A view on the background to the inspirational aspects in the work of Čiurlionis that had a role in my work.



Čiurlionis is all about COLOUR and the meaning of colour.

As a composer aswel as a painter he was on a search for what is covered by the vanity of the visual world,

for aspects that are not so much 'the picturesque' but the expression of an the inner meaning,

and as such giving shape to an object.

- as his contemporaries Čiurlionis studied and worked in the first place to use his talents to the full and as such avoid the chains of poverty,

but at the same time tried to serve a higher aim, a meaning to a life that made toil worth undergoing for more than just a practical reason -



Čiurlionis is 11 years old, completed elemetary school and as many of his generation 'ready for life',

when Jean Moréas (Ioannis A. Papadiamantopoulos) publishes Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro (18th of September 1886)

- Čiurlionis may not have read it, but his generation all over Europe was somehow 'updated on the current'.

 

Such current is made by Maurice Maeterlinck: 1892 Pelléas et Mélisande;

inspiring Fauré, Claude Debussy, Jean Sibelius, Arnold Schönberg, and William Wallace.


In the Netherlands we know Jan Toorop - 1858-1928, Bulgaria knows Geo Milev

Every country in Europe had a grand group of artists of any kind in one way or another involved in this general feeling that

'man was about more than just romantic craving for dreams of a better life or the superior and perfect outside of realistic classicism.

The new era will set the art-forms free.

Free from serving the vanities of the world - no less the bourgeoisie than hardline Stalin - depicting it as in the 17th century the Dutch merchants had their portraits made,

or later the landscape or the ideals of the local komsomol, as it would show how much we were able to enjoy, understand and 'own' it.



If it were (for mankind, philosophically speaking) not so sad -


I'd say it's funny to see artists, critics and public needing 'excuses' to go into that freedom of the arts and the materials used in arts

and these excuses would come in a wagonload of 'isms';

the sort of "I'm not just doing something, Oh-no!, I am take part in the developement of a proper ism.

It is painful to see how difficult the birth of real freedom in the arts was/is.



Čiurlionis lives, and works his (much to short) 36 years in a time when he cannot be but a visionary, a romantic, a symbolist and a modernist

- all based on the classic idea that 'art follows nature'

and it is a grand step for an artist to shape 'this picture' of nature with the powers of a humanly indiviual philosophy;

his paint would still be to express just that what such process would bring to mind,

his pencil would still follow the lines of that process,

his melodic lines would follow nature and his hopes for a free and independant country -

all in fact a way to work towards a life free from slavery, and serfdom and/or child labour.

At the same time he lives between the waving anslaughts of pogroms, wars of all sorts, and conflicts between nationalist movements

all meant to free this that or theother

in countries that seemed for ever torn between (utter vague and often historically unfounded) ethnic groups

- all that culminating in the Russian Revolution, the First- and a Second World War;

and however difficult to grasp in the EU-Europe, in fact, in to a third wave of wars that we seem unable to call 'the 3rd World War'

be it unevitably so - and the arts very much reflecting such, or indeed individually crawling away - is if under a personal stone

/ aswell as giving a reflection of the hopes and cravings for better circumstances for all;

so much an ideal to Čiurlionis.


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