Mine eyes on thine

Today's planned topic was supposed to be men in Pre-Raphaelite art. However, a very perfunctory search of Art Magick's website showed me that this was far too ambitious a topic for just one post. Instead, by searching out pictures of men and women in art, I discovered a thematic set of rules for men, on the topic of gazing and the opposite sex.

Rule #1: If you are staring at a woman, or nuzzling her devotedly, she should be demurely gazing away. This is the sign of a true and wonderful lady.

Rule #2: If a woman locks eyes securely with you, it means she either is a sorceress, or you are both under a spell. Use extreme caution.
Rule #3: If you feel like someone is gazing at you, or if a pretty young boy is looking at you, it could mean that a modest and good woman is staring at you secretly or in disguise. This is the only way for a woman of good standing to gaze openly upon her object of interest.

The images shown above are merely the best examples...after searching Art Magick, there are countless more examples of these "rules" of gazing.

These rules of gazing between the sexes have been brought to you by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its followers.

The Dark Side of Victorian Hair

A woman's hair in Victorian times could be a symbol of warm sexuality, beauty, and security. Lovers would ask for a lock of their beloved's hair, and after a loved one would die, hair ornaments would be created. Whole poems were written devoted to the "hair tent"...the name for when a man would nestle on his beloved's breast and she would let her hair hang down all around him like a safe refuge. However, like the mixed Victorian sentiment toward womanhood in general, a woman's hair could also be considered a dark and evil thing.

A woman's hair could possibly be a wild and evil thing in several ways...

• A source of power for a sorceress, or a source to lose power in womanhood
  
• Snake-like and poisonous
• A web to entangle
  
• An instrument with which to strangle

In Victorian fiction, poetry, and art, all four of these motifs are repeated numerous times. In Rossetti's composition, "Jenny," the title character sells her hair, and is left with her virtue, health, and wealth thereby diminished. In numerous poems and artworks, a woman's hair is described and pictured as snake-like, either moving against the will of the individual, or doing her evil bidding. Hair is also seen as a web, to entangle men in, or to entangle herself. Consider The Lady of Shalott by Holman-Hunt. In a wonderful article on hair in Victorian art, it is said "Hunt casts her as either frenziedly weaving her web or struggling to be free of the entwining and ensnaring threads. She becomes simultaneously the skillful weaver and the desperate slave who has lost control of her web."

However, I think my favorite evil connotation for hair (if one can really use the word "favorite" in regard to something like this?) is the motif of a woman's hair as an instrument for strangling. Waterhouse's La Belle Dame Sans Merci (shown at top) uses her hair as a noose to pull the knight to his death, while the famed poem Porphyria's Lover tells of a man strangling his beloved with her own yellow hair.

And then there is also the persistent story that when Rossetti had Lizzie Siddal's grave exhumed to retrieve his poems, her hair had continued growing until it filled the entire coffin. The morbidity and simultaneous beauty and macabre of such an image is a perfect example of the Victorian man's mixed opinions on a woman's hair, and her body. Recently, in my "research" on Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite hair, I came across a poem that was just too delicious to not share. The idea of a beloved calling from beyond the grave, and the mixed loving and morbid tone remind me much of the story of Siddal's grave, and the attitude of Victorian men.

I Love My Love
by Helen Adam

In the dark of the moon the hair rules.
--Robert Duncan

There was a man who married a maid. She laughed as he led her home.
The living fleece of her long bright hair she combed with a golden comb.
He led her home through his barley fields where the saffron poppies grew.
She combed, and whispered, "I love my love." Her voice like a plaintive coo.
Ha! Ha!
Her voice like a plaintive coo.

He lived alone with his chosen bride, at first their life was sweet.
Sweet was the touch of her playful hair binding his hands and feet.
When first she murmured adoring words her words did not appall.
"I love my love with a capital A. To my love I give my All.
Ah, Ha!
To my love I give my All."

She circled him with the secret web she wove as her strong hair grew.
Like a golden spider she wove and sang, "My love is tender and true."
She combed her hair with a golden comb and shckled him to a tree.
She shackled him close to the Tree of Life. "My love I'll never set free.
No, No.
My love I'll never set free."

Whenever he broke her golden bonds he was held with bonds of gold.
"Oh! cannot a man escape from love, from Love's hot smothering hold?"
He roared with fury. He broke her bonds. He ran in the light of the sun.
Her soft hair rippled and trapped his feet, as fast as his feet could run,
Ha! Ha!
As fast as his feet could run.

He dug a grave, and he dug it wide. He strangled her in her sleep.
He strangled his love with a strand of hair, and then he buried her deep.
He buried her deep when the sun was hid by a purple thunder cloud.
Her helpless hair sprawled over the corpse in a pale resplendent shroud.
Ha! Ha!
A pale resplendent shroud.

Morning and night of thunder rain, and then it came to pass
That the hair sprang up through the earth of the grave, and it grew like golden grass.
It grew and glittered along her grave alive in the light of the sun.
Every hair had a plaintive voice, the voice of his lovely one.

