Lazy Sunday
Aah, my favourite day of the week. Quiet, peaceful, relaxing Sunday. These two photos are all about lazy summer Sunday afternoons, but end-of-winter Sundays can be almost as nice. There’s a drizzling mist outside, but inside it’s warm and cosy. If I’m feeling really introspective I might put Arvo Pärt’s album Alina on the stereo and maybe even write a poem or two. And when the sun peeps out in the afternoon (here’s hoping), I might go for a stroll around the Botanic Gardens. Bliss.
Photographed by Hugh Stewart for Follow Me, October 1990
Margrethe Mather: Out of Weston’s Shadow
Margrethe Mather and Edward Weston in 1922, photographed by Imogen Cunningham; the only portrait of the couple ever taken.Today a little-known photographer, Margrethe Mather was in fact the greatest influence on the development of Edward Weston’s early career.
They first met in 1913, in Los Angeles, working together as artistic partners and even co-signing the photographs they produced. Lovers for eight years or so, they were associated professionally for twelve years. A rebel, romantic, secretive and unpredictable, yet kind and generous, Mather was not only Weston’s model and muse: she was also his teacher. She influenced his vision and broadening his outlook, artistically and socially, introducing him to radical new ideas about politics, aesthetics, sexual mores and life in general.
Maud Emily Taylor, seated in a Chinese chair, c. 1918
Player on the Yit-Kim, 1918Apart from this, Mather was an inventive artist in her own right. Beginning as an uncommitted amateur, she quickly developed into a highly respected professional She was meticulous, with a strong and demanding sense of proportion and design. “If it doesn’t look right, it isn’t right,” she became famous for saying to her artist friends.
“If it doesn’t look right, it isn’t right.” – Margrethe Mather
Mather opened her own studio in 1916, working then in a traditional pictorialist style, and taking portraits. A couple of years later she refined her style to one of extreme simplicity, reducing detail, and playing with composition, negative space and tonal variation to create interest.
Pierrot, 1920
Johan Hagermeyer and Edward Weston, 1921
The Marion Morgan Dancers, 1921, co-signed by Mather and WestonIn 1928, after the failure of a proposal to the newly formed Guggenheim Foundation that she made with Billy Justema, Mather put down her camera for a couple of years. In 1930 she picked it up again to create a series of images of repetitive patterns made from everyday objects: chains, shells, fans, combs, glass eyes, ticker tape, broken china and cigarettes. They were to be prototypes for textiles and interior design components.
When they were exhibited at the M H de Young Memorial Museum the following July, reviewers referred to her as ‘Margrethe Mather, San Francisco Modernist’. It was to be her last contribution to photography – apart from a few magazine assignments – and she died twenty years later on Christmas Day, 1952, aged sixty-six.
Water Lily, 1922
Fan in Hand, 1925Mather, in her fear that she would be remembered merely as Weston’s lover and muse, had begged him to pretend that she didn’t exist. She would have been all but forgotten by historians as she had hoped were it not for the scattered mentions of her in Weston’s diaries. Fortunately for us, her innovative, spare and elegant work has stood the test of time, and she is remembered.
Japanese Combs, 1931
Fans, 1931
Images from the book Margrethe Mather & Edward Weston – A Passionate Collaboration, by Beth Gates Warren
Shorthand Thoughts
My own epigrammatic thoughts this week, the culmination of a flurry of texts with a friend …
Today linguists bemoan the degeneration of language into ‘txtese’ (yes, that really is a word). I try not to take my text messages into revolting territory, and I even proofread them, but it is amusing to consider the notion that the necessary brevity of text messages may bring epigrams back into fashion. Or even the eighteenth-century style salon and an elegant exchange of witticisms. Via text of course.
Epigrams and Etchings
I enjoy reading poetry. Many years ago while browsing in a bookstore I discovered the Roman poets. Martial (c. 40–104 B.C.) and Catullus (c. 84–54 B.C.) became particular favourites for their wit – often I’ve laughed aloud at their very bawdy epigrams. They must have been brilliant men at a party! So rude and libellous, it’s a wonder if they weren’t sued by one of their outraged targets. Sadly though, I can’t read them in the original Latin, and must rely on clever translators.
Here is a small selection (the politer ones), accompanied by the drawings and etchings of Henri Matisse (1869–1954), which seemed eminently to suit.
MARTIAL
The Epigrams
Book I
I
May I present myself – the man
You read, admire and long to meet,
Known the world over for his neat
And witty epigrams? The name
Is Martial. Thank you, earnest fan,
For having granted me the fame
Seldom enjoyed by a dead poet
While I’m alive and here to know it.1
3
So, they’ve summed you up, my little book.
You’re now a ‘milestone in ironic outlook.’
This the price of your publicity:
MARTIAL VIEWS LIFE VERY SAUCILY.
Whatever they say is a load of balls
Certain to send you to second-hand stalls,
Unaware, little book, of the comforts of home
Your ‘low key wit’ now belongs to Rome.
What today’s ‘an incandescent event’
Soon winds up a ‘minor supplement.’
