It's another snowy day in Edinburgh.
Several inches of frosted snow cover the ground, with the bright, crystaline solidity of a thick layer of icing sugar. The air is bracingly cold, and the open sky is a perfect, cloudless blue. Beneath the blankets of snow, there is an impressive hardness, a geological pattern of stone and wood and icy water.
Every day seems different, though. Today, we have clear skies and there's a wintry stillness to the settled snow; tomorrow, a hint of pink cloud suggests we may be in for a blizzard; and that's just the start of it - sending me searching for words to describe this marvelous weather. Sitting with a big dictionary and a warm fire, I've been exploring the language of snow, something that we seem to have almost lost in recent decades.
Over the weekend, we had big, soft snowflakes - or flichts or flocks, as they're called in Scots, catching the etymological connection with flight that's been rather lost in standard English. You know the type - the light, feathery, fragile-seeming kind, which ride slowly from the sky like eiderdown.
There's also flindrikin snow, which is thin and light and fluttery - either like butterfly wings or white lace, the dictionary isn't sure; but either way, the word seems very appropriate.
First, though, there was a type of snow that the weather professionals refer to by the German name graupel, a name which seems to mean "barley-like". This is created when snow passes through moisture in the air, and the water vapour freezes around each snowflake, turning them into fragile pellets - hence the rather misleading name of "soft hail".
But it's not really satisfying to use a loan-word auf Deutsch or the underwhelming "soft hail", and there's no evidence of an English nauralization like "grapple". So what do we call this?!
There's one dictionary reference to "bullets" as a Scots term for "frozen snow" in 1914, but the nearest word in regular use is "moor", which describes a heavy fall of powdery snow. The graupel was certainly "mooring", to use the verbal form that seems rather more common than the noun - coming heavy and fast, in drifts through the sky.
I went for a walk in a blizzard a few days ago, and detoured into the Botanic Gardens. The cafes were shut, but the art gallery in Inverleith House was open, and the paths had been cleared with a little snow-plough - seemingly the only one in Edinburgh that actually works. And as I walked, I watched the snow come mooring through the trees in a tumbling whirl, to add to the deep snow already fast on the ground.
But "moor" isn't quite mainstream Scots - it belongs to the Viking dialect of the Northern Isles, which sit at the intersection of Atlantic and North Sea weather systems. I've seen driving snowstorms and shirt-sleeve summer sunshine alternate in five-minute intervals on Orkney, so this is probably a good place for the unusual combination of cloud levels that produces graupel.
In Edinburgh, however, I suspect the cause was the vapour trails from planes at the airport. It certainly disappeared when the snow shut down the runways. So "moor" doesn't seem quite appropriate for this post-modern snow.
But while I'm still looking for a better word than graupel, Scots has another word for the dramatic way this snow was falling: "yowdendrift".
In contrast to an "erdrift", an 'earth-drift' or normal snowdrift, a "yowdendrift" is a heavy, blown fall of snow that's swept down out of the sky like a snowdrift from on high. This is another word that confuses the specialists, with the Scots National Dictionary suggesting it derives from our language's equivalent of 'yielded', which doesn't make much sense.
I prefer an alternative kenning of my own, based on the earliest recorded form, ewindrift (c. 1650), the only citation before the last years of the eighteenth century; this looks like 'heaven-drift' (Older Scots "hewin"), and as such, it seems to fit in a pair with "erdrift", gives an accurate sense of how the snow comes billowing in from on high... and is quite simply a rather lovely word.
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Sunday 14 November 2010
We Shall Remember Them
Today was Remembrance Sunday, the day the British people stand in silence in front of their TV sets, to remember the sacrifices of the war dead. The rhythms of the morning service are familiar. The Queen, wreaths of poppies, soldiers at the Cenotaph, the Bishop of London in his white cassock and red-and-black choir hood.
But before all that, two minutes' silence. The bells of Big Ben tolled eleven times.
As the bells fell silent, I looked back in my mind's eye, imagining the soldiers of World War I, black-and-white in their steel hats and gaiters, faces grainy with stubble or mud or just exhaustion.
I remember them.
