“The aesthetic experience is a simple beholding of the object . . . you experience a radiance. You are held in aesthetic arrest.” - Joseph Campbell
Aesthetic Arrest is our weekly dip into the Epicurean pleasures we’ve been enjoying lately. Here we go!
Ryan Wildstar’s Recommendations:
Reading: Riversong of the Rhone (Chant de Notre Rhône) by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
“They are picking grapes in the vineyards above me; suspended above me among stone walls, suspended half-way up the steps with baskets called hottes on their backs…
A grandeur expresses itself before me: if only I could express it. Today is the day of the wine harvest, the vendange, and the entire mountain is in motion with people who are here to pack in the grapes and pile them up, which is to say to harvest these grapes, which is to say to gather themselves in the wine that contains them, contains their life, and them, and the best of their acts, at the same time that it contains the sun and the soil from whence it came, — if there were, nevertheless, another wine also born of this land, born of a man of this land, that too would contain him and would contain the land.” - Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, from Riversong of the Rhone
Listening: Saudade by Plínio Fernandes
Looking: The Art of Gertrude Abercrombie
Dizzy Gillespie described her as “the first bop artist. Bop in the sense that she has taken the essence of our music and transported it to another art form.”
For a comprehensive video slideshow of her paintings, click here.
Viewing: Three Thousand Years of Longing by George Miller (based on the story, “The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye,” by A.S. Byatt), starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba
Tasting: Domaine la Rocalière: Tavel Le Classique (Tavel AOC) from sisters Sèverine Lemoine & Mélanie Borrelly
Ryan Elston’s Recommendations:
Reading: The Last Gift of the Master Artists by Ben Okri
…You will find them carving wooden sculptures in the open workshop of the world, hammering at bronze, singing poignant songs in groups, in lovely harmonies.
You will see children making art out of rejected things, broken combs, calabash shards, and disused chairs. Or drawing pictures on the ground.
You will see women painting myths on cloth, in vivid colours, creating new forms with jewels and cowries, carving giant totems, practising new dances in the square.
You will find the old at work, directing great projects, carving ancestral doors patterned with legends, telling stories to the young, listening to the dreams of maidens.
You will see sculptures everywhere, in wood, in bronze, copper, and stone. You will see the sculpted shapes of animals dreamt or imagined, of visitants from the sky, of gods, ancestors, the unborn, spirits, the noble busts of sages. You will see images of harvests and beautiful men and strong women, images of the future, shapes drawn on walls.
You will find a place alive with art in every corner, art in the square, art around the shrines, a world humming with constant creativity.
This is the place the prince entered as a humble man, in quest of love.
- Ben Okri, from The Last Gift of the Master ArtistsListening: The Quintet [Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach]: Jazz At Massey Hall
Looking: The Art of Romare Bearden
“Bearden was a modern reader of The Odyssey, so, he approaches Homer as John Coltrane approaches Miles Davis: ‘Toe to toe, we're gonna make music together. Let's see what we make of it. I know we both know the score, but we're gonna do different things with it.’” - Robert O'Meally, curator of Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey
Viewing: James Joyce’s Ulysses directed by Adam Low (BBC Arena)
The women who were instrumental to the creation and publication of Ulysses included Nora Barnacle, Harriet Weaver, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier. Without these women, Ulysses would never have been written, let alone published!
Tasting: Noel Fish (Tirana, Albania)
That’s it for this week! What are your reading, listening, looking, viewing and/or tasting recommendations?
Aesthetic Arrest Podcast: Bebop, Ben Okri, Ulysses, Romare Bearden & The Rhône