William Harnett’s The Old Violin (1886)

William Har­nett (1848–1892) was an Irish-Amer­i­can painter of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, whose fame may not have with­stood the pas­sage of time very well but who nonethe­less was respon­si­ble for some excel­lent work in the trompe l’œil still life genre. Trompe l’œil, mean­ing “deceive the eye” in French, is a style of paint­ing that seeks to cre­ate a high­ly real­is­tic, three-dimen­sion­al depic­tion of objects, using per­spec­ti­val illu­sion­ism.

The Old Vio­lin is one of Har­net­t’s most famous paint­ings and a superb exam­ple of paint­ed real­ism. The sub­ject is decep­tive­ly sim­ple; a vio­lin, ren­dered in actu­al size, a sheet of music, a small news­pa­per clip­ping, and a blue enve­lope are shown against a back­ground formed by a green and rusty-hinged wood­en door. It cre­at­ed a sen­sa­tion when first exhib­it­ed at the Cincin­nati Indus­tri­al Expo­si­tion in 1886, where view­ers were enthralled by the tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty of the pic­ture. A local news­pa­per report­ed that “a police­man stands by it con­stant­ly, lest peo­ple reach over and attempt to see if the news­pa­per clip­ping is gen­uine by tear­ing it off”.

Along with oth­er Har­nett pic­tures that con­vinc­ing­ly tricked view­ers’ per­cep­tions, The Old Vio­lin aroused con­sid­er­able con­tem­po­rary debate about the aes­thet­ics of imi­ta­tive art­work. The genre is hard­ly unprece­dent­ed, how­ev­er – there’s a great lit­tle sto­ry in Greek myth about the 5th cen­tu­ry BC con­test between painters Zeux­is and Par­rha­sius. The con­test was to deter­mine which of the two was the most real­is­tic painter. When Zeux­is unveiled his paint­ing of grapes, they appeared so real that birds flew down to peck at them. But when Par­rha­sius, whose paint­ing was con­cealed behind a cur­tain, asked Zeux­is to pull aside that cur­tain, the cur­tain itself turned out to be a paint­ed illu­sion, and Par­rha­sius won the con­test.

Back to The Old Vio­lin…note how every ele­ment of grain and worn area of the vio­lin is repro­duced in impec­ca­ble detail. The age of the vio­lin is clear­ly key; as Har­nett him­self said: “As a rule, new things do not paint well; I want my mod­els to have the mel­low­ing effect of age”. Well said!

The paint­ing is cur­rent­ly held in the Nation­al Gallery of Art, Wash­ing­ton DC, and, although there is no longer a need for it to be guard­ed from touch by a less cred­u­lous audi­ence of mod­ern times, I for one will pay my regards to this charm­ing still life should I ever be pass­ing through Wash­ing­ton.

 

 

Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (1977)

In 1977, British direc­tor, Mike Leigh worked with a small group of actors to devel­op an idea he had for a play, a com­e­dy of man­ners, in the form of a sub­ur­ban sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy satiris­ing the aspir­ing mid­dle class emerg­ing in 1970s Britain. The play was called Abigail’s Par­ty and opened at Hamp­stead The­atre in April; lat­er that year, in Novem­ber, a record­ing was made for the BBC’s Play for Today.

Bev­er­ly and Lau­rence (Ali­son Stead­man and Tim Stern) are hold­ing a drinks par­ty for their new neigh­bours Angela and Tony (Janine Duvit­s­ki and John Salt­house), along with anoth­er neigh­bour, Sue (Har­ri­et Reynolds), whose teenage daugh­ter Abi­gail (whom we nev­er see) is hold­ing a par­ty next door. Leigh got his actors to build their char­ac­ters through repeat­ed impro­vi­sa­tions and the cast large­ly con­struct­ed their own char­ac­ters’ back sto­ries them­selves. The result is a rich tapes­try of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion.

Ali­son Steadman’s aspi­ra­tional Bev­er­ly is the star of the show. She slinks like a cat around her kitsch liv­ing room, cig­a­rette and drink in hand, and you just know she’s feel­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed and oh-so-mod­ern. She’s got the lat­est gad­gets in her kitchen but doesn’t know how to use them. She has the rug, the drinks cab­i­net and built-in record play­er, the cig­a­rette case on the cof­fee table, along with a host of oth­er pretensions…in her mind, she has clear­ly “arrived”, though her Estu­ary Eng­lish points per­haps to a dif­fer­ent back­ground: a for­mer life as a depart­ment store cos­met­ics demon­stra­tor. She dom­i­nates her hus­band who, though he has clear­ly made her lifestyle pos­si­ble by work­ing long hours as an estate agent, is con­stant­ly hen-pecked and under­mined by Bev­er­ly, to the extent that he becomes increas­ing­ly neu­rot­ic as the play pro­gress­es. The cracks in the sub­ur­ban facade are evi­dent.

