For almost three months I have been thinking a lot about the issue of fatherhood and marriage. I have started two new series which have been very popular. The first series deals with Kate Middleton and Prince William and the second series has been concerning Arnold and Maria. I will post some links to past posts below.
Today since it is Fathers Day I posted an article below you may find helpful.
As I watched the movie with my children, there were the usual suspects: a cute little girl, a dog and a father who didn’t know he had a daughter but was about to get his chance at redemption. Throw in some Elvis Presley tunes and competitive professional sports for dramatic effect, and you’ve got one of those feel-good movies that tugs at your heartstrings while tickling your funny bone.
Throughout the movie, the main character kept saying, “the power of the father.” What started out as a phrase to help him stay focused in his newly discovered role became something more: the belief that a father has the power to give his children something that no one else can. And while this film was no Old Yeller or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it did manage to successfully ask, “Do children really need a father?”Even in the midst of Hollywood dips and turns, the answer was clear: Yes, there really is a power that only a father brings to his children.
Any time I see a film that even remotely acknowledges such a truth, I’m thankful. Much of our media do not believe a father to be necessarily beneficial, and those that include dads in a script often portray him as an absolute idiot. It’s sad, really. Actually, it’s a disgrace.
The pattern established in the beginning was this:
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Gen 2:24)
A man would leave his father and mother and take a wife. They would be fruitful and multiply. The children would benefit from both parents, as each one would bring different and necessary facets to the child’s life. This was the pattern, the divine design.
I realize the phrase power of the father might stir up less-than-desirable reactions from some. Power is a word that can be used for good or evil. But just because some have and will abuse the reality behind the word, there’s no need to write it off. God’s Word clearly indicates that men — fathers — bring power to the parenting relationship. The woman brings life; the father brings strength. There will be days when a mother brings strength to things and there will be days when a man brings life. But the abiding pattern, the divine design, gives power to the father. The question, as always, is, “How will the power be used?”
I hope this series will cause you to stop and ponder a little — or maybe a lot. A father’s presence means something to a child. The permission a father gives differs from that a mother offers. It’s not necessarily nice to point, but a father had better set nice aside from time to time and point out a few things along the way. If he doesn’t, then who will?
As a father, you may read these articles and think, My father never did those things for or with me! As a result, these words may bring pain to the surface. Please remember that if we don’t seek to transform our pain, we’ll just transfer it to others — often our sons and daughters.
The love of our heavenly Father can redeem any pain and transform it into something strong, solid and powerful. Fathers, we all get a second chance — maybe many chances — at redemption. There may not be canned laughter or the dramatic lighting of a Hollywood movie, but a redeemed father’s power might just make the difference in a little girl or boy’s life.
Here are some more posts on related subjects below:
Britain’s Prince William, center left, and his wife Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, center right, pose for a photograph with, clockwise from bottom right, Margarita Armstrong-Jones, Eliza Lopes, Grace van Cutsem, Lady Louise Windsor, Tom Pettifer, and William Lowther-Pinkerton in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace, following their wedding at Westminster Abbey, London, on Friday, April […]
The Royal Wedding Ceremony of William and Kate Live part 3/4 I really do wish Kate and William success in their marriage. I hope they truly are committed to each other, and if they are then the result will be a marriage that lasts their whole lifetime. Nevertheless, I do not think it is best […]
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver: Dr. Gary Chapman offers hope By Radell Smith, Atlanta Pop Culture Examiner May 19, 2011 10:39 am ET With over four million copies of his bestseller “The Five Love Languages” under his belt, Dr. Gary Chapman went on to write other popular books as well, and one of […]
The Schwarzenegger Family Voting In This Photo: Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor Schwarzenegger goes to cast his vote on election day with his wife Maria Shriver and their daughters Christina and Katherine (her first time voting), at the Kenter Canyon elementary school in Brentwood. Schwarzenegger fathers a love child Maria Shriver Asks – How Do […]
_______________________________________ Weekend to Remember Story – Dennis Rainey Chip Ingram – Two Biblical Requirements to Resolve Conflict (pt 4) To resolve conflict effectively and Biblically there are two absolutes that both parties must agree on – do you know what they are? Without this framework, you can try all kinds of things to avoid or […]
Maria Shriver Asks – How Do You Handle Transitions in Your Life? Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to his wife several months ago that he had fathered a child about 10 years ago with a member of their household staff. Maria moved out, but has not filed for divorce. In the you tube clip above she comments: […]
Weekend To Remember Conference Testimony Here’s a couple who went to a FamilyLife Conference and how it made a difference in their marriage. The Schwarzenegger Family Voting In This Photo: Christina Schwarzenegger Governor Schwarzenegger goes to cast his vote on election day with his wife Maria Shriver and their daughters Christina and Katherine (her first […]
Weekend to Remember “Getaway” Half Price Discount ____________ ___________________________________________ Arnold Schwarzenegger & Family Out For A Walk In Santa Monica In This Photo: Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Christina Schwarzenegger The Govenator Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a walk on Ocean Ave with his wife Maria Shriver and daughter Christina Schwarzenegger in Santa Monica, CA. (// May 23, […]
Italy Four Time World Cup Winner 1934 – 1938 – 1982 – 2006
AP Photo
With Europe on the brink of war, Mussolini’s Italian team, defending champions, reveled in their role as tournament heel. Their fixtures in France drew boisterous mobs of exiled Italian anti-fascists, up to 10,000 strong, who came to jeer their country’s every move. These protests only appeared to raise the Italians’ game. Led by the cunning play of Giuseppe Meazza, the team strolled to a second consecutive world championship.
Controversy came in the quarterfinals against the hosts. As both teams sported blue jerseys, Italy was asked to bring its alternate shirts which were traditionally white. Instead, on Mussolini’s orders, the team took to the field in black shirts, the Maglia Nera, a symbol of the feared and despised Italian fascist paramilitary. It was a gesture purposefully designed to goad the thousands of French and Italian protestors in the crowd. As an additional flourish, Il Duce ordered his players to hold the fascist salutes they effected before kickoff until the howling protestors had run out of energy. The team kept the title for the next 12 years as even the World Cup was trumped by the swirling conflict which consumed the Continent.
They had won just 4 years earlier too as you can see in video clip below:
This salute above by the Italian team reminds me of what happened just a few years later in 1936 in Berlin. Take a look at this clip below narrated by Jesse Owens:
Narrated by Jesse Owens, with the orginal music.
The Nazis went to great lengths to pretend that they were the ‘master race’, but in the end the only ones they fooled were themselves. They looked cool, but little else. Their movement was self-destructive and doomed from the start. Even if WWII had not occurred the Nazi regime would have disintegrated upon Hitler’s death.
Nixon may have summed it up the best, with a similar self realization, in a final speech as he departed the White House in disgrace: “others may hate you, but they don’t win until you hate them, and then you destroy yourself”.
Wilson Hatcher picks:
Brazil’s 1950 World Cup Team
To say Brazil were confident about winning the 1950 World Cup would be an understatement. Instead of a final match, there was a final group, and to win the World Cup, Brazil only needed a draw against Uruguay. A special song was composed for the expected occasion of Brazil’s victory, and the Brazilian FA had 22 gold medals engraved with the players’ names. FIFA President Jules Rimet had prepared his victory speech in Portuguese, so sure was he, too, of a Brazilian win. But as they say, pride goes before a fall, and Uruguay overturned a one-goal Brazilian lead to win the match, and thus, the World Cup. Brazil were shocked, and their team was disgraced, many never playing for the national team again. Even the white shirts used in the match were too closely associated with the failure of 1950 to ever be used again, and to this day, Brazil have never again worn a white shirt.
The World Cup is played on a razor’s edge. In every tournament, national pride, personal emotion, and competitive instinct are all at a fever pitch. Perceived slights can boil over and become international disputes. Legends can become villains, and ordinary men can attain infamous immortality. Sometimes the catalyst can be simple as failing to live up to hype, others are audacious moments replayed for eternity. Whatever the reason, here in no particular order are the 4 Most Controversial Moments in World Cup History:The Battle of Santiago
The BBC’s David Coleman introduced Chile and Italy’s group match at the 1962 World Cup as “the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football, possibly in the history of the game.” Referee Ken Alston, later to become famous for his invention of the yellow and red cards remarked, “I wasn’t reffing a football match, I was acting as an umpire in military maneuvers.” It was, by all accounts, one of the most violent crimes ever perpetrated upon the game of football. The first foul occurred just 12 seconds after kickoff, setting the tone for the match. Several minutes later, Italian midfielder Giorgio Ferrini had to be physically removed by policemen, kicking and screaming, for refusing to leave after being sent off. In response to repeated fouling by Italy’s Mario David, Leonel Sanchez, son of a prizefighter, knocked him to the ground. David was then sent off for retaliating, kicking Sanchez in the head. Sanchez later broke Italian forward Humberto Maschio’s nose with a left hook. The police were needed to intervene three more times before Chile won, putting two late goals past nine-man Italy.
Zidane’s Headbutt
He was one of the greatest players the game had ever known, enjoying the unlikeliest of fairytale swansongs before he retired, leading his team to the World Cup Final. At the age of 34, his retirement imminent, Zinedine Zidane looked like he might turn back the clock and help France to its second World Cup title. He had scored two goals so far in the tournament, and already been named recipient of the Golden Ball as the competition’s best player when he led his French side out against Italy. He even scored the first goal of the match, an audacious chipped penalty in the seventh minute, and everything seemed set for Zidane to ride off into the sunset, hero of his nation. But Italy had other ideas. Marco Materazzi scored in the 19th minute, and as the game dragged on into extra time, the two goalscorers exchanged words before Zidane stopped, turned around, and headbutted Materazzi in the chest. He is immediately sent off. Without their captain, talisman, and penalty taker, France lose in the shootout, and the World’s lasting impression of one of the game’s legends is that of a moment of anger and petulance.
Brazil’s 1950 World Cup Team
To say Brazil were confident about winning the 1950 World Cup would be an understatement. Instead of a final match, there was a final group, and to win the World Cup, Brazil only needed a draw against Uruguay. A special song was composed for the expected occasion of Brazil’s victory, and the Brazilian FA had 22 gold medals engraved with the players’ names. FIFA President Jules Rimet had prepared his victory speech in Portuguese, so sure was he, too, of a Brazilian win. But as they say, pride goes before a fall, and Uruguay overturned a one-goal Brazilian lead to win the match, and thus, the World Cup. Brazil were shocked, and their team was disgraced, many never playing for the national team again. Even the white shirts used in the match were too closely associated with the failure of 1950 to ever be used again, and to this day, Brazil have never again worn a white shirt.
Maradona’s Hand of God
There could only ever be one Maradona. The embodiment of flawed genius, the collision of the breathtaking and the sublime with the low, petty and petulant, The 1986 World Cup was his defining moment. Having just fought a war four years earlier, more over national pride than over a bit of cold and scrubby rock in the South Atlantic, and having been on unfriendly footballing terms since the 1966 World Cup, the quarterfinal between England and Argentina was never likely to be clean or quiet. Nobody, however, could have expected what Diego Armando Maradona would do. His two goals, dubbed the “Hand of God” and the “Goal of the Century” give an insight into the two competing facets of his personality. The Hand of God was the recklessly competitive slum kid, willing to do anything to win. The Goal of the Century was the brilliant footballer, sure of his abilities and lethal in their application. Yet Maradona’s genius was flawed, and it’s the Hand of God for which he is remembered, and by many in the English public, reviled.
