Angela Stretch
An Invention for Two Voices
Do you believe in the artist as a concept?
Not at all, I believe in the image
I am thinking about Frans van Mieris
the Dutch Golden Age painter,
as he presented
himself in
A Cavalier
Could you describe the portrait please?
Somewhere out there, A Cavalier
The event that gives emotion to the face
A Cavalier, himself beheld somewhere
We don’t get any of the story
only an endless moment of a man in oil
a facial of something outside the frame
as if the glamour is not allowed to be his
like one-half of a see-saw
the first arm akimbo
to which we direct ourselves
we will see Monday opposed to Wednesday
the rightful arrest of collar and cuffs
Bank knowledge defines a sophisticated awareness
a particular importance for this little fantasy
suggests to him but from him
their equal expression of returns
Could you love him?
Implicit in the generation of self
is the desire to escape death.
[Roguishly] I sense you have an agenda.
Not at all, it’s neither hidden, or mine.
Stills
An Allegory of Painting—Google… >
The Interrupted song
The Drummer Boy
Brothel Scene
Woman Threading Pearls
Girls Selling Grapes to an Old Woman
Portrait of a Young Lady
The Sleeping Officer
Scene Galante
The Artist’s Studio
A Woman in a Red Jacket feeding a Parrot
The Serenade
Teasing the Pet
The Doctor’s Visit
Woman Before the Mirror
next A Cavalier
Boy Blowing Bubbles
Selfies
A Cavalier 1657 [stolen]
Left earring tronie 1661
Tronie 1662
A Fifty Two Year-old Man 1665
At his Easel 1667
With a Plummed Beret
Red Beret 1670
As Merry Taper 1673
Another tronie 1677
With a Cittern – 1681
With an urban crown, a feather and fur trimmed robe - 1681
Still missing
Fourteen years—Stolen Cavalier.wordpress
Fourteen years since A Cavalier was last seen.
Fourteen years ago person(s) unknown stole this Dutch masterpiece.
Fourteen years.
No news. No leads. No trace.
Someone out there knows something.
Someone out there knows where A Cavalier is.
Please don’t wait another fourteen years to come forward.
Subject
Chron.com/entertainment/article, 14 June 2007
SYDNEY, Australia—A 17th century Dutch painting ___________
_____________________________________________ valued at more
than $1 million was stolen _______________________________ from
an Australian state gallery _______________________ during viewing
hours over the weekend _______________ police suspect an inside job
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
A Cavalier by Baroque-era artist Frans van Mieris ________________
disappeared from a small room in the Art Gallery of New South Wales
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
____________________________________An oak panel painted in oil
_____________________________________ the picture depicts a man
__________ believed to be the artist seated on a chair ______________
__ dressed in a feathered hat ______________________ frilled sleeves.
You haven’t really told me who took it?
[Ignores question] Here’s a brown that I love
matte and opaque, a colour that obliterates and conceals.
Who really took it?
Practically, I don’t how this was achieved
It wasn’t at night and it is not ignorance
It was at a time when our observational powers
and senses are blunted by security cameras—
to imagine how memory is
removing two wall screws
Suspended
‘We find a lot of paintings do eventually come back’.
Robert Goldman, FBI Art Crime Team
Wealthy well-dressed young man, assumed to be a self-portrait of the artist
/ was audaciously stolen / The Gallery had long been understaffed and
complained to state government of the day / James Fairfax donated it in
1993 / Value today unknown / Insured for $1,400,000 / Status: missing
keystoneunderwriting.com.au/articles/9-a-cavalier-self-portrait-by-fransvan-mieris/
And now?
The overall direction, is away from any narrative
Story is being displaced by sensation in its pure state
You see the same thing everywhere in the world at large
An image; its purpose is to be disseminated by the media
The appetites we arouse in ourselves:
computer imaging…
[Digresses at length]