Friday 29 July 2011

York


During my trip to York I visited York Art Gallery.
The York Gallery presented  new show of the city's most notable painter, William Etty, as Art and Controversy.
He was very controversial during his lifetime in the early and middle 19th century, and still is.  His ambition to be the country's most famous painter of historical subjects was well suited to contemporary taste.  He set out to supply his nude art with his huge and smaller canvases of stories from classical literature and the Old Testament.
It was the nudes he filled his works with that so worried his contemporaries. He gloried in flesh, male as well as female, painting naked women and he out to tell the moral of his tales of decadence and divine retribution.


Pleasures of the flesh: William Etty's nudes

'Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs' 1828

why?

"Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"[Zealotry]

metal. preparing for a festival

the 100 most beautiful words in english

Ailurophile A cat-lover.
Assemblage
A gathering.
Becoming Attractive.
Beleaguer To exhaust with attacks.  
Brood
To think alone.
Bucolic
In a lovely rural setting.
Bungalow
A small, cozy cottage.
Chatoyant
Like a cat’s eye.
Comely
Attractive.
Conflate
To blend together.
Cynosure
A focal point of admiration.
Dalliance
A brief love affair.
Demesne
Dominion, territory.
Demure
Shy and reserved.
Denouement
The resolution of a mystery.
Desuetude
Disuse.
Desultory
Slow, sluggish.
Diaphanous
Filmy.
Dissemble
Deceive.
Dulcet
Sweet, sugary.
Ebullience
Bubbling enthusiasm.
Effervescent
Bubbly.
Efflorescence
Flowering, blooming.
Elision
Dropping a sound or syllable in a word.
Elixir
A good potion.
Eloquence
Beauty and persuasion in speech.
Embrocation
Rubbing on a lotion.
Emollient
A softener
Ephemeral
Short-lived.
Epiphany
A sudden revelation.
Erstwhile
At one time, for a time.
Ethereal
Gaseous, invisible but detectable.
Evanescent
Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.
Evocative
Suggestive.
Fetching
Pretty.
Felicity
Pleasantness.
Forbearance
Withholding response to provocation.
Fugacious Fleeting.
Furtive
Shifty, sneaky.
Gambol
To skip or leap about joyfully.
Glamour
Beauty.
Gossamer
The finest piece of thread, a spider’s silk
Halcyon
Happy, sunny, care-free.
Harbinger
Messenger with news of the future.
Imbrication
Overlapping and forming a regular pattern.
Imbroglio
An altercation or complicated situation.
Imbue
To infuse, instill.
Incipient
Beginning, in an early stage.
Ineffable
Unutterable, inexpressible.
Ingénue
A naïve young woman.
Inglenook
A cozy nook by the hearth.
Insouciance
Blithe nonchalance.
Inure
To become jaded.
Labyrinthine
Twisting and turning.
Lagniappe
A special kind of gift.
Lagoon
A small gulf or inlet.
Languor
Listlessness, inactivity.
Lassitude
Weariness, listlessness.
Leisure
Free time.
Lilt
To move musically or lively.
Lissome
Slender and graceful.
Lithe
Slender and flexible.
Love
Deep affection.
Mellifluous
Sweet sounding.
Moiety
One of two equal parts.
Mondegreen
A slip of the ear.
Murmurous
Murmuring.
Nemesis
An unconquerable archenemy.
Offing
The sea between the horizon and the offshore.
Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like its meaning.
Opulent
Lush, luxuriant.
Palimpsest
A manuscript written over earlier ones.
Panacea
A solution for all problems
Panoply
A complete set.
Pastiche
An art work combining materials from various sources.
Penumbra
A half-shadow.
Petrichor
The smell of earth after rain.
Plethora
A large quantity.
Propinquity
An inclination.
Pyrrhic
Successful with heavy losses.
Quintessential
Mose essential.
Ratatouille
A spicy French stew.
Ravel
To knit or unknit.
Redolent
Fragrant.
Riparian
By the bank of a stream.
Ripple
A very small wave.
Scintilla
A spark or very small thing.
Sempiternal Eternal.
Seraglio
Rich, luxurious oriental palace or harem.
Serendipity
Finding something nice while looking for something else.
Summery
Light, delicate or warm and sunny.
Sumptuous
Lush, luxurious.
Surreptitious
Secretive, sneaky.
Susquehanna
A river in Pennsylvania.
Sussurous
Whispering, hissing.
Talisman
A good luck charm.
Tintinnabulation
Tinkling.
Umbrella
Protection from sun or rain.
Untoward
Unseemly, inappropriate.
Vestigial
In trace amounts.
Wafture
Waving.
Wherewithal
The means.
Woebegone
Sorrowful, downcast.

via: iamyourlung

tate

Monday 18 July 2011

Theosophy & Modernism, pt. VIII



“…The first essay, Hidden Meanings in Abstract Art, by Maurice Tuchman, makes an attempt at explaining this dynamic. Tuchman argues that while the early Modernists were clearly influenced by occult systems and mystical schools of thought, experiencing ‘emotions of recognition’ with other similarly inclined artists and thinkers throughout history, that influence was superceded by formalist criticism (and a perceived break with the past) in the years following the Second World War. The primary reason for this, according to Tuchman, was the fact that many of the early abstractionists (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Malevich) were directly involved with and influenced by Helena Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society, founded in 1875.
I’m not an expert in the tenets of Theosophy, but my vague understanding is that they espoused a mix of Eastern metaphysics and western hermetic occultism, with the scientific worldviews of evolution and the electromagnetic spectrum. Basically, they retrofitted a roughly ‘Vedic’ cosmology, that of a holistic universe permeated/made up of energy vibrations, with the language of late 19th, early 20th Century physics, thereby concocting a type of mysticism for modernity. Erik Parker, in his book Techgnosis, sums it up nicely:
The Theosophical cosmos was a giant hum, whose lowest and most coarse ‘vibrations’ made up the material world and whose ‘higher’ planes were carried on ‘higher’ frequencies, all of which interpenetrated simultaneously and invisibly in the here and now, just like Maxwell’s (the physicist who translated Michael Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction into the equations that describe the electromagnetic spectrum) spectral waves…”

Gordon Terry, from a conversation with Erik Bakke

Monday 4 July 2011

Do You Think Too Much?


Do You Think Too Much?

      It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
      I began to think alone — "to relax," I told myself — but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
      I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
      I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
      Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
      I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
      I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
      "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
      "But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
      "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"
      "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
      I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with a PBS station on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors... they didn't open. The library was closed.
      To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
      Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
      I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
(The author of this little jewel is unknown.)



Saturday 2 July 2011

tree lovers

"There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it"  ~Minnie Aumonier