"Ere, can I have a cigarette?" The voice is from a soldier on my right, with the definite twang of East End London. I turn, not quite meeting his eye, and fumble in my left top pocket for a fag. (It does not occur to me that I do not smoke, have only had six ciggies in my life, never carried a packet of fags.)
I hesitate, uncertain. A part of me feels a single ciggy is a paltry gift for a man in his position. A part of me worries about breaking the barriers of class and situation. Reality trembles on the edge of my perception.
The pack of fags I find in my hand is modern, its colors standing out against the muted palate of the vision (the colours of the Bishop of London's robes) but it feels right to hand over. I've smoked a little less than a third of them.
Now the past resumes. I walk along the trench, seeing the way the parapet sways a little to the left ahead of me, out into no-man's land. (The sky is blue above the mud, the clear hazy colour the French call horizon gray, and which Earl Haig described in his war diary on the last day of the War.)
I will only remember those details later.
Perhaps there is a tree on the horizon, or a brave hawk fluttering above.
I look down.
My revolver is in my right hand now, a heavy service Webbley with a green rope lanyard on the end. I see the scalloped trim on my left sleeve, and the three diamond buttons of my cuffs, the lighter fabric of my best-uniform breeches contrasting with the khaki jacket.
The past ends. Later, I will realise that the next sound should be the whistles, the echoing, piping signal to send the army over the top, into No Man's Land, towards the barbed wire and the Germans.
They say you wake up when you die in your dreams.
In the real world, the Two Minutes' Silence continues in crisp modern colour; I have seen the Cenotaph in tree-lined Westminster, three military flags with gilded victors' wreaths; I watch the Household Cavalry in their plumes and cloaks. A gun sounds across a London park, and the buglers blow Reveille.
It is 11:02 am.
But before all that, two minutes' silence. The bells of Big Ben tolled eleven times.
As the bells fell silent, I looked back in my mind's eye, imagining the soldiers of World War I, black-and-white in their steel hats and gaiters, faces grainy with stubble or mud or just exhaustion.
I remember them.
"Ere, can I have a cigarette?" The voice is from a soldier on my right, with the definite twang of East End London. I turn, not quite meeting his eye, and fumble in my left top pocket for a fag. (It does not occur to me that I do not smoke, have only had six ciggies in my life, never carried a packet of fags.)
I hesitate, uncertain. A part of me feels a single ciggy is a paltry gift for a man in his position. A part of me worries about breaking the barriers of class and situation. Reality trembles on the edge of my perception.
The pack of fags I find in my hand is modern, its colors standing out against the muted palate of the vision (the colours of the Bishop of London's robes) but it feels right to hand over. I've smoked a little less than a third of them.
Now the past resumes. I walk along the trench, seeing the way the parapet sways a little to the left ahead of me, out into no-man's land. (The sky is blue above the mud, the clear hazy colour the French call horizon gray, and which Earl Haig described in his war diary on the last day of the War.)
I will only remember those details later.
Perhaps there is a tree on the horizon, or a brave hawk fluttering above.
I look down.
My revolver is in my right hand now, a heavy service Webbley with a green rope lanyard on the end. I see the scalloped trim on my left sleeve, and the three diamond buttons of my cuffs, the lighter fabric of my best-uniform breeches contrasting with the khaki jacket.
The past ends. Later, I will realise that the next sound should be the whistles, the echoing, piping signal to send the army over the top, into No Man's Land, towards the barbed wire and the Germans.
They say you wake up when you die in your dreams.
In the real world, the Two Minutes' Silence continues in crisp modern colour; I have seen the Cenotaph in tree-lined Westminster, three military flags with gilded victors' wreaths; I watch the Household Cavalry in their plumes and cloaks. A gun sounds across a London park, and the buglers blow Reveille.
It is 11:02 am.
Friday 13 August 2010
Edinburgh Art Festival - Modern Art Gallery
What you see is where you’re at—Part 3
(Modern Art Gallery, until 12th December and after)
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was fifty years old on Friday, and to celebrate, it gave away free cake and balloons all day. This populist, feel-good moment fits perfectly with the mood of the Gallery in its anniversary year, with its defining commission from Turner Prize winner Martin Creed—a bright neon inscription that transforms the strict classical pediment of the entrance, Everything Is Going To Be Alright.
