'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë (chapter 16 - 21)

Mr. Lintion’s loss was too painful for him, as he had no orphan and had to write his estate to his daughter. Grief and his hate to Heathcliff made the man a complete hermit: he spent time sitting in his room; he refused from going anywhere as it was possible to meet his enemy. But Edgar couldn’t be in mourning, as that time Cathy, his daughter, became a light in his life.

   Besides, Edgar had another object: as his sister had died and left the son, she asked in her letter to take care about him and the man couldn’t refuse. Cathy was so happy to see her cousin that spent every minute with him. But there happiness wasn’t so long, as known that his son in the Grange, Heathcliff wanted to return him back to Wuthering Heights and nobody could interfere. Cathy was told that Linton went to his father in London. 

   The girl was sixteen, but she didn’t go out of the gate; Mr. Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights didn’t exist for her. One morning Miss Cathy with Helen went for a walk, she wanted to see the nests of the grouse and on her way Mr. Heathcliff met her; he asked them to go to the Heights. The man had only one aim of encouraging the girl to go with him: the young people could fall in love and get married.

   Having come to the estate and seen Hindley, the girl had only one desire to come there every day and sometimes bring her father. Heathcliff, knowing his enemy’s hate and attitude to such a situation, convinced the girl not to tell her father anything. However, the next day the truth came out. Catherine wanted to hear good reasons for every restraint, that’s why Edgar had to tell her almost the whole life story. However, the young lady found the way out and began to write letters to her cousin. Nobody noticed that, except Helen, who burned all letters, received from Heathcliff’s son. Besides, she told Edgar about that and he wrote to Linton that neither he nor Catherine could correspond with each other.  

Film Review

'Frida' (2002)

Director: Julie Taymor

Cast: Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo, Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera, Geoffrey Rush as Leon Trotsky, Mía Maestro as Cristina Kahlo, Edward Norton as Nelson Rockefeller, Roger Rees as Guillermo Kahlo, Patricia Reyes Spíndola as Matilde Kahlo.

Synopsis: There were two great accidents in her density: that bus, after which her life was turned into a sheer torment, and the husband, being unfaithful to her in spite of everything. Of course, failures and pain overshadowed her life, but they not so much destroyed the faith in art, as made it indestructible.

Review: Frida (Salma Hayek) was a Mexican painter; however, not all at once she came to that profession. At the age of 18 she was seriously injured in the accident, after which the young woman spent in bed for a year. During that period Frida began to draw, mainly self-portraits, describing her feelings and life. Her vocation threw her and the artist and Communist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) together, who was unfaithful to her, but she loved him so much that forgave everything. But after he slept with her sister (Mía Maestro), they parted and Frida went to Paris, which became a sensation of the thematic exhibition of the Mexican art. A few years later, the woman’s health became much worse; she couldn't walk, but continued painting. And after her first exhibition in Mexico was held, she died of pneumonia.

The film contains several problems, the main one of which is the role of art in the human life, as it evoked the main character to life, prompted her to defend their ideals. The portraits revealed to us the artist’s inner world: the inward conflicts, emotions, fears, disappointments, turbulent relationships. Only by means of the paintings and the portraits she was able to express loneliness and pain, which could not be put into words.

Separately I’d like to emphasize the actors’ performances, as the success of the documentary film depends on their acting skills. Therefore, I must say that Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina coped with this task perfectly. Everything - their speech, expressions, and the slightest movements - showed how the actors got into their characters’ densities. And I really like Salma Hayek’ acting, I have seen movies with her participation, but "Frida" became her masterpiece. In addition, costumes played not the less important role. In the picture there was a combination of colours, which at first sight seems to be impossible: an aggressive, in some moments shocking, but very harmonious.

After watching, on the one hand, I still have some unpleasant aftertaste, emptiness - I'm impressed with the main character’s tragic life. But on the other hand, the painter cannot not to evoke a feeling of respect and admiration. However, I think the main moment in the documentary film (apart from the life of the main character) plays the director’s ability to present this biography. "Frida" is a perfect combination of a dramatic life story and irreproachable work of Julie Taymor, and as a result it is impossible to put my admiration into words.

'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë (chapter 8 - 15)

After Mrs. Earnshaw’s death her husband was desperate, but he neither prayed nor cried, he only found comfort in card games. Heathcliff became possessed: he watched for Hindley’s degradation with pleasure and wished revenge; he changed greatly: acquired a slouching gait, ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition became manic unsociability, and he received pleasure, exciting the aversion of his acquaintance. Cathy, from the opposite, became a haughty, headstrong creature. 

