Henri Matisse Profile

Henri Matisse Profile

Jul 5, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Profiles

Carolyn and I have admired the work of French artist Henri Matisse, who helped revolutionize visual art developments during the first decades of the Twentieth Century with his expressively colored paintings and uniquely crafted sculptures of freestanding figures.

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was born in Northern France in 1869, and he grew up in the Picardy region of France. He was the eldest son of a wealthy grain merchant, who was a strict father. In 1887, Matisse went to Paris to study law. A year later he passed the bar and then worked as a court administrator.

In 1889, Matisse suffered from an attack of appendicitis. While he was recovering in bed, his mother brought him some art supplies. Painting stirred something deep inside Matisse, and he said that he “discovered a kind of paradise” when creating art. “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands,” he said, “I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”

This experience inspired Matisse to become an artist, which deeply disappointed his father. However, his mother encouraged him and said to not follow the conventional rules of art. She advised him to try out new things and to paint his emotions. Matisse later said, “My mother liked everything I did. It is from my affection for her that I always drew what theory failed to offer me, to finish my paintings.”

In 1891, Matisse began to formally study art at an academy in Paris, where he initially painted still lifes and landscapes in a traditional style. He was influenced by the work of early European masters, as well as contemporary artists and Japanese art. The Eighteenth-Century French painter Jean Simeon Chardin was one of his most important influences.

In 1896, while he was visiting Australian painter John Russell on an island off the coast of Brittany, Matisse was introduced to Impressionism — the Nineteenth Century art movement, emphasized by small, visible brushstrokes that captured the changing qualities of light. Russell was friends with Vincent van Gogh, and he gave Matisse one of van Gogh’s drawings, which made a great impression on him. This experience inspired Matisse to change his painting style, and he started painting with brighter and bolder colors. That year Matisse exhibited five paintings at a salon and two of them were purchased by the state.

In 1897, Matisse painted The Dinner Table, which shows a woman setting a large, elaborate dinner table. Although the painting is now considered to be a masterpiece, it was not well received at the salon where it was first exhibited because people thought that it looked “blurry,” as it is a work done in the style of impressionism, which seeks to capture a feeling more than a realistic depiction. Matisse said, “I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.”

In 1898, Matisse traveled to London for a year, to study the paintings of English romantic painter J.M.W. Turner, and when he returned to London he went into debt from buying the work of painters that he admired. In his home, he displayed the work of Rodin, Gauguin, Cezanne, and van Gogh.

That same year, Matisse married Amélie Noellie Parayre, and in 1902 her parents become involved in a major financial scandal. The family was menaced by angry mobs and fraud victims. Matisse’s father-in-law was arrested, and this meant that Matisse was financially responsible for an extended family of seven. During that year and the following year, Matisse changed his painting style to make his work more saleable and adopted a more somber approach.

Soon after this, Matisse started devoting time to working in sculpture. Although he did his first attempt at sculpture in 1899, he didn’t start investing much energy in this until 1903, when he produced The Serf, which a number of art experts have suggested might have been based upon himself, as he seemed to have “psychologically identified” with the sculpture. Matisse was experiencing poverty at the time, and it was suggested that he “might have felt a kinship with the weight of problems bearing down on the serf’s shoulders.”

In 1904, Matisse had his first solo exhibition at a gallery in Paris, which wasn’t very successful. After this Matisse’s work began showing brighter and more expressive colors, and he joined an art movement known as Fauvism, which depicted simplified or abstract subject matter, and emphasized strident colors and more extravagant brushwork.

In 1905, Matisse exhibited with a group of artists in the Fauvism movement, and the exhibition received both harsh criticism and favorable attention. One critic said of the exhibit that, “a pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public.” Matisse’s painting at the exhibit, Woman with a Hat, was singled out for condemnation by the critics but was then purchased by American novelist and playwright Gertrude Stein.

In 1906, Matisse met Pablo Picasso at Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon, and the two became lifelong friends, as well as rivals. In 1912 Matisse visited Morocco, and while there he made several changes to his work, such as adding the use of black as a color to his paintings and adding “a new boldness.” Although he was receiving greater notoriety for his work, Matisse’s work continued to encounter some serious criticism. In 1913, an effigy of his painting Nu Bleu, which depicted a reclining nude woman, was burned at a show in Chicago.

In 1917, Matisse relocated to the French Riviera, and his work after this move showed a “relaxation and softening in his approach.” In the 1920s, Matisse engaged in active collaboration with other European and American artists, and after 1930 his work changed again, with “a new vigor and bolder simplification.”

