Steve_Bamlett_blog

‘Sargent, like James, was fascinated by the world of appearances, by the pose, by the gaze. … in the concealed self, the arranged presence, the surface elements used to hide and reveal, as though painting and sitting were a game, a way of handling and handing over power’.[1] As I see it, Colm Tóibín’s essay … More ‘Sargent, like James, was fascinated by the world of appearances, by the pose, by the gaze. … in the concealed self, …’. Colm Tóibín’s essay implicitly challenges the history of art as a discipline with a plea for a nuanced social history of appearances and disappearances in both graphic and literary art. Reflecting on the significance of Colm Tóibín’s (2020) ‘Secrets and Sensuality: The Private Lives of John Singer Sargent and Henry James’ in Nathaniel Silver (Ed.) ‘Boston’s Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent’

Reading the evidence on sex, gender and sexual practices. ‘”L’amore masculino is solely a work of virtue, which joins males together …” [Epigram to Chapter 5 from] Gian Paolo Lomazzo Il libro dei sogni (1568)’ .[1] Michael Rocke (1996) Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence.  New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press … More Reading the evidence on sex, gender and sexual practices. ‘”L’amore masculino is solely a work of virtue, which joins males together …” [Epigram to Chapter 5 from] Gian Paolo Lomazzo Il libro dei sogni (1568)’ .[1] Michael Rocke (1996) ‘Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence’.

‘What does this mean? What are the layers of knowing and unknowing that I went through’ .[1] Reflexes from Michael Rosen’s narrative of how a Covid pandemic has exposed the liminal nature of our experience of identity. Michael Rosen Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS (Waterstone’s edition ISBN … More ‘What does this mean? What are the layers of knowing and unknowing that I went through’ . Reflexes from Michael Rosen’s narrative of how a Covid pandemic has exposed the liminal nature of our experience of identity. Michael Rosen ‘Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS’.With visits by @MichaelRosenYes

‘”… . There is one good thing we learn in Rocky mountain life; there is no high or low, knowledge or ignorance, except what applies to the needs of men who come together. So there are needs which most men have, and go all their lives hungering for, because they expect them to be supplied … More ‘”… . So there are needs which most men have, and go all their lives hungering for, because they expect them to be supplied in a particular form.”‘ Enlightenment Heteronormativity and Classical Humanism tie themselves in knots in service to the moulding of the American dream in the ‘close, rough, naked contact’ between men on the Western frontiers of venture capitalism. Is Bayard Taylor’s ‘Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania’ of 1870 really the first gay American novel or a misogynist’s celebration of patriarchal values?

‘Wood moved freely among Paris’s most elite artistic circles as he experimented with various post-impressionistic styles, bisexuality and opium. …/ However, his opium use, financial concerns, and dissolute lifestyle eventually led to serious psychosis. … The inquest ruled that it was “suicide while of an unsound mind”’.[1] Does the history of art as a discipline … More ‘Wood moved freely among Paris’s most elite artistic circles as he experimented with various post-impressionistic styles, bisexuality and opium.’ Does the history of art as a discipline on its own really have the skills, knowledge and values required in order to reflect adequately on the value of shortened lives? Reflecting on the case study of Christopher Wood in Angela S. Jones & Vern G. Swanson (2020) ‘Desperately Young: Artist Who Died in Their Twenties’.

A queer approach to 3. Christopher Wood Tuesday, 4 Sep 2018, 20:01Visible to anyone in the worldEdited by Steve Bamlett, Thursday, 6 Sep 2018, 08:49 A queer approach to sexual preference labelling in art-history: looking at case studies in British mid-twentieth century art: 3. Christopher Wood The aim of this group of blogs is to … More A queer approach to 3. Christopher Wood Repub. of original OU blog around a project actively unsupported by the latter institution.

‘… exposing themselves and their writing to being thought of as symptomatic cases, not poets’.[1] ‘And Elizabeth herself? She has undergone the transformation from living, breathing woman – fluent, motivated, sometimes self-absorbed but always pushing herself onwards, fighting for breath, determined to stay alive and to speak – into a figure in the stories other … More ‘… exposing themselves and their writing to being thought of as symptomatic cases, not poets’. ‘And Elizabeth herself? She has undergone the transformation from living, breathing woman – fluent, motivated, sometimes self-absorbed but always pushing herself onwards, fighting for breath, determined to stay alive and to speak – into a figure in the stories other people tell about her’. Reflecting Fiona Sampson’s (2021) ‘Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’.

‘As you make your way through his twisting narratives, it becomes ever more difficult to escape the impression that the circling merely exhausts us while never bring us any closer to the subject’.[2] Reflecting on why it’s possibly better never to know the subject of the turns and twists in one’s own life adventure. Helped … More ‘As you make your way through his twisting narratives, it becomes ever more difficult to escape the impression that the circling merely exhausts us while never bring us any closer to the subject’. Reflecting on why it’s possibly better never to know the subject of the turns and twists in one’s own life adventure. Helped by Daniel Mendelsohn’s (2020) ‘Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate’.

‘Long ago our bathing was done in natural bodies of water. This gradually changed as we transformed parts of the world to reflect our desires. Bathing rituals, materials, and architectures carry over memories of these places in different ways. the landscapes we bathe in are irreducible to simple forms. Architects of bathing enjoy the constant … More Struggling ‘to escape the attraction to formal essentialism and its clichés’.[1] Why the world gets oversimplified! Reading as an aid to seeing the world as more whole and more complex than one way of seeing it. Soaking in the Christie Pearson’s (2020) ‘The Architecture of Bathing: Body, Landscape, Art’.

‘there’s growing and widespread concern about AFs right now. people saying how you’ve become too clever. they’re afraid because they can’t follow what’s going on inside any more. they can see what you do. They accept that your decisions, your recommendations, are sound and dependable, almost always correct. but they don’t like not knowing how … More ‘What you don’t like are sealed black boxes. okay, let’s open them. Once we see inside, … we’ll learn.’ Reflecting on the inside of a black box in Kazuo Ishiguro’s (2021) ‘Klara and the Sun’. @IshiguroKazuo @vinelandenergy

‘not made with hands’: a shaggy dog shaped reflection on the limits of curation as a model of historical knowledge. A problem in the history of art? A view from a queer retreat. A case study based on reading The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces by Eleanor Ling, Suzanne Reynolds & Jane Munro, Cambridge, … More ‘not made with hands’: a shaggy dog shaped reflection on the limits of curation as a model of historical knowledge. A QUEER problem in the history of art? Based on reading ‘The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces’ by E.Ling, S. Reynolds & J. Munro.