ADRIAN STOKES (1902-1972)
Gerlach Peak or Gerlachovsky stit (2,654m - 8,709ft)
Slovakia
In Lake of Csorba, High Tatras, Peak of Gerlach, Hungary - oil on canvas - Tate Britain
The mountain
Gerlachovský štít (2,654m - 8,709ft), Gerlach Peak in english, is the highest peak in the High Tatras, in Slovakia, and in the whole 1,500 km (930 mi) long Carpathian mountain chain. The pyramidal shape of the massif is marked by a huge cirque. Despite its relatively low elevation, the about 2,000 m vertical rise from the valley floor makes Gerlachovský štít soar. Mistaken for an average mountain in the rugged High Tatras range in the more distant past, it has since played a symbolic role in the eyes of the rulers and populations of several Central European nations, to the point that between the 19th and mid-20th century, it had four different names with six name reversals. It managed to be the highest mountain of the Kingdom of Hungary, and of the countries of Czechoslovakia and Slovakia within the span of only about two decades of the 20th century.
Gerlachovský štít shares its geology and ecology with the rest of the High Tatras, but provides a worthwhile environment for biologists as the highest ground anywhere in Europe north of the parallel linking approximately Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. With the travel restrictions imposed by the Eastern Bloc, the mountain was particularly treasured as the loftiest point available to climb to by Czechs, East Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Slovaks. It continues to attract its share of visitors although the local authorities have been continually adding new restrictions on access.
Climbing
The High Tatras is truly an alpine rock climber’s paradise since there are no nasty glaciers about and the snow is mostly gone by June, though it may linger in some of the shaded valleys until late August. There are literally hundreds of alpine rock and face climbs here and most of them have never been done by westerners even 10 years after the fall of the wall. Most importantly the rock quality is on a par with Yosemite and the routes are well established and protected. Only members of a national UIAA club are allowed to climb the peak on their own. Other visitors have to take a certified mountain guide. The two easiest routes, usually up the Velická próba and down the Batizovská próba named after their respective valleys, are protected by chains.Technically only a grade II to III climb when not snow covered it benefits greatly from a very well maintained mountain trail that leads to the summit along a standard route.
Source:
- Summit post.org
The painter
Adrian Stokes was a British writer and painter, known principally as an influential art critic. He was also a published poet. Stokes’s first major achievements began after he met modernist poet, Ezra Pound in November 1926, and after he started analysis with Melanie Klein, in January 1930. Stokes evolved an innovative aesthetic in the first two of his major books of the 1930s - The Quattro Cento (1932) and Stones of Rimini (1934).
In The Quattro Cento he characterized the intense Early Renaissance feeling for material and space as 'mass-effect' and 'stone-blossom'. The stone—deeply respected as a medium – is, he said, 'carved to flower' thereby bringing to the surface the fantasies the artist reads in its depths.
Stones of Rimini (1934) tightens and focuses these organicist themes, further psychologises the artistic process, and establishes thereby one of Stokes’s most central themes: the duality of 'carving-modelling'. In the contemporary art of the 1930s Stokes found these 'carving' qualities in the work of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore, whose Modernism he championed in articles in The Spectator. As a lover of ballet and a ballet-critic Stokes also promoted the avant-garde creations of the Ballets Russes in two further books: To-Night the Ballet (1934) and Russian Ballets (1935). Following the end of his analysis in 1935 he learnt to paint, joined the Euston Road school of art, and extended his carving-modelling aesthetic to painting in his seventh book, Colour and Form (1937).
In the following years he drew on the work of Klein and other psychoanalysts in reformulating his previous carving-modelling aesthetic in terms of ‘depressive’ and ‘paranoid-schizoid’ states of mind. This featured in his book, Smooth and Rough (1951),which was the last Faber publication and was much more developed in his next book, Michelangelo (1955) now published by Tavistock. At the same time Stokes helped & contributed papers to the 'Imago Group' which met regularly for nearly eighteen years to discuss applications of psychoanalysis to philosophy, politics, ethics, and aesthetics. A year after his death in 1972 these papers were published by Carcanet in the book, A Game That Must Be Lost (1973) which remains one of the most fitting tributes to his life's work.
Source:
- Tate Britain + Wikipedia
