For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
Something you learn as you get older is that there is no limit to human ingenuity. Another thing you learn is that there is also no limit to the human capacity for acting completely insensibly. Popular culture is rife with examples of both. Sometimes in the same example. Italian (con-?)artist Salvatore Garau recently managed to... Continue Reading →
Why are Christians so afraid of art and literature? I have worked in education all of my adult life, and if there is one thing I can guarantee, it is that if I prescribe a text with any hint of magic, sex, or swearing (funnily enough, violence is usually less of an issue)there will be... Continue Reading →
It was the kind of thing that was bound to get them crawling out of the woodwork. There is a certain type of Christian that just cannot resist embarking on a Crusade when anything that vaguely resembles a “just” cause presents itself. When Comino Carvallo intended to display his sculpture – a life-sized, anatomically correct... Continue Reading →
I know that Jane Austen’s novels have much literary merit. She confronts social injustice with a sensitivity and occasionally very subtle and sardonic humour that few can match. She is justifiably considered to be one of the pre-eminent minds of her time. Even 200 years later, in countries and cultures far removed from Victorian England,... Continue Reading →
maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach (to play one day) and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were; and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced... Continue Reading →
Everything you need to know about installation art would have been evident to you had you ever had the (probably quite surreal) opportunity of seeing (and certainly smelling) Dieter Roth’s Staple Cheese (A Race), which was part of his exhibition in Los Angeles’ Eugenia Butler Gallery in 1970. The work consisted of 37 suitcases of... Continue Reading →
I was explaining to a friend recently why Turner’s landscapes are among my favourite paintings. I love the savage beauty of nature, as he depicts it. Something about his wild impartial skies and wild, alien landscapes resonates with my soul. Whenever we look at a piece of art, we only tangentially see the artist. What... Continue Reading →
I am suspicious of hedonism: somehow it is a lie. Now I do not believe myself to be any more incapable of lying than the next person, but I do hold integrity as one of my core values: I do not believe that one can live a fulfilled life when one is consciously living a... Continue Reading →
I am wary of attempts to reduce life’s complexities into trite truisms, but if I were pressed to summarise life’s journey into one succinct statement of sugar-packety goodness, it would be this: fulfilment in life is dependent on one simple choice: will you walk the path of hope or the path of despair? Make no... Continue Reading →
… suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;... Continue Reading →
Vapors In The Wind 