The collection inside is also a lot of fun—the third phase of the year-long What you see is where you’re at project that has taken over the entire SNGMA for its jubilee year, showing off the gallery space and displaying diverse elements of the collection with real wit and intelligence. The central hall opposite the entrance has been given over to a set of dramatically oversized kitchen furniture – a towering table and chairs, paradoxically childlike in their robust proportions.
At once ubiquitously ordinary and monumentally sculptural, this work by American artist Robert Therrien fits unexpectedly well into the distinctly Scottish space of the gallery, juxtaposed dramatically with the dining-room formality of the tall windows, high ceiling, and grey stone fireplace.
This is the latest of the Artists Rooms, showpieces from the seminal collection sold to the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate by London gallery owner Anthony d’Offay. The simple shapes and their glossy black finish also reflect one of the key themes that recurs in this year’s Art Festival—an emphasis on flat, bright shiny surfaces, a visual simplicity this work emphasises by being ironically named No Title.
In the south wing, you can find something even better, arguably the best of the current displays—a room full of Russian abstract art from a century ago, centred on a series of Kandinsky prints. These have a modernism that is still fresh and exciting—the freshness of a brand-new visual language, its lines not yet fixed into predictable patterns by familiarity. The Gallery is worth a visit for these alone.
Juxtaposed with them in the corridor is a series of small paintings by the Scottish Colourists. These date from the same era as the Kandinskys, and they are pretty in their way, but distinctly conservative in contrast with what was going on in Czarist Russia at the time—although I was nicely surprised by a subtly surrealist early offering from Alberto Morrocco, sneaked in among them. The south wing is rounded off by a small room devoted to the still life, combining realist works with some abstract pieces to provide an engaging narrative; conceptual art done well, by actually building it around real content, and showing that content in a new way—this sums up the sense of fun and lightly-held knowledge that pervades the revamped gallery.
The north wing is showing important new work by the Boyle family, based on detailed surveys of the landscape and the elements on a beach on the isle of Barra, planned since the 1970s and created over a span of eighteen years. It’s all very professional and conceptual, but for me, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Nonetheless, precisely beause there seemed to be something missing, I found this reproduction of reality unexpectedly exciting. I couldn’t see anything here beyond critical theory and scientific reproduction, and that made me intimately aware of the necessity of expressing something else, making this an inspiring – unintended? – statement of What Art Is Really All About.
Next door, it’s great to see Duane Hanson’s Tourists back where they belong—long-term fans will known them as the loud American couple who used to stand in the corner of the main gallery space. They’re offset by John de Andrea’s Model in Repose, a superrealist nude that was intended to embody timeless beauty, and has also become a subtle—unintended?—meditation on the passage of time.
Upstairs, the themes repeat. An Artists Rooms exhibtion by Gilbert and George is a riot of glossy colour – I found it unoffensive rather than inspiring, reprising the fashions of this year’s Festival, and also comparable to the safe prettiness of the Colourists; but it’s something the media and tourists up from London for the Festival will recognize. Elsewhere on this floor, you can find an iconic Ray Liechenstein, a superb Bonnard, and two more conceptual rooms, like the still life gallery downstairs—one explores the use of texture, while the other investigates the deceptive simplicity of white paint.
Also upstairs, there is an exhibition of paintings chosen by Elizabeth Blackadder—continuing a season in which major figures in Scottish art make personal selections of work from the Gallery collection. Essentially, this is a homage by an artist to her mentors and heroes, a biographical retrospective of her own artistic influences—a “who’s who” of Scottish and European painting over the past century.
On a purely visual level, I found this less exciting than the earlier selection by Callum Innes, but it hints at the quiet emotions of unspoken memories, and the visual narrative is enlivened by unexpected choices – such as a youthful Futurist foray by Stanley Cursiter, better known to me as an artist of watercolour landscapes and Establishment portraits.
Compared with the “greatest hits” collection of surrealism in the Dean Gallery across the road, the SNGMA’s latest exhibits are more varied—for my taste, there are even a few genuine duds here; but that diversity represents Art in Scotland, and the wide audience that this exhibition is open to. The sheer variety on offer here demands a visit.
