The Changing of the Bones: Marina Abramovic

 The  Royal Academy show dedicated to the performance artist Marina Abramovic has attracted many prurient headlines, because of the live nude performances by the artist’s young surrogates, replicating original performances by Marina herself. She, being 77 years of age, has retired from that category of her work, more likely because of its physical intensity then for prudish reasons. 

Good at Hands: Hans Hals

 Good at Hands: Frans Hals

 

The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals (1582-1666) is a paradigm of the immediately approachable in classical painting: the Mona Lisa of the unsubtle chuckle.

The Hals exhibition at the National Gallery confirms his talent for smiling faces. They are everywhere: exuberant, tender, confident, self-satisfied. 

John Gray on Liberalism

 John Gray on Liberalism

 

 

John Gray demolishes the myths and self-deceptions of liberals with gleeful rhetorical flourishes. History-as-progress is bunk. Especially, the Enlightenment project of universal liberalism as the endpoint of historical progress is shot, finished, dustbinned by the intractable vagaries and contradictions of human nature and societies.

Two Funerals

 Two Funerals

 

On just such a November day, almost exactly 27 years ago, my father’s funeral took place. A still, bright day, low sunlight streaming through church windows.

Greenwich and the Queen's House: Van de Velde

 Royal Greenwich; Van de Veldes Exhibition

 

For many centuries the best way to travel to the royal palace and park at Greenwich was by boat, Greenwich being in the countryside and ill-served by roads. Greenwich is still ill-served by roads, because of traffic congestion, and the quickest way to go from central or northern London is by the frequent trains. However, there are still boats.

In Memoriam Liz

 In Memoriam Liz

 

A memorial service or secular event for someone you have known well is nearly always disconcerting because of the numbers of people attending that you have never met and of whose identities you have no idea.

 

You realise that you were just one part of your friend’s life, both temporally and socially. This should be in no way diminishing. It is equally humbling and uplifting to learn more. You leave with greater appreciation and a sadder feeling of loss.

Rawls's Fragile Liberal State

 Rawls’s Fragile Liberal State

 

John Rawls modelled his idea of a liberal state as a Venn diagram. Whilst the communities existing in the same state might have political, cultural or religious commitments at variance with, or even hostile to, one another, the business of the unitary state is conducted by all communities within institutions (political, legal and administrative) that all can uphold. Further, political debate is conducted according to “public reasons”- reasons that can be accepted as reasons by all communities, even where there is vehement disagreement over policy.

 

Thus, for example, a devout religionist should not invoke the Will of God in support of a policy, in a society where many do not follow any religion or follow a different version of God. (In the US- up to recently- and the UK ,Catholic politicians have acquiesced in, or even supported some degree of abortion rights in the public square.)

Stopovers in Bilbao and Santander

 Stopovers in Northern Spain: Santander and Bilbao

 

Until recently, the north coast of Spain has been, for me, fly-over territory: if the weather is good, glimpses caught of the bay of Santander, far below, almost exactly an hour’s flying time until Malaga.

Coronation Oath-Go-Round

 The Oath-Go-Round at the Coronation

 

One has to admire the attempt to resurrect Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan for the Coronation. Hobbes, writing in the aftermath of the English civil war and at the time the “modern” British monarchy began to be shaped, believed that the only way out of the primitive natural state of permanent civil discord, “a war of all against all”, wherein life is “nasty, brutish and short” was a “covenant”, whereby all submitted to a “sovereign” ( an abstract concept that could include monarchy, oligarchy or democracy) that would supreme, unfettered power to impose civilised order. The original illustration to Leviathan depicts a handsome, Stuartish Monarch – yet on close inspection the Monarch is composed of all the citizens that have transferred their powers to him, and from whom his sovereignty is derived.

 

In May 2023, we were enjoined to enter an actual Hobbesian covenant, and pledge allegiance to a modern Leviathan, King Charles..

 

But the Hobbesian commentator detects two major flaws in this new social contract.

 

First, after an initial frisson over whether this allegiance is “commanded” from everyone, we are told it is voluntary – a mere invitation to pledge allegiance. This will not do at all. According to Hobbes, the covenant transferring power to Leviathan is universal and irreversible. Only thus does Leviathan get his, her or its supreme authority.

 

That is one lamentable failure. The other problem is that, in the UK, the identity of Leviathan is elusive. Is it the King, as Head of State? But in the same Coronation Ceremony, the King swears (in an Oath dating back to Hobbesian times) to uphold the laws enacted by Parliament. But, in turn, in Parliament, MPs swear allegiance to the Crown.

 

We arrive, puzzled, at an Escher-like hierarchy of Leviathans, folding back on one another..

 

I suppose the Crown may represent the feeble spirit of our Leviathan, and Parliament the crude actuality. So affirming allegiance to the Crown may bathetically translate into obedience to some wretched, passing, crew of politicians.

 

Hobbes squirms in his shroud.

 

 

May 2023

Rock & Roman Ruins

 Rock & Roman Ruins- Baelo Claudia

 

 

There are plenty of unvisited places that one feels one knows anyway, because they have become cultural, historical or geographic cliches, always present in image and report. Some will inevitably disappoint upon actual acquaintance.

 

Spain and the Hispanic World: Goya Portraits

 Hispanic Art at the Royal Academy: Goya Portraits

 

Goya (1746-1828) lived through especially tricky times in Spain – the Enlightenment, then invasion and brutal war, a brief interval of liberalism, followed by reactionary despotism.

Holy Grail and Beekeepers In Valencia

 Holy Grail and Beekeepers in Valencia

 

Every amateur student of the Grail (Last Supper Chalice) legends knows that, if one is faced with a choice of potential Grails, never choose the ornate one. The Indiana Jones films instruct us that this would be a lethal error, should one drink from it in pursuit of immortal life. Rather, the true life-giving Grail is a humble earthenware cup, suitable for a last supper in unpretentious circumstances.

A Toddler's Anecdotes

 A Toddler’s Anecdotes

 

I have a hypothesis about the visual memories of long ago. Like any hypothesis about the reliability of distant memory, it is ultimately unprovable, but there’s a suggestion of plausibility.