Matisse was visiting Paris in 1940 when the Nazis invaded the city. He fled to the south, but stayed in France, and even had an exhibit in Paris whiles the Nazis occupied the city. However, all of Matisse’s work was purged from French museums and galleries, much of it confiscated by the Nazis, and he had to sign an oath assuring his “Aryan” status. During this time Matisse worked as a graphic artist, producing black-and-white book illustrations and lithographs.

In 1941 Matisse underwent surgery for abdominal cancer that left him reliant on a wheelchair and often bed-bound, so painting and sculpture became physically challenging. Matisse turned to a new medium, where he would cut up sheets of paper, pre-painted with gouache, into shapes of varying colors and sizes, and then arrange them to form creative compositions. Some of these pieces became murals and room-sized works. He called the last fourteen years of his “a second life.”

Between 1948 and 1951, Matisse was commissioned to work on the Chapel of Rosary in Venice, for which he created all the wall decorations, Stations of the Cross, furniture, stained-glass windows, vestments, and altar cloths. This is often considered to be the crowning achievement of his career.

In 1952, Matisse established a museum dedicated to his work, the Matisse Museum in Le Cateau, which today holds the third-largest collection of his work in France.

In 1954 Matisse died of a heart attack at the age of 84. He is buried in a cemetery in the Cimiez neighborhood of Nice.

Today Matisse is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His stylistic innovations fundamentally altered the course of modern art, influenced the art of several generations of younger painters, and his work has been highly valued. In 2002 Matisse’s sculpture Reclining Nude I sold for $9.2 million, and in 2005 his painting The Plum Blossoms was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for $25 million.

Some of the quotes that Henri Matisse is known for include:

Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

I don’t know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I’m some sort of Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Creativity takes courage.

It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.

Work cures everything.

Would not it be best to leave room to mystery?

Why have I never been bored? For more than fifty years I have never ceased to work.

by David Jay Brown

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Frida Kahlo Profile

Frida Kahlo Profile

Jun 26, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Profiles

Carolyn and I have admired the work of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, who is known for her bold and vibrant self-portraits that express pain, passion, and inner strength. Kahlo is considered one of Mexico’s greatest artists, where she is celebrated for her attention to indigenous culture and her tenacity in the face of hardship, as well as by feminists for her defiance in breaking harsh gender-biased social conventions and her honest depiction of the female experience. She is a powerful inspiration to many.

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, a village on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father was a photographer from Germany, and her mother was from Oaxaca, with indigenous and Spanish roots. Kahlo was raised with three sisters, and she described the atmosphere in her childhood home as often “very, very sad,” because both of her parents were often sick, and “their marriage was devoid of love.”

When Kahlo was six years old, she contracted polio, which made her right leg grow shorter and thinner than the left. The illness also caused her to be isolated from her peers for months, and this caused her to begin school later than her peers. In 1922, Kahlo was accepted to the elite National Preparatory School, where she focused on natural sciences with the aim of becoming a physician, and she performed well academically.

However, Kahlo enjoyed creating art from an early age. She received drawing instruction from her father’s friend, who was a printmaker, and she filled notebooks with her sketches. In 1925, Kahlo began to work outside of school to help her family. After briefly working as a stenographer, she became a paid engraving apprentice for her father’s friend.

A severe bus accident at the age of 18 confined Kahlo to bed for three months, and this caused her to live her life in chronic pain. She had spinal injuries and a broken pelvis, as well a fractured collarbone and two ribs. Her right foot was also crushed, her right leg broken in eleven places, and a piece of handrail impaled her.

While Kahlo was recovering from this terrible accident, in her bedridden state, she began to paint. Kahlo’s mother provided her with a specially made easel, which enabled her to paint in bed, and her father lent her some of his oil paints. She had a mirror positioned above the easel, so that she could see her reflection.

Painting became a way for Kahlo to reflect on her life, and to explore questions about her identity and existence. She said, “I paint myself because I am often alone, and I am the subject I know best.” She later stated that the accident and the isolating recovery period made her desire “to begin again, painting things just as [she] saw them with [her] own eyes and nothing more.” Most of the paintings Kahlo made during this time were portraits of herself, her sisters, and her school friends. They are noted as an expression of her internal struggles, and physical and mental suffering. Kahlo’s early paintings and letters show that she drew inspiration from European artists, in particular Renaissance masters, and from avant-garde movements such as Cubism.

