Come Unto These Yellow Sands – but mind the naked fairies…
A Few Words First Most of my favourite newsletters are the ones I’ve not written. Not principally because some generous soul has spared me racing against looming deadlines, but because the texts written by talented authors who generously allow me to reproduce them...
Ships in the Air
Or a Short History of Flights of Fantasy “…Give me the ships, with sails adapted to the heavenly wind; there will be fearless people, even if they face the immensity. And for those descendants who in short time will venture themselves by these ways we will prepare…”...
Witchdances, Winterkings and Dragonstones
Or the Astonishing Visions of Hermann Hendrich A few months ago, my writer friend Harold Rhenisch came by, on his pilgrimage through Germany, digging up the taproots and ostracons of his family and past. Here in Neuchâtel, we visted the Dürrenmatt Museum (something...
The Dream of Emese
Or An Intricate Intertwining of Threads Many months ago, while investigating – if investigating is not too diligent-sounding a term for my somewhat directionless wanderings on the track of some mythological creature or other across the marches of cultural history –...
Two Foreign Gentlemen from Naples
TWO FOREIGN GENTLEMEN FROM NAPLES Or the Most Enigmatic Lives and Works of Monsù Desiderio If art history (capital A, capital H) generally traces a pretty straight path through the rolling green countryside of painting, stopping only to inspect the work of masters and...
A Shoulder to Lean On
Or Reflections by a Vicarious Southpaw After a half a century of diligent draughtsmanship one would think that much if not all of the process can be taken for granted. (Estimation based on the point where I most distinctly recall encountering my first major...
Two Years or Two Thousand Miles
... Whichever Come First Or the Statistics of Art, Parentheses Parity and Pencil Parings Two years ago today, I stepped off a plane in Wellington and said to myself “Well, I’m back.” It had been a while, clearly, and in all honesty, I thought at the time that now, two...
That Extra Dimension
Or Imagining, Subtracting and Adding: the Arithmetic of Painting and Sculpture Well, they’re back! Several months after being officially released, Smaug the Golden and Eowyn & the Nazgul are available again. The real thing (in real bronze with a hardwood base) is...
Ullage
Or the Fine Art of the Empty Space It’s no secret. I quite like words. Meeting new ones is like meeting new people, each toting an etymological suitcase of complexity and experience in the simple syllabification of a few letters. So, when the in-flight entertainment...
Standing Stones
Or How the Past Can Inspire the Now Actually, this entry might well have been entitled “a friend in need…” as ambition had gotten farther down the road to writing something than the writing itself. Some how, the year’s end and this one’s beginning, which I had hoped...
A Short History of Hot Air
Or Smoke Gets In Your Eyes “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…. Phlogiston!” (Hearty applause) “And its creator… Georg Ernst Stahl!” (The house comes down) It is a shame such a scene never took place, but the world of 18th century science was such a mix of daring,...
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...
