Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Act III
I think this is what they mean when they talk about flying by the seat of your pants. I am in Nice. Back in France. Thrilled to bursting. Yesterday I spent an hour shopping for food at my beloved Intermarche, and then spent the evening making gratin. They came out with two new kinds of Carambars, one with the flavors of soft drinks, and one—and how did this take so long?—with the original flavor, only soft. See, the problem with regular Carambars was always that they were utterly inedible: they were better suited to pulling a tooth, than satifying a sweet one. One had to put them in the microwave for eight seconds (any more and they would bubble). Then, getting the wrapping off them was a hopeless chore. And finally, they’ve seen the light, and have introduced Carambar Tendres. It’s a brand new day. Today, I bought the new Asterix. No hesitation. No concern for price. It’s a weird one (involving Aliens, and only token references to the Romans), but it’s still Asterix. I couldn’t believe they were still making them. I’m almost home.
I spent a week in Florence, a lovely week, inhaling all the Rinascenza I could get my hands on. At the Brancacci Chapel, where we saw Dame Maggie Smith, who was filming a TV series or something, I bought Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. I don’t know what was the best part of that day, Vasari, Maggie Smith, the Chapel itself or the pizzas Jeremy Sisselman and I ate afterwards. The pizzas were very good. But Vasari is great—I mean, it’s like reading Joyce in Dublin, Miller in Paris or Pearl Buck in rural China (I just finished The Good Earth, only I read it in Egypt and Italy, not China). Everything you’re looking at, he talks about. Plus he was like totally best friends with the guy who did it (especially if it’s Michaelangelo, to whom he devotes about a quarter of the book). He’s a world-class kissass, and he fouls up all kinds of information like dates and lifespans, but you have to love him. He also occasionally refers to himself in the third person, which is adorable. Lastly, he has nothing, absolutely nothing but contempt for any art that was created between the eras of Praxiteles and Cimabue. He even gives Roman sculpture short shrift. But you can see why. In Florence’s Galleria dell’Academia, you have a pretty clear distinction between old and new, and you understand how the new artists could have had such distaste for their hoary, Byzantine predecessors. The Galleria is a one-trick pony, but oh, what a trick it is: David. Il est bouleversant, epatant. You turn a corner and at the end of the hall, enshrined under this dome, there he is, huge and light as a feather. It’s really, really hard to describe him: a picture can never do it justice; how words are supposed to do it, I don’t know. Instead of risking injury in the attempt (as the French put it, se planter), I’ll let Vasari have a crack: “And without any doubt this figure has put in the shade every other statue, ancient or modern, Greek or Roman. Neither the Marforio in Rome, nor the Tiber and the Nile of the Belvedere, nor the colossal statues of Monte Cavello can be compared with Michelangelo’s David, such were the satisfying proportions and beauty of the finished work. The legs are skilfully outlined, the slender flanks are beautifully shaped and the limbs are joined faultlessly to the trunk. The grace of this figure and the serenity of its pose have never been surpassed, nor have the feet, the hands, and the head, whose harmonious proportions [the feet, head and hands are HUGE when seen from below, and in perfect proportion when seen from afar] and loveliness are in keeping with the rest. To be sure, anyone who has seen Michelangelo’s David has no need to see anything else by any other sculptor, living or dead.”
