanity. 7) What was the artistic situation in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century? Picasso, born in 1881, had arrived in Paris at the turn of the 20th century from Barcelona. He was an Andalusian very gifted (dou). In Paris every assumption (supposition) about what art meant was in the process of being overthrown (renvers). Poetry was no longer a rhythmic compression of observation and sentiment, much less a narrative (encore moins un rcit). Now, for Picassos friend Appolinaire, it was a breathless ( bout de souffle) run of sound, symbol and allusion, performance mattering (qui importe) more than meaning. In the hands of Ravel and Satie, music had ceased (cesser) to be cathedrals of symphonic sound and had become a flowing (qui coule), directionless (sans directions) river of associations flooding (inondant) the senses. Likewise (de mme), painting had junked (bazarder) many of the old rules and regulations. 8) Compare what Diego Velazquez painted in the 17th century to what painting wanted to be around 1900. For example, in the 17th century, when Velazquez painted a king on horseback ( cheval), it was the symbol of omnipotence, absolute control. It was the most ancient and enduring image of pure power. Picasso certainly knew what he didnt want from art: the hoary (dpass, vieux jeu) old pantomimes of the mighty (les puissants). So, Picasso dismounted (dmontait) the platitude. Instead of a prince in the saddle (en selle), he painted a naked boy leading a barebacked horse (cheval sans selle) and an eerily (sinistre) featureless (monotone) landscape, entirely bereft (dmuni) of the picturesque. The hue (teinte) of the image is of grey dust and baked clay (terre cuite). 9) What was the reception of les Demoiselles dAvignon? No one wanted to buy it. The American Leo Stein, until then loyal patron, thought Picasso had gone mad. His dealer Kahnweiler kept on saying the painting was unfinished. Matisse thought it was a hoax (canular) and said it made him feel as though he had swallowed (avaler) gasoline. Picasso turned it to the wall in his studio and waited 17 years for a buyer.

In this picture, everything associated with the traditional European nude grace, sensuality, fertility, compassion has been sheared away (enlever). 10) What did Picasso do with the usual aims of art i.e. beauty, likeness, heroes, stories, expressions? Picassos painting brought us to an artless moment: without heroes, stories, subjects and expressions. With a gesture of economic poetry, he made an endrun (moyen dtourn?) around centuries of ceremonious picturing, the modern coming straight out (sans hsitation) of the archaic, as if there never had been anything much worth noticing in between (comme sil ny avait jamais rien eu de valable, de valeur entre les deux). 11)

What had Van Gogh and Czanne already done to likeness? Van Gogh chose the colour of things and people according to emotive perception rather than optically observed hue (teinte). Czanne worked with destructions of solid form into crystallo-graphically faceted structures, that were both broken and coherent at the same time.

Bye-bye resemblance! 12) How did Matisse depart from (scarter de) resemblance? Matisse chose a decorative way. The road of abstraction: shimmering (chtoyant) arrangements of flat, brilliant colour designed to set our senses dancing and put smile on our face. Picasso was the least sentimental and the most sculptural of all modern artists went the other way, wanting to register the tactile in paint. 13) What does cubism do to resemblance? The simultaneous multi-dimensional rendering (interpretation) of different aspects of a same figure was a representation of what the figure truly was. So no colours other than those of engineering and architecture rusty browns (brun rouill), dusty ochres (ocre sale) and steel greys (gris acier). The aim is to distract the viewer from his idea of fundamental form. By blowing up (en faisant sauter) the apparent look of things and people, the Cubists were saying that they were offering an alternative reality: the reality of shifting (variable) perception. 14) Around Picasso what was World War II like in Paris? From 1914 to 1918 Paris had a strange, unreal war. Picasso had friends, such as Braque and Apollinaire, who went off (partir) to fight and came back terribly wounded (bless). His friendship with Khanweiler changed. As a German national, Kahnweiler left in a hurry without paying Picasso the 20.000 francs he owed. A broken world emerged from the carnage. Defeat and revolution became a new urgency that art had to connect with the People, act as a messenger. Instead of the landscape, the poster and the billboard (panneau daffichage) showed strong, simple images that would move the powerless (limpuissance) to passionate action. This kind of art happened mostly elsewhere, fed by (nourri par) the chagrin of defeat. 15) What was art like in Germany and Russia after World War II?

In Germany: violent colour and grotesque faces shouted fury and disgust from the canvas at the old order, both social and aesthetic. In revolutionary Russia: geometric abstraction spoke to the scientific certainties (certitudes) of Marxist dialectical materialism at the same time as iconic heroes of the proletariat summoned (appeler, faire venir) the workers to obedient patriotic sacrifice.

16) What made Picasso rich around World War I? After the war, Picasso had never seemed more remote (loign, distant) from politics. It was how to make a collage that exercised him, not how to make a revolution (= ctait faire des collages qui lintressait, pas comment faire une rvolution!). He made glued-on and painted fragments of newspapers. Unlike (contrairement aux) Les Demoiselles dAvignon and the hard-core Cubist paintings, they were loved by the buyers. Picasso grew rich and famous from the appreciation, got married to a Russian ballerina, Olga, and began to live the bourgeois rather than the bohemian life in a swish Right Bank apartment. Sometimes he chose another direction: prompted by (incit par) Matisse, he pushed Cubism towards a more decorative, high-coloured flatness (platitude). But on other times, he relapsed (rechutait) into figurative drawing, to the consternation of his avant-garde friends. 17) What was Picassos private life around 1930 and how did it reflect in his work? Olga and Marie-Thrse became polar opposites in his experimental representations of sexual experience. Depending on what Picasso had on his mind, misery of ecstasy (extase), the women could be pulled in this way or that (tir dans un sens ou dans lautre), like human plasticine body parts, artfully rearranged (ingnieusement rearrang). He depicted (dpeindre) his wife Olga transforming her in strange things, for example a praying mantis (une mante religieuse) with lots of toothed orifice. Evidently, Picassomarriage was no longer much fun. After the rack (aprs le supplice), came the bed, with the welcoming Marie-Thrse in it. For her there was no problem. He painted her with voluptuous arabesques and glowing (clatant) coulour. 18) What were the two Spains in his first third of the 20th century? Picasso had grown up in a country that, even a half century before the Civil War, was divided. One Spain - Catalan Barcelona - had embraced modernity. The city was commercial, secular and hospitable to all kinds of culture experiment. And there were other regions, such as the northern Basque country around the port of Bilbao, where industry pointed (diriger) the country towards (vers) the future. But in the rugged (accident, rude) centre an eternal Spain of nuns (nones) and donkeys (nes), cathedrals and immense landed estates, fierce (froce, toute preuve) devotion and harsh (dur, svre) subsistence showed no sign of conceding itsq grips (lcher prise, la poigne). The question for the 20th century was whether those two Spains could possibly live together. 19) What was the outcome of the 1931 election in Spain and the ensuing situation?

