Wilde & Korallo| 2000
Dario Ersetti presents Wilde & Korallo
Foreword
Dario Ersetti
"I'm dying beyond my means." So OscarWilde, on November 30, 1900, sipping his last glass of champagne. Why this publication on Oscar Wilde and Giovanni Korallo after a hundred years? When I saw Giovanni Korallo's paintings for the first time, I had the sensation of having seen them before. Korallo's figures certainly recall other figures by other painters. But they are different. Males are swollen and impetuous almost like Bay males. Almost. Females, some females, are as fat as Botero females. But they are different women. Where then did I see images similar to those of Korallo? And then it occurred to me. Not painters but poets, indeed, poet, indeed, Oscar Wilde. Wilde with pictures of him ... the vermilion mouth ... the silver doves ... the yellow sheaves ... the green grass .... Wilde described Korallo's paintings. Not the other. Korallo doesn't know Wilde as Wilde doesn't know Korallo. It's a kind of halfway meeting, where road has the meaning we want to give it.
Introduction
Bernard Hickey
Professor Bernard Hickey AM, and Director of the Observatory on Diasporas, Cultures and Institutions of Overseas Countries, Full Professor of English Language and Literature, Director of the Section of Australian Studies at the University of Lecce.
When we think of Oscar Wilde's lifelong testimony to aesthetic values, we feel the presence of an informing spirit that enlivens every object on which we look. And the same thing happens for the selection made by Dario Ersetti of Wilde's poems and his choice to associate with them paintings by Giovanni Korallo, which has come down to us thanks to the enlightened generosity of Ottica Rucco, Lecce. In his preface Dario Ersetti tells us about his emotions, guiding us to see Giovanni Korallo's paintings in their right place. Wilde, in his best epigrammatic way, as if it were an oxymoron, once said that "nature follows art". With this expression he referred to the fact that when an artist paints the nature, sensitivity and technique of him allow him to present various aspects of nature that no ordinary person would ever notice. I can say that, in this fascinating publication, the art of Giovanni Korallo follows Dario Ersetti. He is our guide, that links the visual to the verbal, the extraordinary paintings to Wilde's most refined poetry. This attractive little book reveals many of Wilde's attitudes to her circumstances led us to ignore. The author of this anthology, with his personal choices, the fruit of his sensitivity, revealed, in my opinion, just how Wilde embodied the contradictory genius of the Anglo-Irish group of English origin, for several centuries the ruling class in Ireland As Professor A. Norman Jeffares noted in the Encyclopaedia of Ireland (1968), Wilde was the successor of the great playwrights Anglo-Irish - Congreve, Goldsmith and Sheridan - who had made themselves a name in London in the 1700s. They too had to live off theirs talent and adapt their ingenuity to the general social context. They knew the art and craft of oratory to perfection. The irony, making fun of themselves and others marked theirs style. They were skilled in conversation, analyzing it, repeating it in their works with an accuracy that was both deadly and delightful. The rhythm of their characters' speech, the "copia verborum" stemmed from their paradoxical position in a singular society. The Anglo-Irish, belonging to this class, were deeply attached to Ireland (just as Oscar Wilde was to England), yet they (and he) could boast of being completely different from those they served but didn't always love. And one hundred years after his death in Paris, November 30, 1900, thanks to a precise choice and the combination of art and humanity that for us they are a gift of poetry, painting, selection and generosity, we have enriched ourselves, and, in a positive, constructive way, we are remembering and learning from Oscar Wilde's earthly pilgrimage.
Information:
Nation of Exhibition: Italy
City of Exhibition: Lecce
Place of Exhibition: Carlo Castle V
Subsequent exhibitions
Gallery
Ye shall be Gods
Before the dividing of days
Or the singing of summer or spring
God from the dust did raise
A splendid and goodly thing:
Man - from the womb of the land,
Man - from the sterile sod
Torn by a terrible hand -
Formed in the image of God.
But the life of man is a sorrow
And death a relief from pain,
For love only lasts till tomorrow
And life without love in vain.
The Fair Lady of My Mind
She is too beautiful for a mortal
to see or elect her to the good of his heart,
More beautiful than a queen or courtesan
Or moonlit night water.
Her hair is bound with myrtle leaves,
(Green leaves upon her golden hair!)
Green grasses through the yellow sheaves
Of autumn corn are not more fair.
Her little lips, more made to kiss
Than to cry bitterly for pain,
Are tremulous as brook-water is,
Or roses after evening rain..
