Nuni-Cunai - Essays

A Case for Olympia
December 1996, New York

The Baudelairean eternal beauty in art.
The ideas in this essay are accompanied and illustrated by ASH OLYMPIA, a nude self portrait conceived after Manet's Olympia.

Les Roses sans Chenilles (Roses without Caterpillars)
on George Sand and Flaubert
May 1997, 3707 words

How art engages and employs the imagination of the reader.
In French.

J'ai envie de respirer l'air parisien (I want to breath the air in Paris)
May 1997, 955 words

Written for the René Taupin Scholarship.
It also serves as an addendum for A Case for Olympia as it elaborates on the theme of art and cultural differences.

Les Cercles de l'amour (The Circles of Love)
September 1997, 1185 words

Hernani by Victor Hugo and Les Caprices de Marianne by Musset.
How the "law of physics" is at work in these relationships traditionally described as "love triangles."
A circle is offered as the more fitting geometric model with some entertaining and convincing reasons as to why.

A European Recitative
November 1997, 1945 words

Written after 3 luminous summer months spent in Europe.
Called a recitative, for it simply recites that which would lead to an aria or an opus,
which, in this case, would be a novel based on eight days in Italy: eight glorious and ignominious days...

ART AS PRIVATE PROPERTY: THE CONFINES OF FREEDOM.
May 1998, 9531 words

An in-depth examination of the relationship between an artist's private self and his (or her) public.
Blok, Shostakovich, Mayakovsky, Olesha, Orwell and Shakespeare.

MIRRORS & BUTTERFLIES
Olympia's legacy
Charles, Charles & Fabrice
Astratto, senza fine
Hunters and Trumpers
Life in abstract in art in the Charterhouse
Shoes, poets and the humanity
Chance Butterflies
De la Faille's no.255
May 1999, approx. 42,000 words

Composed of eight essays, including Prologue and Addendum,
this collection picks up where A Case For Olympia had left off, delving deeper into the concept of the humanity present in art. At times taking on an anecdotal tone, this opus outraged the sensibilities of many academics who were not used to intellectual writings on art springing so directly from life itself. It also includes a small discovery made about the very title of Stendhal's famous and often discussed novel, The Charterhouse of Parma.
Some of the other writers discussed are: Balzac, Cavell, Croce, Danto, Flaubert, Heidegger and Petrarch.