Wednesday, September 17, 2008

all the world's a shallow grave ... or why education can never be as expensive as ignorance






slurp !!! .... any excuse to include a bit of art in pedants' corner


























amateur pedants, genuine lovers of ecclesiastical buildings, and over-educated art historians may have already noted the outline of a familiar building in the background of william hogarth's action-packed vignette of eighteenth century social problems ... do feel free to click on the link ...

http://emotionalblackmailers.blogspot.com/2008/07/back-to-saint-johns-in-bloomsbury.html





































these pictures are somewhat gratuitously displayed in celebration of the government's vaguely realistic and constructive attempt to further and to inform the national debate on alcoholism ... if you can stay in focus, do click on the link below before re-filling your glasses. cheers !


Saturday, September 13, 2008

two for joy


chartres clocks




pilgrim

in chartres, we met a tough australian who had just walked a huge chunk of the pilgrim's way from the french border to santiago


it was the first time i'd seen all the stamps which the pilgrims collect at each hostel on the route


now she'd come to chartres to study the labyrinth ... and she explained the difference between a medieval church's labyrinth and a maze ... the medieval church labyrinths have a spiritual or symbolic purpose possibly connected to the pilgrimage to jerusalem and they don't have dead ends


unfortunately the origins of their meaning were forgotten by the clergy and many were destroyed





























here's an uncredited image downloaded from wikipedia's article on the cathedral at chartres


chartres ... the old post office





any old irons






plusiers des any old irons





piss-ups and breweries, french style


courbet's great studio painting almost restored in the musee d'orsay









Friday, September 12, 2008

chartres



















http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartres_Cathedral

more stuff from chartres








NB
IF YOU GO TO CHARTRES ...
... STAY FOR AT LEAST TWO NIGHTS
... AND TAKE SOME GOOD BINOCULARS TO STUDY THE STAINED GLASS NARRATIVES
the best internet guide to the stained glass might well be adrian fletcher's ...

borrowed image


















at the jeu de paume in paris, there is a big exhibition of wonderful photographs by the late richard avedon

i had a lot of delightful surprises and one big surprise

somehow or other, for nearly forty years, this triptych had passed me by ... i had never seen it

in the second room at the jeu de paume, the three prints, each about ten feet square, are displayed higher up the wall than in this picture from the milan show

so coming face to face with some of the "cast" of lou reed's "walk on the wild side" was quite a shock

for some reason that i'm not yet able to rationalize, i was immediately reminded of some of botticelli's great canvases, primavera, venus and mars, ... but of course warhol's factory had nothing to do with idealism ... maybe someone else can figure out the connection for me

any suggestions ?

a discreet little cafe




not bad ... as cathedrals go