In 1929 Kahlo moved to the city of Cuernavaca in South-Central Mexico, where she lived with her husband, Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and was inspired by the city. Here she changed her artistic style and drew inspiration from Mexican folk art. Kahlo’s identification with the people of Mexico, and her profound interest in its culture, remained important facets of her art throughout the rest of her life.

In 1930 Kahlo and her husband moved to San Francisco, where they spent six months, and she was introduced to American artists. Kahlo further developed her folk style of painting here, and she participated in a public exhibition of her work for the first time, with the San Francisco Society of Women Artists. Kahlo then moved to Detroit, where she experimented with different painting techniques, and her work was featured in several exhibitions, although she disliked the capitalist culture of the United States and experienced numerous health problems.

In 1934 Kahlo returned to Mexico City, where she focused on regaining her health, and only painted several paintings over the next three years. She began painting productively again in 1937. In 1938 she made the first significant sale of her paintings when film star Edward G. Robinson purchased four of her paintings. That same year she met French Surrealist André Breton who was impressed by her work, and he arranged for her to have exhibitions of her work at galleries in Paris and New York City. He described her work as “a ribbon around a bomb.”

That same year Kahlo traveled to New York City to attend the opening of her exhibit, which was attended by Georgia O’Keeffe and other famous figures. Kahlo received much positive attention in the press for this exhibit and sold half of her 25 paintings exhibited there. She also received commissions from A. Conger Goodyear, the president of the Museum of Modern Art, and author and politician Clare Boothe Luce.

In 1939 Kahlo sailed to Paris, to follow up on André Breton’s invitation for an exhibition, where things didn’t go quite as well. When she arrived, she found that Breton had not cleared her paintings from the customs and no longer even owned a gallery. However, with the aid of Marcel Duchamp, Kahlo was able to arrange for an exhibition at another gallery, but further problems arose when the gallery refused to show all but two of her paintings, considering them to be too shocking for audiences, and the exhibition didn’t receive much attention.

Kahlo’s paintings touched on female issues such as abortion, miscarriage, birth, and breastfeeding, things considered to be taboo and never spoken of in public back then. Nonetheless, one of her paintings, The Frame, was purchased by the Louvre, which made her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection. She was also warmly received by other Parisian artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró.

During the 1940s Kahlo had more successful exhibitions in the United States, in Boston and New York, as well as in Mexico City, and her artwork gained wider appreciation in Mexico, although she struggled to make a living from her artwork. In 1943, Kahlo accepted a teaching position at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado in Mexico City.

In 1945, the government commissioned Kahlo and some of her students to paint murals for a Coyoacán laundry service as part of a national scheme to help poor women who made their living as laundresses. Her financial situation improved when she received a 5000-peso national prize for her painting Moses in 1946, and when her painting The Two Fridas was purchased by the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1947.

Around this time, Kahlo’s health began to fail, and during her last years, she was largely confined to her home, where she painted mostly still lifes, portraying fruit and flowers with political symbols such as flags or doves. Realizing that Kahlo did not have much longer to live, photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo staged her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Arte Contemporaneo in 1953.

Although Kahlo was initially not expected to attend the opening of her exhibition, as her doctors had prescribed bed rest for her, she arranged for her four-poster bed to be moved from her home to the gallery. To the surprise of the guests, Kahlo arrived in an ambulance and was carried on a stretcher to the bed, where she stayed for the duration of the reception. The exhibition was a notable cultural event in Mexico, and it received attention around the world.

Kahlo died in 1954 at the age of 47. During her life, Kahlo created around 200 paintings, primarily still lifes and portraits of herself, her family and her friends. She also kept an illustrated diary and did dozens of drawings. Kahlo’s reputation as an artist grew much further posthumously. She gained more recognition in the late 1970s when feminist scholars began to question the exclusion of female and non-Western artists from the art historical canon and the Chicano Movement honored her as one of their icons.

In 1984, Kahlo’s reputation as an artist had grown to such an extent that Mexico declared her works part of the national cultural heritage, prohibiting their export from the country. As a result, her paintings rarely appear in international auctions. Regardless, Kahlo’s paintings have broken records for Latin American art. In 1990, she became the first Latin American artist to break the one-million-dollar threshold when her painting Diego and I was auctioned by Sotheby’s for $1,430,000. In 2006, her painting Roots sold for $5.6 million, and in 2016, Two Lovers in a Forest was auctioned for $8 million.