The Kansas City Star reported: The Kansas City Star reported: Less than 24 hours after a history-making loss, the United States men’s national soccer team landed in Kansas City bloody, but unbowed. Not only did a 2-1 defeat against Panama on Saturday night mark the Americans’ first group-play loss in the 20-year history of the […]
LA Galaxy reported: Gold Cup: USA at loss for answers after historic loss No explanation for lackadaisical start, says Donovan after loss Simon Borg MLSsoccer.com June 11, 2011 (Getty Images) TAMPA, Fla. – It’s a script the US national team has seen play out plenty of times over the last year or so: Slow start. […]
Yahoo Sports reported: The rivalry between the Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps goes back to their days in the old NASL in the 1970s, but the final 10 minutes of their first MLS match against each other on Saturday night might have been the best yet. The Sounders’ Mauro Rosales pulled the score even […]
Today we are discussing the 7th most controversial game. Everette Hatcher’s choice: I have chosen this game partly because it was a game that the USA won. Sadly Escobar was killed in a bar back in Columbia when he got home. Two of my sons were learning soccer at the time and they were 7 […]
Today we are discussing the 8th most controversial game. Everette Hatcher picks the Germany v. USA game in 2002. 2002 World Cup Quarter Finals: Germany vs United States Close call on hand-ball: In the 49th minute of Friday’s Germany-United States World Cup quarterfinal, a shot by American Gregg Berhalter bounced off German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn and […]
Today is a discussion of the 9th most controversial game in World Cup History. Wilson Hatcher: I believe the game between Slovenia and the USA is my choice for number 10. Bradley revisits controversial call in World Cup The day after a controversial call annulled an apparent goal and left the United States in a […]
Uploaded by TubeCentary on Jun 7, 2011 Goals from the GOLD CUP match. Dempsey and Altidore with the goals. Hilarious American commentary to go with it. The Associated Press reported: Five Mexican players fail test Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Five players on Mexico’s soccer team, including goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa and defender Francisco Rodriguez, have […]
Today is a discussion of the 10th most controversial game in World Cup History. Everette Hatcher: I believe the game between Slovenia and the USA is my choice for number 10. Bradley revisits controversial call in World Cup The day after a controversial call annulled an apparent goal and left the United States in a […]
Today we are discussing the best player of all time. Everette Hatcher picks Pele. Pele The Great videosport.jumptv.com – A tribute to history’s greatest soccer player of all time. Wilson Hatcher’s pick: Lionel Messi Lionel Messi 2009 – Top 10 Goals *NEW* This list is based on talent not influence. For Pele would easily be […]
The Kansas City Star reported: The Kansas City Star reported: Less than 24 hours after a history-making loss, the United States men’s national soccer team landed in Kansas City bloody, but unbowed. Not only did a 2-1 defeat against Panama on Saturday night mark the Americans’ first group-play loss in the 20-year history of the […]
LA Galaxy reported: Gold Cup: USA at loss for answers after historic loss No explanation for lackadaisical start, says Donovan after loss Simon Borg MLSsoccer.com June 11, 2011 (Getty Images) TAMPA, Fla. – It’s a script the US national team has seen play out plenty of times over the last year or so: Slow start. […]
Yahoo Sports reported: The rivalry between the Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps goes back to their days in the old NASL in the 1970s, but the final 10 minutes of their first MLS match against each other on Saturday night might have been the best yet. The Sounders’ Mauro Rosales pulled the score even […]
Today we are discussing the 7th most controversial game. Everette Hatcher’s choice: I have chosen this game partly because it was a game that the USA won. Sadly Escobar was killed in a bar back in Columbia when he got home. Two of my sons were learning soccer at the time and they were 7 […]
Today we are discussing the 8th most controversial game. Everette Hatcher picks the Germany v. USA game in 2002. 2002 World Cup Quarter Finals: Germany vs United States Close call on hand-ball: In the 49th minute of Friday’s Germany-United States World Cup quarterfinal, a shot by American Gregg Berhalter bounced off German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn and […]
Today is a discussion of the 9th most controversial game in World Cup History. Wilson Hatcher: I believe the game between Slovenia and the USA is my choice for number 10. Bradley revisits controversial call in World Cup The day after a controversial call annulled an apparent goal and left the United States in a […]
Uploaded by TubeCentary on Jun 7, 2011 Goals from the GOLD CUP match. Dempsey and Altidore with the goals. Hilarious American commentary to go with it. The Associated Press reported: Five Mexican players fail test Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Five players on Mexico’s soccer team, including goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa and defender Francisco Rodriguez, have […]
Today is a discussion of the 10th most controversial game in World Cup History. Everette Hatcher: I believe the game between Slovenia and the USA is my choice for number 10. Bradley revisits controversial call in World Cup The day after a controversial call annulled an apparent goal and left the United States in a […]
Today we are discussing the best player of all time. Everette Hatcher picks Pele. Pele The Great videosport.jumptv.com – A tribute to history’s greatest soccer player of all time. Wilson Hatcher’s pick: Lionel Messi Lionel Messi 2009 – Top 10 Goals *NEW* This list is based on talent not influence. For Pele would easily be […]
The Thinker (1879–1889) is among the most recognized works in all of sculpture. In fact, below you can see Paul who constantly is showing up Gil with his knowledge about these pieces of art. He shows off while describing Rodin’s life story when all four of them are taking in “The Thinker.” However, he is set straight by the museum worker (French First Lady, Mrs. Bruni-Sarkozy). She is pictured below on the bench with Gil.
“Paul: If I am not mistaken Rodin’s work was influenced by his wife, Camille. Mrs. Bruni-Sarkozy:[French First Lady] Rose was the wife. Paul: No he was not married to Rose.”
I am currently going through all the writers and artists mentioned in Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris.” Today I will look at Rodin. By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans to look at Coco Chanel, Modigliani, Matisse, Luis Bunuel, Josephine Baker, Van Gogh, Picasso, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot and several more.
In the movie “Midnight in Paris” we have this exchange:
“Paul: If I am not mistaken Rodin’s work was influenced by his wife, Camille. Mrs. Bruni-Sarkozy:[French First Lady] Rose was the wife. Paul: No he was not married to Rose.”
The Dr. Coleman A. Mopper Memorial Lecture at the DIA
October 4, 2005 (Detroit)—Marie Cheffer, sister; Rose Beuret, mistress and wife; Camille Claudel, lover and colleague—these women influenced the life and extraordinary art of famed sculptor Auguste Rodin. Their personal and professional relationships with Rodin are the topic of this year’s annual Dr. Coleman A. Mopper Memorial Lecture at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) on Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. Ruth Butler, world-renowned Rodin expert, professor emeriti at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and author of the book “Rodin: The Shape of Genius,” presents a compelling perspective on Rodin’s work by focusing on the women who influenced his career, creativity and life. Butler will also reveal her speculations regarding the end of his relationship with his mistress for over 50 years, then finally his wife, Beuret, during their time in Paris and nearby Meudon, France.
The wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy appears in the gardens of the capital’s Rodin Museum dedicated to the 19th century sculptor August Rodin and the sculptress Camille Claudel, also his mistress.
One of the two male protagonists played by Michael Sheen says: “If I’m not mistaken Rodin’s work was influenced by his wife, Camille.”
“Rose was the wife,” says Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy.
“No he was never married to Rose,” he replies erroneously.
The trailer shows picture postcard shots of the City of Lights, with captions, “Paris in the morning is beautiful, Paris in the afternoon is charming, Paris is enchanting in the evening, but Paris after midnight is magic.”
The plot revolves around a family travelling to the French capital for business. The party includes a young engaged couple forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.
The film, described as a “marvellous love letter to Paris” will open this year’s Cannes film festival on May 11. It also stars Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard and Rachel McAdams.
Mr Allen recently scotched rumours during the shooting in Paris that a wooden Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy took 32 takes to shoot a single scene saying: “This is a hundred per cent untrue.”
“She’s in the picture. Everything she shot is in the picture. I love her. She’s great. It’s not a big part, but it’s a respectable part.”
Rodin in 1917 posing with friends and associates in front of the full scale plaster version of The Gates of Hell at Meudon. Left to right: two practitioners: Léonce Bénédite (first curator of the Musée Rodin); Rodin; his foreman, Henri Lebossé; Eugène Rudier; and another practitioner.
(photo, collection Robert Descharnes)
It would be impossible to overstate the significance of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) to the history of art. More than any other sculptor since Michelangelo, Rodin changed the face of figurative sculpture and ushered in a whole new era of artistic expression. Many know Rodin for his famous controversies—the scandal around the Age of Bronze or the Monument to Honoré de Balzac—or for his unfinished projects, most famously The Gates of Hell. But few who recognize Rodin’s works have failed to be moved by them. The innovations he introduced into sculpture were elaborated by countless artists who followed him, including many who worked in his studio, such as Constantin Brancusi and Aristide Maillol.
This Tuesday, May 31, 2011 photo shows a visitor in the garden of the Rodin museum in Paris. Spend a day, and a de rigeur night, here and you can walk hand-in-hand with Woody Allen through the City of Light he portrays in “Midnight in Paris,” his sweet and zany Valentine to the French capital. In an instant anyone can amble down the 21st-century streets of this walking city. AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere.By: Elaine Ganley, Associated Press
This is Paris and the language is love — crazy love — amid the creative folly of a city whose ethereal beauty and bawdy underside spell magic.Spend a day, and a de rigueur night, here and you can walk hand-in-hand with Woody Allen through the City of Light he portrays in “Midnight in Paris,” his sweet and zany valentine to the French capital.Amble down the 21st-century streets of this walking city, and like Allen’s leading character, Gil (played by Owen Wilson), you could be swept into the past, with the iconic 1930s tune that haunts the movie whispering “Speak to me of love” in your ear.In Allen’s Paris, there is no place for rude taxi drivers or haughty waiters.”I wanted to show the city emotionally, the way I felt about it,” Allen said during a news conference last month in Cannes, where “Midnight in Paris” opened this year’s film festival. “It didn’t matter to me how real it was or what it reflected.”It was, he added, “Paris through my eyes.”
Visiting some of the postcard venues Allen splashes from the camera — like temples of gastronomy such as Le Grand Vefour on the Right Bank or Laperouse on a Left Bank quai — requires reservations and deep pockets.
Other don’t-miss sites, as well as some hidden delights packed with the Paris of yesteryear, are accessible to all. But don’t bother with a plan. Like leading man Gil, a Hollywood hack writer dreaming of penning that great novel, just soak up the atmosphere by wandering the Left Bank of the Seine river, the artsy and intellectual side of the city and the colorful heart of Woody’s Paris.
Then, step into Deyrolle at 46 rue du Bac, steps from the Metro of that name. Only in Paris could a taxidermy and curiosity shop be a source of inspiration to artists and occasionally their gathering place. Deyrolle, which dates from 1831, is imbued with history and magic.
You’ll begin to understand the eclectic ambiance that fed the souls of the “lost generation” of American writers from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, and the likes of Picasso, Modigliani and others.
Climb the stairs to the wondrous menagerie, and into another dimension. You will be greeted by a lion at rest, the heads of deer, elk and other woodland and jungle creatures. Then comes the magnificent polar bear who makes a brief but notable appearance in “Midnight in Paris,” at a soiree hosted by Fitzgerald and his zany wife Zelda.
