स्मित करणारी अपूर्वाई....Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

पूर्व आणि पश्चिमेतील मध्ययुगीन कालातील स्त्रीयां मध्ये फरक काय? याचे एकाच शब्दात उत्तर द्यायचे असेल तर मी म्हणेन Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (१७५५-१८४२) सारखी स्त्री चित्रकार पूर्वेमध्ये नसणे आणि फ्रान्स मध्ये असणे ....

स्वतः चे पोर्ट्रेट 

जोनाथन जोन्स या चित्राबद्दल लिहतात :

"Modelling herself after a portrait by Rubens that is also in the National Gallery, this artist, whose friendship with Marie Antoinette later forced her to flee France, gives herself all the conventional attributes of 18th-century beauty – but she’s holding the palette, she’s in control."

पण या मोठ्या कलावंत बाईं जरी फ्रेंच राज्यक्रांतीमुळे देशधडीला लागल्या असल्या तरी त्यांच्याकडे दुसऱ्या एका क्रांतीचे श्रेय जाते असा दावा करण्यात आला आहे. 

Kathryn Hughes , review of ‘The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris’ by Colin Jones , 2014 for The Guardian, October 2014:

“ In the autumn of 1787, gallery-going Parisians didn't know where to look. On the walls of the Louvre hung a self-portrait by the eminent artist Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun. In some ways the painting was deeply conventional. Mme Vigée Le Brun was dandling her infant daughter on her knee in a gesture that managed to invoke both the Virgin Mary and the new bourgeois ideal of "natural" motherhood. The problem was her mouth. It was smiling. Not just an enigmatic Mona Lisa smirk, but a proper one which showed her teeth. Was Vigée Le Brun mad, a slut or some kind of wild revolutionary? The only thing to do was rush past, and pretend you hadn't seen.

In this compelling Cheshire cat of a book, Colin Jones charts the moment in the mid-18th century when Paris learned to smile. Until that point, the court, tucked away at Versailles, had insisted that everyone kept a straight face. This was partly because France's most privileged mouths had been spoiled by too much sugar, and no one wanted their black stumps flashed to infinity in the Hall of Mirrors. But it was also because smiling in general risked making you look either plebeian or insane....”

Self-Portrait with Her Daughter Julie, 1786

Courtesy: Wikipedia

 

जो अमेरिकेत गेल्यावर माझ्या सारखा भारतीयाला दुकानात , बाहेर 'कारण नसताना' तिऱ्हाईताकडे बघून स्मित करणारी माणसे बघून जो धक्का बसतो त्याची सुरवात कदाचित तेंव्हा झाली...

प्रसिद्ध लेखक जुलिअन बार्न्स त्यांच्याबद्दल लंडन रिव्यू ऑफ बुक्स मध्ये लिहतात:

"... Her father was a painter; she showed much early promise and made the right connections (her husband being an art dealer); by 23 she had painted her first picture of Marie Antoinette, for whom she became the portraitist of choice. She was very accomplished, excellent at flesh and all the varieties of material that covered it: the muslin and lace, the satins and silks, the straw hats and the flowers that lodged in them; she was good at and with children. She was also very professional, knowing how to disguise physical fault and accentuate any hint of beauty; she knew the most winning relationship between parted lips and visible teeth. She pleased her sitters; her sitters pleased her. She was expert at a kind of formal informality...."  (italics mine)

Isabella Teotochi Marini, May-June 1792

Dinanath Dalal and Robert McGinnis....Rembrandts of Popular Culture

Robert McGinnis , ज्यांना पॉप कल्चर चे Rembrandt म्हटलं जात, त्यांनी शेकडो मुखपृष्ठे तयार केली....दीनानाथ दलाल (ज्यांची काही चित्रे ह्या ब्लॉग वर आहेत) सुद्धा महाराष्ट्रातील लोकाभिमुख संस्कृतीचे Rembrandt च होते. पण त्यांना अनभिषिक्त Rembrandt व्हायचे होते.

 

McGinnis यांचे एक प्रसिद्ध मुखपृष्ठ चित्र The Silver Concubine, लेखक: Hal G. Evarts, 1962 

 

 courtesy: copyright holders of  Robert McGinnis's art

Cavafy's Below the House (at Miraj)....कुलकर्णी, चाफेकर वाडा , मिरज

जी. ए. कुलकर्णी:

"बेळगाव नावाच्या गावास/ पाऊले जरी दूर भटकत गेली/ तरी तुझ्या जुन्या आठवणींची बुत्ती / सतत जवळ राहिली आहे." (रमलखुणा, १९७५)

 जीएंचे जसे बेळगाव, तसे माझे मिरज... 

 

ज्यावेळी मी मिरजेला, २०१९ साली ३५ वर्षांनंतर गेलो, आणि मी २० वर्षे राहिलेल्या आमच्या घराजवळ गेलो, आणि काही काही वेळ तिथे घालवून पुढे गेलो, त्यावेळी मला वाटलेले सी पी कवाफी (C. P. Cavafy) यांनी फार सुंदर शब्दबद्ध केले आहे...

 

Below the House

 

Yesterday while strolling through a neighborhood

on the edge of town, I passed below the house

I used to go in when I was very young.

There Eros had taken possession of my body

with his exquisite force.

 

                                                 And yesterday

as I passed along that ancient street,

suddenly everything was made beautiful by desire’s spell:

the shops, the pavements, the stones,

and walls, and balconies, and windows;

there was nothing ugly that remained there.

 

And while I was standing, gazing at the door,

and standing, tarrying by the house,

the foundation of all my being yielded up

the sensual emotion that was stored inside.

 

('Complete Poems: C. P. Cavafy', 2009 translated by Daniel Mendelsohn)

 

[1917; 1919]

 

(पूर्वी आमचे कौलारू दुमजली साधे घर वेगळे दिसायचे. पण खिडक्या - एक नव्याने झालेली सोडून- आणि दरवाजा यांची स्थाने अजून बदलली नाहीयेत)

 

 

You should see the sun on the Ganges...the City of Light

Kowalski: You should see the sun on the Ganges. It's amazing.

(Lieutenant Matt Kowalski played by  George Clooney, Gravity, 2013)

"BANĀRAS is a magnificent city, rising from the western bank of the River Ganges, where the river takes a broad crescent sweep toward the north. There is little in the world to compare with the splendor of Banāras, seen from the river at dawn. The rays of the early-morning sun spread across the river and strike the high-banked face of this city, which Hindus call Kāshī—the Luminous, the City of Light. The temples and shrines, ashrams and pavilions that stretch along the river for over three miles are golden in the early morning. They rise majestic on the high riverbank and cast deep reflections into the waters of the Ganges. Long flights of stone steps called ghāts, reaching like roots into the river, bring thousands of worshippers down to the river to bathe at dawn. In the narrow lanes at the top of these steps moves the unceasing earthly drama of life and death, which Hindus call samsāra. But here, from the perspective of the river, there is a vision of transcendence and liberation, which Hindus call moksha..."

(Diana L. Eck, 'BANARAS: CITY OF LIGHT', 1981)

  sunrise over the river Ganga in Varanasi