The answer of the question could the two Spains live together? was given by the ballot box in 1931 (the first election in 60 years) : No! Because the new Spain was concentrated in the populous cities, it was able to put together the majority to end monarchy. King Alfonso XIII went into exile. A new golden age of social and political liberty was supposed to dawn (se lever). But the eight years of the Spanish Republic proved a prolonged and tortured ordeal (supplice) for its defenders and enemies alike (de la meme faon). The trouble was that both of the incompatible Spains claimed to be the authentic nation and each had the same number of votes around 4.5 million. When the verdict of the ballot box went against them, neither was prepared to accept the results and resign themselves to a state of political opposition. When the left wing won, the Church and the army treated the moment as if Spain itself had gone down to defeat. When a coalition on the right won, the unions (syndicats) organized a general strike. If each side had been capable of conceiving (concevoir) of themselves as rival parties, some form of coexistence might have been possible, but this was never the case. Traditionalists saw the socialists, who dominated the Republican governments as anti-Christ, destroyers of the institutions that, for them, made Spain: Church, army. For their parts, the social democrats saw the conservatives as a fortress of wealth (richesse), superstition and privilege. There were too many monks (moines), too many army officers, too many landless peasants (paysants sans terre) who could barely ( peine) put bread on the table. All that needed to change of Spain was ever to enter the modern world. For both sides, the salvation (le salut) of the country required the annihilation of the other. From the outset (ds le dbut), the history of the Republic was an unforgiving culture was. 20) What did Lorca mean by Spain is the only country where death is a natural spectacle? Lorca had meant bullfights that excited a lot the Spaniards, but he had also meant history. While Picasso was in exile, the memory of bullfights never failed to stir (exciter) him. 21) What was the representation of bullfights for Picasso? For Picasso, the bullring (arne de la corrida) became, as is had been for Goya, a way of reconnecting with Spanish memory. He played in his new series of bullfight (corrida) paintings with new gaudy (voyante) colours.

22) What was Dalis position on the Spanish situation? The Surrealist who was radical in his art was deeply conservative in his politics. When the time came to choose sides, he threw in his lot with Francos Nationalists. Some ring-wing intellectuals saw no reason not to hope that Picasso might do the same, and even made overtures to him that the artist neither encouraged nor discouraged. 23) What was Mondrian doing at the time?

In Paris, the Dutchman Piet Mondrian was making his two-dimensional grids (grille) with their panes (carreaux) of primary colour nailed (clou) to the surface, exemplified (illustrant) modernisms search for an art liberated from time and place, history and memory. An art that was purified itself and therefore universal. 24) When Simon Schama makes Picasso say something like The beasts are out [...]. I know; Im one of them. What does he mean? Picasso painted a lot about the world of Cretan Labyrinth and the Minotaur. In this series of prints his obsessions with erotic carnage became projected on to a screen where mythology and history played out (jouer). But through all his wanderings (ballades) in the labyrinth of his imagination, one thing is clear: the supreme modernist was now committed to (sengager envers) reawakening (renouveau) ancient fetishes (objet ftiche). Just as Boy leading a Horse, painted almost 30 years earlier, had connected the archaic and the modern so ancient ritual, magic and allegory spoke again to contemporary terrors. 25) What did General Francisco Franco do mid-July 1936? In mid-July 1936 General Franco, a small man with an imperious bearing (allure), who had said to save Spain from socialism and atheism he would, if necessary, shoot half the country, opened hostilities by ferrying (faire traverse en bateau) an army from Spanish Marocco over the Mediterranean to Spain. Air transport was supplied by the Luftwaffe (= German Air Force) of the Third Reich, and the army that Franco would use to conquer Spain included 40.000 Italian troops on loan from Mussolini. The eagerness (excitation) of the fascists and Nazis to use the Spanish Civil War as a dry run for their coming battle with the degenerate democracies and Soviets communism made this conflict both inevitable and ferocious. 26) What was the cry of Francos supporters? Viva la muerte (long live death) was the rallying cry of Francos rebels. 27) Who were the foreign allies of the Republican? Who did not intervene? Faced with naked (non-dissimule) intervention, the appeasers in Britain and France would do no more than make bleating (chevrotant?) noises. In the League of Nations, set up after World War I to promote international peace, impotence hid behind a mask of neutrality. Arms shipments (cargaisons) to both sides were embargoed (interdit). The immediate result was to clear (dgager) obstacles for Francos army, which swept (balayer) through large parts of Spain. Seville, Cadiz and Crdoba all fell. Surprisingly, Madrid did not, Republican defences halting (faire arte) Francos advance (progression) just south of the city. 28) Why was Picasso made director if the Prado and what did he do as such? When a shell (obus) hit the Prado Museum, Picasso felt personally assaulted (agress). The modernist supremo was suddenly protective of his ancestry: El Greco, Zurbarn, Velzquez and, of course, Goya, the witness to Disasters of War. So when Picasso was asked if he would accept the honorific position of Director of the Prado, he didnt hesitate. It was the signal to the world that, finally, Picasso stood with the Republic. When a decision was made to evacuate some of the museums masterpieces to the Mediterranean coast, Picasso was consulted on the selection. A convoy carrying Velazquezs Las Meninas and Las Lanzas, and Goyas Majas on a

Balcony went through the narrow (troit) corridor of Republican-held territory to the safety of Valencia. Picasso waited nervously for news of the paintings arrival, his own fate (destin) now locked into that of his country. 29) How did the Dreams and Lies of Franco come about? Picasso was asked if he would paint something on an imposing and ambitious mural of the Republics pavilion for the International Exhibition to be held in Paris that summer. Picasso accepted the commission, although he had no idea what he might produce. He took a single day off to brood on the challenge (rflchir au dfi). Between breakfast and supper he drew Dreams and Lies of Franco, a sheet of linked prints that could be sold together or separately to raise money for the Republics refugee Relief Fund. Picasso abandoned the anti-populist position he had taken since the invention of Cubism and became crudely dirty (?). Dreams and Lies was a comic-strip attack on Francos pretensions to be Spains Knight Crusader (chevalier des Croisades). Instead of depecting a modern El Cid mounted on a gallant steed (cheval), Picasso drew him astride ( cheval) a comical phallus. According to Picasso, Franco appeared as a squishy (mollasson) turd-like (lair dun con). 30) Describe the town of Guernica by early 1937? Guernica, 15 miles from Bilbao, was a town of just 7000 inhabitants, but its importance to that nations culture and history went well beyond (au-del) its size. At its centre, at the summit of a small hill, was the ancestral oak (chne) beneath which (sous lequel) the people had for centuries assembled to elect their legislators and air the grievances (faire part de leurs plaintes). The town was the cradle (berceau) of the sense of separate identity linguistic, historical and even ethnic tenaciously held by the Basques. Franco and the Falange (=Spanish fascist organization and political movement of the nationalists) stood for (dfendre) the old centralizing absolustism, intolerant of any such regional autonomies. So when the war began, there was no doubt which side the Basques would be on ( quelle partie les Basques allaient se rallier), especially after the Republican government offered them autonomy. Their first modern prime Minister, Jos Aguirre, had taken he oath (prter serment) of office in Guernica, vowing (jurant) to defend is homeland to the death. 31) What happened in Guernica on 26 April 1937? It was about four in the afternoon on a spring Monday, 26 April: a market day (jour de march). The people of Guernica were emerging from their siesta. Shops and banks were opening; old men were sitting outside cafs, enjoying the April warmth (chaleur). The sky was limpid. Out of the blue a speck (une petite tche) appeared, a solitary plane. It made a few low passes over the market and the assembly house with the oak (chne) at its back, and then, hanging (planant) over the densest (la plus dense) part of the town, disgorged (dcharger, larguer) six bombs. The town was immediately engulfed (engloutie) in smoke and flames. Few minutes later, three more planes dropped 50-kilogram bombs, and then successive waves of military planes flying in formation inflicted a storm of havoc (une tempte de ravages) that continued for over an hour. Due to the risk of incineration in their houses, the people of Guernica ran into churches, where they thought they might be safe, or into the woods and fields surrounding the town. That was exactly what the German fliers had been anticipating, so they emptied (vider, dcharger) round after round of machine-gun fire on helpless civilians. Bodies started to pile up in the streets.

