Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
We suffer from veneereal disuse.
Frank and his tanks (Anfore)
- Thread starter Matteo Mollo
- Start date
We suffer from veneereal disuse.
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
Joe's contrition should be incitation to fewer, monsieur.
To be honest, I haven't try this wine for at least 1 year now.
But my recent experiences with Northern Rhone '05 have been quite bad...
Including '05 Pergaud, and last thursday Allemand's Chaillot . A total waste.
And Descombes morgon in mags is so good right now...
Amicalement
Eric
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Thanks so much. Will open a 2004 Jasmin Cote Rotie instead.
Saina Nieminen
Saina Nieminen
For what it's worth Eric's St. Joseph VV La Croix '05 was aromatically open a couple weeks ago - the result, sadly, was a furious evaporation rate. Anomalous experience?
Salut Otto,
A good example that one should never trust a winemaker's opinion about his wines...
I've heard that Les Cadinnires 2005 is also great right now. I thought it was very closed...
Anyway, Jasmin 2004 is a joy right now, and Oswaldo will get a very nice piece of wine for sure.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
In support of Eric, I recently opened a Lezin 05 Cote-Rotie and it was young and tough and not open for business.
Joel Stewart
Joel Stewart
...forgot to thank you too, Oswaldo for the refresher course on Baroque 101. Your comment puts in perspective at least some of the power, technical strength and ostentation of the art of the period for me. Bernini, whose abilities are nothing short of astounding, nevertheless left me a bit cold with his hyper-realism, emotional exaggeration and occasional bathos (don't ask me why greek sculpture often captures my fancy more...perhaps the portraits of real people, warts and all, I've seen, capture something living and real, over his purified subjects, I suspect). On the other hand, it's easy to forget how much artists were in competition for work as hired guns for the cause, as it were.....and the artifice, ostentation/"awe-inspiring displays" can be astounding nonetheless. Sometimes in a Spielbergian high tech-sentimental kind of way, albeit.
edit: Bernini's Ecstacy of St. Theresa "multi-media" sculpture for the Cornaro Chapel in Rome is a prime example of this excess (as well as a prime example of your "ecstatic devotion" description). Totally over the top...and likely tripped contemporary viewers out completely.
Interesting, Joel. One of my most enduring memories of Rome involves my various encounters with Bernini's work, in the Villa Borghese as well as various churches. I was stunned with his technical mastery of a tricky medium. I can't say that I came away with an impression of emotional exaggeration, but I was a callow youth of 24 at the time and no artist to boot.
Mark Lipton
kirk wallace
kirk wallace
How about this? Bring back any memories?
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
The historical record of what might be called with accuracy Bernini's Costanza Affair tends to lend support to the view of Bernini as leaning toward the emotional and excessive.
Gianlorenzo Bernini completed this bust of Costanza Bonarelli in 1637. By that time Bernini had been in the midst of an affair with Costanza for some length of time. Bonarelli was the name Costanza had taken from her husband Matteo. Matteo worked as one of Bernini's assistants while the affair progressed. Not long after the bust was rendered, Gianlorenzo learned that his younger brother Luigi Bernini was also having an affair with Costanza. Catching Luigi in situ with Costanza after pretending to go on a trip to the countryside, Gianlorenzo attacked Luigi with a crobar and broke two of his ribs. Later that evening he again assaulted Luigi, this time with a sword, and attempted to kill him. By that time Gianlorenzo had already dispatched a servant to Costanza's home, where that fellow found Costanza in bed and proceeded on Gianlorenzo's instruction to mutilate her face with a razor. Not too long afterwards, Gianlorenzo helped see to it that Costanza was tried for adultery and sent to prison.
At that time Bernini was 40 years of age. In the coming years he would marry a lady who was reputedly the most beautiful woman in all of Rome, and father 11 children by her.
One might reasonably suggest from all of this that Gianlorenzo Bernini was a passionate dude.
At that time Bernini was 40 years of age. In the coming years he would marry a lady who was reputedly the most beautiful woman in all of Rome, and father 11 children by her.
One might reasonably suggest from all of this that Gianlorenzo Bernini was a passionate dude.
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
After someone else has sipped from the same cup, you mean?
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
Yes, in life. You tell a good story, but it's obviously little more than one outcome of many that art and life in this case should have the same tenor.
For every tumultuous artist (or writer, filmmaker, etc.) we can find handfuls of sedate, bourgeois creators who leave their well-kept home to turn out revolutionary worlds.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Mr. Stewart, painter and printmaker (here the penny dropped), intriguing this idea that Bernini was the Spielberg of his day. There was, after all, a kind of intergalactic war going on.
Interesting, too, how overt mastery like this can inspire awe but lessen the ability to connect on a more intimate level. Self-portraits and still lives are arguably the most revealing genres throughout the history of art because we see the artist at his/her least programmatic. In contrast, commissioned portraits, biblical scenes, allegories and historical tableaux are at the service of some ulterior purpose, furthering an ideological program or simply making a buck. Baroque religious scenes are often just ecstasy for hire. A "modest" still life from Zurbaran, Chardin or Morandi can affect me much more.
Interesting, too, how overt mastery like this can inspire awe but lessen the ability to connect on a more intimate level. Self-portraits and still lives are arguably the most revealing genres throughout the history of art because we see the artist at his/her least programmatic. In contrast, commissioned portraits, biblical scenes, allegories and historical tableaux are at the service of some ulterior purpose, furthering an ideological program or simply making a buck. Baroque religious scenes are often just ecstasy for hire. A "modest" still life from Zurbaran, Chardin or Morandi can affect me much more.
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
I am not sure what this has to do with what I said.
I am as aware of Wallace Stevens, for instance, as the next guy.
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
You described the artist's personal life as a response to descriptions of his work.
"Bernini's Costanza Affair tends to lend support to the view of Bernini as leaning toward the emotional and excessive."
Maybe in life. He also did in his work. I argued that the two did not necessarily have to go together.
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
I actually started thinking of interesting examples of the reverse: artists whose personal lives were tumultuous and their works, staid.
Such as Verlaine. Being married to a woman, launching into a homosexual affair with Rimbaud, slumming it in London, being a pauper and a drunk, getting in a rage and firing a gun at said younger poet, etc. And writing very traditional, sing-songy verse.
I mean, Hugo wrote more innovative things, technically, than Baudelaire.
But anyway. Back to Bernini.
Such as Verlaine. Being married to a woman, launching into a homosexual affair with Rimbaud, slumming it in London, being a pauper and a drunk, getting in a rage and firing a gun at said younger poet, etc. And writing very traditional, sing-songy verse.
I mean, Hugo wrote more innovative things, technically, than Baudelaire.
But anyway. Back to Bernini.
Levi Dalton
Levi Dalton
This is pretty much the art historical line as I understand it. Not least because Bernini also authored 20 plays, and was known to do the sets for plays as well as design the machinery for what might be called special effects. In one production he arranged for the stage to be flooded as a rendering of the Tiber.
What Bernini did was break broundaries for the sake of illusion, fusing architecture with sculpture and painting. He was very concerned with conveying a dynamic sense of movement and also emotion.
But to ascribe a concern with the individual as Baroque, as was done earlier in this thread, misses the contribution of the Renaissance to that mental framework.