Individual Reading W. S. Maugham "The Moon and Sixpence" Summary Chapters 34- 40

Summer began and the narrator was overloaded by work when his friend, Dirk Stroeve, came to him. He was in despair as his wife, Blanche, had committed a suicide. As it found out Strickland had left her and having not born it she drank oxalic acid. Doctors did their best but she didn’t want to live. What is more she didn’t allow anybody to see her and though Dirk kept visiting his wife she didn’t talk with him.

After horrible torments she died. Her husband was shocked and in blank despair. He had no idea where to go and what to do. At last he went to his and Blanche’s house and there he found Strickland’s picture depicting naked Blanche. Her was impressed by Strickland’s genius and asked the artist to go to Holland with him. Strickland sharply refused and Dirk Stroeve decided to go to his homeland where his parents lived. After his wife’s funerals he said goodbye to the narrator and went to Amsterdam.

Individual Reading W. S. Maugham "The Moon and Sixpence" Summary Chapters 24-33

Not long before Christmas Dirk Stroeve came to the narrator and asked him to help Strickland. The artist was desperately ill and hadn’t eaten anything for several days. They decided that there was no better solution than to settle the sick painter in Stroeve’s house. However, they faced a problem- mrs. Stroeve didn’t want to see Strickland in her house. Only after insistent entreaties of her husband she agreed. Though the Stroeves took care of Strickland and helped him to recover, he wasn’t grateful but rude and impudent. After a while Strickland could get up and began to paint pictures in Stroeve’s workshop with undue familiarity.

After three weeks Dirk Stroeve visited the narrator and told him that his wife had left him and gone with Strickland. The latter was indifferent to her but allowed to go with him.
Both Dirk Stroeve and the narrator knew that it would come to a bad end. As Dirk’s love was unfailing he had left Blanche the house and was always ready to take her back. He didn’t blame anybody but himself. He wrote her letters and looked at her when she went shopping, but his devotion and care didn’t prevent a tragedy.

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The title of the article is New York Performing Artists Share Inspiration on ‘Made Here’ was written by Felicia R. Lee on March 13, 2013 on the website of the New York Times. The article is about “Made Here,” a documentary series and interactive Web site that gathers interviews, performances and other footage to showcase the lives of New York City performing artists.

According to the article, with the help of this site many well known actors and actresses can talk about issues like gender, criticism, influences and staying in New York as well as offering advice for the next generation. The Web site has attracted roughly 36,000 visitors, from more than 77 countries. Moreover, with each season’s premiere, a new episode will become available for streaming online. The author of the article quotes Tanya Selvaratnam, a writer and actor who is one of the series producers. She jokes that the challenge was to turn each episode “into a dialogue, a conversation. There are so many artists it’s a series that can continue for a long time.”

Further the reporter adds that “Made Here” emerged from the HERE Artist Residency Program, which provides long-term developmental and production support to New York-based performing artists. Since the series began, the project has released 30 episodes featuring 68 artists, and has covered a wide range of issues affecting the performing arts community, including real estate, family balance, technology and money.

In conclusion we get to know that public screenings and events for “Made Here” will take place over the next two seasons, beginning with a premiere screening and conversation on April 10. The event is free and open to the public.

From my point of view, “Made Here” is a very useful and helpful site for beginners in acting. I’ve visited it and really enjoyed videos with actors and their words about their profession, life-style and outlook. I believe these videos can inspire you to do something outstanding, something what you have wanted to do for a long time.

Link http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/new-york-performing-artists-share-inspiration-on-made-here/?ref=theater

Girl with a Pearl Earring (Review)

                                                  

Director: Peter Webber
Genre: Drama
Lead actors: Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Judy Parfitt
Release Year: 2003
Country: United Kingdom, Luxembourg
Run Time: 100 minutes

Main characters:
Colin Firth as Johannes Vermeer
Scarlett Johansson as Griet
Tom Wilkinson as Pieter van Ruijven
Cillian Murphy as Pieter
Judy Parfitt as Maria Thins
Essie Davis as Catharina Bolnes
Anna Popplewell as Maertge
Alakina Mann as Cornelia

