the beautiful contemplation that comes in with autumn

“I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains are the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.” — Michel De Montaigne

It is an accomplishment, absolute and God-like, to know how to enjoy our being as we ought. We seek other attributes because we do not understand the use of our own; and, having no knowledge within, we sally forth outside ourselves. —‘On Experience’ by Michel de Montaigne, 1268-9.

“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.” — Michel de Montaigne

“…certainly philosophy is no other than sophisticated poetry. Whence do the ancient writers extract their authorities but from the poets? and the first of them were poets themselves, and writ accordingly. Plato is but a poet unripped. Timon calls him, insultingly, ‘a monstrous forger of miracles’.” Michel de Montaigne, Essays

“He is always against something. Anger incites him. I am always for something. Anger poisons me. I love, I love, I love.” — Anais Nin, “Henry and June”

“She bubbles, her talk is like the foam of the sea, her laughter dispels all concerns.” — Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955.

“I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.” — Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anais Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

“I feel very small. I don’t understand. I have so much courage, fire, energy, for many things, yet I get so hurt, so wounded by small things.” — — Anaïs Nin, from Nearer the Moon: The Previously Unpublished Unexpurgated Diary, 1937-1939

“We are all, in turn, wounded, by someone, something.” — Anais Nïn, from The Diaries of Anais Nïn, Vol. 7: 1966-1974.

“Even memory is an act of imagination, you never tell the same story twice, not even to yourself.” — Michael Burkard, as featured in Mary Ruefle’s On Imagination

Nightmare (Detail), 1846 - Ditlev Blunck 

Saint Andrew, Pompeo Batoni, 1740-43

Purity of the Heart
Pompeo Batoni
Oil on canvas
c. 1752

Jan Bogaerts (1878-1962) House with Garden in the Vosges

Henry Robert Morland, “The Ballad Singer”, ca. 1764

Twilight at seaside, 1819, Caspar David Friedrich

“Fiction teaches us that the sorrows of living are meaningful. Fiction restores the meaning. The experience which is being lived day by day may seem futile, destructive because the vision of totality is lacking. In the novel it acquires a pattern. It is fiction. It reaches beyond pain to the pattern of meaningfulness which consoles us for all the agonies, and uncovers elevations.” Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume Five 1947-1955

“When one is uprooted, transplanted, there is a temporary withering. I always panic at this and think it is permanent. I thought my life was shrinking… I began to sprout new leaves.” — Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. three

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” — Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974

I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise. Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in The Diary Of Anais Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

“I walk into the fire always, and come out more alive.” — Anaïs Nin, from a letter quoted in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume IV (1944-1947)

Peter Alexander (American, b. 1939), Punta Jose, 1986. Oil and wax on canvas

Running Artemis, Greek, late 2nd century BC–early 1st century AD, Saint Louis Art Museum: Ancient Art

Portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga (1598–1655), half-length, as a Bride. Giusto Sutterman. Flemish 1597-1681. oil/canvas. Christie’s Oct. 2020.

Bergh Richard - Nordic Summer Evening (1900)

Orazio Gentileschi - Danae (1621)

Andrew Wyeth - Her Room (1963)

Harald Slott-Møller - Georg Brandes at the University in Copenhagen (1889)

Naum Gabo, Opus 9, 1973

art digest 02 / “A man is a god in ruins.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Squall - Andrew Wyeth, 20th century

Trodden Weed (1951) Andrew Wyeth

Stephen Seymour Thomas - The Violin Student

Parmigianino, Portrait of a Man with a Book. 1524, oil on canvas. Private collection.

Jan Van Huysum, Nature Morte avec des Fruits 1722

Mercury about to Behead Argus Ubaldo Gandolfi, c. 1770-1775

A Sleeping Legionary in a Helmet, Ubaldo Gandolfi

Sala degli imperatori, Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photographed by Max Hutzel, c.1960.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) Study of a Young Man (c. 1760)

Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) Patroclus 1780 oil on canvas

(Nordic Summer Evening) Sven Bergh Richard, ca. 1899/90

St. Matthew and the Angel by Guido Reni, 1635–40

Still Life with Goblet and Fruit by Jan Jansz. van de Velde (1656)

Vanitas Still-Life (1659-60). Pieter Claesz. (Dutch, c.1597-1661). Oil on canvas.

