“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…” is the legendary opening line. Following its publication and the trial for obscenity, ambulance Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl became – and still is today – the symbol of the beat generation and of a new form. The homonymous movie, which was scarcely shown and received fairly quietly in the UK, is visually compelling, mixing black and white lyrical shots with animations. Alongside fellow beat authors Kerouac and Cassidy and lover Peter Orlowsky, his voice not really narrating the movie but accompanying it (now reading triumphantly, now responding calmly to the interviewer), Ginsberg was masterfully played by James Franco.

Franco, 33, can swing between arthouse and commercial with great ease and has not been limiting himself to being “just” an actor (and a very successful one). He is known for his famous interpretation of James Dean, movies such as 127 hours and Milk, blockbusters like Spiderman or the forthcoming The planet of apes prequel, art exhibitions at the Gagosian gallery, working on a PhD, studying design and creative writing, publishing a collection of short stories, and soon realising an EP. Overall, he has shown a great creative hunger, including a strong literary ambition. While it was reassuring to hear him humbly (?) confess in an interview with Charlie Rose at Brown University that he “did not intend to write Ulysses”, his involvement with literature and writing adds an interesting layer to his interpretations.

In fact, he has now tackled the character of another poet, the complex Hart Crane. Crane (1899-1932) was heir to a Cleveland fortune and a poet in 1920s New York City. Author of White buildings (1926) and The bridge (1930), known for the difficulty of his style, Crane was admired by the likes of Allen Tate, E. E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams, and influenced later generations of poets, including Allen Ginsberg. James Franco was so fascinated by the character that not only he interpreted Hart Crane, but he also wrote, directed and produced the biopic.

The movie, shot entirely in black and white, is titled The broken tower, from one of Crane’s last poems inspired by his only known heterosexual affair with a friend’s wife, Peggy Cowley, who joined him in Mexico in 1932 where he was on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Returning from Mexico, Crane committed suicide jumping overboard the steamship that was bringing him back to New York. He drowned in the Gulf of Mexico. The broken tower is also the title of Crane’s biography, published in 1999 by Paul Mariani, who worked with James Franco on the movie.

Presented last Monday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, The broken tower received mixed reviews, which was predictable. We now await the release of the movie.

It all dates back to 1840, still in London.  The novelist Theodore Edward Hook sent the first postcard in history. Today, 170 years later, as Nicola Churchward remarks, “this postal innovation has come to epitomise our aptitude for communicating through images. […] It can inspire and remind us. Calm or excite us. Or indeed make us laugh. A marker in time and place the picture postcard might remain on the wall for a lifetime”.

In a celebration of this medium, the RCA organises an annual exhibition and sale in which hundreds of postcards signed on the reverse – hence the secrecy – are donated by renowned artists, designers and recent graduates from the College. Priced democratically at 45£ each, they are sold to at a maximum of four per buyer and the profit is entirely devolved to fund future scholarships.

Certainly, the affordability of the artworks attracted a wide public. This year’s edition of Secret included works by John Baldessari, Grayson Perry, Jake Chapman, Yoko Ono, Tracey Emin, Sir Peter Blake, and also by fashion icons (Sir Paul Smith, Mary Quant, Manolo Blahnik), photographers (David Bailey), filmmakers (Mike Leigh) and designers (Ron Arad, James Dyson). And recognisable names easily attract crowds. A ballot was set up, allowing 50 lucky ones to enter the sale first; certainly an indication of high public demand.

We are used to massively publicised exhibitions, to book tickets in advance to see an art show or to buy a membership to a museum in order to avoid the queues when we can only schedule our visits on the weekend. Art fairs are fundamental networking events for dealers and a restricted number of collectors, but are surrounded by a multitude of events. But this does not mean to be against this trend (or at least not entirely). I myself eyed a dozen postcards and dragged myself to South Kensington from East London on a Saturday morning. My journey did not end there: intimidated by the queue, I seek refuge at Wholefoods and, while consuming an exceptionally early breakfast for a Saturday, I thought of Walter Benjamin and his seminal essay The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction: “The kind of simultaneous viewing of paintings by large crowds that occurs in the nineteenth century is an early symptom of the crisis affecting painting, which was certainly not triggered by photography alone but, relatively independently of photography, by the work of art laying claim to mass attention”.

An (over?)enthusiastic response to an event such as Secret is certainly positive, with the public showing interest and, ultimately, scholarships being funded.

