We're the Woolflings...Virginia Woolf's devotees

I’m in a room of people, all chattering like mad. There are feathers in the hair of the women and our Charlston dresses shimmer like mad in the candlelight. We're all fringes and Art Deco jewellery.  The men are more sober...at least on the outside. Inwardly, we're  seething with  intellect, emotion and sexuality. Everyone is secretly cheating with someone they're not married to. And as we exchange sparkling conversation about all the most important issues of the era, above us floats an ethereal presence, In the best traditions of Bloomsbury they're gender fluid...a 'he', a 'they' and sometimes a 'she', is whispering in our ears that they are three hundred years old and counting.

Where on earth am I? Is it the early 1930s, and I'm partying with the Bloomsbury set, joining in with their most decadent and amusing members?

Or...actually…I am somewhere on the Gower in Wales, where a set of 21st century friends meet regularly to celebrate story and myth?

Last time I was there, we were immersed in the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which you can read about here; this time we're celebrating the writing, and the life, of Virginia Woolf. This is a gathering of Woolf fanatics. We're the Woolflings, we tell ourselves, as we move round the room playing our parts and sipping our drinks. 

From her teens Woolf regularly sank into a distressed state which we now think may have been bi-polar disorder, because when Virginia was in party mood, her conversation shimmered and she was full of life and fun, but when she was low she became very ill, often delirious, with 'vile imaginations' that threatened her sanity. She’d hear the birds outside her bedroom window sing in ancient Greek, and had strongly suicide thoughts. Her illness may have begun at the age of 13 when her beloved mother died. Her half sister Stella, who took over being a mother to her, died not long after. In her famous diary she said it was impossible to write of. A few years later, her father died, followed by her beloved brother Thoby. She wrote Jacob’s Room  in memory of him, an emotion which you feel, turning her grief into a spiritual shape. In the novel, Jacob moves from childhood to his early death in battle, and we’re left with the emptiness of Jacob’s room to show the profound emptiness of loss.

We’d been discussing her work all weekend, dipping into A Writer's Diary which is a Woolfling's constant companion. This journal. which she kept from 1918 to three weeks beforee her death, included entries on her writing, books she was reading and her unfolding private world - the anguish, the triumph, the creative vision.

We mostly concentrated on four of her many books, starting with The Lighthouse. This is set in a country house similar to the one ther father kept. He was the writer and thinker Leslie Stephen and he'd take his entire family down to the rather disheveled Talland House on the rugged Cornwall coast every summer.  Woolf’s book is a clear reconstruction of those times, removed to the Isle of Sky where, through the lives of the Ramsay family, she investigates human relationships. Talland must have been a respite for Virginia, but most things that are constant in our lives  have to end eventually, and the novel finishes with the return of the grown children and their father to the house, after their mother's death. None of the siblings want to be there, and it's too late for them to be the least excited about trip to the eponimous lighthouse.

In 1917 the Woolfs bought a printing press, which I've already written about  in this blogpost about the Hogarth Press.  Virginia was slowly recovering from a breakdown and Leonard hoped the intensely manual  occupation would give her something to occupy her mind when she wasn’t writing. Despite the long hours, she found it exhilarating, as she wrote to her sister Vanessa:

Reading from Mrs Dalloway

“After 2 hours work at the press, Leonard heaved a terrific sigh and said ‘I wish to God we’d never bought the cursed thing!’ To my relief, though not surprise, he added, ‘Because I shall never do anything else.’ You can’t think how exciting, soothing, ennobling and satisfying it is. And so far we’ve only done the dullest and most difficult part – setting up notice.’”

Although Woolf's books were printed on this press, it would be wrong to think of it as ‘self publishing’. She received rave reviews for Mrs Dalloway, which might be thought of as the epitome of Virginia’s modernist style. It’s often the first book people will read of hers, and certainly it was my entry into her world, when I bought a finely-bound volume in the early eighties. The plot is  simple and only takes place over one day. Clarissa Dalloway is throwing a party, while war veteran Septimius suffers severe PTS; hallucinations and haunting memories. Her first title for this book was The Hours; taken by Michael Cunningham for his novel that follows another Clarissa's day through New York while also detailing the last hours of Woolf’s life. 