The plays is at turns amus­ing and excru­ci­at­ing, espe­cial­ly to those of us old enough to have had some real-life insight into sev­en­ties sub­ur­bia. Watch this glo­ri­ous scene as Bev­er­ly, with bare­ly-veiled irri­ta­tion at her husband’s lack of pli­an­cy, cajoles him to put con­tem­po­rary croon­er Demis Rous­sos onto the record play­er (could Mike Leigh have picked a fun­nier exam­ple of an inher­ent­ly-sev­en­ties artiste?).

So please…do you think we can have Demis Rous­sos on…?

 

The cast of Abi­gail’s Par­ty

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851)

This is one of my wife’s favourite works of lit­er­a­ture, and whilst read­ing it she was intrigued to the point of obses­sion by its descrip­tive majesty con­cern­ing the whale hunter’s trade. Not that Sal is an adher­ent of whale killing, you under­stand, but in Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick no stone is left unturned in his descrip­tions of life at sea for a nine­teenth cen­tu­ry whaler, and to read the book, as I did myself lat­er, is a fas­ci­nat­ing voy­age indeed.

D H Lawrence called it the “great­est book of the sea ever writ­ten”. It is a sweep­ing and detailed study of the obses­sive quest by the enig­mat­ic one-legged Cap­tain Ahab to track down and kill the elu­sive white whale that was respon­si­ble for his miss­ing limb. The ship that Ahab cap­tains is the Pequod, leav­ing the Mary­land port of Nan­tuck­et on a whal­ing expe­di­tion and crewed by vet­er­ans of this tough­est of careers: expe­di­tions typ­i­cal­ly last­ed six months or more, often years (the longest whal­ing voy­age is believed to be that of the Ship Nile from 1858 to 1869 — eleven years!).

The nar­ra­tive voice is that of Ish­mael (Call me Ish­mael…the novel’s famous open­ing line) and he has signed up with the Pequod amid an array of colour­ful char­ac­ters. Nan­tuck­eters rub shoul­ders with Poly­ne­sians, Amer­i­can Indi­ans, Africans; har­pooneers with boat­steer­ers; black­smiths with carpenters…and all of them under the absolute con­trol and com­mand of Ahab. Ish­mael may be a “green hand” but he is evi­dent­ly a wide­ly read man, as the lit­er­ary and Bib­li­cal allu­sions fly thick and fast, along­side a dizzy­ing array of tech­ni­cal expo­si­tions, ceto­log­i­cal lore, and abun­dant nau­ti­cal vocab­u­lary and seaman’s slang.

Long regard­ed in the last cen­tu­ry as a “Great Amer­i­can Nov­el”, the book was actu­al­ly a com­mer­cial fail­ure dur­ing Melville’s life­time and had only sold about three thou­sand copies by the time of his death. Like many works of genius, it per­haps need­ed the rest of the world to “catch up” with it its broad sweep.

In any event, here’s a piv­otal encounter with Moby Dick him­self in which Ahab’s dement­ed obses­sion is stark­ly man­i­fest­ed.

Sud­den­ly the waters around them slow­ly swelled in broad cir­cles; then quick­ly upheaved, as if side­ways slid­ing from a sub­merged berg of ice, swift­ly ris­ing to the sur­face. A low rum­bling sound was heard; a sub­ter­ra­ne­ous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedrag­gled with trail­ing ropes, and har­poons, and lances, a vast form shot length­wise, but oblique­ly from the sea. Shroud­ed in a thin droop­ing veil of mist, it hov­ered for a moment in the rain­bowed air; and then fell swamp­ing back into the deep. Crushed thir­ty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant like heaps of foun­tains, then bro­ken­ly sank in a show­er of flakes, leav­ing the cir­cling sur­face creamed like new milk round the mar­ble trunk of the whale.