It is interesting, however, to meditate on the reason behind the long queue outside the RCA. Collecting art, as extensively and more authoritatively treated elsewhere, is driven by a variety of mechanisms – fetishism, social approval and economic investment being some of them. And today, as critic Rick Poynor recently¹ pointed out trying to answer the question Where is art now?, “[…] as twenty first-century network democrats, we fervently wish to believe that everyone deserves access, that we are all creative and perhaps even artists, that elitism […] is totally unacceptable from other people because it affronts our ego and sense of self-worth”.

But it would be healthy and objective (and certainly wouldn’t be a first) not only to meditate but also to question the authenticity of this artistic craving and its cultural foundations – when stunning exhibitions are sometimes scarcely viewed and outlandish purchases make the news more and more often.

What we should ask ourselves is: what am I queuing for? Which translates in: what am I seeking pleasure from? Or is it just the prospect of a bargain, the John Baldessari for 45 quid now happily hanged on the wall?

The more sceptical on the subject might enjoy a conversation with independent filmmaker Ben Lewis, who will be answering questions at the Aubin Cinema next Sunday November 28^th after the projection of his documentary The great contemporary art bubble. Given the small number of seats I suspect the tickets will sell out quickly, so hurry up to avoid… queuing outside…

(1) Elephant magazine, issue 4, 2010

The name seems to be very appropriate. A Història do Viajante. The story of a traveller. Travelling by means of flavours, where a Japanese market meets and melts with a local orchard. But also the result of the chef’s own travels, from California to New York, from native Portugal to Japan, eventually landing in London.

Launched two weeks ago in the context of the stylish Bethnal Green Town Hall Hotel & Apartments just off the Cambridge Heath Road, the interior has been tastefully decorated with Scandinavian furniture and by the time you are sipping a cocktail before the meal you are ready to embark on a culinary experience which has few comparisons in London. Serving exclusively surprise set menus (but you have the option to choose the number of courses), the chef guides you in a journey that is made of colour, texture, temperature and of course taste.

The apparent beauty of the dishes – some resembling an Abstract Expressionist painting, almost as if the imaginary roving traveller also included a stop at the MoMA to contemplate Franz Kline – is just one component and is not glamorous colourful appearance to compensate a lack in the substance. Instead, under the skilfully presented form, lies a layer of combinations of textures that renders Mendes’ food so interesting. Mixing and juxtaposing solid, creamy, granular; powder, puree, broth, mousse. “I want my food to surprise and delight my guests. It’s not about being shocking, but it is about being playful” says the chef. This sensory experience also involves temperature, with an intriguing use of granita both in the first course as well as in the dessert, granita being clearly an interesting element both in terms of texture and in terms of temperature. Last but not least, the taste. “Each ingredient should taste as perfect as it possibly can” says Nuno and the vegetable course that was presented as the “spring garden” was so fresh that it epitomized his belief perfectly. The journey is completed by almost crafted amuse-bouche, sorbet (lemon and Thai basil, just excellent) and optional wine pairing including selections from small vineyards.

Food experiences of such level can sometimes be daunting or excessive or insanely expensive. But Viajante is all about being intrigued by the food and the atmosphere is refined but most of all relaxed. From the open-air kitchen, the chef supervises his project conceived carefully and passionately (“I have devoted the last two years to Viajante, to planning and experimenting with each dish, each menu”) and he himself is a pivotal element in the success of the restaurant. Far more talented than other popular chefs, Nuno Mendes strikes for his modesty. This inevitably reflects in his direct creation, his food, which is so much more enjoyable and interesting because it is not perceived as pretentious, despite its sophistication.

Trained at the California Culinary Academy, with a CV which includes experiences at Jean-Georges in New York City and El Bulli, Nuno Mendes’ first London-based project was Bacchus, a converted Victorian pub in Hoxton in which he amazed his clients with sous vide food, with the ingredients sealed in vacuum and cooked in a water bath with carefully (to the 0.5°C) controlled  temperature. Then he moved (towards Dalston, so not very far) on to an exciting private dining project, The Loft, in which a spectacular tasting menu can be enjoyed in the intimacy of a private apartment by a maximum of twelve people (incidentally, the project is still running in the form of collaboration with other chefs). Finally, he opened Viajante, without abandoning the East End. In fact he says: “The East End is the place I now call home”.

Home. A strange feeling for a viajante, a wanderer. But sometimes it can just be the intimacy of four people around a table, the conviviality. Sometimes a flavour. Sometimes the memory of that flavour – la madeleine de Proust – while the mind keeps travelling.

