Letter to Penelope : Louvre, Paris

Dearest Penelope,

How I wish you were here to witness these treasures with me! Today I saw a Sarcophagus of a Wedded Couple in terracotta from the late 6th century B.C.. They were languidly lounging on a bed with drunken 'Archaic smile'. Their presence seemed imbued in the carvings, but it wasn't haunting, rather jubilent, joyful. Like an eternally happy pair. Cimabue. Wow! What individual style. His stylization of the figure and drapery are to me something so removed from reality, so indifferently unnatural that they exist only for themselves, and this allows them their own kind of naturalism. A created self-referential reality. This is a goal to attain, to create a reality to exist in vicariously through my artwork. Another thing I admired about the handling of his work were the engrained gold roulette markings. I liked the smooth handling of tempera combined with this recession into the wood. I felt it made for a nice reductive/negative power that is preposterously opposite today's aesthetic taste which seems to me so additive and big instead of quite passivity like the Cimabue's had. Maybe I just don't think anything good can be made today. I'm a resentful bastard like that, what you call my 'uncompromising idealism'. They showed my Giotto's St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata from late thirteenth century. Giotto had such a way of characterizing his figures and making them seem more human than in reality. There is a graphic softness to his imagery that betrays any modern convention. He was a superb compositional director, very smart and simple with his arrangements. A big influence on me in this way. They had a painting by an anonymous painter depicting our favorite theme, The Fall of the Rebel Angels. I was secretly devising methods in my mind of how to get that thing off the wall and into our home. It was all gold with grotesque monstorous black silhouettes of descending demons. It would have looked so inviting in our foyer over the red velvet ottoman.

Guess who I met last night? (I'll give you three seconds and a kiss on the jaw) Our friend Stefano Brahmano. He was playing at some place called Theatre Mannequin with a viola and cello player, he played upright acoustic bass. Very rich sounds they put out. The cellist was from Santa Cruz and is having her first novel published in December. They met at a danish shop, Stefano was tapping a Mingus tune on table to himself when Elisa (the cellist) started humming the piano parts. They didn't speak a single word to each other until the next morning when she asked him how he liked his eggs. All of us went out for drinks after their show. I missed you so much.

Tommorrow I'm meeting with the curators at Musee d'Orsay to view and advise the restoration of a Camille Corot along with advising them on the acquistion of some debatable Whistler's from a seller in Germany. Hopefully I'll get to meander around their halls some too!

yours,
Odysseus