Plot:
Griet is a shy girl living in the Dutch Republic. Griet goes to work as a maid in the unhappy household of the painter Johannes Vermeer. Griet works hard, almost wordlessly, in the lowest position in a harsh hierarchy, where even one of the Vermeer's children treats her spitefully. On a routine shopping trip outside the house, a butcher's son, Pieter, is quickly taken with Griet. As Griet cleans Vermeer's studio, which his wife Catharina never enters, they become casually acquainted and he encourages her appreciation of painting, light and color. Vermeer gives her lessons in mixing paints and other tasks, taking care to keep this secret from his wife, who would react very jealously if she found out that her husband was spending time with Griet. In contrast, Vermeer's mother-in-law, sees Griet as useful to Vermeer's career. Vermeer's richpatron Van Ruijven notices Griet on a visit to the Vermeer household and asks the painter if he will give her up to him to work in his own house, a situation which ruined a previous girl. Vermeer refuses, but accepts a commission to paint a portrait of Griet for Van Ruijven.Catharina discovers that Griet used her earrings, posing her husband and tries but fails to destroy the painting, then banishes Griet from the house forever.Vermeer does not object, and Griet leaves the house in shock.

Well, the screenplay "Girl with a Pearl Earring" tells a fictional tale about how the title painting by 17th century Dutch painter Vermeer might have come to be. Inwardly, the film is about the unspoken but palpable feelings between two people of very different stature and station which may or may not be forever cast in the crazed pigments of the masterpiece.

I really enjoyed this film. It's bright colours, sensuality and thoughtfulness to details are delightful. With the main character you begin to see the world in a different light. For me, the film is good in everything: acting, directing, cinematography, costumes and the lighting especially. The whole film is seemed to be painted by a talented artist, Johannes Vermeer.
Music is also enjoyable and helps to be filled with the climate of that time.
A brilliant acting of the main actors supplemented and completed impression. I love how Colin Firth acts in many films and this film is no exception. He perfectly suits for this role. Scarlett Johansson became a pleasant surprise for me. In this film she showed herself in a best light. She is very good and is suitably restrained and innocent.
There is no surprise that Girl with a Pearl Earring won many awards. Most of them Eduardo Serra and Peter Webber have got: Camerimage Bronze Frog - Eduardo Serra, Dinard British Film Festival Golden Hitchcock - Peter Webber, San Diego Film Critics Society Award (Best Cinematography)- Eduardo Serra, C.I.C.A.E. Award - Peter Webber and Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award (Best Cinematography)- Eduardo Serra.

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The title of the article is “Expressionism’s Sooty Anomaly” was written by Roberta Smith on March 1, 2013 on the website of the New York Times. The main aim of the article is to give the reader some information about Franz Kline’ exhibition at Sidney Mishkin Gallery, about his works and his coming-to-be a famous artist.
According to the text, Franz Kline established himself as a major Abstract Expressionist painter almost overnight. He was exhibited in the Charles Egan Gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan when his unique style with emblematic motifs earned him a place in the Abstract Expressionist pantheon.
Kline became a member of the Abstract Expressionist bandwagon along with such prime movers as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. However, he didn’t spend many years or decades as others did but won popularity for a short period of time, about four years. Kline’s representational period is almost an embarrassing anomaly in the annals of Abstract Expressionism. Surprisingly, it has received little attention and sometimes been ignored altogether.
Further the author gives the description of “Franz Kline: Coal and Steel” exhibition. The show was organized by Robert S. Mattison, a professor of art history at Lafayette College, in Easton, Pa., at the Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania. Such works as “Chief,” “Caboose,” “Bethlehem” and “Ingot” show their industrial forms which are visible, highly or not so highly distilled.
Mr. Mattison takes Kline’s connection to the region beyond the titles and black-on-white forms. In his essay he says that Kline’s art is not only full of simply powerful formal devices but it reflects the ups and downs of Kline’s life. The works themselves reveal Kline’s talents for drawing and painting culminate in the architectonic calligraphies of his mature style.
The author adds that the Pennsylvania landscapes and street scenes of the 1940s have paint-loving originality and can be compared with van Gogh or Soutine than to any American artist, except the 19th-century eccentrics Albert Pinkham Ryder and Ralph Blakelock.
As for the colour Kline turned to it late in his career, however the resulting paintings are often considered his weakest. In addition, some works narrow the palette to explore variations of two or three colors, as if heading for the ultimate reduction to black and white.
The author cites as an example some artist’s works: “Chief (Train)” (1942) and “PA Street (Pennsylvania Mining Town)” (1947). Most of Kline’s works depict Pennsylvania scenes and only several of New York. In conclusion Roberta Smith that if we want to understand all the beauty of Kline’s works ,we should know his career and his background. Well, this article really interested me, I would like to visit Kline’s exhibition and feel dynamics and expressiveness of his works.