And then the coup de grce : in a third wave, German planes delivered 3000 aluminium-cased incendiary bombs, designed to maximize conflagration on the ground and turn the town into a bowl of fire. It took three hours to reduce Guernica to that ashy cauldron (un chaudron couvert de cendres). 1645 of its people nearly a quarter of the population perished right away; thousands more were terribly wounded. Somehow (pour une raison ou une autre), the oak tree stood amidst (au milieu) the flames, charred (carbonis) but not destroyed. 32) For the Luftwaffe what was Guernica the rehearsal (repetition) of? Guernica was the Lufwaffes first opportunity to rehearse (preparer, rpter) what would become standard operational procedure over Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and elsewhere. The Basque town, of course, had no strategic significance, the real target being Bilbao. For Richthofen (Lieutenant Colonel and pilot of the first bomber), the action had been tremendously (terriblement) gratifying. He thought that the flare (clat) of the fireball would have been visible from the port. Bilbao would get the message. Elated (rempli de joie), he reported: Guernica literally levelled to the ground (a t rase); bombs craters in the streets...simply terrific, perfect conditions for a great victory. 33) What did the correspondent of The Times discover about Guernica that had been denied? George Lowther STEER, correspondent for The Times, covering the Basque was from Bilbao had seen the night sky turn orange, heard the explosions and was wondering what was happening. He went to Guernica as fast as he could. One he penetrated the town, he saw the massacre. STEER picked up the housing of an incendiary bomb and noticed the German mark and date of manufacture. Then he took a photo of it. Back in London, this version was very inconvenient for his editor, Goeffrey Dawson, an appeaser (qqn qui appaise) who was much inclined to credit Francos assertion that there were no foreign planes flying missions in Spain. The Franco version was: it had been Basque socialists who had been responsible for blowing up their own town in an effort to discredit the Falange. But Dawson ran Steers story anyway; it was the first newspaper report of the calculated massacre of civilians from the air. Two days later, on 30 April 1937, Picasso read the French translation of the article, published in Ce Soir. 34) Who was Dora Maar? What was her role in the creation of the painting Guernica? Dora Maar, born Isadora Marcovitch, was a Croatian Surrealist photographer and, for one among his women, Picassos intellectual equal. Picasso had spotted her (a flash sur elle) in a Left Bank caf. He could hardly have missed the elegant, dark-haired woman stabbing (donnant des coups de couteau) the table. Dora had taken a knife from their handbag and spread (carter) the fingers of one hand open while she jabbed (planter) the wood between them at high speed. She missed a lot; then she put her gloves back on and bled (saigner) into them. This was what Croatian Surrealist did. Wide-eyed (les yeux grands ouverts), Picasso was introduced to (presenter ) Dora and made an offer for the bloody glove. She was acutely aware (extrmement consciente) that what the painter was about to tackle would mark his place in the history of art. She made herself the photographer of record (photographe de souvenirs), and Picasso, who until this

point had never let anyone take shots of him at work, consented. The photographs are a unique record of the evolution of Guernica. 35) Detail the creation of the painting Guernica. On 1 May 1937, two days after Picasso had read Steers strory, he began work. Beyond (par del) the rue des Grands Augustins he could hear the low drone (vrombissement) of a May Day march going through the streets. He still had no clear idea of what he was doing, bus was certain that he had to begin. He started with a pure adrenaline rush (hte). On that first day, the ambitious grandeur of the concept was apparent. The format was dictated by the rectangular dimensions of the pavilion wall, but also by the inspirational spectacles of the 19th century histories. The cast of the characters (personnages) imprinted on his mind (graver dans sa mmoire) over the previous three years a wounded horse, a massive bull (taureau) and a candle-light bearer (porteur) make an immediate appearance. Later in the afternoon, Picasso impersonated (se faire passer pour) a small childs drawing of a horse, something utterly (totalement) innocent. But the playfulness (le caractre enjou, espigle) didnt last. The next day, the horses were rendered (rendu, interprt) in states of excruciating (insoutenable, atroce) torment: necks violently twisted, the tongues conical, etc. Then, after two days of creative fury, he stopped. Just like that. The deadline for the opening of the Paris Exhibition was fast approaching, but for a week Picasso did no work at all on the composition. Instead, he went into the country to see Marie-Thrse and the baby. Picasso had the inspired idea of transferring the theatrical agony of his personal life into his new-found political art. Heads of women with bloody tears began to appear in Guernica drawings. He had vision of domestic tragedy, of misery. For the first time, a mother carrying a dead baby crawled (se glisser) on the scene. On 11 May, he began to attack the huge canvas, 20 feet long and 12 feet high. Its impossible to look at Guernica and not feel the panicky sense of No Way Out, intensified by its black and white vision. To achieve this space havoc (ravages) Picasso went back to the period of his greatest invention, setting the catastrophe in claustrophobic Cubist space. But this kind of Cubism is less cerebral and more intensely emotive. Guernica generates visual panic. 36) What is the legend of Pegasus and Perseus? Pegasus is the mythical symbol of the birth of art and poetry. In classical mythology the horse had been born from the Gordon Medusa after she had been killed by the hero Perseus. Pegasus was his mount (monture) who flew high, landing on Mount Helicon. From the touch of his hoof (sabot) a pool (flaque ou tang) sprang bright and clear, blood turned to crystal purity, and the pool became the font of the Muses, the source of the arts. 37) Why did Picasso want to paint Pegasus in his Guernica? Why didnt he do so? Picasso said that something good, like art, may also come from slaughter (boucherie). Originally, the fallen warrior with the broken sword (pe) had been grander, stronger, his head helmeted (avec un casque) like a classical hero. Then Picasso remembered an image from the late medieval Spanish apocalypse manuscript and turned the warrior on his back, mouth open. It also seemed that Picasso made the figure a shattered (constern), hollow (creux, vide) statue, its bust (buste) and torse broken. Beside its right hand he has set another unconvincing emblem of hope: a single daisy (pquerette), a smidgen of life (un

petit brin de vie) amidst the carnage. On the opened palm (paume) of the left hand he has drawn an unmistakable puncture wound (perforation), the stigmata of the risen Christ. So the cool modernist was now quoting (citer) the Gospel (=part of the New Testament of the Christian Bible). It was General Franco who was supposed to be the Christian Soldier. And that, of course, was the point, turning the tables on the sanctimoniousness (attitude moralisatrice)of the Falange leader, the Caudillo. 38) How does Goyas 3rd May, 1808 relate to Picassos Guernica? Compare to Davids revolutionary art. The head of Picasso contained one more image of the agony of his nation: Goyas 3rd May, 1808.This painting was the Goyas response to cruelty and massacre of the executions in Madrid of rebels who had risen against Napoleons invasion. And, like Picasso, Goya was complicated by the fact that his politics had been ambiguous, as were his attitudes to the two Spains, old and new. Intellectually, he was a reformer. But he was also in his way a traditional Spanish patriot, and on this occasion he unequivocally took the side of the victims. Goya created the first painting of modern state brutality; the polar opposite of the cosmetic classicism of Jacques-Louis David. But the painting of Goya was also saturated with symbolism and couloured by the hope of salvation.

