“He sketched everything, and fashioned beautiful paintings from his meticulous observations (well done, Edgar: keep it up)… [the RA] presents many scintillating studies in a variety of scintillated media, including charcoal, chalk, pencil and pastel (that’s pretty well the lot, then), as well as a number of impressive oil paintings.” Impressive eh? I’m sure the old Boy would have appreciated the compliment, especially from you.
But wait: there’s more: “watching him describe the trajectory of a limb in fluttering sweaty motion is compelling (the old eyes are riveted). He must surely have sketched from life (the penny drops at last) either backstage at the Opera or in his studio in Montmartre, or back home at his Mum’s perhaps, or down the pub with his mates.”
“Often he tentatively traces the contour of an airborne limb (ah, those airborne limbs, I can see ’em now, fluttering sweatily away) several times before deciding on the best line, and articulating it more heavily (cunning old bird, that Edgar). Rather than erase his initial impressions, though, he left them intact – and these ghostly echoes offer a brilliant approximation of movement.”
And that’s what passes for art criticism these days. But we mustn’t be too hard on the poor goose: I don’t know quite what they do for O Level (art crit.) these days down at the Poly, so perhaps Sookey hasn’t really been shown any decent drawings before, whether by Degas or anyone else. But I must say he seems to be getting the knack of the egregious image and superfluous adjective. The current champ, old Dicky Stork, still up there on one leg on the Academy chimneypot, had better look out.
SAIL AWAY
We know the nights are drawing in and we’re in for another hard frost and several feet of snow when assorted gulls, boobies (I’ve mentioned them before) and the odd albatross and lost penguin, set off into the far North for a spot of winter warmth and sunshine, and rescuing the occasional polar bear to keep the feel-good quotient up. I blame global warming. But this time it’s hard to know where to begin.
It seems that one fine warm Arctic summer’s day some years ago, wheeling away high in the sky and far from home in the Southern Ocean, a prize albatross, Hartley’s Albatross no less, than which no self-respecting twitcher would rather catch a glimpse, thought he’d found a little island never seen before, for it had been hidden hitherto beneath a dutifully shrinking glacier in Svarlbard, somewhere to the north of Greenland. So this year he’s gone back with a boatload of said gulls, boobies and lost penguins, including, I understand, “some of the UK’s leading thinkers, ie. experts in climate change, human migration, global governance, international law and environmentalism”, to see if it’s still there. And lo and behold it still is.
So what Captain Albatross and his brainy-heavy shipmates have now done is load up their boat with some ‘island territory’ – which I can only suppose to mean a few bucket-loads of earth, some rocks and pebbles, a clod or two of turf and a bunch of flowers – and sail away
Proudly powered by LiteSpeed Web Server
Please be advised that LiteSpeed Technologies Inc. is not a web hosting company and, as such, has no control over content found on this site.
Moping Owl: Degas and garters
Nicholas McLeod: Drained
… from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 404 Not Found
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
DEGAS & GARTERS
I knew there’d be trouble, the minute I heard the Keepers were bringing Old Edgar back to the Zoo on Piccadilly. ‘Degas & The Ballet’ sounds good, and is good, because Degas is always good, one way or another, whatever he
404
does, which is quite a lot. And that’s the trouble, because no-one seems satisfied with good anymore, for it’s own sake. It seems it must always be turned into something else, to give everyone something to talk about, rather than look. So this show is called ‘picturing movement’ as well, to give a theme and analytical ring to it, and perhaps stop everyone thinking of Degas as just another Dirty Old Backstage Johnny who did nothing but leer up young girls’ tutus. But of course it doesn’t.It certainly hasn’t stopped young Sookey, Old Mother Dorment’s number 2 Goose down at Telegraph Farm. Indeed he jumps right in, setting up the hare of doubt straight away supposedly to shoot it later – some hope. “Degas’s (sic) budding fascination with dance turned into lifelong obsession (you see)… [He] will always be remembered first and foremost as the painter of dancers (make sure we get the point). From the 1870s he haunted the Paris Opera, studying performances and scrutinising, yes fairly scrutinising the dancers’ rehearsals, warm-up exercises (oh my word yes) and gossipy antics backstage (there ought to be a law: there really should)…. Today it is tempting to write off Degas’s (sic again) pictures of ballerinas as overly pretty and effeminate visions of beribboned nymphets in tutus pirouetting across the stage.” Yes, yes: we know.
‘Effeminate visions’? I’m afraid he’s lost me there. “But (aha: the necessary ‘but’) nothing could be further from the reality (what a relief!) of his robust and vigorous studies of athletes sweating and straining their sinews (golly! those poor sinews: