Paciurea's Chimeras (Dimitrie Paciurea) Paciurea's Chimeras (Dimitrie Paciurea)

Paciurea's Chimeras (Dimitrie Paciurea‪)‬

Apollo 2003, Oct, 158, 500

Apollo
    • 2,99 €
    • 2,99 €

Publisher Description

Striking her wings with the dragon tail, as she leaps and flies, and spits fire from her nostrils, comes the green-eyed chimera, wheeling, yelping..."I incite to perilous voyages and great enterprises. With my paws I have chiselled architectural wonders...I look for new scents, larger flowers, untried pleasures. If anywhere I catch sight of a man contented and wise in spirit, I fall upon him and strangle him."(1) A malevolent, pleasure-seeking, she-creature, Gustave Flaubert's chimera is also endowed with the divine spark of creativity. This elevates her above the beast in the Iliad: 'a foaming monster the Khimaira/of ghastly and inhuman origin/her forepart leonish, her tail a snake's/ a she goat in between. This thing exhaled/in jets a rolling fire/'. (2) Homer's graphic description provided the ekphrasis for subsequent variations oil the theme, fixing the representation of the chimera in art historical iconography. Popular in antiquity, its hybrid specificity of 'a lion with a goat's head in the middle of its back and tail ending in a snake's head' was consistently maintained. (3) However, it was Flaubert's creature that captured the imagination of the Symbolists, who adopted her in their pantheon of beasts, rendering The Temptation of St. Antony obligatory reading after his death in 1880. (4) The Chimera became a ubiquitous presence, and we even find her making a comical guest appearance in Huysmans's Against Nature as a coloured terracotta toy brought to life by a female ventriloquist for the entertainment of her lover, Des Esseintes: 'the marvellous dialogue of the Chimera and the Sphinx, spoken in deep guttural voices, now raucous, now piercingly clear, like voices from another world. "Here Chimera, stop!" "No, that I will never do!" and then the incantatory lines: "I seek new perfumes, larger blossoms, pleasures still untested". (5)

GENRE
Arts & Entertainment
RELEASED
2003
1 October
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
19
Pages
PUBLISHER
Apollo Magazine Ltd.
SIZE
173.9
KB