“Give way!” cried Ahab to the oars­men, and the boats dart­ed for­ward to the attack; but mad­dened by yes­ter­day’s fresh irons that cor­rod­ed in him, Moby Dick seemed com­bined­ly pos­sessed by all the angels that fell from heav­en. The wide tiers of weld­ed ten­dons over­spread­ing his broad white fore­head, beneath the trans­par­ent skin, looked knit­ted togeth­er; as head on, he came churn­ing his tail among the boats; and once more flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and lances from the two mates’ boats, and dash­ing in one side of the upper part of their bows,
but leav­ing Ahab’s almost with­out a scar.

While Dag­goo and Quee­queg were stop­ping the strained planks; and as the whale swim­ming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank as he shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round and round to the fish’s back; pin­ioned in the turns upon turns in which, dur­ing the past night, the whale had reeled the invo­lu­tions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable rai­ment frayed to shreds; his dis­tend­ed eyes turned full upon old Ahab.

The har­poon dropped from his hand.

“Befooled, befooled!”–drawing in a long lean breath–“Aye, Parsee! I see thee again.–Aye, and thou goest before; and this, THIS then is the hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last let­ter of thy word. Where is the sec­ond hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those boats are use­less now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me; if not, Ahab is enough to die–Down, men! the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I har­poon. Ye are not oth­er men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.–Where’s the whale? gone down again?”

But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escap­ing with the corpse he bore, and as if the par­tic­u­lar place of the last encounter had been but a stage in his lee­ward voy­age, Moby Dick was now again steadi­ly swim­ming for­ward; and had almost passed the ship,–which thus far had been sail­ing in the con­trary direc­tion to him, though for the present her head­way had been stopped. He seemed swim­ming with his utmost veloc­i­ty, and now only intent upon pur­su­ing his own straight path in the sea.

“Oh! Ahab,” cried Star­buck, “not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that mad­ly seek­est him!”

Her­man Melville

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl play Fairytale of New York (1987)

Fairy­tale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty Mac­Coll is an Irish folk-style bal­lad and Christ­mas song, writ­ten by Jem Fin­er and Shane Mac­Gowan. It was released in Novem­ber 1987 after two years in the mak­ing and – although it nev­er quite made the num­ber one slot in the UK Sin­gles Chart (it was kept off it by the Pet Shop Boys’ Always on my Mind) – has proved endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar, con­sis­tent­ly top­ping polls of the “nation’s all-time favourite” Christ­mas songs.

The open­ing lines make it evi­dent that this is no typ­i­cal Christ­mas song: it’s Christ­mas Eve in a New York City drunk tank, with an Irish immi­grant in ine­bri­at­ed rever­ie about the song’s female char­ac­ter, and their hopes and dreams, des­tined to be crushed by alco­hol, drugs and cir­cum­stance. No bells jin­gling and chil­dren play­ing here.

The famous call-and-response duel between Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty MaColl is doubt­less the ele­ment that stamps its mark on the listener’s con­scious­ness, with its amus­ing tirade of abuse in words only just on the right side of the radio cen­sor (in fact, Radio 1 did ban the words “slut” and “fag­got” on 18th Decem­ber 2007, only to reverse the ban lat­er in the same day due to crit­i­cism from lis­ten­ers, the band, and Kirsty MacColl’s moth­er!). I might add, inci­den­tal­ly, that “fag­got” is Irish slang for a lazy, no-good per­son, so need not be con­fused with the pejo­ra­tive word for “gay”.

The melo­di­ous voice of Mac­Coll fits in per­fect­ly with MacGowan’s rough drawl, though the involve­ment of Mac­Coll only came about due to a fall­out between the band and the orig­i­nal choice for the female voice, bass play­er Cait O’Riordan. When O’Riordan left the band in Octo­ber 1986, pro­duc­er Steve Lily­white sug­gest­ed let­ting his wife (Mac­Coll) lay down a new guide vocal for the song, sim­ply with a view to help­ing future audi­tions. When they heard it, the band of course loved it and realised that this was the voice for the song. As Mac­Gowan was quot­ed lat­er: “Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it”.