Vasari was also given to hyperbole. But this time, he’s kind of right on. Your heart truly seems to hop when you see it. It’s one of those ineffably perfect objects. The thing is, there is virtually nothing else in the Galleria that one might be interested in seeing (except their Stradivariuses). You wait in line for two hours, one if you have a reservation, shell out EUR9 to see David, plus Michelangelo’s unfinished bound slaves (admittedly excellent), and then schlep through the rest of the galleries of Renaissance rejects and gonzo gothic, which, after David, just feels shamefully tacky. The fact is that, more often than not, to get to the masterpieces, you have to wade through roomfuls of the most wretched art. And so you can understand how someone like Vasari, living in this completely whacked-out era (pretty much the first and last time that art was not only a reputable profession, but more than likely a highly remunerative one, too), could have taken stock of just how much progress had been made in a quick 150 years, looked back at everything that had come before, and wondered how uninspired those people had to be to create such rubbish. Frankly, I agree. Even Cimabue and Giotto, for all their importance, when you look at them, it’s hard to feel inspired. Piero della Francesca, too. Not a huge fan. Maybe that’s just me. Filippo Lippi, however, was bonkers. Love him. Saw demons. Painted them. He was also a total horndog: “It is said that Fra Filippo (left the Carmelite order at 17) was so lustful that he would give anything to enjoy a woman he wanted if he thought he could have his way; and if he couldn’t buy what he wanted, then he would cool his passion by painting her portrait and reasoning with himself. His lust was so violent that when it took hold of him he could never concentrate on his work. And because of this, one time or other when he was doing something for Cosimo de’ Medici in Cosimo’s house, Cosimo had him locked in so that he wouldn’t wander away and waste time. After he had been confined for a few days, Fra Filippo’s amorous or rather his animal desires drove him one night to seize a pair of scissors, make a rope from his bed-sheets and esape through a winder to pursue his own pleasure for days on end. When Cosimo discovered that he was gone, he searhed for him and eventually got him back to work. And after that he always allowed him to come and go as he liked, having regretted the way he had shut him up before and realizing how dangerous it was for such a madman to be confined.”
Now THAT’S an artist.
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But I have digressed like whoa. Flying by the seat of my pants. How did I get to Nice? I was supposed to be in Bologna. Well.
Wednesday evening, I emailed Roz in Bologna, as she was really the only reason I was going. I had realized that, at this stage of the game, Italy was really a substitute for France (I was having dreams about going back), and I was growing eager to move on. My wobbly Italian was getting to me—it’s been two and a half months since I’ve been able to speak the language, and the promise of fluency was definitely alluring. But I hung on. Thursday I puttered around Florence. Played Frisbee with random Italian ladies in front of Santa Croce, under the stern, disapproving eye of Dante. No word from Roz. Friday, I took off for Siena. Beautiful city, but all the art’s gothic, and it was, very crippling, transparently a facsimile of France for me. Spent the night and headed back to Florence Saturday. Slept all the way; the conductor, if there was one, never stamped my railpass. Banged around Florence. Had no intention of staying the night again, not at EUR25 a pop, and really wanted Roz to write back. At this point, I still hadn’t heard from her, and was getting anxious. Budget options in Bologna are nil. I was worried something had happened. And then the thought entered my head: I actually use this railpass for something and suddenly hop a train for Nice. I could scrap Italy, which was bugging me, save a bunch of days on my railpass, and faff around France instead. The more I thought about it, the better an idea it sounded. I went back to the train station and asked if it was possible. Certainly it was—in fact, at random, there was a train leaving Pisa at 2:45am, bound for Nice. This would be the second time on this trip that I have boarded transport at 2:45am. I kept checking my mail, and was hearing nothing from Roz. I emailed Wendy, my friend here, and asked how she’d be disposed to my showing up, oh, tomorrow morning? I called home and we discussed it. We resolved that maybe it was time I saw some more of France (for all the time I’ve spent there, I’ve only really seen two places). Then, at 11pm, with little thought to what I was going to do when Roz finally wrote back, I got on a train for Pisa. Again, they did not stamp my rail pass. That means I get an extra day of travel later on. An hour and a half after arriving in Pisa, I boarded the train to Nice, hoping Wendy’d receive my messages in the next seven hours. Thank heavens, she came home from work at 6am and felt the need to check her email. She wrote me back at Finnevico, which I can check on my cell phone, and when I awoke as we crossed the border into France, dawn bursting in through the window, and I wedged between the seats, I had her response. I found her apartment, 30 Rue de France, a block from the Mediterranean, and it’s glorious. Big bay windows, a fold out couch, a washing machine—everything I could possibly ask for. It’s the first time since Beijing that I’ve stayed in anything resembling a home. I was getting terribly sick of hostelry. An hour after getting here, though, filthy, tired, having not changed my clothes in four days, I check my mail. Roz has finally written back.
