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• 18:51 Drinking cocktails in Texas Embassy. Next up ... Waterhouse Exhibition at Royal Academy. #

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2009/61: The Bones of the Earth -- Michael Swanwick

The Bones of the Earth -- Michael Swanwick

The air is richer and the greens are greener and at night there are so many stars in the sky that it's terrifying. The Mesozoic swarms with life. You can't appreciate how thinned-out and impoverished our time is until you go back. Rain forests are nothing ... With my own eyes, I have seen a plesiosaur give birth. This hand stroked her living neck as she lay quivering in the shallows afterward. (p. 41)

( non-spoilery review )

Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy

Yesterday, ladymoonray and swisstone encouraged me to visit the J W Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy. Too many people, as usual, but it was fantastic: seeing (and having the audio guide explain) the brushwork close up, spotting themes and imagery in a way that I just don't when I'm flicking through a book, laughing at the pigeons. (Really: Waterhouse seems to've had a thing about pigeons, though later in his career he transferred his affections to panthers: the panthers look glossy and well-fed -- and in one case, rather simian -- so one presumes they've feasted on any stray birds or bird-women left over from earlier paintings.)

Not entirely convinced I agree with some of the factoids presented (for one thing, I fear there's a more Freudian explanation of all those pearls explained as 'tears of drowned sailors') but I was impressed with the social context, discussion of technique and contemporary commentary presented in the audio guide. I would have liked more about the models and about Waterhouse's life as it intersected with his art -- I blame Desperate Romantics, at least in part -- but apparently little is known about the models and Waterhouse liked to keep his private life private.

Waterhouse is good at painting male figures in lifelike, vulnerable, human attitudes: but I prefer his women, who are often iconic but are strong and powerful and dangerous. Check out The Magic Circle: never mind the mish-mash of paraphernalia (Druidic sickle, Greek warriors, Egyptian landscape, seven ravens) she is doing real magic. Or any of the depictions of Circe. Or the predatory water-nymphs enticing Hylas. Or Penelope and the Suitors, in which it seems evident that -- far from being 'patient' and 'forbearing' -- she is about to turn round and tell them exactly where to go.

Also, just for ladymoonray: ( a commentary on 'I am half-sick of shadows' )

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2009/62: Salt -- Jeremy Page

Salt -- Jeremy Page

... these storms never blow themselves out, but instead drift into some eternal vortex of the North Sea, waiting to return one day. So the storm that hit North Norfolk a thousand years ago, drowning Vikings by the boatful, could return a few hundred years later to add herring fishermen and Dutch traders to its grisly cargo. In her time she claimed she'd heard shouts in Old Norse across the marsh, heard chainmail thrashing in the breakers, had listened to the sickening crack of wood as longboats hit the banks off Blakeney Point. Danish sailors crying like babies in the mist, and she'd smelled their last meal of herring and oats as the galley-pot tipped when the boat went down. (p.41-42)

( non-spoilery review )