Self Portrait, Milan 1973
After nearly twenty years, this drawing remains amongst the artist's few favorites. He was in Milan, having a great success drawing numerous portraits, and as always being amazed at people's behavior once their vanity was "threatened." All he was trying to do was create a beautiful drawing that resembled the sitter as much as possible, and expressed something of that person's character as seen through the eyes of the artist. In exchange for this he was paid a relatively small sum of money and often treated as if he had committed a cardinal sin if the drawing didn't happen to please the sitter, which was most often the case. In fact, it never failed to astonish the artist that he went on receiving commissions at all, since so few people seemed to like their portrait; but ironically, their friends invariably liked them, so would commission their own... and in turn be displeased!
Christian walked the sharp edge of this tightrope for fifteen years, until his health was seriously threatened by doing so, and he managed to earn enough to "retire" and concentrate on his painting, with which, by the bounty of the gods, he eventually achieved his recognition and success. (In any case, hating snobbery almost as much as he detested pretension, Christian was in every way temperamentally unsuited to being a portrait artist.) On this particular trip to Milan, Christian found himself going through the most peculiar kind of "brain-storm" during which everything simply arrived in his head in verse. So he made this candle lit self-portrait, and wrote simultaneously, in mirror-script which he adopted from his drawing Master, Leonardo, the lines which came to him on the subject of "how one should treat this artist if they wanted him to make their portrait." Unfortunately he was not yet in a strong enough position to make any such demands, but at least he gained relief by "getting it off his chest."
It started "So you'd like to be drawn, e'er tomorrow it's dawn. Drawn meaning your likeness in mine eyes not yourn!" Many of the lines are funny, satirical, and tongue in cheek, while others are more "serious." Christian uses mirror-script so that people regard the writing only as part of the design, and don't spend all their "looking energy" trying to read the poem.
On looking at the finished work, Christian was overwhelmed by the balance of the lines, the perfect number of them, and how they fit the space left by the portrait. It is said that sometimes, after having achieved a great feat, an athlete or even a warrior will suddenly get a fit of trembling, as they actually realize what they have just done, the impossibility of it, and the potential disaster it might have been. Such is the sensation Christian experiences before this drawing, which he is sure he would be incapable of repeating, but which he did at the time as if it were the easiest and most natural thing in the world to do. This "cosmic" side to art is for Christian one of the main reasons for his being an Artist.
Extract From The Book "Anthony Christian"
Poem From "Self Portrait, Milan"
So you'd like to be drawn e'er tomorrow it's dawn
(Drawn meaning your likeness through mine eyes not yourn)
Delighted but Stranger, I do not love thee
So keep me from danger and give me my fee
For sustenance basic to feed she and me
'N so we too can savour some sweet luxury.
But what lack-a-day did I just hear you say?
You'd rather do what than be painted today?
You've shown me your funds, they're so wearily ample
Yet still you would hound me and on me would trample
Making me blush with your whim's whispered offers
Of handouts from one of your bottomless coffers!
Why! I'd lose e'en my health chasing after your wealth
That you covet and protect with your sneers and your stealth
And you blind you and grin whilst your miserable sin
Is making e'en thinner the already thin.
Now you have all that cash yet you spend it on trash
Drown in sweet sour champagne and smoke too much 'ash
Cram your mouth with much more than your body can store
And occupy beds against your own law
Then you buy the forgiveness they whore at church door!
You throw your accounts in the pools and the founts
Of numberless cities where the natives sing ditties
To your person sans flaw till they ask you for more
Than you nothing donated - it's then that you're hated!
While on thick pile carpets in casinos you gamble
Know you with hunger some misfortunates ramble?
'N though your wealth travels thee, does it help you to see
As you fight off the boredom of Christian Diordom?
Do you think if your money, if poured o'er you like honey
Would marry you sticky e'en grasp you it tricky?
Or might it sink you your knees till you're eaten by bees
Respectable fodder not even for fleas.
