Peter Clothier's Mind Work explores the history and spiritual dimensions of his inspiring life. Clothier is known for insightful writing on the arts and artists which adds luminosity to the events depicted in Mind Work. The volume delves deeply into a life well lived and inspires us to consider our own lives in a spirit of humility and acceptance. The book is structured into a series of essays that reflect an admiration for Montaigne's writings. In this spirit, each chapter of Mind Work dwells upon a singular idea and illuminates this idea with episodes drawn from Clothier's experiences. Mind Work deftly weaves Peter's family history into essays rich with metaphysical questioning. Looming behind much of Clothier's life is the recurring struggle to both live up to his father's dreams for him and to overcome them. In one pivotal chapter, Clothier and his wife Ellie encounter, for the first time, Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses in the Church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome. Clues to Peter's past, present and future are found in that moment. As I read that passage, I pictured all the Peter Clothiers depicted in the book - from the just named infant, to the wounded boy, to the young man on the train to Spain, to the adolescent bloodied in a German car crash, to the young father unsure of life and family, to the art writer, to the academic, to the inspirational man that Peter is today. The Buddhist practice of meditation plays a vital role in Peter's life. Discussions of Buddhism provide an interconnecting thread throughout Mind Work. In essence, life for Peter can be seen as a series of actions and then the result of these actions. Peter's mantra, "This is not me. This is not mine. This is not who I am.", guides us through Mind Work and reminds us of the inspired discipline found in his spiritual struggles and triumphs. Peter Clothier's Mind Work honestly grapples with one man's life and expands the viewpoint to help us consider the human condition. The writing in Mind Work is cinematic and brings us face to face with the rich life and the fertile mind of Peter Clothier. Highly recommended.
Peter Clothier Reads by Torchlight at the Standard Hotel, Hollywood
photo by Gregg Chadwick
Paul Georges The Studio
120”x79 1/2” oil on canvas 1965
The Whitney Museum Collection, New York
Courtesy Paul Georges Estate
Michael Stein's new novel "The Rape of the Muse" ponders the worth of art and the place of beauty in our contemporary society. Stein's re-imagining of painter Paul Georges' trial for libel in 1980 updates the events to the 21st century and fleshes out the characters with a post September 11th ennui. When Georges' trial took place in 1980, the Neo-Expressionist boom in art was just beginning. Emotional, brightly colored paintings using the figure as a theme filled galleries in New York and Europe. In that time Paul Georges’ artwork was included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. But still, Georges was an outsider looking in on an art world that often considered narrative painting to be atavistic at best - reactionary at worst.
Paul Georges The Mugging of the Muse
80”x103” oil on canvas 1972-1974
Courtesy Paul Georges Estate
Michael Stein adeptly weaves elements of Paul Georges' life into the story of his fictive painter - Harris Montrose. Montrose cares deeply about the gift and responsibility of art. This humble esteem for the muse that stokes his creative fire leads to a showdown with an artistic colleague over a limned image. Are we all fair game for artistic interpretation? Is anything really private anymore? Is the language of painting relevant to our time?
Stein brings in a young artist, already marked by the reigning critics as one to watch, who is psychologically blocked from the creative process. This young artist, Rand Taber, becomes Montrose's studio assistant. As if in a scene from Martin Scorsese's segment in the film "New York Stories", Taber learns life lessons from his mentor Montrose. In this sense, Michael Stein seems to hold up the elder painter as a pugnacious model of validity. Harris Montrose paints like his life depends on it. The muse needs to be honored. And if anyone gets in the way they should heed the warnings. The muse shall be avenged.
It is refreshing to read a work in which art is considered deeply as much more than a commodity or a means to privilege. Michael Stein’s “The Rape of the Muse” is gutsy – almost an aesthetic bar fight of a novel. It is heartening to feel Paul Georges’ passion seep into Stein’s writing. Art is not just style. At its best, art considers life and then makes something new. Michael Stein’s “The Rape of the Muse” digs into the life and work of the forceful painter Paul Georges and conjures up a story for our moment.
In his first work of fiction, The Wandering Falcon, Jamil Ahmad depicts a world caught between timeless paths of migration and geo-political modernity. Ahmad knits together a series of short stories that cover the life arc of one young man, Tor Baz - the wandering falcon of the title, as he journeys from infancy to manhood.
Inspired by his time as a civil service worker in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Ahmad writes of a world governed by clan and custom. During his time as a powerful emissary of the Pakistani government under the tribal region's frontier governing system, Jamil Ahmad simultaneously served as politician, police chief, judge, jury and executioner. Bits of this personal history are woven within the stories, including hints of Jamil's wife's German heritage. Environmentalist and activist Helga Ahmad was instrumental in encouraging her husband Jamil to move from halting first attempts at poetry to richly crafted stories of people, place and borders.