Kahlo has attracted so much popular interest that the term “Fridamania” has been coined to describe the phenomenon. She is considered “one of the most instantly recognizable artists,” whose face has been “used with the same regularity, and often with a shared symbolism, as images of Che Guevara or Bob Marley.” Kahlo’s life and art have also inspired a variety of merchandise, and her distinctive look and colorful style have been appropriated by the fashion world. On Instagram, her official account has 1.2 million followers.

A Hollywood film about Kahlo’s life, Frida, was released in 2002, and it earned six Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Makeup and Best Original Score. The 2017 Disney-Pixar animation Coco also featured a character based on Kahlo that was voiced by Natalia Cordova-Buckley. Kahlo has also become an icon for several minority groups and political movements, such as feminists, Chicanos, and the LGBTQ community, as she was openly bisexual and never ashamed to talk about her sexuality. Oriana Baddeley has written that Kahlo has become a signifier of non-conformity and “the archetype of a cultural minority,” who is regarded simultaneously as “a victim, crippled and abused” and as “a survivor who fights back.”

Some of the quotes that Frida Kahlo is known for include:

At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.

Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly.

I paint flowers so they will not die.

I don’t paint dreams or nightmares; I paint my own reality.

Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.

I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.

by David Jay Brown

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Salvador Dali Profile

Salvador Dali Profile

Jun 19, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Profiles

Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of Spanish artist Salvador Dali, who is one of the most recognized surrealist artists in the world.

Salvador Dali was born in 1904 in Figueres, a town close to the French border of Spain. His father was an attorney, who had a strict disciplinary approach to parenting, which was tempered by Dali’s mother, who encouraged her son’s artistic endeavors.

Dali was named after his older brother, who died before he was born, and he was haunted by the thought of his dead brother throughout his life. Dali often referred to him in his writings and art, such as in his painting Portrait of My Dead Brother. When Dali was five years old, he was once standing over the grave of his brother with his parents, and they told him that he was the reincarnation of his brother, and this had a strong psychological impact on him. Dali also had a younger sister, who published a book about him in 1949 called Dali as Seen by His Sister.

In 1916, Dali discovered modern painting while on a vacation with his family and another family, who had an artist among them. Dali began doing charcoal drawings, and he attended the Municipal Drawing School in Figueres. In 1917 Dali’s father organized an exhibition of his art at their home.

In 1918, Dali had his first public exhibition of his drawings at the Municipal Theatre in Figueres. In 1921 Dali was introduced to the art styles of Futurism and Cubism by acquaintances, which had an influence on his work. Futurism aimed to capture the dynamism of the modern world, and Cubism brought multiple perspectives into a single image.

In 1922 Dali moved to Madrid. He studied at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he drew attention with his eccentric dress and long hair. At the school, Dali became involved with the Madrid avant-garde art group known as Ultra. He was expelled from the school twice, once in 1923 for inciting a student protest, and again in 1926, when he told a panel assessing him that none of them were competent to judge him.

Around this time, Dali made frequent trips to the Prado Museum, which he said was “incontestably the best museum of old paintings in the world.” Every Sunday Dali went to the Prado Museum to study the works of the great masters. Of this period in his life Dali said, “’This was the start of a monk-like period for me, devoted entirely to solitary work: visits to the Prado, where, pencil in hand, I analyzed all of the great masterpieces, studio work, models, research.” Dali began painting during this time, and his work was influenced by Futurist and Cubist styles.

In 1925 Dali had an exhibition of his work in Madrid, along with other artists. Seven of his paintings were done in the Cubist style and four were done in a more realist style. His work was praised by several leading critics, and that same year he also had his first solo exhibition, which met with critical and commercial success. In 1926 Dali traveled to Paris, where he met with Pablo Picasso, whose work he admired and had influenced him.

In 1927 Dali’s work began to become influenced by Surrealism, and this is where he found his calling. Surrealism was a movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind. Dali began creating paintings with dreamlike imagery and hallucinatory juxtapositions. After being influenced by his readings of Sigmund Freud, Dali began incorporating sexual imagery and symbolism into his work, which caused controversy and some rejection of his work at the time.

Around this time, Dali grew a neatly trimmed mustache, which became more flamboyant in the years that followed, and this became part of his trademark style and iconic image. Dali become known for his impeccably waxed mustache, which he styled into two thin, upward-pointing curves.

In 1929 Dali collaborated on a short surrealist film called An Andalusian Dog, and he continued with his paintings that explored themes of sexual anxiety and unconscious desires. In 1929 Dali had an exhibition of his work that was described as “the most hallucinatory that has been produced up to now,” and this exhibition was a commercial success.

