AS ABOVE, SO BELOW A Novel of Peter Bruegel by Rudy Rucker

If you have read Girl with a Pearl Earring and enjoyed the references to Vermeer’s paintings, you will likely enjoy reading Rudy Rucker’s imagined tale of artist Peter Bruegel’s progress with his many paintings. The story ends before his two sons, Little Peter and Jan, took up the brush. 

Each of Rucker’s chapters is headed with the title and photograph of a Bruegel painting. The journey begins in the French-Italian Alps and Rome, but quickly moves to Belgium, mainly in Antwerp and Brussels. 

Life in the middle 1500s was not easy, what with the Inquisition breathing down your neck or lopping off your head at the neck. But even with an uneasy certainty that someone you knew would soon be hung or headless, life went on in soap opera fashion. Family life, friendships, feuds and patched relationships abound with humor and tragedy mingled together in a fascinating narrative. 

Throughout, Bruegel’s dry humor and joie de vivre shine a bright central light on the tale and move the story forward. A comment that especially struck me was: 

“That was the thing about art:

your fingers spilled the secrets of your soul

before you knew them yourself.” 

Another comment that remains vivid in my mind is presented after Peter Bruegel witnesses an everyday scene in a street filled with descriptive characters and everyday occurrences: 

“—life was endlessly rich and endlessly various,

and it could take a man eight years simply to paint

one single moment of one single day.” 

This intimate look at Bruegel’s Beekeepers, Beggars, and Birdsnesters is well worth reading. 

 

Next up for review is:

Kill Switch by Steve N Lee

 

 

 

Z is for Zeitgeist: Picasso's Recurring Theme AtoZChallenge

The theme of my 2014 A-to-Z Blog Challenge is BLUES, PUPUS, and REVIEWS.

Monday & Wednesday - REVIEWS: mini-style book reviews 

This brings full circle my A to Z posts which

began with: 

ART: Picasso’s recurring theme - desolation of social outsiders - which answers to his BLUE period extending from 1901 through 1904; 

 

and end with:

 

ZEITGEIST (the general intellectual, moral, and cultural state of an era): where Picasso’s recurring theme - desolation of social outsiders - answers to the spirit of the time, the artistic and intellectual avant garde at the start of the twentieth century. 

 

 

In the book, PICASSO by Jp. A. Calosse, the author addresses the three essentials of Picasso’s ripening style during the second half of 1901. 

1. Predominance of form in composition

2. Sentimental themes

3. Use of monochromatic blue 

Together, these three essentials help me appreciate the artist’s state of mind during a period of time when his genius poured forth onto canvas for the world to view, study, and absorb. 

The writer in me believes Picasso did not consciously create a “BLUE PERIOD” in his life. As a painter, he did what came naturally to him. Would you agree with my conclusion that, rather than use his paintings to editorialize his feelings, he painted to explore his artistic talents?

 

Jp. A. Calosse: Picasso

http://www.amazon.com/Picasso-Jp-Calosse-ebook/dp/B00CR6CYFO/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1398650248&sr=1-8&keywords=Picasso

 

A to Z CHALLENGE - ART: Picasso's BLUE Period

 

Thank you to Arlee Bird,

Alex J. Cavanaugh, and all the co-hosts

of the 2014 A to Z Challenge,

for your tremendous efforts

to 'make it happen' each year.

 

 

 

 

The theme of my 2014 A-to-Z Blog Challenge is BLUES, PUPUS, and REVIEWS.

Tuesday & Friday - BLUES: Art, Movies, Music, and Police;

Thursday & Saturday - PUPUS: Hawaiian snacks to whet your appetite;

Monday & Wednesday - REVIEWS: mini-style book reviews

When I worked in the Chicago Loop, my interest in Picasso was fueled by a daily lunchtime rendezvous with Picasso’s unnamed sculpture. Donated to the city in 1967, it dominated the Civic Center (Daley Plaza).

 

I also spent an inordinate amount of time at the Art Institute of Chicago (now The Chicago Institute of Art) in Grant Park. Picasso’s most popular ‘Blue Period’ painting, THE OLD GUITARIST, was displayed prominently there. I purchased a poster of the piece, framed it, and hung it on my apartment wall. Years later, the poster still triggered images of the original painting’s genius brush strokes. Far from feeling blue, the obvious message of despair Picasso projected, I felt my spirits soar.

 

I especially like the elongated fingers of the old guitarist in the painting. They reflect the influence El Greco had on Picasso. His blue period, from 1901 through 1904, was dominated by themes of loneliness and poverty, possibly sparked by his friend’s suicide.

 

Some say it was not poverty that led Picasso to paint the impoverished outsiders of society: beggars, prostitutes, drunks, and outcasts, but that he painted them made him poor himself. If this is true, does it follow that subject matter also determines a writer’s spiritual wealth?