Her neck is like white melilote
Flushing for pleasure of the sun,
The throbbing of the linnet's throat
Is not so sweet to look upon.
As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
White-seeded, in her crimson mouth,
Her cheeks are as the fading stain
Where the peach reddens to the south.
O twining hands! O delicate
White body made for love and pain!
O House of love! O desolate
Pale flower beaten by the rain!
Keep reading
Reduce
Roma unvisited
What joy for me to seek alone
The wondrous Temple and the throne
Of Him who holds the awful keys!
When, bright with purple and with gold,
Come priest and holy Cardinal,
And borne above the heads of all
The gentle Shepherd of the Fold.
O joy to see before I die
The only God-anointed King,
And hear the silver trumpets ring
A triumph as He passed by!
Or at the brazen-pillared shrine
Holds high the mystic sacrifice,
And shows his God to human eyes
Beneath the veil of bread and wine.
Keep reading
Reduce
From Spring Days to Winter
In the glad springtime when leaves were
green,
O merrily the throstle sings!
I sought, amid the tangled sheen,
O the glad dove has golden wings!
Between the blossom red and white,
O merrily the throstle sings!
My love first came into my sight,
O perfect vision of delight,
O the glad dove has golden wings!
The yellow apples glowed like fire,
O merrily the throstle sings!
O Love too great for lip or lyre,
Blown rose of love and of desire,
O the glad dove has golden wings!
But now with snow the tree is grey,
Ah, sadly now the throstle sings
My love is dead: ah! well-a-day,
see at her silent feet I lay
A dove with broken wings!
Ah, Love! Ah, Love! that thou wert slain
Fond Dove, fond Dove return again!
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Reduce
Ye Shall be Gods (antistrophe)
The spirit of man is arisen
And crowned as a mighty King.
The people have broken from prison
And the voices once voiceless now sing.
Cry aloud, O dethroned and defeated,
Cry aloud for the fading of might,
Too long were ye feared and entreated,
Too long did men worship thy light.
Aye, weep for your crimes without number,
The loving and luring of men,
For your greatness is sunken in slumber,
Your light will n'er lighten again.
Chorus of Cloud Maidens
Cloud maidens that float on for ever,
Dew-sprinkled fleet bodies, and fair,
Let us rise from our Sire's loud river,
Great Ocean, and soar through the air
To the peaks of the pine-covered mountains
where the pines hang as tresses of hair.
Let us seek the watch-towers undaunted,
Where the well-watered corn-fields abound,
And through murmurs of rivers nymph-haun
ted
The songs of the sea-waves resound;
And the sun in the sky never wearies of
spreading his radiance around.
Let us cast off the haze
Of the mists from our band,
Till with far-seeing gaze
We may look on the land.
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Remorse
I love your topaz-coloured eyes
That light with blame these midnight streets,
I love your body when it lies
Like amber on the silken sheets.
I love the honey-coloured hair
That ripples to your ivory hips,
I love the languid listless air
With which you kiss my boyish lips.
I love the brows that bend above
Those eyelids of chalcedony:
But most of all, my love! I love
Your beautiful fierce chastity!
Artistic criticism
Isabella Galmarini
" It is still lying on the suspended table ... I have looked and gazed at those few pages countless times. Wilde & Korallo. What is there in that play on words and figures, in that abundance of signs and colors? The symbolic truth can only be understood intuitively but when it appears it illuminates the whole being ... "
View all criticism
Isabella Galmarini
It is still lying on the suspended table ... I have looked and gazed at those few pages countless times. Wilde & Korallo. What is there in that play on words and figures, in that abundance of signs and colors? The symbolic truth can only be understood intuitively but when it appears it illuminates the whole being. Nothing. I want to see beyond that chaotic world where men, trees, animals, objects merge and take on the same meaning but my eyes are enchanted by the serenity of those proud female faces, those lonely and haughty queens. I lose myself in those big hands of opulent bodies but I don't penetrate them. Nothing. They look at me. Figures present, powerful, prosperous, full of color, carnal but at the same time elusive, unreal, of other times. As you come out of a dream for a moment to indulge, aware. Just for a moment. Nothing is linear yet so defined. Passively everything mixes up to confuse. Yet present, masks of our emotions, sad boundless creatures in a veiled, unreal world. The soul is dead, it got lost to be transformed into form, into pure form. I shy away from interpretations preferring to simply let myself sink into the subtle beauty of the painting.