Dali was deeply in touch with his subconscious and unconscious mind, and he used a variety of methods to induce altered states of consciousness. He was an avid lucid dreamer and practiced techniques to help with becoming awake in his dreams. Dali also experimented with different psychoactive substances, such as cannabis and hashish, and in the 1930s he used the psychedelic drug mescaline, which he believed gave him greater access to his subconscious mind. In response to an interviewer’s question about drugs, Dali famously said, “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs,” and “Take me, I am the drug, take me, I am hallucinogenic.”

In 1931 Dali painted one of his most famous paintings, The Persistence of Memory, which depicts a surrealistic landscape with melting pocket watches. Dali had numerous exhibitions of his work that were met with more commercial and critical success, as his fame as a surrealist painter grew.

In 1934, Dali took his first visit to the United States, where he had exhibitions and he received widespread press coverage. He delivered lectures on surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art and other venues, where he said, “The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!”

Dali was theatrical and flamboyant in his presentation to the world. In 1936, while at an exhibition of his work in London, he gave a lecture wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet. He arrived carrying a billiard cue and was leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds. Dali said that he just wanted to show that he “was plunging deeply into the human mind.”

In 1938 Dali met Sigmund Freud and he did a sketch of him. As Dali was sketching him, Freud whispered, “That boy looks like a fanatic.” This comment delighted Dali.

In 1939, during the German invasion of France during World War II, Dali fled with his wife Gala to Portugal, and then to New York in 1940, where they stayed for eight years.

In 1941, at a gallery in New York, Dali announced the death of the Surrealist movement and the return of classicism at his exhibition, however, critics didn’t think that there was actually any major change in Dali’s work.

In 1942, Dali’s autobiography The Secret Life of Dali was published, and it was reviewed widely in the New York and London press. In 1948, Dali and his wife moved back to their house in Port Lligat in Spain, where they spent much of their time over the next three decades, although they spent their winters in Paris and New York.

In the late 1940s Dali became introduced to Christian mysticism, and this influenced his artwork— such as his 1949 painting The Madonna of Port Lligat, which shows a surreal Virgin Mary with a floating baby Jesus in her lap. Dali then sought to integrate Christian mysticism with Einsteinian physics in his work. In paintings such as The Christ of Saint John on the Cross and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory Dalí synthesized Christian iconography with images of material disintegration, that was inspired by nuclear physics.

In 1968, Dali bought a castle in Púbol, Spain for his wife Gala, who would retreat there for weeks at a time, and Dali agreed not to visit her there without written permission. This led to estrangement from his wife, who was his artistic muse and caused Dali to become depressed. Dali’s health began to fail around this time.

In 1980, Dali’s health deteriorated, and he was treated for a number of medical ailments. In 1983, Dali’s last painting, The Swallow’s Tail, was revealed. After this, Dali lost his ability to paint, due to a motor disorder. In 1984 Dali’s depression worsened and he refused food, leading to severe undernourishment. In 1989 Dali died at the age of 84.

Two major museums are devoted to Dalí’s work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Dalí’s life and work have had an important influence on pop art, other Surrealists, and many contemporary artists.

In 2003, a previously unreleased animated film that Dali created with Walt Disney in 1945 was released, about a love story between the mythic god of time Chronos and a woman named Dahlia. Dali was portrayed in a film by Robert Pattinson called Little Ashes in 2008, and by Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris in 2011. The Salvador Dalí Desert in Bolivia and the Dalí Crater on the planet Mercury are named after him.

Some of the quotes that Salvador Dali is known for include:

Have no fear of perfection— you’ll never reach it.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy— the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?

A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.

What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.

One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.

It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

Everything alters me, but nothing changes me.

by David Jay Brown

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Robinson Jeffers Profile

Robinson Jeffers Profile

Jun 12, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Poets, Profiles

Carolyn and I admire and appreciate the work of poet and environmentalist Robinson Jeffers, who is known for his poetry about our beloved Central California Coast.

John Robinson Jeffers was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1887. His father was a Presbyterian minister, his mother a Biblical scholar, and his brother became a well-known astronomer. As a child, Jeffers studied the Bible and classical languages. During his youth, he traveled through Europe and attended school in France, Germany, and Switzerland. By the time he was 12, Jeffers was fluent in French, German, and English, and he had a good knowledge of Latin and Greek.

When he was 18, Jeffers earned his degree from Occidental College in California and then studied literature at the University of Southern California as a graduate student. Jeffers then studied medicine at USC for three years, although he dropped out of medical school, and then enrolled as a forestry student at the University of Washington in Seattle, a course of study that he also abandoned after just one semester.