To set you off on the proper foot
Some shit’s written ‘Magic, a classic to boot.’2
38
They’re mine, but when a fool like you recites
My poems I resign the author’s rights.1
Femme Endormie, 1936
Book 2
I wrote, she never replied:
That goes on the debit side.
And yet, I’m sure she read it:
That I put down as credit.1
Book 3
90
She’s half-and-half inclined
To sleep with me. No? Yes?
What’s in that tiny mind?
Impossible to guess.1
Study of a model, 1934
Book 7
3
Why have I never sent
My works to you, old hack?
For fear the compliment
Comes punishingly back.1
Book 8
27
If you were wise as well as rich and sickly,
You’d see that every gift means, ‘Please die quickly.’1
Woman’s face, 1942
TO CHLOE
I could resign that eye of blue
Howe’er its splendour used to thrill me;
And even that cheek of roseate hue, –
To lose it, Chloe, would scarce kill me.
That snowy neck I ne’er should miss,
However much I’ve raved about it;
And sweetly as that lip can kiss,
I think I could exist without it.
In short, so well I’ve learned to fast,
That, sooth my love, I know not whether
I might not bring myself at last,
To – do without you altogether.3
FOOTNOTES
1 Martial – The Epigrams, translated by James Michie, Penguin Classics, 1978
2 Translated by W. S. Milne, (1953–) from The Roman Poets, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 1997
3 Translated by Thomas Moore, (1779–1852), from The Roman Poets, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 1997
La torsem et native nue 1932
CATULLUS
5
Lesbia,
live with me
& love me so
we’ll laugh at all
the sour-faced strict-
ures of the wise.
This sun once set
will rise again,
when our sun sets
follows night &
an endless sleep.
Kiss me now a
thousand times &
now a hundred
more & then a
hundred & a
thousand more again
till with so many
hundred thousand
kisses you & I
shall both lose count
nor any can
from envy of
so much kissing
put his finger
on the number
of sweet kisses
you of me &
I of you,
darling, have had.
From The Poems of Catullus, translated by Peter Whigam, Penguin Classics, 1966
Variation 1, 1942
Compare the same poem translated four centuries earlier:
Come and let us live, my Dear,
Let us love and never fear
What the sourest Fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dies to-day
Lives again as blithe to-morrow;
But if we dark sons of sorrow
Set, O then how long a night
Shuts the eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A thousand, and a hundred score,
An hundred, and a thousand more,
Till another thousand smother
That, and wipe off another.
Thus at last when we have numbered
Many a thousand, many a hundred,
We’ll confound the reckoning quite,
And lose our selves in wild delight:
While our joys so multiply
As shall mock the envious eye.
Translated by Richard Crashaw (1612/13–49), from The Roman Poets, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 1997
Fata with a hat of light, 1933
One for You, One for Me, One for You …
Who Stole My Cherry earrings aptly wrapped in bird tissue paperI adore jewellery. I hoard it in my nest like a magpie. Any time I glimpse a little shining string of beads, my eyes light up and I take it home with me. I’ve built up quite a collection, and sometimes I am even moved to actually turn all these bits and bobs into jewellery. Recently two birthdays motivated me to pick up my tools again. Here’s the story …
Cherry Picking
Who Stole My Cherry? earrings
Everyone loves cherries, don’t they? To eat, to wear, to adorn themselves with –who remembers dangling cherries from their ears as a child? Nostalgia, not nature, inspired me to create this pair of cherry earrings.
I chased down just the right string of dark red agate beads, and then a string of through-drilled green leaf beads. It wasn’t so easy to find the latter, for most of these Czech pressed glass leaves are top or side-drilled, and I definitely wanted opaque, not translucent leaves. After trawling Etsy for hours, the seller I ultimately found was right in my hometown, Melbourne. I ended up with so many beads I would be able to make a punnet of cherry earrings!
Nostalgia, not nature, inspired me to create this pair of cherry earrings.
After all my research however, I realised that cherry earrings were rather common. There were a multitude of varieties out there, how would mine be any different? At least they were made from real stone and sterling silver, but that wasn’t quite enough. Then I hit upon it. One of the cherries would be stolen! Instead of a cherry, the pip would be dangling from the stalk. I found some peach-coloured pearls and I was ready to go.
I call them the Who Stole My Cherry? earrings, and I gave the first pair to my friend Rapunzel. She loved them.
The Circus is in Town
Circus Is In town pendant
Recently I had purchased a selection of carnival-themed vintage cloisonné beads. I’d had an idea in my head to create a collection on this theme using the glass foiled beads I’d bought years ago – 1kg for $10. But then my friend Amerika’s birthday rolled-up, and I realised these would be perfect for her.
It would be dull to make earrings again (Amerika and Rapunzel know each other), so I made a pendant using a little clown and two stars. I much prefer to use sterling silver than base metal, and silver isn’t terribly expensive if you know where to shop (online, not retail). Amerika was delighted with her present too, exclaiming as she saw the circus theme.
And then in the time-honoured tradition of ‘one for you, one for me’, I contrived a pair of earrings for myself on the same carnival theme. Using another set of vintage cloisonné beads embossed with stars, I dangled them from a string of sterling silver baubles. They’re somewhat reminiscent of a set of juggling balls.
What can this magpie make next?
Stars In Her Earrings