Paths of Glory
General, have you ever played Nectaris?
(Stanley Kubrick) (1957) The wise war-monger, Clausewitz, decreed that the objective should be relinquished when its value was not equal to the cost of its gain. There are many instances in human conflict where this seemingly trite point has been blanketed and lost in the fog, notably the struggle on the western front, 1914-1918. In Kubrick’s grey and gritty story, Kirk Douglas is given the ridiculous task of taking the ‘Ant-Hill’, a fortified patch of raised ground held by an enemy armed to the teeth. With the inevitable failure of this mission, the superior officer in charge needs a patsy, so three…
Continue Reading →Treasure Ships
4 frigates capturing Spanish Treasure Ships (Francis Sartorius, 1804) Not in this collection
(Art in the Age of Spices, Art Gallery of SA July 2015) P, liking ‘boaty’ paintings, was prompted to see this exhibition collecting some of the good things to come of the spice age and the tender mercies of the Dutch East Indies Company. Our favourite pieces: the sumptuous Scholar in his Studio c 1655 by Abraham Van Den Hecken;a glowing St Cecilia:an allegory of music, c. 1650 by Francesco Fieravino, some 15th C ‘pop-up’ books showing the world as known before they closed the circle on Terra Australis, a reliquary from Goa containing a thorn from the Crown of…
Continue Reading →Goethe – The Man and His Character
(Joseph McCabe) (1912) In the years before Kaiser Wilhelm turned the English off anything German, this stodgy but comprehensive life is a good introduction to the Teutonic Shakespeare. From 28 August 1749 through Faust Part I, numerous flings with strait-laced ladies (all lovers of literature), festschrifts in Weimar, an Italian pilgrimage, the search for a Germany, mateship with Schiller, the French Revolution and Faust II, to the last cry for “More light!”, the story carries you along and hopefully leads you to the work. And what work! He is the post-classical bridge to the new literature and he remains a Giant,…
Continue Reading →The Stones of Venice
(John Ruskin) (3 volumes, 1851-3) Ruskin, high priest of fine art and architecture, wrote these 3 volumes based on a deep well of learning and meticulous research, including a Pevsner-like mountain of sketches and using the new technique of daguerreotype, a revolution in architectural appreciation and review. It will be read from cover to cover now only by art historicists, not architects, for on aesthetics Ruskin (like Carlyle) is a man out of time: “art is valuable or otherwise , only as it expresses the personality, activity, and living perception of a good and great human soul; …it may express and…
Continue Reading →Vale Mr Walsh
The Varnished Culture has a modest yet passionate interest in Australian Rules Football; thus we comment on the dreadful passing of Phil Walsh, Senior Coach of the Adelaide Crows. He called himself a ‘Bogan from [the southern Victorian region of] Hamilton’, yet cited (superbly) Van Gogh as an exemplar of the frustrating chase to achieve perfection, suggesting that he had soared beyond the mundane to reach the varnished culture. Our condolences to Mrs Walsh.
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