This, then, is the plan. I return to Bologna on Thursday morning. Stay there a few days, then come back through here. Spend the night, then hop a train for Avignon, and then a bus to Apt. See if I can make it for the market on Tuesday morning. I’m going to scare the hell out of Jean-Luc.
I spent a week in Florence, a lovely week, inhaling all the Rinascenza I could get my hands on. At the Brancacci Chapel, where we saw Dame Maggie Smith, who was filming a TV series or something, I bought Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. I don’t know what was the best part of that day, Vasari, Maggie Smith, the Chapel itself or the pizzas Jeremy Sisselman and I ate afterwards. The pizzas were very good. But Vasari is great—I mean, it’s like reading Joyce in Dublin, Miller in Paris or Pearl Buck in rural China (I just finished The Good Earth, only I read it in Egypt and Italy, not China). Everything you’re looking at, he talks about. Plus he was like totally best friends with the guy who did it (especially if it’s Michaelangelo, to whom he devotes about a quarter of the book). He’s a world-class kissass, and he fouls up all kinds of information like dates and lifespans, but you have to love him. He also occasionally refers to himself in the third person, which is adorable. Lastly, he has nothing, absolutely nothing but contempt for any art that was created between the eras of Praxiteles and Cimabue. He even gives Roman sculpture short shrift. But you can see why. In Florence’s Galleria dell’Academia, you have a pretty clear distinction between old and new, and you understand how the new artists could have had such distaste for their hoary, Byzantine predecessors. The Galleria is a one-trick pony, but oh, what a trick it is: David. Il est bouleversant, epatant. You turn a corner and at the end of the hall, enshrined under this dome, there he is, huge and light as a feather. It’s really, really hard to describe him: a picture can never do it justice; how words are supposed to do it, I don’t know. Instead of risking injury in the attempt (as the French put it, se planter), I’ll let Vasari have a crack: “And without any doubt this figure has put in the shade every other statue, ancient or modern, Greek or Roman. Neither the Marforio in Rome, nor the Tiber and the Nile of the Belvedere, nor the colossal statues of Monte Cavello can be compared with Michelangelo’s David, such were the satisfying proportions and beauty of the finished work. The legs are skilfully outlined, the slender flanks are beautifully shaped and the limbs are joined faultlessly to the trunk. The grace of this figure and the serenity of its pose have never been surpassed, nor have the feet, the hands, and the head, whose harmonious proportions [the feet, head and hands are HUGE when seen from below, and in perfect proportion when seen from afar] and loveliness are in keeping with the rest. To be sure, anyone who has seen Michelangelo’s David has no need to see anything else by any other sculptor, living or dead.”
Vasari was also given to hyperbole. But this time, he’s kind of right on. Your heart truly seems to hop when you see it. It’s one of those ineffably perfect objects. The thing is, there is virtually nothing else in the Galleria that one might be interested in seeing (except their Stradivariuses). You wait in line for two hours, one if you have a reservation, shell out EUR9 to see David, plus Michelangelo’s unfinished bound slaves (admittedly excellent), and then schlep through the rest of the galleries of Renaissance rejects and gonzo gothic, which, after David, just feels shamefully tacky. The fact is that, more often than not, to get to the masterpieces, you have to wade through roomfuls of the most wretched art. And so you can understand how someone like Vasari, living in this completely whacked-out era (pretty much the first and last time that art was not only a reputable profession, but more than likely a highly remunerative one, too), could have taken stock of just how much progress had been made in a quick 150 years, looked back at everything that had come before, and wondered how uninspired those people had to be to create such rubbish. Frankly, I agree. Even Cimabue and Giotto, for all their importance, when you look at them, it’s hard to feel inspired. Piero della Francesca, too. Not a huge fan. Maybe that’s just me. Filippo Lippi, however, was bonkers. Love him. Saw demons. Painted them. He was also a total horndog: “It is said that Fra Filippo (left the Carmelite order at 17) was so lustful that he would give anything to enjoy a woman he wanted if he thought he could have his way; and if he couldn’t buy what he wanted, then he would cool his passion by painting her portrait and reasoning with himself. His lust was so violent that when it took hold of him he could never concentrate on his work. And because of this, one time or other when he was doing something for Cosimo de’ Medici in Cosimo’s house, Cosimo had him locked in so that he wouldn’t wander away and waste time. After he had been confined for a few days, Fra Filippo’s amorous or rather his animal desires drove him one night to seize a pair of scissors, make a rope from his bed-sheets and esape through a winder to pursue his own pleasure for days on end. When Cosimo discovered that he was gone, he searhed for him and eventually got him back to work. And after that he always allowed him to come and go as he liked, having regretted the way he had shut him up before and realizing how dangerous it was for such a madman to be confined.”