Owner Prince Louis Albert de Broglie (pronounced de broy) is a modern-day nobleman, preserving the heritage of Deyrolle. But he also makes it his mission to contribute to protecting the species that populate Deyrolle and pass the message of sustainable development.
“Our idea is not to sell an elephant a day but to give a little part of this magical place” to others, he said, stressing that animals on display here succumbed to natural deaths at zoos, circuses and elsewhere. “You cannot protect anything if you don’t know it,” he said.
“Deyrolle always received artists,” from Surrealist writer Andre Breton to Salvador Dali (given a cameo comeback in Allen’s film), de Broglie said. “Today, many are inspired by Deyrolle.”
Artists came to the rescue when Deyrolle was almost lost to a devastating fire in 2008, helping fund reconstruction with an auction.
While the polar bear and other large creatures go for princely sums, there are souvenirs a visitor can take away, from books to a line of gardening products, “Le Prince Jardinier,” with items starting at as little as a few euros.
Now, on to the next stop. Paris opens its panoply of wonder if the visitor walks down the Boulevard Saint-Germain to Saint-Germain des Pres, dotted by famed literary cafes. Turn left down rue Bonaparte toward the Seine, or get lost in the winding streets on the way. At some point, hit the quai of the Seine.
The true wanderer may take hours to reach Shakespeare and Company at 37 rue de la Bucherie, not far from the Saint Michel Metro in the 5th arrondissement, and just across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral. But that’s all the more reason to get there.
In his movie, Allen only winks with the camera at the shop, an institution steeped in the history of expatriate Americans. A visitor can curl up in a comfy nook, good book in hand, resting feet and soul until 11 p.m.
The original site of legendary literary matron Sylvia Beach, a magnet for English-speaking expats like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the Irish James Joyce, was on the rue de l’Odeon not far from 27 rue de Fleurus where Gertrude Stein, writer, art collector and friend of Picasso lived with lover Alice B. Toklas — and who is featured in Allen’s film (played by Kathy Bates).
Shakespeare and Company got a second life in 1951, at the spot filmed in the movie. It, too, drew the expats, and still does.
Here, books — first, second- and thirdhand — line the walls, and floors, stacked in no particular order, with shelves on the patio outside the front door.
“My father says it’s a Socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore,” said Sylvia Whitman, whose father took over from Beach and who now runs the shop.
A half-dozen writers can lodge there at a time in exchange for a hand in the shop. They also can visit with George Whitman, now 97 and living on the third floor.
“Some people who come are literally on a mission. Others have heard from friends that it’s a quirky place,” said his 30-year-old daughter. “For me, it’s a total fairytale land.”
There’s constant foot traffic in the bookstore at this time of year, so Whitman doesn’t know if the movie is bringing in new visitors. And while fans of the movie may not realize that Allen is a writer as well as a filmmaker, Whitman says the store has always sold his books.
But now it’s time to go back in time, moving deeper into the Left Bank by ascending the rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, one of Paris’ most ancient streets. Turning away from the Seine, toward the Metro stop Maubert-Mutualite, one can spot it.
Despite a history dating from antiquity, the street today, paved and bustling, is undistinguished — until the end of the journey. At the top of the hill, cobblestones appear as the street spills onto a church, Saint-Etienne du Mont, first built in the 12th century.
Here, Gil, waiting on the church steps, was thrust back in time into the Paris of his dreams, a carefree, chaotic world of creation. With the Pantheon, where France has buried its heroes, just steps away, we are in the realm of greatness. But will the average traveler experience the same kind of magic as Allen’s hero?
Perhaps not. But at least there are restaurants galore.
Rodin was not educated at the École des Beaux-Arts, the most elevated school for the training of French artists, but his works achieved worldwide recognition in his own lifetime and his reputation continues to grow to this day. His genius was to express the inner truths of the human psyche and his gaze penetrated beneath the external appearance of the world. Exploring this realm beneath the surface, Rodin developed an agile technique for rendering extreme physical states which correspond to expressions of inner turmoil or overwhelming joy. Rodin was obsessed with myths, both ancient and modern, and his works commonly evoke classical mythology, the Bible, and the Divine Comedyof Dante, as well as the macabre modern Paris described in the poems of Charles Baudelaire. Deriving inspiration from such literary sources, Rodin sculpted a universe of great passion and tragedy, a world of imagination that exceeded the mundane reality of everyday existence.
Technically, Rodin introduced some very important innovations to the history of sculpture. His ability to make his figures lifelike caused him to be accused of modeling his sculptures directly from live subjects. The heightened expressive intensity of his works introduced a whole generation of artists to the potential for expressing internal depth through external features. In his Monument to Balzac, Rodin took his expressive technique to a new level, producing a figure of a great genius at the moment of his inspiration, wrapped in a cloak in the middle of the night. Though Rodin had made countless studies from life for this monument, he discarded these renderings in order to marry the expressive intensity of his modeling with the brilliance of the subject. This parallel between technique and subject, combined with the courage to throw away years of work in order to achieve a higher level of expression, mark Rodin as a unique and powerful artist.
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Timeline of Rodin and major events in world:
Rodin and his sister Maria, c. 1859
United States Civil War; Franco-Prussian War
Victor Hugo writes Les Misérables; Dostoyevsky writes Crime and Punishment
Deaths of Henry Thoreau, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital published in 1867; Suez canal opens in 1869
Napoleon III holds “Salon de Refusés” to exhibit works rejected by the Academy.
Rodin is discharged from the National Guard for nearsightedness
Works in Belgium with Carrier-Belleuse in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War; returns to Paris in 1877
Sees Michelangelo’s work in Florence
Creates Saint John the Baptist Preaching in 1878 and The Call to Arms in 1879
Commission for The Gates of Hell, 1880
German Empire proclaimed by Otto von Bismarck, 1871
The word “impressionism” is coined; Whistler paints portrait of his mother
Jules Verne publishes Around the World in Eighty Days; Tolstoy writes Anna Karenina
Sioux defeat Custer at Little Bighorn, 1876
Joseph Stalin is born, 1879
meets Camille Claudel in 1883
Commission for The Burghers of Calais, 1884; definitive model shown in a joint exhibition with Monet at Galerie Georges Petite in Paris, 1889
Original plaster example of The Kiss, 1886; French government purchases a marble version in 1888
Commission for the Monument to Victor Hugo, 1889
Rodin in his studio
Freedom of the press established in France; trade unions legalized
Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel, and Adolf Hitler are born
Deaths of Victor Hugo, Vincent van Gogh, and Karl Marx
Statue of Liberty erected; Eiffel Tower built
Rapid expansion of railways in the western United States
Rodin receives commission for Balzac monument, 1891
Elected president of the sculpture section of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts
Ends relationship with Camille Claudel
Rodin’s marble sculpture is in great demand; he creates The Hand of God in marble, 1898
Retrospective, Paris World Exposition, 1900
Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
Paul Gauguin settles in Tahiti; Aubrey Beardsley spreads art nouveau style; the symbolist movement is active
Tate Gallery opens in London
Nobel Prize instituted; the Paris subway opens
Alfred Dreyfus arrested for treason, 1894; pardoned, 1899
Rodin is visited by Edward Steichen and King Edward VII
The Thinker is installed at the Panthéon in Paris
Rodin experiments with enlargements of partial figures such as The Cathedral, 1908, and The Hand from the Tomb, 1910
Picasso has first exhibition in Paris; paints Les Demoiselles d-Avignon
Deaths of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Whistler, and Paul Cézanne
Futurist movement active in Italy
Separation of church and state in France
Rodin travels despite wartime difficulties; his sculpture is shown throughout Europe
Bequeaths his estate to France in 1916
Marries Rose Beuret on January 29, 1917; she dies three weeks later
Rodin dies November 17, 1917, and is laid to rest at Meudon
Also reproduced in Descharnes & Descharnes.
World War I begins, 1914; Bolshevik Revolution, 1917
Marcel Duchamp paints Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912
Wassily Kandinsky creates nonobjective paintings
Albert Einstein formulates general theory of relativity
Cubist works are exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants
Belle de Jour Presentation In a film class my partner and I did a video presentation on the film Belle de Jour and the filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Bunuel was a surrealist, so if the video doesn’t quite makes sense, its not supposed to. ___________________________________________________ I am presently going through the characters referenced in Woody Allen’s […]
I am currently going through the characters referenced in the Woody Allen movie “Midnight in Paris.” Today I am looking at Henri Matisse. Below is a press release from a museum in San Francisco: the steins were known for their saturday evening salons, where artists, writers, musicians, intellectuals, and collectors gathered to discuss contemporary art, […]
Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Modigliani’s mistress and later Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to the film story line. Actually Picasso had taken girls from others […]
An article from Biography.com below. I am currently going through all the personalities mentioned in Woody Allen’s movie “Midnight in Paris.” Today I am spending time on Coco Chanel. By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans […]
The Thinker (1879–1889) is among the most recognized works in all of sculpture. In fact, below you can see Paul who constantly is showing up Gil with his knowledge about these pieces of art. He shows off while describing Rodin’s life story when all four of them are taking in “The Thinker.” However, he is […]
Artists and bohemians inspired Woody Allen for ‘Midnight in Paris I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today we will look at Salvador Dali. In this clip below you will see when Picasso […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to […]
How Should We Then Live 7#3 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” Paul Gauguin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec were the greatest painters of the post-impressionists. They are pictured together in 1890 in Paris in Woody Allen’s new movie “Midnight in Paris.” My favorite philosopher Francis Schaeffer […]
How Should We Then Live 7#1 Dr. Francis Schaeffer examines the Age of Non-Reason and he mentions the work of Paul Gauguin. 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Kurt Fuller as John and Mimi Kennedy as Helen in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am […]
Midnight In Paris – SPOILER Discussion by What The Flick?! Associated Press Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1934 This video clip below discusses Gertrude Stein’s friendship with Pablo Picasso: I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Gad Elmaleh as Detective Tisserant in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Juan Belmonte was the most famous bullfighter of the time […]
Woody Allen explores fantasy world with “Midnight in Paris” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris.” The New York Times Ernest Hemingway, around 1937 I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers […]
What The Flick?!: Midnight In Paris – Review by What The Flick?! 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald and Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony […]
The song used in “Midnight in Paris” I am going through the famous characters that Woody Allen presents in his excellent movie “Midnight in Paris.” This series may be a long one since there are so many great characters. De-Lovely – Movie Trailer De-Lovely – So in Love – Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd & Others […]
Photo by Phill Mullen The only known photograph of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer, though their writing styles differed considerably. My grandfather, John Murphey, (born 1910) grew up in Oxford, Mississippi and knew both Johncy and “Bill” Faulkner. He […]
I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” was so good that I will be doing a series on it. My favorite Woody Allen movie is Crimes and Misdemeanors and I will provide links to my earlier posts on that great movie. Movie Guide the Christian website had the following review: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is the […]
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago: Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on […]
Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]
Osama bin Laden is in the clear. Federal prosecutors
have elected to drop hundreds of criminal charges
against the al Qaeda leader and architect of the 9/11
terror attacks because he will be unable to appear in
court to answer them.
Bin Laden was indicted back in 1998 in the Southern
District of New York for his role in the al Qaeda attack
on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which
killed more than 200 people, including a dozen
Americans. Several superseding indictments in the
same federal jurisdiction piled on more charges.
On Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Lewin
presented a formal recommendation to U.S. Attorney
Preet Bharara that Bin Laden not be prosecuted on any
of the charges, given that he is dead.
After reciting Bin Laden’s multiple aliases and then
listing the counts against him for ten pages, Lewin
notes, “On or about May 1, 2011, while this case was
still pending, defendant Usama Bin Laden was killed
in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the course of an operation
conducted by the United States.”
Lewin then provides evidence that bin Laden was
actually killed in the raid, including the confirmation
of his identity by DNA analysis and facial recognition
analysis, eyewitness confirmation by one of bin
Laden’s wives, video of bin Laden found in the
Abbottabad compound and the “significant quantity”
of other al Qaeda material seized by U.S. Navy Seals
during last month’s raid.
He also notes that “al Qaeda has itself publicly
acknowledged the death of BIN LADEN. Among other
pronouncements, a recently released video depicts
senior al Qaeda leader and co-defendant Ayman al
Zawahiri acknowledging bin Laden’s death.”
Artists and bohemians inspired Woody Allen for ‘Midnight in Paris
I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today we will look at Salvador Dali. By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans to look at Rodin,Coco Chanel, Modigliani, Matisse, Luis Bunuel, Josephine Baker, Van Gogh, Picasso, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot and several more.
In this clip below you will see when Picasso first met Dali.
Adrien Brody plays Salvador Dali in “Midnight in Paris.”
Associated Press
Salvador Dalí in 1971
Dalí, Salvador (1904-89): Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936), claiming that this was the source of his creative energy. He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named `critical paranoia’. According to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually aware at the back of one’s mind that the control of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended. He claimed that this method should be used not only in artistic and poetical creation but also in the affairs of daily life. His paintings employed a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted by the unreal `dream’ space he depicted and by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. He described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs’ and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax (The Persistence of Memory, MOMA, New York; 1931).
(My wife and I saw the Alfred Hitchcock film “Spellbound” in 1985 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and we saw this dream that Dali contributed as seen in clip below.)
In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) led Breton to expel him from the Surrealist ranks. He moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time he devoted himself largely to self-publicity; his paintings were often on religious themes (The Crucifixion of St John of the Cross, Glasgow Art Gallery, 1951), although sexual subjects and pictures centring on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse.
Apart from painting, Dalí’s output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and work for the theatre. In collaboration with the director Luis Buñuel he also made the first Surrealist films—Un chien andalou (1929) and L’Age d’or (1930)—and he contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). He also wrote a novel, Hidden Faces (1944) and several volumes of flamboyant autobiography. Although he is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, his status is controversial; many critics consider that he did little if anything of consequence after his classic Surrealist works of the 1930s. There are museums devoted to Dalí’s work in Figueras, his home town in Spain, and in St Petersburg in Florida.
1904: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí was born on May, 11th in Figueras, Catalonia, Spain.
1917: He started to visit the School of Art. First paintings.
1918: First small exhibition in the Theatre.
1921-25: Went to Academy of Arts in Madrid. Conflicts with his teachers.
1925: First stand-alone exibition of Dalí at the Galery of Dalmau.
1926-28: Early explorations of the Surrealism. Dalí in Cadaqués 1927
1929: Gala went into his life. Joined the group of Surrealists in 1930 Gala 1927, and Dalí 1929
1934-37: Dalí had his paranoid-critic-epoch. Dalí and Gala in 1937
1941-44: “Avida Dollars” in America.
1945-49: Dalí the Classic. Dalí and his Daddy in Cadaqués 1948
1950-65: His mystic period. He wrote several books (The secret life of Salvador Dalí).
1963-78: Dalí the Divine – Dalí and the Science.
1979-83: Theory of Disaster.
1982: Gala died.
1989: Dalí, Jan. 23th, died.
_______________________________________________
The above clip is from the film series by Francis Schaeffer “How should we then live?” Below is an outline of the 8th episode on the Impressionists and the age of Fragmentation.
AGE OF FRAGMENTATION
I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought
A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas) and Post-Impressionism (Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat): appearance and reality.
1. Problem of reality in Impressionism: no universal.
2. Post-Impression seeks the universal behind appearances.
3. Painting expresses an idea in its own terms as a work of art; to discuss the idea in a painting is not to intellectualize art.
4. Parallel search for universal in art and philosophy; Cézanne.
B. Fragmentation.
1. Extremes of ultra-naturalism or abstraction: Wassily Kandinsky.
2. Picasso leads choice for abstraction: relevance of this choice.
3. Failure of Picasso (like Sartre, and for similar reasons) to be fully consistent with his choice.
C. Retreat to absurdity.
1. Dada , and Marcel Duchamp: art as absurd. (Dada gave birth to Surrealism).
2. Art followed philosophy but came sooner to logical end.
3. Chance in his art technique as an art theory impossible to practice: Pollock.
II. Music As a Vehicle of Modern Thought
A. Non-resolution and fragmentation: German and French streams.
1. Influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets.
2. Direction and influence of Debussy.
3. Schoenberg’s non-resolution; contrast with Bach.
4. Stockhausen: electronic music and concern with the element of change.
B. Cage: a case study in confusion.
1. Deliberate chance and confusion in Cage’s music.
2. Cage’s inability to live the philosophy of his music.
C. Contrast of music-by-chance and the world around us.
1. Inconsistency of indulging in expression of chaos when we acknowledge order for practical matters like airplane design.
2. Art as anti-art when it is mere intellectual statement, divorced from reality of who people are and the fullness of what the universe is.
III. General Culture As the Vehicle of Modern Thought
A. Propagation of idea of fragmentation in literature.
1. Effect of Eliot’s Wasteland and Picasso’s Demoiselles d’ Avignon
compared; the drift of general culture.
2. Eliot’s change in his form of writing when he became a Christian.
3. Philosophic popularization by novel: Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir.
B. Cinema as advanced medium of philosophy.
1. Cinema in the 1960s used to express Man’s destruction: e.g. Blow-up.
2. Cinema and the leap into fantasy:
The Hour of the Wolf, Belle de Jour, Juliet of the Spirits,
The Last Year at Marienbad.
3. Bergman’s inability to live out his philosophy (see Cage):
Silence and The Hour of the Wolf.
IV. Only on Christian Base Can Reality Be Faced Squarely
(1920s-1930s) Surrealism was both a art and literary movement that stressed the significance of letting one’s imagination rule through the use of the sub-conscious without the hindrances of logic and normal standards. The anti-rationalist characteristic that stemmed from the Dadaist movement was a part of Surrealism. However, Surrealism involved more playful and spontaneous in spirit. Ways of thinking about how a viewer perceives the world around himself helped to shape the movement. The movement was begun in 1924 in the city Paris by Andre Breton, the author of the ‘Manifeste du surrealisme.’ His writings encouraged the expression of one’s imagination through the use of dreams. His writings attracted many artists of the Dadaist movement. The Surrealist movement was helped along in its development during the 1920s and 1930s with the famous artist Salvador Dali.
From left to right: Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, (Hans) Jean Arp, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Rene Crevel, Man Ray
Jean Arp (Hans Arp)
Jean Arp is associated with the DADA movement. His collages were of torn pieces of paper dropped and affixed where they would land. His use of chance is intended to create free of human intervention. “Dada,” wrote Arp, “wished to destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover an unreasoned order.”
Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance
Random Collage
Torn Paper and Gouache
Dada carried to its logical conclusion the notion of all having come about by chance; the result was the final absurdity of everything, including humanity.
Pictured below: Salvador Dalí (lower center) and Marcel Duchamp (upper left) attending a bullfight.
Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) by Marcel Duchamp
Francis Schaeffer continues:
The man who perhaps most clearly and consciously showed this understanding of the resulting absurdity fo all things was Marcel Duchamp (1887-1969). He carried the concept of fragmentation further in Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), one version of which is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art–a painting in which the human disappeared completely. The chance and fragmented concept of what is led to the devaluation and absurdity of all things. All one was left with was a fragmented view of a life which is absurd in all its parts. Duchamp realized that the absurdity of all things includes the absurdity of art itself. His “ready-mades” were any object near at hand, which he simply signed. It could be a bicycle wheel or a urinal. Thus art itself was declared absurd.
_____
(Jackson Pollock pictured below dripping his paint)
Francis Schaeffer in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? noted on pages 200-203:
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is perhaps the clearest example in the United States of painting deliberately in order to make the statements that all is chance. He placed canvases horizontally on the floor and dripped paint on them from suspended cans swinging over them. Thus, his paintings were a product of chance. But wait a minute! Is there not an order in the lines of paint on his canvases? Yes, because it was not really chance shaping his canvases! The universe is not a random universe; it has order. Therefore, as the dripping paint from the swinging cans moved over the canvases, the lines of paint were following the order of the universe itself. The universe is not what these painters said it is.
(John Cage pictured above)
(Woody Allen, Peter O’Toole and Capucine)
________
(Marcel Duchamp plays white, John Cage plays black, on a chessboard modified to generate tones depending on where the chess pieces are. Toronto, 1968. Teeny Duchamp at far left, camerman in the background. This was a performance.)
John Cage provides perhaps the clearest example of what is involved in the shift of music. Cage believed the universe is a universe of chance. He tried carrying this out with great consistency. For example, at times he flipped coins to decide what the music should be. At other times he erected a machine that led an orchestra by chance motions so that the orchestra would not know what was coming next. Thus there was no order. Or again, he placed two conductors leading the same orchestra, separated from each other by a partition, so that what resulted was utter confusion. There is a close tie-in again to painting; in 1947 Cage made a composition he called MUSIC FOR MARCEL DUCHAMP. But the sound produced by his music was composed only of silence (interrupted only by random environmental sounds), but as soon as he used his chance methods sheer noise was the outcome.
But Cage also showed that one cannot live on such a base, that the chance concept of the universe does not fit the universe as it is. Cage is an expert in mycology, the science of mushrooms. And he himself said, “I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operation, I would die shortly.” Mushroom picking must be carefully discriminative. His theory of the universe does not fit the universe that exists.
All of this music by chance, which results in noise, makes a strange contrast to the airplanes sitting in our airports or slicing through our skies. An airplane is carefully formed; it is orderly (and many would also think it beautiful). This is in sharp contrast to the intellectualized art which states that the universe is chance. Why is the airplane carefully formed and orderly, and what Cage produced utter noise? Simply because an airplane must fit the orderly flow lines of the universe if it is to fly!
!Midnight in the Paris-best scene of the movie Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Woody Allen
published on Dec 18, 2012
Woody Allen talking with Salvador Dali and Man Ray and Luis Bunuel.
This is the transcript of
DALI: We met, earlier tonight…At the party! Dali.
GIL: I remember!-
DALI: A bottle of red wine!
GIL: It can’t be… Yeah….So?
DALI: Another glass for this man, please. I love the language!The French! The waiters? No.You like the shape of the rhinoceros?
GIL: The rhinoceros? Uh…Haven’t really thought about it.I paint the rhinoceros.
DALI: I paint you. Your sad eyes.Your big lips, melting over the hot sand,with one tear.Yes! And in your tear, another face.The Christ’s face!Yes, in the rhinoceros.
GIL: Yeah. I mean, I probably do look sad. I’m in…a very perplexing situation.
DALI: Diablo…Luis! Oye, Luis!(Damn. Luis! Hey, Luis!)My friends.This… is Luis Bunuel…and…Mr. Man Ray.-
GIL: Man Ray? My Gosh!- How ’bout that?
