Lovely print!!
Edo period / Surimono woodblock print in shikishiban format
7 11/16″x6 13/16″ / Various collections, including Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
An interesting range of styles of work here from 100 years ago. Only the vivid colours in the last few pictures seem more modern.
This week’s look back at paintings from exactly a century ago moves on from the narrative and figurative works I showed last week to a selection of genre paintings, and makes a start on the many landscapes to come.
Although Naturalism and ‘social realism’ are supposed to have faded away by the twentieth century, after the Great War there were still plenty of fine painters who were depicting scenes from everyday life in realist style. Among them was Friedrich Eckenfelder, who reminds us that, while motor taxis may have been crowding the streets of the cities, in the German countryside little had changed.
Friedrich Eckenfelder (1861–1938), White Horses with a Jolly Peasant Group in the Wagon (c 1920), oil on canvas, 86.5 x 112.5 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.
White Horses with a Jolly Peasant Group in the Wagon is one of Eckenfelder’s largest studio paintings, and shows a merry…
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Interesting Sonnet and separated from another interestingly at 37 on a similar theme. Patterson mentions the restless quality of the final sestet.
Tony Harrison is a poet whom I feel I know rather well from his television appearances. He seemed to be on the box quite a lot around 2000 or so. By any criteria his is a radical poet from Leeds. In my imagination I see him as a radical voice from that period along with another favourite poet, Tom Paulin. Harrison is an engaged poet from Leeds and is probably best known for his long poem “V” which was published in 1985. He is an immensely clever poet immersed in his Northern background with which is radicalism is associated and his broad knowledge of the classics. He is a playwright, a film-maker and a translator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Harrison
In the poem which I discovered recently he is addressing his view of history. How the past has been recorded is an issue that perhaps becomes more pressing as we age. There is much debate about statues currently, who we should remember and what is both consciously and unconsciously addressed. What should we pass on to future generations and how to counteract distressingly current propoganda. This poem comes from the new edition of Selected Poems by Tony Harrison published by Penguin – you can find it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Harrison He is travelling with his children over moorland-
Past scenic laybys and stag warning signs
the British borderlands roll into view.
They read: Beware of Unexploded Mines
I tell my children that was World War II.
Those borderlands are becoming politically more controversial, there is a simple rhyme-scheme with those dangerous residues beneath the surface. The poem makes the link between khaki uniforms and cavalry twill. It brins to mind the smart casual wear demanded of upper ranks in their so called leisure time. The areas forbidden to play are those marked off by signs and fences which remind the reader of enclosures and the imperial system of trade providing employment in a regulated manner to mill workers. The latter similarly having their time divided by tolling bells.
Mill angelus, and church tower twice as high.
One foundry cast the work-and rest-day bells-
the same red cottons in the flags that fly
for ranges, revolutions, and rough swells.
The alliterative Rs remind us not only of the Union Jack but that to some it was considered the butcher’s apron. The rough swells is almost classical ( Homer’s wine-dark sea) and rowdy posh boys with the ambivalent firing ranges in the background.
Very interesting perceptions raised here and philisophical ideas about contingency and social aspects of knowledge etc.
No surprises – the peak of freshness revealing itself only in virtual unreality.
The gritty everyday mere variations on a theme grown grey.
A card in the post injects tales of different lives, all struggling within similar scenes,
but with different characters and different dreams.
Outdoors we become more distant; not only in physicality but in personality, venting inner frustrations in public confrontations as we queue for packaged food in stiff winding formation.
One thing – nature remains the same, takes no heed of gradual change; the conclusion of casual encounters or the fearful flinching or the braving of traffic and thorns in homage to our new motto ‘social distancing.’
I fill my time with paper cuttings, shaping paper realities and marvelling how paper nothings become paper somethings, distinct from my static surroundings.
I cling to paper memories, remnants of unwelcome worlds – tickets sacred in their very materiality –…
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Thank you for that- normal service will return at the Morrab as soon as possible!
Image Courtesy of the Morrab Library
Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch, but surely Gilbert & Sullivan would have had their pirates sing about the Morrab , an independent library situated in Penzance’s Morrab Gardens if they could have fit it in.
Image Courtesy of the Morrab Library
The Morrab sounds like an ideal location for a Victorian operetta penned by the famous duo. Even the name seems apt. Morrab is derived from the Cornish words “mor,” meaning sea, and “app” meaning shore or coastal land.
Image Courtesy of Morrab Library
Set amidst beautiful gardens overlooking the sea, The Morrab is the sixth largest independent library in the United Kingdom.
Image Courtesy of Morrab Library
It is remarkable because it houses a marvelous series of collections which have gradually been acquired since the library was founded in 1818. The Morrab houses more than 55,000 volumes and is strong in literature…
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§ 10.85 ON LADON:
Ladon, a boatman on the Tiber,
bought himself when grown old,
a bit of land on the banks of his beloved stream,
.But as the overflowing Tiber often invaded it with raging floods,
breaking into his ploughed fields,
converting them in winter into a lake,
he filled his worn-out boat,
which was drawn up on the beach, with stones,
making it a barrier against the floods.
By this means he repelled the inundation. who would have believed it?
An unseaworthy boat became the protector of the boatman!
Iam senior Ladon Tiberinae nauta carinae
Proxima dilectis rura paravit aquis.
Quae cum saepe vagus premeret torrentibus undis
Thybris et hiberno rumperet arva lacu,
Emeritam puppem, ripa quae stabat in alta,
Inplevit saxis obposuitque vadis.
Sic nimias avertit aquas. Quis credere posset?
Auxilium domino mersa carina tulit.
Moving on from ancient boats protecting retired boatmen, I was intriged by the article in the New Scientist telling how an unmanned ship has just made it’s way with very little remote steerage through the Panama Canal.
If only it was just in the 1940s. Fascism is capable of a kind of plasticity so that in various forms it lingers today. There are areas where the gruesome original lurks about today.
Conrad Veidt & Claude Rains in Casablanca
Stories about fighting fascists always make for fascinating movies.Look at the legendary Casablanca (1942), for instance, or the low-key but surprisingly tense The Mortal Storm (1940). Like many Hollywood war films of the early 1940s, these productions have…
Really love this pot!!
1968 / Earthenware / Dimensions not available
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK
I think Steppenwolf is a truly fascinating book. Amongst other things it is a portrait of the intellectual as an outsider. It is also a picture of the loneliness of ageing. There are very imaginative pieces of writing rather a forerunner of magical realism. The final passages achieve a kind of dramatic resolution. It is true to say that it is not a comfortable read. It is possible you will enjoy Siddartha more- thanks for posting.
An occasional series, cross-posting my reviews from Read the Nobels.
To see my progress with completing the Read the Nobels Challenge, see here.
Translated by Basil Creighton, revised by Walter Sorrell, Penguin, 1965, 1979 reprint.
I am almost too embarrassed to share the excruciating naïveté of this review, but there it is at Blogspot for all to see anyway, and those who’ve read the book may enjoy an opportunity to chat about it set me straight. To redress my sins, I’ve added excerpts from its citation in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die which, (obviously) I didn’t own when I wrote this review. I apologise too, for the use of the term ‘schizophrenic’… these days I would use ‘bipolar disorder’.
Hesse says in his introduction that this is the…
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