Lockdown Diaries: Day 56 (Angkor Wat)

Another of those places which I probably won’t ever have the chance to actually visit; I hope it inspires some of you to put it on your bucket list!

Lockdown Diaries: Day 41 (Virtual Museums)

Locked Down in London, Day 41: Homeschooling

An Ofsted inspector inspected his own homeschooling arrangements and found his school ‘appalling’:

The headteacher is eminently qualified but is regularly seen wearing nothing but dressing gowns and underpants. This sets a very poor example to the pupils. Also in the evening, both members of staff are often observed drinking alcohol in front of the pupils…

⇒ Read more (BBC)

Lockdown Diaries: Day 4 (The World’s First Library)

Locked Down in London, Day 4: Stay at Home, Leper!

The health service sent me an even longer text today which requires me to put myself into solitary confinement for a minimum of 12 weeks. You couldn’t do this to an inmate in a prison; it would be illegal. If I was HM the Queen of England, I could perhaps comply with their instructions but unfortunately… 

Sleep separately if you can. Stay 3 steps away from others at home. Keep away from children … Eat separately, using your own cutlery, dishcloths and towels. Clean and wipe down surfaces in the kitchen, bathroom and door handles before use. If you can, use separate bathrooms. If you share a bathroom, use it first and clean it between uses…

Thank you, I was not aware that I was a leper.

Within the hour, the patronising text from the NHS was followed by a bullyish one from the UK government:

New rules in force now: stay at home… Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.

What happened to English politeness? I mean not a single please. 

Finally, the Transport of London chimed in with more of the same:

Non-essential journeys risk lives. Stay at home!

This latter came decorated with a nice big red exclamation mark, just in case I’m particularly slow-witted.

I think I got the point now: I should stay at home.

Moving to Mars

I’m A Martian

I’m a Martian. This might surprise you, as I’m neither green, nor insectoid and have never dug a canal in my life, but I’m a Martian nevertheless – or at least NASA says so.

Art, Word, War: Anglo-Saxon Codices

Orderly British queues, intellectuals discussing minute details of craftsmanship and content; teenage girls squealing in delight as if they just met a rock star – at the sight of the handwriting of an early 9th century bishop. (I wonder what school they go to.)

That was Art, Word, War, the current British Library exhibition about the Anglo-Saxons.

Florence, City of the Renaissance

Renaissance – rebirth – is the Medieval realisation that the classical world, in particular Greece, has something to offer us. One of the places where you can observe Renaissance best ‘in action’ is the Italian city of Florence, in Tuscany, a northern region of Italy. For all that it’s a famous tourist destination, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you do enjoy immersing yourself in the Renaissance – because apart from that, there’s not a lot else to do.

The Grammar of Ornament (The Beauty of Patterns II)

The Beauty of Mathematics

Back in July I almost managed to convince myself that mathematics was beautiful.

And certainly, the result of mathematics at least is often quite beautiful:

Chambered nautilus shell by Jitze Couperus via Flickr. [CC BY 2.0]

The bit of mathematics illustrated above is a favourite of nature, and goes by the name of the Fibonacci sequence. Today, however, we’re going to ignore nature to see instead what man can do with a bit of mathematics. Or rather, what one particular man did with a bit of mathematics.

Decorations from Pompeii, image plate in The Grammar of Ornament. Photo by Eric Gjerde via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Face to Face with My Ancestors (The Scythians in the British Museum)

I went to see the Scythian exhibition in the British Museum on Friday night and I came face to face with a Scythian warrior from over 2000 years ago.

Was this what my great-grandfather 50 times removed looked like?

The Beauty of Patterns (The Rabbit Problem)

Decorative tiling (azulejos) in the Plaza de España, Seville

Shells and galaxies curl in spirals, stripes run down on the sleek hide of tigers and zebras, waves and sand dunes rise in crescent shape. Some patterns – like the leaves of a palm tree – win you over with their strong, simple lines, others – like crystals and snowflakes – with their intricate geometry. And mankind copies nature: floral motifs proliferate in embroidery, decorative tiles combine into complex matrices, spiral staircases rise towards glass ceilings. The geometry of architecture, natural symmetry, repetition and variation…

The beauty of patterns seduces the eye and the mind.

The Art of Zurbarán

In the Museum of Prado in Madrid and the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville you can see a number of paintings by the 17th century Spanish painter, Francisco de Zurbarán. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t recall ever having heard Zurbarán’s name when I was in school, although admittedly art history was no longer part of the grammar school curriculum by then.