Looking at your paintings, it appears that light is a major preoccupation in your work. How do you approach light?
The most difficult question first! In fact, when I’m at work painting, the thought of ‘light’ as such never enters my head. There are just different pigments which I put on the canvas to make the figures and the environment in my image look the way they need to look – that’s how I approach it – and some of those combinations of pigments happen to be lighter, some darker. (I wonder if this is the kind of Cezanne meant when he said ‘For the painter, there is no such thing as light.’) And yet of course when I stand back and look at what I’ve done, what stays in the mind is the light. I realize that I’m typically drawn to scenes where low-angled sunlight jangles against strong artificial light, and for that very reason I try to break my own habit, avoid my own clichés – do scenes where the light is very muted; where it’s all artificial; or where it’s high in the sky and purely natural. One canvas just has sunlight falling from a window in the ceiling into a room where four men sit with their eyes closed. And thinking of that, the best way I can express my sense of how this theme operates in painting is to get paradoxical and to say that light is natural metaphysics. It is a physical load of pigment with certain optical properties, and equally it is nothing less than understanding and grace.

In terms of light, you have written an essay on Pierre Bonnard – has his representation of light (and light on the human skin) influenced you?
I first got a job to write about Bonnard in 1994, when I knew very little about him except that I liked him – I’d never seen a big show of his work. I’d already been painting for twenty years plus, so I guess my mindset was already basically formed. I think the things that Bonnard is trying to represent – the things he is trying to get an equivalent for – are chords or resonances within his own memory, he is two steps removed from the physical hue of the object. Whereas I’m the kind of painter who is always naively trying to match the pigment to the object’s immediate colour, you see me holding up a loaded brush or palette knife before a scene to check the correspondence and ‘get it right’. ‘Get it right’ in quotes of course, because the end results are not factual, they’re imaginative, even as Bonnard’s are. But the approach does remain fundamentally different.

Human beings, the interaction with the crowd and the surroundings, the human figure – these also appear to be important in your work
Yes, that is what I am mostly thinking about when I’m making the pictures – rather than ‘light’, per se. My general theme is how human beings occupy environments, occupy different types of space. Or I could turn that upside down by saying, what concerns me is that  a rectangular picture has got to have something in it, something that’s not simply coextensive with it, and that entity is generally going to be an analogue for myself or things of a similar nature, i.e. a figure, one way or another. Many of the present collection of pictures have become crowd-filled, as you say. Partly because I had the use of a big studio and thought I’d take the chance to try painting some big canvases – but more deeply because the artist I’ve always looked up to most is Bruegel, and I’ve always longed to imitate his panoramic sociological approach to humanity.

In terms of figurative art, can you comment the following statement by Richard Wollheim: “When the Impressionists tried to teach us to look at paintings as though we were looking at nature [...] this was because they themselves had first looked at nature in a way they had learnt from looking at paintings”?
That would apply to all attempts at naturalistic painting. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Here’s Fan Kuan worrying over the same issue a thousand years ago:  ‘My predecessors [in landscape painting] always found their own methods in natural phenomena. So for me to take those other artists as my teachers cannot compare with learning from natural phenomena. And it would be better still, if I were to learn from my inner self rather than from natural phenomena.’  – And in fact that’s what the Impressionists thought, that they were injecting inner self – sensation, the flux of immediate passing experience – into the representation of landscape scenes. But there was an extra party in the dialogue by the time they were working – the camera. They were trying to supersede photography or at least to distinguish its remit from painting’s. For me, inevitably, photographs are a fundamental given of the situation. But I use them chiefly thus: I search through other people’s photographs for suggestions or cues or reminders, telling me about the various configurations in which people and their environments appear in the world. I then draw and draw and draw on the basis of those photographically supplied cues, until I have a picture that represents what’s out there in the world in my own expressive language.

Your grandparents were art critic Clive Bell and painter Vanessa Bell: how much are you influenced by your family’s legacy in your painting and writing?
For the most part, very indirectly, I think. Because my father Quentin Bell – their son – reacted against their English versions of modernist art with a personal artistic stance you could almost call post-modernist (except that this was in the 1940s) – he explored a fascination with pre-modern craft traditions, at the same time he explicitly admitted there was something absurd and anachronistic  in doing so. He mostly did pottery and illustration, but I’ve taken that attitude of his over into painting. My painting is interested in things I think of as pre-modern, like narrative and naturalistic values. But maybe those are mad concerns for a contemporary painter to have? And so the paintings mock themselves a bit. Many in the current exhibition have clown-like protagonists. I’m very fond of Vanessa Bell’s and Duncan Grant’s art, but I don’t identify with it at all. One thing, though, that maybe runs through the generations of the family is a belief that paintings are largely to do with pleasure, and if a painting gives pleasure, that is an entirely satisfying reason for it to exist.

