The Idle Brain
May 27, 2023“The idle brain is the devil’s playground.” That’s a good thing. My best ideas come from an idle brain. This is not a prescription for mental laziness, but something quite different. It’s the habit of thinking freely, a habit that must be cultivated. Rigidity of thought is a guarantee against creativity or inventiveness. So I know what side I’m on.
I first learned that old saying from The Music Man, the musical that brilliantly put The Pied Piper of Hamelin in a new setting - River City, Iowa, around the turn of the 19th century. A traveling entrepreneur - a charming flim-flam man - is in town to convince the locals that they need a “boys’ band” to safeguard the morals of the younger set, who are in danger of the risks of the sinful temptations of modern life - above all, pool. ”You’ve got Trouble - right here in River City - that’s Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for Pool!” Well, nothing against marching bands.
After Trump’s 78th felony indictment, I remembered this old poster, found a suitable file, and spent ten minutes Photoshopping it. It’s addressed to all the always-faithful Trump worshippers. At some point loyalty becomes mere servility, the character of a slobbering, slavish, butt-sniffing creature with only the baser instincts, and little intelligence.
It’s well-known that Jimmy Hoffa, leader of the Teamsters’ Union, was a rough-around-the-edges kind of guy. But he did always try to remember his manners. Here he is, testifying before the U.S. Senate on racketeering in the labor movement in Washington, D.C. in August 1958. He was also quite a football fan too - some years later, I’ve heard, he went to Giants Stadium in New Jersey and never came back. But he can feel it down there in the end zone when somebody spikes the ball.
I’ve got a bundle of 60 or so stereoscopic photographs - cheap modern reproductions, unfortunately, not vintage. I have no stereoscope viewer, but if I look at the photos and cross my eyes so that the doubled double images combine such that two images from different eyes are superimposed, I can approximate the 3-D effect and see an image with depth. The cards are organized by various themes: Childhood, Comic, Industry, Famous People (Booker T. Washington!), Old West, Transportation, and so on. There’s only one of this category, Victorian Risqué, but it’s a good one: ”The Dream”. The title is ambiguous, however - I’m not sure if the lovely lady here, sleeping au naturel in warm weather, is the one dreaming, whether it’s a disturbing or a delightful dream), or if what I’m looking at is my dream. I’m trying to remember.
Here’s a comparison: the label of a bottle of beer, and the famous painting that inspired it. I brewed my own beer for a while, and so I’m glad to see the microbreweries that pop up to give people something better than the swill from the major U.S. breweries - or I should call them beer factories. As a rule I don’t buy them - these days I prefer to drink wine, and these craft beers tend to be very pricey. But I keep an eye on what’s getting put out. I have found a few good “styled” beers produced by the big breweries here in Italy, and sold at a modest price. They are very agreeable, without costing €5 and up for a bottle. Various styles - a good India Pale Ale (here called ” Italian Pale Ale” or just IPA), wheat beers, bock, and so forth. (Even the mass-produced Italian lagers are superior to their U.S. cousins.) But I didn’t want to talk beer.
Instead I want to talk about this great label, for a beer from a small producer, this one made with peaches from the town Volpedo, the locality of the brewer, and well-known for its peaches. We see three peaches, with arms, legs, and faces, advancing forward with great seriousness in their expressions. Outside Italy this would be unknown, but this image is instantly recognizable in Italy for its source: a very famous painting, ”Il Quarto Stato”, or ”The Fourth Estate”, by the artist Pellizza da Volpedo, from about 1900. The Fourth Estate means the peasantry. The painting’s historical inspiration - a real event - was a less a strike than a spontaneous uprising against the landed aristocracy on behalf of the poor Italians who were victims of famine at that time - and often before, and since. They are advancing toward the lovely big house of the local lord who holds the fate of everyone in his hands, and who has never given a damn for the peasants upon whom his wealth depends. These people have been pushed to their limit, and right now I wouldn’t bet the lord of the manor will finish this day alive. An early version of the painting is called ”La Fiumana” - the human river. For Italians, Pellizza da Volpedo’s work is as well-known and iconic as ”Washington Crossing the Delaware” is for Americans, although the historical context is quite different. Those who hate the painting are probably monarchists or fascists - who still exist in Italy. Those who admire the painting tend to have progressive or socialistic sympathies. The label is so irreverent, that I wonder if some aren’t offended by it. Personally I take the label in good humor, and the painting with the seriousness that it deserves.
