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Ely Cathedral: The Ship of the Fens

Mar 5, 2025 / terry / No comments

Ely Cathedral was originally situated on a low island in the middle of the Fens, a region of marshland in eastern England lying inland of the Wash. Because of the flatness of the surrounding land the cathedral could be seen from great distances, appearing as the “Ship of the Fens.” The marshes were drained in the 17^th Century, but it is still easy to imagine the building floating above the waters: the embodiment of Auden’s image of the English cathedrals:

Luxury liners laden with souls,
Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
(Auden, 1936, p 43; also McDiarmid, 1978, p 292)

Category: Architecture, Art, History, Photography, Poetry, Psychiatry, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Augustine of Canterbury, Cathedral, Dissolution of the monasteries, Ethelreda, Gothic, Henry VIII, Lady Chapel, Normans, Philip Larkin, Reformation, Richard Goodrich, Romanesque, Saxons, Sean Henry, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Wynne, W. H Auden

Looking at the Human Brain: from Vesalius to the Present

Feb 4, 2025 / terry / No comments

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) published his De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) in 1543 (O’Malley, 1964). This book, based on dissections of human cadavers, provided illustrations of the human brain that were both anatomically correct and esthetically pleasing. The scientists that followed Vesalius expanded on our knowledge, and produced their own representations of the human brain. This essay traces the evolution of these pictures.

Category: Art, History, Medicine, Neuroscience / Tags: Anne Carson, Brain Stem, Cerebral Cortex, Charles Bell, Christfried Jacob, Corpus Callosum, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Fornix, Henry Gray, Henry Vandyke Carter, Hippocampus, John Willis, Limbic System, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Papez, Rembrandt, Vesalius, Vicq d'Azyr

Words and Music: Schubert and Goethe

Jan 21, 2025 / terry / No comments

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) died young, but not before he was able to compose music that has become justly famous. As well as symphonies, piano works, sacred music, and chamber works, he composed over 600 songs or Lieder. This essay considers a few of his over 70 settings for poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Category: History, Literature, Music / Tags: Erlkonig, Faust, Franz Schubert, Goethe, Gretchen am Spinnrade, Lieder, Mignon, Song of the Harper, Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship

The Moissac Portal: Masterpiece of Romanesque Sculpture

Nov 27, 2024 / terry / One comment

n the 9^th and 10^th Centuries CE, Europe began to awaken from the has come to be known as the Dark Ages. Imposing churches were erected and many of these were decorated with sculptures. This new style of art and architecture, thought to be derived from that of the Roman Empire, has been called “Romanesque.” The sculpture from this time is full of a tremendous vitality and marked by a rich imagination. Some of the most impressive examples adorn the portal of the Abbaye de Saint Pierre in Moissac in southwestern France.

Category: Architecture, Art, History, Language, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Abbaye Saint Pierre de Moissac, Ansquitil, Apocalypse, Apostle Paul, Bosom of Abraham, Christ in Majesty, Dives and Lazarus, Durand de Bredon, Flight to Egypt, Gospels, Jeremiah, John of Patmos, Moissac, Monastery, Revelation, Romanesque, Twenty-four Elders, Tympanum

Some of the Evil of my Tale: Lawrence of Arabia

Nov 18, 2024 / terry / 3 comments

In late 1916, Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935), a British intelligence officer stationed in Cairo, was assigned as a military liaison officer to the forces of Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi, the Sharif of Mecca, who, with his sons Ali, Abdullah and Faisal had initiated the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks in June 1916. Lawrence quickly adapted to the ways of his hosts and gained their trust. Under his leadership, the Arabs took the city of Aqaba in July 1917. This allowed the British to supply both their own army and the Arab rebels as they advanced on Jerusalem and Damascus. Lawrence led the Arabs as they disrupted the Hejaz Railway, and harried the Turkish army. His exploits were recorded on film and widely publicized by the American journalist Lowell Thomas, from whom came the epithet “Lawrence of Arabia.” Lawrence published a memoir of his experiences in 1927, Revolt in the Desert. A much more complete and introspective book on the Arab Revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, was not formally published until after his death in 1935.

Category: Art, History, Literature, Painting, Philosophy, psychology, Religion / Tags: Aqaba, Arab Revolt, Asraq, Augustine, Burroughs motorcycle, Damascus, Deraa, Edmund Allenby, Faisal ibn Hussein, Hejaz, Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi, Iraq, Jerusalem, Jordan, Lowell Thomas, masochism, Mecca, Palestine, Paris Peace Conferences, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Syria, T. E. Lawrence

Le Corbusier: The Measurement of Man

Oct 13, 2024 / terry / No comments

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was a Swiss-born architect, painter and urban planner. He is generally considered as one of the main forces in the development of modernist architecture. UNESCO has designated 17 of his building projects as “world heritage sites,” more than any other architect. In the 1940s Le Corbusier developed a system of measurements called the Modulor to assist in the fitting buildings to human beings. The first building to be constructed using the Modulor was the Unité d’Habitation, a striking and innovative residential building in Marseille, begun in 1947 and completed in 1952. In recent years, Le Corbusier has been criticized for his antisemitism and his fascist leanings. These critiques do not detract from the importance of his work but do explain how his buildings sometimes seem inhuman.

