Paul Benney 'Pissing Death' (2012) |
A blog to explore the interests of an original renaissance woman; arts, sciences, poetry, librarianship and everything in between.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Art/Photography/Space/Death
On my course so far we’ve covered labels, art/space/geography and this week we are looking at the art of photography. So when I saw the title of the first incredibly timely and apposite lecture at the Inside Out festival ‘Death and Space’ my attendance was assured. ‘Death and the Contemporary’ according to the website, is a series of ‘site-specific events providing an opportunity for interdisciplinary discussions to consider issues surrounding the representation of death in contemporary culture’.
And where better to talk art, photography, space, contemporary cultural practices and death than in the Deadhouse under Fountain Court at Somerset House? This space resonated with all these connections; from links with the 17th century dead who were in attendance, to contemporary portrayals of powerful spirituality with the art of Paul Benney. As a brief aside, his exhibition works in perfect synchronicity with the light wells and moody, enclosed spaces of the Deadhouse. His mysterious shadowy figures beckon you, forests threaten to maroon you, saints watch over you, whilst Death in time honoured tradition simply pisses all over you.
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Reflections reflected: Chris Orr at the Geological Society
Chris Orr RA. On the Road to Damascus |
Friday, 12 October 2012
Categorising Renaissance art: Or cavete titulos*
‘any classification or any signpost in the landscape is welcomed for its help in the mastering of an unstructured reality’E. H. Gombrich, “Norm and Form: The Stylistic Categories of Art History and their Origins in Renaissance Ideals”, in his book Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, I (London: Phaidon, 1966), 82–83
This lecture was the first of our term of Current Approaches to the History of Art. It’s interesting to note that it is also the earliest and first in chronological terms. Using the terms High Renaissance and Mannerism, Dr Caldwell sets out to explore the labels and divisions that, though they have their roots in the 16th century, were set in stone in the modern era. She was also to examine how we came to categorise label artistic styles and be aware of its artificial subjective disciplines.
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Mother and child
With separate double golden suns
In between she sits, the untouchable
Dawnlike Mother. Her roseate cheeks
Glow whilst dusk pink gown drapes
And shrouds a graceful form.
Pale eyes cast down lost in thought,
As if, like me, searching for words.
Her slender hands shield her child
From our rapt intensity; He notices not
Her or our abstraction, he reaches out
As if to touch the curious bird tamely,
Lightly perched on that blush sleeve.
Signifying separation of his earthly care
A perpetual reaching, a never touching
Like the woman and the child.
Like the viewer and the woman.
Inspired by Jacopo Bellini's (1396-1471) 'Madonna col Bambino'
In between she sits, the untouchable
Dawnlike Mother. Her roseate cheeks
Glow whilst dusk pink gown drapes
And shrouds a graceful form.
Pale eyes cast down lost in thought,
As if, like me, searching for words.
Her slender hands shield her child
From our rapt intensity; He notices not
Her or our abstraction, he reaches out
As if to touch the curious bird tamely,
Lightly perched on that blush sleeve.
Signifying separation of his earthly care
A perpetual reaching, a never touching
Like the woman and the child.
Like the viewer and the woman.
Inspired by Jacopo Bellini's (1396-1471) 'Madonna col Bambino'
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