Category: Essays

Essays

Sounding out Idols

Agnieszka Gratza

In his essay Éloge du maquillage (‘In Praise of Cosmetics’), Charles Baudelaire advocates among other the use of rice-powder designed ‘to rid the complexion of all the blemishes that nature has outrageously strewn there, and to create an abstract unity in the texture and colour of the skin; a unity which, much like that produced by the leotard, instantly assimilates the human being to the statue, that is to say a divine and superior being.’ For Baudelaire, not only are women justified in their attempts at reforming nature, they are performing a kind of duty by attempting to make their beauty appear supernatural, even divine. Continue reading Sounding out Idols

Essays

Collectors as philanthropists

Agnieszka Gratza

Philanthropy and collecting stem from opposite impulses. Collecting amounts to acquiring things for one’s own private enjoyment; philanthropy, on the contrary, consists in giving away money or other valuable assets for the public good. The one is self-gratifying and wrapped up in itself, the other selfless and outward-looking. Whereas the collector bestows his affections on objects, the philanthropist is by definition animated by the love of mankind. Continue reading Collectors as philanthropists

Essays

We Come from the Sea

Agnieszka Gratza

We come from the sea. We don’t think about it very often but […] our semi-circular canals are similar, our eyes are similar, we have backbones. And the fish grew little legs and came out of the sea and then developed into what we are today. There are different theories about how that happened. My idea is that we have a memory of that. Somewhere in our unconscious we remember that we come from the sea. It’s not a memory; it’s a feeling; it’s in our DNA. Continue reading We Come from the Sea

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The Green Ray

Agnieszka Gratza

This essay appeared in the November online issue of The White Review: I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. (Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass) Aurora chasing is a favourite sport up in Iceland, one of the main draws for visitors. Northern Lights come in all sorts of hues, apparently, but more often than not they are a glowing green – the colour of the equally elusive meteorological phenomenon that gives its title to a lesser-known Jules Verne novel and to Eric Rohmer’s 1986 film Le rayon vert. The dreamy final sequence … Continue reading The Green Ray