Watchin' the Tropics

**EDIT: I'm noticing a number of Florida neighbors in my blogstats who are looking for things like "fay spaghetti plot" on Google and end up here--as you can see, not a weather blog. Go to Weather Underground or the website for the National Hurricane Center and you'll find all the latest information. Stay Safe!**

Most readers of this blog won't need this useful link, but any US readers who live on a coast vulnerable to tropical disturbances will want to know about Weather Underground (see under Favorite Links at left). My sister Chantel -- an extreme-weather watcher since we were kids -- told me about this site after I moved here, and since the crazy hurricane season of 2004, I use it whenever there's something Chantel tells me we need to keep an eye on. It was four years ago today (well, in terms of it being a Friday--the date was 8/13/04 I think) that Hurricane Charley exploded in intensity on its way to Florida and while en route to Tampa Bay, decided to make a last minute right turn into Port Charlotte and environs, where it caused immense destruction. Stupidly I had not evacuated St Pete, although I had evacuated my apartment, which is in a flood zone, under official orders. I was staying with a friend who was not in the flood zone, but if a Category 3 or 4 storm had indeed come calling, flooding would be the least of the problems. (The media loves telling us that if a major hurricane did hit Tampa Bay, St Petersburg would turn from a peninsula into an island with most of its coastline underwater--including my apartment and my campus.) I don't think I've been as scared in my life as I was on 5 am that day looking at how the storm had grown overnight and was heading right for us. Now I'm a Nervous Nellie about the tropics, and news today of a tropical somethin' that could well intensify to a gal named Faye and possibly annoy Florida in the next week has me jumpy.

It does not help that Florida is most vulnerable during Aug, Sept, and Oct. During school. When I have responsibilities to my students and can't just cancel class and flee town when the spaghetti models* start to look dicey. When any cancelled class, whether I do it or the weather does it, screws up my syllabus!

*Spaghetti models: When the National Weather Service runs computer models on the storm's potential path, each model produces a line. All the lines are juxtaposed on a map to show the range of possibilities--the totality is known as the "spaghetti plot" or the "spaghetti models" because of how it looks. The NWS uses the spaghetti models to graph what's called a "Cone of Uncertainty" (I love that term, I have to say). If Tampa Bay falls at any point into the Cone of Uncertainty, Dr. Bundrick starts squawking and flapping her arms like a chicken.

Night & Day

Boston Globe writer Sebastian Smee has an insightful review online today of Yale University Art Gallery's dual display of "Starry Night" and "Cypresses." I've not seen YUAG's exhibit (sadly), but I've seen both those paintings in their regular homes (MoMA and the Met respectively) and my opinion is the same as Smee's: "Cypresses" is the more dynamic painting of the two. Smee characterizes "Starry Night" as feeling more like an experiment -- quite rightly, because despite its fame and icon status, "Starry Night" was atypical of van Gogh's oeuvre and not a piece that particularly stood out for him. It *was* an experiment, an abstraction done indoors when he was not able to go outside and do a proper night scene. (Being in the asylum of Saint-Rémy at the time and only allowed to roam the countryside during the day.) Vincent had experimented with abstractions -- in the sense of scenes done from his imagination, not from nature -- while Gauguin was staying with him in autumn 1888, but by this time had largely abandoned the method. "Starry Night" is an anomaly. "Cypresses" is much more the kind of painting Vincent enjoyed creating and is much more 'characteristic.' When I had my research fellowship at the Met some years ago and would make my pilgrimages to the van Goghs, "Cypresses" was one of those I liked the best, for its textures and sense of movement. You can *feel* the wind in the trees and grasses, and trust me, on a day of mistral, the air feels exactly that swirly.

If my blogstats are any indication -- I've been getting a LOT of Connecticut visitors this summer -- the YUAG show is doing very well. Any visitors want to share their experience? Is YUAG's own experiment of a two-painting exhibition, limiting the number of visitors so all can engage well with the pictures, successful?

Sweet Vincent!

Talk about genius. That "Starry Night" is made of cupcakes!

Today's "Van Gogh" Google search turned up reference to a new-ish book called "Hello, Cupcake!" which includes the recipe. I found this image on the authors' blog. The historical van Gogh didn't care much for sweets, but I sure do, and I might have to take a crack at it sometime!

Camera Shy

Vincent van Gogh was very camera shy, it seems. A photograph of him age 13 and another of him age 18 survive, and this one of him as an adult...from the back. Emile Bernard is the young man facing the camera. In general, Vincent was a bit distrustful of photography vs. portrait painting: when Theo sent him a photograph of their mother in September 1888 (while Vincent was living in Arles), Vincent thanked him in a letter then wrote, "But I do not care for it at all as a real likeness." He then proceeded to paint a portrait based on the photograph, adding the rich color he loved.

