Madonna's hands

[purple_shadows]

We've been learning about Gothic art in my Understanding art class, and one of the things we looked at was perceptions of beauty, and how Madonna's durring that period were always painted as having long thin fingers, that went to a point of obscurity, and lookd very awkward, but was considered elegant at the time.

 

 

The Madonna’s hands are long and thin

Pale and deformed so that they may

Appear beautiful and “other worldly”

For she is not of our world, and never will be

She cannot be

 

But I have the Madonna’s hands

Long and pale and awkward

Does that somehow make me more pleasing?

I am not pure, I never was

I never will be

 

So what then defines the real from the fake?

The art from the artist?

[Quincunx]

I have a warm and general like of the poem (cannot suggest anything less than polished about it), but I was equally intrigued by the preface you included with it. The poem might have fallen short of what you expected from it, if the preface is so indivisible from the verse. Need to think a bit more on this, try to filter out what extra shade of meaning came from outside the verse.

[Quincunx]

I tried to recite the poem from memory, and was unclear at a few points, where it could maybe become stronger:

 

End of the second line, trailing off into "may" where the rest of that verse is bracketed by strong adjectives and ideas. It might be unchangeable--the rest of that verse is very strong and perfect, even the beginning of that line.

 

The pair of questions at the end of the poem, I could not even guess as to what they were, trying to remember this--they should carry more force than that. The concept of ending and underlining the poem with questions is good. Going back over the poem and preface, the only part that doesn't come up in the poem itself is "perceptions of beauty", perhaps one question could bring that back into focus?

 

Understand that this poem stays with me, irritates me, a rough diamond. I can see your vision, with a rare inclusive feeling, but the fuzziness of the image is driving me bananas.

[purple_shadows]

I should probably explain the background of the poem a little bit more. Looking back over my little bit, I don't think I did that very well, I left a few things out. Such as the fact that all of the art durring that time period was religious and iconographic. The artist was never important, only what they were painting, and as such, we don't know who painted the majority of them.

 

While perceptions of beauty is a large part of this, it also has to do with the struggle to identify spiritually as an artist, and also identifying yourself with a piece.

 

So what then decides the real from the fake?

The art from the artist?

 

What is spirituality? What does beauty have to do with it? What makes art art? And what about the artist? What were they like? How might they have felt about themselves in relationship to their work?

 

I don't know how you read the lines, but you have to read them slowly, with very little pause at the end. The first verse is more musing. Thinking about a piece that perhaps you have just done. The second is seeing yourself in the painting, more specifically a religious one, and feeling spirtually inadequate. And the questions at the end question how seperate the artists of the time were from what they were painting.

 

I am working on fixing it up a bit. Maybe changing some wording, to get my point across a little more clearly. for now, I hope this helps with anything you weren't sure about..