November 16th

from Poseidon’s purse

they drag the big eyed harvest

gasping on hot wharfs

the omniscient

God so fickle and angry

buries them with waves

I popped into the British Museum, I haven’t been there in years, it is an astonishing place, putting aside the dubious origins of how some of the antiquities ended up there, it is a magnificent collection.

This mosaic (Roman, approx 100AD) really caught my eye. The pieces of stone were so tiny, it allowed for fantastic detail. N.b – I know I use the Greek “Poseidon” as opposed to “Neptune”, but I prefer using the Greek names

November 12th

 

an eye blinks turquoise

from the fisherman’s drag net

the dancing satyr

I went to the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’ve been to a lot of the big hitting exhibitions this year and Bronze is right up there. There were so many pieces covering 6000 years of history, unsettling old pagan pieces, pre-classical from northern Europe, of unknown function, all the way to the modern day where Bourgeois (one of her wonderful spiders seemingly skids across a wall), Moore and Matisse amongst others, were represented. The exhibition paid respect to both Asian and African artefacts too, the Nigerian pieces were astonishingly beautiful.

Perseus and Medusa (a copy of Cellini’s original) was also imposing, him holding aloft her serpent head, with serpents seemingly also spilling from her headless neck as he stands triumphant over her fallen corpse.

But my favourite piece, was the first piece, which get’s a room of its own as you enter the exhibition. The Dancing Satyr, a Greek classical piece pulled from a fisherman’s net off the coast of Sicily, fairly recently (1998). He’s incomplete, the leg he balanced on, both arms, part of the head and his tail are all missing, but this does not diminish him. The powerful realism really struck me, the definition of the muscles in movement of something beyond human, the detail in the face and hair. It was quite astonishing really.

It’s a great exhibition. Well worth going to!

Photo from the Royal Academy Website

March 8th

Fishermen at sea,

Walkers under Turner’s moon,

Illuminated.

 

Neil and Paul came up from London and we all walked to the pub for dinner. The full moon was rising in the sky, it pushed its face through the broken cloud. It reminded me of a JMW Turner painting. This painting was exhibited when he was 21, in 1796. “Fishermen at Sea”.

(from the Tate website)

Painting the wilds of the sky, the elements, the sea and the wide open landscapes was his strength. His later work, when it is suggested that his eyesight was failing is perhaps his most magnificent. The use of colour, the blur in the unique style giving an impression of movement, blinding light, heat or cold, is breathtaking. But this early piece is majestic too.

As for a photo of the moon from last night, here it is. Over two hundred years later, if you look up, the sky is comfortingly timeless.