By the time she was writing the magically realistic Orlando, Virginia had met Vita, and taken her for her muse. Orlando follows an English nobleman who lives for three centuries and mysteriously becomes a woman during that time. Woolf received critical praise for the groundbreaking work, as well as a newfound level of popularity – most people agree it is her most accessible and witty story.

Vita

The final book we explored was The Waves, my personal favourite. The voice of this novel is like listening to the waves break on a shore...I can still feel her prose shusshing in my ears. Despite there being almost no story at all, I think it's a thrilling novel. We watch six friends grapple with the death of a mutal friend, Percival. Woolf does this by revealing their inner soliloquies. This is Virginia Woolf’s theory of how fiction works for her, an amazing, poetic dreamscape.  

'Violet'

But now, after a weekend of study, reading, dramatising and interpretating, we're allowed to loosen our (bow) ties and let our (shingled) hair down. At the  party, we greet each other with air kisses and whoops as the ‘four Vs’ and their male partners arrive in their finery.

First to pour a drink is Virginia herself,  accompatined by the ever loving and caring Leonard Woolf. And here's her sister Vanessa Bell, but there's no Clive Bell in sight. She's accompantied by her lover and gay friend Duncan Grant, who is an artist, like her. By now, Vita Sackville-West has arrived with her long-suffering husband, Harold  Nicolson. Vita was also a novelist, writing books that are still enjoyable (see this blogpost), but is most famously known as a gardener. With her hubby she transformed the derelict gardens at Sissinghurst Castle into something so wonderful it's an attraction to this day. Finally,  the enigmatic Violet Keppel comes in, sulking somewhat. She is Vita’s true love and was her lover before and after the little fling with Virginia. She’s on the arm of her fiancé Major Trefusis, who she will eventually marry after many gay affairs, still suffering a deep depression. 

Finally, Orlando is here, in all zir glory. Man, woman, young, ageless. Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy, zie whispers to the others...All extremes of feeling are allied with madness. We can all hear zir, even though we can't see zim clearly... we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.  Is not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

The atmosphere in the candlelit room is electric. While Orlando floats above us, Vanessa is trying to find out just how things are with her sister, whom she cares for deeply, while discussing her art with Duncan and, more importantly, trying to pursued him to give her a child…despite being a wonderful artists she was also a born mother and finally they did have a child together.

Meanwhile Violet is griping and glowering at everyone. Temporarily at least, Vita has gone off with her new amour, Virginia. It’s possible they only spent one weekend together, and no one knows if the relationship was consummated, but Violet isn’t happy and poor Major Trefusis is getting it in the ear. 

As for Virginia…she’s high tonight. Her conversation is witty, avant-garde and irreverent to the point of bawdiness. She's talking about life...I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life...and feminism...as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world... and books...Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather.

She’s using language to create; ‘some kind of whole made of shivering fragments that capture the flight of the mind.’ 

Virginia might have been mentally desperate  at times, but there's no doubt she was cherished and loved by her husband. Leonard was always by her side, watching for signs of depression, keeping things quiet and calm, providing her with a balanced diet, and that most important of essentials...A Room of One's Own. As the Second World War continued, and she finished Betweenn the Acts, her last book, Leonard  saw how she was sinking into deepening despair as their London home was destroyed in the Blitz. She was also terrified that if England was invaded by Germany, Leonard, who was Jewish, would be in particular danger. On the 28th March 1941, Virginia Woolf filled her overcoat pocket with stones, walked into the River Ouse and was swept away. She was a strong swimmer, so the stones made her determination clear. Although she'd had enough of her life, her books remain as a testiment to her. They are filled with such understanding of life and death, such wonder, and such a clear acount of the human condition. Let's let her have the last words as we party on her behalf on into the night...So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

Hello to her

Seven Wonderful Wonders of West Wales.

Seven wonderful wonders of West Wales

I’ve lived in West Wales for nearly 10 years now, and everyday I celebrate the richness of its landscape, culture, history, buildings and people. I love everything equally, but when I really think about it, there’s bound to be

 things that particularly are in my heart. So I’ve compiled this top ten of wonderful wonders, some of which I see every day, some of which I visit with joy on occasion.

