Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Elegy for a Dead Admiral


by Jack Vettriano

Where in the world did he get that title? Would there be an ELEGY for an alive Admiral? I love this picture but the title seems to take away from it. Anyone got a clue why JV came up with this title? What do you think it should be called?

I guess the woman in red is the Admirals widow? I wonder if she is being served from a special bottle of wine they bought on their honeymoon. Maybe they were saving it for some special anniversary. Could she be drinking and remembering her brave slain husband as the violins play "their"song? Could it be that that is what he wanted? It was all he wanted. No funeral. No stuffy words in his elegy. He asked that it just be the woman, the wine, and the music he loved remembering him on the beach where they first met....

I love art. A painting can launch a dozen different epic stories with some imagination. My parents both have an artistic flair. Sadly they were raised in a climate that looked on art as impractical and unimportant. The thinkers of this time built churches with stark white walls, bare unimaginative sanctuaries and institutional looking facades. To this generation, who did so many wonderful things, art was an indulgence, an extra, a societal trinket... But is it? As A child I remember my mother calling her painting class a " guilty pleasure." "Guilty of what?" I wondered but never asked.

The spiritual, intellectual part of a soul needs to be fed beauty and wonder to thrive. Creativity is a gift that must be nourished and molded. Art in it's simplest form is an expression, an attempt to communicate through images more than mere words can express. I hope art will not be left out of our churches in the future. As we navigate this post modern, and some argue post-Christian, era we must use all the forms of expression given us by God to communicate His message. We must not limit God to the small spectrum we have limited to religion. We must let his message and his transformation of our lives shine through our actions, our art, our music, our literature, our poetry and our architecture. We must be His expression!



Anyone want to share this soap box? :) Go find art in your world today! Blessings!



3 comments:

Clarissa said...

"Overdressed"

Beaner said...

Maybe she finally gets to spend "his" money!! ;)

I love art & I have 2 beautiful framed posters from an artist named Michael Parkes. He does a LOT of repetition in his works - same colors, same themes or characters & he does a lot of human form stuff too (which means a lot of nudity) but the two pieces I have do not contain nudity (I don't mind artistic nudity, but I'm not hanging it on my wall!) I, too, love to try to figure out what he's trying to say with his work - what is the message & what does that message mean to me? It reminds me of sunsets - my children & I always comment on how God painted a beautiful sunset tonight or how much God must love to paint. Sometimes I think if a person painted a sunset & gave it to me I would be so excited & thankful, so I try to be thankful of all the beauty (all the art) that God has placed in this world & then THANK HIM for it.

Anonymous said...

Or maybe it is his daughter being served from the bottle that he and his late wife had out aside and never opened. He requested she remember him simply at low tide and then go on with her life. The violins are playing the sad sea song he had sung to her all his life. The wind is stealing their notes from her ears as she quietly cries tears in to her lap. She feels alone.