Category: Architecture, History, Politics / Tags: Antisemitism, Brutalism, Chandigarh, Communal Housing, Domino Plan, Fascism, Fibonacci, Golden Ratio, Jane Jacobs, Le Modulor, Leonardo da Vinci, Plan Voisin, Reinforced Concrete, Ronchamp, Unité d’Habitation

First Snow, Algoma

Sep 13, 2024 / terry / One comment

Alexander Young Jackson (1882-1974) studied art in France and Italy during the first years of the 20^th Century. He learned the techniques of the Impressionists but was also affected by Van Gogh and Cézanne. After painting for a while in Quebec, he moved from Montreal to Toronto in 1914, and became friends with James MacDonald (1873-1932), Lawren Harris (1885-1970) and Tom Thomson (1877-1917). This group of painters began to paint en plein air in the wilderness in Northern Ontario. Their paintings forged a new style of landscape painting that combined aspects of neo-impressionism, art deco, and expressionism. In 1915, Jackson enlisted in the Canadian army and was wounded in 1916. After convalescence he returned to active service as an official war artist from 1917 to 1919. In late 1919, he joined Harris, MacDonald and Frank Johnston (1888-1949) on a trip to the Algoma wilderness. Drawings and oil sketches from this trip provided the basis for his 1920 painting First Snow, Algoma. In 1920, Jackson became a founding member of the Group of Seven, an association of Canadian landscape artists, which lasted from 1920 to 1933.

Category: Art, History, Painting / Tags: A. Y. Jackson, Algoma Central Railway, Algonquin Park, Canadian War Artists, Frank Johnston, Group of Seven, J. E. H. MacDonald, Lawren Harris, Tom Thomson, World War I, Ypres

Artemisia

Jun 29, 2024 / terry / No comments

Conventional histories of art mention few female painters. As Germaine Greer famously pointed out in her 1979 book The Obstacle Race, this is more related to their lack of opportunity in a patriarchal and misogynistic society than to any lack of talent (see also Nochlin, 1971; 1988). Greer pointed to a “magnificent exception” to the rule that female painters do not become renowned: Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656), a baroque painter, whose images continue to fascinate us with their conception and shock us with their power.

Category: Art, History, Painting, Religion / Tags: Agostino Tassi, Artemisia Gentileschi, Caravaggio, Cristofano Allori, Germain Greer, Judith and Holofernes, Mary Magdalene, Orazio Gentileschi, rape, Susanna and the Elders, The Obstacle Race

Du Fu: Poet, Sage, Historian

Mar 10, 2024 / terry / No comments

Du Fu: Poet, Sage, Historian

Du Fu (712-770 CE) was a poet during a time of great political upheaval in China. He was born near Luoyang and spent much of his young adulthood in the Yanzhou region, finally settling down to a minor official position in Chang’an, the imperial capital. In 755 CE, An Lushan, a disgruntled general, led a rebellion against the Tang dynasty. The emperor was forced to flee Chang’an (modern Xian), and chaos reigned for the next eight years. For more than a year Du Fu was held captive in Chang’an by the rebels. After escaping, he made his way south, living for a time in a thatched cottage in Chengdu, and later at various places along the Yangtze River. His poetry is characterized by an intense love of nature, by elements of Chan Buddhism, and by a deep compassion for all those caught up in the turmoil of history. This is a longer post than usual. I have become fascinated by Du Fu.

Category: Art, History, Language, Literature, Music, Painting, Poetry, Politics, Religion / Tags: An Lushan Rebellion, Chan Buddhism, Chang'an, Chinese Poetry, Daoism, Kenneth Rexroth, Li Bai, Spring View, Stephen Owen, Tang dynasty, translation, Wang Shimin, Wang Wei

History, Myth and Fiction

Jan 1, 2024 / terry / 2 comments

This post describes some of the events that occurred in Ronda, a town in southern Spain, during the summer of 1936. After the Spanish Civil War broke out, Anarchists quickly took control of the town, and murdered many supporters of the Nationalist cause. Two months later, advancing Nationalist forces captured Ronda, and drove most of its people from their homes. Those that refused to leave suffered bloody reprisals. These events quickly became mythic rather than historic. In one story, the Anarchists had murdered the town’s Falangists by having them beaten to death in the town’s plaza and then thrown into the canyon that cuts through the center of the town. Ernest Hemingway recounted this version in his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. However, most historians now agree that this never happened.

Category: Architecture, Ethics, Film, History, Photography, Poetry, Politics, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Ernest Hemingway, Falangists, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hugh Thomas, John Donne, Nationalists, Philip Levine, Rainer Maria Rilke, Republican, Ronda, Second Spanish Republic, Spanish Civil War, The Spanish Holocaust

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