39) What is the place of light in Goyas 3rd May, 1808 and in Picassos Guernica? Picasso has taken something else from Goyas execution, which, like Guernica, is a nocturnal massacre: the alteration (changement) of light from a source of good, the primary condition of the creation of art, to the accomplice evil (complice du mal). Describing masterpieces as luminous had long become commonplace (with the works of Caravaggio and Rembrandt). But theres something about Goyas terrible fancy (terrible fantaisie): the idea that modern art light might also be malign (pernicieux) wormed itself (sest immisc) into Picassos imagination. He thought of 3rd May 1808, a scene in which dirty business is being done in the dead of night, and saw that the lantern is the light in which we regard evil. In Guernica, there is an eye-shaped lamp, its brilliance denoted by a jagged (irrgulier) flare (clat) like the flash of a sunspot. In the painting, Picasso drew little monsters swimming with bad intentions, right on the target, into the bulls eye. But at the last minute, Picasso changed the centre of the artless eye into a single light bulb (ampoule). When he was later asked about the symbolism of Guernica, Picasso turned laconic again, resisting over-reading. The bull was just a bull and the lamp just a lamp. But its hard not to be put in mind of Goyas lamp of darkness. 40) What was the reception of Picassos Guernica in 1937? There was no doubt that the Republic would not survive in lengthening, so Guernica was desperately needed. But whether it would make conversions was uncertain. When modern art in the 1930s had a strong message to communicate, it usually did so in beefy (costaud) naturalism, stylized a little, but without risking incomprehension. Picasso was probably expecting either acclaim

or outrage. Either way (dans tous les cas) he would know his masterwork had done its job. What he got was bemusement (perplexit). When Picasso handed the painting over to the Spanish authorities and received his handsome fee, there was the unmistakably (indniable) deadly sound of polite appreciation. Guernica was hung on the ground floor, the installation screamed mixed feelings. As planned (comme prvu), it covered an entire wall, but the stepped ramp (rampe) on the exterior of the building took visitors straight up to the next storey (tage), so what they would either have missed the painting entirely, or have first seen it from the angle it had never occurred to the painter to consider as important from top down, from the point of view of the bombers light. Perhaps Guernica wasnt exactly what its patrons had hoped for. The outsider walls of the pavilion were covered with more orthodox homilies. Disappointingly for its sponsors, there was nothing in Picassos painting that clearly and unequivocally identified the fascist aggressors. Germans were amused and wrote it off as the work of someone who had become deranged. In Britain, Anthony Blunt wrote it off as a private brainstorming. And for Picassos French friends and peers (paires), there was either praise (louange) or deadly silence. Picasso himself showed no sign of going broody (mlancolique) over the mixed reception. 41) How did the Spanish Civil War end? Franco was still standing by the lie that it had been the Basques themselves who had destroyed their ancient town. It was thought (on pensait que) that he was eager (impatient) to lay hands (mettre la main) on the paintings in order to destroy it. So a 40-year exile began, abetted (soutenu, encourag) by Picasso, who did not want his painting to lie dormant in a particular museum, but rather to turn into a nomad for democracy. Even after the final defeat of the Republic, he wanted Guernica to tour (visiter) the world so that the atrocity would never be forgotten. 42) What happened to Guernica after it had been to London? Guernica arrived in London on 29 September 1938, the same day of the Munich Agreement between Hitler and Chamberlain. Some of the anti-appeasement intelligentsia (= Britons opposed to the Munich Agreement) organized its exhibition at the New Burlington Gallery. But the crowds where thin (mince) and the critics craping (critiquant). A second show, at the Whitechapel Gallery, was a different story. Fifteen thousand people came to see the paintings. It was a demonstration for the Labour left (=political party), opened by the partys leader Clement Attlee and shown films documenting the war in Spain. After Guernica had been to London, it went to New-York. At the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), it was the centrepiece, along with Les Demoiselles dAvignon, of a Picasso retrospective. There, as in London, the press was mixed: hoots (sifflements) of derision from some critics, some accusations of communism from the others, lukewarm (peu denthousiasme) from modernists. But a younger generation of painters, some from Europe, some not (Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning) came toGuernica and got high on its fire and fury. Then the picture went on tour all the way to California, where it raised a little money for refugees and won more polite praise (loge). When the European War started, Picasso agreed that Guernica should stay at MoMA, not just for the

duration of hostilities but until democratic institutions were restored in Spain. Franco attempted to have it but the painting stayed there. The war meant survival, and then, at the Liberation in 1944, a horde of pilgrims (plerins) converging on the rue des Grands Augustins, eager (empress) to hear all about the making of Guernica. Guernica, in exile at MoMA, burned over the decades with moral heat as its creators candle guttered (vaciller). In Germany it was the moral authority and painterly power of Guernica that allowed painters to be eloquent about the obscenity of their recent history. In America, Guernica saved modern art from death by navel-gazing, rescuing it from the curse (maldiction) of its own cleverness (intelligence) and the obligations of novelty (nouveaut). Guernica has always been bigger than Art, uncountable by the museum, one of those rare works that gets into the bloodstream (courant de sang) of the common culture. Picasso knew that Guernica might have lost the battle, but also that it had won the war: that the old fascist would die, and with him would perish his horrible regime. On the other hand, the painting would endure, and when freedom was reborn in Spain, would find its way home. Of course, where at home isremains open to debate. The Basques insist it belongs to Bilbao, but in 1981 it went to Madrid,(Reina Sofia Museum) nervously guarded by armoured glass and police until, in 1995, both were removed (enlever) and Guernica was allowed to face the public with only the courage of its convictions for protection. In 2004, three bombs planted by Muslim terrorists exploded in the Atocha Station, not far from the Reina Sofia Museum. 192 people were killed and 2050 were injured. Some days later, we could see at the museum countless thousands people were standing before Guernica. They needed no guides to tell them why it mattered. Guernica still speaks and screams bloody murder.

Chapter 8: Rothko, The Music of Beyond in the City of Glitter

1. Explain the title of the chapter. The music of Beyond in the City of Glitter 2. What are the introductory questions that Simon Schama asks at the beginning of this chapter? Just how powerful is Art? Can it put you off your food the way love or grief or fear does? Can it slam the brakes on the relentless business of life, fade out the buzz and cut straight through to our most basic emotions: anguish, desire, ecstasy, terror?

