Without Lifting A Finger

Before I attend to a few images suggesting a poem, I'll jot down a few impressive (to me) bullets from Emily's Hundreds : Ghost flowers grow in the woods -- beauties. I shall take a big clump home. They are mystery flowers Yet, as I was mounting sketches today I felt so many shortcomings and I believe more and more that one's only real critic, the one that counts, is one's own soul The educated look for technique and pattern, colour quality, composition. Spirit touches them little and it's the only thing that counts It's my own awful longing to possess a dog and of course it's very real to me [ Emily is most certainly talking about artistic "possession"--nothing dark or perverted here ] She was really interested in my work. She said that it appealed to her like religion. Art and religion you can't separate, for real art is religion, a search for the beauty of God deep in all things living above paint, above colour, above design, even ab...

Juggling (not juggling) two books at once: Frisch's Stiller and Emily Carr's Journals ( Hundreds and Thousands ). Not juggling because things are going slowly--because of school? because of ____?--but that's life. * Anyway, I've gotten through about half of Stiller , and I have a few "bullets" for you ( I would say "Little Book," but that's Emily Carr): Went to Davos yesterday. It's just as Thomas Mann describes it My greatest fear: repetition Ascona Every word is false and true, that is the nature of words Is there anyone who doesn't wish at times that he could become a monk? We live in an age of reproduction the rest of us swim in a cocktail containing pretty well everything and mixed in the most elegant manner by Eliot a fellow who had the chest and shoulders of a Michelangelo slave

Started school this week and things aren't pretty. That partly explains my silence. Just a short passage from Emily's Hundreds (which got some Hogarthian ink) re her relationship with Lawren and theosophy.      I have written to Lawren and told him about things. I think he will be very disappointed in me and feel I have retrograded way back, fallen to earth level, dormant, stodgy as a sitting hen. I think he will hardly understand my attitude for I have been trying these three years to see a way through theosophy. Now I turn my back on it all and go back sixty years to where I started, but it is good to feel a real God, not the distant, mechanical, theosophical one.  I am wonderfully happy and peaceful.

Emily's view of herself and her art: something along the lines of Art = Religion and Artist = Translator of Mute Nature. An entry from 1930: TUESDAY, JANUARY 20TH I have been to the woods at Esquimalt. Day was splendid -- sunshine and blue, blue sky, and two arbutus with tender satin bark, smooth and lovely as naked maidens, silhouetted against the rough pine woods. Very joyous and uplifting, but surface representation does not satisfy me now. I want not "the accidentals of individual surface" but "the universals of basic form, the factor that governs the relationship of part to part, of part to whole and of the whole object to the universal environment of which if forms a part."

Here are links to the other paintings Emily crits: 1.) A. Y. Jackson's "Autumn in Algoma" did not please her. 2.) On the other hand, Jackson's "Barns" delighted her. 3.) Her conclusion on Arthur Lismer's "Happy Isles" seems somewhat mixed . 4.) J. E. H. MacDonald's "Solemn Land" seems to have impressed her: "very big and powerful and solemn." 5.) MacDonald's "Glowing Peaks" she liked, except for the "brown water" (couldn't find this picture). 6.) She states that she didn't care about A. J. Casson (he apparently joined the group in 1926, after Frank Johnston left), and that his "Dawn" didn't please her (I couldn't find this picture either).

Harris seems to have done many paintings similar to "Mountain Forms," the painting Carr was so taken by in Montreal. Below is an example of his work (I found it on Photobucket but I do not know its title): 

Have set aside Berger's essays for a time (I'm roughly half way through) to pick up a new book: Emily Carr's Hundreds and Thousands (her journals from 1927 to 1941). It begins with her traveling from B.C. to the East (Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal) largely to meet with the members known as The Group of Seven (I believe she meets with all seven) and to view their work. From 1927, Dec 5th, Montreal: Arrived 11:50 and after lunch went straight to the Royal Canadian Academy. It was a good show. The big room (mostly Group of Seven) was very enjoyable. It was the first time I have been able to sit and take the time over the Group of Seven. I studied them separately and together. There was Jackson, Lismer, Harris, MacDonald, Carmichael and Casson represented -- all except Varley.      Harris's "Mountain Forms" was beautiful. It occupied the centre of one wall -- one great cone filled with snow and serenely rising to a sky filled with wonderful light round it in...

In my brief wanderings I rubbed up against the term "The Group of Seven" in conjunction with Emily Carr. Apparently she is not considered to be one of the original seven. Here's Wiki's take: The Group of Seven — sometimes known as the Algonquin school — were a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1972), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). Two artists commonly associated with the group are Tom Thomson (1877–1917) and Emily Carr (1871–1945). Although he died before its official formation, Thomson had a significant influence on the group. In his essay "The Story of the Group of Seven", Lawren Harris wrote that Thomson was "a part of the movement before we pinned a label on it"; Thomson's paintings "The West Wind" a...

Emily Carr (December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945) was a Canadian artist and writer heavily inspired by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast . One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a modernist and post-impressionist painting style, [ 1 ] Carr did not receive widespread recognition for her work until later in her life. As she matured, the subject matter of her painting shifted from aboriginal themes to landscapes, and in particular, forest scenes. As a writer, Carr was one of the earliest chroniclers of life in British Columbia. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as a "Canadian icon". [ 2 ]   Early Life Born in Victoria , British Columbia , in 1871, the year British Columbia joined Canada , Emily Carr was the second-youngest of six children born to English parents Richard and Emily (Saunders) Carr. [ 3 ] The Carr home was on Birdcage Walk, (now Government Street) in the James Bay district of Victoria, a short distance from the legislative b...

Almost every summer we take a "family" vacation. This summer the three graces and I did a full circle (though it felt like a magic triangle): We flew into Seattle and drove directly to Vancouver; from Vancouver we took the BC ferry to Victoria; and from Victoria we took another ferry (the Coho) back to Washington State (it landed in Port Angeles) and Seattle. Being an early riser, reader, and coffee drinker (I'd say connoisseur but that's too highfalutin for what I am), I woke early and hiked to the nearest Starbucks (I'm really a Peetnik but Starbucks' Americano and rasberry thumbprint scone were adequate subs for my "usual"). Reading: In Vancouver I knocked off Peter Handke's little Don Juan: His Own Version (not IMHO vintage Handke but still a good read); and between Victoria and Seattle (I actually finished it on the plane coming home) I thoroughly enjoyed the signature style (a book title in every line) of Herta Muller in her  Passport ....