Number One; Cardigan Bay 

My local coast line is the hidden secret of West Wales – one of the best coastlines in the UK – but we try not to tell, otherwise everyone would want to see the resident dolphin pod, the breathtaking views (especially as the sun sets or the moon comes up over the black sea), the rugged rocks dotted with seals and rare sea flowers and tempting patches of rabbit-cropped grass ready for that perfect picnic, where you may  spot a kite, or even an osprey. There’s picturesque villages, and tiny ‘secret’ beaches only reached by Wales’ famous coastal path. Stretching from Cardigan to Aberystwyth, the bay has a wealth of things to visit, from Llaneraeron, a National Trust day out, to the narrow gauge railway up to the Devil’s Bridge.  So, please don’t tell anyone about all of this; we like to keep it to ourselves!

Number Two; The Ancient Sacred SitesIf you’ve been reading my blog regularly, you’ll already know about the stone circle where we celebrate the Summer Solstice (and appeared on Channel  Five!!), Gors Fawr. Close by in the Preseli Hills are the amazing bluestone outcrops, which became part of the Stonehenge structure five thousand years ago. But West Wales is also resplendent with cromlechs,; the Welsh word for dolmen, pre-historic tombs consisting of a large flat stone laid on upright ones, possibly to form graves, some of which have been stripped down to their bare skeleton of massive stones. Pentre Ifan is perhaps the largest and best preserved neolithic cromlech, but there are others, some more than 1500 years earlier than the pyramids, all of which are amazing. Carreg Samson is a fine example – legend has it that St Samson placed the capstone in position using only his little finger. I’ve lain inside this dolmen, to meditate on a hot summer’s day. 
Perhaps the cutest is Carreg Coetan in Newport, near Cardigan. Composed of four upright stones, only two of them actually support the enormous capstone, which precariously perches…and has done for thousands of years! Also worth a visit is Castell Howell, a reconstructed Iron Age settlement. But I don’t want to forget the later Christian sacred sites, such as the tiny churches, some from 500 CE which dot the coastal landscape, and the great Abbey ruins of both St Dogmaels, where every week there’s an organic market next to the pretty duck pond, or the Cisterian Abbey of Strata Florida, Latin for ‘Vale of Flowers’, which has stood on lush meadows beside the banks of the river Teifi since 1200. 

Number Three; Newcastle Emlyn.

The tiny town (3000 inhabitants) which is four miles from my house, is one of the loveliest towns I know. The site of the first permanent printing press in the 18th century…and  the last recorded use of the stocks in Britain (1872), it’s a Fair-trade town with it’s own Fair and Fabulous shop, where mostly I buy my pressies, as I honestly can’t afford the Maker’s Mark, because this stocks the finest art and craft items local to the area. NCE is full of shabby-chic shops, antique galleries, organic shops like The Carrot Cruncher, and pretty cafes with a view of the Teifi like Riverside and Harrisons. Every month there’s a thriving cattle market which blocks the roads and adds to the farmyard stink, but I love to stand and watch the auctioneers, who rattle off their sales without taking breath.  

At the bottom of a steep cliff, the river winds round the town, creating both a  natural motte and moat for the ancient castle, where apparently the very last dragon in Wales was shot down, landing in Llewellyn’s Pool, a maelstrom in the river which has recently taken the life a man who fell in late one night. The last dragon is such a loved tale, that the townsfolk brought it back to life a few years ago…read about this here https://www.goddess-pages.co.uk/the-last-dragon-in-wales-was-killed-in-newcastle-emlyn/

Number Four; The Eisteddfod 

Every summer Eisteddfods are seen up and down the land, and the National one is held alternatively in the north and south of the country. Next year, it's in our county, at Tregaron which lies on the river Teifi, and we can't wait to be there, ‘ar y maes’, as they say in Welsh (on the field). We've been going to local eisteddfods since we came here, always totally stunned at the hotbed of hidden talent in our area. Competitors from four to ninety-four clamber up on the stage and announce, confidently, 'I'm going to sing...' or 'play...' or 'dance...or recite...'  Later, they will have to listen to the judges' opinion of them. Even more culturally shocking for someone from England is that teenagers do it to! Spotty youths who elsewhere would be hanging round street corners are there with their beautiful voices, singing violins and recitations.