Link http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/arts/design/franz-kline-coal-and-steel-at-sidney-mishkin-gallery.html?pagewanted=1&ref=design

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The article published on the website of the newspaper “New York Times” on March 1, 2013 is headlined “Skin and Earth, Suddenly Unrecognizable”. The article gives a description of a new exhibition at Castle Gallery at the College of New Rochelle. The article provides new information concerning our outlook on art, the Earth and our body. The artists, who were exhibited, portray human skin, in hues of terra cotta, rose, brown and turquoise, which alter skin so much that it is no longer recognizable, what the paintings ultimately reveal is something known intimately to everyone.

As Katrina Rhein said, all works resemble something familiar to everybody when you are seeing are these strange places on sculpture, drawings, paintings and a mixed-media pieces. As for the sculptures of Laura Moriarty, an artist in Rosendale, N.Y., they are full of colorful encaustics, which have a geological feel. Her sculptures made of pigmented beeswax.

According to the text, there is a show-room named “The Expansive Force of Water Freezing in Cracks” in which people can see pools of swirling, bleeding color are stacked to form what looks like a 3-D version of the earth’s strata in a textbook diagram crossed with a crumbling or otherwise askew pastry shop confection.

The author, Tammy La Gorce, gives us the information about a small room within Castle Gallery called the “feature gallery” is dedicated exclusively to Ms. Moriarty and “Still Time”. The installation she created gathers 50 similar encaustics of various sizes and six paper sculptures. Ms. Moriarty says that the process of creation of a new work always involves studying cross sections, often of plate tectonics, in geology books. She wants to make people pay attention to the World around them and not treat it as it is separate from them. She stresses that we have an effect on the processes of the earth, that are really big and really hard to harness.

Further the author reports that a series of 24 gouache-on-paper panels of Gina Occhiogrosso also can attract our attention. Her piece “Slump” takes weather-ravaged billboards as its subject. The Works are represented in their twisted, dilapidated and broken forms against stark white backgrounds on each panel. The artist admits that her works are weird and that’s why they have no commercial interest and it is hard to sell them.
As for me, I don’t understand such kind of Art. It is too ambiguous, strange and not pleasant for perception. Maybe if I visited this exhibition I would change my mind, but I doubt.

Link http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/nyregion/terra-incognita-on-exhibition-at-the-college-of-new-rochelle.html?ref=design&_r=0

Individual Reading W. S. Maugham "The Moon and Sixpence" Summary Chapters 12-23

The narrator and Strickland went to have dinner. The former tried to persuade the other to return home to his family. However Strickland was obstinate and resolutely decided to stay in Paris. He admitted that his deed was awful and he left his wife and children without any money, but he didn’t worry about it at all. He knew that his wife’s relatives would help with children’s education and his wife herself would find a job. When the story-teller told about it Mrs. Strickland, she was strongly surprised. She didn’t even suspect that her husband was interested in Art. What is more she was confident that he couldn’t live in poverty. That’s why it was a severe blow to her. Mrs. Strickland asked the narrator never tell about it anybody and floated a rumour that her husband had left her because of a pretty French dancer. As Strickland had said his wife really found a job – she became a typist and soon started his own business.

After five years he narrator went to Paris again. There he met his friend Dirk Stroeve, a funny chubby artist. He found Strickland a genius, though his works didn’t enjoy wide popularity. Strouve also had a wife, Blanche, a calm courteous woman. He loved her madly. Though he always behaved silly and made people laugh at himself she disliked when people jeered at her husband. One of such people was Strickland who often made Dirk Stroeve cry by his mockeries.