Jeffers returned to Los Angeles. In 1906, he met Una Kuster, a fellow graduate student, who was married at the time to a well-known attorney, and they had a passionate love affair— that became a huge scandal, reaching the front page of the Los Angeles Times. In 1912, Jeffers published his first book of poetry, Flagons and Apples, although it didn’t receive much attention. When Una got divorced in 1913, she married Jeffers the next day, and they moved to Carmel, California together.

In 1919 Jeffers built a granite house in Carmel with his own hands, named Tor House, later, he added a large four-story stone tower on the site called Hawk Tower. This became Jeffers’ family home until the end of his life. It was a magnificent and impressive accomplishment. Stewart Brand, the founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, described the Tor House as “a poem-like masterpiece” with “more direct intelligence per square inch than any other house in America.”

Around this time Jeffers began to exclusively write poetry, and he wrote his epic poem Tamar, which is a controversial tale about a ranch family, involving incest and violence. Tamar first appeared in Jeffers’ poetry collection Tamar and Other Poems, which was published in 1924. This collection brought attention to Jeffers’ work and his fame grew over the following years.

According to one account, “With the publication of Tamar and Other Poems… Jeffers’ fame sprung into being virtually overnight. One decade and multiple collections of poetry later, he had become arguably the most famous poet in the United States.” In 1932 Jeffers appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In 1946 his version of the Greek drama Medea was performed on Broadway.

In 1948 Jeffers published a poetry collection titled The Double Axe and Other Poems, which included some poems that were critical of U.S. involvement in the Second World War. The publisher censored eleven poems in the collection and included a warning that Jeffers’ views “were not those of the publishing company,” and that the book contained some potentially “unpatriotic” poems. It wasn’t until 1977 that the full collection of poems was finally published.

During the 1950s and later, as the environmental movement gained momentum, Jeffers became an important voice for protecting the natural world. He also developed a unique philosophy. Jeffers coined the term “inhumanism,” which means “the belief that humankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the astonishing beauty of things.” Jeffers refers to this philosophy in some of his poems. For example, in his poem Carmel Point Jeffers encourages people to “uncenter” themselves.

In his poem The Double Axe, Jeffers describes “inhumanism” as “a shifting of emphasis from man to not man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence. … It offers a reasonable detachment as a rule of conduct, instead of love, hate, and envy… it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty.” Jeffers believed that humanity had been rejected by an uncaring divine being, and that everyone should transcend emotion, and embrace an indifferent God.

Nature serves as a backdrop for much of Jeffers’ poetry. Animals and aspects of the natural world are often compared to humans, with humans being shown as inferior. Jeffers preferred nature to people, as he felt that our species failed to recognize the significance of other creatures and the natural world. His work celebrates the beauty of seas and skies, and the freedom of wild animals, and it strives to create a vision of the world in which human experience is questioned and decentered.

Although Jeffers was known to be rather reclusive, he corresponded and interacted with other notable writers and poets during his life, such as Benjamin De Casseres and D.H. Lawrence.

Jeffers died in 1962. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and published worldwide. Jeffers’ poetry has also influenced many writers, such as Gary Snyder and Charles Bukowski, who said that Jeffers was his favorite poet. In 1973 Jeffers was honored on a U.S. postage stamp.

Some of the quotes that Jeffers is known for include:

The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.

I have heard the summer dust crying to be born. 

Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain. 

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me, Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.

The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heartbreaking beauty will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

One existence, one music, one organism, one life, one God: star-fire and rock-strength, the sea’s cold flow—And man’s dark soul.

As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. But we are what we are, and we might remember not to hate any person, for all are vicious; And not to be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; And not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed. 

A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.

by David Jay Brown

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Joseph Campbell Profile

Joseph Campbell Profile

Jun 5, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Writers

Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of literature professor, author, and mythologist Joseph Campbell, who is recognized today as being one of the most influential experts on mythology.

Joseph John Campbell was born in White Plains, New York in 1904. His father was a hosiery importer and wholesaler, and he was raised in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family, with a younger brother.

When Campbell was seven years old, his father took him and his brother to see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which made a great impression on him. Campbell “became fascinated, seized, obsessed, by the figure of a naked American Indian with his ear to the ground, a bow and arrow in his hand, and a look of special knowledge in his eyes.”

As a result of this experience, Campbell became extremely interested in Native American culture. By the time he was ten years old, Campbell had read every book on American Indians in the children’s section at his local library and began devouring the books on the subject in the adult section.