"I love my love with a capital T. My love is Tender and True.
I'll love my love in the barley fields when the thunder cloud is blue.
My body crumbles beneath the ground but the hairs of my head will grow.
I'll love my love with the hairs of my head. I'll never, never let go.
Ha! Ha!
I'll never, never let go."

The hair sang soft, and the hair sang high, singing of loves that drown,
Till he took his scythe by the light of the moon, and he scythed that singing hair down.
Every hair laughed a liting laugh, and shrilled as his scythe swept through.
"I love my love with a capital T. My love is Tender and True.
Ha! Ha!
Tender, Tender, and True."

All through the night he wept and prayed, but before the first bird woke
Around the house in the barley fields blew the hair like billowing smoke.
Her hair blew over the barley fields where the slothfull poppies gape.
All day long all its voices cooed, "My love can never escape,
No, No!
My love can never escape."

"Be still, be still, you devilish hair. Glide back to the grave and sleep.
Glide back to the grave and wrap her bones down where I buried her deep.
I am the man who escaped from love, though love was my fate and doom.
Can no man ever escape from love who breaks from a woman's womb?"

Over his house, when the sun stood high, her hair was a dazzling storm,
Rolling, lashing o'er walls and roof, heavy, and soft, and warm.
It thumped on the roof, it hissed and glowed over every window pane.
The smell of the hair was in the house. It smelled like a lion's mane,
Ha! Ha!
It smelled like a lion's mane.

Three times round the bed of their love, and his heart lurched with despair.
In through the keyhole, elvish bright, came creeping a single hair.
Softly, softly, it stroked his lips, on his eyelids traced a sign.
"I love my love with a capital Z. I mark him Zero and mine.
Ha! Ha!
I mark him Zero and mine."

The hair rushed in. He struggled and tore, but wherever he tore a tress,
"I love my love with a capital Z," sang the hair of the sorceress.
It swarmed upon him, it swaddled him fast, it muffled his every groan.
Like a golden monster it seized his flesh, and then it sought the bone,
Ha! Ha!
And then it sought the bone.

It smothered his flesh and sought the bones. Until his bones were bare
There was no sound but the joyful hiss of the sweet insatiable hair.
"I love my love," it laughed as it ran back to the grave, its home.
Then the living fleece of her long bright hair, she combed with a golden comb.

1958

Pre-Raphaelite Tresses

Why were the Pre-Raphaelites so fascinated with a woman's hair? The answer seems obvious....a woman's hair has been considered "her glory" since Biblical days and before. However, further information on the role of a woman's hair in Victorian times gives even more insight into why the hair was such a romantic and erotic image in Pre-Raphaelite art. In a biography of Fannie Cornforth, author Kristy Walker says "Loose hair was seen rarely in Victorian society and had two connotations. A child could wear her hair down, but as soon as she aspired to be a woman, or more essentially a 'lady' her hair was strictly pinned up. To be seen loose-haired was a pleasure reserved for her husband, in the bedroom. It's not a coincidence that the act of pinning up hair is called 'dressing' hair..." This certainly explains the prevalence of Rossetti paintings of a woman at her toilet, combing or unbinding her hair, with a faraway look in her eyes, like the artwork of Fannie Cornforth above.

Author Anne Hollander in her book Seeing through Clothes says "More than at any other time [Pre-Raphaelite] women's hair was important in the nineteenth century...with immediately erotic overtones and a strong connection with real life. Thick and abundant female hair safely conveyed a vivid sexual message in an atmosphere of extreme prudery....Pre-Raphaelite hair, like the Pre-Raphaelite face and body, was one of the truly original images invented by nineteenth-century art. The kinky, thick stuff weights the head and shades the face, as it is also heatedly described as doing in various kinds of Romantic literature. Lines such as Swinburne's "Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,/Our Lady of Pain" and many more in the same vein parallel the emotional and suggestive--though not so erotic--use of drapery in art."

Often times, however, I've wondered...why is Pre-Raphaelite hair so often today called "Pre-Raphaelite curls"...especially when only one of the Stunners had naturally kinky curly hair (Jane Morris)? The term today seems to have come to mean 'curly spiralled hair in a nimbus around the head,' but more often in PR art, the hair when unbound was very softly waved from the plaits the women kept it in all day.
A photo of Fannie Cornforth combing her incredible long Pre-Raphaelite locks.

So at what point did the term "Pre-Raphaelite curls" come into use? My suspicion is that, like so many modern expressions, it was created by commercialism in order to promote a style that could be only successfully achieved through assistance (i.e. paying for someone to style your hair that way), with a name that automatically conjured up romance and medievalism. In actuality, to achieve "Pre-Raphaelite hair" all one must do is braid one's hair when half dry, and let it dry before taking it down. That is, after all, what the original Pre-Raphaelite woman would do. Shhh...the commercial marketing specialists wouldn't want you to know that!

Yes, I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist there. Either that or cynical. I swear I'm neither. I just think too much.
There IS another solution, however, if your hair tends to not hold a wave when you try the braiding method. Thanks to modern technology, there's a tool called the triple barrel curling iron, a strange torture-device-looking contraption. This device truly works, however, giving Pre-Raphaelite waves to almost anyone who can start with a straight or semi-straight texture as a basis.
Using a triple barrel curling iron is pretty foolproof...one just uses it like a crimping iron, down the length of a section of hair. It does, however, take time to "crimp" the entire hair...my mid-back length hair took about 2 hours.