Now THAT’S an artist.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
But I have digressed like whoa. Flying by the seat of my pants. How did I get to Nice? I was supposed to be in Bologna. Well.
Wednesday evening, I emailed Roz in Bologna, as she was really the only reason I was going. I had realized that, at this stage of the game, Italy was really a substitute for France (I was having dreams about going back), and I was growing eager to move on. My wobbly Italian was getting to me—it’s been two and a half months since I’ve been able to speak the language, and the promise of fluency was definitely alluring. But I hung on. Thursday I puttered around Florence. Played Frisbee with random Italian ladies in front of Santa Croce, under the stern, disapproving eye of Dante. No word from Roz. Friday, I took off for Siena. Beautiful city, but all the art’s gothic, and it was, very crippling, transparently a facsimile of France for me. Spent the night and headed back to Florence Saturday. Slept all the way; the conductor, if there was one, never stamped my railpass. Banged around Florence. Had no intention of staying the night again, not at EUR25 a pop, and really wanted Roz to write back. At this point, I still hadn’t heard from her, and was getting anxious. Budget options in Bologna are nil. I was worried something had happened. And then the thought entered my head: I actually use this railpass for something and suddenly hop a train for Nice. I could scrap Italy, which was bugging me, save a bunch of days on my railpass, and faff around France instead. The more I thought about it, the better an idea it sounded. I went back to the train station and asked if it was possible. Certainly it was—in fact, at random, there was a train leaving Pisa at 2:45am, bound for Nice. This would be the second time on this trip that I have boarded transport at 2:45am. I kept checking my mail, and was hearing nothing from Roz. I emailed Wendy, my friend here, and asked how she’d be disposed to my showing up, oh, tomorrow morning? I called home and we discussed it. We resolved that maybe it was time I saw some more of France (for all the time I’ve spent there, I’ve only really seen two places). Then, at 11pm, with little thought to what I was going to do when Roz finally wrote back, I got on a train for Pisa. Again, they did not stamp my rail pass. That means I get an extra day of travel later on. An hour and a half after arriving in Pisa, I boarded the train to Nice, hoping Wendy’d receive my messages in the next seven hours. Thank heavens, she came home from work at 6am and felt the need to check her email. She wrote me back at Finnevico, which I can check on my cell phone, and when I awoke as we crossed the border into France, dawn bursting in through the window, and I wedged between the seats, I had her response. I found her apartment, 30 Rue de France, a block from the Mediterranean, and it’s glorious. Big bay windows, a fold out couch, a washing machine—everything I could possibly ask for. It’s the first time since Beijing that I’ve stayed in anything resembling a home. I was getting terribly sick of hostelry. An hour after getting here, though, filthy, tired, having not changed my clothes in four days, I check my mail. Roz has finally written back.
This, then, is the plan. I return to Bologna on Thursday morning. Stay there a few days, then come back through here. Spend the night, then hop a train for Avignon, and then a bus to Apt. See if I can make it for the market on Tuesday morning. I’m going to scare the hell out of Jean-Luc.
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| Graphic Design Job |
