You talkin' to me?....

I Am Curious (Yellow)

I am sterdam.....  And, for that matter, I'm just wild about saffron.....  And, just for the record (Mellow Yellow?), a little over 54 years ago, I celebrated my 21st birthday in Morecambe by taking Mary to see the Swedish film, I Am Curious (Yellow), thinking, in my characteristic naivety, that it might have been intellectually interesting.  I was wrong, in a Travis Bickle kind of way, but I think (hope) that Mary may have forgiven me by now.....

You talkin' to me?

Narcissus

So, since my days are well beyond their yellow leaf, I am in the Netherlands.....

As it says on the boat:

For a mini-art break:

Well.... Sort of.... Back in the arms of  Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, at least.....

No, not in his arms, but in the same room, perhaps, where the gold glisters..... I'm sure he would join me for a triple tipple in the Cafe Karpershoek, especially since it was established in 1606, the year in which the old master was born....

Our accommodation is modest:

Sorry!  Wrong slide.....

As I said, our accommodation is modest:

Yes, well, Chet Baker is occupying the Prins Hendrik, where I usually stay:

Anyway, this is not about the stairwell:

Nor about the Boardroom:

Nor about my old friends:

It's not about the bicycles:

It's not about the bars:

It's not about the canals:

And it really isn't about a broodje haring either......

No....  [Well, what are you waffling about?  Ed]

No..... Well, I am curious [Yes....? Ed]. I am curious about yellow.....

Wheatfield with Crows - Vincent Van Gogh (July 1890)

Or, perhaps less precisely, I am curious about how we see things, and just by chance the van Gogh Museum has a temporary exhibition about Yellow.... Yellow. Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour - the first exhibition to explore what the colour yellow meant to Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. As Vincent wrote to his brother Theo:  Sunshine, a light which, for want of a better word I can only call yellow – pale sulphur yellow, pale lemon, gold. How beautiful yellow is!

It is fascinating to explore the world of yellow, though this only opens up the whole question of light and how we see colour. On an earlier visit to Amsterdam I was interested in how Rembrandt painted white - the absence of colour - the fine folds of a ruff, or the blaze of light on the wall at Belshazzar's Feast.  

Isaac Newton showed that white light is made up of different colours by splitting light with a prism, and then putting it back together with another. But how do you paint that?  

Newton also 'invented' the colour wheel, which suggests that certain colours compliment others:

Olafur Eliasson, installation in the exhibition ‘Yellow. Beyond Van Gogh's Colour’

Part of this exhibition shows some of the components Van Gogh may have used to mix his paints. Yellow ochre is one of the oldest pigments known to have been used in art. But in more recent times cadmium and chromium, and other elements, have been used to produce synthetic colours, though some of these fade or darken over time. Chrome Yellow (incidentally the title of Aldous Huxley's first novel) was Van Gogh's favourite colour, which derives its name from the element chromium, from the Ancient Greek χρῶμα (khrôma), which means colour.....

Another aspect of painting is colour theory. Michel Eugène Chevreul was a nineteenth century French chemist, and his studies of textile dyes led to colour theories that provided the scientific basis for Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painting. He also stressed the importance of accurate portrayal of lighting in promoting realism, but  said, It is almost always so that accurate, yet exaggerated colouring is found more pleasing than absolute fidelity to the scene....  and Van Gogh took this advice to heart, later writing that this reciprocal heightening is what's called the law of simultaneous contrast…. If the complementary colours are taken at equal value, that is to say, at the same degree of brightness and light, their juxtaposition will raise both the one and the other to an intensity so violent that human eyes will scarcely be able to bear to look at it....

Yellow is also traditionally the colour of the sun, of warmth, of happiness, but artists have used it to express deeper meanings, emotions and ideas. In literature and fashion, yellow has been associated with everything that is modern, daring and decadent.  Cheap novels and Italian crime fiction are published on yellow paper.  Danger is signalled by yellow jackets, heavy machinery is yellow with black lettering....  

So I look around.  Does it make a difference if I alter the colour palette?

Natural

Neutral

Dangerous?

Is this a friendly picture?

And what is your eye drawn to here?

And here.....?  Is the upturned car as eye-catching as the table legs and the floor?

And does messing with the colours really mess up your mind?

Does the little patch of yellow in the background steal your thoughts?

And is white all right?  Or do we yearn for something more?