The bleak landscapes in the book evoke a world of nomadic treks where human contact is brief and often violent, and where far western desert winds blows clouds of sand so thick that breath is priceless. The environment is unforgiving as is the justice doled out by tribe and government.
Jamil Ahmad finished The Wandering Falcon in 1973-74 but the stories did not find a publisher until this year. Penguin Books' decision to at last publish Jamil's stories is timely. Ahmad believes that his stories evoke a vanishing world of tribes that the modern world must resonate and harmonize with: "Because frankly speaking, I still think that each one of us has a tribal gene inside, embedded inside. I really think that way."
Jamil Ahmad
Jamil Ahmad hopes that deeper understanding of the tribes that once roamed freely between the far borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran could help end the wars that stain their mountains and valleys with blood. Reading The Wandering Falcon can help begin a process of understanding between the timeless nomadic life and the fragmenting borders of our post-modern society.
Our contemporary world has much to learn from the rhythms of the nomadic trail. I highly recommend Jamil Ahmad's magnificent book The Wandering Falcon.
Gregg Chadwick Breath of Allah
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011
Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando) Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (Ohashi Atake no Yudachi)
(#58 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo)
Sheet: 14 3/16" x 9 1/8" woodblock print 9th month of 1857
Brooklyn Museum
Photo Courtesy The Brooklyn Museum
Japanese fiction is a great love of mine. My taste ranges widely from the postmodern antics of Murakami, to the quiet intellectualism of Endo, to the luminous spaces of Kawabata, and to the pent up rage of Mishima. In a culture which traditionally values quietly getting along even when catastrophe strikes, fiction allows a space for readers to wail with those who hurt and lash out at those who would oppress. Japanese novels of mystery and horror provide such a space to ponder the darker recesses of humanity. Mystery writer Keigo Higashino, originally from Osaka and now resident in Tokyo, is currently one of the best selling authors in Japan. Reading "The Devotion of Suspect X" provides understanding of his popularity. Higashino's prose is both quietly poetic and noir like in its straightforwardness.
"The Devotion of Suspect X" is set in 21st century Japan and describes the plight of a single mother with a young daughter as she takes drastic action to escape an abusive, estranged husband. A brilliant math teacher who lives down the hall comes to her aid. Or does he?
From there the story takes off. Make sure you read the book until the very end.
In much Japanese writing, an evocation of place is of utmost importance. This setting creates a mood in which the characters move and interact. The first chapter of "The Devotion of Suspect X" finds us in Tokyo near the Shin-Ohashi bridge, which is memorable for its depiction by the brilliant 19th century Japanese woodcut artist, Ando Hiroshige, in "Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake" (Ohashi Atake no Yudachi) from his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. A Japanese reader, and those quite familiar with Japan, would likely find Hiroshige's memorable image, of figures huddling under straw umbrellas as they scurry across the bridge in an effort to hide from a driving. slanting rain, pop into their head. I know I did. And this image provided a rich backdrop of life under pressure from time and nature.
I enjoyed "The Devotion of Suspect X" very much and now have a new Japanese author to follow - Keigo Higashino.
Leonardo da Vinci is an artist whose name is instantly recognizable but whose artwork can seem so familiar to 21st century eyes that the actual paintings feel lost behind a veil of cultural expectations. Paul Strathern's new book, The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped, allows us to see Leonardo as a living man and artist shaped by his time, friendships and experiences.
Strathern's book opens with an epigraph spoken by Orson Welles' character, Harry Lime, in The Third Man.
From the vantage point of a ferris wheel high above Vienna, Orson Welles surveys the battered post-war city beneath him and says. "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
A Brief Convergence
Paul Strathern who has a background in philosophy, and writes often on the subject, approaches the brief convergence of Leonardo, Borgia and Machiavelli as a sort of biographical/philosophical thought experiment. Like a good professor, Strathern asks questions:
"What was it precisely that made Leonardo agree to work for Borgia?" What were Leonardo's "real intentions"? How did Leonardo "become involved with Machiavelli?"