The cake in the cafe is also excellent—along with the Douglas Gordon in the stairwell.
(Modern Art Gallery, until 12th December and after)
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was fifty years old on Friday, and to celebrate, it gave away free cake and balloons all day. This populist, feel-good moment fits perfectly with the mood of the Gallery in its anniversary year, with its defining commission from Turner Prize winner Martin Creed—a bright neon inscription that transforms the strict classical pediment of the entrance, Everything Is Going To Be Alright.
The collection inside is also a lot of fun—the third phase of the year-long What you see is where you’re at project that has taken over the entire SNGMA for its jubilee year, showing off the gallery space and displaying diverse elements of the collection with real wit and intelligence. The central hall opposite the entrance has been given over to a set of dramatically oversized kitchen furniture – a towering table and chairs, paradoxically childlike in their robust proportions.
At once ubiquitously ordinary and monumentally sculptural, this work by American artist Robert Therrien fits unexpectedly well into the distinctly Scottish space of the gallery, juxtaposed dramatically with the dining-room formality of the tall windows, high ceiling, and grey stone fireplace.
This is the latest of the Artists Rooms, showpieces from the seminal collection sold to the National Galleries of Scotland and the Tate by London gallery owner Anthony d’Offay. The simple shapes and their glossy black finish also reflect one of the key themes that recurs in this year’s Art Festival—an emphasis on flat, bright shiny surfaces, a visual simplicity this work emphasises by being ironically named No Title.
In the south wing, you can find something even better, arguably the best of the current displays—a room full of Russian abstract art from a century ago, centred on a series of Kandinsky prints. These have a modernism that is still fresh and exciting—the freshness of a brand-new visual language, its lines not yet fixed into predictable patterns by familiarity. The Gallery is worth a visit for these alone.
Juxtaposed with them in the corridor is a series of small paintings by the Scottish Colourists. These date from the same era as the Kandinskys, and they are pretty in their way, but distinctly conservative in contrast with what was going on in Czarist Russia at the time—although I was nicely surprised by a subtly surrealist early offering from Alberto Morrocco, sneaked in among them. The south wing is rounded off by a small room devoted to the still life, combining realist works with some abstract pieces to provide an engaging narrative; conceptual art done well, by actually building it around real content, and showing that content in a new way—this sums up the sense of fun and lightly-held knowledge that pervades the revamped gallery.
The north wing is showing important new work by the Boyle family, based on detailed surveys of the landscape and the elements on a beach on the isle of Barra, planned since the 1970s and created over a span of eighteen years. It’s all very professional and conceptual, but for me, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Nonetheless, precisely beause there seemed to be something missing, I found this reproduction of reality unexpectedly exciting. I couldn’t see anything here beyond critical theory and scientific reproduction, and that made me intimately aware of the necessity of expressing something else, making this an inspiring – unintended? – statement of What Art Is Really All About.
Next door, it’s great to see Duane Hanson’s Tourists back where they belong—long-term fans will known them as the loud American couple who used to stand in the corner of the main gallery space. They’re offset by John de Andrea’s Model in Repose, a superrealist nude that was intended to embody timeless beauty, and has also become a subtle—unintended?—meditation on the passage of time.
Upstairs, the themes repeat. An Artists Rooms exhibtion by Gilbert and George is a riot of glossy colour – I found it unoffensive rather than inspiring, reprising the fashions of this year’s Festival, and also comparable to the safe prettiness of the Colourists; but it’s something the media and tourists up from London for the Festival will recognize. Elsewhere on this floor, you can find an iconic Ray Liechenstein, a superb Bonnard, and two more conceptual rooms, like the still life gallery downstairs—one explores the use of texture, while the other investigates the deceptive simplicity of white paint.
Also upstairs, there is an exhibition of paintings chosen by Elizabeth Blackadder—continuing a season in which major figures in Scottish art make personal selections of work from the Gallery collection. Essentially, this is a homage by an artist to her mentors and heroes, a biographical retrospective of her own artistic influences—a “who’s who” of Scottish and European painting over the past century.
