In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life.

In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life.
- Karl Marx

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maharajah: The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington

Maharajah: The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington  This is an unbelievably impressive exhibition maintaining the usual high standard of events at the V & A. India was overwhelmed by stronger neighbours, then by Western Imperialists, seeking a colony that fitted with their nostrums, that might be strategically advantageous. Even today the current war is based really on Indo-Pakistan relations representing the Islamification of east and west India (now Pakistan and Bangladesh) first brought about by the Moghuls. The Moghuls, a nation that originated in Persia but actual descendants of the Timurids, hence their homeland Moghulistan (Mongolistan). The Moghuls were essentially militaristic, even more militaristic than the native Rajputs, who seemed to have lived by a kind of Zealot ethic, preferring suicide to dishonour. They were clearly a very powerful presence until their influence waned and the British came to establish the Raj, but the words we have of 'Indian'...
Read more

THE PAINTED VEIL and LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

The Painted Veil (2006), dir John Curran, starring Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Diana Rigg and Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), dir Mike Newell, starring Javier Bardem The Painted Veil , adapted from a Somerset Maugham novel, is a moving tale of a love affair played out before the backdrop of a cholera epidemic in China sometime in the early 20th century. The film depicts the horrors of cholera, the beauty of the Chinese landscape, the trials and tribulations of Walter and Kitty Fane’s relationship. Love in the Time of Cholera , (another adaptation from the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, adapted by Ronald Harwood) shares with The Painted Veil the theme of Europeans in a non-European locale, coping, or failing to cope, with cholera. In The Painted Veil , Walter Fane (played by Edward Norton, an American actor with a high art reputation), a British medical official sent to a remote Chinese Province to help control a cholera epidemic is estranged from his wife Kitty, who has be...
Read more

Paul Cezanne and Amadeo Modigliani

Image
Paul Cezanne: Painting People at the National Portrait Gallery and Amadeo Modigliani at the Tate Modern on the 26 th & 27 th of November 2017 Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) was born in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France but soon moved to Paris to be with his childhood friend, the writer Emile Zola.  Throughout his life he divided his time between Paris and Aix.  Cezanne’s father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne (1798-1886) had accrued a fortune firstly by selling hats and then as a banker.   He wanted his son to be a lawyer. However, Cezanne’s ambition was to be an artist.   His wish to be purposefully engaged in a creative life and to marry the woman he loved were all opposed by his father who also happens to be the subject of the first major painting in this exhibition.  Cezanne’s painting of his father, ‘The Artist’s Father reading L’Evenement’ (oil on canvas, 1866) demonstrates the dominant influence of Cezanne’s early life.  Louis-Auguste is ...
Read more