The National Eisteddfod itself is held in the medium of the oldest living language in northern Europe (Welsh, of course! ) and is still one of the largest cultural festivals of its kind in Europe, attracting more than 150,000 visitors over one week in August. This ancient tradition exists thanks largely to the efforts of the 19th Century visionary Iolo Morgannwg, but it all began in my local town of Cardigan, (Aberteifi), where in 1176 a cultural tournament involving bards and musicians was held for the first time in the grounds of the castle by the Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd. We’re all booked up for the Maes next year, but will continue to enjoy the way the Welsh are wedded to music, poetry and dance all around Ceredigion every year.

Number Five; The River Teifi.

You’ll notice how many times I mention the Teifi (pronounced Tayvi in Welsh and Tivey by the English) because in Wales, places are defined by their river, and Ceredigion is no exception. The Teifi (and the Ceri, which is the tributary closest to where I live), used to be my favourite place to walk. It starts high in the Cambrian Mountains at the Teifi Pools, which long ago were bubbling springs but are now the county’s water reservoirs. If you keep striding west, you’ll pass beneath willows and beside wide trout pools, over a variety of stone bridges, through pretty villages and moss woods  filled with birdsong and the tinkle of streams. At Cenarth, you can watch the salmon leap the falls to go and spawn upstream, or hire a coracle, which used to be the only form of river fishing boat in this area, but now is simply a fun thing to try (and fail at) on holiday. 

But I don’t choose the river for my walks any longer, because my new puppy is a menace in the water! 

Number Six; The National Library of Wales 

I’ll never forget the first time I climbed the hill in Aberystwyth to visit The National Library of Wales. I turned round from its huge revolving door to witness what must be the best view from any library in the world. I was looking out over the slate roofs of the university city town to the blue-grey expanse of Cardigan Bay. It took away my breath, which I didn’t get back until I left its hallowed halls. It houses six and a half million books, all relevant to Wales, including every single modern book published in Wales. There’s the oldest book ever printed in Wales. and the oldest manuscript, the Black Book of Carmarthen, almost eight hundred years old. 

I’d gone there to read such a book (in facsimile, of course), because in the library houses some of the original copies of what we now think of as The Mabinogion. This ancient text, some of the earliest prose stories of the literature of Britain, is one of my great loves. There are two main source manuscripts, created c. 1350–1410, as well as a few earlier fragments. In the collection as it’s presented today, there’s a classic hero quest, "Culhwch and Olwen"; a historic legend, "Lludd and Llefelys," early glimpses of King Arthur and the highly sophisticated complexity of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. The original 12th century books the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest are in the National Library of Wales. But these stories were brought together from earlier oral traditions, in just the same way as the Iliad and the Odyssey were written about oral tales that had been told since the Bronze Age in Greece. You can read more about these stories in some of my blogposts.

Number Seven; The Welsh Botanical Garden 

Because one of my friends was part of the original team who founded the idea of a Botanic Gardens, I'm particularly attached to this wonder, and in fact, many others are too, as the Great Glasshouse was officially voted number one 'modern wonder' in Wales. When the gardens started being created between low hills in Carmarthenshire, it became the first national botanic garden of the 21st century anywhere in the world, and the first in the UK for nearly 200 years. At its heart is the amazing Glasshouse, largest structure of its kind in the world, with a geometry of such complex and advanced technology that it never existed on paper – only as a computer programme. Housing plants from Chile, Western Australia, South Africa, California, the Canary Islands and the Mediterranean. Outside in the grounds, we really love the double-walled garden, rebuilt from ruins, and the large collection of n Welsh apple varieties. It’s got a great cafe, and is a day out in itself, although on the way back, we sometimes walk around the gardens of Aberglasney, which are very different again.

I could go on; there must be a hundred wonderful wonders in Ceredigion alone. So come and explore yourself1

Picasso: My Experience

Picasso: My Experience

Part Six of Kitchen Table Writer's Look at Art

People are always asking me what my favourite genre of novel to read is, and who is my favourite author, but no one ever asks me the same question about art. Perhaps I just don't move in those circles, where elevated conversation gently buzzes through rooms of martini-holding guests (which is how I sort of visualise arty parties). But if anyone actually did, I'd answer without hesitation…
Picasso. 

