Who else is relieved that Lady Edith Crawley, played by Laura Carmichael, is finally finding happiness on Downton Abbey? Having binged on all of the…
View More I Met Virginia Woolf in This RoomTag: painters
Prying into the lives of painters is a perfect tack for literary adventuring because there is generally so much drama their stories have been told repeatedly.
Take Paul Gauguin, for instance. Who hasn’t heard at least one wild story about the bohemian Frenchman who made haste to Tahiti and had himself a harem within a fortnight? I saw many of the paintings he created there in 2010 when the Tate Modern in London staged Gauguin: Maker of Myth. The nearly 150 items on view included paintings, drawings, carvings and prints, an assemblage that I would say is one of the most stimulating spectacles I’ve ever seen.
The Tate had gathered works from museums, institutions and collectors worldwide, and many of Gauguin’s Tahitian paintings I found to be vibrantly alive. To have the opportunity to walk through this revolutionary period of his life was remarkable, as the curators had assembled more than just art—even including a replica of the door-surround on the two-story hut he built himself, onto which he’d scrawled “Maison de Jouir”—so apropos of his sexually-charged mindset when he lived in the islands. It’s remarkable to be able to take in such a comprehensive view of an artist’s work; the paintings gave me visuals to enliven a poem I had written about Gauguin so I’m grateful I was able to see his Tahitian oeuvre. I am always on the lookout of exhibitions by painters of this stature to feature on the The Diary of an Improvateur.
Renovating During the Tudor Era
Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Looking back to the Tudor Era from this great distance, it’s easy to see how barbaric a sport jousting was.…
View More Renovating During the Tudor EraGod’s Articulate Finger
Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel In this last entry of the year, I wanted to share a piece of my own creative writing to say…
View More God’s Articulate FingerDining with History
A month from Sunday, I’ll be winging my way to Paris to attend Maison & Objet, and I’m thrilled to say I’ve been invited to…
View More Dining with HistoryWe’ll Never Be Royals
Nest Nest Nest features the Alliage pattern.As I write this, I can feel the design energy draining from the Americas as the movers-and-shakers in our…
View More We’ll Never Be RoyalsThe Peacock Room à la Whistler
The most recognizable painting by artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler might lead you to believe he was as Puritan as his upbringing. The fact he…
View More The Peacock Room à la WhistlerPoetry and Ceramics in Savona
The 16th-century poetry that sprung from Savona made a strong impression on Thomas William Parsons when he found verses inscribed on a statue of the Madonna near the…
View More Poetry and Ceramics in SavonaMme Cezanne at the Met
“For nearly seventeen years, Cézanne would conceal his affair with Hortense from his father…” —Philippe Cézanne As I studied the sketches and paintings in the…
View More Mme Cezanne at the MetImpressions of Venice
Several months ago, Sophia Khan engaged me on Twitter and I decided to visit her site to understand her point of view. I must say…
View More Impressions of VeniceRooms of Their Own
A private place in which to write… As someone whose life is spent working with words for at least a part of every day, I find…
View More Rooms of Their Own