Now if you think me just bitter then take you your joy
'N give it not unto me, but the first little boy
Whose life could be changed; give him freedom to range
From lack knowledge's hearse his whole universe
'N from ignorance decay a bright newborn day!
Since it can't be denied that you've ready been tried
Given chance after chance but catching ne'er glance
Of e'en those hold you dear far away or right here
(No no no do not sneer for even you must adhere
To the laws of mankind to which you're so blind
Never nearer to give than to die is to live
Or nearer to please than hummed hint or tease)
Give your money to those whose nurses do plead
For their lack lustre lives which you helped them to bleed!
So you'd like to be drawn e'er tomorrow it's dawn
Yet on this very day you're loathe me to pay
You'd prefer money lend than same money spend
For with loans money grows for your buttons and bows
But having made the decision must you sit in your prison
Telling yourself in your bare bookless shelf
That your pockets need bulge so you'd best not indulge
The vainness you think (Hey look! Think makes you pink!)
Would have kept me in work (for your coins I'd not shirk)
Thus you show me your heart has missed even my art.
Steadfast and ruthless my line won't be truthless
Making grinning well toothed the already toothless
Or coiffed by the hautiest the inevitably bald
Should I make eyes the larger inevitably smalled?
(Would you have me give sight to those with the loss?
Just to be taken and nailed to a cross?)
Would you have lips the fuller inevitably thin
Oh dear blindfold sitter where e'er have you bin
That you cannot see Nature wherever she's at
And wear beauty honest and be grateful for that.
To that which is hard would you have me give soft
Add intimate gold to the cold and aloft?
Should I shorten the longer and lengthen the short?
Beauty you cannot and must not distort!
Unlike your mirror sees your desire
Such reflections from me are impossible hire
So look closer next time e'er all's covered with paint
And try to find Nature for ugly she ain't
And if there's a poundage you truly regret
Then why don't you lose it 'fore you bring me your threat?
You sit and you hint that I must draw you thinner
Else not long from now there'll be scarce even dinner!
And if like Apollo you be not made
Command me not then to soften or shade
But accept you for am as you really is
Then you'll no longer put me in such a tiz!
Conceit can receive only all it deserves
From impoverished painters it too often serves
For in flattery serves only empty disguise
Putting valueless stranger before your eyes
Much better by far is to take you to task
Than letting you fall into cold hollow mask
Which you look at with sighs of "To be like her"
'Cause your vision's perverted you see nought but a blur!
"To be like him" Oh! You're just as bad
And by fairytale painters deserve to be had
As themselves they are done for in one second flat
When True Painter sees them and grabs for his hat!
See the peacock's left handed is surely afoot
Like a black man's a white one covered in soot
And the white's truly black only covered in flour
Why! You're so confused now you can't find the hour!
If buy you a painter to make you a vision
Twixt senses and luney there's little division
An egg becomes ego and I go him too
And a yoke on a painter's an awful to do!
Were you prettily pretty or plumply divine
Think would have painted you old van Rijn?
Or Rubens, van Dyke, Vinci, Buonarotti?
They'd 've done no more than spank your botty
And sent you on home with a curse and a glare
With expressions of wonderment that you could dare
To fritter the time of the world's greatest few
With your bribe less than due for you are only you!
Humble pride I can lose not (neither sell it nor loan)
Almost too high above you to flippantly buy
With my sign that will prove it containing no lie
So please treat me kindly and I will commit
Not only your portrait but my name on it!
Read finally now on my painter's page
You women of young and of middle age
You old men and girls not forgetting the youths
Treat me gently and kindly, you'll get ought but truths!
So you'd like to be drawn e'er tomorrow it's dawn
(Why I'd work way past midnight and still I'd not yawn)
Yet on this very day you are loathe me to pay
Your Highness dubious Honour does force me to say
Without further discussion or any more talk
Take this my chalk and go far away walk
Be a pixie , a fairy, a gnome or an elf
And go sit on your shelf - and draw you yourself.
Anthony Christian - Milano 1973
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