Poetry, stories, art, and music from the desk of Jezzie G, a writer without a label
Can’t Stop
Album: By the Way
Date: 2002
Genre: Rock
Artist: Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Red Hot Chilli Peppers are a rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The lineup is vocalist Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea, drummer Chad Smith, and guitarist John Frusciante. With music incorporating elements of rock, funk, punk, hard rock, psychedelic rock, and hip hop their eclectic range has influenced a variety of genres including funk metal, rap rock, rap metal, and nu-metal
Dancing Ostriches
1995
Surrealism
Pastel on paper mounted on aluminium
Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
‘Dancing Ostriches’ is part of a series of paintings created by Rego in which she depicts muscular, stocky women stretching and preparing for a ballet performance. The ‘Ostriches’ are all dressed in black continuing Rego’s interest in the opposing states of innocence and experience, of life and death
Paula Rego
Surrealism, School of London, Feminist Art
Born: 26 January 1935, Lisbon, Portugal
Nationality: Portuguese-British
Died: 8 June 2022, London, UK
Rego was a visual artist, considered the preeminent female artist of the late 20th and early 21st century. She is best known for her paintings and prints based on storybooks. Rego’s style evolved from abstract to representational and she favoured pastels over oils, Her work often reflected feminism
The Keys of Morning
1920
While at her bedroom window once,
Learning her task for school,
Little Louisa lonely sat
In the morning clear and cool,
She slanted her small bead-brown eyes
Across the empty street,
And saw Death softly watching her
In the sunshine pale and sweet.
His was a long lean sallow face;
He sat with half-shut eyes,
Like a old sailor in a ship
Becalmed ‘neath tropic skies.
Beside him in the dust he had set
His staff and shady hat;
These, peeping small, Louisa saw
Quite clearly where she sat –
The thinness of his coal-black locks,
His hands so long and lean
They scarcely seemed to grasp at all
The keys that hung between:
Both were of gold, but one was small,
And with this last did he
Wag in the air, as if to say,
“Come hither, child, to me!”
Louisa laid her lesson book
On the cold window-sill;
And in the sleepy sunshine house
Went softly down, until
She stood in the half-opened door,
And peeped. But strange to say
Where Death just now had sunning sat
Only a shadow lay:
Just the tall chimney’s round-topped cowl,
And the small sun behind,
Had with its shadow in the dust
Called sleepy Death to mind.
But most she thought how strange it was
Two keys that he should bear,
And that, when beckoning, he should wag
The littlest in the air
Walter de la Mare
Born: 25 April 1873, London, England
Nationality: English
Died: 22 June 1956, Twickenham, England
De la Mare was a poet, short story writer, and novelist, best remembered for his works for children and for his poem “The Listeners.” He also authored a subtle collection of psycho horror stories including “All Hallows” and “Seaton’s Aunt.” In 1921 he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel “Memoirs of a Midget” and in 1947 the Carnegie Medal for British Children’s Books
Gina Pane
Body Art, Performance Art, Earth Art, Feminist Art
Born: 24 May 1939, Biarritz, France
Nationality: French
Died: 6 March 1990, Paris, France
Pane was an artist of Italian origins. She attended the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from 1960 to 1965 and was a member of Art Coporel, a 1970s body art movement. Pane also taught at the École des Beaux-Arts, Mans, from 1975 to 1990 as well as running an atelier to performance art at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, from 1978 to 1979 commissioned by Pontus Hulten
Best known for the performance piece “The Conditioning” (1973), in which Pane is laid on a metal bed frame over burning candles. Marina Abramović recreated the piece in 2005 as part of her “Seven Easy Pieces” at New York’s Solomon R Guggenheim Museum
Pane’s artistic career was carved out of using her body as a symbol of humanity and its universal body. It was a canvas to express communal concerns such as sexuality, spirituality, gender, politics, feminism, the environment, and suffering. Her work contributed to the French Body Art movement, Art Corporel, in which artists used their own flesh and blood as an art medium, laying bare the strength and fragility of the body as a tool for expression.
Best known for the azioni pieces in which Pane would perform strategic sets of actions upon herself, often requiring high levels of physical endurance and tolerance of pain. Using her own body invited the viewers to resonate on a deeper level with the feelings she was going through and trying to convey. Pane was also interested in the visual language of ritual and often executed her performances with that in mind, borrowing from religious rites and other self-sacrificial practices creating contemporary versions of the personal and spiritual relationship.
Pane’s work emerged as many artists began exhibiting the documentation of conceptual work as the artwork itself. Many of Pane’s actions, whilst done privately, were meticulously staged, and photographed so that viewers would viscerally feel the emotional depth of a piece whilst not witnessing first-hand its creation.
