Various Things In Brief
Dec. 30th, 2022 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThe weather system that has been hurting the USA has moved into our neighbourhood. Ailz says it has ridden here on the Gulf Stream. It's belabouring us in the form of icy rain, which occasionally hardens into sleet or hail. I understand it may not move on until the New Year.
Climate Change I believe in. Whether that change will take the form of global warming I doubt.
I keep having to remind myself that I'm no longer responsible for my mother's well-being.
A few posts back I said that Manet's Bar At the Folies Bergere might be the greatest painting on view in England. Other contenders would be Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding in the National Gallery, Botticelli's Mystical Nativity in the National Gallery, Picasso's Three Dancers in the Tate and Poussin's Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake in the National Gallery (again). What all these great paintings have in common is an element of mystery. What are the Arnolfinis actually up to? What existing story is Poussin illustrating or is it something he has imagined for himself? Great art always holds something back and invites us to wonder what it might be...
Poussin's Dance to the Music of Time in the Wallace Collection should also be on the short list- but it would be unfair to allow him more than one entry- even if he is the greatest painter who ever lived...
No Rembrandt? I think not. The greatest Rembrandts are elsewhere, though the magisterial self portrait in Kenwood House might just scrape into consideration...
No Breughel either- for much the same reason....
Climate Change I believe in. Whether that change will take the form of global warming I doubt.
I keep having to remind myself that I'm no longer responsible for my mother's well-being.
A few posts back I said that Manet's Bar At the Folies Bergere might be the greatest painting on view in England. Other contenders would be Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding in the National Gallery, Botticelli's Mystical Nativity in the National Gallery, Picasso's Three Dancers in the Tate and Poussin's Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake in the National Gallery (again). What all these great paintings have in common is an element of mystery. What are the Arnolfinis actually up to? What existing story is Poussin illustrating or is it something he has imagined for himself? Great art always holds something back and invites us to wonder what it might be...
Poussin's Dance to the Music of Time in the Wallace Collection should also be on the short list- but it would be unfair to allow him more than one entry- even if he is the greatest painter who ever lived...
No Rembrandt? I think not. The greatest Rembrandts are elsewhere, though the magisterial self portrait in Kenwood House might just scrape into consideration...
No Breughel either- for much the same reason....