Vanitas Still Life with the Spinario, 1628, Pieter Claesz

Attributed to Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1623) A Young Shephard Circa 1620-1625

Portrait of a boy, Albert Anker

A Roman Marble Sarcophagus Relief Torso of a Young Warrior, Eastern Mediterranean, 1st half of the 3rd Century AD.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818

Giorgio da Castelfranco (1478-1510) Double Portrait (attributed to Giorgione)

Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton

Andrew Wyeth (American, 1917-2009), Marriage, 1993. Tempera on panel prepared with gesso

Portrait of a man 1881 Léon-Augustin Lhermitte (1844-1925)

Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) The Village Lovers 1882

Emile Friant (1863-1932) Ombres portées 1891

Anne-Louis Girodet De Roussy-Trioson (1767-1824)

Alexandre Boucher (detail)

1819

Isidore Pils (1813-1875)

Two head studies

1840-1845

Christen Købke (1810-1848) Portrait of Frederik Sødring 1832

Charles-Marie Bouton (1781-1853) The Drawing Lesson 1826

Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691) Portret van een jonge man (detail) ca. 1640-1660

Nicolaes van Helt Stockade (1614-1669) Portret van Georg Pfründt ca. 1640

Pietro Canonica (1869-1959)

The artist in his studio, Charles Willson Peale. 1822, Pennsylvania academy of fine arts.

Silenus cradling the infant Dionysus.
Roman copy of A.D. 1st-2nd century after a bronze Greek original of ca 300 B.C. presumably by Lysippos.
Medium: Marble

Mars Vigilant (Man in Armor Holding a Pike), Jan van Bijlert, ca. 1630

Bo Bartlett - The Box, 2002 Oil on Linen

Details, part II: “Arabesque” series, contemporary, by Daniel Abel.

Elliott Erwitt, Acropolis Museum, Athens, 1976

Male acephalic body Inspired by Greek statues. Marble. Roman period. after J. C.

Head of Jupiter. 1st.century AD. Roman. bronze.

Luis Veldrof, aposentador mayor y conserje del Real Palacio - portrait by Vicente López y Portaña, 1823 detail

A Vanitas Still Life with an Hourglass, a Skull, a Violin, a Snuffed Candle, Coins, Books, Musical Scores, Cards, a Sword, a Helmet and a Woolen Cloth on a Table draped with a Persian Carpet, North Italian School, second half of the 17th Century

The Open Window, Carl Vilhelm Holsøe

Still Life with a Lute and a Guitar, Nicolas-Henry Jeaurat de Bertry

vogue 1994 Roman Holiday

“Roman Holiday”

Vogue, December 1994

photographer: Arthur Elgort

model: Claudia Schiffer

invisible circus, rome, 2001

Have you always listened to the tick tock fever pitch of your heart when walking in the Roman alleyways? Have eyes followed you around every corner?

I want to go down this alley with you. I want to see where we end up. Sooner or later we’ll part, for we all do, but let’s turn and twist awhile, let’s follow the invisible circus’ insistent rhythms.

The Strong Man, the Bearded Lady, the Dwarves, the Painted Horses, The Fire Eaters, the Trapeze Artists, the Freaks, the Carnivale Women, the Caramel Apple Man, the Sad Faced Clowns, the Elephants, the Monkeys, the Musician with eyes that undress us, the Knife Thrower and his Assistant, the Man with the Tophat, the Liontamer, the Lion, the Ostrich, the Peacock, the Double-Jointed Sitar Player, the Fortune Tellar, the Travellers… Let’s dance with them! To their intangible beats, to the long since passed echoes.

I still feel life in these rocks bleeding out for us. Giving it another go. Entertain us! Entertain us!

I still feel his eyes on us, undressing us, calling to us; I see the tarot cards laid out, I see different paths diverging at opposite sides of the table for us, I hear the clang of her silver earings, I hear the bells chime in a hundred church towers all at once. I smell the animal’s fur, I hear the smoldering, purring growl breaking into night. I hear the clowns laughter clogged with tears. Pancake makeup streaked grey, red and black. Forming rivers of impatient color around our feet.

I only need to hear your voice singing ancient songs we cannot translate and you’ll save me from going off into this invisble circus for good.

But the music rises, the memories crowd me into a corner, I need to move, to get out, to keep going, to keep moving, to rise to the occasion and be someone else. One self does not satisfy me. I don’t satisfy me. (2001)

(I took this photograph in Rome in 2008, Nikon Film 100, Englishman’s Cemetery, Aventine)