On a purely visual level, I found this less exciting than the earlier selection by Callum Innes, but it hints at the quiet emotions of unspoken memories, and the visual narrative is enlivened by unexpected choices – such as a youthful Futurist foray by Stanley Cursiter, better known to me as an artist of watercolour landscapes and Establishment portraits.
Compared with the “greatest hits” collection of surrealism in the Dean Gallery across the road, the SNGMA’s latest exhibits are more varied—for my taste, there are even a few genuine duds here; but that diversity represents Art in Scotland, and the wide audience that this exhibition is open to. The sheer variety on offer here demands a visit.
The cake in the cafe is also excellent—along with the Douglas Gordon in the stairwell.
Saturday 24 July 2010
A Layman's Guide, part 1: The Lord's Prayer
This is intended as the first in a series of sketch posts exploring the basic texts and tenets of Christianity. These are designed mainly to help me set my own thoughts in order.
It begins as an address to God that proclaims the holiness and authority of the Creator, and then becomes a prayer for "us", paired with a reminder to be kind and generous to others. In so doing, it serves to express the two Great Commandments - to love and honour God, and to our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12.18-34, Matt. 22.34-40). In its simplicity, it seems straightforward and economical.
Yet if you look closely, there is a depth of complexity in this short, familiar prayer. The most obvious question is why there's a section I've printed in brackets - this is a type of prayer coda, known as the doxology (Gk. doxologos, "statement of glory"). It represents a very early textual variant in the text of Matthew, but it leads into wider topics about the development of the New Testament, which I want to discuss more in a later sketch - so for now, it's simply enough to note that the Lord's Prayer was used in diverse ways from a very early date: some Christians integrated the concluding doxology, while others didn't use it at all.
There are also two very hard-to-translate words in the underlying Greek text: firstly, the word usually rendered as "daily", which in Greek is epiousion, a very unusual word that means literally "more than immediate"; it is not wrong to understand this as "daily", but there is something more here, a mysteriousness that is sensed but not fully explained - something that is captured in the technical Latin translation, supersubstantialem. This is a word that reminds us that God's presence in reality is more than we can understand or define, and anticipates the mysterious reality of Christ's presence in the bread of the Sacrament.
The second unusual choice of words is the references to "trespasses", which would be more accurately translated "debts" or "legal obligations". Luke, but not Matthew or the liturgical version, has a different word for our own "trespasses", meaning more explicitly "faults" or "sins", but there is an unexpected emphasis here on freeing people from obligations, rather than on the simple forgiveness of wrongs.
I suspect that this can be better understood by comparing the Lord's Prayer with the dedication prayer said by King Solomon at the consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem (2 Kings 8.15-61, 2 Chronicles 6.14-42). This is a far longer text, but the essence covers the same topics: it proclaims the majesty of the God of Heaven, and establishes the Temple as a place of justice for those accused of trespass against their neighbours, and as a place of redemption for the people's sins, which might otherwise lead them into hunger and captivity.
So, the Lord's Prayer looks back to the Old Testament - but there is also an important change in emphasis. By accepting this prayer from Jesus, we implicitly proclaim his identity as the Christ, the successor of David and Solomon - renewing the relationship between God and man that was embodied in the Temple in Jerusalem.
But the Lord's Prayer is not simply about renewal - it is also about transformation. While Solomon spoke his prayer alone, we are in a sense praying alongside Jesus, here. "Our Father", in these words, is both the heavenly Father of the divine Son, and the universal Father of all.
As such, as a prayer to be said regularly by everyone, the Lord's Prayer reflects an important change, the move from the Temple and its ritual obligations and law codes, to the community of believers, the new teaching of Jesus, and forgiveness through love and grace.
In this sense, indeed, the conceptual joining of the forgiveness of sins and the freedom from ritual obligations becomes very central indeed.
In this short, simple prayer, there is, in short, an expression of all the basic precepts of Christianity. It is close to the basis of the heritage shared by all Christians, in ways far beyond the simple fact of its early position in our canon.