The bottom line is this...a woman's hair was once a sexual symbol only allowed to be shown to one's "husband" to whom one "belonged." We've advanced far beyond this attitude, but a woman's hair can still be considered extremely sexual. What better way to flaunt how far we've come than to show off your Pre-Raphaelite locks for all the world to see?

Stay tuned Monday for a post about the dark side of Pre-Raphaelite hair!

The Beauty of the Undone

I'm currently reading William Morris and Red House. Today's blog features a picture found in the book. The image is of the doors to the settle in the entry way of Red House, painted by William Morris. Notice anything? It's not finished. William Morris most likely began painting the settle doors when he and his family first moved into Red House. I don't know the history of the settle from that point on, but I'm guessing it was probably moved with the family. The point is....William Morris most likely lived with this settle for the rest of his life, never finishing the figures on the doors.

I have always thought of William Morris as a figure of near superhuman voraciousness for lifelong learning. Famously, a doctor at his bedside diagnosed his cause of death as "simply being William Morris and having done more work than most ten men." His reputation is well-deserved, and I don't feel it is lessened at all by learning a lesson from the settle doors: even the greatest of artists leaves work undone.

I love to write and do art, yet I am often annoyed at myself for leaving so many projects half-finished. Sometimes I tend to get down on myself for this, and feel like I could never successfully leave a mark in any expressive field. At times like this, it is comforting to know that William Morris, a man of such accomplishments, also left things unfinished and lived with his unfinished projects and kept them around, moving ahead to accomplish so much.

Music of the Spheres, Continued

Continuing yesterday's theme of Pre-Raphaelites and music, I wanted to post about two incredible musicians who are very reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelites both in look and musical mood.

First is Laurie Ann Haus, a singer with stunning Waterhouse-like looks who is the lead singer for the group Todesbonden. Laurie has a beautiful soprano voice that lends itself to many different musical explorations.


Second is Ariel Tebben of Ariel Rose Music, a vocalist and musician whose latest album, 'Verticordia,' was directly inspired by Pre-Raphaelite music.

The Music of the Spheres

Today's topic is basically just an excuse to be able to post a quote I read that made me laugh. But the theme is...Pre-Raphaelites and music. The two seem to go hand in hand, whether we are speaking of the thematic use of instruments in Pre-Raphaelite art (see above), or the inspiration Pre-Raphaelite art can have for modern musicians.

ArtMagick is a wonderful source for looking up themes in Pre-Raphaelite art. Their theme pages can be used to look up all artworks with redheads, all artworks with harpists, etc. Thanks to them for making it easy to create the above collage of images.

Polar opposites in decorating taste, as already mentioned, Rossetti and William Morris appear to have been polar opposites in musical taste as well. William Morris had a fine appreciation for music.

"Morris had sung plain-chant at Oxford and was enthusiastic about English carols, then emerging from obscurity; in 1860 his version of 'French Noel' for four parts was published in a collection of Ancient Christmas Carols. The previous October, his birthday present to Janey was a two-volume edition of Popular Music of the Olden Time, containing tunes like Greensleeves." --William Morris and Red House

Rossetti on the other hand...

"[Rossetti] was singularly devoid of any musical taste, however. His house was decorated everywhere with curious old and esoteric musical instruments, but they were solely decorative, and Mr. Dunn never heard a note of music in it. Rossetti once went to hear a performance of "The Messiah" at the Crystal Palace when, he said, it seemed to him that everybody got up and shouted at him as loudly as possible! At another time he saw a performance of "Fidelio." The next morning he could give Mr. Dunn no clear idea of what it was all about. The only notion he had of it was that of a man who was taken out of prison, where he had been for a couple of days without food, and who, when a loaf of bread was given him, instead of eating it like any starving man would do, burst out into a long solo over it lasting for ten minutes--which he thought was obviously absurd!" --Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and His Circle by Henry Treffry Dunn.

Is it strange that both of these quotes, while completely opposing in taste, both make me like the individual more?

Burne-Jones and the Colors of the Week

I recently finished the excellent book The Pre-Raphaelites at Home. One delightful thing about this book is that there were so many little tidbits of information scattered throughout. One of my favorite tidbits was the fact that Edward Burne-Jones saw the days of the week as different colors. I thought "oh why not" and decided to try for a week wearing the colors on their designated days.

Burne-Jones' colors are as follows (my pictures above start with Monday):

• Sunday: Gold
• Monday: Yellow
• Tuesday: Red
• Wednesday: Blue
• Thursday: Amethyst
• Friday: Sapphire
• Saturday: "Wet...ever since I was tiny -- but I don't know why"

The "wet" comment especially amuses me...I could just see a child Ned getting his bath every Saturday, and that sticking with him (total theorizing on my part).

What I learned from wearing the colors? Well, first, I apparently have nothing yellow in my entire closet. Second, where's the green? I love green, and with the Pre-Raphaelite affection for the outdoors, I'm really surprised that he didn't see a day as green.