Tag: art-history

The meaning of notable! What leaves a mark? Who makes that note?

June 9, 2025

When I visited the wonderful John Bellany self-portraiture exhibition at City Art Gallery in Edinburgh on Friday 4th June, there was also another exhibition (on Modern Scottish Art) containing one other Bellany painting, that painting known as Obsession. Photography was banned so I rely on internet photographs to mark or note memories not my own. … More The meaning of notable! What leaves a mark? Who makes that note?

The quiz of yesterday (after I lost faith in its fun): the answers.

April 20, 2025

In what follows, I scatter the correctly paired works variously in labeled collages: Barbara Hepworth Winter Solstice at ItDibs Hepworth’s idealistic iconography certainly extended to her self-portrait. The use of blank space on paper characterises the treatment of her massive forehead, full of space which her abstract figuration also has, wherein colour tones and shades … More The quiz of yesterday (after I lost faith in its fun): the answers.

Have a go at this exercise! I dare you! It is an exercise on whether we can use terms used in talking about art, in this using the term ‘style’ alone, to recognise a artist’ s work.

April 19, 2025

Me as a more-than-tubby queer angel. The title of this piece is a bit presumptuous. Too few read this blog, and very much fewer respond (though I am grateful for those who do feedback their thoughts either personally or in public) to assume anyone either wants me to set them a little experimental exercise or … More Have a go at this exercise! I dare you! It is an exercise on whether we can use terms used in talking about art, in this using the term ‘style’ alone, to recognise a artist’ s work.

The queer artist, Charles Ricketts, wrote: ‘There is something Latin in the fibre of Titian, in his sense of reality and sense of control. … he belongs to a patrician people to whom experience is met by the force equal to control it’. Could such a judgement relate to the experience of queer life in a Britain certain of its Imperial pretensions?

January 18, 2025

The queer artist, Charles Ricketts, wrote: ‘There is something Latin in the fibre of Titian, in his sense of reality and sense of control. … he belongs to a patrician people to whom experience is met by the force equal to control it’. [1] Could such a judgement relate to the experience of queer life … More The queer artist, Charles Ricketts, wrote: ‘There is something Latin in the fibre of Titian, in his sense of reality and sense of control. … he belongs to a patrician people to whom experience is met by the force equal to control it’. Could such a judgement relate to the experience of queer life in a Britain certain of its Imperial pretensions?

To have ‘flung a pot of paint in the public’s face’ is the dynamic of beauty in painting and proceeds when done properly as if it were done by the painting itself: the case of James McNeill Whistler’s ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, 1875.

December 19, 2024

‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, 1875, which earned Ruskin’s scorn. Oil on panel, by Whistler, James Abbott McNeill (1834-1903); 60.2×46.7 cm; Detroit Institute of Arts, USA; © Detroit Institute of Arts ; Gift of Dexter M. Ferry Jr.; American, out of copyright. Credit: Bridgeman Images One of the strangest aspects of my … More To have ‘flung a pot of paint in the public’s face’ is the dynamic of beauty in painting and proceeds when done properly as if it were done by the painting itself: the case of James McNeill Whistler’s ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, 1875.

Bridging Gaps in Personal Learning No. 2 : This blog is based on thinking about the debt of influence of Francis Bacon to his painting hero, Vincent Van Gogh, as a portraitist.

November 5, 2024

Bridging Gaps in Personal Learning No. 2: This blog is yet again an attempt to understand my own process of  learning. It is based on thinking about the debt of influence of Francis Bacon to his painting hero, Vincent Van Gogh, as a portraitist. I start with the configuration of that debt by Rosie Broadley … More Bridging Gaps in Personal Learning No. 2 : This blog is based on thinking about the debt of influence of Francis Bacon to his painting hero, Vincent Van Gogh, as a portraitist.