I just finished reading The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio in an American translation by Wayne Rebhorn (Norton, 2013). It’s an entertaining dive into the Florentine mind, circa 1350’s Italy. Aspects of it are foreign and even repellent to a 21st century thinker. But much is familiar despite the tales being a reflection of a Medieval world anticipating a Renaissance one.
While these thoughts were swimming in my head this morning, I picked up a copy of a book I created in 2017 and haven’t read in a long time: Crystal Cities 2014-2017. It’s a collection of 170 paintings done between 2014 - 2017 and organized by themes. The images have a medieval quality and are the same scale as paintings or book illuminations from those long ago times.
And here’s an example of my text accompanying a section titled “The Enigmatic City”
“A city is simultaneously alluring and repellent and full of good and bad apples. A city is a place of obscure beginnings and spectacular endings. They may humbly arise from a crossroads only to one day collapse spectacularly in flames or be lonely and deserted and one day completely forgotten.
Cities are a mixture of hope and despair, wealth and poverty. Stories of generosity and cruelty are found on every page of the newspapers. This is true of cities all over the Earth for all time. Cities are a reflection of human behavior. Cities are the human story written in stone, steel, smoke, glass, paint and flesh.”
The last section of the book, “The Sleeping City” begins with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 (“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up…”) and then this:
“In the dark silent hours the stars are assembled in columns and rows, in heavenly ledgers. The builders of this city consulted these celestial spreadsheets and simply connected the dots. Curves were described mathematically and the formulas forgotten. Crystalline skins joined to vectors and terracotta plazas populated the empty spaces.
The construction began at a startling pace. As the interstices filled up, the process seemed to slow but the filling-in just became increasingly fine-grained and difficult to see. It was like ravenous mosses invading the cooling, new ashy slopes of Mt. Etna or Mt. Saint Helens. Fir trees would follow.
Now, creative and mercurial Life needs to inhabit the crystal residences and hidden rooms. Stories and history are waiting impatiently as the last sleeping is almost finished. The sun is ready to reappear…”
