There are moments in the long and weary life of a civilisation when one can hear not so much the bells of its cathedrals as the creak of its conscience. This week, Canterbury Cathedral - England’s oldest mother-church, cradle of Augustine, beacon of Becket, and bruised survivor of the Reformation - has been newly baptised … Continue reading The Defaced Face of Faith: On the Canterbury Graffiti Scandal
Tag: art
L’amour de Pierrot – A Reflection on Dalí’s Love and Death
L’amour de Pierrot - Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989). Public domain image, early 20th century. Some paintings laugh softly into the grave. L’amour de Pierrot, painted by the young Salvador Dalí before his moustache had fully declared war on convention, is such a piece. At first glance, it’s all sweetness and sentiment: two lovers - Pierrot … Continue reading L’amour de Pierrot – A Reflection on Dalí’s Love and Death
Blind Pew: A Study in Terror and Vision
Newell Convers Wyeth, Blind Pew (1911).A haunting illustration for Stevenson’s Treasure Island: the blind beggar strides down the moonlit lane, stick thrust forward, half-frail and half-fearsome - fate itself tapping towards us. In another life, back at home, whenever something went awry - a cup chipped, a tool gone missing, a mystery mischief no one … Continue reading Blind Pew: A Study in Terror and Vision
Time and the Old Women: Vanity with a Skeleton’s Smile
Francisco de Goya, Time and the Old Women, c. 1810–1820. Public domain. Francisco de Goya painted this nightmare somewhere between 1810 and 1820, during those black years when he’d gone deaf, half-mad, and wholly honest. The result is Time and the Old Women - a canvas in which social comedy collapses into a danse macabre. … Continue reading Time and the Old Women: Vanity with a Skeleton’s Smile
Down Below: Leonora Carrington’s Descent into the Furnace of the Mind
Leonora Carrington didn’t so much write a memoir as vomit out an apocalypse. Down Below isn’t autobiography in the polite sense, with polite sentences arranged like cutlery for an afternoon tea. It is, rather, the table turned over, the crockery smashed, and the cutlery embedded in the wallpaper. This slim, feverish account of her psychotic … Continue reading Down Below: Leonora Carrington’s Descent into the Furnace of the Mind
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