MORE ABOUT MY FATHER: Part 2

Fast forwarding, skipping over Sacha's South American and other ventures because I want to focus on the more off-beat things his restless imagination drove him to undertake. Come to think of it, everything he undertook was off the beaten track. 

Here he is in Florence - I don't know who took the above photo but it strikingly captures him in inward-turned, isolated mood, oblivious to his surroundings. Whatever the triggers which could set off his recurrent bouts of melancholy, Sacha's response was always to leave, move, travel far away and begin something new. In this instance New York was the place he left and the something new was an idea he conceived - perhaps on the way from one city to the next - for which a special house in special surroundings was required. Once an idea had taken root in my father's mind it began growing instantly, spreading antennae in all directions and locating with extraordinary serendipity all the elements needed for its realisation. Thus he found the special house in the special surroundings: it was called Villa Ulivi, within walking distance of the heart of Florence - you could see the Duomo from the rooftop terrace. 

How Sacha came to discover this magnificent fifteenth century residence I do not know but he did, and it happened to be for rent, and so he rented it for several months. Apart from a photo of my recently resurrected painting (see January 20, 2010) of cypress trees in the garden, the only picture I can find of the villa is the black and white snapshot below. Yesterday, on the off-chance, I googled Villa Ulivi and...what do you know?...the Villa is alive and well and has become a hotel (I borrowed the colour picture of the house from their website). A very nice hotel apparently but I don't recognise the current interior decoration. When Sacha moved in, and later on all our family, there was very little furniture, only a few beautiful, darkly austere Renaissance antiques.

 

Sacha named his project The House of Contrasts. Here's a summary, taken from a description written after the event: 

It was proposed that a demonstration of positive and negative stereotyped views about each other held by two cultures, American and European, presented in dramatic fashion and in uninterrupted succession, could produce an enlightening psychological shock. This shock would help to crystallize one's own manner of seeing and perhaps also come a step closer to the goal: a kinder and more tolerant understanding of one person, or one nation, towards another.


The experiment was tested on groups of American college students on a cultural tour of Italy. A Florentine villa was the setting for the demonstration and the script, narration, music and graphic presentation was prepared by voluntary collaboration between American and Europeans. The stereotype views were shown in allegorical fashion, inspired by Dante: the negative clichés were 'Inferno' while the positive ones were 'Contrastland'. The reactions, opinions and criticisms of each group of students who visited the House of Contrasts were tape-recorded to serve as valuable records for further exploration of this theme. 

I was in New York pursuing my art education when my father's idea and Villa Ulivi got together and the House of Contrasts began to take shape. At first I resisted his urging me to come and work on the visual presentation - I felt it would distract me from my own path. But Sacha's power of persuasion was hard to resist, especially when it offered such an intriguing situation in such tempting surroundings.

I'd better continue this in another post, otherwise I'm just going to be at this computer all night. Part 3 coming up next - is anyone still here? 

MORE

ANOTHER EXTRAORDINARY CYBER MIRACLE

I painted the above landscape in Florence a long long time ago, still a student, searching for my own 'voice' in art (I'm still searching). With all the moving from one country to another this painting, which I loved, was lost. 

Andrei Korliakov leaves a comment on my Blaugustine blog in French  below my Beautiful Blank Slate post of January 9th. 

I get in touch with Monsieur Korliakov, a Russian historian living in Paris.
I am amazed, dazed, enchanted and enthused when he writes back, attaching the above photo, saying he found the painting a few years ago in a Paris flea market.
It was signed so he looked my name up on the internet.

The coincidence - if it's still possible to call such entrancing synchronicities coincidence - doesn't stop there: the most traumatic and significant period of my father's life was his emigration from Russia to Paris during the chaotic events of the 1920s. Andrei Korliakov's research (and his interesting website) is concerned with Russian emigration from 1917 to 1947. 

How do these threads in the vast tangled web of human history end up linking together?
My Russian émigré father.
My father rents the Villa Ulivi in Florence for a project he's working on.
I paint the cypress trees in the Villa's fabulous garden, excited by everything I see.
Time goes by. The painting is lost.
Much much much more time goes by.
A Russian historian is browsing the marché au puces at the Porte de Vanves in Paris.
He picks up a painting he likes and notices the signature, a Russian name.
He buys the painting. Time goes by.
He looks up my website, contacts me on my blog, Blaugustine.
The lost painting is found.


Andrei invites me to visit him the next time I am in Paris. You can be sure that I will do so at the earliest possible opportunity!

MORE