Paul Strathern defines his terms with background and analysis of the three major characters. Like Orson Welles, Paul Strathern uses a keen eye and a sense of humor to survey the events surrounding Machiavelli's Florentine diplomatic mission in 1502 which put Leonardo in the service of Cesare Borgia. Strathern vividly describes Renaissance Italy in the 1500's, which was not a unified country under the banner of Italy but instead a collection of constantly battling city states and principalities dominated by Milan, Venice, Naples, Florence and the pope in Rome. The book's narrative introduces us to da Vinci, Machiavelli and Borgia and then weaves, in a Rashomon view, their lives and the events surrounding them from three different vantage points. Strathern helps us see the vibrance and struggle of Renaissance Italy from the viewpoints of the artist, the philosopher, and the warrior.
A Visual Realm of Ideas
In a way that I find new to biographies of Leonardo, Paul Strathern concerns himself not only with the events in da Vinci's life, but especially in how Leonardo learned to think, ponder and dream. Leonardo da Vinci was born as the illegitimate son of Piero da Vinci. Because of the circumstances around his birth, Leonardo was not allowed to receive a classical education and so did not learn Latin as a youth. How did the young da Vinci grow into such a deep thinker?
Strathern clearly shows that Leonardo's artistic and scientific investigations were prompted by his own curiosity and massive intelligence. Even without Latin, Leonardo was able to read the classics in translation. Through his study of the Roman author Lucretius, whose epic poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) sought to explain the world in scientific terms, Leonardo learned that accurate understanding derives from investigation and experience.
"Reflect that the most wicked act of all is to take the life of a man. For if his external form appears to be a marvelously subtle construction, realize that this is nothing compared with the soul which dwells within this structure." - Leonardo da Vinci, from his notebooks
Leonardo cherished life so much that he became a vegetarian but at the same time he devised weapons and instruments of war. This conflict runs throughout Leonardo's adult life and Paul Strathern addresses this paradox throughout the book: Leonardo "served with no apparent show of unwillingness (even in the privacy of his notebooks), as military engineer to the ruthless murderer Cesare Borgia, a monster whose name would enter history as a byword for infamy."
Perhaps an answer can be found in the zeitgeist of the era. As Strathern explains, the Renaissance prompted a more rational humanist outlook in the worlds of art and literature, but medieval fears and prejuidices remained strong. In troubled times, a collective mania could take hold. A similar, collective mania, took hold in the United States after the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
This collective mania was hidden in the richly nuanced shadows in Leonardo's paintings. Caught in the sfumato in "The Adoration of the Magi", now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, warriors on horseback battle. Lost to time, but remembered in Peter Paul Rubens' restoration and reworking of an Italian 16th-century drawing, horses lock forelegs and armored soldiers scream as they battle for the standard in Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari.
Legacies
Like a figure from da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari, Cesare Borgia died on a battlefield.
After the Medici returned to power in Florence in 1510, Machiavelli was stripped of his Florentine citizenship, kicked out of his political office, fined 1,000 florins which left him almost penniless, banned from the city of Florence, and cast into an early forced retirement at his tiny family farm seven miles outside the city walls. At 43, Machiavelli had lost his career and his wealth. But he still could write:
"For four hours, I forget all my worries and boredom. I am afraid neither of poverty nor death. I am utterly absorbed in this world of my mind. And because Dante says that no one understands anything unless he remembers what he has understood, I have noted down what I have learned from these conversations. The result is a short book, called The Prince, in which I delve as deeply as I can into the subject of how to rule."
Leonardo da Vinci left a legacy of unpublished volumes, uncast sculptures, unrealized engineering projects, and unfinished paintings. Strathern theorizes that Leonardo's time with Cesare Borgia was brutish and caused Leonardo to doubt that humans were essentially good. Among diagrams and plans for weapons and machines, Leonardo wrote, "I will not publish or divulge such things." Leonardo saw the evil nature in men and did not trust humanity with his genius. A weapon, elegantly realized with a quill pen on a sheet of costly paper, becomes horrible when realized in the physical world and used to tear flesh and bone. Ultimately, Leonardo's discoveries lay hidden for centuries.
Leonardo's inability to finish his projects had aesthetic reasons as well. Since the classical age, unfinished artworks were cherished because they seemed to reveal the living thoughts of the artist. Leonardo da Vinci saw that an initial sketch captured the very instant of inspiration. Inspiration was valued as being more urgent and vital than a finished work of art itself. The initial idea or conception is what truly mattered to da Vinci. Once Leonardo had grasped the artistic idea, a finished work of art already existed in his mind.
Strathern's The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped lights a darkened era. From the smoky depths of sfumato glazes we peer into da Vinci's world of nuance and suggestion. In Leonardo's artistic legacy and Strathern's satisfying book we are left with existential questions, mere hints about our time on earth and the threads of history and influence that link us to the past.
