“The Greats”
Lady Agnew daring John Singer Sargent to get on with it
(Art Gallery of New South Wales, January 2016) As if it is not enough to give the world The Witchery, Edinburgh, in the form of her three great galleries (National, Portrait and Modern) has lent 70-or-so important works that Sydney-siders and visitors can see till 14 February 2016. Eclectic but sumptuous, in this selection we get Botticelli’s Weymyss Madonna, Old Woman cooking eggs by Velásquez (above)… …works by Landseer (above), Reynolds, Titian, Rembrandt, and Watteau (his chocolate-box Venetian scene is below). A modest and immodest brace of Gainsboroughs, a luminous little piece by Corot, and a mighty Lorrain-style landscape by the proto-impressionist…
Continue Reading →“I do not seek, I lie in wait”
Corot's Entrée du bois à Ville d'Avray
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796 – 1875) Corot was an important bridge between neo classical landscape painting and impressionism. His landscapes as well as his figures were informed by scrupulous use of colour and design. His personal torch he took from Lorrain and Poussin and he handed over to the Impressionists. Dirk Stroeve, a character in Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, declares that Corot never sold a picture, but this is probably a reflection of the early 20th century fancy that Corot was ‘passé’. In fact, after initial indifference by the Salon and the market, he was reasonably successful, and after his death,…
Continue Reading →The Martian
We'd rather watch Marvin (thanks to Warner Bros.)
(Dir. Ridley Scott) (2015) The one where the rocket takes off, but leaves the botanist behind by mistake, to tend his potatoes. It is easy to overlook quibbles (about, say, wind-cut sand dunes and big storms in an almost airless planet, consequence-free exposure to massive radiation, etc. – in other words, the fact that Mars doesn’t look or act as presented here) if you get a compelling story with real wit and feeling attached. Unfortunately, we don’t. What we do get is the old Hollywood ‘bake ‘n’ shake’. Recipe: Ingredients & method Let’s mine a bit of Interstellar but this time, Matt Damon…
Continue Reading →Happy New Year
The Varnished Culture wishes humans and wee beasties a Happy New Year, excepting mosquitos and humans that insist on acting like animals. As artist Francis Bacon toasted, ‘Champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends!’ And at midnight, when the moment hopefully arises, rather than croaking Auld Lang Syne, better to murmur to your loved one a good Robbie Burns poem: Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run.
Continue Reading →Books About JonBenét
What happened to her? (Picture thanks to Associated Press)
She was the beloved daughter of wealthy parents, and the only little girl in the world with that name. And we all know how things ended, only we don’t. The two best books on the subject, to date, are Lawrence Schiller’s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town and Detective Steve Thomas’ JonBenét, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation. There’s no need to outline the events which are known, or to detail the weirder aspects – the “War and Peace” of all ransom notes, the $118,000 ransom, the playwright across the road who wrote it all before it happened, the false confession, Burke’s voice on tape when it…
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