More Books by Apollo

Acquisitions 2004-2006: the First Priority of the National Trust's Acquisitions Policy is the Return to Its Houses of Works of Art and Furnishings Historically Associated with Them. There have been Some Notable Triumphs in the Past Two Years, Described by Christopher Rowell, Alastair Laing and James Rothwell in This Selection of Recent Gifts and Purchases. Acquisitions 2004-2006: the First Priority of the National Trust's Acquisitions Policy is the Return to Its Houses of Works of Art and Furnishings Historically Associated with Them. There have been Some Notable Triumphs in the Past Two Years, Described by Christopher Rowell, Alastair Laing and James Rothwell in This Selection of Recent Gifts and Purchases.
Acquisitions 2004-2006: the First Priority of the National Trust's Acquisitions Policy is the Return to Its Houses of Works of Art and Furnishings Historically Associated with Them. There have been Some Notable Triumphs in the Past Two Years, Described by Christopher Rowell, Alastair Laing and James Rothwell in This Selection of Recent Gifts and Purchases.
2006
Where Do We Come from? Where are We Going? the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has Reopened After a Major Renovation and Expansion of Its Collections. Its Chief Curator, Eleanor Jones Harvey, Presents a Selection of Its New Acquisitions, All Designed to Further One of the Museum's Purposes: To Explore the Origins of American Culture--and to Suggest Where It is Heading (New MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS) Where Do We Come from? Where are We Going? the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has Reopened After a Major Renovation and Expansion of Its Collections. Its Chief Curator, Eleanor Jones Harvey, Presents a Selection of Its New Acquisitions, All Designed to Further One of the Museum's Purposes: To Explore the Origins of American Culture--and to Suggest Where It is Heading (New MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS)
Where Do We Come from? Where are We Going? the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has Reopened After a Major Renovation and Expansion of Its Collections. Its Chief Curator, Eleanor Jones Harvey, Presents a Selection of Its New Acquisitions, All Designed to Further One of the Museum's Purposes: To Explore the Origins of American Culture--and to Suggest Where It is Heading (New MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS)
2006
Britain and the Bauhaus: Alan Powers Challenges the View That the Reception of the Bauhaus in 1930S Britain Went Little Futher Than Providing Temporary Shelter for Some of Its Teachers. Common Roots with the Bauhaus in the Arts and Crafts Movement Helps to Explain a Lively British Interest in the School's Ideals, Among Not Only Architects But Also Designers--and Even Puppeteers (Essay) Britain and the Bauhaus: Alan Powers Challenges the View That the Reception of the Bauhaus in 1930S Britain Went Little Futher Than Providing Temporary Shelter for Some of Its Teachers. Common Roots with the Bauhaus in the Arts and Crafts Movement Helps to Explain a Lively British Interest in the School's Ideals, Among Not Only Architects But Also Designers--and Even Puppeteers (Essay)
Britain and the Bauhaus: Alan Powers Challenges the View That the Reception of the Bauhaus in 1930S Britain Went Little Futher Than Providing Temporary Shelter for Some of Its Teachers. Common Roots with the Bauhaus in the Arts and Crafts Movement Helps to Explain a Lively British Interest in the School's Ideals, Among Not Only Architects But Also Designers--and Even Puppeteers (Essay)
2006
Modern British Painting: After Decades in Which Twentieth-Century British Art was Seriously Undervalued, Prices for Paintings are Finally Beginning to Reflect the Quality of the Works. Why has It Taken So Long?(Collector's Focus) Modern British Painting: After Decades in Which Twentieth-Century British Art was Seriously Undervalued, Prices for Paintings are Finally Beginning to Reflect the Quality of the Works. Why has It Taken So Long?(Collector's Focus)
Modern British Painting: After Decades in Which Twentieth-Century British Art was Seriously Undervalued, Prices for Paintings are Finally Beginning to Reflect the Quality of the Works. Why has It Taken So Long?(Collector's Focus)
2004
Interwar Photography at the V&A: Modernism and More: The V&a's 'Modernism' Exhibition Demonstrates the Centrality of Photography to the Style. But, As Kate Best and Sophie Leighton Discuss, The Museum's Own Collection Reveals That Modernism was Just One Strand in Photographic Culture Between the Wars (Essay) Interwar Photography at the V&A: Modernism and More: The V&a's 'Modernism' Exhibition Demonstrates the Centrality of Photography to the Style. But, As Kate Best and Sophie Leighton Discuss, The Museum's Own Collection Reveals That Modernism was Just One Strand in Photographic Culture Between the Wars (Essay)
Interwar Photography at the V&A: Modernism and More: The V&a's 'Modernism' Exhibition Demonstrates the Centrality of Photography to the Style. But, As Kate Best and Sophie Leighton Discuss, The Museum's Own Collection Reveals That Modernism was Just One Strand in Photographic Culture Between the Wars (Essay)
2006
Arts and Crafts in London and Los Angeles: Two Ambitious Exhibitions Make Clear the Continuing Relevance of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Writes Peyton Skipwith, But the V&a's Show is a Severe Disappointment (Victoria and Albert Museum) Arts and Crafts in London and Los Angeles: Two Ambitious Exhibitions Make Clear the Continuing Relevance of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Writes Peyton Skipwith, But the V&a's Show is a Severe Disappointment (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Arts and Crafts in London and Los Angeles: Two Ambitious Exhibitions Make Clear the Continuing Relevance of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Writes Peyton Skipwith, But the V&a's Show is a Severe Disappointment (Victoria and Albert Museum)
2005