I admit I didn’t get hairdresser, Max, for barber (as Bill says). But I like the way the piece turns toward that neat ending, how it gets there. Possibly some nuanced cutting, but not much, & it’d be up to you to see if there’s any can be done…
Doug
> On Jun 28, 2016, at 11:51 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Anguish and other Portraits
>
> Settled in front of his framed mirror,
> I hear James, my old hairdresser,
> enthuse about his new art-teacher,
> who specializes in portraiture.
>
> ‘Now your face, Max, draw a line here
> down your nose past your neck where
> your shirt takes over! Two faces, see?
> textures, lines, asymmetry.’
>
> Too true. I stare searching his face
> for the lines an artist would trace.
> ‘Now, Max, my teacher wants from me
> a short - five hundred word - essay
>
> on “Anguish”, the painting you may
> know at the National Gallery.’
> I fail to conjure any memory
> of a portrait named so oddly.
>
> ‘Max, look it out, and send me
> a few words to help my essay.’
> Later, shorn ever so smartly,
> my debit card fleeced,
>
> I find the website: NGV,
> and Schenck’s ‘Angoisse’.
> I do remember this!
> No portrait! but a woolly ewe
>
> crying! Her dead lamb in the snow
> is focus of many hungry crows
> creeping forward or in the sky
> flapping down towards their prey.
>
> Feel for the ewe!
> of course we all do,
> for just a moment, admiring too
> the fine detail of Schenck’s work,
>
> that Dane, I’d say, with tendencies
> Pre-Raphaelite (my amateur guess).
> Later I send James that word.
> Next day I meet, for a quick
>
> Gallery tour, with my friend
> Chris and his cameras. All round
> we’re hemmed in by tourists
> of Asian appearance snapping
>
> themselves as much as the art.
> They like sheep too. Many
> here safely graze. Pastorals!
> But the anguished ewe?
>
> It’s a Pieta, says Chris,
> though the lamb’s too small
> to be Mary’s dead Jesus.
> I must tell James.
>
> From there we adjourn for coffee
> to Swanston Street in what must be
> the world’s smallest cafe,
> a glass cupboard for four
>
> in the old insurance building*
> now an art deco treasure.
> Chris’s light meter
> says: too dark for a portrait.
>
> We further adjourn to the old
> Athenaeum Library** with big
> windows to read by, a table
> to rest his camera on, able
>
> to photograph in stillness
> my aged asymmetry -
> notably
> lacking in anguish.
>
> [St Kilda Road, June 2016]
>
>
> http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/school_resource/art-start/image-bank/august-friedrich-schenck/
>
> *http://www.manchesterunitybuilding.com.au/
>
> **http://www.melbourneathenaeum.org.au/index.php/library-info/library-gallery
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Automobile Accident
Not finding where the flowers were
he seized a tree.
Lorine Niedecker
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