Born in Biarritz, France in 1939 to an Italian father and an Austrian mother Pane spent most of her youth in Italy growing up speaking both Italian and French. Her father was a piano maker and inspired Pane’s use of felt in her art.
Pane moved to Paris in 1961 to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She also worked at Atelier d’Art sacré, an organization that paired artists with projects for civic and religious buildings. Pane is renowned for her performance art but she also explored painting, sculpture, and land-based art. Mostly geometric, hard-edged abstractions Pane’s paintings revealed a preference for colour and minimalist form.
Sculptural elements remained as part of Pane’s oeuvre whilst her interest in painting was short, in 1969 she threw four pieces into the Chisane river in Perosa Argentina, Italy so they’d reach the sea in a ritualistic abandonment of the medium.
Pane was troubled by the conservatism of the French government in the late 1960s and the growing violence and trauma of the Vietnam War. A volatile period of unrest unfurled in France during May 1968punctuated by demonstrations and major general strikes including the occupation of universities and factories across the country almost bringing the French economy to a halt. Pane sought to convey her disillusionment and frustration through her art. From 1969-1979 she used her body as a way of expressing her concerns. She became known for her azioni in which she used her body as her media for expressing her opinions on politics, gender, love, and the role of art itself.
Pane was a feminist and openly homosexual, and also open about how a patriarchal and hetero-normative culture circumcised the bodies and minds of those outside its rigid structures. Pane was in a relationship with Anne Marchand and they worked closely together on preparing and documenting Pane’s performances. She was also keen on surrounding herself with women, from photographers to collaborators, including the women-only audience for her major work ‘Azione Sentimentale’ (1973).
In 1978 Pane began teaching at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Mans, establishing an experimental performance workshop at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Pane stopped performing in 1980 after sustaining injuries. Her work was mixed media, combining aspects of painting, sculpture, and photography until her death from cancer in 1990
Resources
Gina Pane by Valerio Deh
Song for a Matriarch
Form: Sneadhbhairdne
Within, your eye’s wisdom glimmers,
your smiles project
the times which make you all woman;
reflect, perfect.
Innocence lost in soft laughter
with love impart,
quell the instincts of the rascal,
heartbeats apart.
The sweet sensual words flutter
with mute humour,
in tossed salads of fine living
an hour’s rumour.
As your sweet mystery reveals
beauty unveiled
in lunar light my heart declares
your love prevailed.
Eyes capture dainty feet tapping
the flames dancin’
as fruits of your learning enthral
my sin within
©JezzieG2024
Day 107
No Prompt
Hi Nigel,
‘Hiya! Oh, good, I can say thank you for letting me hang around with you the other day’
No problem, I figured you would want to
‘Do you think she knew I was there?’
I guess not. Mum isn’t really a believer in spirit communication and all that
‘Does she know you are?’
Yes, we have talked about it.
‘And she thinks you are quite bonkers.’
Not at all. Daisy May was a spirit talker too, so she’d have been used to it
‘It was a fun day out’
So what do you make of Oxford?
‘Apart from too many people, it does seem a nice city and the art gallery was amazing’
You did drift off a bit at the Ashmolean
‘So did you and Mum’
I definitely think the arts are a genetic thing
‘I do believe that now. And, weirdly, we all would have bought the print of the cranes embroidery’
I think you influenced my decision there as it isn’t what I normally go for
‘Chinese embroidery is stunning though’
Yes, but not normally something I would get as a print. I did sneak in a Pre-Raph by Rossetti, too
‘As Mum said, that was a given as soon as you saw it’
Absolutely, and looks awesome with my Waterhouse prints
‘What attracts you to Pre-Raph?’
They enchant me. They have done so ever since I saw my first Waterhouse at the Walker in Liverpool and spent a couple of hours transfixed at it. I can drift into Pre-Raph paintings, especially Waterhouse
‘Oh, I get that and love it when that happens. It’s like being in a different world’
Exactly, and most of that is our own imagination inspired by the artist
‘You should write it’
I can’t and I have tried. Perhaps even us creatives need our escapism
‘Yes, I think we do. Talking of which the books you got in that lovely bookshop are itching me to read them’
Haha! You’ll have to wait for ’Granddad’s War’ as I am reading that.
‘Damn! Oh, well you got a few so I have others to choose from’
Two guarantees when I go to Oxford, the Ash and that bookshop lighten my bank account a bit
‘If you are with mum in that bookshop you can’t help it as she takes forever in the William Morris wrapping paper stuff’
That’s her thing, and to be fair she uses it in her crafts
‘Can you imagine those prints as wallpaper or curtains, though’
I’d rather not. See you tomorrow, Nige
©JezzieG2024
Jezzie G 