Is it correct to say that your approach to art history in Mirror of the world is based more on seeing art as the tangible product of the human creative process rather than an abstract aesthetic concept?
Well, I’m only interested in the concept of ‘art’ in a very peripheral way, as a theme that occasionally stimulates people to make interesting objects. Fascinating objects and how people made them and what those people were like and what they felt the world was like, those are the things that matter to me. I do tend to think of aesthetics as a thin, dodgy, not very convincing branch of philosophy, even when it’s got the intellectual weight of Hegel behind it, or the elegance of Croce.

Art and innovation (and this constant idea of seeing something “new”, making something “new”): but is it possible to reinvent the wheel in art?
This is what I’ve been saying about my own painting earlier, that it is trying to reinvent the cart-wheels of narrative and naturalism long after transport has moved on to… air travel, or something. It’s crazy. Yet painting is a business where being naive does make sense, I believe. In one sense you’re always bound to be doing something new, for better or worse, in another you are in the same position as every other artist in history, and ‘We have learnt nothing’, as Picasso said when he visited Lascaux.

As an artist, how do you relate to the art market, its changes and the idea of art as a commodity?
I have no problem at all with the idea of my pictures as commodities – I want them to be bought and to hang in other people’s rooms. It’s true that I don’t want them to be bought and get stacked in a storeroom as investments – but is that much worse than them lying stacked and unseen in my studio? The art market is a crazy system, sure, but also a very big and complex one. The fact that some mega-wheeler-dealer like Hirst dominates the media image of it doesn’t mean there aren’t all kinds of niches and corridors available for completely different acts, such as mine, to operate commercially also. One might wish that the media representation of what artists are up to wasn’t so monopolistic and narrow – but that’s where something like The Tamarind comes in, isn’t it? 

Francis Kyle Gallery
9 Maddox Street
W1S 2QE London
www.franciskylegallery.com

The setting is Milano. Not the capital of fashion, but something softer: Milano covered in snow, seen from the top. The family is uniting around the dining table for the birthday of the patriarch (the first of many parallels with Visconti, as in the opening of La caduta degli dei). Everyone is present: the charismatic and respected patriarch holding the keys to the family’s fortune, a much uninspiring natural heir, the young promise of a successful grandson, the foreign woman with a soothing accent and a naturally refined deportment, the glamorous lady who seems not to remember that her youth has long gone, a granddaughter questioning her sexuality, various extras, the faithful housekeeper, a number of servants. It is a microcosm, with a set of rules and a set of mores, with a very specific language mostly unintelligible for or easily misunderstood by the outsider, with their “totems and taboos”: the works of art on the walls (Morandi, Campigli, Sironi), hidden rivalries, dormant desires. Then, as in the most respected tradition of drama, an element of conflict enters the secluded world of the golden dynasty. The plot evolves, in the streets of Milano and in the rooms of the villa, in the Ligurian hinterland and in the City of London, but it is tinged with tragedy.

Luca Guadagnino has written and directed a very dense movie. An ambitious project conceived together with his lead actress, the enigmatic, commonly-known androgynous but here incredibly feminine Academy award winner Tilda Swinton. Muse for Derek Jarman and reincarnation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Swinton plays the beautiful Russian married into the wealthy Recchi family. Emma (Bovary?) speaks an exotic Italian and, meaningfully, Russian with her eldest son. Naturally elegant and controlled, she radiates her Russian heritage through an underling agitation. Alongside Swinton, an Italian cast (Edoardo Gabbriellini, Flavio Parenti, Alba Rohrwacher) with a showy Marisa Berenson playing Rori, Emma’s mother-in-law. But it is not “just” the director and his actors contributing to the accomplishment of the movie. Guadagnino was aided in the script writing process by three well-known Italian authors (Barbara Alberti, Ivan Cotroneo and Walter Fasano). The photography has been cleverly entrusted to Yorick Le Saux, who has extensively worked with François Ozon in the past. The costumes have been specifically designed by Raf Simons (Jil Sander) for Tilda Swinton and jewels have been provided by Damiani. The setting itself has a prestigious history: Villa Necchi Campiglio (today a museum) was designed by the architect Piero Portaluppi for the Necchi family and is a very fine example of 1930s architecture, with sleek lines, linear rosewood bookcases, sliding doors, a heated swimming-pool and housing a collection of modern Italian art. In the tradition of Visconti, every detail has been tastefully studied.

