Gennady Spirin

Gennady Spirin

Two illustrations for Philipok

circa 2000

    Such a determined child. Eager to learn and to prove himself as big a boy as his elder brother, Philipok deviously makes his way into the depths of winter towards the school house while his grandmother sleeps, unaware. He trudges along the familiar snowy road winding through his village, confident and bundled warmly in thickly-wrapped boots and coat and his father’s big fur hat, only to be deterred by a snarling, relentless pack of territorial dogs blocking his path. Feeling small and powerless he succumbs to fear, falling into the snow with a sudden weakness in his little legs and large cumbersome feet, his alphabet book clutched still more firmly under his arm. But he knows, in a way, that in order to fall one must first learn to walk, and to walk again little Philipok shall in order to reach his wish. With the help of a kind old man he again finds himself bracing the tireless winds, only to finally reach the school doors now crippled by his own doubt - will he be scolded and sent away by the teacher, or be embarrassed and teased by those more clever than he? But events are sure to repeat themselves.

     Spirin’s hand shows care in each scene he illustrates. Not only in the types of people and animals is there a familiar warmth drawn from the artist’s own Russian upbringing, but in the boy, too, there resonates a fondness, a detailed closeness, which defines Philipok as more than just the main character of Leo Tolstoi’s tale. Modelled from life, Philipok takes the shape of Spirin’s own young son, imbued with an equal sense of rosy-cheeked wonder and awe. Both boys bring the qualities of the fictional and the real out in the other, making both story and fact coexist within the readers’ minds. It is a story for children, and for the child within every adult. It is Philipok’s story, and it is our story.

Léon de Smet

Léon de Smet

Vase de Fleurs

circa 1916

     A magnificent red consumes the canvas. A vast parade of people, fish and flowers, or whatever one makes them to be, jig and swim in the shallow fiery waters surging around the explosion of feather-like buds, each blooming so passionately out from the depths of the orange clay bowl. Cupping this, the fluted vase - blue and cool and ravishing - acts to silence the riot swelling around it. Like a pillar of power it tries not only to contain the erupting flowers, but to calm the surrounding sea threatening to weaken its flowers, to drown them. It wants to own its pride of purpose, to support its every stem; it wants to prove itself a vase unlike any other. Ripples ensue from the table itself, dark and textured like nutritious soil. Danger approaches, or at least the warning of war. Things begin to tremble. Too many forces have now pooled into the same field of expression. Soon the vase and its cradled jewel will become one with the enemy, both lost in one big wave of pushing and tugging and bragging, comparing whose red is the reddest and whose strength is the strongest. Haughty and immature, each will think less of the other, convinced that its supremacy of colour will reign in the end, over all. But which will meet its end first: the sheet of paper, the ephemeral flowers or the brittle ceramic?

Sir George Clausen

Sir George Clausen

The Gleaners Returning

circa 1908

    A fresh shower of sunlight filtered through a canvas of branches. The women’s feet fall down wearily on the sandy path, step by step. They breathe deeply: they inhale the goodness of the air and the birdsong floating with it, each weighed down by a light evening heat. The soft rustles and swishes of their skirts add an extra melody to that which already surrounds them; and though tired, they dance with each footstep and gesture to the sound of the trees and the gossiping insects. 
     They are alive from tip to tip. Their skin is moist with the cooling sweat of a day’s worth of bending and heaving, their backs now tingling and sore. Strands of hair whip their cheeks as gently as their shadows drown the light, and their fingers are red and worn, but tough. Notice how one thing imitates another - how the trunks swoon as the dresses sway; how the leaves shimmer as the baskets of grain shudder; and how the air swims about lazily as the women smile and sigh, however slightly, with a satisfaction only known to those who work hard and honestly. This is a picture of celebration. Into a rectangular frame of time it paints the stories of three nameless women, perhaps a mother and her daughters, who are shown sharing the rewards after long hours of physical labour. Unburdened by expensive things and endless leisures these people are those who understand best the meaning of freedom, even if they feel it for only a short while, because of the value they place in the leisure of simplicity. They are returning from fields of monotonous gleaning - returning to the roots of the little things that keep them alive and aware of where true happiness may be found.

the Émile Hermès Collection: Objects of Curiosity

French or English (?) (maker(s) unknown)

Wig Rest 

circa early to mid-nineteenth century

(blown glass, paint and water-coloured engravings)

     This orb is as striking as it is curious. Up close, it appears to be anything than what it actually is. Neatly laid out across the inner face of its sphere, the frozen circus of humanised beasts - each impeccably dressed - floats against the starry backdrop of speckled golds and of sprays of inky blues and reds and greens. A squatting donkey plays a red flute while its companion neighs and struts to its own improvised song; a slender brown bird, music sheets in hand, gazes up keenly at a perching parrot, posed with its wings outstretched, who stares intently into the beyond, at us; and a large kneeling camel, its arm resting gently on what looks like a wooden barrel, attired as a casual Middle Eastern, its lush beard swathing its neck and its blue-striped sash nipping its waist tightly. As its audience, intent on discovering its secret, we fall under the orb’s spell. We peer closer and closer into its seamless window; its skies seem to scintillate and shimmer, playing slight tricks with our eyes and casting our unsuspecting imaginations farther than we may be ready to accept.

     And it is at this point that the orb’s literal function makes sense. More than being a miniature world of fantasy; more than showcasing a precise degree of anonymous handiwork and technical skill; and more than representing an era in which new forms of printing made way for refined standards in decorative art, this glass orb is an emblem of the human mind. It is a gateway stylised to the fashions of its epoch, a gateway both in the metaphysical and simply physical senses. It dedicates a part of its time to visually luring in the curious, using its props to toy between fact and fiction, while during the rest of its time promptly becoming the artificial mind underneath a fancy (or not) weave of hair.

20th Century Film

A Room with a View (Merchant Ivory)

starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench (etc.)

circa 1985

(based on the novel by E.M. Forster)

     This is Lucy, wonderful Lucy. She is mischievous, clever, curious and passionate, but also confused - repressed. On paper, Forster renders Lucy’s character as that of an open book: one that, though seeming to be wide open, has yet to reveal its début, its epiphany of being, through some form of outlet she knows she is meant to discover, soon. This frustrates her. One feels that at any moment she may implode emotionally because of her introverted sense of expressing a feeling she has yet to understand, let alone to identify. This said, it takes more than either one good read or watch to then understand the importance of George, an equally-introverted (perhaps moreso) young man whose budding acquaintance with Lucy (much to the tutting though harmless disapproval of Charlotte) sets off a sudden spark within her. Like a fawn, she is clumsy and scared of these new feelings. But despite the exciting allure they give her, she tears what she feels to be her guilty interest away from George, convincing herself that what she sees as the good in him would only be destructive to her. Her past dictates order and control, though her mind and body scream to be rescued from such restrictions. In her power to deceive and resist, she warps reality in order to maintain this control, but in doing so she unknowingly brings the truth closer. 

     And it is at the beginning of her story that, ironically, we see its end unveiled, subtly. As the first marker to weaken the storm within Lucy, however minimally, it is a certain Mr. Emerson who recognises it as similar to that in his own son, George. He not only inadvertently lends her a masterpiece of advice, but he also sets off the plot's clockwork. Under the domes of the Florentine church in which they stand, and in her light blue dress and bushy braided hair, a contemplating Lucy digests his words: 

If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible (…). You are inclined to get muddled - pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.