Our Father who art in heaven,This short and simple prayer is perhaps the most basic and ancient text of Christianity, shared universally among almost every congregation. It is known from its first line as the Our Father or Pater Noster, and also as the Lord's Prayer, reflecting that it is identified in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and in the liturgy of the Church, as being taught by Jesus Himself.
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.(For thine is the kingdom,
(and the power, and the glory,
)for ever and ever.)
Amen.
It begins as an address to God that proclaims the holiness and authority of the Creator, and then becomes a prayer for "us", paired with a reminder to be kind and generous to others. In so doing, it serves to express the two Great Commandments - to love and honour God, and to our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12.18-34, Matt. 22.34-40). In its simplicity, it seems straightforward and economical.
Yet if you look closely, there is a depth of complexity in this short, familiar prayer. The most obvious question is why there's a section I've printed in brackets - this is a type of prayer coda, known as the doxology (Gk. doxologos, "statement of glory"). It represents a very early textual variant in the text of Matthew, but it leads into wider topics about the development of the New Testament, which I want to discuss more in a later sketch - so for now, it's simply enough to note that the Lord's Prayer was used in diverse ways from a very early date: some Christians integrated the concluding doxology, while others didn't use it at all.
There are also two very hard-to-translate words in the underlying Greek text: firstly, the word usually rendered as "daily", which in Greek is epiousion, a very unusual word that means literally "more than immediate"; it is not wrong to understand this as "daily", but there is something more here, a mysteriousness that is sensed but not fully explained - something that is captured in the technical Latin translation, supersubstantialem. This is a word that reminds us that God's presence in reality is more than we can understand or define, and anticipates the mysterious reality of Christ's presence in the bread of the Sacrament.
The second unusual choice of words is the references to "trespasses", which would be more accurately translated "debts" or "legal obligations". Luke, but not Matthew or the liturgical version, has a different word for our own "trespasses", meaning more explicitly "faults" or "sins", but there is an unexpected emphasis here on freeing people from obligations, rather than on the simple forgiveness of wrongs.
I suspect that this can be better understood by comparing the Lord's Prayer with the dedication prayer said by King Solomon at the consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem (2 Kings 8.15-61, 2 Chronicles 6.14-42). This is a far longer text, but the essence covers the same topics: it proclaims the majesty of the God of Heaven, and establishes the Temple as a place of justice for those accused of trespass against their neighbours, and as a place of redemption for the people's sins, which might otherwise lead them into hunger and captivity.
So, the Lord's Prayer looks back to the Old Testament - but there is also an important change in emphasis. By accepting this prayer from Jesus, we implicitly proclaim his identity as the Christ, the successor of David and Solomon - renewing the relationship between God and man that was embodied in the Temple in Jerusalem.
But the Lord's Prayer is not simply about renewal - it is also about transformation. While Solomon spoke his prayer alone, we are in a sense praying alongside Jesus, here. "Our Father", in these words, is both the heavenly Father of the divine Son, and the universal Father of all.
As such, as a prayer to be said regularly by everyone, the Lord's Prayer reflects an important change, the move from the Temple and its ritual obligations and law codes, to the community of believers, the new teaching of Jesus, and forgiveness through love and grace.
In this sense, indeed, the conceptual joining of the forgiveness of sins and the freedom from ritual obligations becomes very central indeed.
In this short, simple prayer, there is, in short, an expression of all the basic precepts of Christianity. It is close to the basis of the heritage shared by all Christians, in ways far beyond the simple fact of its early position in our canon.
Edinburgh Art Festival - Dean Gallery
Another World: Dalí, Magritte, Miró and the Surrealists
(Dean Gallery, until 9th January 2011)
Stand-up comedians say that Edinburgh is the month that comes between July and September. The reason for this is the Festival, the sprawling splurge of art, theatre, culture and bad jokes that takes over the capital for a month.
Not all of the Fesitval is in August--the Film Festival now takes place in June; and now, the major art exhibitions are opening in mid-July.
The first hint of this year's offering was a new work by Anthony Gormley (creator of the Angel of the North)--in the form of a life-sized bronze statue of a man, rising chest-high out of the pavement tarmac near the Modern Art Gallery. This is one of a series of life-size figures along the Water of Leith, the river that braids its way through the city's suburbs. They're wonderfully beautiful and effective, their archaic simplicity and earthy patina fitting neatly within their new surroundings - the light-patterned leafscapes and bowed branches overhanging the river, the reflective ripples of the stream, and the asphalt and ironwork of the paths and pavements from which they're viewed.