The parallel with Visconti is not limited to the opening scene and to the attention for details. Tilda Swinton on the top of the Dome brings to mind iconic imagery from Rocco e i suoi fratelli (of course in a very different context). Music has a central role in the movie (an opulent soundtrack by John Adams) just as Wagner is crucial in Ludwig or Mahler accompanies memorable sequences of Morte a Venezia. Family dynamics and the elegant setting (with a hint, or more than just a hint, of decadence) are at the core of most of Visconti’s oeuvre. Marisa Berenson herself (granddaughter of Elsa Schiaparelli) was part of the cast of Morte a Venezia. But comparisons can be diminishing, to the detriment of a work’s originality. A homage is particularly effective when it is involuntary. The difference between a lesson absorbed and reinterpreted and a poem mechanically recited by heart, just as a true natural heir is not mimicking a legacy but is effortlessly enacting it.

This is a cultivated movie, just like someone who is used to populate his reasoning with citations. Madame Bovary and De Chirico are part of the lexicon. So is Andrea Chenier by Umberto Giordano, whose aria La mamma morta provides the title of the movie, Io sono l’amore, by means of an indirect citation (the famous sequence of Philadelphia in which a terminally ill Tom Hanks translates the Italian text into English to an astonished Denzel Washington). Just like a reflection in a mirror, something Visconti was very fond of.

 It has been defined “the most important exhibition of Moore’s work for a generation” (The Guardian) and it certainly represents an important homage paid to Britain’s most popular sculptor and one of the crucial names in the art of sculpture in the post-Rodin era (Brancusi, Giacometti, Smith, Moore, Calder, Chillida). But alongside the bronze, granite and wooden surfaces and the flowing melody of their shapes, their critical analysis and their contextualisation, it is interesting to discover a less known side of Henry Moore: the drawer.

The drawings represent much more that just sketches in preparation for the more physical action of sculpting, providing a rather different medium of expression. Despite the bi-dimensional approach which may appear in contradiction with the idea of sculpting itself, they are means to explore forms in isolation rather than in space. Or study forms and their relation to space. In this regard, some of Moore’s drawings enact the arrangement of the finished sculpture, with stylised cows grazing on the edge of the field for which the work has been conceived. This is particularly important for the sculpture that is meant to interact with its surroundings – Chillida’s El peine del viento eroded by the sea, Anish Kapoor’s installations in urban spaces, a reclining human figure in the Yorkshire countryside. A 1942 drawing portrays a curious indistinct crowd staring at a wrapped object in an open field (the object dominating the crowd), studying not only the interaction of the work of art with its surroundings but also the interaction of the work of art with its public.

While some drawings are clearly linked with a specific subject (maternity) others are linked with the preoccupations that the artist felt at the time and not to a specific single work, thus representing an independent production. The series of drawings portraying miners and the shelters of the World War II period, both included in the Tate retrospective, are of great interest. They reveal elements inspired by The potato eaters by Vincent Van Gogh – the claustrophobia, the attention toward the oppressed working class, the dark atmosphere – and by the dreamy Caprichos by Goya – the nocturnal vision and the agitation of the nightmare –.

The exhibition explores defining subjects of Moore’s art, including the reclining figure, the iconic mother and child composition, abstraction and the seminal drawings of London during the Blitz. The mother and child theme is also studied by means of drawings. And while the pencil and the crayon defined female figures, Moore had not only in mind the traditional model – the Madonne of the Italian Quattrocento – but newer forms: a phase in Picasso’s oeuvre (Deux femmes courant sur la plage, 1922) and bodies with a wooden quality defined by Kirchner (Bathers throwing reeds, 1909). The drawings, together with the wood carvings and the sculptures, testify that by the end of the 1920s Moore had absorbed tribal art, but it was something filtrated through the Cubist experience and influenced by the novel psychoanalytic theories and ideas of sexuality.

Tate Britain, until 8 August 2010
Images: Tate © Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation

Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, his debut is that of a writer, when in 1946 he published Elisabeth, a novel – characterised by subtle prose – that let us forsee the style of the scripts of his future movies. The book came out with the pseudonym Gilbert Cordier. A pseudonym is often associated with shame and resentment (see Stendhal), and in this regard Monsieur Rohmer, with his double nom de plume, probably had something to reveal.

Following the first feature films, the artist begins to see his path. His adventure in the world of art-house cinema has begun. Director on the one hand and, on the other, theorist. In fact, Rohmer was Editor of the Cahiers du cinéma for some years. Those were the years of Godard, Chabrol, Rivette, Eustache, Truffaut. Years of unforgettable movies (the legend of À bout de souffle, the poetic story of Jules et Jim) when Rohmer chose his position (on the sidelines) to play an independent game. He conceives an ambitious project: cycles of movies (stories at different stages, on multiple levels) in which he intends to recount the endless facets of the human soul, the worthlessness and the complexity, the splendour and the fragility, with all the comic aspects (or tragicomic).

The first cycle is that of the Moral Tales. Six astonishing movies, of great depth, each profoundly different from the other and yet all linked in a closed circle. La boulangère de Monceau (1962), La carriére de Suzanne (1963), La collectionneuse (1967), Ma nuit chez Maud (1969), Le genou de Claire (1970)  and L’amour l’aprés-midi (1972). Each of these stories involves a moral choice, a dilemma that puzzles the protagonist, a fork in the road. It’s the serried dialogues between Jean-Louis Trintignat and Françoise Fabian (unforgettable Maud), it’s the obsession focused on the knee of the young attractive (and arrogant) Claire, it’s the thoughts of the three characters of La collectionneuse (a sort of Jules et Jim with colours borrowed from Matisse and Bonnard).

This meditation in six acts is followed by an historical pause, during which Rohmer directs La marquise von (1976, inspired by a novella by Heinrich von Kleist, a beautiful period movie characterised by masterful lighting) and Perceval le Gallois (1978, a heavy adaptation from Chretiens de Troys). These are historical and literary digressions, recaptured by Rohmer toward the end of his career in L’anglaise et le duc (2001).

Once again absorbed in everyday life, Rohmer initiates a second cycle, that of Comedies and Proverbs. If the objective is always the same (a man, a woman, their psychology), the tactic has changed: a folkloristic adage is quoted and presented in the context of a beach in Brittany or in 1980s Paris. The films in this cycle are: La femme de l’aviateur (1981), Le beau mariage (1982), Pauline à la plage (1982), Les nuits de plein de lune (1984), Le rayon vert (1986),  Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) and L’ami de mon amie (1987). All these movies enjoyed the success of critic and public, all were characterised by the Rohmer-trademark: the dialogues chasing each other and interweaving, the simple settings (often beaches, equally often the countryside, an unexpected Paris), the accomplished actors (cleverly directed but also free to improvise in order to convey more spontaneity to the memorable fast-paced dialogues).

Another cycle follows, that of the Four Seasons: Conte de printemps (1989), Conte d’hiver (1991), Conte d’été (1996) and Conte d’automne (1998). The seasons are identified with their colours – the light-blue of the skies of Normandy for Summer, the red green and brown of the vineyards for Autumn. The sensitivity is, by now, familiar: the meditations of a young man caught in his dreams and in his incertitude, two friends in their middle age enjoying themselves in a comedy of misunderstandings (serious, but with a smile). Juggling and balancing.

There are also films outside the cycles. Those Rendez-vous à Paris, in which the structure is still typical of Rohmer. The recent L’anglaise et le duc (2001) from the memoires of Lady Grace Dalrymple Elliot, lover of the Duke of Orléans interpreted by the excellent Lucy Russell. And here Monsieur Rohmer finds one of his strengths: the unequalled taste in choosing the actors. Actors who give an astonishing performance and then disappear (from the screen, not in the memory of the public), such as Haydée Politoff, protagonist of La collectionneuse. But also legends of French cinema: Françoise Fabian (the seductive Maud) and Jean-Louis Trintignat. André Dussolier and Barbet Schroeder, Arielle Dombasle and Pascal Greggory. Some of the actors and actresses are a fetish, especially Béatrice Romand (young in Le genou de Claire, then in Le beau mariage, for which she was awarded the Coppa Volpi in Venice) and Marie Riviére (seen in La femme de l’aviateur and Le rayon vert) both united in the Autumn Tale in a memorable double interpretation. Or young promising actors, such as Melvil Poupaud in the Summer Tale.

Overall the strength of Rohmer’s cinema lays in its delicacy. The ability of recounting the fragility of a relationship, the intensity of an impulse, the complexity of a doubt. Often intertwined with the movements of the body (very observant the director, very refined the actors), the feelings are the real protagonists of the moral debates, of the comedies and the proverbs, of the seasons of life (a passionate summer, a melancholic autumn ending with a smile). A film by Rohmer can be ironic, humoristic, subtly sad, patently intimate – always, however, profoundly human.

The repetition of the themes (lastly disguised in the classical setting of the Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé) was a demonstration of clarity. Awarded in numerous editions of the most prestigious festivals (the lifetime achievement Leone d’Oro dating to 2001), Rohmer never lost his freshness, sometimes joyfully baroque sometimes astoundingly simple.