Backed by the con­sum­mate musi­cian­ship of the Pogues, the song’s vocals and lyri­cism add up to a very round­ed, mean­ing­ful and bit­ter­sweet piece of music that has unar­guably cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of a nation. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

It was Christ­mas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see anoth­er one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Moun­tain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eigh­teen to one
I’ve got a feel­ing
This year’s for me and you
So hap­py Christ­mas
I love you baby
I can see a bet­ter time
When all our dreams come true

They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christ­mas Eve
You promised me
Broad­way was wait­ing for me

You were hand­some
You were pret­ty
Queen of New York City
When the band fin­ished play­ing
They howled out for more
Sina­tra was swing­ing,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a cor­ner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scum­bag, you mag­got
You cheap lousy fag­got
Hap­py Christ­mas your arse
I pray God it’s our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

I could have been some­one
Well so could any­one
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells are ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

Kirsty Mac­Coll and Shane Mac­Gowan

Sir James Guthrie’s A Hind’s Daughter (1883)

Dur­ing a work vis­it to Scot­land some years ago, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it Edinburgh’s Nation­al Gallery of Scot­land. It has some excel­lent art­works and is well worth an afternoon’s tar­ri­ance. It hous­es the sub­ject of today’s blog, Sir James Guthrie’s A Hind’s Daugh­ter.

The Glas­gow School was a cir­cle of influ­en­tial artists and design­ers that began to coa­lesce in Glas­gow in the 1870s, and flour­ished from the 1890s to around 1910. Dubbed the Glas­gow Boys, these men had a pas­sion for real­ism and nat­u­ral­ism, as well as a dis­taste for the Edin­burgh ori­ent­ed Scot­tish art estab­lish­ment, which they viewed as oppres­sive (cf. the Impres­sion­ists). Dri­ven and moti­vat­ed by nat­u­ral­is­tic ideals, they embraced change, cre­at­ed mas­ter­pieces, and became Scot­tish icons in the process.

James, lat­er Sir James, Guthrie was one of the lead­ing lights of the Glas­gow Boys. He focused on the life and land­scape of rur­al Scot­land for his oeu­vre; the land and its inhab­i­tants pro­vid­ed a rich resource for Guthrie and none typ­i­fies his art­works of this peri­od more than A Hind’s Daugh­ter (a hind being a skilled farm labour­er). The small girl has just straight­ened up after cut­ting a cab­bage and looks direct­ly and arrest­ing­ly at the view­er, as if she has just spot­ted you. It’s a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Scot­tish scene, with girl and land­scape inex­tri­ca­bly merged.

Guthrie paint­ed the pic­ture in the Berwick­shire vil­lage of Cock­burnspath. The warm earth colours and dis­tinc­tive square brush strokes demon­strate the influ­ence of French real­ist painters such as Jules Bastien-Lep­age, who sim­i­lar­ly sought inspi­ra­tion from the peas­ant farm­ers of rur­al France. I love it.

 

 

Sir James Guthrie

Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (1978)

Some music is made for play­ing whilst cruis­ing down the high­way or get­ting ready to go out on the town. And some music is made for play­ing whilst wear­ing slip­pers, sip­ping cof­fee and glanc­ing at the Sun­day papers. Spiegel im Spiegel is most def­i­nite­ly in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry.

Writ­ten by Arvo Pärt in 1978, in his native Esto­nia, Spiegel im Spiegel is a min­i­mal­ist piece in the so-called tintinnab­u­lar style of com­po­si­tion (a term coined by Pärt him­self, from the Latin tintinnab­u­lum, “bell”), where­in a melod­ic voice oper­at­ing over dia­ton­ic scales, and a tintinnab­u­lar voice, oper­at­ing with­in a tri­ad on the ton­ic, accom­pa­ny each oth­er. The effect is calm­ing and med­i­ta­tive.

The piece was writ­ten for a sin­gle piano and vio­lin, and here is a beau­ti­ful ver­sion fea­tur­ing Nico­la Benedet­ti on vio­lin and Alex­ei Grynyuk on piano. The piano plays ris­ing crotch­et tri­ads and the vio­lin plays slow, sus­tained notes, alter­nate­ly ris­ing and falling, and of increas­ing length.

Inci­den­tal­ly, Spiegel im Spiegel in Ger­man lit­er­al­ly means “mir­ror in the mir­ror”, rep­re­sent­ing, I sup­pose, the idea of an infin­i­ty of images reflect­ed by par­al­lel plane mir­rors: the ton­ic tri­ads are end­less­ly repeat­ed with small vari­a­tions, as if reflect­ed back and forth. In any event, if, like me, you cher­ish an occa­sion­al calm and still envi­ron­ment in a hec­tic world, this is for you. I rec­om­mend just putting the piece on at a qui­et time and, rather than con­cen­trat­ing on it, sim­ply let it fill the room with its serene qual­i­ty whilst you do some­thing else. You will be spir­i­tu­al­ly refreshed with­out even real­is­ing it!