The main event, however, is a seminal exhibition of surrealist art at the Dean Gallery. Edinburgh has one of the world's greatest surrealist collections, thanks in large part to the generosity of Gabrielle Keiler--collector, benefactor and marmalade heiress--and this exhibition is able to present a thorough retrospective of the twentieth century's most important artistic movement. This is very much an Edinburgh exhibition--it's a measure of the stature of the Dean collection that they've been able to loan a number of pieces from London to complete the picture.
This is nothing less than a complete overview of the surrealist movement, from Dada to World War 2. We have Duchamp's fountain - or rather, one of the handful of autographed replicas that he created to replace the lost original, cheekily arranged on its back in a glass box, like a museum specimin - and, of course, Magritte's Ce nest pas un pipe.
The dance of Man Ray and Lee Miller--sexual and stylistic--teases us throughout the gallery, while the key surrealist themes of fornication, mechanization, humour and unconscious knowledge are all laid out for the casual visitor. Of course, that's not to underestimate the straightforward pulling power of big names: the exhibition boasts a large number of works by Dali and Miró, plus a mix of old favourites and unexpected surprises from Giorgio de Chirico, and a very wide selection by Max Ernst--I find his paintings a little emotionally stiff, but they're meant to be that way, communication a Germanic tension from the edge of the Nazi rise--and a wall paneled with his woodcuts is electrifying, all the more powerful for being so unexpected, so new.
The perfectly counterpoints the Dean Gallery's permanent displays of work by Edouardo Paolozzi, Edinburgh's own heir to the surrealist mantle; and while you're there, look up at the dome in the stairwell, to see an excellent, veriginous site-specific piece by Richard Wright.
This isn't just worth a visit--it's essential.
(Dean Gallery, until 9th January 2011)
Stand-up comedians say that Edinburgh is the month that comes between July and September. The reason for this is the Festival, the sprawling splurge of art, theatre, culture and bad jokes that takes over the capital for a month.
Not all of the Fesitval is in August--the Film Festival now takes place in June; and now, the major art exhibitions are opening in mid-July.
The first hint of this year's offering was a new work by Anthony Gormley (creator of the Angel of the North)--in the form of a life-sized bronze statue of a man, rising chest-high out of the pavement tarmac near the Modern Art Gallery. This is one of a series of life-size figures along the Water of Leith, the river that braids its way through the city's suburbs. They're wonderfully beautiful and effective, their archaic simplicity and earthy patina fitting neatly within their new surroundings - the light-patterned leafscapes and bowed branches overhanging the river, the reflective ripples of the stream, and the asphalt and ironwork of the paths and pavements from which they're viewed.
The main event, however, is a seminal exhibition of surrealist art at the Dean Gallery. Edinburgh has one of the world's greatest surrealist collections, thanks in large part to the generosity of Gabrielle Keiler--collector, benefactor and marmalade heiress--and this exhibition is able to present a thorough retrospective of the twentieth century's most important artistic movement. This is very much an Edinburgh exhibition--it's a measure of the stature of the Dean collection that they've been able to loan a number of pieces from London to complete the picture.
This is nothing less than a complete overview of the surrealist movement, from Dada to World War 2. We have Duchamp's fountain - or rather, one of the handful of autographed replicas that he created to replace the lost original, cheekily arranged on its back in a glass box, like a museum specimin - and, of course, Magritte's Ce nest pas un pipe.
The dance of Man Ray and Lee Miller--sexual and stylistic--teases us throughout the gallery, while the key surrealist themes of fornication, mechanization, humour and unconscious knowledge are all laid out for the casual visitor. Of course, that's not to underestimate the straightforward pulling power of big names: the exhibition boasts a large number of works by Dali and Miró, plus a mix of old favourites and unexpected surprises from Giorgio de Chirico, and a very wide selection by Max Ernst--I find his paintings a little emotionally stiff, but they're meant to be that way, communication a Germanic tension from the edge of the Nazi rise--and a wall paneled with his woodcuts is electrifying, all the more powerful for being so unexpected, so new.