   Once when Mr. Hindley was absent, Catherine received the guests, Isabella and Edgar Linton. The last one’s aim of coming was proposal, which Miss Cathy accepted. There was only one problem: the young lady loved Heathcliff, but to married him meant to degrade. After that nobody saw the young man.

Year later Catherine became Mrs. Linton and moved to Thrushcross Grange. Everybody indulged her, as Edgar was afraid of ruffling her humor. However, everything changed with a Heathcliff’s appearance. The man lived in Wuthering Heights, he was its owner that time, as Mr. Hindley lost all his money in card games and to return them he pledged the estate, but lost it either. He became a frequent guest in the Grange, as Isabella Linton showed sympathy toward a new acquaintance. That became the pretence of bitter enemies' fight, the eyewitness of which was Catherine and who then had no breath for speaking, she stretched herself out stiff, turned up her eyes, her cheeks became blanched and livid. She had a brain fever, besides, the lady was pregnant and that make the situation more complicated. Every time when she saw Heathcliff (he still came to see his friend and Isabella), she began raving. At the same time Edgar tried to put his sister off flirting with that man or he would broke all bonds of between herself and him. That conversation, Cathy’s mortal state didn’t influence the young lady, as she ran off with Heathcliff. 

   That time Mrs. Linton lost her mind and several days later, when nobody closed their eyes, she gave birth to their daughter, Catherine Linton, and not coming to her sense she died. 

Meanwhile, Mrs. Heathcliff knew better her husband and understood that he was like the evil. He bit her only for her presence, she couldn’t bear that no more and a year later ran away in London. There Isabella gave birth to Hindly, their son; ten years later the woman died. The boy moved to Thrushcross Grange to his uncle, but Heathcliff had another plan about his son.

Rendering 1: 'A deep look at Fischl's painting process'

The article ‘A deep look at Fischl’s painting process’ was published by Kenneth Baker in San Francisco Chronicle on January 30, 2013. It reports about Fischl’s art and his painting process.

   Speaking of his paintings, it’s necessary to note that "The Pictures Generation" at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is the show that was organized by the Met's photography department, which might have considered Fischl too much a painter. It’s important to note that at the same time it is an anxiety over the collapse of conventions and institutions, the blurring of gender and other pegs of identity and opportunism supplanting idealism, all roiled by tidal waves of mediated images.

   Analyzing the situation, it’s necessary to emphasize that the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia originated the Fischl show, where superficial affinities between Fischl's art and Bay Area Figurative painting may explain its presentation.  And giving appraisal of the situation, it’s necessary to point out the fact that Fischl always put painting foremost, and he rose to prominence among such painters like Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. However, he had gone to the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia (a school known as a hotbed of socially critical conceptual art), where his work was frequently linked with that of David Salle, who also traced his paintings to photographic sources.

   However, there is every reason to believe that "Dive Deep" will surprise some visitors, as it includes so many of the photographs Fischl has taken to germinate drawings, paintings and prints. Besides, it’s very likely that the selection of works usefully traces the passage of a female beach bather at St. Tropez from photographs through various studies into graphics and painting. Speaking of ‘Dive Deep’, it’s interesting to note that not only paintings, but also the small bronze sculptures also will surprise viewers, as Fischl's art is the tension in it between the fabrication of an image and its use to fabricate intrigue. So the he exhibition tells people almost more than they care to know about Fischl's working process, because sometimes it involves so many stages that the climactic work seems an awfully small payoff. But the 6-by-9-foot painting of novelist Richard Price and family, ‘Untitled’, shows Fischl's hand at its most relaxed; he evokes daylight, demeanor and an uneasy family dynamic with striking economy and credibility.

   There’s still one question: why to paint these images when the camera and computer already accomplish so much. And here necessary to note that the answer is simple, as passing these frozen and sometimes scrambled figments through Fischl’s own hand and nervous system will extract from them a human truth otherwise unavailable or felt only in authentically.

   In conclusion the author suggests that the most ambitious projects represented in the show is "The Bed, The Chair, The Sitter," that involves Fischl hiring models to improvise scenes and poses in a chosen environment to generate a sort of storyboard without fixed narrative. After all there’s another question:  why Fischl requires such elaborate stagecraft to let his hand go.

   Everything I can say is that art is the expression of the world’s vision of the artist, the image of his spiritual world on canvas, so for the average man, delved not so deeply into the world of art, it is difficult to understand the meaning of this or that work. You need to be a connoisseur of art to appreciate the artist’s work. 

