The Art of Talking Art
Or Getting A Few Words in Edgeways This is an essay about the fine art of talking about… art. There’s decidedly an art to it. Serious art critics, who speak about serious art, adopt a palette of authority, sternly applied with brushes that brook no objection, deciding...
Musings, Museums & Bemusements
Or A Few Musings of a Studiously Random Nature I confess to spending quite a lot of time in museums. I also confess to taking them for granted, though of late, I have vowed to make a rather greater effort to use them more profitably. To do this, I’ve been thinking of...
Edges
Or Vertigo Without Fear of Falling I like edges. I like where one thing stops and another starts. I cherish those points of contact, abrupt or indistinct as they may be, whether between atoms or idioms, between states of mind or states of matter. I like… Left:...
A Nile of Sphinxes*
Or Pawprints on a Riverbank Who invented the sphinx? When Prince Thutmose had his dream in the shadow of the Giza Sphinx, it was already so old as to be considered practically ageless. “The sand oppresses me,” said the Sphinx, see how it irks and suffocates me. Free...
The Sphinx with a Thousand Faces
Or A Statue in Egypt Pards, Paranders, Monoceros & Manticores. Charadrius, Cinnomolgus, Amphisbaena, Leucrota & Tragelaphus, and Bonnacons to boot. Medieval bestiaries are rampant with the most extraordinary creatures, but where is the Sphinx? That was the...
Half Speed Ahead
Or Ce N’est Qu’un Au Revoir Well, I give up. After a year of managing newsletters, with all work and no play making John a dull boy besides, I have finally reached the (temporary) end of my tether, and will still be doing them, but only once per month, at least for a...
Perspectives
Or Where It’s Really All About One’s Point of View I think Dover Books must be the publisher the best represented in my library, they do have a habit of publishing all manner of wholly indispensable books on art and history that I simply cannot pass up. So, when asked...
Discursive
Or Thoughts and Words in Some Semblance of Order. (After a Fashion.) After having given a couple of evening talks to art and design students recently, I have once again realized how ardently I desire NOT to know what I will say, that the unrehearsed articulation of...
Heaven and Hell in a Cedar Tunnel
Or A Very Slim Book by Mervyn Peake At a very trim twenty-two pages, The Craft of the Lead Pencil, by Mervyn Peake, is the briefest of excursions into the well-trodden realm of drawing manuals. * This said, the modest number of pages is no indication of the keen...
Tesserae
Or a Certain Fragmentation of Thought and Image I tend to pick up things. Mostly fragments and broken bits - shells, pebbles, fragments of brick or ceramic. I have quite a collection now, though I suppose it cannot properly be called a collection, as it obeys none of...
Napoleon III, Fluid Beef, The Hollow Earth and Beagle Fiction
Or A Certain Concatenation of Concomitance (Or Convolutions of Coincidence, It All Depends) In 1870, Napoleon III had a problem with Prussia. After having declared war on those pesky Prussians, he was preparing to mobilize 400,000 troops, and of course had to...
A Book Long Overdue
JOSÉ SEGRELLES ILUSTRADOR UNIVERSAL A year ago, we had the pleasure of visiting the José Segrelles Museum in Albaida, near Valencia. Since, I have had the honour and the pleasure of corresponding with the wonderfully enthusiastic people who look after it, so when they...