One day, in an unexpected place, we will find ourselves engaged in a discussion or sharing doubts with archetypal symbolic characters (Frivolous, Gullible, Strong, Ambiguous, Constant) and we will recognise ourselves as characters in one of his movies.

Summing together technique and imagery from the Futurists, levitra the Dada and the Pop movement, ed Kruger has created a bold and effective body of work that combines black and white photography (rarely colour) with resonant, advert-like slogans. Images such as the pin puncturing a finger with the writing “Thinking of you” or the motto “I shop therefore I am”. Kruger’s experience as a magazine editorial designer is evident both in the choice of subjects and in the approach to the image and the typographic element. The result is a direct message to the viewer (the consumer) who is often entranced by the contrast between the words-layer and the image-layer in the paste up. However, the “advertisement” aspect is kept separated from the art work by the artist herself: “Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways”.

Barbara Kruger, born in Newark in 1945, studied with Diane Arbus at the prestigious Parson’s School of Design in New York. From her first 1980 solo show at PS1 in New York, to the Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the 2005 Venice Biennale, her work has been consistently exhibited over the past thirty years: the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, the Tate in London and the Whitney in New York, and numerous solo shows, especially with the influent Mary Boone Gallery. Her work has remained direct and sharp, analysing the way in which we relate with language and the stimulation  of the viewer’s (consumer’s) mind through bold imagery.

Barbara Kruger, Paste up, Sprüth Magers Gallery London, until 23 January 2010
Image credits: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Money can buy you love), 1985, Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London

Born into a well-to-do family in the Lot region, Françoise Quoirez took by storm the cultural establishment of France in 1954 with the acclaimed and controversial novel Bonjour Tristesse, published under the pseudonym Sagan (inspired by one of the characters in Marcel Proust’s Recherche, the Princesse de Sagan). International bestseller and shortly after made into a movie interpreted by David Niven, Jean Seberg and Deborah Kerr, the story is set in the nonchalant atmosphere of the French Riviera where hedonism and frivolity meet with darker thoughts in the mind of spoilt teenage Cécile. Those were the initial years of the Nouvelle Vague.

The movie Sagan, directed by Diane Kuris, covers the time span of half a century, from the stardom year 1954 until 2004, when an old, fragile and impoverished Françoise Sagan died of a lung embolism. Her life has all the elements of tragedy and romance: immediate success, the first triumph turning almost into a curse, marriages, lovers, an estranged son, drugs, alcohol, luxury, beauty, solitude. The movie opens in Honefleur, in 2004, with a reporter trying to sneak a photograph trough the wooden gate of Sagan’s mansion, le manoir du Breuil near Équemauville. An enthusiastic young girl, she was known by the nickname of charmant petit monstre (charming little monster). Androgynous in her looks, with short hair and slender figure, she lived the success of Bonjour Tristesse with a cheerful attitude, at the same time conscious and blasé. Her places (Deauville, Paris, Saint-Tropez, Honfleur), her sportcars. Following a car accident at the wheel of her Aston Martin, she was in a coma for some days. Once she recovered, she quickly married publisher Guy Schoeller. The marriage lasted only three years and two years after her divorce she married the American sculptor Robert Westhoff, with whom she had her only child, Denis. Like Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson or Paul and Jane Bowles, Françoise and Robert also had same sex relationships outside their marriage and following their separation. In fact, Sagan’s most faithful companion was Peggy Roche, ex model for Givenchy and later herself a stylist.

We follow Sagan into her descent in drug and alcohol abuse, her difficult (almost inexistent) relationship with her son, her financial problems, her respiratory accident while on a state visit to Colombia with President François Mitterand. Later Peggy Roche dies. In the last years of her life, Sagan was practically ruined and was involved in the financial scandal known as Affair Elf . It was only the support from her wealthy companion Ingrid Mechoulam (Astrid, in the movie) that allowed her to keep her mansion, where she died in 2004. A few years earlier she was asked to write her own epitaph: “Sagan, Françoise. Fit son apparition en 1954, avec un mince roman, “Bonjour tristesse”, qui fut un scandale mondial. Sa disparition, après une vie et une œuvre également agréables et bâclées, ne fut un scandale que pour elle-même” (Sagan, Francoise. Appeared in 1954 with a slender novel, “Bonjour Tristesse”, which was a worldwide scandal. Her death, after a life and a literary production both pleasant and botched, was a scandal only for herself).

