Portraits With Backgrounds - Paperback

PORTRAITS WITH BACKGROUNDS Portrait of the Queen of Naples PORTRAITS WITH BACKGROUNDS by CATHERINE BARJANSKY in collaboration - with ELINORE DENNISTON ISFew York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1947 This book is for Michael, My son and my dearest friend CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. PERSPECTIVE i II. A LEGEND IN A VAX 5 III. BACKGROUND WITH FIGURES 15 IV. SHADOWSAND LIGHT 25 V. A PHANTOM QUEEN AND A TORRENT OF Music 3 3 VI. A ROMAN SPRING 43 VII. SCULPTURE AS OUTLINES 55 VIII. CHIAROSCURO 65 IX. DREAMERS AND CREATORS 79 X. A LATE LARK SINGING 93 XL ONLY ONE HAPPINESS 105 XII. CURVED LINES 115 XIII. OF PALACES AND KINGS 125 XIV. A QUEEN IN A PARK 135 XV. PORTRAIT OF A KING 147 XVI. SOME CONTEMPORARY SCULPTORS 159 XVII. EINSTEIN IN WAX 171 XVIII. DANNUNZIO, A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE 179 XIX. PAGES FROM MY SKETCHBOOK 191 XX. THE MIDDLE DISTANCE 203 XXL THE PALETTE 213 CHAPTER ONE PERSPECTIVE THE people who move through the pages of this book have been encountered in many countries of the world and in many societies. I modeled them in wax, and now I have tried to sketch their portraits in words. The quick and the dead for some of them are gone, as the world of which they were a part is gone though some of them must live as long as our civilization exists. The backgrounds that gave these portraits their perspective have faded, for the most part, reduced to rubble and dust and chaos. In a normal world, a world at peace, changes are so gradual as to be imperceptible. But Europe as I saw it lies in ashes. It exists only in the memory of those who knew it and walked its vanished streets. Much of it was beautiful, some of it contained the seeds of its own destruction. There may be people who can sum up thepast and divide it into neat categories, but I am not of their number. Living is a more complex process than that, and for the creative artist it is a long search, a continuous striving. The past for me, like all existence, is a series of pictures and a mass of color, most of it orchestrated by great music. It is not my task to analyze the importance of the genius of Albert Einstein, nor to estimate the value of dAnnunzio and Madame Colette as writers, nor to criticize the sculpture of Antoine Bourdelle and Carl Milles. That will be done more successfully by their biographers. It is not as a critic nor as an historian that I have drawn these portraits of kings and com 2 PORTRAITS WITH BACKGROUNDS moners, of musicians and sculptors, of writers and scientists it is as an artist. Are they true portraits No portrait in the world, whether painted on canvas, modeled in clay or wax, or chiseled in marble, is entirely true, for it always consists of two elements the per sonality of the model and that of the artist. At times one of the two personalities dominates the other the model may be so vivacious that it cannot be expressed, or so reserved that the artist cannot reach it. I once saw the composer Vincent dIndy sitting for Antoine Bourdelle in the great sculptors studio in Paris. Bourdelle, who was seeking to reproduce dIndys personality, talked incessantly, trying to get different expressions on his face while dIndy, thinking that Bourdelle talked too much while he worked, and annoyed at being so continually stared at, looked irrita ble and displeased. The resulting portrait was a finished work of art, but the spark of life Bourdelle always sought was absent. Auguste Rodin wanted to modelPope Benoit XV while he was in Rome. An admirer of his, an Italian musician who after wards told me this story, spoke of him at the Vatican where his name was vaguely confused with Robin, a maker of pills. After endless trouble, Rodin got an audience and, whether from excite ment or absent-mindedness, vigorously shook the hand of His Holiness instead of kissing the cross on his slipper. The Pope, naturally, was shocked, but he agreed to pose. Rodin arrived with his modeling stand and clay, and the sittings began...