I understand Vincent's camera-shyness, and next week I have to face it head-on (literally) when I have author photos taken for my book and for Avon's promotional materials. I'll be working with a former student of mine, Brandi Morris (see her website here), and I hope she can do something with me. I'm SO not photogenic, and somehow I have to look approachable, smart, pretty, engaging, and fashionable all at the same time, for those readers who actually do look at the photos when considering whether to buy a book. We'll be going for a very soft look, in keeping with the novel's subject (thank goodness I've been growing out my hair), and we're thinking of shooting here on my (our) campus, since it's on the water and quite scenic. *Sigh* I'll get up in front of however many people and yak all day long without fear -- but photos freeze me. Deer in headlights is definitely not the look we want!

Meet Tropical Storm Edouard

Take an art history dork (me) and an extreme weather dork (my sister), add Photoshop. Meet Tropical Storm Edouard! (The fabulous Edouard Manet, bien sûr!) Chantel and I can afford to jest when Edouard is a low-level storm and heading the other way from FL. ;-)

When Art Overwhelms

On a trip to Florence in 1817, the French novelist known as Stendhal experienced dizziness, heart palpitations, and other frightening (he thought) symptoms after viewing great architecture and works of art (including Caravaggio's Bacchus at the Uffizi, seen here). In the late 1970s, Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, after observing dozens of cases in her Florence clinic of tourists with similar symptoms (and some even more extreme), gave the condition a name: Stendhal Syndrome. She wrote a book on the subject in 1989, and the term has stuck ever since.

It's hard in some ways to have a truly emotional reaction to works of art, because the big museums at least tend to be so crowded and noisy. How can you engage meaningfully with something when some oblivious bozo with an audioguide or a camera-phone is edging you out of the way? But it can happen, and it sure has happened to me. I can think of three particularly notable occasions when I was "overwhelmed" beyond just an adrenaline rush --
a) My first visit to the Louvre in 1996, when I saw the Victory of Samothrace, the only artwork that has ever made me actually cry (little tears, not a big boohoo). Had to sit down. Revived self with coffee and pastry in museum cafe.
b) My first visit to the Van Gogh Museum last year (surprise). Talk about sensory overload, walking up the stairs to the main floor and seeing in one sweep Sunflowers, Bedroom at Arles, The Yellow House, etc, etc, etc. Familiar as those pictures were from books, they still knocked me over in person, and it was the quantity as much as anything. Felt dizzy, had to sit down. Probably would have cried if museum were less crowded. Recovered self with tea and cake in the museum cafe.
c) A visit to the Met last summer (by no means my first), when I discovered the Greek art curators had newly created a *whole study gallery* of *every Greek vase previously in storage*. I didn't know it was there! Had never seen many of those vases before! I was the only person in the gallery, I had them all to myself! Completely caught off guard, my knees went weak, my heart pounded, I had to sit down. Recovered self later with ... you get the point. :-)

Art historian James Elkins wrote an interesting book called "Pictures and Tears," which he based on a few hundred letters he received (after a call for submissions online) from people who had strong emotional reactions in front of artworks. Not surprisingly, a few of those people mentioned van Gogh paintings as artworks that had moved them to tears. Vincent would love that: he wanted people to be moved by his work and to understand that he himself was someone who felt deeply. In my novel "The Sunflowers," there is -- of course -- a scene when the heroine, Rachel, has a Stendhal Syndrome moment, the first time she visits Vincent's studio in the yellow house. Predictable, perhaps, but grounded in something real: I rewrote the scene after going to the Van Gogh Museum, when I didn't have to imagine any more what it would feel like for her. In the VGM, I looked around me at other faces: some people were doing the "museum shuffle" from picture to picture, not seeming particularly enthused, but the others -- dazed looks, open mouths (seriously), big wide eyes. Overwhelmed.

Have *you* ever been moved by an artwork like that?

The Return of Victoria

The magazine, that is. I don't know how I missed this, except that I seldom visit the magazine section of the bookstore these days, but one of my favorite magazines from back in the day -- Victoria -- has returned. Returned last November, evidently. A reference to it on the blog The Earthly Paradise sent me scurrying to the magazine's website then to Amazon to buy a subscription.

I was a loyal reader of Victoria from the year it first appeared (1987) until about the mid-1990s or so, when, steeped in graduate-school angst, I grew a little tired of it. I kept every issue I had, and I guess they're still in my parents' basement. Oh, I loved that magazine! In 1987, I was a high-school senior, loving the Brontës, loving my British lit course, loving European history, eager to eat up a pretty publication that spirited me to a gracious world of afternoon tea and blissful gardens. I'm so excited that it's back! In a world that seems more and more stressful and ugly, it's nice to think a little bit of bliss can be bought for $19.99 a year.