 

Arvo Part

Charles Trenet sings La Mer (1946)

I first prop­er­ly heard this clas­sic exam­ple of chan­son française at the funer­al of a friend’s dad, who had evi­dent­ly loved the song and elect­ed to mark his cross­ing with it: La Mer by French singer, Charles Trenet. The song pos­i­tive­ly drips with gal­lic non­cha­lance and romance. Leg­end has it that Trenet wrote a first ver­sion of the song when he was just 16, but La Mer as we know it was born in 1943, dur­ing a train trip in the South of France. Trenet, along with singer Roland Ger­beau and pianist Léo Chau­li­ac, was trav­el­ling from Mont­pel­li­er to Per­pig­nan, along the beau­ti­ful French coast. Inspired by the scenery, Trenet wrote La Mer before the jour­ney was over, and he and Chau­li­ac per­formed the song that very evening.

At first, Trenet didn’t like the final ver­sion of La Mer, for some rea­son, so in fact it was Roland Ger­beau who first record­ed it, in 1945. But a year lat­er, Trenet’s record com­pa­ny boss con­vinced Trenet to have a go at the song as well. The music was rearranged and the song began its jour­ney prop­er to chan­son clas­sic, becom­ing a huge suc­cess and a jazz stan­dard.

By the time of Trenet’s death in 2001, over 70 mil­lion copies of La Mer had been sold and 4000 dif­fer­ent ver­sions record­ed. The song has been trans­lat­ed suc­cess­ful­ly into mul­ti­ple lan­guages (hence Beyond the Sea, Il Mare, De Zee, Das Meer etc), and cov­ered by a mul­ti­tude of artists, of whom I think Rod Stew­art does a par­tic­u­lar­ly good ver­sion. But it is Trenet’s charm­ing­ly pol­ished orig­i­nal in the French that irre­sistibly cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion.

Lis­ten here:

La mer
Qu’on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d’ar­gent
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie

La mer
Au ciel d’été con­fond
Ses blancs mou­tons
Avec les anges si purs
La mer bergère d’azur
Infinie

Voyez
Près des étangs
Ces grands roseaux mouil­lés
Voyez
Ces oiseaux blancs
Et ces maisons rouil­lées

La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d’une chan­son d’amour
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie

Charles Trenet

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

The Hud­suck­er Proxy is a 1994 fan­tas­ti­cal com­e­dy film by Ethan and Joel Coen. Sid­ney J Muss­berg­er (Paul New­man), the new head of the huge­ly suc­cess­ful cor­po­rate mono­lith, Hud­suck­er Indus­tries, in Fifties-era New York, comes up with a bril­liant plan to make a lot of mon­ey: appoint a moron to run the com­pa­ny. When the stock falls low enough, Sid­ney and his friends can buy it for pen­nies, then take over and restore it to its for­mer for­tunes. They choose Norville Barnes (Tim Rob­bins), who has just start­ed in the mail room, but soon, tough reporter Amy Archer smells a rat and begins an under­cov­er inves­ti­ga­tion of Hud­suck­er Indus­tries.

The Coens’ sense of the aes­thet­ic is supreme, their know­ing ref­er­ences wit­ty to the extreme, and their style all their own. This movie, despite being a box office flop, is packed with deli­cious high­lights but today’s blog focus­es on the bril­liant per­for­mance by Jason Jen­nifer Leigh. Leigh plays Amy Archer, the hard­nosed reporter will­ing to do any­thing to get a good sto­ry, even going under­cov­er to gain the trust of the über-naïve Norville. In the news­room, she’s bold, sassy, and will inform any­one lis­ten­ing about her Pulitzer Prize. In a man’s envi­ron­ment, she’s the most capa­ble of the lot and, as we’ll see, she can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk on the phone to the chief, type a sto­ry, solve cross­word puz­zles, and fence fel­low reporter Smit­ty with smart, fifties-hip word­play.

