Marian Fanny Christian
• Part Two
 Architectural Drawing 1
Fanny
 Architectural Drawing 2
Fanny |
Fanny stopped drawing heads and started producing somewhat architectural drawings, and even incorporating collage work into them from time to time. To my surprise I even liked them. It was her sense of balance that amazed me; all of her drawings, no matter what she chose to draw, had this wonderful sense of balance, she had a truly extraordinary eye, and was able to do things with an almost childish ease that people who study for years are still unable to achieve. And, like children, she approached everything and then achieved it without the slightest fuss or pretension. Watching her work, I was always reminded of a wonderful little anecdote I’d heard many years before. A little girl who had produced a drawing of unexpected quality, or even several, had been asked by an adult what had caused her to do these drawings. “Well,” answered the little girl after a few seconds cogitation, “I have my thinks; and then I draw a line around my thinks.” That describes exactly the working methods of Fanny. Her wonderful art comes from the place of innocence and lack of sophistication that children’s art comes from, from her Heart and her Soul, and for that reason, while far from childish, has about it a purity that most artists - including myself - can never lose their educated sophistication to even approach. I know that because I have managed to do so, but only occasionally, quite rarely. Fanny does it on a daily basis, and so believe me, I admire her as an artist, as much but separately from my admiring her as the wonderful wife and best friend that she is.
The “Beardsley” was to Fanny what “Gamba” was to my own drawing; you just arrive at a point when you know you have mastered a certain a aspect of art to the point where you are likely just to be copying yourself in future works unless you move on. I gave up drawing for twenty years when I reached that point, Fanny moved on - and how.
Fanny had reached the “Beardsley” - a quality virtually impossible to achieve in no more than four months of drawing - in October of ‘99; she then went off at a tangent and started experimenting with rather architectural drawings done completely freehand. Of these she only did relatively few, finding her natural inclination was towards the curved line rather than the straight and rigid. Nonetheless, several of the drawings of this period were remarkable. |
At the tail end of that period, at the beginning of the new century, she started hinting at the erotic in her drawings, somewhat influence - unusually - by the direction my work was going in. Even with those she managed to surprise me, with a sense of design, line and balance that I have not seen surpassed anywhere in thirty five years of drawing. Quite amazing.
That period came to an abrupt end when Fanny suddenly branched out into a series that remains one of my favourites to this day, wherein each drawing she created was more extraordinarily beautiful than the one before, and she started incorporating colour into her work, with great success. The first of these works was “La Plume,” and then she went on with the series that includes “Islam” “Beast of Burden” as well as several others. Her colouring reached a high-point just before our Spiritual Wedding in April with “Strawberry,” a work inspired by the strawberries we started growing at Ichor, one of which my daughter Melodi had picked and brought into the house to show us. Fanny found it so lovely to look at - rather than taste, it proved to be somewhat bitter - that she drew this wonderful little masterpiece as a result.
 La Plume
Fanny | |  Beast of Burden
Fanny |  Strawberry
Fanny |
After “Strawberry,” Fanny became fascinated for a while by realistic drawings and she made a whole small series of studies that, again, put me in mind of Durer. When she sent me over her first study, of a couple of eucalyptus leaves, I was a little puzzled, unable to understand a) why she would send me a photograph of anything, let alone a pair of leaves, and b) How she had technically arrived at having those leaves so brilliantly pasted to the paper that they almost looked as if the ‘photo had actually been printed on the paper. So realistic were they that it didn’t even occur to me that they were hand drawn. Of course, when I realised that I was indeed looking at a hand drawn study, I rushed over to Fanny’s little studio, buried in a corner of our Ichor garden, and made all sorts of noises like a dribbling baby, trying to express my admiration over this incredible achievement, these perfect little studies. Nature Studies. She continued on and off in this mode throughout the year, sometimes mixing the realistic with surrealistic and abstract, as in the lovely drawing she made to celebrate our marriage.
 Leaf Studies
Fanny | |
 Three Pears
Fanny |
We had our wedding a few days later, a Spiritual wedding which was made an even more beautiful experience by glorious blue skies and sunshine that we were given just for that one day. It was the monsoon season, and literally every other day in May it rained cats and dogs without cease. Just a single eighteen hour break from the dreadful monsoon weather, but to an almost ludicrous degree and we just “happened” to get married on that same day.