DALI: This is Pen-der. Pen-der. Pender!- Yes. And I am DalÃ!- DalÃ. Yes.You have to remember. Pender is in a perplexing situation.
GIL: It sounds so crazy to say.You guys are going to think I’m drunk, but I have to tell someone. I’m…from a…a different time. Another era.The future. OK? I come…from the 2000th millennium to here.I get in a car, and I slide through time.
MAN RAY: Exactly correct.You inhabit two worlds.- So far, I see nothing strange.- Why?
GIL: Yeah, you’re surrealists!But I’m a normal guy. See, in one life,I‘m engaged to marry a woman I love.At least, I think I love her.Christ! I better love her! I’m marrying her!
DALI: The rhinoceros makes love by mounting the female.But…is there a difference in the beauty between two rhinoceroses?
MAN RAY: There is another woman?Adriana. Yes, and I’m…very drawn to her.I find her extremely alluring.The problem is that other men,great artists – geniuses- also find her alluring,and she finds them. So, there’s that…
MAN RAY: A man in love with a woman from a different era.I see a photograph.
LUIS BUNUEL: I see a film.I see an insurmountable problem.I see……a rhinoceros.
Let me make a few points here. We see that Gil Pender’s perplexing problem is that he is in love and this goes against his views that we are not put here for a purpose, but by mindless chance. God created us so we can’t deny that we are created for a purpose and when a person falls truly in love with another person then they have a hard time maintaining this is only just a product of evolution and has no lasting significance.
Solomon wisely noted in Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” (Living Bible). No wonder Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography, “It is odd, isn’t it? I feel passionately for this worldand many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is. I am haunted. Some ghosts, for some extra mundane regions, seem always trying to tell me something that I am to repeat to the world, but I cannot understand that message.”
Bertrand Russell playing chess with his son (1940).
The Bible teaches that we all know that God exists and has made us in his image and if we deny that then we are suppressing the knowledge of our conscience in unrighteousness. Romans 1:18-19 (Amplified Bible) ” For God’s wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness REPRESSandHINDER the truth and make it inoperative. For that which is KNOWN about God is EVIDENT to them andMADE PLAIN IN THEIR INNER CONSCIOUSNESS, because God has SHOWN IT TO THEM,”(emphasis mine).
But let me respond further with the words of Francis Schaeffer from his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT (the chapter is entitled, “Is Propositional Revelation Nonsense?”
Of course, if the infinite uncreated Personal communicated to the finite created personal, he would not exhaust himself in his communication; but two things are clear here:
1. Even communication between once created person and another is not exhaustive, but that does not mean that for that reason it is not true.
2. If the uncreated Personal really cared for the created personal, it could not be thought unexpected for him to tell the created personal things of a propositional nature;otherwise as a finite being the created personal would have numerous things he could not know if he just began with himself as a limited, finite reference point. In such a case, there is no intrinsic reason why the uncreated Personal could communicate some vaguely true things, but could not communicate propositional truth concerning the world surrounding the created personal – for fun, let’s call that science. Or why he could not communicate propositional truth to the created personal concerning the sequence that followed the uncreated Personal making everything he made – let’s call thathistory. There is no reason we could think of why he could not tell these two types of propositional things truly. They would not be exhaustive; but could we think of any reason why they would not be true? The above is, of course, what the Bible claims for itself in regard to propositional revelation.
A video important to today. The man was very wise in the ways of God. And of government. Hope you enjoy a good solis teaching from the past. The truth never gets old.
The Roots of the Emergent Church by Francis Schaeffer
Francis Shaeffer – The early church (part1)
Francis Shaeffer – The early church (part 2)
Francis Shaeffer – The early church (part 3)
Francis Shaeffer – The early church (part 4)
Francis Shaeffer – The early church (part 5)
How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)
#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer
10 Worldview and Truth
Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100
Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
Below is a review I got off the internet:
Cannes (France), 12 May (EFE).- Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’ was chosen to open the 64th Cannes Film Festival, a film partly set in Paris the 1920s, a point in time that fascinated the American director
2011 Sony Pictures Classics.
Owen Wilson as Gil and Rachel McAdams as Inez in “Midnight in Paris.”
That’s not only the best per-theater average of 2011, but also the best debut-weekend average of a Woody Allen movie since time immemorial, i.e., B.M — or before Manhattan (1979), as that’s where Box Office Mojo’s opening-weekend list ends.
Even adjusting for inflation (using Box Office Mojo’s chart), back in 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo, one of Allen’s best-received efforts, averaged $84,205 at 3 locations. In 1995, Mighty Aphrodite, which would earn Mira Sorvino a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, collected $31,049 per site at 19 locations. Manhattanaveraged $52,450 at 29 locations. (Note: All things being equal, the higher the number of theaters, the lower the per-theater average.)
A few more comparisons: Midnight in Paris earned nearly four times more than You’ll Meet a Tall Dark Stranger‘s $160k — also at six sites — on its debut weekend in September last year. At four theaters, The King’s Speech averaged $88,863 in November last year.
According to Box Office Mojo, Midnight in Paris boasted the 16th highest weekend per-theater average among movies in limited release since 1982. (Most of those on the top-ten list are costlier, special screenings of Disney movies.)
Dreamgirls, Brokeback Mountain, Precious, and Red State (at a single location) are the four non-Disney, non-animated releases ahead of Midnight in Paris. The list, of course, hasn’t been adjusted for inflation.
Artists and bohemians inspired Woody Allen for ‘Midnight in Paris I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today we will look at Salvador Dali. In this clip below you will see when Picasso […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to […]
How Should We Then Live 7#3 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” Paul Gauguin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec were the greatest painters of the post-impressionists. They are pictured together in 1890 in Paris in Woody Allen’s new movie “Midnight in Paris.” My favorite philosopher Francis Schaeffer […]
How Should We Then Live 7#1 Dr. Francis Schaeffer examines the Age of Non-Reason and he mentions the work of Paul Gauguin. 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Kurt Fuller as John and Mimi Kennedy as Helen in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am […]
Midnight In Paris – SPOILER Discussion by What The Flick?! Associated Press Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1934 This video clip below discusses Gertrude Stein’s friendship with Pablo Picasso: I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Gad Elmaleh as Detective Tisserant in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Juan Belmonte was the most famous bullfighter of the time […]
Woody Allen explores fantasy world with “Midnight in Paris” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris.” The New York Times Ernest Hemingway, around 1937 I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers […]
What The Flick?!: Midnight In Paris – Review by What The Flick?! 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald and Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony […]
The song used in “Midnight in Paris” I am going through the famous characters that Woody Allen presents in his excellent movie “Midnight in Paris.” This series may be a long one since there are so many great characters. De-Lovely – Movie Trailer De-Lovely – So in Love – Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd & Others […]
Photo by Phill Mullen The only known photograph of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer, though their writing styles differed considerably. My grandfather, John Murphey, (born 1910) grew up in Oxford, Mississippi and knew both Johncy and “Bill” Faulkner. He […]
I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” was so good that I will be doing a series on it. My favorite Woody Allen movie is Crimes and Misdemeanors and I will provide links to my earlier posts on that great movie. Movie Guide the Christian website had the following review: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is the […]
The Associated Press reported today: The signature under the typewritten words on yellowing sheets of nearly century-old paper is unmistakable: Adolf Hitler, with the last few scribbled letters drooping downward. The date is 1919 and, decades before the Holocaust, the 30-year-old German soldier — born in Austria — penned what are believed to be […]
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago: Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on […]
Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]
Adriana pictured above is Picasso’s fictional mistress in the film “Midnight in Paris. Of course, Picasso did have plenty during his lifetime.
I am in the process of going through the characters referenced in Woody Allen’s film “Midnight in Paris. Today I will be discussing Georges Braque. By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans to look at Rodin,Coco Chanel, Modigliani, Matisse, Luis Bunuel, Josephine Baker, Van Gogh, Picasso, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot and several more.
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics
Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.”
Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to the film story line. Actually Picasso had taken girls from others quite often in the past. Picasso’s blue period was during a time when he moved into his best friend’s apartment and took up with his girl after his best friend’s suicide.
Along with Picasso Braque invented Cubism. I am currently going through the artists and writers mentioned in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Below is a biography of Braque.
“Georges Braque developed his painting skills while working for his father, a house decorator. He moved to Paris in 1900 to study where he was drawn to the work of the Fauve artists, including Matisse, Derain and Dufy, as well as the late landscapes of Cézanne. Meeting Picasso marked a huge turning point in Braque’s development and together they evolved as leaders of Cubism. After a brief interlude in which he was called up to fight in the First World War, Braque’s style developed in the direction he was to follow for the rest of his life. In establishing the principle that a work of art should be autonomous and not merely imitate nature, Cubism redefined art in the twentieth century. Braque’s large compositions incorporated the Cubist aim of representing the world as seen from a number of different viewpoints. He wanted to convey a feeling of being able to move around within the painting. The still life subject remained his chief preoccupation from 1927 to 1955.”
This clip below mentions Georges Braque as one of Picasso’s friends who with Picasso developed cubism.
I doubt that Georges Braque lived the same type of life like Picasso with all the mistresses. Of course, Woody Allen’s film is fiction. I did want to make a comment about cubism. Both Braque and Picasso founded cubism together but Picasso could not live with the loss of humanism that the paintings pictured. Take a look at this post on Picasso.
A Christian Manifesto Francis Schaeffer
Published on Dec 18, 2012
A video important to today. The man was very wise in the ways of God. And of government. Hope you enjoy a good solis teaching from the past. The truth never gets old.
The Roots of the Emergent Church by Francis Schaeffer
How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)
#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer
10 Worldview and Truth
Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
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Francis Schaeffer in the episode, “The Age of Fragmentation,” Episode 8 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? noted:
Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Sisley, Degas were following nature as it has been called in their painting they were impressionists.They painted only what their eyes brought them. But was there reality behind the light waves reaching their eyes? After 1885 Monet carried this to its conclusion and reality tended to become a dream. With impressionism the door was open for art to become the vehicle for modern thought. As reality became a dream, impressionism began to fall apart. These men Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, all great post Impressionists felt the problem, felt the loss of meaning. They set out to solve the problem, to find the way back to reality, to the absolute behind the individual things, behind the particulars, ultimately they failed. I am not saying that these painters were always consciously painting their philosophy of life, but rather in their work as a whole their worldview was often reflected. Cezanne reduced nature to what he considered its basic geometric forms. In this he was searching for an universal which would tie all kinds of individual things in nature together, but this gave a broken fragmented appearance to his pictures. In his bathers there is much freshness, much vitality. An absolute wonder in the balance of the picture as a whole, but he portrayed not only nature but also man himself in fragmented form. I want to stress that I am not minimizing these men as men. To read van Gogh’s letters is to weep for the pain of this sensitive man. Nor do I minimize their talent as painters. Their work often has great beauty indeed. But their art did become the vehicle of modern man’s view of fractured truth and light. As philosophy had moved from unity to fragmentation so did painting. In 1912 Kaczynski wrote an article saying that in so far as the old harmony, that is an unity of knowledge have been lost, that only two possibilities remained: extreme abstraction or extreme naturalism, both he said were equal.
