Poetry of Line

Poetry of line.
A house stands on a morning hillside,
Quivering through the dewy haze.
An Italian scent rising with the sun,
An intense suggestion of shapes.
He looks at the landscape
As if at his palms, seeming
Random collection of sharp marks
To craft soft foliage or
A living hand

Line of poetry.
A collection of domestic vessels
Cluster smartly,looking out oddly.
An Italian scent rising from the cloth
An intense order of natura morta.
He looks at the homely
With a half closed stare, seeming
Creating rounds, fluted and handled
To create solid with light
A living gaze

Giorgio Morandi at the Estorick.

Body, mind, water

Embodiment is the hot topic right now it seems. Whether it's the retirement of the page 3 girl, the apparent increase in nudity in London's theatres and performance spaces, or 20,000 year old statuettes, bodies and art are everywhere.

The more I read about embodiment and art, whether from a clinical, philosophical or sociological point of view, it is clear that even if you're looking at a landscape or still life, the body is still present. From the gesture of the artist to the gaze of the viewer, all art is embodied. Once this is understood it would seem that there is little left to say. Which is rather an issue given that I've got 5000 words to find. Perhaps the key is to forget the theory per se and concentrate on the art?

The exhibition 'House of many windows' consists of work by contemporary figurative artists* and looks at how they present the body. Whether it is their own, others or imagined historical portraits. I was interested in  the way the artists depicted their subjects communicating with the viewer.

An uncontroversial look at art and AIDS

In a week that has seen tentative steps towards a cure for a devastating disease, unforgivable hypocrisy in the church and the cardinals getting together to elect a new pope, rather appositely my class this week was about art and AIDS. Sometimes the connections just beg to be written about, so this is a brief one with a just a few observations on the differences between how governments, artists and commercial organisations responded to AIDS in the early 1990s. 

On the Paris Version of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks

Science of painting reflects the mind’s divinity

Monoliths marshal and stand sentient
Silhouetted against the timeless sky
Nature’s harsh light unworthy to pierce
Mary’s loving liquid tranquility:
Divinity needs no external light.

Only a glow from within illuminating,
Awakening the soul, the mind, the spirit.
A perfect circle of composed gesture
Human intellect a divine conduit
Science/art interpreting art/science

From Dec 2011 when the two Da Vinci 'Virgin of the Rocks' were in the National Gallery