The portrait gallery
Vincent
Van Gogh 1853–1890
A Velasquez-grey day. Rain.
Thrown out
of the chapel
I rock like the Greek oracle
on its
tripod, prophesying
a cure for uncleanliness
through
total immersion
in the working girl’s juices.
I’ve leant too long
against the
vestry wall.
It’s cold. Clergy condemn
My
camel-hair brush:
their pride requires
a
carpenter’s pencil
and hard-edged light.
Tremulous, mist transfigures
the
landmark into a
departure. I am nearly
there.
Sunflowers spr
out from the peasant’s boots:
my fingers
encircle
a postman’s world. Personal.
*
Edvard
Munch 1863–1944
Every canvas is a woman who weeps in the ward
for venereal disease. I infected her….
When view and mood are fused
the deepest recess is a shared experience.
But exhibitions! They’re public executions
dignitaries attend with hats in hands
no painter chooses to shake.
*
Hans
Van Meegeren 1889–1947
My brush caresses an Old Master.
But it’s not good enough!
A Paganini cadenza instead of Schubert:
an afternoon on the river
when I want to cross oceans….
Modernism? I refuse to come
under the influence: to stagger
through the beer booth of an October fair
where there is no vision, only
a display that dismays.
This non-sense of ‘conceptual embodiment’
–
it’s desperate as fair-weather
friendship when winter sets the jaw,
a sitter’s stare hardens
into the varnished masterpiece.
*
Egon
Schiele 1890–1918
Vienna. The heresiarch’s denied
a prayer candle, matches
to light
it.
I wear my godfather’s hand-me-downs,
circumnavigate the civilised world
with a
soulful waltz….
Egon, get your shit together!
Star-struck cesspools are an artist’s
glittering
prizes:
his conspiratorial face flickers up
from their surfaces, ‘You corrupted
a minor,
right?’
Two uniformed demons appear:
‘These studies are indecent –
you’re
under arrest.’
I dip my fingers in spit,
sketch seascapes (Trieste, Venice)
– they fade
into this jail’s plaster. The Adriatic
swells in the folds of my coat.
I map the
coast.
Every line shows an intimacy
never previously
realised.
*
Mark
Gertler 1891–1939
Prayer candles keep
irregular hours:
Jewish children dribble
over the butcher’s display.
ADOPT FOREIGN FASHIONS
COLLECT REFUSE
daubs the wall
before Shevzik’s Steam Baths.
‘Very fetching’
hats nod to one another;
blue eyes refuse
to meet. I’m white
as a sheet of Michelet paper.
*
Mark Rothko 1903–1970
The candle cremates
its paper lantern.
*
Philip
Clairmont 1949–1984
The face of God –
a forty-watt light-bulb
that fractures surfaces.
Wallpaper
weeps,
revealing snail-slime white
plaster smoothed by who knows
who knows
when: you
don’t
want a name
or date: detail needs grace,
longevity order.
You catch
dust-motes
in hands with veins that dry
like brushstrokes on the lost,
the locked
away
painting.
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