With this painting modern art was born. Picasso painted it in 1907 and called it Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. It unites Cezzanne’s fragmentation with Gauguin’s concept of the nobel savage using the form of the african mask which was popular with Parisian art circle of that time. In great art technique is united with worldview and the technique of fragmentation works well with the worldview of modern man. A view of a fragmented world and a fragmented man and a complete break with the art of the Renaissance which was founded on man’s humanist hopes.
Here man is made to be less than man. Humanity is lost. Speaking of a part of Picasso’s private collection of his own works David Douglas Duncan says “Of course, not one of these pictures was actually a portrait, but his prophecy of a ruined world.”
But Picasso himself could not live with this loss of the human. When he was in love with Olga and later Jacqueline he did not consistently paint them in a fragmented way. At crucial points of their relationship he painted them as they really were with all his genius, with all their humanity. When he was painting his own young children he did not use fragmented techniques and presentation. I want you to understand that I am not saying that gentleness and humanness is not present in modern art, but as the techniques of modern art advanced, humanity was increasingly fragmented. The opposite of fragmentation would be unity, and the old philosophic thinkers thought they could bring forth this unity from the humanist base and then they gave this up.
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Below is a review of “Midnight in Paris” that I got off the internet.
I can’t remember the last time Woody Allen made a film as delightful as Midnight in Paris. He’s certainly done it before and it’s not one of his comedy classics like Annie Hall and Sleeper, but Midnight in Paris is undoubtedly one of Woody Allen’s best films of the past ten years. It’s the rare Allen comedy where he doesn’t insert an Allen-like neurotic character, and the script finds inventive ways to be funny and thoughtful. Johanne Debas and Darius Khondji’s cinematography is gorgeous, the film is filled with wonderful performances where you can tell that all of the actors are having a marvelous time, and Allen brings it all together with a joy rarely seen in his movies these days.
Gil (Owen Wilson) is having a miserable time in one of the most beautiful cities in the world: Paris. He’s a screenwriter who’s struggling to finish his novel, his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) seems more enamored of her pretentious friend Paul (Michael Sheen) than she does of Gil, and her parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy) hate Gil and think he’s cheap. But none of that bothers him as much as the fact that he feels like he living in the wrong time. When he walks around the museums and gardens of Paris, he takes in the beauty, but it also provides him with nostalgia for the 1920s and all the amazing writers and artists he never met.
Despondent and a little drunk, Gil wanders the streets of Paris alone at midnight. As he passes one particular street, an old-time motorcar offers to give him a lift. He gets in and suddenly finds himself party talking up F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill) while Cole Porter (Yves Heck) plays the piano. Gil slowly realizes that he’s somehow been transported back to the Paris of the 1920s and that he has the rare opportunity to talk to his literary heroes about his book. Matters become slightly more complicated when he starts to fall for Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a costume designer and a muse for giants like Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo).
There’s a charming simplicity at the heart of Midnight in Paris and it comes from the question of what would you do if you could go back in time and live in a world that you thought was better than your own? Allen doesn’t try to recreate the 1920s as they actually were (this isn’t Boardwalk Empire), but rather as Gil imagines it and that everyone is larger than life. Stoll almost steals the movie with his bombastic impersonation of a young Ernest Hemingway while Adrien Brody gets amusingly strange as he plays the eccentricities of Salvador Dalí. And as for Wilson, I can’t remember the last time I saw him exuding such immeasurable joy and personality into a role, and I applaud both him and Allen for not making Gil the standard neurotic Woody Allen surrogate character.
The movie pulls the majority of its entertainment value from watching Gil have fun with his 20th century artistic heroes (the rest of it comes from Michael Sheen’s performance), but it also has a thoughtful exploration at its core about artistic creation, inspiration, and criticism. There’s a couple of simple observations like how the people who inspired us to be creative can inspire us to lead better lives through their art, and how nostalgia always makes people think an earlier time was better (Gil even remakes on the latter, “I’m having an insight! It’s a minor one…”), but the idea I found most interesting was about the relationship between the critic and the creator.
Since I’m a critic, that should come as no surprise and neither should the fact that Allen sides with the creative. It’s not that the film condemns criticism. The constructive criticism Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) gives Gil on his manuscript is invaluable as are the life lessons he gets from all his other idols and Adriana. But the ignorant, pompous criticism of Paul is where Allen clearly takes issue. While the script veers a little too close to “Only the artist has the correct interpretation of their work,” Allen keeps it above water by letting us know that Paul is wrong not because he has an opinion on art, but because it’s an uninformed opinion that willfully ignores history and context.
Woody Allen’s comedies are always at their best when they have a thoughtful idea at the middle and the revelation of that idea isn’t too heavy-handed. He’s had some trouble with that formula in recent years, but he gets the mixture almost completely right with Midnight in Paris. Even if you don’t want to engage in the subtext, you’ll be swept up in the performances and ache to live in the artist’s dream city of Paris (although I recommend staying out of the 17th century).
Artists and bohemians inspired Woody Allen for ‘Midnight in Paris I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today we will look at Salvador Dali. In this clip below you will see when Picasso […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to […]
How Should We Then Live 7#3 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” Paul Gauguin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec were the greatest painters of the post-impressionists. They are pictured together in 1890 in Paris in Woody Allen’s new movie “Midnight in Paris.” My favorite philosopher Francis Schaeffer […]
How Should We Then Live 7#1 Dr. Francis Schaeffer examines the Age of Non-Reason and he mentions the work of Paul Gauguin. 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Kurt Fuller as John and Mimi Kennedy as Helen in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am […]
Midnight In Paris – SPOILER Discussion by What The Flick?! Associated Press Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1934 This video clip below discusses Gertrude Stein’s friendship with Pablo Picasso: I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Gad Elmaleh as Detective Tisserant in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Juan Belmonte was the most famous bullfighter of the time […]
Woody Allen explores fantasy world with “Midnight in Paris” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris.” The New York Times Ernest Hemingway, around 1937 I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers […]
What The Flick?!: Midnight In Paris – Review by What The Flick?! 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald and Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony […]
The song used in “Midnight in Paris” I am going through the famous characters that Woody Allen presents in his excellent movie “Midnight in Paris.” This series may be a long one since there are so many great characters. De-Lovely – Movie Trailer De-Lovely – So in Love – Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd & Others […]
Photo by Phill Mullen The only known photograph of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer, though their writing styles differed considerably. My grandfather, John Murphey, (born 1910) grew up in Oxford, Mississippi and knew both Johncy and “Bill” Faulkner. He […]
I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” was so good that I will be doing a series on it. My favorite Woody Allen movie is Crimes and Misdemeanors and I will provide links to my earlier posts on that great movie. Movie Guide the Christian website had the following review: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is the […]
The Associated Press reported today: The signature under the typewritten words on yellowing sheets of nearly century-old paper is unmistakable: Adolf Hitler, with the last few scribbled letters drooping downward. The date is 1919 and, decades before the Holocaust, the 30-year-old German soldier — born in Austria — penned what are believed to be […]
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago: Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on […]
Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]
I am currently going through all the characters referenced in Woody Allen’s film “Midnight in Paris.” Today I will be discussing Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans to look at Geores Brague, Dali, Rodin,Coco Chanel, Modigliani, Matisse, Luis Bunuel, Josephine Baker, Van Gogh, Picasso, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot and several more.
Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Very early when he arrived in Paris, Vincent met him at the Cormon workshop and they quickly became friends.
Toulouse-Lautrec will introduce him to many painters and merchants during the weekly afternoons that he organizes at home. He will take him to the Mirliton, Aristide Bruant’s cabaret, for the first time.
He wants to challenge the painter de Groult to a duel, as the latter criticized Vincent’s paintings at an exhibition.
The duel won’t take place because de Groult will apologize to him.
Toulouse-Lautrec is deeply affected and sad when he learns about Vincent’s suicide and he will come to his funeral.
Paul Gauguin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec were the greatest painters of the post-impressionists. They are pictured together in 1890 in Paris in Woody Allen’s new movie “Midnight in Paris.” My favorite philosopher Francis Schaeffer did a great job in his film series “How should we then live?” looking at the artists of this period and I wanted to share a couple clips from that film and a portion of the written outline. First, here is a brief biography of Lautrec’s life.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born on November 24, 1864, in southern France. Son and heir of Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse, he was the last in the line of an aristocratic family that dated back a thousand years. Today, the family estate houses the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec. As a child, Henri was weak and often sick. But by the time he was ten years old he had begun to draw and paint.
At age twelve Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left leg and at fourteen his right leg. The bones did not heal properly, and his legs ceased to grow. He reached maturity with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally short legs. He was only 4 1/2 feet (1.5 meters) tall.
Deprived of the physical life that a normal body would have permitted, Toulouse-Lautrec lived completely for his art. He dwelt in the Montmartre section of Paris, the center of the cabaret entertainment and bohemian life that he loved to depict in his work. Dance halls and nightclubs, racetracks, prostitutes – all these were memorialized on canvas or made into lithographs.
Toulouse-Lautrec was very much an active part of this community. He would sit at a crowded nightclub table, laughing and drinking, meanwhile making swift sketches. The next morning in his studio he would expand the sketches into brightly colored paintings.
(Currently in Little Rock the exhibit “The Impressionists” presented by Harriet and Warren Stephens has the “Study of a Woman” by Henri Toulouse Lautrec. I saw the exhibit and enjoyed it very much.)
view
In order to join in the Montmartre life – as well as to fortify himself against the crowd’s ridicule of his appearance – Toulouse-Lautrec began to drink heavily. By the 1890s the drinking was affecting his health. He was confined first to a sanatorium and then to his mother’s care at home, but he could not stay away from alcohol. Toulouse-Lautrec died on September 9, 1901, at the family chateau of Malrome.
How Should We Then Live Pt 7
AGE OF NON-REASON
I. Optimism Of Older Humanist Philosophers:
The unity and true knowledge of reality defined as starting from Man alone.
II. Shift in Modern Philosophy
A. Eighteenth century as the vital watershed.
B. Rousseau: ideas and influence.
1. Rousseau and autonomous freedom.
2. Personal freedom and social necessity clash in Rousseau.
3. Rousseau’s influence.
a) Robespierre and the ideology of the Terror.
b) Gauguin, natural freedom, and disillusionment.
C. DeSade: If nature is the absolute, cruelty equals non-cruelty.
D. Impossible tension between autonomous freedom and autonomous reasons conclusion that the
universe and people are a part of the total cosmic machine.
E. Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard and their followers sought for a unity but they did not solve the problem.
1. After these men and their followers, there came an absolute break between the area of meaning and values, and the area of reason.
2. Now humanistic philosophy sees reason as always leading to pessimism; any hope of optimism lies in non-reason.
III. Existentialism and Non-Reason
A. French existentialism.
1. Total separation of reason and will: Sartre.
2. Not possible to live consistently with this position.
B. German existentialism.
1. Jaspers and the “final experience.”
2. Heidegger and angst.
C. Influence of existentialism.
1. As a formal philosophy it is declining.
2. As a generalized attitude it dominates modern thought.
IV. Forms of Popularization of Nonrational Experience
A. Drug experience.
1. Aldous Huxley and “truth inside one’s head.”
2. Influence of rock groups in spreading the drug culture; psychedelic rock.
B. Eastern religious experience: from the drug trip to the Eastern religious trip.
C. The occult as a basis for “hope” in the area of non-reason.
V. Theological Liberalism and Existentialism
A. Preparation for theological existentialism.
1. Renaissance’s attempt to “synthesize” Greek philosophers and Christianity; religious liberals’ attempt to “synthesize” Enlightenment and Christianity.
