"All was a
sizzle of excitement, new relationships, new ideas, different and intense
emotions seemed crowding into one’s life"
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa
Bell was a true designer in a sense that she was curious, she experimented with
things – be it in art, relationships,
travel or food, and she lived focusing on here and now, rather than on some end
point in the future.
Born in
1879 in London, Vanessa Bell was a Victorian child – imagine all the rules and restrictions that governed the children’s behavior at the time. The family was quite large,
for the marriage was the second one for both parents, and they already had
children before Vanessa, Adrian, Toby and Virginia were born.
Vanessa was
the one gifted with a sense of visual form and colour – she went on to study at
the Royal Academy of Art. Her paintings have quite a distinct colour bright palette;
she also did interior design – her house at Charleston is a
life-size souvenir of her taste and vision which were radically different from
all that was considered acceptable at the time, and even today might seem at
least original, if not eccentric.
 |
| Charleston, Vanessa Bell's house |
In life as
in art Vanessa was an experimenter too.
Together
with her sister Virginia (the famous British writer Virginia Woolf) Vanessa was part
of what later became known as Bloomsbury group – a group of creative men and
women who lived at one time or another in Bloomsbury – a beautiful green
tranquil area of London. It was then, in 1920s and 30s an intellectual hub,
humming with creative energy, with all of them meeting regularly at each other’s
houses, discussing, reading, making music and making love.
First
marrying an art critic Clive Bell and having 2 sons with him, Vanessa later met
Roger Fry, another eminent English art
critic and professor. They spent plenty of time travelling in France, discovering
contemporary French art (think impressionists who were already creating quite a
name for themselves).
Clive and
Vanessa have never divorced. Although both of them had other partners during their
lives, they stayed in a sense together in bringing up their children and supporting each other professionaly, and they
have actually shared a house for many years
During the
1st World War when Vanessa and the family moved to Charleston,
another friend, who refused to serve in the army and had to work at a farm
instead, joined them. His name was Duncan Grant, he was a painter too, he was
gay, and Vanessa was in love with him.
I think a
third person can never truthfully know what happens inside a couple, so it is
difficult to say how important or not it was to Vanessa that Duncan had other
lovers, what kind of compromises she had to make. What I think was important,
that they were partners in their lives’ work, painting side by side, travelling
to Italy and France, creating the home at Charleston, hosting friends, bringing up the
children.
So it was a
very large household, with three children and many visitors, with sister
Virginia who had spells of ill health and needed attention living not far – in Rodmell.
I think to a large extent such lifestyle was of course possible because they must
have had independent incomes, and Vanessa could have “a room of her own” to
create and to spend time with her friends and family. She had domestic help –
nannies for the children and someone to clean and cook.
In 1937 a
tragedy struck when Vanessa’s oldest son Julian was killed in the Spanish civil
war. Then another – when Virginia feeling that a new spell of madness was
coming on and feeling unable to deal with it has killed herself in 1941.
But
Charleston and its inhabitants survived. They stayed true to their vision of
life and freedom and honesty and art.
To me
Vanessa Bell is one of the extraordinary women who organized and lived their
lives with very little regard towards conventional, acceptable, normal. Her
example shows how we too can experiment and find that the seemingly unconventional
is what works for us best. That long-lasting relationships with friends and lovers
build what becomes a rich fabric of life.
On the
other hand she shows how we can afind inspiration in domestic, every-day situations and
objects to create new vision.
If you
would like to learn more about Vanessa Bell, her family and times, I can
recommend these excellent books and films
Virginia
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia
Woolf, Letters
Life in
Squares, TV series
Комментарии
Отправить комментарий