Sleeping Hermaphroditus - Mattress by Bernini (1620)

The sun begins to leave us, a yellow stain spreads across the western sky:

And then the blue turns to orange, brush marks etched into the heavens with the wrong end of a paintbrush:

The great organ in the Westerkerk plays Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi, its gold embroidered pipes blowing mustard coloured music through my head:

The heavy brass bells of the Oude Kerk toll Goodbye to the Yellow Brick Road:

And the towering Scheepvaarthuis of the Amrath is ready to sleep:

To sleep, perchance to dream. Medusa here evokes a state of quiet transformation, in which beauty and unease co-exist.....

Spawn - Juul Kraijer (1970)

Yellow is the colour of my true love's hair

In the mornin' when we rise

In the mornin' when we rise

That's the time, that's the time

I love the best

Colours (1965)

Donovan

Except it isn't.... The dominant wavelength of my true love's hair is not between 570 and 590 nanometers, which is what it should be for me to see the light reflected from her hair as yellow....  Not in the morning.  Not in the evening, either.  So, Donovan Leitch, try putting that into your optical spectrometer.....

Listening to the yellow wallpaper

I think that I have learned something, though quite what it is, and whether I shall remember it remains something of a mystery.  I shall, in future, pay more attention to what my cones are telling me, and attempt to take more note of compliments......

XXMXX

Narcissi - The smell of yellow

XXCJXX

I had a dream

Dream a little dream....

I wake. I am standing on my roof, my tee shirt and shorts soaked amid the teeming rain. I can hear myself shouting, though the words are drowned by the storm. In my head I hear Lennon chewing out: All you need is love.... but the wind blows it spinning away.....

I wake again. This time I am in my bed, the storm thrashing against my duvet, the carpet rocks foaming with sea surge. It is the start of a new term and the kids are herding into the ruined chapel, high on the cliffs above Tintagel, above the Giant's Causeway, above the cliffs at St Ives.....

Vaughan Williams, A Sea Symphony is ringing in my ears, while the wind howls like a hammer on the anvil of the altar.....  The pupils mill like flour, like chaff....  I have my prepared address, pages of A4, selected poems to suit the occasion, one from the past (Shelley perhaps, or Spenser?) the other more contemporary (Heaney, or Hughes, perhaps?) interspersed with tentatively typed text that I must have composed carefully in hope that my wisdom might fall on receptive ears.....

The Head (or is it the Chaplain?) precedes me, as Vaughan Williams/Walt Whitman fades....

a rude brief recitative

Of ships sailing the seas..... 

—of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach

Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing

I cannot hear the voice, the students cannot hear, the waves, the wind, the storm is fast.....

I am supposed to climb up to the ruined, windowless, Gothic arch, to stand above the seething sea, to hurl my speech toward the shivering children, but I realise it is purposeless, the gale is overpowering.....

I turn to climb the wall of trees, the wooden wall of the nave, to clamber onto the roof where the pupils perch, like jackdaws, ruffled by the wind.....

A vast similitude interlocks all, ...

All distances of place however wide

All distances of time,

The wind is too wild, it tugs at my papers, rips them from my hand and they swirl down to dissolve in the frothing brine.  But my turn has come, their eyes turn to me, bedraggled, gaunt, leafless against the light:

This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd

And shall forevеr span them and compactly hold and enclose them

I scramble for something to say, and I yell, atop my voice, the words I left behind me over thirty years ago on leaving Rome, the words I stole from Dylan, the mighty cliches I had so often sung.....

May God bless and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?

Who Justify these restless explorations?

Who speak the secret of impassive earth? ...

I held my grandfather by the arm, gently lifting at his elbow, guiding the 86-year-old up some shallow steps, some sixty years ago now, guiding him calmly up some minor steps to our door. And he turned his head toward me, saying, Don't get old, boy.  Don't get old.....

The school is standing, the wind is dying, the sea moves from passion to passivity, and only the rocks remain.....

And we say together:

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

Bob Dylan

Forever Young

And the sun breaks through as we move on out into the glade, the path leading us forward:

The sea is calm, the tide has receded, the broken jetty is still above the silt, the sun is going down merging coolly into the clouds:

I wake again. I am reclining, white light flooding over me, a hand grips my lower jaw, a hand wrapped in rubber.....  a strong man wrenches at my wisdom tooth, rocking from side to side, cracking the enamel, tugging, pushing, pulling..... 

Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying

Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves

Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant

And then I am free, disconnected from the pain, disjointed, released from the struggle.  The storm has abated, and the woods are hushed, save for the lyrical repetition of a Song Thrush high above me.....

And the song thrush sings, repeatedly, All you need is love.....

All you need is love....

And I wake, again. This time I am silently, soundlessly screaming.....

So long ago

Was it in a dream?

Was it just a dream?

I know, yes I know

It seemed so very real

Seemed so real to me

John Lennon

#9 Dream