'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë (chapter 1 - 7)

Mr. Lockwood rented an estate called Thrushcross Grange, the place fixed on a situation so far removed from the society. Its owner was Mr. Heathcliff, who lived in the neighborhood in Wuthering Heights. Mr. Heathcliff was a dark-skinned gypsy, but a gentleman in dress and manners, rather slovenly with his negligence, at the same time the man had a handsome figure and was rather gloomy. The man showed neither feelings nor mutual kindness.

   So when Mr. Lockwood appeared in that house, it seemed, nobody welcomed the man (guests were so rare there that nobody knew how to receive them), as he stood alone in the company of three grim shaggy sheep-dogs, who kept their eyes on him. And when the man began winking and making faces at them, it took an unexpected turn as all of the dogs attacked him. Only after that event Mr. Heathcliff and his servant Joseph appeared with vexatious phlegm. 

   The next day the guest came again, though the owner wished no repetition of his intrusion. However, Mr. Heathcliff was absent that time and there were three of them – a young woman, Joseph and a young man. Mr. Lockwood knew the servant, but not the rest of them and when he tried to understand who was who, nothing good came out of that. The first one was slender, she had an elegant little face, small features; in her eyes the man saw only desperation. She was Mr. Heathcliff's daughter-in-law. As for the young man, the guest couldn't understand whether he was a servant or not, as his speech and dress were rude, his thick brown curls were rough and uncultivated, his whiskers covered his cheeks, and his hands were embrowned like those of a common worker. Only one thing was clear – that man wasn't the owner's son.

   Meanwhile the weather became worse, dark night came down permanently and nothing could bee seen outside. That's why Mr. Lockwood had to stay, but nobody took care about that, and he was left to himself. Having found the room, the guest saw several books and the writing on the ledge: it was a repeated name, like Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff and Catherine Linton. All those books were an unknown Catherine's diaries, the whole life stories were written there. While reading them, the man fall asleep: he heard as the fir repeated its teasing sound and to stop it Mr. Lockwood stretched his arm out the window and his fingers closed on the fingers of a cold little hand. It belonged to a ghost of a young woman, who repeated all the time to let her in, as she had wandered there for about twenty years. The man tried to free his hands and when he did it he suddenly woke up yelling. After that Mr. Lockwood didn't return there, but when he came to Thrushcross Grange he asked Mrs. Dean (the housekeeper) tell him everything about the Heights and its residents. The woman herself came there from the Heights when her mistress was married; when she died Mrs Dean stood there as the housekeeper. 

   That young woman, her maiden name was Catherine Linton, Heathcliff's son's wife, but he died and she became a widow. Hareton Earnshaw, living with Heathcliff, was the late Mr. Earnshaw son.

   Originally, Mr. Hindley Earnshaw with his family lived in Wuthering Heights. Once went to Liverpool, promised to bring presents to his children (Cathy and Hindley, and Helen who played with them and at the same time helped about the house), but instead of them the man brought a boy, whom he called Heathcliff. Neither Miss Cathy nor her brother and Helen liked the boy; however, the man took to him strangely. Heathcliff pained rarely; he told precious little and generally the truth, that's why Hindley lost his allies (Cathy and Helen), as both of them were too fond of the boy, especially Catherine. 

   After Heathcliff's appearance a trouble time began, but Mr. Earnshaw thought his son was the reason, Hindley, that's why he sent him to college. Unfortunately, nothing changed, as the man's strength was failing and three years later died. His son came to his funeral and brought the wife with him. Year later she gave him a boy, whom they called Hareton Earnshaw and died. Young Earnshaw didn't care much about his son, Helen did; he didn't care how Cathy and Heathcliff behaved, as he still hated the boy. As a result both of them grew up as savages.

   Once the ran to watch how the Lintons passed their days in Thrushcross Grange. They were standing on the basement and making faces to young Edgar and Isabella Linton, when the master's dog seized Cathy's ankle. Heathcliff could run away, while the Lintons kept the girl for treatment. Having known about that, Hindley didn't rip out the boy but prohibited to speak with Miss Cathy or he would be sent from the house.

   For five weeks that Catherine spent at Thrushcross Grange, she changed greatly, as she became a real young lady. Meanwhile, Heathcliff became rude and dirty as a savage: he wore the same dress for about three months, his hair were thick and uncultivated, his face and hands were dirty. And when Miss Cathy saw her old friend, she squeezed and kissed him, but looking at his appearance, she ridiculed him for his untidiness. That held away them from each other.