 Wedding Bouquet
Fanny
 Japan
Fanny |
The following day Fanny was so touched by the memories still flooding over her that she created the drawing she called “The Wedding Bouquet.” I am sure by now, at least, that you realise just how true it is that my profound admiration of this work is not in the slightest influenced by my love of the Artist. I mean just look at this drawing! Certain areas of it call to mind the work of Durer, who was certainly one of the two or three greatest draughtsmen ever. Another work she created during what might be called this same series, towards the end of that year, I titled myself, as when I looked at it, it made me think so much of things Japanese. I called it “Japan” and Fanny was pleased with that way of seeing the drawing that she kept the title. Again, those details in each corner are extraordinarily reminiscent of the Nature studies of Durer. Her last foray into the world of drawing classically from life came at the end of the year, when she set up three pears and “had a go at them.” Some go.
That brings me to another most remarkable aspect of Fanny and her Art. Until she met me, she had virtually no knowledge of Art History whatsoever. The only artists whose names she knew, because she constantly saw them in the newspapers, were Picasso and Dali. Also she had just about heard of Rembrandt, although couldn’t name one of his works, and she knew vaguely that the Mona Lisa was by Leonardo da Vinci. But that was all. And so when she drew things that called one artist or another to my mind and I mentioned it, she was to say the least surprised; even more so when I would then rush off to my considerably well-stocked art library and bring her a book showing the work of the Master I was referring to at that time. After Durer, the most classic case of this happening was when at one point I noticed all sorts of forms appearing in her work that reminded me of the amazing drawings of Hans Bellmer, sadly known only amongst those who are not shocked by the graphic side of erotic art of which Bellmer was a major exponent. But when Erotic Art does finally become one of the major and universally accepted genres - as it will if I have anything to do with it - Bellmer will be recognised on a far greater scale than he is now. And I say that even though even I believe that some of his work was OTT and even gross, and wouldn’t give it wall space in my own home even were it given to me. But the ones that are not like that...sublime. |
Anyway, when I brought Fanny a book on his work to show her the connection between her work on his, her automatic reaction was “Oh look, he’s using my shapes in his drawings!” We laughed a lot as I pointed out that the order of things was somewhat the reverse, even though she had had no consciousness of it at the time of creating those forms. By the way, it must be understood that artists using similar forms as each other, conscious or not, has nothing detrimental about it, any more than it does when there is a similarity of ideas that might appear similar but go off in a different strain, as happens quite often, as it did between Giorgione and Titian, several other artists all the way through to Bellmer and Fanny.
As someone who has been drawing for forty years at least, it was truly amazing to keep seeing Fanny coming up with ideas that seemed as if they must be the ultimate; nothing, I thought, could be more amazing in its way than this - and then she would enter a new series, a new realm and puff! Something even more extraordinary.
 Fan's Fan
Fanny |
Due to various dramas in our lives, including moving, in part at least, back to the UK after nearly thirty years of being away from it, Fanny didn’t draw for a while. When she did, towards the end of 2001, she came out with the wonderful “Fan’s Fan,” a play on her own name of course, but also a drawing so beautiful it was obviously the outpouring of several months pent up and waiting to come out, as the greatest works of Art sometimes do, as if they have a will of their own. That led to a new magnificent series in 2002 which included the wonderful “Gladiator,” one of my favourites of all time, and “The Mask,” oh dear, another favourite. Her work reminds me of Holbein, the only Master to have an exhibition of his drawings that I couldn’t narrow down to three. Fanny’s are like that, I love so many of them, and really as much as I love or have loved any drawings before in my life. |
THE FANERGIES
One of the reasons that Fanny sometimes goes through quite long periods of not drawing is because she is actually involved with other (creative) projects. At around this time, the early part of 2002, Fanny hit on an idea and made all sorts of experiments to see whether her inspiration might work or whether it was just pie in the sky. Of course, being her, it worked. We shared between us a lovely model named Vicky. She used to come once a week for me to paint her, and then another whole day for Fanny to photograph her, which Fanny had become interested in doing while watching Vicky modeling for me, she found her so beautiful. Over the next few weeks, Fanny took some truly remarkable photographs (and I say that as a photographer preparing to publish a book on my own ’photos), absolutely the most beautiful pictures of Vicky. |
 Lady Marian
Fanny |
Her idea had been that if she took some ’photos that she liked, she would then like to see what it would look like if she was able to overlay her drawings over the photograph. Her son Pete is something of a computer wizard - his brother Mike is our Webmaster! - and he showed Fanny how she might achieve this technologically. She took what he showed her and built on it, with one experiment after another, and finally evolved an extraordinarily beautiful technique of producing images that were a synergy of her Drawing and her Photography. Being the wordsmith that she is, she had soon coined the word “Fanergies,” and they literally took off as soon as she put them onto our website. Everyone who saw them loved them, as they appeared to be girls who were heavily tattooed, or wearing skimpy lace creations. Either way, they were universally appreciated and still sell as a regular feature on our website.
 Marian Fanny Christian, Part Three
Anthony Christian
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