Giacometti's Nose or "ein Lugaus der Phantasie ins Rings"

During a seminar at the Kunstakademie Münster, the subject being Giacometti's sculpture 'The Nose', which was modelled on the features of a dead friend of his as representing the dead as being dead, I learned of a wish of Giacometti's, which was to be hanged just once and still live on. I was very much struck by this story, because something deep inside of me understood and agreed with this desire; and had in fact cherishing it for some time as well...

As does the wonderful Christian Morgenstern in his poems entitled "Galgenlieder"

Or to put it quite differently owing to Michael Pennington in Battle of Wills: "To be no more worth than a piss in the Thames".

It will all make sense in good time

There was one messenger from the gods already, my Mercury, http://das-unmoegliche.blogspot.com/2011/01/messenger-from-god-or-gods.html , and it made sense only a few days later because Mercury or Mercure was exactly the direction I should have been thinking of.

On September 22nd 2010 in the Bishop's Garden at Chichester, I heard a strange sound, "tock", and felt something on my left boot, while I was writing a letter. When I raised my eyes there was a robin on my boot, puzzled we both stared at each other. Allegedly - though I was unaware of the implications at that moment - also a messenger from a diety...

I'm definitely looking forward to returning to this magical place in August again....

Iedereen is van de wereld - everybody is of this world

This one goes out to the fabulous people sitting next to me during Love Is My Sin, with whom I had a lovely conversation about building a snowman and why it ought to be a carrot for a nose (if you haven't got one) and how a five-year old should know!!! It's been wonderful sharing this performance with you and seeing the sparkle in your eyes!!!
In het donker kan ik jou niet zien, maar ik weet dat jij daar staat (in the dark I cannot see you, but I know that you are standing there)!!

 And probably I was one of the misfits ;-)!!!

Greetings from my lovely daughter Debora to everybody reading this!!

Een doreen wia in Karke in de kerk - Chichester Festival Booking

Having nearly lost my nerves while trying to book a ticket or two for The Syndicate at the Minerva in Chichester (I'm not yet sure if I've actually booked only one, B13, or two others, A13 and A18, as well for August 16th), I definitely need something like the wonderful Intergalactic Lovers from Ghent to soothe my nerves!!!

and

Shakespeare's Spectres

Some time ago I read about a documentary entitled "Battle of Wills" and being intrigued - and definitely wanting to watch the movie - I contacted an email address that I've also come across . I was astonished to learn that in fact I was communicating with its director Anne Henderson ...

Anne was very servicable and sent me a copy....

And what shall I say?! She has directed a very subtle documentary, that at once manages to enlight several layers of one story. The most important one is one man's, Lloyd Sullivan's, battle to establish the "scientific" proof that a portrait, known as the Sanders portrait, that he had inherited, was in fact representing Shakespeare. Yet there is much more to be learned here and this is how art nowadays has become a commercial product like any other and that by those objective scientific proofs a lot of money can be gained and lost, depending on the outcome. Furthermore on yet another level national resentiment and pride gets involved when Sanders portrait challenges by its existence the authenticity of the National Portrait Gallery's own Chandos portrait, for Lloyd Sullivan's family had moved to Canada. Revealing how the representatives of the British institution save themselves by repeating tautologies like a mantra, without giving any substantial reason, they are merely saying that the Sanders portrait cannot be Shakespeare because it cannot be :-). First when I had watched only the first 16 minutes of the movie I was reminded of another battle I had been reading about, one of ideologies, between Martin Heidegger and Meyer Shapiro. In this case Jacques Derrida stated that the actual issue of their feud, The Pair of Shoes by Vincent Van Gogh and also Van Gogh himself had become a revenant, a spectre, a ghost in the process...

At this point I would suggest for anybody, having become interested by this post and the mysterious smile of the man in the Sanders portrait, represented on the scan accompanying this uttering, to use the following link http://www.informactionfilms.com/en/productions/battle-of-wills.php and order a copy. It "stars" also  people like  Joseph Fiennes, Simon Callow, Gregory Doran and Michael Pennington.