The perfectly counterpoints the Dean Gallery's permanent displays of work by Edouardo Paolozzi, Edinburgh's own heir to the surrealist mantle; and while you're there, look up at the dome in the stairwell, to see an excellent, veriginous site-specific piece by Richard Wright.
This isn't just worth a visit--it's essential.
Saturday 19 June 2010
In the beginning…
“In the beginning, heaven and earth… were brought forth by the Spirit from within itself.”
-Virgil, Aeneid VI. 724-6
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus lived around 500 BC, at Ephesus in Asia Minor; he is known as ho skoteinos, ‘the obscure’, because his writing was thought to be difficult, both in its prose and in the ideas it expressed.
I first heard about him while reading Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair – one of the books that Scottish schoolboys are given in English class, in between the Dickens and the Shakespeare. In this, the passing of the old peasant society in the early twentieth century is presented as an expression of Heraclitus’ philosophy, panta rhei, or “everything changes”.
The reality is rather more complicated: the real mainspring of A Scots Quair is the unresolved, unacknowledged tension between the author’s traditional rural childhood and the urban social reformer he’d become as an adult. Like Of Mice And Men in America, A Scots Quair is deliberate socialist propaganda, every fictionalized detail worked for ideological value – and rather than its real literary merit, the pervasive political subtext is probably what earned its place it on the school curriculum (as opposed to, say, Old Mortality or A Prince of the Captivity).
More importantly, “everything changes” isn’t a reliable quotation from Heraclitus – it first appears as Plato’s summary of his views a century later; the idea of him as “the weeping philosopher”, depressed by the permanence of change, is also a later image, perhaps a product of Plato’s pupil Theophrastus.
From the surviving fragments of his writing, it seems that Heraclitus did something unexpected with the fact of change: he used it as a means to infer an underlying principle causing change, which he called the logos. This logos, innate in all things, must thus be infinite and universal; if everything changes, the logos is eternal.
This use of seeming paradox is another thing that Heraclitus thought was important: “how a contrast agrees with itself, unified through divergence, like the bow and the lyre”.
Commentators generally explain “unified through divergence” as something to do with the physical construction of bows and lyres – the joining of materials that bend in opposite directions to produce a flexible S-curve, or the tension between the curved body and the straight string that holds it together, or the sound and motion produced when the string is plucked.
They’re right – all three aspects are probably implied by the one tight phrase – but there’s more to it than that.
The bow and the lyre are the emblems of Apollo, paired symbols of war and peace: the innate, contrasted relationship between them is exactly the sort of thing that Heraclitus was describing: there are intimations here of holiness and moral truth, and a sense that this sort of combination is inherrently beautiful.
This was recognized by the artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, who adopted the bow and the lyre as the flag of Little Sparta, his demi-paradise in the Border hills – replacing the bow with the Oerlikon gun, to add another layer of productive contrast, between idyllic nature and hard-edged modern technology. When the light shines through the fabric of the flag, the barrels of the gun on one side become the strings of the lyre on the other.
It seems almost deceptively simple to say that Heraclitus' philosophy was about the eternal logos and all things being “unified through divergence” – in truth, his prose is so complex, and his work survives in such fragments, that it is difficult to draw clear conclusions; even where he seems to be saying something straightforward, he may be implying the reverse in a paradox. As head of the ancient royal dynasty of Ephesus, anecdotes tell that he rejected conventional judgements, resigning the sacred kingship, and playing dice with children in the temple when the citizens came to him for advice.
But even if we don’t understand him, Heraclitus is important: his influence leads beyond Greek philiosophy to Jewish thought, and ultimately to one of the most majestic and mysterious statements ever written, the opening passage of the Gospel according to St John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word dwelled with God; and God was the Word…”
Here, the creative aspect of the Christian God, which we call the Word, is identified in the underlying Greek as the logos. Of course, this is not to say that the Evangelist was reciting Greek philosophy; what is happening here is, I think, far more profound and important than that – but it is also a discussion for another time…
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