2. Religious liberals denied supernatural but accepted reason.
3. Schweitzer’s demolition of liberal aim to separate the natural from the supernatural in the New Testament.
B. Theological existentialism.
1. Intellectual failure of rationalist theology opened door to theological existentialism.
2. Barth brought the existential methodology into theology.
a) Barth’s teaching led to theologians who said that the Bible is not true in the areas of science and history, but they nevertheless look for a religious experience from it.
b) For many adherents of this theology, the Bible does not give absolutes in regard to what is right or wrong in human behavior.
3. Theological existentialism as a cul-de-sac.
a) If Bible is divorced from its teaching concerning the cosmos and history, its values can’t be applied to a historic situation in either morals or law; theological pronouncements about morals or law are arbitrary.
b) No way to explain evil or distinguish good from evil. Therefore, these theologians are in same position as Hindu philosophers (as illustrated by Kali).
c) Tillich, prayer as reflection, and the deadness of “god.”
d) Religious words used for manipulation of society.
VI. Conclusion
With what Christ and the Bible teach, Man can have life instead of death—in having knowledge that is more than finite Man can have from himself.
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Comedy. Starring Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, Rachel Mc-Adams, Kathy Bates. Directed by Woody Allen. (PG-13. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
Was there ever really a golden age? And if so, did people know it at the time? Are people even capable of recognizing a golden age when they’re in the midst of one? For Woody Allen, whose musical and cultural tastes run to the 1920s and ’30s, these questions have probably fueled countless daydreams. And now out of all that rumination comes “Midnight in Paris,” a movie that’s loving and wistful and often hysterically funny.
Romance is built into the design. A screenwriter, who has always been nostalgic, visits modern-day Paris and falls through a ripple in time: On a Paris street, a clock strikes midnight, and a 1920s taxicab drives up. F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are inside, and they take him to a party. Though at first the writer thinks these are faux Fitzgeralds and that he’s at a costume party, he soon realizes that this is the real deal. He is surrounded by the music and styles he loves and is mingling with his idols and artistic heroes.
Our hero’s dislocation keeps the movie as light as it needs to be. Meeting celebrities can be awkward enough, but meeting legends of the past – the eagerness to please would be overwhelming. Yet always there is an edge of poignancy, too, because you are looking at the ’20s through the eyes of a modern person, as a world that is, by definition, past. The past is always romantic because it’s gone, just as the future is always frightening because you’regone.There’s an idea about Paris at work here, as well. Allen takes the notion of streets alive with the past and makes it literal in “Midnight in Paris,” so that everything that has ever happened in this city never goes away. It’s alive with parallel worlds – which is sometimes how we feel when we visit great cities like Paris, Rome or New York.Gil (Wilson) finds himself able to go back and forth between his own time and the ’20s, and so we keep feeling the contrast. In the 21st century, he is engaged to an awful spoiled brat played without compromise by Rachel Mc-Adams. Meanwhile, in his nightly ’20s rambles, he is falling in love with Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who is having an affair with Picasso. As was the case with Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” Woody Allen brings out, for the first time in an American film, the fire and allure Cotillard has shown in her European work.In the meantime, in between all the longing and wistfulness, this movie is sidesplitting because Allen gets to tap into an inexhaustible source of comedy: Whenever he wants a laugh, or 10 laughs, he just introduces another writer or painter and plays to our expectations. Every scene, for example, involving Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll) is a scream, because Allen has him talk the way Hemingway wrote. There is even a Man Ray joke here. And if you know Luis Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel,” you’ll fall out of your chair when Gil starts feeding him movie ideas.Adrien Brody shows up as the young Salvador Dalí – good casting. Alison Pill looks very much like Zelda, though Tom Hiddleston is too tall for Scott Fitzgerald, who was just a little bigger than Woody Allen. But Kathy Bates is just right as Gertrude Stein, as businesslike and motherly as you’d want her to be.— Advisory: Lots of smoking – they didn’t know better in those days.E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.
Artists and bohemians inspired Woody Allen for ‘Midnight in Paris I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today we will look at Salvador Dali. In this clip below you will see when Picasso […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to […]
How Should We Then Live 7#3 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” Paul Gauguin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec were the greatest painters of the post-impressionists. They are pictured together in 1890 in Paris in Woody Allen’s new movie “Midnight in Paris.” My favorite philosopher Francis Schaeffer […]
How Should We Then Live 7#1 Dr. Francis Schaeffer examines the Age of Non-Reason and he mentions the work of Paul Gauguin. 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Kurt Fuller as John and Mimi Kennedy as Helen in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am […]
Midnight In Paris – SPOILER Discussion by What The Flick?! Associated Press Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1934 This video clip below discusses Gertrude Stein’s friendship with Pablo Picasso: I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Gad Elmaleh as Detective Tisserant in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Juan Belmonte was the most famous bullfighter of the time […]
Woody Allen explores fantasy world with “Midnight in Paris” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris.” The New York Times Ernest Hemingway, around 1937 I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers […]
What The Flick?!: Midnight In Paris – Review by What The Flick?! 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald and Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony […]
The song used in “Midnight in Paris” I am going through the famous characters that Woody Allen presents in his excellent movie “Midnight in Paris.” This series may be a long one since there are so many great characters. De-Lovely – Movie Trailer De-Lovely – So in Love – Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd & Others […]
Photo by Phill Mullen The only known photograph of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer, though their writing styles differed considerably. My grandfather, John Murphey, (born 1910) grew up in Oxford, Mississippi and knew both Johncy and “Bill” Faulkner. He […]
I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” was so good that I will be doing a series on it. My favorite Woody Allen movie is Crimes and Misdemeanors and I will provide links to my earlier posts on that great movie. Movie Guide the Christian website had the following review: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is the […]
The Associated Press reported today: The signature under the typewritten words on yellowing sheets of nearly century-old paper is unmistakable: Adolf Hitler, with the last few scribbled letters drooping downward. The date is 1919 and, decades before the Holocaust, the 30-year-old German soldier — born in Austria — penned what are believed to be […]
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago: Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on […]
Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]
Britain’s Prince William, center left, and his wife Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, center right, pose for a photograph with, clockwise from bottom right, Margarita Armstrong-Jones, Eliza Lopes, Grace van Cutsem, Lady Louise Windsor, Tom Pettifer, and William Lowther-Pinkerton in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace, following their wedding at Westminster Abbey, London, on Friday, April 29, 2011 in this photo provided by Clarence House on Saturday, April 30, 2011. (Hugo Burnand, Clarence House/AP Photo)
I really do wish Kate and William success in their marriage. I hope they truly are committed to each other, and if they are then the result will be a marriage that lasts their whole lifetime. Nevertheless, I do not think it is best to live together before marriage like they did, and I writing this series to help couples see how best to prepare for marriage.
Permanence Before Experience – The Wisdom of Marriage
Thu, Mar. 04, 2010 Posted: 09:05 PM EDT
Rightly understood, marriage is all about permanence. In a world of transitory experiences, events, and commitments, marriage is intransigent. It simply is what it is – a permanent commitment made by a man and a woman who commit themselves to live faithfully unto one another until the parting of death.
That is what makes marriage what it is. The logic of marriage is easy to understand and difficult to subvert, which is one reason the institution has survived over so many millennia. Marriage lasts because of its fundamental status. It is literally what a healthy and functioning society cannot survive without.
And yet, modernity can be seen as one long attempt to subvert the permanent – including marriage. The modern age has brought the rise of individual autonomy, the collection of populations in cities, the weakening of family commitments, the waning of faith, the routinization of divorce, and a host of other developments that subvert marriage and the commitment it requires.
Added to this list is the phenomenon of cohabitation. The twentieth century saw the phenomenon of cohabitation become the expectation among many, if not most, young adults. But the end of the century, the progression of intimacy (including sexual intimacy) was likely to follow a line from “hooking up” to cohabiting.
A new study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics suggests two very important findings: First, that cohabiting is now the norm for younger adults. Second, cohabiting makes divorce more likely after eventual marriage.
“Cohabitation is increasingly becoming the first co-residential union formed among young adults,” states the report. The facts seem daunting. The percentage of women in their 30s who report having cohabited is over 60 percent – doubled over the last fifteen years.
Reporting in The New York Times, Sam Roberts documents the rise of cohabitation among the young. He cites Pamela J. Smock of the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center. “From the perspective of many young adults, marrying without living together first seems quite foolish,” she explains.
That perfectly captures the new logic – that it would be foolish to marry without first cohabiting. How can you know if you are really meant for each other? How can you measure compatibility without the experience of living together?
That logic makes perfect sense in a society that is increasingly sexualized, secularized, and “liberated” from the expectations of the past.
Reacting to the research findings, Professor Kelly A. Musick of Cornell University asserted, “The figures suggest to me that cohabitation is still a pathway to marriage for many college graduates, while it may be an end in itself for many less educated women.” The study report affirmed her assessment: “Cohabitation is increasingly becoming the first co-residential union formed among young adults . . . . As a result of the growing prevalence of cohabitation, the number of children born to unmarried cohabiting parents has also increased.”
But, as this new report suggests, cohabiting before marriage does not lead to a stronger and more permanent union. Instead, the experience of cohabiting weakens the union. As Roberts reports: “The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first, the study found.”
Pamela Smock argues that the research will fall on deaf ears. “Just because some academic studies have shown that living together may increase the chance of divorce somewhat, young adults themselves don’t believe that.”
That may be true, and it surely captures the spirit of the age. The experience of cohabiting just makes sense to many young adults. Their logic is that marriage is what happens after a relationship becomes sexually intimate and is found to be adequately fulfilling – not before.
They do not know that what they are actually doing is undoing marriage. They miss the central logic of marriage as an institution of permanence. They miss the essential wisdom of marriage – that the commitment must come before the intimacy, that the vows must come before the shared living, that the wisdom of marriage is its permanence before its experience.
Cohabitation weakens marriage – even a cohabiting couple’s eventual marriage – because a temporary and transitory commitment always weakens a permanent commitment. Having lived together with the open possibility of parting, that possibility always remains, and never leaves.
This research might not alter the plans of many young couples, who are not likely to read, much less be advised by such research. But it does affirm what makes marriage what it is, and what weakens and destroys marriage as an institution.
From a Christian perspective there is more, of course. We are reminded of marriage as God’s gift and expectation, and of the divine goodness of it. We are also reminded that it is our Creator, and not we ourselves, who knows that we need permanence before experience. We need marriage.
Adapted from R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s weblog at www.albertmohler.com. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com. Original Source: www.albertmohler.com.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Christian Post Guest Columnist
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Dr. Adrian Rogers – Steadfast Loyalty To Your Wife
Dr. Francis Schaeffer examines the Age of Non-Reason and he mentions the work of Paul Gauguin.
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics
Kurt Fuller as John and Mimi Kennedy as Helen in “Midnight in Paris.”
I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today I am looking at Paul Gauguin. By the way, I know that some of you are wondering how many posts I will have before I am finished. Right now I have plans to look at Lautrec, Geores Brague, Dali, Rodin,Coco Chanel, Modigliani, Matisse, Luis Bunuel, Josephine Baker, Van Gogh, Picasso, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot and several more.