The first time I took notice of Zurbarán was, in fact, in the Prado, seven years ago now – I must have seen him in the National Gallery in London before, but the National Gallery is so vast and so full of masterpieces of all styles that I passed him by. The Prado was different. Not that it’s short of masterpieces from all over the world, mind, but I went there specifically to look at Spanish paintings. I wanted to see Goya and El Greco and Velázquez… and while doing so, I came across Zurbarán.

Saint Francis in Meditation by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598 – 1664), National Gallery, London (NG230) [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]

The View from the Ivory Tower

Should we admire or despair of those single-minded people who dedicate themselves to the pursuit of a pet obsession? Who put what we’d consider a ‘normal’ life on hold to disappear into the wilderness spending years in research?

I’m talking about the likes of Milman Parry, who traipsed around the remote mountains of pre-WWII Yugoslavia for a decade, recording folk songs in an attempt to gain an insight into the oral tradition as surviving since the time of Homer… Or Walter Muir Whitehill, who, similarly obsessed, spent nine years in Spain at around the same time, discovering and cataloguing Romanesque churches in the most godforsaken locations. (Both Harvard academics, I notice.) I came across this second one, Muir, while reading Roads to Santiago by Cees Nooteboom.

Night at the Museum

Many of London’s museums and galleries stay open late into the evening once a week. You might think day or night makes no difference…

But it’s nice to break the daily routine once in a while. Instead of going home after work, I head for Bloomsbury.

The British Museum after six pm is a different place

The lights are dimmed. The crowds are gone; it’s quiet. I relax in the members’ room with my book and a glass of wine before going for a wander.

British Museum

The Great Court

I can get up close to the most popular exhibits without an elbow fight. I can contemplate. I can read the labels in peace.

I can take pictures.

The fresco of Nebamun

Golden bracelet

Till next Friday.

You might also like:
⇒ Made by the Egyptians: A Bust of Amenhotep III
⇒ The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
⇒ Three Hours at the British Museum

My Love-Hate Relationship with Caravaggio

Caravaggio (detail from The Taking of Christ)

For today’s Mediterranean theme, we’ll take a painter. From a Mediterranean country, clearly. He’s a painter I cannot be indifferent to: I either hate his pictures – or love them.

Amun-Ra Sailing Under the Starry Sky

My second favourite profession I would have gone for if I had the choice when I was young? Marine archaeologist.

I just mention this because in the past half-year I was haunting the now closing Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds exhibition of the British Museum which told the story of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, two cities that sank into the Mediterranean Sea (in Aboukir Bay, previously only known to me as the place where Nelson defeated the French). The site is being excavated by the team of Franck Goddio – the marine archaeologist who seems to get to excavate all the best sunken things in the world. (This is envy speaking.)

Venice According to Canaletto: The Doge’s Palace (Then & Now)

Venice, the ultimate tourist destination, was already popular as far back as the 16th and 17th century: it was one of the obligatory stops on the so-called Grand Tour, when wealthy young men – principally English – travelled for a few years in Europe to complete their education. The Grand Tour was, in a manner of speaking, a posher and lengthier forerunner of the modern gap year. Or – if we’re less charitable – of the package holiday. In any case, the Grand Tourists invariably wound up in Italy; and we owe them a number of varyingly entertaining travel accounts as well as far too many paintings of young Englishmen posing in togas in front of well-known Italian landmarks.

Nelson, Naples…

There’s a new exhibition about to open in the National Maritime Museum of Greenwich, titled Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity. For the sake of those among you who ‘didn’t win first prize in the lottery of life’: Lady Hamilton is famous for being the lover of Admiral Nelson, the victor of Trafalgar and the saviour of England.

I first heard of Nelson when I was about seven and the Hungarian Television broadcasted the 1941 black-and-white tearjerker, That Hamilton Woman. Being too young to grasp that the handsome Royal Navy officer on screen was in fact Laurence Olivier, rather than Nelson himself, at the end of the film I was left with a life-long admiration for Nelson, a life-long dislike for Bonaparte and a complete unawareness of who Laurence Olivier was.

Moonlit Night in Naples by Sylvester Shchedrin via Wikipedia (Public domain). This romantic scene evokes long forgotten memories of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in a location that – owing to the war – couldn’t possibly have been Naples…

Sketches Of Spain: Miles Davis

I wouldn’t dream of blogging on music; but my husband played Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis the other day and it was very good.

It occurred to me that it would go rather well with Federico García Lorca. Variations on a theme. Spain.

Enjoy:

(Click on the album cover to play.)