Bonne chance to Lloyd Sullivan and Anne Henderson, and this about tells where my personal sympathies lie...

Ab Oriente - Aachen and St Pancras

Suddenly last December when waiting for the Eurostar to depart from St Pancras International I was strongly reminded of Aachen and its Palatine Chapel. Allegedly it is the most beautiful edifice north of the Alpes and I must agree. Charlemagne robbed the pillars from Ravenna and had his chapel built in the Byzantine style (still Aachen's French name is Aix-la-chapelle).

Oh holy Charlemagne - at least to me , for he is a local saint, venerated only in the diocese of Aachen nowadays, but since this is where I'm living I certainly may pray to him :-). Moreover when he still was venerated by the whole of the Roman Catholic church, pilgrims came to Aachen and as a sign of worship, they would crawl underneath his throne, errected in the chapel. Thanks to the kindness of the late auxiliary bishop August Peters I had the opportunity to do the same, oh holy Charlemagne.

But then Aachen had its white elephant in the 9th century, a gift from Harun al-Rashid to Charlemagne. What more does one need to fuel one's imagination?!

And it is believed that the cathedral at Aachen was the model for James Ensor's etching The Cathedral:

Maybe still the Master Builder lurking a little bit

Definitely an issue coming up now - and being discussed in Ibsen's Master Builder - is the question of the origin of art, what is art, why is there art at all, what use?! Here there are excerpts from an interview with Barnett Newman conducted by Thomas B. Hess

And adding to that the words of the immortal Hugo Claus, first as translated into English by Absynthe Minded

My verses stand gawping a bit
I never get used to this
They lived here long enough
Enough!
I send them out of the house
I don’t wanna wait
Until their toes are cold
Enough!
I wanna hear the humming of the sun
Or that of my heart,
Hardening
Enough!
They don’t screw classically
They babble commonly
And bluster nobly
Enough! Enough!
In winter their lips leap
In spring they lie flat at the first warmth
They ruin my summer
And in autumn it’s girls and a broken heart

For another twelve lines on this sheet
I’ll hold my hand over their head
And then I’ll kick them out
Enough!
Go and pester elsewhere, one-cent rhymes
Find somebody who cares
Enough!
Go now on your high feet
This is where the graves laugh
When they see their guests
Enough!
One corpse on top of the other
Go now and stagger to her
Whom I do not know
Enough! Enough!
In winter their lips leap
In spring they lie flat at the first warmth
They ruin my summer
And in autumn it’s girls and a broken heart

And here the original:

Envoi

Mijn verzen staan nog wat te gapen.
Ik word dit nooit gewoon. Zij hebben hier lang
genoeg gewoond.
Genoeg. Ik stuur ze 't huis uit, ik wil niet wachten
tot hun tenen koud zijn.
Ongehinderd door hun onhelder misbaar
wil ik het gegons van de zon horen
of dat van mijn hart, die verraderlijke spons die verhardt.

Mijn verzen neuken niet klassiek,
zij brabbelen ordinair of brallen al te nobel.
In de winter springen hun lippen,
in de lente liggen zij plat bij de eerste warmte,
zij verzieken mijn zomer
en in de herfst ruiken zij naar vrouwen.

Genoeg. Nog twaalf regels lang op dit blad
hou ik ze de hand boven het hoofd
en dan krijgen zij een schop in hun gat.
Ga elders drammen, rijmen van een cent,
elders beven voor twaalf lezers
en een snurkende recensent.

Ga nu, verzen, op jullie lichte voeten,
jullie hebben niet hard getrapt op de oude aarde
waar de graven lachen als zij hun gasten zien,
het ene lijk gestapeld op het andere.
Ga nu en wankel naar haar
die ik niet ken.

Restoring Chekhov's House

For all you Michael Pennington admirers out there, who might also fancy his cause to save Chekhov's White Dacha in Yalta, you can download his account of his journey there in the autumn of 2009 on this website http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bydesign/ . Scroll down to the podcast of the edition of Wednesday 26 January  2011, there is a small trick as you cannot download the singular item - due to copyright restrictions -, but if you listen to the entire show, it is yet included ;-) ( and it may also be downloaded, shhhh!! ). To accompany the sound there are some photographs of the event on this site http://www.yalta.chekhov.com.ua/start_r.php4 , scroll down to the post dated 4.11.2009 15:50. Enjoy! 

PS :And please remember to donate some money for this certainly worthwhile cause http://www.yaltachekhov.org/help.html !!!

Die Zeit ist aus den Fugen* - the time is out of joint - the strange life and times of Dr Karl Wollf

* ein sehr empfehlenswertes Buch von Hansjörg Schneider, mit dem Untertitel "Dresdens Schauspiel in den zwanziger Jahren"

Dr Karl Wollf (1876-1952), photograph taken from the beforementioned book

Some time ago I grew very interested in the actor Anton Walbrook or Adolf Wohlbrück, so I tried to find out as much as possible about him. During research I came across many intriguing people, but the one that made me feel almost jealous of Walbrook for having personally known such a man, was Dr Karl Wollf, dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus (theatre) in Dresden from 1916 until 1933 (sadly he belonged to the first people being expelled by the Nazis).

The first text by Wollf I read was his booklet accompanying the Shakespeare Festival 1930 in Dresden and the  open minded attitude he exhibits, his kind of humour, instantly made me fall in love with his daring intellect. Especially the preface caught my eye, where he compares Shakespeare's genius with nature itself and states that it is as boundless as the forces of nature. Here are scans of this preface (it's in German alas):

Some time later I discovered that Wollf had also written a book entitled "Journey Into Chaos", this time since it was published in English and mainly for an English speaking audience during WW2 he called himself Charles Wollf. There he gives a very detailed account of his personal life from the beginning of WW1, Germany and  the European continent inbetween the wars, focussing especially on his personal encounters and on the cultural life of those countries - for anybody interested in the 1920s in Germany and the impact that the upcoming National Socialism had on German culture, certainly a must-read -  until his hair-raising escape from Vichy France to England in the early 1940s. At the beginning of WW2 he was as "hostile" foreigner detained in Paris and subsequently sent to live in the south of France after France had been occupied. Having read some of his writings, I certainly was very interested in the way such a man would handle the atrocities threatening his very life. And what I found was an account of the most amazing dream, something that comes very close to Posthumus' vision in Cymbeline. Wollf is absolutely overwhelmed by the awful circumstances he has to live in - scarcely any food, no heating in the winter , the company of other refugees he had learned to hate etc - yet he interprets this in his vision as just punishment for his past sins, but just when he is about to be subdued by all this, there arises hope and he understands that beyond God's justice, there lies God's mercy. Consequently this gave him the hope and the power to design a daring plan to escape via Spain and Portugal to England, which thanks to his family and friends in England worked out just fine. In London he became a founder member of the "Club 43", an organisation of German-Jewish emigrants, which still resides in Belsize Square!

Albert Bassermann and Max Ophüls or The art of performing

"The Sublime is Now"   Barnett Newman

Once upon the time in the early 1920s in the beautiful city of Aachen, when Max Ophüls was still an actor engaged at the city's Stadttheater, there came the great Albert Bassermann. He was touring the land with a production of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Kollege Crampton" with him in the lead and local actors taking the minor parts. All Bassermann actually did was to instruct  his fellow actors how to (re-)act beforehand. Thus he told Max Ophüls : "Young man, there will be this scene when my character gets sacked in front of all the others. I will take it the hard way and you will pat me on the shoulder." Comes the performance and the beforementioned scene, Bassermann is standing there with his back(!) turned to the audience facing Ophüls. At that moment Ophüls gets struck by awe  and surprise, for there are real tears streaming down Bassermann's face and for a moment he cannot even move, when he hears a very low voice besides him: "Now, young man pat me on the shoulder!" ;-)

Bassermann as Henry Percy in Max Reinhardt's production of Henry IV Part 1