Musings. Ex Libris

Enigmatic, world-weary, capricious and bewitching, such sort of women that preoccupy L’Avventura and La Note is also the focal point of L’Eclisse . All of them were played by Monica Vitti, with such confidence and aptitude that one cannot help wondering if Antonioni had them all tailor-made, or simply that Vitti was born for these roles. Claudia, Valentina, Vittoria and Vitti all seem the same person with only slight variations. After all, maybe one shouldn’t bother too much with the distinction of life and art when both are so confusedly intermingled in Italian cinema. Especially with Antonioni’s films, the quotidian is often made ambiguous by virtue of the auteur-director’s invariable reliance on the more instinctive mode of storytelling. Antonioni once said: “I never discuss the plots of my films. I never release a synopsis before I begin shooting…I depart from the script constantly. I may film scenes I have no intention filming. Things suggest themselves on locations, an...

Landscape art can be elusive. In any art exhibition that aggregates paintings from a variety of genres, those with the subjects of clouds, mountains, trees, forests, river, ocean etc. are very likely the least interesting ones for the most ignorant of gallery-goers, who might, however, still notice the vivid colours and the superb brushworks before hastening on towards the more popular showstoppers. Colours and brushworks- the only attributes those viewers can recall of the paintings that quickly become no more than a passing memory, almost negligible in their perceived role of acting as a foil to the more notable masterpieces. Our instinctive apathy towards landscape painting might be partly ascribed to the general ignorance of Nature. History testifies to how precious little do we know of the nature we’ve inhabited, how frequently such wanting of knowledge abets the selfish people to gratify their avarice at the expense of the harmony amidst all living souls. Every voice in Nat...

                 * Edvard Munch, Jealousy (1907) That awful sound would not stop. The chanting, the interminable chanting, the muffled sound of which showed no sign of abating. Its monotony compounded her distress- after a grueling day of grieving, even the tenderest sob provoked her. She compelled herself to reflect on what really happened, raking up the memory that was too tragic and searing to be deemed realistic only a few days earlier. We were happy, she recalled. Of course such merriment was punctuated with contretempts, but they were never bitter, and quickly forgotten. Were I ever content to dwell in a household where no evils had ever admitted the entrance? She wondered. Yet there was this inclination to rebel, this unmitigated lust for a hazardous adventure. Out of this dreary, dingy, provincial home was what had been preying on her mind all summer. That summer, when the ceaseless rain could hardly rel...

The said story of mine is posted on Zouch Magazine. Follow the link here:  http://zouchmagazine.com/fool/#.VKC8Q7AAKY

                        * Sally Mann, Jessie (1951) The beasts from the Apocalypse looked on, with eyes of ravenous red- a girl danced within a garland of fire. She was naked, and held in her hands the staffs that could ward off any danger inflamed inexorably by her untarnished beauty. Lust and wonder abounded. The beasts looked on, salivating. For them the girl was like a candle in motion, her skin flimsy like dripping wax. Their imagination played a fatal trick: the desire came in the form of an infernal fire, threatening to lick away her flesh to the bone, and gnaw it, caressingly and persistently like a jilted lover, still hankering after the love he was denied of. I asked the girl of her stance on innocence as virtue. She told me that it was engrained in her nature to follow a set pattern of life ordained by the divine One. Innocence was only one of the many virtues that she knew from a very young age to hold...

                                * John Everett Millais, The Bridesmaid (1851)  The High Priestess dwelled in a shrine flanked by the portals of Night and Day. When I approached, she told me that her power came from the borrowed light, which sustained her throughout every sleepless hour. Never once in her life did she yield to the hypnotic spell of sweet somnolence. Her steely gaze could penetrate through the densest of fog, the most blinding of sunbeam, and the murkiest of the mounting darkness. Even the wolves were terrified of her unflagging vigilance. Every day she saw people, large crowds of people, streaming through the portals of Night and Day. Some youths would leap through the threshold of the portal of Day with their faces all rosy and jolly, only to be led out and blindfolded to the other portal, still laughing hysterically and completely oblivious of their imminent entrapment in...