dublinka

Anyone who enjoys Apollinaire, will love reading Apollinaire on art, a selection of his essays and reviews, translated from the French by Susan Sulieman and spanning the years 1902-1918. I've been reading it on and off for a while now, and it has given me a wonderful insight into the formulation of the aesthetic sensibility, which later give us so many wonderful poems. Apollinaire touches presciently on numerous interesting characters. Picasso, Matisse, Braque, are just the tip of a very large iceberg. Nearly every salon show in Paris (Salon of Women painters, Salon des Indépendents, the humorists' salons etc)comes under his scrutiny. He also talks about generally about the artworld, it's denizens, and the various movements and submovements that raged in that era. The Theft of the Mona Lisa, futurism and the criticism of poets are other examples of topics. Of the later poets who wrote art criticism, Apollinaire states "They have not made up their minds to admire everything new. They are trying to distinguish the good from the bad so that energies liberated by the good should not be lost". In doing so, Apollinaire was defending the rights of poets, to express opinions on art, in both technical and wider matters. This cheered me up a little, as of late I've grown tired of hearing poets come on Late Review style shows, stumbling like embarassed schoolchildren, when it comes to a review of something outside of theatre, television or poetry. Afraid to say what they think.