 Simon wonders if Art can really have an impact on our life and, if yes, what kind of impact? Does it really give us important emotions? 3. What had been the traditional answers to these questions? For most of arts history, it was assumed that if you pitched the stakes that high (metre le niveau si haut) you would need stories, or at least figures, to deliver the poetic rush of feeling: weeping Madonnas; voluptuously nudes; soulful selfportraits; embattled heroes laid low. Even figureless landscapes drenched in light worked through the presumption of sentimental memory, briefly passing felicities. Traditional answer to questions such as Can Art really give us emotions are: Art can gives us emotion but only if it represent something that we know; something that we have seen before; that can give us memories; or that we can understand (for example: human suffering). 4. Why wasnt that good enough for Rothko? Mark Rothko believed that the tradition of showing for example human tragedy was all used up. He through that the problem of modern life, especially in consumer society, was that unspeakable things had been done (after WWII) and contemporary cultures answer was to dull the pain with distraction. The problem of modern Art was how it could throttle the relentless chirpiness of contemporary life and reconnect us with the strenuous drama of the Human condition. According to Rothko, only a completely new visual language of strong feeling, could wake the population from moral stupor. 5. What did he take on in 1958? In 1958 Rothko took on a commission through witch, he thought, he could bring his monumental dramas right into the belly of the beast. He accepted to create modern piece of art for The Four Season Hotel (Manhattan). Rothkos work would join paintings by Picasso and Pollock. He understood well enough what he was up against: gossip, fashion, glitter. But that was the point. 6. What happened in Britain and in the US on 25 February 1970? On the 25th February 1970, nine of the Seagram murals arrived not in NY but at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) on Londons Millbank. A few hours before, on the same day, Mark Rothkos body had been discovered on the floor of his Manhattan studio. He had committed suicide by cutting his wrists. The painter who had spent a lot of time in his own mind walking the realms of the death now had, in London, something like his own mausoleum. 7. Who were the artists of pop culture? What were they doing? Pop art is a kind of art that bottled contemporary fiz and made it rock. In Britain: Hamildton, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Patrick Caufield In USA: Wharol, Jaspers Jhons, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein. Those painters, instead of panicking at mass culture, made love to it and made art to it. 8. How did Rothko want the Seagram murals to be presented? Rothko had insisted that the lighting be kept almost pretentiously low. This was a clever prescription. Ones eyes took their leave from the white glare of the gallery wall, and, as they adjusted to the obscurity, entered an altogether different optical realm.

9. What was the subject of these paintings for Rothko? According to Rothko there were an adventure into an unknown witch can only be explored by those willing to take a risk. 10. Why did Rothko say that he wasnt an abstract painter? He meant that, it was not enough to lay down those forms and leave it at that. That way laid arid self-containment, aesthetic narcissism. Subject mattered and his own subject was the universal tragedy of the world. 11. What was his childhood like? Born in 1903 (as Marcus Rothkowitz) in tsarist Russia. He could remember Cossaks roughing up Jews in the streets. He was terrified by pogroms (organized persecutions or exterminations of Jews). At ten, he left Russia to join his father in USA. When the family was reunited in Portland, his father was seriously ill with colon cancer. He died seven month later. He had been brought up in the Orthodox Judaism. 12. How did he become a chochom and what becomes of chochoms? Marcus has done chelder; a Hebrew school. Thats why the Orthodox Judaism in with he had been brought never really goes away. So, he became a chochom a know it all. Most of the chochoms become rabbis. 13. What did he do at university and after university? At Lincoln High School Marcus was a star debater, and went to hear the firecracker orator Red Emma Goldman laid into capitalism and sing the praises of the Russian revolution. But he also took dramatic arts and though for a while about a different career. He won a place at Yale where he studied mostly history of philosophy and psychology for a year. He lived off-campus with relatives in New Haven, and accepted the role that had evidently been assigned to him by launching a lefty underground newspaper called the Saturday Evening Pest. At the end of his second year he dropped out (laisser tomber) altogether. After that, he got to the jazz-age Manhattan. As soon as he got there he enrolled in a life drawing class at the Arts students League. He was torn (dchir) between the studio and the stages. In 1924, Marcus went back to Portland to train as an actor in a local company. It was Josephine Dillons company that first exposed him to music, colour and design. That all together with his instinctive feel of tragedy, made the makings of Rothko. In &925, he took still-life classes with a painter and teacher called Max Weber. Rothko started to pain still-life nudes and landscapes. To make a living, he worked as a bookkeeper in the garment industry and did maps and illustrations for the Graphic Bible. Times did by and Rothko became definitely part of the Manhattan art world, taken up by Milton Avery and his wife Sally. He took classes every week at their apartment. In 1928, at the well-named Opportunity Gallery, Rothkowitz showed work along with Avery. 14. What was The Ten? What does the name refer to? In 1935, Rothko became a member of the Ten (the minimum number of Jews who can pray together) and who agitated the experimentation and against conservatism in museums, schools and galleries. Naturally, they were nine of them. They showed their work, but they zeal for experiment wasnt that novel.

Mostly, they were concerned to look experimental, depending on whatever was coming in over the European cultural radar. 15. Relate his work to history between 1929 and 1945. 1929: Wall Street Crash followed by the Great depression. Rothkowitz had not much to show for his decade in NY. He was exhibited but not much sold, and when he did, it wasnt a living. He was married to Edith Sachar. 1934: Rothkowitz was one of the original founding members of the Art Union. 1935: Admidst the usual Talmudic bickering of leftist factions, the denunciations and walks-out, Rothkowitz and its comrades were all burning to make an art that would say something about the alienation, and they saw it, of modern American life. 1935: Roosevelts New Deal: Rothko was taken on by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), hired for the easel division. But, in the spirit of the time, what he really wanted to do was were public project murals- that would escape gallery fodder and make a social place in witch Everyman and Everywoman could dwell. But his 2 attempts to compete for commissions failed. Moreover, Ediths work was taken by the WPA. 1936: Rothko painted entrance to Subway Interesting paintings (++ P406) as he got deeper into the series, the pictures became less and less like urban genre paintings. 1938: Rothko became an American citizen. Roosevelts confrontation with fascism was what he wanted from America: an escape from narrow-minded isolation, a reconnection with the destinies of modern history, now Rothko and his friends wanted American art to go the same way. 1939: War tugged at Rothkos creative conscience, and subway riffs suddenly seemed parochial, not weighty enough to answer the call. It seemed to him a moment of universal moral crisis. 16. What did Barnett Newman say during World War II about the status of art? Newman (one of Rothkos closest friend) said how he and his group felt that in the moral crisis of a word in shambles it was impossible any longer to paint the old subjects (flowers, reclining nudes, people playing the cello). Newman drew the conclusion to abandon art for the four years during witch America was involved in WWII. 17. What was life like when Rothko was in his 40s and what were his longings? His marriage to Edith was falling apart. In his forties, he was eaten by anxiety that he might never find that elusive form of painting that somehow was simultaneously American and universal, radically new and unarguably timeless. Every successive show he assisted at the MOMA (Dada in 1936 & Picasso in 1939) made him feel worse. So, he did what dismayed intellectuals generally do when they are blocked went back to the big books. So myths and monsters, entrails and auguries appear in his work. He changed his way of painting (eg. Slow girls at the edge of the sea). There were reasons both personal and historical for the unexpected sensuousness. Rothko had fallen in love with Mary Alice Beistle, whom everyone called Mell. 18. What did the Nazis consider degenerate art and regenerate art? Nazis consider the modernism (witch was in fact the seed of new growth) as degenerate. They glorified as regenerate the stale leavings of neo-classicism.