In 1921, Campbell graduated from the Canterbury School in Connecticut and initially studied biology and mathematics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, although he later switched to the humanities, and transferred to Columbia University in New York, where he excelled.

In 1924, after traveling to Europe with his family on a steamship, on the return voyage, he met philosopher and spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti aboard the ship, and they discussed Indian philosophy. This began a friendship between the two; they stayed in touch for five years, and this had a profound influence on Campbell, sparking his interest in Eastern philosophy and Hindu thought.

In 1925 Campbell graduated with a degree in English literature from Columbia University, and then in 1927, he earned a master’s degree in medieval literature from the school. Later that year Campbell received a fellowship from Columbia University to study in Europe, where he studied Old French Provencal and Sanskrit at the University of Paris and the University of Munich.

From 1929 to 1934 Campbell lived in a cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he engaged in an intensive and rigorous independent study. During these years he generally read for nine hours a day, although he traveled to California for a year, between 1931 and 1932, where he became close friends with writer John Steinbeck.

In 1934, Campbell accepted a position as professor of Literature at Sara Lawrence College in New York. Then, in 1938, Campbell married one of his former students, dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman, and they lived together in a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City for 49 years. In the 1980s they purchased a second apartment in Honolulu, and they divided their time between Hawaii and New York.

In 1943 Campbell coauthored the book Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial. This book takes its title from the symbolic creation legend of the Navaho people, which they incorporated into their blessing ceremony for tribe members headed to battle, and the book explores how this rite influenced Native Americans during World War II when they were for the first time drafted into the U.S. military.

In 1949 Campbell’s best-known book was published, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The book was published to wide acclaim and brought him numerous awards and honors. In this study of the myth of the hero, Campbell proposes the existence of a “monomyth” (a word coined by James Joyce), or “a universal pattern that is the essence of, and common to, heroic tales in every culture.” This book has had a major influence on generations of creative artists, from abstract expressionists in the 1950s to contemporary filmmakers today.

Between 1955 and 1956, Campbell traveled to Asia for the first time and spent months in India and Japan. This had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and it inspired him to want to teach comparative mythology to a larger audience.

Campbell authored numerous books on mythology, including The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology in 1959, Oriental Mythology in 1962, Occidental Mythology in 1964, and Creative Mythology in 1968. In 1972 he published Myths to Live By, and in 1986 his book The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion was released. Campbell was also a prolific editor. Some of the many books he edited included Alan Watts’ Myth and Ritual in Christianity and The Portable Jung, with work by psychologist Carl Jung.

Campbell also widely lectured, and starting in 1965, he led workshops at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur for many years. In 1972, Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years.

In 1985, Campbell was awarded the National Arts Club Gold Medal of Honor in Literature. At the award ceremony, James Hillman said, “No one in our century— not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Lévi-Strauss— has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness.”

In 1987 Campbell died at his home in Hawaii and is buried in Honolulu.

Before his death, Campbell completed filming a series of interviews with Bill Moyers that aired on PBS in 1988 as The Power of Myth, and much interest in his work followed the airing of this popular series. The series discusses mythological, religious, and psychological archetypes, and a book, The Power of Myth, containing expanded transcripts of their conversations, was released shortly after the original broadcast. Millions of viewers were introduced to Campbell’s ideas by the broadcast, which was composed of six hours of conversation that the two men had videotaped over the course of several years.

In 1991, Campbell’s widow Jean Erdman worked with others to create the Joseph Campbell Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving, protecting, and perpetuating Campbell’s mythological work.

Hollywood filmmaker George Lucas has also credited Campbell’s influence. Following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977, he stated that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell’s. Many other filmmakers have acknowledged the influence of Campbell’s work on their films, including Christopher Vogler, a Hollywood screenwriter, who created a company memo based on Campbell’s work, A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which led to the development of Disney’s 1994 film The Lion King.

Some of the quotes that Joseph Campbell is known for include:

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.

All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.

Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths.

by David Jay Brown

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Fyodor Dostoevsky Profile

Fyodor Dostoevsky Profile

May 30, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Writers

Carolyn and I have long enjoyed the writings of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who wrote many great novels, short stories, and essays during his lifetime. His powerful works explore the human condition in 19th-century Russia, and they engage with a variety of timeless philosophical and spiritual themes.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1821. He had an older brother, his father was a doctor, and he was raised in his family’s home, which was on the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. This hospital was in a lower-class district on the edges of Moscow, and when playing in the hospital gardens as a child Dostoevsky encountered patients who were at the bottom of the Russian social scale.