The famous photo of Picasso shading Franciose
 Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot with Picasso’s nephew on the Côte d’Azur in 1951. Photograph: Robert Capa/Magnum

I first encountered Picasso in my twenties, when I bought the book written by Francoise Gilot; My Life with Picasso. Gilot became Picasso's lover and the mother two to of his children.  Gilot was at that point trying to establish herself as an artist when she met the older man. She is now 94, and was recently interviewed by the Guardian; read the article .

La Joie de Vivre, 1946

Since reading her biography, which was as much about their art as their love affair, I've  zoned in on the great man's work wherever I am, from travelling to London in the eightes for touring exhibitions of his work, to discovering that Antibes, in the South of France had its own picasso gallary. In 1946 Picasso spent a  year in Antibes using the 2nd floor of the Chateau Grimaldi as his workshop, and at the end of that year gave around seventy works to the city,  The gallery is now inside that magnificent chateau. I wandered around the artwork until I was face-to-face with the most enormous painting that struck a cord. This is linked to Francoise Gilot, because when he painted it, he was about to become a father again with her child in hid sixties, so he probably did feel full of the joys of life, This comes through in this painting, in fact it shouts it out. I could have stayed in front of it forever, because it is amazingly detailed and there is so much to see, interpret and understand. 


Françoise herself is depicted as the central dancing nymph accompanied by a faun and centaur playing flutes and two small goats who are dancing with her in their goat-like way. The colours are muted and restricted to yellow, blue and neutrals, and I stood there thinking how it made me feel free and re-energised. 

Three Musicians 1921
https://www.pablopicasso.org/three-musicians.jsp

Since that time, I've visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Picasso's The Three  Musician is on display. Like  La Joie de Vivre, it’s a massive painting more than 2 metres wide that swallows all your attention. Picasso was experimenting at the time with cutting out and repositioning images in paper. The  three brightly coloured figures are set against a dark background, which could be a stage as they might represent the masked figures in a type of Italian popular theatre, and it’s easy to spot Pierrot and Harlequin. The third figure is hard to make out. He is a singing monk, intriguingly concentrated into a small, grey rectangle. Using cut out paper clearly aided Picasso in his development of cubism, which, as far as my small artistic brain can work out, is when the artist tries to represent many sides of a 3-D object in 2-D, using geometric shapes to distort what we're seing and make us look again. This picture takes us backwards in art history time, to 1907 and the other famous Picasso at MoMA;  Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The name is a reference to a street in Barcelona famed for its brothels. This is traditionally seen as Picasso's pivotal first step towards the new Cubist style, establishing him as the leader of avant-garde art in Paris, and marking a radical break from traditional composition. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Demoiselles_d%27Avignon

As I took in the pink, naked figures with their grotesque faces, and the incongruous bowl of fruit, which seems to be slipping down a slanting tabletop at the bottom of the composition, I  recalled a TV programme on Picasso I'd seen, which explained that the compressed, splintered, flattened and jagged naked women were inspired both by Iberian sculpture and African masks I was also struck by the connection between the powerfully muscular Art Deco bodies I'd been seeing all over New York during our tour and the ladies in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, who are equally well-built and muscular.

More recently, I’ve become fascinated by a series of paintings I've never seen, but certainly will, next time I'm in Barcelona. In his final years, Picasso combined all the styles he'd invented and embraced all his life, and his paintings became even larger and full of colour. He also began to re-examine and re-appropriate (this is, copy, with changes to make the work your own) the old masters. In 1957, he created a series of 58 paintings in little over two weeks, all from a seventeenth century oil painting by Diego Velázquez; Las Meninas. This has even more massive dimensions than Les Demoiselles and is hung in Madrid. Picasso’s works – also called Las Meninas –  are preserved at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona – well worth a visit. 