Their mistake was Americas good fortune 19. What was life like in post-World War II America? Some action painters were taking the aim a the tepid blandness of post-war America life a life that they though was lived virtually, not physically. What did they see when they looked at the world? The Cold war and Korean War, the two superpowers locked in deathly embrace; at home, paranoia and terror, Reds under the beds, the mushroom clouds merely a button push away. Coping meant denial into z lifestyle: the suburban dream in gingham and bobby socks; Buicks in the driveway, wife in the kitchen baking pies and pieties; Young Billy on the gridiron, freckled Susie in pineapple pickers cheering him on; Pop off to work in his crisply pressed Brooks Brothers suit, back home for the martini and the slippers; the whole family like Rex, the happy Labrador, panting and jumping for joy, and always, always in the background the cathode-tube flicker and canned chuckles of the TV. Hey, what was a mega power to do? It was either bromide or suicide. There was nothing more truly America. The artists decided to use paintings to reattach the people to physical reality. 20. What did poet Stanley Kunitz want art to be? Stanley Kunitz wanted art to reattach the people to physical reality. Even if they did nothing that had gone before, art would be once more what it had been in the past. Stanley called that the defence of the world. It wouldnt do it illustratively but with the fundamental materials of art itself: colour and line. 21. What was the effect of Matisses Red Studio on Rothko? Red Studio is a painting of Matisse (P414). It entered the MOMA in 1949, and Rothko went to see it over and over again. Matisses painting had simply abolished column and reinvented pictorial space. Venetian red covered the entire field with no help given to the eye as to where the floor ended and the wall began. Objects themselves a window, a decorative plate, paintings float without discernible volume upon the red field. The third dimension had simply been waved away. The transformation actually intensified it. Rothko took the point. Now, if he needed to convey the sense of a mythological or primal evolutionary moment, he no longer needed to labour it with draw figures, but could let his own freely drifting patches of colour work their suggestive magic on our perception. That connection he was after direct, intimate, but also monumental- was beginning to happen. 22. What was Rothkos reaction to the fact that he began to sell? When Rothko began to sell, he suspected it wasnt enough. 23. What is the compositional problem of all abstract expressionists (abex)? How to stay loose and free without becoming entirely random, tediously incoherent? The dialogue between freedom and limits was, of course, definitively American, event though Rothko once claimed et was his tight swaddling in Russia as a baby that made it his particular compulsion! For Rothko, the tensions between the framing edge of the canvas and the pulsing forms that pressed against it were not just an aesthetic flourish. He needed ambiguous boundaries the better to give his colour shapes a sense of movement tearing and fraying those edges, pressing down on them. Animation made his colour potent.

24. Describe the transformation of Rothkos paintings around 1950. 25. How is Rothko manipulating the sensations of the viewer? He is playing on how the minds of the audience sees the paintings. The permutations can go on forever , manipulating the sensations 26. In what ways does his work in the 1950s equal Rembrandts or Turners? Because he had become the maker of paintings as powerful complicated and breathtaking as them 27. Why did he always want two of his paintings facing each other at exhibitions? So that when one turns ones back on a painting of his, its still impossible to escape their pulsing emission of light. 28. How did Rothko think of his colour-forms? Explain. They are animated organisms, they respire, he thought of his colour forms as actors. So while at first sight the paintings seem composed and still, after a minute or two in their companyreveals a world of movement. 29. For Rothko what is the place of the audience of his paintings? Explain. The audience is indispensable for the picture to work , he was making sure that clarity was passed on to the eyes of the beholder 30. When was a painting finished for Rothko? The last brushstroke was merely the end of the beginning, the picture continued to grow form expand and quicken in the eye of the beholder. 31. How did he react when his paintings were going into the world? He was fearful about letting his paintings go out in the world as if he were saying a tearful farewell to a child embarking on his first year to college. 32. Why did he prefer vertical paintings? So the sensuous comunication could be more selectively targeted, what Rothko wanted was the undivided , intense attention of a single beholder. 33. What else did he require for the exhibition of his paintings? Why? The lighting had to be low, no spots could be tolerated. Postition on the wall was also critical , as low as possible with the foot of the unframed painting almost touching the floor. He insisted on the biggest paintings hitting the incoming visitor first. No paintings by anyone except him and finally little or no room between the pictures. 34. What would Rothko answer to people calling him a kind of transcendental philosopher? What he wanted to deliver, in painting big pictures and large shapes, was a sense of material experience, the sensuousness of the sampled world in all its gorgeous richness. He wanted to do that trough paint that felt breathed on the canvas; the richness of the painting almost inexhaustible 35. What was his technique to achieve this? He diluted so much the color with the water; with no edge in his paintings. He meant that indeterminate borders were crucial for the emotion

36. How successful was he in his early 50s? What did he think of it? The big Rothkos were recognized right away by both critics and collectors as a body of work that made the case for american painting in a entirely new way : emotionnaly stirring and sensuously addictive. In threeyears, between 1954 and 1957 , prices for rothkos paintings trebled. No sooner had he begun to make money than he begun ti complain about being misunderstood and bookended with Pollock. 37. What did he say was the subject of his paintings? not? His pictures are supposed to gey you aroused, not calmed. What was it

38. What was the turn of his work around 1958-1959? Why? He turned away from the brilliant coulours because he suspected that they had turned him into a millionaire-friendly wallpaper. 39. What was the Four Seasons Restaurant? In the word of Rothko towards John Fischer, the editor of Harpers magazine , The four seasons restaurant was the place where the richest bastards in new york come to eat and show off 40. How were the Seagram murals created? Needing a big space to think big thoughts , he rented an old YMCA gym on the bowery. Inside the studio he rected scaffolding to the same dimensions as the four seasons space so that he could work three-dimensionally, seeing at each stage how the paintings would react with and against eachother. 41. What happened when he himself went to dine at the Four Seasons? His confidence that he could indeed make a place that would stop the diners in mid-souffl sank : he told a friend : Anyone who will eat that kind of food for that kind of money will never look at a painting of mine 42. What did he wish for after the failure of this project? His struggle to make a place of meditation was not over. 43. What was his place in art in the 1960s? He was himself an american institution , representing the USA atthe vennice biennale where he did succeed in installing a pure rothko-room and he was treated like the grandest surviving patriarch of the new york school. 44. How did he react to that? None of this seemed to give him joy , he turned to alcoholism and his lifelong chain-smoking began to give him heart and lung problem. 45. How did the Rothko chapel come into existence? In 1964, Dominique and John de Menil , enthusiastic collectors of modern art from a wealthy family through selling drilling equipment , offered Rothko just exactly what he wanted : A chapel custom-built to his expectations. 46. What is common to the eight artists of this book? How does this apply to Rothko? They all assumed our participating presence in their art but perparps none took such pains to make us partners not just in the beholding but in the creation of his art as rothko did.

47. In what ways does Rothkos art differ from contemporary British art? British comtemporary art was perhaps the farthest plac e from the commercial hustle and critical blood sports that animated its counterpart in New york. 48. What does Simon Schama mean by poignant to describe Rothkos and all art? Because its impossible to come to a room with rothkos paintings and not be touched by that poignancy : of our comings and goings, entrance and exits , womb, tomd and everything in bewteen.

Is that what you mean ?

1. After the bell rang, the boxers continued hitting themselves.

Cela signifie quils se frappent eux-mmes. After the bell rang, the boxers continued hitting each other. 2. Three men stole a bank in North London yesterday.

Cela signifie : They run away with the building Three men robe a bank in North London yesterday. 3. Try to take this medecine, it might help.

Taking the medecine sounds wierd / essayer de prendre attraper les mdicaments. If its + infinitif its the trying or try taking its an experiment . In this case we can say try to take wich would mean you have problem to take it otherwhise try taking means lets see if it works . Try taking this medecine, it might help.

4.

There were very little people in the supermarket this morning.

There were very few people in the supermarket this morning. 5. Unfortunately the coffee machine is out of work.

It means unemployed Unfortunately the coffee machine is out of service. 6. The ticket inspector came into the compartment and controlled our tickets. Controlled means be master / If he controlled the tickets, he has power on the tickets. Ex : The government controls the country. The ticket inspector came into the compartment and checked our tickets. 7. The landlady I stayed with in England was a very good cooker.