Gauguin was a financially successful stockbroker and self-taught amateur artist when he began collecting works by the impressionists in the 1870s. Inspired by their example, he took up the study of painting under Camille Pissarro. Pissarro and Edgar Degas arranged for him to show his early painting efforts in the fourth impressionist exhibition in 1879 (as well as the annual impressionist exhibitions held through 1882). In 1882, after a stock market crash and recession rendered him unemployed and broke, Gauguin decided to abandon the business world to pursue life as an artist full-time.
In 1886, Gauguin went to Pont-Aven in Brittany, a rugged land of fervently religious people far from the urban sophistication of Paris. There he forged a new style. He was at the center of a group of avant-garde artists who dedicated themselves to synthétisme, ordering and simplifying sensory data to its fundamentals. Gauguin’s greatest innovation was his use of color, which he employed not for its ability to mimic nature but for its emotive qualities. He applied it in broad flat areas outlined with dark paint, which tended to flatten space and abstract form. This flattening of space and symbolic use of color would be important influences on early twentieth-century artists.
In Brittany, Gauguin had hoped to tap the expressive potential he believed rested in a more rural, even “primitive” culture. Over the next several years he traveled often between Paris and Brittany, spending time also in Panama and Martinique. In 1891 his rejection of European urban values led him to Tahiti, where he expected to find an unspoiled culture, exotic and sensual. Instead, he was confronted with a world already transformed by western missionaries and colonial rule. In large measure, Gauguin had to invent the world he sought, not only in paintings but with woodcarvings, graphics, and written works. As he struggled with ways to express the questions of life and death, knowledge and evil that preoccupied him, he interwove the images and mythology of island life with those of the west and other cultures. After a trip to France (1893 to 1895), Gauguin returned to spend his remaining years, marred by illness and depression, in the South Seas.
Gauguin as an artist strived to give his work a more human touch, expressing feelings and knowledge and human reactions to the realities of life, while at the same time freeing himself as an artist to express color and design boldly, overcoming the narrowness of merely copying what the eye can register as the impressionists painted. In an attempt to obtain his goal of “regaining humanity,” as he called it, he moved to Tahiti in 1891. It was here that he painted his greatest work in 1897: Whence? What? Whither?
During the course of 1897 Gauguin referred increasingly to his own death, alluding to suicide in letters and his journal. In the autumn he noted that “The artist dies, his heirs make a grab for his works, sort out the copyright, his estate, and whatever else there might be to do. Now he has been stripped to the bone. I think about these things, and am going to strip myself first: it gives me a sense of relief.”
As Gauguin contemplated taking his own life he set out to create a painting that would leave a lasting legacy of his faith, worldview, artistic insight and intentions by asking three metaphysical questions: Where do we come from? What art we? Where are we going?
In a letter to friend Daniel de Monfreid, he describes the painting as a “philosophical work” which could be compared to the Gospels. We must read the work, he said, from right to left and interprets it as such:
“In the bottom right-hand corner there is a sleeping child, then three covering women. Two figures dressed in purple are deep in conversation. A crouching figure, which defies perspective, and is meant to do so, looks very large. This figure is raising its arm and looking in astonishment at the two women who dare to think about their own fate. The central figure is picking fruit from a tree. Two cats by a child…a white goat. The idol is raising both its arms with rhythmic energy and seems to be pointing to somewhere beyond here. A covering girl appears to be listening to the idol. An old woman, close to the end of life, completes the circle. She is ready to accept her fate. At her feet a strange, white bird with a lizard in its talons symbolizes the futility of empty words…”
Where do we come from? A baby lies next to some young women as the source of life. What are we? A woman stands reaching for the apple, a probable reference to Eve in the garden and man’s fall into sin and ruin. Where are we going? From right to left we see the process of ageing taking place culminating in an old woman, “ready to accept her fate.” Art historian H.R. Rookmaaker suggests that in the background “mysterious figures, in sad colors, standing near the tree of knowledge, are sad as a result of that knowledge.”
It is interesting to note that a few days after completing this work, Gauguin went off into the woods and swallowed a large amount of arsenic. But his body rejected it and he was unable to keep the poison down.
I give this example to show how form and content can beautifully integrate in such a way as to make the work a more powerful vehicle of expression. It should be obvious to the reader by now that I do not share Gauguin’s unfortunate outlook on life, but as an artist and a Christian, I appreciate the thought and purpose behind his masterpiece. Both the aesthetic quality and intellectual content marry to form an important and thought-provoking piece of art. The creators of the religious kitsch that line the shelves at your local happy Christian bookstore could learn much from the serious attention Gauguin put into his work.
As Schaeffer was quick to warn, we should not judge art by this criterion alone, but view all works of art by its technique, validity, worldview, and suiting of form to content to gain a deeper understanding, appreciation, and true evaluation.
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I got to visit the exhibit “The Impressionists and their influence,” presented by Harriet and Warren Stephens at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock in June of 2011. I got to see this painting below:
“Yes, indeed, the savages have taught many things to the man of an old civilization; these ignorant men have taught him much in the art of living and happiness. Above all, they have taught me to know myself better; they have told me the deepest truth. Was this thy secret, thou mysterious world? Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature. I have become better for having understood and having loved thy human soul— a flower which has ceased to bloom and whose fragrance no one henceforth will breathe.”
Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa
The passage above comes from the end of Paul Gauguin’s travel journal in Tahiti entitled Noa Noa. Literally meaning “fragrant, fragrant”, the phrase noa noa is introduced to the reader at the end of the opening chapter when Gauguin describes the intoxicating scent of the Tahitian women upon his arrival. “A mingled perfume,” he writes, “half animal, half vegetable emanated from them; the perfume of their blood and of the gardenias— tiaré— which all wore in their hair. ‘Téiné merahi noa noa (now very fragrant),’ [the women] said.” (Gauguin 8).
During his first visit to Tahiti (1891-3), Gauguin documented his experiences on this two-year journey from beginning to end, even starting with his initial disappointment at the overwhelming presence of French civilization in Polynesia. Upon viewing the queen of the island at her husband’s funeral, however, Gauguin is taken by her “Maori charm” (Gauguin 6) marking the beginning of his passionate love affair with Tahiti. Gauguin not only recorded his personal encounters with the land, the people, and specifically the women, but he also made his journal a sort of anthropological report: providing first-hand accounts of their customs, religious beliefs and cultural history. In one section, Gauguin even discusses Tahitian astronomy, listing mythical histories behind the names of the stars, and the Polynesian version of Genesis, even complete with detailed accounts of whom originally begat who, as is provided in the Old Testament of the Bible.
While it is important to remember that Noa Noa is a journal and lacks the objectivity needed for a truly comprehensive and factual account of nineteenth century Tahiti, this bias gives us a personal window into what Gauguin saw through his eyes. The juxtaposition of sketches mixed with his own words allowed Gauguin to provide us with the Tahiti that he wanted to share with the world. One of the most interesting artistic elements of his original manuscript was his series of ten woodcuts that he intended to publish as a part of the journal. Drawn to the “primitive” techniques and materials used in this artform, Gauguin even used unsophisticated tools to achieve a new, less traditional print (Chapman, GroveArt.com). Unfortunately, as Noa Noa was considered “a bit much for stuffy 1900 Europe” (Gauguin ix), Gauguin had to publish the journal himself and omit the woodcuts. In newer versions of Noa Noa, however, the woodcuts have been included alongside his words and several of his original sketches.
In all, perhaps the most valuable thing to come out of Gauguin’s accounts in Noa Noa is an intimate look into the motive behind many of his great works of art. Frequent themes in the journal are also found throughout his works such as Polynesian mythical culture, Tahitian women, androgynous figures, sexual freedom, and the beauty of this Paradise on Earth. In the spirit of a true artist, Gauguin even has his journal come full circle as he ends the book with the flower that his wife once wore behind her ear, now wilted on her knee, a symbol of the end of a journey that opened with an introduction to the flowered, fragrant women observed at the start, who would eventually become the inspiration for such an important period in his life and career.
Summary: This is a romantic comedy set in Paris about a family that goes there because of business, and two young people who are engaged to be married in the fall have experiences there that change their lives. It’s about a young man’s great love for a city, Paris and the illusion people have that a life different from theirs would be much better. (Sony Classic Pictures)…
Artists and bohemians inspired Woody Allen for ‘Midnight in Paris I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today we will look at Salvador Dali. In this clip below you will see when Picasso […]
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to […]
How Should We Then Live 7#3 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” Paul Gauguin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec were the greatest painters of the post-impressionists. They are pictured together in 1890 in Paris in Woody Allen’s new movie “Midnight in Paris.” My favorite philosopher Francis Schaeffer […]
How Should We Then Live 7#1 Dr. Francis Schaeffer examines the Age of Non-Reason and he mentions the work of Paul Gauguin. 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Kurt Fuller as John and Mimi Kennedy as Helen in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am […]
Midnight In Paris – SPOILER Discussion by What The Flick?! Associated Press Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1934 This video clip below discusses Gertrude Stein’s friendship with Pablo Picasso: I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that […]
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Woody Allen explores fantasy world with “Midnight in Paris” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris.” The New York Times Ernest Hemingway, around 1937 I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers […]
What The Flick?!: Midnight In Paris – Review by What The Flick?! 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald and Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony […]
The song used in “Midnight in Paris” I am going through the famous characters that Woody Allen presents in his excellent movie “Midnight in Paris.” This series may be a long one since there are so many great characters. De-Lovely – Movie Trailer De-Lovely – So in Love – Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd & Others […]
Photo by Phill Mullen The only known photograph of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer, though their writing styles differed considerably. My grandfather, John Murphey, (born 1910) grew up in Oxford, Mississippi and knew both Johncy and “Bill” Faulkner. He […]
I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” was so good that I will be doing a series on it. My favorite Woody Allen movie is Crimes and Misdemeanors and I will provide links to my earlier posts on that great movie. Movie Guide the Christian website had the following review: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is the […]
The Associated Press reported today: The signature under the typewritten words on yellowing sheets of nearly century-old paper is unmistakable: Adolf Hitler, with the last few scribbled letters drooping downward. The date is 1919 and, decades before the Holocaust, the 30-year-old German soldier — born in Austria — penned what are believed to be […]
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago: Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on […]
Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]
AP Photo
This Tuesday, May 31, 2011 photo shows a visitor in the garden of the Rodin museum in Paris. Spend a day, and a de rigeur night, here and you can walk hand-in-hand with Woody Allen through the City of Light he portrays in “Midnight in Paris,” his sweet and zany Valentine to the French capital. In an instant anyone can amble down the 21st-century streets of this walking city. AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere.By: Elaine Ganley, Associated Press
2011 Sony Pictures Classics.
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics
2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics
While it is important to remember that Noa Noa is a journal and lacks the objectivity needed for a truly comprehensive and factual account of nineteenth century Tahiti, this bias gives us a personal window into what Gauguin saw through his eyes. The juxtaposition of sketches mixed with his own words allowed Gauguin to provide us with the Tahiti that he wanted to share with the world. One of the most interesting artistic elements of his original manuscript was his series of ten woodcuts that he intended to publish as a part of the journal. Drawn to the “primitive” techniques and materials used in this artform, Gauguin even used unsophisticated tools to achieve a new, less traditional print (Chapman, GroveArt.com). Unfortunately, as Noa Noa was considered “a bit much for stuffy 1900 Europe” (Gauguin ix), Gauguin had to publish the journal himself and omit the woodcuts. In newer versions of Noa Noa, however, the woodcuts have been included alongside his words and several of his original sketches.
The Daily Hatch 