Sagan is brilliantly interpreted by Sylvie Testud (also a theatre actress and a writer). A long preparation in the study of the character is evident: the voice, the gestures, the gait, the whole attitude. Instead of playing Sagan, Sylvie Testud had opted for becoming Sagan, conscious that the author and her myth are still alive in the public, especially in France, leaving little space for improvisation. Alongside Testud, the eclectic Jeanne Balibar (Ne touchez pas la hache, 17 fois Cécile Cassard, Va savoir) plays Peggy Roche, with her striking outfits and mellifluous voice.

Another character in the movie is the action of writing. The physical act of writing, the reason behind it, the urgency, its commercial aspect, the years of Existentialism. “Écrire est la seule vérification que j’ai de moi-même” (Writing is the only verification I have of myself). We see Sagan writing: in bed, surrounded by half-smoked cigarettes and half-drunk bottles of whisky; in the garden of her mansion; sitting with the typewriter on her lap. She writes. In fifty years of excesses she has also managed to publish almost fifty literary works, including novels, theatre plays, scripts, autobiographical writings.

The movie also provides an overview of fifty years of French history: the Nouvelle Vague; May 1968; the Manifesto of the 343 in which 343 women admitted of having had an abortion in 1971 including Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau and Françoise Sagan; Mitterand’s presidency. Interestingly during the movie, while Sagan, her second husband and her entourage are watching on TV the revolution in the streets of the Latin Quarter, one of the spectators comments: “This is the revolution” looking at their new way of living, just there, in that room. Less boundaries, socially and sexually.

The movie is not judgmental: neither compassionate for the suffering and the weaknesses of the writer, nor exalting her excesses. It portrays the lights and shadows of a complex character, of a woman that already at the age of 18, in the opening lines of the novel that made her Sagan, wrote: “A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else”.

The story is based on the 1999 novel by Sheila Kohler, but it also brings to memory the unforgettable Miss Jean Brodie and her temperament, as described by Muriel Spark in her early successful novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). The central theme is not only the complex dynamics occurring in a group of adolescents (both novels addressing a “team” of young girls) but also how each member of the group interacts with the charismatic role-model, the teacher that nobody will ever forget. Not a teacher, but the teacher, in a wider meaning of the term: a source of inspiration. Some details of Miss Brodie are memorable: taking the liberty of discussing Fascism and Cimabue instead of mathematics during class, reproaching a girl for opening a window more than fifteen centimetres because it is “vulgar”, her ambition of transforming her team of girls into “la crème de la crème”. The impact of such an alluring character on the mind of an adolescent sparks strong reactions. Imitation, jealousy, eroticism. Obsession.

In the film, Miss G is a stain of colour in the gray rigorous atmosphere of the school and its surroundings. Dressed with great taste, a cigarette often between the red lips, assured in her attitude, compelling when recounting stories set against exotic backgrounds, she is almost magnetic. Her special group of girls, the diving team, feels privileged and intimidated, each girl responding differently to such a strong personality, with attraction easily disguised as admiration. Miss G possesses an allure of mystery, which of course adds to her erotic charge. She passionately tries to inspire her girls, challenging them, instructing them against social obligations, telling them that “the most important thing in life is desire”. The movie then takes a darker turn, with Miss G revealing another side, under the armour of emancipated and glamorous young woman. The character thus gains more complexity, ultimately possessing an explosive mix of fragility, illusions, ambitions and sensuality.

In the role of Miss G, Eva Green delivers an accomplished performance. Known to the greater public as the Bond girl of Casino royale, she was the unforgettable Isabelle in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The dreamers. Daughter of French actress Marlène Jobert and a theatre actress, she also has previously worked with Ridley Scott, producer of Cracks, for the movie Kingdom of heaven. In her latest role, she incarnates with confidence the charismatic Miss G, shifting between her passionate side and her dark side. Beautiful and stylish, she flaunts elegant 1930s outfits in the improbable setting of the boarding school, playing the gramophone on the shore of the sea while encouraging the diving team to aim higher. Her most striking feature are probably the piercing blue eyes and her gaze, so rich in emotions, is reminiscent of Charlotte Rampling’s. As some of Rampling’s most popular interpretations, this character is oscillating between fragility and an almost arrogant, fascinating confidence, not intentionally provocative but naturally sensual. All this summarised in the complex gaze. While presenting the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, Eva Green said that she also found inspiration for her character by listening to songs performed by Marlene Dietrich, adding the final touch to her interpretation.  

The movie, directed with talent by Jordan Scott and with beautiful photography curated by John Mathieson, will be released in the UK in December 2009.