{"id":40621,"date":"2022-10-27T06:30:02","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T17:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=40621"},"modified":"2022-10-24T14:42:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T01:42:58","slug":"giacometti-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2022\/10\/27\/giacometti-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"“Giacometti” Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, when discussing Joanna Preston’s award-winning Tumble<\/em><\/a>, I mentioned how the opening poem, Female, Nude<\/em><\/a>, is ekphrastic, i.e. it was written in response to a work of art. In the case of Female, nude<\/em>, the artwork was a Man Ray painting, Ingres Violin.<\/em><\/p>\n

I also mentioned that the poem was Joanna’s contribution to an ekphrastic poems series that I curated in 2013.<\/p>\n

So today, while the ekphrastic theme is fresh, I’m refeaturing Giacometti<\/em><\/strong>, my own contribution to the same series.<\/p>\n

Giacometti <\/em>was also published in JAAM 28:<\/strong> Dance dance dance<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

~*~<\/p>\n

Giacometti<\/span><\/h3>\n

please do not dance
\nwith the statues<\/em> \u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

leaves swirl<\/span>
\ninto the atrium\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 drift<\/span>
\nbetween steel<\/span>
\nglass\u00a0\u00a0 stone<\/span><\/p>\n

a man<\/span>
\ncast in bronze\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 stalks<\/span>
\nthrough a flurry<\/span>
\nof programmes<\/span>
\nthe woman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 elongated<\/span>
\ntowers overhead<\/span>
\nstares back\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 forward<\/span>
\nalong the century<\/span><\/p>\n

watches men walk<\/span>
\non the moon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Helen Lowe<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Poet\u2019s Note from<\/em> Helen Lowe <\/span><\/h3>\n

(written for the Ekphrastic Series)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I wrote Giacometti<\/em> in response to the exhibition of sculptures, prints & drawings from the Maeght Foundation, including the \u201cwalking man\u201d and \u201cgiant woman\u201d (Grandes Femmes) pieces from the Chase Manhattan Plaza project (1960), which was featured in the Christchurch Art Gallery, November 2006 \u2013 February 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, poems often derive from \u2018sparks\u2019 of experience. In this case the Giacometti exhibition was amongst the first major exhibitions for the newly opened, new Christchurch Art Gallery building, and I recall there being a real sense of excitement about that in the community\u2014both for the new building and the major exhibition: we all wanted to go and see the statues.<\/span><\/p>\n

The notion of \u2018dancing\u2019 with the statues sparked in part from that sense of excitement and the flurry of people coming and going through the new foyer area\u2014in itself conceived much like an enclosed plaza\u2014and although the leaves swirling into it were real, the words also allude to the sense in which programmes also became \u2018leaves\u2019 amongst that flurry of people all engaged in their own individual dance with the statues.<\/span><\/p>\n

The poem focuses on the \u201cwalking man\u201d and \u201cgiant woman\u201d pieces from the Chase Manhattan Plaza project because those were the two that most \u201cspoke\u201d to me in the exhibition. The woman in particular conveyed a great deal which may or may not have been intended by the sculptor: the sense in which the twentieth century is the one in which women stepped away from the circumscribed roles of the past and became \u201cgiants\u201d, as well as the tremendous array of events the \u2018new women\u2019 of that century were witness too. I could have focused on world wars, the Great Depression, the holocaust, the atom bomb\u2013but I chose to focus on the event that for me, more than any other, was a similar stepping away from the known past:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cstares back\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 forward<\/em><\/span>
\nalong the century<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

watches men walk<\/em><\/span>
\non the moon.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, when discussing Joanna Preston’s award-winning Tumble, I mentioned how the opening poem, Female, Nude, is ekphrastic, i.e. it was written in response to a work of art. In the case of Female, nude, the artwork was a Man Ray painting, Ingres Violin. I also mentioned that the poem was Joanna’s contribution to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40625,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40621\/revisions\/40625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}