Category Archive: ART
Islamic Arts
(by J Bloom & S Blair) Despite ongoing conventions, Islamic Art (an extremely wide term, used here for convenience and coherence) flourished beyond the merely decorative or doctrinal. This sumptuous Phaidon edition is a good entrée to the flowers of the various Muslim empires in history.
Continue Reading →The Embarrassment of Riches
(Simon Schama) There’s the Amsterdam dutch And the Zaandam dutch And the Rotterdam dutch And the God-damn dutch… However, despite their slightly dodgy record in slave driving, tulip speculating, trade finance and robust colonization, this admiring and admirably crammed history of culture in the Dutch Golden Age is a delight. The ‘Burgemeester van Delft’ in Jan Steen’s painting on the cover is a dead ringer for Jeffrey Jones (Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).
Continue Reading →Blue Collar & Cups
Hello again and thank you for joining me for this fourth edition of Lesley’s blog, “Annabel Lee”. The powers that be have declared that the colour of Thursday is blue. Accordingly I shall show you a blue beaded, appliqued and embroidered wristlet which I am working on. I am deliberating on how to do the actual lacy cuff bit. A detail of the wristlet-so-far is shown here with some beaded teapot & cup ornaments. I just cannot decide what to use for the actual lacy cuff bit of the wristlet. My sewing assistant and I have hauled out the masses of…
Continue Reading →The Turner Exhibition
(2013)* The Tate’s collection of works by J W M Turner came to Adelaide. Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway 1844 with its ludicrous train and hare is not in this collection, thank god, the picture that doubtless drove Dali, the consummate draftsman, to say “The worst painter in the world, from every point of view, without the foggiest hesitation or any possible doubt, is named Turner.” This is harsh, considering JMW’s Lorrain-inspired Carthage paintings and some of the more inspired proto-impressionist swishes of colour but really, he never could draw and his vivid whites, yellows and blacks…
Continue Reading →The Sistine Chapel
Image courtesy of Titimaster
Unless you have some Papal credentials, see the Vatican City with a proper guide. Not merely to jump queues but to navigate the treasures within. Giotto’s triptych; Caravaggio’s Entombment; the Laocoon; Raphael’s Transfiguration, Liberation of St Peter and School of Athens…some of the greatest mythical painting ever made and there it all is, before you, towering over the tourist hurly-burly, busy taking selfies. Blessed with a bit of height, the Varnished Culture could stake out some wall space and gaze over the sea of baseball caps. Down sparse casements and through subterranean galleries of truly hellish ‘modern’ art, up a…
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