Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... Just as Breugel’s irreverent Adoration of the Kings is an enjoyably startling incongruity amongst the National’s religious scenes, so An Old Woman is a bit of a surprise amongst its numerous portraits of noblewomen and alabaster-skinned beauties. Painted in about 1513 ... Read More...
Painting
Continuing our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... In a room full of paintings, why does a particular one leap out? Practically every painting in the National Gallery would probably leap out if it were instead displayed in a common-or-garden gallery, so a painting housed here must ... Read More...
I have at home a cheapo (not Naxos, but similar, you know) CD of some orchestra or another playing Saint-Saen’s Carnival of the Animals and other children-friendly pieces. I’d never noticed until the other day that it has a quite magnificent bit of cover art. It is The Goose of the ... Read More...
In our occasional feature we invite guests to select the six cultural links that might sustain them if, by some mischance, they were forced to spend eternity in a succession of airport departure lounges with only an iPad or similar device for company. Today's voyager is Gadjo Dilo, who brings ... Read More...
Originally sited at 100 Pall Mall – a private townhouse – the National Gallery opened in its current Trafalgar Square premises in 1838. Being situated in the ‘very gangway of London’ is a key element of the National’s raison d'être. As Mr Justice Coleridge wrote in 1857, the Gallery should ... Read More...
In our occasional feature we invite guests to select the six cultural links that might sustain them if, by some mischance, they were forced to spend eternity in a succession of airport departure lounges with only an iPad or similar device for company. Today's voyager is Frank Wilson, former book review editor ... Read More...
The Dabbler interviews illustrative artist Tim Lane… Some months ago I was idling around the more arcane shops of Bristol, searching in what seemed like vain for the perfect birthday gift for a close relation, when I found a print of the above picture and - that rare thing – instantly ... Read More...
Tate Modern's Gauguin exhibition would be worth going to if you only visited one of the rooms, the one called 'Making the Familiar Strange'. It provides a contrast with most of the rest of Gauguin's oeuvre which is more concerned with 'Making the Strange even Stranger' (in Brittany and then, ... Read More...
In Anthony Burgess’ short story The Endless Voyager, a businessman throws away his passport and wallet mid-transit and, unable to enter any country, spends the rest of his life shuttling from airport to airport. He eventually goes mad. Today, of course, such a traveller might stave off purgatorial insanity by ... Read More...
This video's beautiful and intriguing (it starts about 1'40" in but the explanations that precede it are fascinating - more here). It's made using the light 'extruded' from an iPad captured by long exposure photography and animated using stop-motion. I've been interested in the possibilities of digital art but, to ... Read More...