If the con­cept of the quick-tongued, ace female reporter feels famil­iar, it should; in the great tra­di­tion of news­pa­per movies, Leigh is chan­nelling a cross between Jean Arthur in Mr Deeds Goes to Town and Katharine Hep­burn in Woman of the Year. In this scene, she has invei­gled her­self into Norville’s office and con­trives to win his trust, play­ing the vul­ner­a­ble maid­en in dis­tress and pre­tend­ing to be “a Muncie girl”. Then cut to tough Amy in the news­room, mul­ti-task­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly and mock­ing the pat­sy, Norville. You can be sure her heart will soft­en in the end, but for now Leigh nails the stereo­type char­ac­ter with aplomb.

Jen­nifer Jason Leigh as Amy Archer

The Beatles play I Want To Hold Your Hand (1964)

Of course the Bea­t­les had to make an appear­ance in this blog. Unde­ni­ably the most influ­en­tial bands of the rock era, they took the musi­cal world by storm, hav­ing grad­u­al­ly built their rep­u­ta­tion over three years from their for­ma­tion in 1960. They hold a rock-sol­id place in the hearts of most peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion and of many peo­ple since. But which song to choose from a canon so replete with the sub­lime?

I have gone with a song so utter­ly exem­plary of the Bea­t­les sound and feel, from their ear­ly hey­day, and pos­i­tive­ly drip­ping with their youth­ful exu­ber­ance and melod­ic vir­tu­os­i­ty. Writ­ten by Lennon and McCart­ney in the base­ment of Jane Ash­er’s par­ents’ house in Wim­pole Street, Lon­don; record­ed at Abbey Road’s stu­dio two; and released in the UK on 29th Novem­ber 1963, it’s I Want To Hold Your Hand. It sold more than a mil­lion copies on advanced orders alone, on the back of the suc­cess of She Loves You, and became the group’s first US num­ber one, kick-start­ing the British Inva­sion of Amer­i­ca.

Of all the tele­vised ver­sions of the song (notably on the Ed Sul­li­van Show, with the famous intro­duc­tion “Here they are…the Bea­t­les!”), I found this ver­sion from the More­cambe and Wise Show in 1964. Played live, it’s absolute­ly bril­liant. Lennon’s and McCart­ney’s voic­es are con­stant­ly switch­ing between uni­son and har­mo­ny, and there is a won­der­ful inter­play between Lennon’s riffs and George Harrison’s sub­tle gui­tar fills. And through­out, of course, they just look so damn good togeth­er; it’s a delight to watch.

The Bea­t­les 1964

Niccolò dell’Arca’s Lamentation of Christ (between 1463 and 1490)

Nic­colò dell’Arca (c. 1435–1440 – 1494) was an Ital­ian Ear­ly Renais­sance sculp­tor, about which lit­tle is known except for his pos­ses­sion of a sub­lime skill in the art of sculp­ture.

His Com­pianto sul Cristo mor­to (the Mourn­ing, or Lamen­ta­tion, of Christ) is a life-size group of six sep­a­rate ter­ra­cot­ta fig­ures lament­ing in a semi­cir­cle around the dead Christ, in the Sanc­tu­ary of San­ta Maria del­la Vita in Bologna. Lamen­ta­tions were com­mon­ly depict­ed in Renais­sance Europe, it being the thir­teenth of the Sta­tions of the Cross. Here, the pain of Jesus’s friends, as he is tak­en down from the cross, could not have been expressed with more intense pathos. Sor­row digs into their faces, for­ev­er frozen in anguish.

More than 600 years after they were made, these frag­ile, now colour­less ter­ra­cot­ta stat­ues con­tin­ue to move and sur­prise vis­i­tors to the church who often don’t know about the church’s prized but untrum­pet­ed pos­ses­sion. It’s a uni­ver­sal and time­less grief the fig­ures express. The only peace­ful fig­ure of course is that of Christ who looks serene­ly asleep on a dec­o­ra­tive scal­loped cov­er­let. Each of the oth­er fig­ures’ dra­mat­ic pathos is inten­si­fied by the real­ism of the facial details.

It’s uncom­fort­able view­ing, of course, due to the nature of the scene, but you know these Renais­sance artists; they had a remark­able capac­i­ty for depict­ing pain and suf­fer­ing, all part and par­cel of the con­cepts embod­ied in the Chris­t­ian reli­gion. The anguish is stark, but the cause of the anguish becomes the focus for the Renais­sance view­er: the dead Christ and the impli­ca­tions of that death for mankind. Check out the image details to ful­ly appre­ci­ate Del­l’Ar­ca’s arti­san­ship.

 

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