When Dostoyevsky was four years old his mother used the Bible to teach him how to read and write, and he was introduced to books at an early age. His nanny read him fairy tales, legends, and heroic sagas, and his parents introduced him to a wide range of literature. Although his father’s approach to education has been described as “strict and harsh,” Dostoevsky reported that his “imagination” was “brought alive” by his parent’s nightly readings.

In 1837 Dostoyevsky left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute, and after graduating he worked as a lieutenant engineer and book translator, from French into Russian. In 1839 signs of Dostoevsky’s epilepsy first appeared, and his seizures plagued him throughout his life. During his 20s, Dostoyevsky recorded several journal descriptions of his seizures, and there are also descriptions in his novels. There have been numerous medical hypotheses about the type of epilepsy with which Dostoevsky suffered, the most notorious feature of his type of epilepsy being the so-called “ecstatic aura.” While these seizures were debilitating, they also appear to have contributed to mystical experiences that enhanced the creativity of his writing.

Dostoyevsky had this to say about his epileptic seizures, “I felt that heaven descended to earth and swallowed me. I attained God and was imbued with him… all the joys life can give I would not take in exchange for it… for a few moments before the fit, I experience a feeling of happiness such [that] it is impossible to imagine in a normal state and which other people have no idea of. I feel entirely in harmony with myself and the world, and this feeling is so strong and so delightful that for a few seconds of such bliss, one would gladly give up ten years of one’s life if not one’s whole life.”

Between 1844 and 1845 Dostoyevsky wrote his first novel, Poor Folk. His motivation for writing this novel was said to be largely financial. Dostoyevsky was having financial difficulties, due to an extravagant lifestyle and a gambling addiction, so he decided to write a novel to try and raise funds. The novel is written in the form of letters between the two main characters, who are poor relatives, and it describes the lives of poor people, their relationship with rich people, and poverty in general. This novel became a commercial success, and it gained Dostoyevsky’s entry into Saint Petersburg’s literary circles.

In 1846 Dostoyevsky’s second novel, The Double: A Petersburg Poem, about a bureaucrat struggling to succeed, was published in a journal and it received negative reviews. Around this time Dostoyevsky also published several short stories in a magazine, which also received negative reviews, and this caused him stress and greater financial difficulty. After this his health declined, his seizures increased in frequency, and Dostoyevsky’s life took a dark turn.

In 1847 Dostoyevsky was arrested for belonging to a particular literary group called the Petrashevsky Circle, which discussed banned books that were critical of Tsarist Russia. Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death, but at the last moment, his sentence was commuted. He later described this experience, of what he believed to be the last moments of his life, in his novel The Idiot. Dostoyevsky spent the next four years doing hard labor in a Siberian prison camp, where he had frequent seizures, and then after surviving that, he had to do six more years of compulsory military service.

In the years that followed Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, editing several magazines, and he traveled around Western Europe. For a time, he experienced such serious financial hardship that he had to beg for money. In 1866, when he owed large sums of money to creditors, his widely acclaimed novel Crime and Punishment was first published in a literary journal, in twelve monthly installments. It was a “literary sensation” of 1866 and is now one of the most widely read books of all time.

The novel is about the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of an impoverished young man who plans to kill an unscrupulous old woman, who stores money and valuable objects in her apartment. What’s so remarkable about this story is how Dostoyevsky portrays the psychological process of his self-tormented main character.

Between 1868 and 1869 Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot was first published serially in a journal. The title of the book is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, a young, Christ-like, epileptic prince whose “goodness, open-hearted simplicity, and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight.”

In 1880 Dostoyevsky published his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, a passionate and philosophical story about rival love affairs, that explores questions of God, free will, and morality. Dostoevsky’s body of work consists of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, 221 Diary articles, and numerous other works.

Dostoyevsky died in 1881. Since his death, he has become one of the most widely-read and highly-regarded Russian writers. Dostoyevsky’s books have been translated into more than 170 languages, they’ve served as the inspiration for numerous films, and his work has influenced many other writers.

In 1971, Dostoevsky’s former apartment in Saint Petersburg was opened as a museum, known as the F.M. Dostoevsky Memorial Museum. The apartment was Dostoevsky’s home during the composition of some of his most notable works, including The Double: A Petersburg Poem and The Brothers Karamazov. The museum library holds around 24,000 volumes and a small collection of manuscripts.

Some quotes that Fyodor Dostoyevsky is remembered for include:

To love someone means to see them as God intended them.

Beauty will save the world.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

by David Jay Brown

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