PÅ LIVETS TRASSLIGA BASTMATTA: Matisse

fredag 22 juli 2016

Katter i konsten

Henri Matisse med sin katt

Katten med röd fisk

Marguerite med svart katt, 1910

Flicka på röd soffa med katt. 1938

Katt klipp

måndag 16 november 2015

The Red Room

32. Läs en novell med en färg i titeln

The Red Room, av H. G. Wells

Harmony in Red (The Red Room) , 1908

Varken Wells eller spökhistorier hör till mina favoriter, ändå läste jag tappert på — och behållningen blev mina assocciationer.

I Wells novell är det, som så ofta i spökhistorier, en ung man som vill visa sig på styva linan, och därför bestämmer sig för att sova i det hemsökta röda rummet. Han hittats nästa morgon blodig och medvetslös efter att ha slagits med spöken under natten.

"Very well," I answered, shortly, "and which way do I go?"

"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, nodding his head on his shoulder at the door, "until you come to a spiral staircase; and on the second landing is a door covered with green baize. Go through that, and down the long corridor to the end, and the Red Room is on your left up the steps."

Wells beskrivning av slottet Lorraine Castle är tämligen fantasilöst — behållningen var de minnen den väckte, från ett liknande slott, där jag en gång gick vilse.

Strindberg kom ju på titeln 15 år innan Wells skrev sin novell 1894 , man kan ju undra om han då hade läst Strindbergs roman. Men ännu tidigare var man i Washington DC, där inredde man ett rött rum mellan 1810 och 1830 i Vita huset. Matisse målade sitt röda rum först 1908, och Helga Felleisen målade sin tavla 2000 — den verkar onekligen en aning matissinspirerad.

The Red Room or The Empty Chair, 2000

Helga Butzer Felleisen

Men allra först var Charlotte Brontë, när hon skrev "Jane Eyre" 1847 — minns ni hur Jane blir inlåst i röda rummet, som straff för att hon dristat sig till att läsa en bok i husets bibliotek?

The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.