Cooker means the thing you cook on. We want to say she coocked very well The landlady I stayed with in England was a very good cook. 8. They hoped the fire brigade would arrive on time.

That means that there is an appointment. They hoped the fire brigade would arrive in time. 9. Nick couldnt reach the hammer, so he asked Bob to throw it at him. At him veut dire il lui jette le marteau dans la figure. Nick couldnt reach the hammer, so he asked Bob to throw it to him. 10. Helen usually goes to work with her car. they go together Helen usually goes to work by car. 11. I wish you would be taller. I wish / Something that can be possible. Its physical. Ex : I wish you would be taller than your father. I wish you were taller. 12. My boss told me that I must stop to sleep at work. It means He has to stop, stop in order to sleep. My boss told me that I must stop sleeping at work. 13. Im very boring in this class Je suis ennuyant et non je mennuie (le prof est alors chiant et non moimme) ! Im very bored in this class. 14. Alan had to change the train in Birmingham Had to modifie

Alan had to change trains in Birmingham 15. My mother split coffee on my nex dress so that I had to wear a different one. Elle a fait exprs pour quelle change de robe. If there is so that there is an attention. My mother split coffee on my nex dress so I had to wear a different one. 16. Your plants have grown up a lot since my last visite The plants become adults. To grow up is only for human being. To grow up = stop behaving like a children. Its only grow for anything else. Your plants have grown a lot since my last visite 17. Parents should educate their children more strictly Educate means they are the teachers of their childrenand only that. Parents should bring their children up more strictly 18. I often hear music at home Hear is not volontary. I havent choose it. Its in the street, Its listen to if I choose the music. I often listen to music at home. 19. I came to school by foot today Foot means a transport. For example I came by car. On foot means you use your feet. On foot beacause there is only one you use with on. I came to school on foot today. 20. My uncle Tom died with pneumonia. With means that someone died the same day. My uncle died from/of pneumonia. 21. Ive been painting three rooms today. That means he was painting the three rooms at the same time. Ive been means hw we occupied our day. Ive painted three rooms today. 22. After putting on my new dress my husband told me that the taxi had arrived. Its the husband who put the dress. After I put my new dress my husband told me that the taxi had arrived. 23. We drove back to the car hire company and I paid the car. Its the car which get the money. We drove back to the car hire company and I paid for the car. 24. My girlfriend has beautiful hairs In plural you can count them My girlfriend has beautiful hair. 25. The teacher gave us a paper to write our composition on. In this sens paper should be uncountable. Paper in itself means newspapper if its uncountable. The teacher gave us a sheet of paper to write our composition on.

26. That dress matches you perfectly Match as a noun. There is afinities between them. Its your perfect Partner. A confrontation between two teams. A match = allumette. To link, to ssociate. To match = aller bien ensemble. Fits = its exactly your size. Suits = everything is ok. That dress suits/fits you perfectly. 27. During the last lesson Annie made a picture of the class. Made means she created the object. During the last lesson Annie takes a picture of the class. 28. The bank manager said he would be happy to borrow money. To borrow = emrpunter. To lend = prter. It means that the manager need the money and that the Customer lend it. The bank manager said he would be happy to lend money. 29. My sister got married with a chinese man. the chinese man isnt the husband but gets married at the same time. My sister got married to a chinese man or My sister married a chinese man. 30. Renato is very good in Italian cooking. it means hes an ingrdient. Renato is very good at Italian cooking. 31. I usually read a magazine while I cut my hair. She is doing both at the same time. We must cahnge to significate that somebody does something for us. I usually read a magazine while I have my hair cut. 32. We played tennis when it started raining. There is two conscutive actions in this case. Past continius we were playing tennis when it started raining. We were playing tennis when it started raining. 33. In case the weather gets cold well put our jumpers on. The jumpers are already on. In case in something you do in prevision of the situation. If the weather gets cold well put our jumpers on. 34. After her son was convicted of robbery Mrs Thomas went to prison to visit him. it means thaht they are both in jail. Without the its the normaly use of the noun. After her son was convicted of robbery Mrs Thomas went to the prison to visit him. 35. When few friends arrived at Pats house she decided to have a party. Few = not a lot of poeple, not enough. A few = much people, its enough. Different in the opinion of the poeple. When a few friends arrived at Pats house she decided to have a party.

36. When Marc got home the dog was laying on the sofa. To lie = mentir (lied lied lying) to lie = tre couch, position (lay lain lying) to lay = mettre quelque chose sur quelque chose (laid lai laying). If the dog was laying it can only be eggs. When Marc got home the dog was lying on the sofa. 37. Paddy always says the truth. Il ne fait que dire truth Paddy always tells the truth. 38. At last I will end my speech by thanking you for your attention. At last means Well after a long time, there it comes (ex : Bus). At last = the minimum. Finally/ To conclude I will end my speech by thanking you for your attention. 39. When James goes on Holiday he asks me to look for his houseplants. Look for = searching / look at = just see. Look after = to care of When James goes on Holiday he asks me to look after his houseplants. 40. Kristy send a postcard of Michelangelos David with her address written on the backsite. It means the address is written on the back side of the statue. Kristy send a postcard of Michelangelos David with her address written on the back. 41. The bus driver suggested walking down to the river for a picnic. He is part of the picnic in this case. To walk down = the poeple who do it. If you suggested to do something youre part of it. If he suggest to do something he is excluded. Ex : He suggests going to the cinma (included) / He suggests to go to the cinma (excluded) He suggests that his father goes to the cinema. The bus river suggested to walk down to the river for a picnic. 42. Thats Julio. Hes coming from Colombia. Coming from = right now. Thats Julio. He comes from Colombia. 43. Twelve policemen are searching the Young who went missing yesterday. Are searching = sont en train de le fouiller. Looking for (informel) Searching for (formel) Twelve policemen are searching the Young who goes missing. 44. We ussualy have a toast at breakfast time. A toast means a speech / pour un jour spcial. We ussualy have toats, a piece of toast, some toast at breakfast time. 45. All our six children are in the bed at the moment. there is only one bed. All our six children are in bed, their beds at the moment.

46. Jim and Suzy arent very good parents, they never put their feet down. Ils volent . On veut dire quils sont trop indulgents. Taper du pied. Jim and Suzy arent very good parents, they never put their foot down. 47. Valeries new boyfriend is definitely in love with her he gives a ring to her every evening. Il lui donne une bague tout les jours. Valeries new boyfriend is definitely in love with her he gives her a ring every evening. 48. Bob cant put up Dans motorbike any longer its too noisy. Thy want to mean give a bed (hospitalit). We can say can put someone up / cant stand someone. Bob cant put up with Dans motorbike any longer its too noisy. 49. Dave and Helen arrived before the opera started but it was a race against the time. He is driving and the car is an another driver. Dave and Helen arrived before the opera started but i twas a race against time. 50. I couldnt remember his name when he arrived but it was at the end of my tongue. Il est sur le bout de la langue. I couldnt remember his name when he arrived but it was at the tip of my tongue. 51. Wed love to visit you, but the dogs tie us up most evenings. To tie = attacher, nouer. The dogs tie the peopleup Wed love to visit you, but were tied up with the dogs most evenings. 52. When the new cook started work Stefano was always pulling his legs. It means that hes really pulling his legs. Pulling the leg means making fun with him, make some jokes about him . For this expression leg without s. When the new cook started work Stefano was always pulling his leg. 53. I arrived after the film had started, but Gary soon put me into the picture. In that case Gary really put him in the picture. The expression is with in and means that Gary tells whats happened in the film before. I arrived after the film had started, but Gary soon put me in the picutre. 54. The doctor could see that James was filled with beans when he came for the medical. He was really full of beans. Full of beans is an expression that means he has a lot of energy. The doctor could see that James was full of beans when he came for the medical. 55. Its sad that so many wild animals are overrun by cars these days.

