As I was floating down unconcerned RiversI no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targetsNailing them naked to coloured stakes.I cared nothing for all my crews,Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons. When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.Into the ferocious tide-ripsLast winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas Never endured more triumphant clamouringsThe storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.Lighter...
Friday, 24 June 2011
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768, oil on canvas, 183 x 244 cm, National Gallery, LondonTen figures emerge from the inky shroud of blackness claustrophobically, comfortably, enveloping them. A single candle behind a skull in glass dimly illuminates the scene - in Wright's signature, highly-contrasting style - of a scientist performing an experiment in the formation of a vacuum. Dramatically, but perhaps unrealistically, a rare white cockatoo...
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Self, 2006, blood (artist's), liquid silicone, stainless steel, glass, perspex and refrigeration equipment, 205 x 65 x 65 cm, National Portrait Gallery, LondonThe hum of a refrigerator unit below a cold glass case. Within: a red decapitated head, eyes closed, as if in meditation.Every five years, beginning in 1991, Marc Quinn creates a new sculpture - of his own head, out of his own blood, taken over a 5 month period. Formed from liquid...
Monday, 20 June 2011
The House of Commons, 1833-43, oil on canvas, 300 x 500 cm, National Portrait Gallery, LondonPainted to commemorate the passing of the first Parliamentary Reform Bill in England in 1832, Sir George Hayter took 10 years to complete the work, which depicts the opening session of the new House of Commons on 5 February, 1833. Of the 658 in parliament at the time 375 are present in the portrait and 323 can be definitively identified, including a self-portrait...
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, 1829, oil on canvas, 132 x 203 cm, National Gallery, LondonUlysses, aboard his ship, is triumphant in victory following escape from the lair of the cannibal cyclops, Polyphemus (seen in the mountains to the left), having blinded and deceived him. The sky before them is alive with golden early rays of light as Apollo's horses pull the Sun above the horizon. Similarly, transparent sea-nymphs appear to be dragging the ship...
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Cataract 3, 1967, emulsion on canvas, 222 x 223 cm, British Council, LondonPainstakingly applied emulsion in a strict mathematical pattern gives the optical illusion of movement and depth. The work, impossible to see for what it is ('merely' paint on canvas), tricks the brain into seeing its waves and colours as regressions, an alive surface.'Representation' itself is called into question. Our eyes cannot be trust...
Monday, 13 June 2011
The Death of Chatterton, 1856, oil on canvas, 91 x 60 cm, Tate Britain, London"Cold penury repress'd his noble rage,And froze the genial current of his soul.Now prompts the Muse poetic lays,And high my bosom beats with love of Praise!But, Chatterton! methinks I hear thy name,For cold my Fancy grows, and dead each Hope of Fame." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (from Monody on the Death of Chatterton,...
