For a person who enjoys writing as much as I do, there is
not really any convincing excuse for not having produced more entries in this
blog than the inescapable accusation of laziness.
Admittedly
I have been completing the last assignment for the Open University course on
Modern Art of the Twentieth Century – but that was handed in (or at least sent
off via the internet) on the 26th of May, and while that might have
explained the lack of other written work leading up to this date, it does not
really explain the lack of words after it.
I propose
to ignore everything and write as if there was an unbroken daily chain
stretching back to when there really was an unbroken daily chain of blog
entries.
Come September I will be plunging back in Art History and doing
my last course for my degree (I think, you never really know with the Open
University, as you need much more than a mere degree to work out the fiendish
complexity of how a degree is actually worked out given the courses, modules,
exemptions and the phases of the moon than have to be taken into
consideration. And don’t get me started
on the impenetrable calculations which go into deciding the class of degree
that you get!) in Renaissance Art.
I am fondly
hoping that this course will have less pretentious theory and more taking about
the actual paintings. It says something
about the works of art that we will be considering that I have had to search
out my old copy of The Penguin Dictionary of Saints so that I can work out why
the various slaughtered fanatics with the shining heads are carrying
miscellaneous hardware, botanic specimens, weapons, models, keys, books or body
parts. Decoding paintings is hard work
at the best of times, even in the modern era when we have plentiful primary
documentation to work with, it is even more taxing when we are dealing with
paintings whose moral, religious, social and artistic purpose is more
distant.
But it is stimulating to find out that even the smallest and seemingly most insignificant details might have a truly significant importance. And this is not just like finding a bee in an Italian painting and being told that the name for the insect in Italian is a pun on the name of the family that commissioned the painting; or that the material used in a tomb is actually an elegant comment on the antiquity and power and wealth of the person who caused the tomb to be built well before his own death.
You will
notice that there are no specifics in those examples because I am too hot and
sticky and lazy to go downstairs and find the books that I would need to fill
in the names. I can, at least, remember
that the material was porphyry – a word that I knew and I have used, though it
is only recently that I actually looked it up and discovered its unlikely
source. I am sure that I will not be
able to stop myself ‘sharing’ my discoveries as soon as the next course gets
under way.
Assuming,
of course, that I have passed this one.
Although the work was given in at the end of May the results are not due
to be posted until, possibly, the end of this week.
The ‘proper’ restaurant in MNAC, Barcelona’s main and most
prestigious art museum on Montjuic came into its own again last week when I met
Suzanne on Tuesday and had lunch and catch-up.
Both the conversation and also the food were excellent.
I have always
recommended the restaurant as having the most breath-taking non-view from the
large windows. The restaurant is in the
front of the museum and, as the whole edifice is on a hill it commands a
sweeping vista of the city up to the surrounding hills. But, and this is the point, not of the most
interesting parts of the city.
Admittedly the large fountain was, for the very first time in all my visits
to the museum, working! That made up for
the lack of detail in the expansive panorama which you always assume will be
more impressive than it actually is.
If the
restaurant had been on the side of the building then you would have been able
to eat looking out towards the sea and would have had an excellent view of all
the more famous monuments in the city.
But it isn’t. Still worth going
there and having a meal. Never let me
down, and the lamb shank I had this time was outstanding.
I did also
go and visit a possible candidate painting for the final essay that I have to
do on the Renaissance Course. You have
to write about a work or works that you have actually seen, so one of the vast
collection in the museum is a given.
The one
that I glanced at was actually commissioned by the city of Barcelona almost 500
years ago, or possibly more (again, I am not prepared to go downstairs to
determine exactly when) and there seems to be an interesting divergence in the
appreciation of the painting: some critics claim it as one of the first works
to bring the Northern Renaissance and the techniques of oil painting and a
particular approach to perspective to this area. They also laud the particularisation of the
characterisation of the five donors which appear in the painting and say that
this is a dramatic moment in the history of portraiture. One other critic that I noted while browsing
through expensive books that I have no intention of buying dismissed the
painting as a mediocre copy of a Van Eyck and complained robustly about its
lack of originality. At least there is a
controversy, I am sure that I could make something of that!
I may work
on the painting through the summer and see what information I can get together
without too much ‘research effort’ to see whether it is a viable
candidate. I am greatly encouraged by
the fact that the contract for the painting figures in one of my set texts and
is conveniently translated into English as well. That is a very good start.
Toni is now back home after an eleven-day stay with his
mother, looking after her as she recovered from her recent and successful
operation. To celebrate his return, any
excuse, we went out for lunch to the restaurant of the hotel where most of
Cardiff will be staying for the publishing event of the year in October.
Talking of which. My
bits are done and edited. As the days
follow each other I am starting to worry, a little, about whether my original
plan is going to become a reality. I
still have faith, though each day when nothing happens lessens my optimism.
Still, the sun is shining and even at night there is a more
than pleasing warmth. Admittedly, sleep
is impossible without the gentle wafting air of an electric fan, but that is a
small price to pay for the sun. Though
not at night. Obviously.
I am trying to get back to putting my poems on line and have
added one, Fatal Flaw, which can be
found at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es Though, come to think of it, I am not sure
now that the second word should start with a capital, no, I think that Fatal flaw is better.
Wednesday we are back up in Terrassa for a birthday. Never a dull moment.