Overrun means covered with. We want to mean they are Under de wheels of the car. Its sad that so many wild animals are run over these days. 56. He was worried before the exam but for him it was a piece of cake Here it means he receive a piece of cake but we want to mean that i twas easy He was worried before the exam but for hi mit was piece of cake

57. It takes Bill a long time to show his Holiday slides he keeps being carried away. He was so exited that he must leave the room. He was taking out of the room. We want to mean that he was nostalgic , he think hes still there, he is somewhere else in his imagination. We want to mean hes so much in this story It takes Bill a long time to show his Holiday slides hes getting carried away. 58. Sally was Lucky to have her friends she could fall back onto when she broke her arm decorating. She fell on her friends while she was decorating. We are trying to say that she could count on them. Sally was Lucky to have her friends she could fall back on when she broke her arm decorating. 59. I see that Paul and Ginny have finally met their matches on the tennis court. Matches = allumettes. They are playing against matches. We are trying to say that they met too other players that are as good as them. To match = to put together thing that are good together, competition. I see that Paul and Ginny have finally met their match on the tennis court. 60. Mrs Johnson said she was glad to see Karls back. Shes looking at his back. We are trying to say that she is glad to see him leaving. Shes glad hes leaving. We want to say : Finally hes leaving ! Hes so boring Mrs Johnson said she was glad to see the back of Karl. 61. Paul will have to come back down to the earth one day. He is not on the planet at the moment. To earth it means dreaming. Paul will have to come back down to earth one day. 62. This music brings me back to the Time I spent in Greece. Its really bringing you in Greece. We are trying to say that the music reminds him his time spent in Greece. This music takes me back to the Time I spent in Greece. 63. Dont worry about Sharon and Wayne arguing its just a storm in a cup of tea.

There is really a Storm in a cup of tea. Were trying to say Its not a big deal . The diffrence between cup of tea and tea cup is that a tea cup is just the rcipient its empty. Dont worry about Sharon and Wayne arguing its just a strom in a tea cup. 64. The only trouble with teaching that class is Marcel hes alway splitting hair. Hair it refers to the all of it. All your hairs are your hair. When we say hair in the singuar it means whatever you have on your head. Hes creating in this sens hairline by splitting hair. We have to say hairs for the expression. The only trouble with teaching that class is Marcel hes always splitting hairs. 65. I ran over Giles in town yesterday. It was great to see him again. I ran on him, hes under the wheels of my car. We are trying to say Oh ! What a surprise ! I ran into Giles in town yesterday. It was great to see him again. 66. I havent seen Jimmy for ages. Next time Im in Scotland I must look up him. It means you look somewhere down up. On regarde den bas. We are trying to say to visit him . Loo someone up means to visit someone that you havent seen for a long time. I hvent seen Jimmy for ages. Next time I must look him up. 67. When we got to the Holiday homes, the manager told us to take our picks. Picks = pioches. The manager told them to take the material when they arrive in Holiday. Pick means choose the room, the thing that you prefer. When we got to the Holiday homes, the manager told us to take our pick. 68. Ill have to lose some weight because this is becoming a vicious cycle. The is a bicycle somewhere. Vicious circle (cercle vicieux) Ill have to lose some weight because this is becoming a vicious circle. 69. Id forgotten that Brendas sister died last month, so when I asked who photograph was of, really put my foot on it. He really put his foot on the picture. We are trying to say that he made a tactless remark. Id forgotten that Brendas sister died last month, so when I asked who photograph was of, I really put my foot in it. 70. Geoff and Suzy usually organise a few games to break ice at their parties. There is really ice and at the party you hate to break ice. To break the ice means to relax the atmosphere. Geoff and Suzy usually organise a few games to break the ice at their parties.

71. Mr Sturgess is going to overtake Mr Simpsons position as manager. Overtake = dpasser (en voiture). It has to do with trafic anyway. We are trying to say that he took his place to take over. Mr Sturgess is going to take over Mr Simpsons position as manager. 72. Making Turkish coffee is easy, but an espresso is completely different kettle of fishes. Kettle = cafetire, bouilloir. Here it means there are really fishes. We are trying to say a kittle of fish which means much more difficult and completely fishes is not using in the plural normally. We only use it when we insist on the number. Sheep is the same. Majing Turkish coffee is easy, but an espresso is completely different kettle of fish. 73. My borther hit the ceiling when I told him Id crashed his car. Here he really hit the ceiling. We are trying to say that he was really angry. My Brother hit the roof when I told him Id crashed his car. 74. It was nearly 9.20 am, but only one person in the office had gone down for work. People are somewhere up the office. They are standing up. We are trying to say that only one person is working. It was nearly 9.20 am, but only one person in the office lets get down to work. 75. Can you keep the eye on the soup ? Im just going to make a phone call. He really put an eye on the soup. We are trying to say check if everything is ok. Can you keep an eye on the soup ? Im just going to make a phone call. 76. Dont complain to me about the smoke ; youre barking at the wrong tree. Barking = dogs bark (the noise that dogs make). Hes barking at the neighbour. We are trying to say that youre recusing the wrong person. Accusing the wrong person. Dont complain to me about the smoke ; youre barking up at the wrong tree. 77. Fergus was engaged for six months, but on the day of the wedding his feet got cold. The feet is really cold. The best man bring him his shoes. Were trying to say that he doesnt want to marry her anymore. He runs away. Fergus was engaged for six months, but on the day of the wedding he got cold feet. 78. Karen was having an argument with her sister when she suddenly turned me on. Turn someone on = to arise sexually. Were trying to say that she turned suddenly. Karen was having an argument with her sister when she suddenly turned on me.

79. On the trip to France the French teacher and her husband really lost their faces when the hotel manager couldnt understand their french. Their faces really falled down. Were trying to say that they are humiliated. On the trip to France the French Teacher and her husband lost face when the hotel manager couldnt understand their french. 80. Pam had to fill in one of the teacher who was ill. Fill in = litteraly fill the teacher. We are trying to say that she replaced the teacher. Pam had to fill in for one of the teacher who was ill. 02/05 The Spanish boy I met on holidays 3 years ago still drop me some lines sometimes. > The Spanish boy I met on holidays 3 years ago still drop me a line sometimes. I didnt think my drawing of Masami was right so I decided to start again from the scratch. > I didnt think my drawing of Masami was right so I decided to start again from scratch. If Marc had the chance to sleep in the tent, hed jump on it. > If Marc had the chance to sleep in the tent, hed jump at it. You must get off that parcel soon otherwise it wont arrive by Christmas. > You must get that parcel off soon otherwise it wont arrive by Christmas. I wasnt happy about the state of the ships bathroom but Henry told me that it was just the top of the iceberg. > I wasnt happy about the state of the ships bathroom but Henry told me that it was just the tip of the iceberg .