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The Revelation
An idle poet, here and there,
Looks round him; but, for all the rest,
The world, unfathomably fair,
Is duller than a witling’s jest.
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,
They read with joy, then shut the book.
And some give thanks, and some blaspheme
And most forget; but, either way,
That and the Child’s unheeded dream
Is all the light of all their day.
Coventry Patmore
1823–1896
The Revelation
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Founded in 2013, Nahmad Contemporary is dedicated to the presentation of innovative, historically focused exhibitions. The gallery specializes in leading Contemporary artists who rose to prominence during the 1980s, and a selection of Modern masters from the 20th century. The scope of Nahmad Contemporary’s program includes exhibitions that historicize Contemporary artists by illuminating a distinct series, medium, or focus within their oeuvre. Additionally, the gallery features Modern masters to inspire contemporary perspectives on particular works from their canon.
https://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/
Yours Truly
Curated by Eleanor Cayre
July 10-September 14, 2024
Rita Ackermann, Chino Amobi, Hope Atherton, Ed Atkins, Darren Bader, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Kye Christensen-Knowles, Louis Eisner, Hamishi Farah, Isa Genzken, Sasha Gordon, Mark Grotjahn, Wade Guyton, Abul Hisham, Tishan Hsu, Arthur Jafa, G. Peter Jemison, Cheyenne Julien, Ali Kazim, John Kelsey, Eli Keszler, Zak Kitnick, Carolyn Lazard, Maggie Lee, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Nate Lowman, Mathieu Malouf, Irene Mamiye, Danny McDonald, Danielle Mckinney, Joel Mesler, Stuart Middleton, Jeanette Mundt, Gladys Nilsson, EVA HELENE PADE, Walter Price, Enzo Shalom, Heji Shin, Marianna Simnett, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Tobias Spichtig, Frances Stark, Emily Sundblad, Jamie Sutton, Martine Syms, Henry Taylor, Wolfgang Tillmans, Salman Toor, Michelle Uckotter, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Jordan Wolfson, Issy Wood, Jonas Wood, and Arisa Yoshioka.
‘Yours Truly’ in Nahmad Contemporary New York
NAHMAD CONTEMPORARY
980 Madison Avenue, Third Floor
New York, NY 10075
Hours:
Monday – Friday 10AM – 6PM
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The Toys
My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,
I struck him, and dismiss’d
With hard words and unkiss’d,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray’d
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
“I will be sorry for their childishness.”
Coventry Patmore
(1823–1896)
The Toys
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Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself.
“What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell. Instead, it’s a tale of long journeying through a life that changed popular music: of a homesick wanderer forging ahead on routes of her own invention, and of me on her trail, heading toward the ringing of her voice.” (From the introduction)
For decades, Joni Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians—from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile—and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing.
At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as—with the other arm—she pushes us away.
Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting.
In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell’s peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio.
She charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life.
Along this journey, Powers’ wide-ranging musings on the artist’s life and career reconsider the biographer’s role and the way it twines against the reality of a fan. In doing so,
Traveling illustrates the shifting nature of biography, and the ultimate contradiction of celebrity: that an icon cannot truly, completely be known to a fan.
Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject.
Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
by Ann Powers (Author)
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Language: English
June 11, 2024.
Hardcover: 448 pages
ISBN-10:0062463721
ISBN-13:978-0062463722
Hardcover
$35.00
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Seulette suis…
Seulette suis, et seulette veux être,
Seulette m’a mon doux ami laissée.
Seulette suis, sans compagnon ni maître,
Seulette suis, dolente et courroucée,
Seulette suis, en langueur malaisée,
Seulette suis, plus que nulle égarée,
Seulette suis, sans ami demeurée.
Seulette suis, à huis ou à fenêtre,
Seulette suis, en un anglet muciée,
Seulette suis, pour moi de pleurs repaître,
Seulette suis, dolente ou apaisée,
Seulette suis, rien qui tant messiée,
Seulette suis, en ma chambre enserrée,
Seulette suis, sans ami demeurée.
Seulette suis, partout et en tout aître,
Seulette suis, que je marche ou je siée,
Seulette suis, plus qu’autre rien terrestre,
Seulette suis, de chacun délaissée,
Seulette suis, durement abaissée,
Seulette suis, souvent toute éplorée,
Seulette suis, sans ami demeurée.
Princes, or est ma douleur commencée :
Seulette suis, de tout deuil menacée,
Seulette suis, plus teinte que morée,
Seulette suis, sans ami demeurée.
Christine de Pisan
(1364/1365 – 1430)
Seulette suis…
Poéme
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The Sleeper
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!
Oh, lady bright! can it be right—
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop—
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully—so fearfully—
Above the closed and fringéd lid
’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!
The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And wingéd pannels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals—
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portals she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809 – 1849)
The Sleeper
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Comme surpris
Comme surpris
Et entrepris
De vostre amour,
Je me rens pris
En vo pourpris,
Dame d’onnour.
Si ne mespris
Quant j’entrepris
Si haulte honnour
Comme surpris.
Mais en despris
Ne m’ait le pris
De vo valour;
Car j’ay apris
Les biens compris
En vo doulçour
Comme surpris.
Christine de Pisan
(1364/1365 – 1430)
Comme surpris
Rondeaux
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Belle, ce que j’ay requis
Belle, ce que j’ay requis
Or le vueilliez ottroier,
Car par tant de fois proier
Bien le doy avoir conquis.
