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Monday, April 20th, 2009
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1:16a
lucian freud: my mother was ill for eight or nine years. she was in her nineties when she died. she had tried to kill herself when my father died. she did a perfectly good job, but she was found by her sister, who lived next door and brought her back to life when she was virtually dead. after that, even though my mother had amazing health and was really fine, she pretended she was very ill. she was just terribly depressed to be still alive. i started painting her, because she had lost interest in everything, including me. before then, i always avoided her because she was so intuitive that i felt my privacy was rather threatened by her.
"the painter's mother iii",(1972), oil on canvas
"the painter's mother (final version)", (1982), etching
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3:22p
in 1805 hölderlin was delivered into the clinic at tübingen run by dr ferdinand authenrieth, inventor of a mask for the prevention of screaming in the mentally ill. the following year he was discharged as incurable and given three years to live, but was taken in by the carpenter ernst zimmer (a cultured man, who had read his "hyperion") and given a room in his house, which had been a tower in the old city wall, with a view across the neckar river and meadows. zimmer and his family cared for hölderlin until his death, 36 years later. wilhelm waiblinger, a young poet and admirer, left a poignant account of hölderlin's day-to-day life during these long, empty years. as time went on he became a kind of minor tourist attraction and was visited by curious travellers and autograph-hunters. often he would spontaneously write short verses for such visitors, pure in versification but almost empty of affect, although a few of these (such as the famous "die linien des lebens", which he wrote out for his carer Zimmer on a piece of wood) have a piercing beauty and have been set to music by many composers.
die linien des lebens sind verschieden
wie wege sind, und wie der berge grenzen.
was hier wir sind, kann dort ein gott ergänzen
mit harmonien und ewigem lohn und frieden.
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7:26p
adolf menzel's pupil carl johann arnold had seen the artist in 1850 "when he was going to have a foot bath, painting a study of his foot, life size, so that he completely forgot his initial intention". the lively curiosity for this subject never lessened and, eighteen years after the painting described here, menzel drew a large format picture of his half-bare right leg, adding the image of his left foot in a mirror. its perfect working and apparently autonomous movement, like a puppet, and at the same time the strange animal quality and cartilaginous aspect of this despised part of the body - and for this reason the object of fetishism - exerted a fascination over him "comparable to that of old dog-eared books or a wobbly scaffold".
adolf menzel, "the artist's foot", (1876), oil on wood"
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