Glowing Light: Venice

The first of three secondary colors, ARANCIONE, or orange, is a mixture of the primary colors red and yellow.  Fire, embers, sunset, citrus, coral...

Marzapane: a confection with a distinct almond flavor, made of sugar, honey and almond meal.

Coral jewels.

I have shown you designs from Venice's Mariano Fortuny before.  He is becoming my Venetian muse.  He lived from 1871-1949 and was a prolific painter, etcher, sculptor, photographer, architect and inventor.  His life culminated with his renowned textile designs, most famous of which was the Delphos Gown, made of shimmering, crimped, silk (like the scarf above) that hugged the wearer's form (a shocking change from Victorian corsets).  It was said the garment's fabric was light enough to be drawn through a wedding ring.  I saw an original turquoise Delphos Gown at an antique fair last weekend for €400!

Another Fortuny design (a far cry from a sow's ear...).

Architecture and undies - so Italian!  Look closely, and reflected next to her left hip is a nun, covered from head to toe.

I've always wondered why people with orange hair are called redheads.

In my last, BLU post, I spoke of the famous, five-generation Rubelli textile company, housed in a Renaissance palazzo.  Here is a fellow artist from the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica,  choosing one of the contemporary samples that range from €40 to €3,000 per meter.  

The famous British artist, Turner, was known for his ethereal, light-filled paintings.  Between the years of 1833 and 1846, paintings of Venice constituted 1/3 of his body of work.  It is said he stayed in a hotel overlooking Piazza San Marco, and went up to the rooftop to sketch during dawn and dusk.  This evening photo of the sky over Campo Santo Stephano, after a glorious thunderstorm, reminds me of Turner's work.

An interesting lamp of flames.

Looking straight up at the Teatro La Fenice's chandelier.

Chandeliers hanging in the furnace room of the Seguso glassworks in Murano.

When I first arrived in Venice, I felt artistically uninspired.  While speaking with Matilde, the founder of the Scuola di Grafica, she said she had a respected art professor in Rome who said:  "Art is like a cat.  When you want it to sit on your lap, it won't.  But, when you least expect it, it jumps up on your lap and curls up, allowing you to do anything to it."  So I began with some simple color studies, like this one.

Then, Matilde showed me the loosening-up process of sitting before a mirror, with your paper up against your chest, and painting while looking at the paper in the mirror, not looking at the paper directly.  It taxes both sides of the brain, and unexpected parts of your character emerge.

I then photocopied these "mirror" paintings and did a glue-transfer process onto various papers or canvases.  Mysterious "psyches" continued to reveal themselves.

For some reason, much of my time in Venice has been a reflection on aging.  This one, in particular, intensely captures the depths of feelings I'm facing about my age.

A lovingly cared for shrine.

The antique fair, where I saw the €400 Fortuny dress, was set up for 3 days in the square right in front of my apartment.  It had a fantastic array of Venetian, European and Asian items, including this Buddha.

I took a day trip to the island of Burano, a fishing village known for the bright colors of its houses.  It was truly enchanting.

Another view of Burano.

I am entranced by Venetian chimneys.  It always seems they come in families, with genealogical resemblances to their neighbors, but still every one different. 

Real foliage and metal foliage.

This is a hand wrought iron bracket on the historic well of a private palazzo.

As portrayed in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, this is in Venice's historic Ghetto.  The English word, ghetto, is borrowed from the Venetian word, ghèto, which means foundry.  This isolated part of Venice was a cannon foundry before the influx of Jewish citizens, fleeing persecution.  The Jews were housed in an area surrounded by water and controlled at night by heavy gates, manned by Christian guards, both protecting and segregating its inhabitants.  Due to the cramped quarters, additional floors were added to the tops of the buildings, making them some of the tallest in Venice.  Laws forbid building separate synagogues, so they were built on the top floors (like the wooden one in this picture) so that there should be no obstructions between the congregation and the heavens.

 

An orange pigeon at Piazza San Marco.

I've mentioned the cruise ship controversy in Venice, and I think this makes the issue clear.  On this day, a huge demonstration was staged against the allowance of cruise ships into Venice's lagoon.  Police boats and helicopters were everywhere as demonstrators in small boats yelled and shot off smoke bombs, to little avail, being completely dwarfed by the ships that were being towed out to sea.  San Giorgio Maggiore, looking very small, is in the background. 

 Up next, the second secondary color, VIOLA!