genius

During a Tokyo festival in 1804, he created a portrait of the Buddhist priest Daruma said to be 600 feet long using a broom and buckets full of ink.

Another story places him in the court of the Shogun Iyenari, invited there to compete with another artist who practiced more traditional brush stroke painting.

Hokusai's painting, created in front of the Shogun, consisted of painting a blue curve on paper, then chasing a chicken across it whose feet had been dipped in red paint.

He described the painting to the Shogun as a landscape showing the Tatsuta River with red maple leaves floating in it, winning the competition.

"From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention."

"At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie."

today is a certain someone's birthday

green grow the rushes, o!

the road to westminster

boo ! hiss ! ... an unusual perspective of lord leighton's athlete and python

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

V and A

gilda ... at one end of a gigantic wine cooler

a casting of the porch at santiago de compostela ... the semi-circle of musicians

lady lavender ... the as-yet unmartyred patron saint of librarians

they must have been frisky once upon a time

chaos in the castings room

wot makes the world go 'round

not the kind of gel who tans easily

my mind goes blank ... again !

soaked after a quick dash in the pouring rain from the truck to the doorstep of the blogger, plutarch, a walking talking fount of knowledge and ideas, and a real gent, of course

in the time it takes to swallow a cup of coffee, the subject of current reading returned to the old problem of what to read whilst time is so precious ... what to avoid reading, and what we must re-read ... and we suddenly realized there is a gap in our perspective when neither of us could come up with a quick answer to this question ...

which are the most interesting, or complex, wimmin in the great novels ?

there are plenty of memorable beauties, and plenty of witty and passionate heroines, but when we tried to make a list of wimmin in novels who stimulate and challenge as spiritually and intellectually as do the ones we encounter in real life ... we agreed it might be necessary to appeal for suggestions

a bank in the strand

saint dunstan's in fleet street

http://www.hiddenlondon.com/stdunstans.htm

a rusty old clock in fleet street

civilization

re-photographing gilbert bayes in shaftesbury avenue (i)

i went back to photograph gilbert bayes' freize at the old saville theatre, this time with a tripod and a longer lens, so that i could work from across the street and produce a set with something approaching the original continuity of his design
















i've only just discovered that the panels on the london fire brigade HQ are by the same artist

http://emotionalblackmailers.blogspot.com/2007/11/fire-station-in-lambeth.html

re-photographing gilbert bayes in shaftesbury avenue (ii)

yet another little bit of local colour

like a dog chasing it's own "tale"

i'm still looking for clues about who commissioned maurice lambert's grotesque carvings for AEI ...

but when i googled the obvious search criteria, all i got was me !

more about maurice lambert

there isn't much written about maurice lambert ... perhaps because not much of his work is memorable

















the main book, by vanessa nicolson, is excellently illustrated and researched ... but she sticks to the facts and so she doesn't really ask the question i need to answer ...

how did maurice go from being that sweet baby to becoming a part-time or temporary pornographer of [post-war/cold-war/state-sponsored?] violence ?

and which holder of the purse-strings commissioned the work on behalf of associated electrical industries, and how far was it's confrontational subject matter discussed ?























maybe vanessa nicolson's single paragraph about maurice lambert's war-time experience gives us a tenuous clue to his own attitude














































... and maybe the following article, which popped up when i googled "corporate cold war art", might help to give some perspective to the nature of this commission ...

http://libcom.org/history/articles/cultural-cold-war/

some gilbert bayes nymphs in the V&A

"the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable"

a rarther frivverless old joanna ... designed by burne-jones

did they mop their gravy with bread, or just lick the plate ?

sometimes the day starts well ...

kensington style

on the north side of a private chapel in the home counties

on the south side of a private chapel in the home counties

in a private chapel in the home counties

Here lies the Body of JOHN EVELYN Esq of this place, second son of RICHARD EVELYN Esq who having served the Publick in several employments of which that Commissioner of the Privy Seal in the reign of King James the 2nd was most Honourable: and perpetuated his fame by far more lasting Monuments than those of Stone, or Brass: his Learned and useful works, fell asleep the 27th day of February 1705/6 being the 86th Year of his age in full hope of a glorious resurrection thro faith in Jesus Christ. Living in an age of extraordinary events, and revolutions he learnt (as himself asserted) this truth which pursuant to his intention is here declared.
That all is vanity which is not honest and that there's no solid Wisdom but in real piety.

Of five Sons and three Daughters borne to him from his most vertuous and excellent Wife MARY sole daughter, and heiress of Sir RICHARD BROWNE of Sayes Court near Deptford in Kent onely one Daughter SUSANNA married to WILLIAM DRAPER Esq of Adscomb in this County survived him the two others dying in the flower of their age, and all the sons very young except one nam'd John who deceased 24 March 1698/9 in the 45th year of his age, leaving one son JOHN and one daughter ELIZABETH.