Showing 31 - 40 of 90 annotations contributed by Bertman, Sandra

The Alchemy of Grief (Alchimia del dolore)

Ferrara, Emily

Last Updated: Dec-31-2007
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Collection (Poems)

Summary:

Born with aortic stenosis in 1984, Adam Ferrara Jasheway died suddenly at age nineteen of cardiac arrest. Dedicated to the memory of her son, this collection poignantly charts a mother's trajectory of grief. The poems are divided/organized into six sections paralleling the process of alchemy: calcinatio (burning by fire), solutio (dissolving in water), sublimatio (rising in air), coagulatio (falling to earth), mortificatio (decaying), and transmutatio (healing).


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The Old Guitarist (The Blind Guitarist)

Picasso, Pablo

Last Updated: Jul-13-2007
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on canvas

Summary:

Draped in blue rags, an emaciated old guitarist sits cross-legged, strumming his guitar in a desolate setting. He is WRAPPED in his music and grief. Like the blind prophet, Tiresias in the Greek tragedies, he has seen all and knows the tragic destination of our strivings--all result in loneliness and death. Painted in Barcelona, the distorted style is reminiscent of the drama found in Spanish religious painting, particularly that of El Greco. The melancholy and pathos of Picasso's works from his Blue period reflect his sadness at the suicide of his young friend, Casagemas.

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Singing Myself a Lullaby

Rosenberg, Douglas; Bromberg, Ellen

Last Updated: May-18-2007
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Video

Summary:

West coast dancer John Henry made his life the subject of his final performance. Choreographer Bromberg and film maker Rosenberg collaborate with Henry in the creation of a work for the theatre based on his desire to leave an autobiographic legacy. Filmed during the last few years of Henry's life with HIV/AIDS, the documentary examines the image of self as one individual prepares to separate from body and personhood, and continues after his death.

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Painting

Bacon, Francis

Last Updated: May-17-2007
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil and pastel on linen

Summary:

The foreground of Painting features a man dressed in a black suit and holding an umbrella. His face, hoary and grotesque, is obscured above his moustache by the shadow of an umbrella. A yellow flower attached to the lapel of the man's jacket stands out clearly against the black of his clothing, and is the only yellow used in the painting.

The man sits or stands inside a round enclosure made either of white metal or wood. Around the perimeter of these circular bars, two pieces of meat--what appear to be shanks of beef--are penetrated and supported by the enclosure. In front of the man, a platform of some sort extends toward the viewer. Behind him hangs a massive carcass, its limbs suspended outwards to expose the ribcage.

Three rectangular shapes that seem to be window blinds hang with cords behind the suspended meat. In the middle of the painting, in the deep background, abstract shapes that may or may not be human forms stand around on a catwalk.

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The Garden of Death

Simberg, Hugo

Last Updated: May-17-2007
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Fresco

Summary:

Three skeletons in black robes are busy in the task of watering and taking care of various plants. The skeleton in the foreground holds a green watering can, faces to the left, and walks behind a wooden construction of some sort. Behind him another skeleton clutches a stalk of blue flowers to his chest. In the background, the third skeleton faces away from us, apparently busy with some task at hand.

The flowers in the picture are odd and unlike flowers found in life. Their shapes range from spiky to round, their colors from white to black. In the distance a path leads to the Garden of Death through green woodland.

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The Triumph of Death

Bruegel the Elder, Pieter

Last Updated: Mar-26-2007
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on panel

Summary:


A bleak landscape of death and destruction confronts the viewer. An army of skeletons massacres masses of people of every age and gender. At the top of the painting, the sky is black with smoke from fires that have destroyed the landscape, as if the land had been decimated by war. Ships lie half sunken in the bay. The middle of the painting features skeletons herding masses into a spike rimmed tunnel; the door of the tunnel is marked with the holy cross of Christ. There is no suggestion of salvation however, for piles of bones, skulls, and intact skeletons fill pens and wagons, and litter the ground. In the painting’s foreground, people of high social status are sprawled dead or dying near more ordinary individuals -- king, cardinal, wanderer, lovers -- all, regardless of their social status, meet Death.

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Two Young Girls or the Beautiful Rosine

Wiertz, Antoine

Last Updated: Mar-22-2007
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil on canvas

Summary:

A suspended skeleton and a beautiful nude woman face one another. The skeleton, perhaps used by medical students or artists, hangs by its skull from a wire. At its feet are cluttered a few pieces of debris – a stone head and foot. A label attached to the skull reads “La Belle Rosine.”

Opposite the hanging bones stands a nude young woman with a garland in her hair. Her eyes look upwards toward the vacant sockets of the skull. Her contemplative expression suggests that she may perhaps be reflecting on her mortality. In her left hand, she loosely holds a garment.

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He Can No Longer at the Age of 98

Goya, Francisco

Last Updated: Dec-28-2006
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Brush and ink

Summary:

An old man stands alone, accompanied only by his shadow. His bent body caves under some unknown force, and the man tries his best to remain upright by relying on two canes, one held in each hand. Facing to the front left of the paper, the old man appears to be on his way to some destination; his feet are not drawn with any suggestion of movement, however, and so it appears that despite his intentions, the old man cannot accomplish the simple goal of walking.

Beneath the illustration read the words that constitute the artwork’s title: “He Can No Longer at the Age of 98.” The vagueness of the text’s meaning allows the viewer to indulge a multitude of imaginings of what specifically the man can no longer do – he cannot walk, cannot function, cannot survive independently, he cannot do most anything. Drawn and painted without color, Goya’s lonely and impotent old man offers a bleak outlook on severe old age.

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Far and Beyon'

Dow, Unity

Last Updated: Dec-01-2006
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

As much about the abusive treatment of women, and the clash of traditional and contemporary mores as it is about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, this beautifully crafted novel tells the story of a nineteen-year-old Mosa (for mosadi--woman) who has already lost two brothers to AIDS. The reader is caught up in the mega-deaths and non-mention of the dreaded acronym, AIDS, as the story unfolds. At their brother’s gravesite Mosa’s one remaining living brother is halted as he shovels in the final loads of earth: "All around him were fresh graves . . . He looked at the not fresh, fresh graves, and noted the dates of birth. Young people who had died prematurely . . . He had known about their long illnesses, their deaths and their funerals." (p. 20)

The author is the first (and only) female judge of the High Court of Botswana and a human rights activist. She is internationally renowned for bringing about the Dow Case, which challenged Botswana nationality laws; she argued successfully for revisions allowing women to pass their nationality on to their children.

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Hope, II

Klimt, Gustav

Last Updated: Aug-29-2006
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Visual Arts / Painting/Drawing

Genre: Oil, gold, and platinum on canvas

Summary:

A pregnant woman stands in profile to the viewer, with her head bowed down toward her belly and bared breasts. The woman’s eyes are closed and one hand, its fingers curled, is raised so that the palm faces away from her. Perhaps she is praying. A streak of grey angles up behind her head, possibly an abstract halo or wing.

The woman wears a colorful shawl, although her breasts are exposed. The shawl is intricately patterned with swirls and circles evocative of sperm and ova, respectively. A grey skull-cum-death’s head peers out from behind her belly. Beneath the woman and partially enshrouded by her shawl are three women who assume the same position of bent head, closed eyes, and raised hand(s).

All the activity in the image is compacted into a long pillar of sorts, the right side of which forms a fairly straight edge, and the left side of which curves outwards. Behind, a speckled golden-brown makes for a solid background with no perspective.

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