    Click here to read more about the
 painting and see who all these people are 

Although I've never seen Diego Velázquez’s painting in the flesh, I downloaded it as a screen saver, and it excited, even thrilled me. I found that I could unravel things about it just by looking for longer and longer, and that I was taken off on tangents… psychological, philosophical and practical. But when I then read more about the picture, I had to review some of my conclusions and seek further unravelling of its mysteries. This simply added to the delight of discovery.  





The first puzzle is the name given to the painting. Clearly, the central figure in Velázquez’s original is the Infanta Margaret Theresa, a five-year-old stunner in a costly white dress. The 'Meninas' are her handmaidens, ladies in waiting of high status, dressed quite similarly, a little older than her, and extremely attentive. Noticeably, they have dark, ‘Spanish’ hair, while the Infanta has golden curls. 

At first I thought Margaret’s expression was that of a little girl who loves attention. I thought she’d turned her face to the light, believing it  enhanced her beauty. But on closer inspection, I could see her eyes are looking in the opposite direction – at Velázquez's canvas. Is that because the artist is painting her? If so, why is she behind him? Or is there someone else, outside the picture, who is posing for it? Is Margaret looking at a picture of her parents? Because they are there too, in the mirrored image behind Margaret. Are we watching the court watching the painting develop, and seeing it for ourselves in a mirror? If so, what does this mean?  I wondered if by looking at this painting, I'm putting myself in the shoes of the King of Spain. If that’s true, I don’t think the king understood. Velázquez remained his favourite all through his reign.

Each figure adds to the mystery and enchantment. On the right are two dwarfs, perhaps employed to entertain the princess One has laid a foot on the dog. Is he saying “at least I have power over one creature in this court” or is he just boyishly trying to inflict pain on the animal? Above the princess are the royal chaperone and a bodyguard while at the back, in a bright, open doorway, someone looks in. This might be the Queen's Chamberlain. To the left is the artist himself, concentrating on a massive canvas. A link between Velázquez and Picasso is that they both put themselves into their paintings.

All this discovery about Velázquez’s painting had come out of learning about Picasso's tribute. I'd been listening to a programme about Picasso’s Guernica, 

Click on link to find out more about this painting

on Radio Four, of course, which explained that  in the fifties, Picasso often created works relevant to the political situation in Franco’s Spain. This enabled him to make very specific satirical comments about the fascist government without getting into too much trouble. 
His Las Meninas is harder to unravel than Guernica, but, as with other Picasso’s works, it’s even harder to look away. I discovered they also fascinate and frustrate art historians.

click link for more information

The Infanta is a picture of childhood innocence. Picasso painted her over and over again: Alone, in body and as a bust, the Infanta appears in 14 of the series interpretations. In the work to the left, she does retain that sweet, chubby-cheeked look, but Picasso subverts and alters the original throughout the series. In some she seems to have a sourer look, worldly wise and rather disenchanted. In both representations, she’s wearing a mantilla, unlike the original, which makes me think Picasso wanted to make her seem traditionally Spanish. The colour of her dress and hair also change in each representation and in some her head is out of proportion. To quote art histories, it's possible Picasso twisted Infanta Margarita’s face in order to show how difficult it was for the young princess to balance her contradictory feelings and emotions between traditional etiquette and controlled behavior on the one hand and playfulness.

click link for  further pictures

Some art historians suggest that Picasso painted re-appropriations late in his life because he finally felt equal to the great masters, also to prove he had not left his best years behind. In the art world, it is quite common for a great master to be reviled in later stages of their lives, and this was happening to Picasso.

So how are these pictures a commentary on contemporary events in Spain, observed by Picasso from his exile in France? Look at the ceiling bosses. They have become grotesque hooks for the suspension of torture victims. In some pictures, the painter becomes a figure from the Inquisition while in one of them a maid has Franco’s moustache.

In the middle of these 58 paintings, Picasso also painted pigeons, white creatures, resonant of innocence and purity. It was as if he was searching for

perfect innocence amid the desperation of Spain at that time.

I found this quote from Picasso on the Guggenheim website, about this series…
little by little, I would paint my Meninas which would appear detestable to the professional copyist; they wouldn’t be the ones he would believe he had seen in Velázquez’s canvas, but they would be “my” Meninas. 

I like the way that sums up what you see when you look at the canvases, or at least, their representations online.