Je l’ay ja si long temps quis,
Et pour trés bien emploier,
Belle, ce que j’ay requis.
Se de moy avez enquis,
Ne me devez pas noyer
Mon guerdon, ne mon loier;
Car par raison j’ai acquis,
Belle, ce que j’ay requis.
Christine de Pisan
(1364/1365 – 1430)
Belle, ce que j’ay requis
Rondeaux
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Award-winning poet Maya C. Popa suggests that our restless desires are inseparable from our mortality in this pressing and precise collection.
Rooting out profound meaning in language to wrench us from the moorings of the familiar and into the realm of the extraordinary, the volume asks, how do we articulate what’s by definition inarticulable? Where does sight end and imagination begin?
Lucid and musically rich, these poems sound an appeal to a dwindling natural world and summon moments from the lives of literary forbearers―John Milton’s visit to Galileo, a vase broken by Marcel Proust―to unveil fresh wonder in the unlikely meetings of the past.
Popa dramatizes the difficulties of loving a world that is at once rich with beauty and full of opportunities for grief, and reveals that the natural arc of wonder, from astonishment to reflection, more deeply connects us with our humanity.
Maya C. Popa is a naturally gifted poet, lucidly engaged with the most profound questions we face in our collective responsibilities and our relations with each other. She writes with love and wonder of a world poised at a perilous moment: “My children, will they exist by the time / it’s irreversible?” she asks. “Will they live / astonished at the thought of ice / not pulled from the mouth of a machine?”
To read her poems is to pause again and again at the precision of imagery, breadth of ideas, and the warmth and generousness of her lyric voice.
Maya C. Popa is the poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and teaches poetry at New York University.
Wound Is the Origin of Wonder: Poems
by Maya C. Popa (Author)
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
November 8, 2022
Language: English
Hardcover: 96 pages
ISBN-10: 1324021365
ISBN-13: 978-1324021360
Hardcover $21.49
Paperback $15.99
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TATE MODERN LONDON
Yoko Ono Music of the Mind
15 February – 1 September 2024
Delve into the powerful, participatory work of artist and activist Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono (1933) is a leading figure in conceptual and performance art, experimental film and music. Developing her practice in America, Japan and the UK, she is renowned for her activism, work for world peace, and environmental campaigns. Ideas are central to her art, often expressed in poetic, humorous and radical ways.
Spanning more than seven decades, the exhibition focuses on key moments in Ono’s career, including her years in London from 1966 to 1971, where she met John Lennon (1940 – 1980).
The show explores some of Ono’s most talked about artworks and performances, from Cut Piece (1964), where people were invited to cut off her clothing, to her banned Film No.4 (Bottoms) (1966-67) which she created as a ‘petition for peace’.
Alongside her early performances, works on paper, objects, and music, audiences will discover a selection of her activist projects such as PEACE is POWER and Wish Tree, where visitors can contribute personal wishes for peace.
Through her instructions and event scores, Ono invites visitors to take part in both simple acts of the imagination and active encounters with her works.
The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern, London in collaboration with Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Y O K O O N O & J O H N L E N N O N
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Il faut tout perdre
Il faut tout perdre, il faut vous obéir.
Je vous les rends ces lettres indiscrètes,
De votre cœur éloquents interprètes,
Et que le mien eût voulu retenir ;
Je vous les rends. Vos yeux à chaque page
Reconnaîtront l’amour et son langage,
Nos doux projets, vos serments oubliés,
Et tous mes droits par vous sacrifiés.
C’était trop peu, cruelle Éléonore,
De m’arracher ces traces d’un amour
Payé par moi d’un éternel retour ;
Vous ordonnez que je vous rende encore
Ces traits chéris, dont l’aspect enchanteur
Adoucissait et trompait ma douleur.
Pourquoi chercher une excuse inutile,
En reprenant ces gages adorés
Qu’aux plus grands biens j’ai toujours préférés ?
De vos rigueurs le prétexte est futile.
Non, la prudence et le devoir jaloux
N’exigent pas ce double sacrifice.
Mais ces écrits qu’un sentiment propice
Vous inspira dans des moments plus doux,
Mais ce portrait, ce prix de ma constance,
Que sur mon cœur attacha votre main,
En le trompant, consolaient mon chagrin :
Et vous craignez d’adoucir ma souffrance ;
Et vous voulez que mes yeux désormais
Ne puissent plus s’ouvrir sur vos attraits,
Et vous voulez, pour combler ma disgrâce,
De mon bonheur ôter jusqu’à la trace.
Ah ! j’obéis, je vous rends vos bienfaits.
Un seul me reste, il me reste à jamais.
Oui, malgré vous, qui causez ma faiblesse,
Oui, malgré moi, ce cœur infortuné
Retient encore et gardera sans cesse
Le fol amour que vous m’avez donné.
Évariste de Parny
(1753-1814)
Il faut tout perdre
Élégies (1784)
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Aimer est un destin charmant
Aimer est un destin charmant ;
C’est un bonheur qui nous enivre,
Et qui produit l’enchantement.
Avoir aimé, c’est ne plus vivre,
Hélas ! c’est avoir acheté
Cette accablante vérité,
Que les serments sont un mensonge,
Que l’amour trompe tôt ou tard,
Que l’innocence n’est qu’un art,
Et que le bonheur n’est qu’un songe.
Évariste de Parny
(1753-1814)
Aimer est un destin charmant
Élégies (1784)
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