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15 Nov 2024

Clare
Bonetree

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Full
Moon

Dec 1st

Nov 1st

We were talking
about roundness

After Diego Rivera’s Dos Mujeres (1914),

a portrait of Angelina Beloff and

Maria Dolores Bastian

                        We were talking

                        about roundness –

                        imperfect, curvaceous,

                        delicious, whole,

                        self-describing,

                        self-owning

                        roundness

                        of oranges, women,

                        planets, artichokes,

                        beachballs, marbles, glass eyes,

                        the letter O;

                        the shape a mouth makes:

                        O, O, O, O, O,

                        oh no! – and yes –

                        contradictory containers

                        for desire;

                        and about the question

                        of how to grapple

                        gloriously,

                        with the impossibility

                        of fully conveying

                        the hole – or the whole –

                        of it on a canvas,

                        on a flat square,

                        on a round world.

                        Our conversation

                        flowed, rocked

                        back and forth,

                        ideas rising and

                        falling on the waves

                        of our breath.

                        Sometimes

                        currents crossed

                        eruptions of laughter

                        you could not catch,

                        lapping at the shores

                        of our experience.

Behind the poem...

Inspired by the relaxed, easy stance of the women in Rivera’s famous painting, Dos Mujeres, (Two Women), I wanted to find out more about them. They were the artist’s wife and her great friend; both of them also painters, though their work is now barely known. Intrigued by the relationship between these two women, and wondering what they might be talking about, I was caught by the sense that the painter was outside their conversation – could never be a part of it. These artists, I felt, had been silenced by history: frozen in their roles as models and muses. I had a strong desire to bring back their voices.

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