This is a small painting of about 1649, by the Swiss artist Albrecht Kauw. It’s called ”Death with Bagpipes and the Prostitute”. It belongs to that proud tradition of humor directed at the most-detested musical instruments, among which the bagpipes rank very high. (I beg pardon of the stock photo agency that licenses the file. If a laugh were worth money, I might be in trouble.)
This is a page from some illustrated tract on spirituality - I can’t remember the source, but it’s part of an altarpiece I’ve been working on for a long time. What I love about this is that the person meditating seems to have an imperfect grasp of The Seven Deadly Sins. She’s got Pride, Greed, Anger, Sex/Lust, and Laziness down well enough (may those are her favorites). But after that it’s “etc., etc.” - a neophyte, she still needs a little work. Not too bad, though - she’s only missing Envy and Gluttony, so maybe these are not issues for her. (At upper left we read ”attachment”.)
The following image is based on a painting by the French painter Pierre Hubert Subleyras, ”The Pack Saddle”, or ”Le Bât”, of 1732. The subject comes from a story by Jean de La Fontaine, who may have adopted it from Bocaccio’s Decameron Tales. (No problem there - over the millenia, writers have borrowed, adapted, adopted, and lifted their stories from one another. As a TV writer asked in an episode of The Simpsons, “How can we write if we can’t steal?”) An artist, about to leave on some business, is painting a charm - a drawing of a donkey - on his wife’s lower abdomen, supposedly to keep her faithful during his absence. On the floor is an engraving he’s using as a guide. After he goes away, another artist - well-known to the first - who lusts for this woman comes along; they go to bed, and in the process the donkey drawing is obliterated. He re-paints it to cover his tracks, as it were, but not remembering perfectly, he adds a saddle. This mistake gives away the game when the husband artist comes back, and boy, is he pissed off. Thus the name of the painting. Here’s the French, which is maybe kind of antiquated:
Un peintre estoit, qui, jaloux de sa femme,
Allant aux Champs lui peignit un baudet
Sur le nombril, en guise de cachet.
Un sien confrere, amoureux de la Dame,
La va trouver, et l’asne efface net;
Dieu sçait comment; puis un autre en remet
Au mesme endroit, ainsi que l’on peut croire.
A celuy-cy, par faute de memoire,
Il mit un Bast; l’autre n’en avait point.
L’Epoux revient, veut s’éclaircir du poinct.
Voyez, mon fils, dit la bonne commere,
L’asne est témoin de ma fidelité.
Diantre soit fait, dit l’Epoux en colere
Et du témoin, et de qui l’a basté.
Even with my very weak command of French, I detect a double-entendre here in the last line: ”and the witness, it is the one who saddled the donkey”. (I’m assuming that ”basté” means “saddled”, as a past participle adapted from ”bât” or saddle.) Note the sawhorse at upper right in the shape of the letter “A” (somewhat as Albrecht Dürer drew it for his monogram, with a full horizontal top element instead of the usual sharp angle). Subleyras painted another version of this subject without the sawhorse (and with the book and its illustration of the donkey more evident). Thinking too much of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it occurred to me to read this as a sort of scarlet letter. That’s probably quite mistaken. Instead, I see the painting as essentially humorous, and not in the least moralistic. A bedroom farce.
Here’s another painting by Subleyras, with a scene from another de La Fontaine story, ”Le Jument du compère Pierre”. It’s about a very poor and very stupid peasant couple who get swindled by a pervert priest who promises (with a magic spell) to turn the farmer’s wife into a mare by day so she can help with the farm work - they will be able to do twice as much work as before. (The farmer has only an ass, or donkey, to help with the plowing, etc.) She has to get down on all fours for the spell - assume the position. The priest has ordered them to keep still and silent while he is making the spell, but at a certain point, the husband feels the priest is going just a little too far with his business, and he objects (this is the moment shown in the painting). So the priest and the farmer’s wife both say “you imbecile, you’ve ruined the spell!” The farmer says, “An ass is all I need!” (In French there seems to be no double-entendre as in English about ass and ass.) I wonder if in the 1700s, before pervert gynecologists existed, the people had to make do with pervert priests. This one, besides being guilty of perversion, exploitation and fraud, is surely a heretic of a very high order, practicing witchcraft - even if insincerely, and only to serve his perversity. In those days many people were burned at the stake for less.
Both these paintings could be considered part of the tradition of genre painting, even if they depict events from popular stories rather than ordinary day-to-day life without any particular narrative content.
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