Category Archives: arts

arts, books, ramblings

Book Review: Letters from England

Karel Čapek
Letters from England
(Continuum, 2001)
What is the connexion between Czechoslovakia, ant, London and robots? Answer: Karel Čapek.
Čapek (1890-1938) was a Czech novelist, dramatist and journalist who was mostly active in the 1920s and 30s. He is possibly best known today for two plays written with his brother Josef: R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) and Pictures from the Insects’ Life (aka. The Insect Play). This latter I have known since school as we did it as the school play in my final year; it is strange, weird and disturbing. With R.U.R. Čapek is credited with the invention of the term “robot”.
In 1924 Čapek visited Britain and Letters from England is the resulting sketches about the visit. It is a small paperback which I’ve had on the shelves for many years and dipped into occasionally – as I have done again recently.
The sketches, originally written in Czech but in several translations, are a mixture travel diary and cynical but humorous observation.
Čapek travels the length and breadth of the Britain (but omits Ireland). The first third of the volume is taken up with London, including this wonderful description of his first visit:

I remember with horror the day when they first brought me to London. First, they took me by train, then they ran through some huge, glass halls and pushed me into a barred cage which looked like a scales for weighing cattle. This was ‘a lift’ and it descended through an armour-plated well, whereupon they hauled me out and slid away through serpentine, underground corridors. It was like a horrible dream. Then there was a sort of tunnel or sewer with rails, and a buzzing train flew in. They threw me into it and the train flew on and it was very musty and oppressive in there, obviously because of the proximity to hell. Whereupon they took me out again and ran through new catacombs to an escalator which rattles like a mill and hurtles to the top with people on it. I tell you, it is like a fever. Then there were several more corridors and stairways and despite my resistance they led me out into the street, where my heart sank. A fourfold line of vehicles shunts along without end or interruption; buses, chugging mastodons tearing along in herds with bevies of little people on their backs, delivery vans, lorries, a flying pack of cars, steam engines, people running, tractors, ambulances, people climbing up onto the roofs of buses like squirrels, a new herd of motorised elephants; there, and now everything stands still, a muttering and rattling stream, and it can’t go any further …

This, remember, is 1924. Plus ça change!
Čapek perambulates an astonishing amount of the country: Oxford, Cambridge, Yorkshire, North Wales, the Lake District, Edinburgh, Inverness … and here he is in the Isle of Skye:

I am in a region which is called Skye, that is to say ‘Sky’, although I am not in the heavens but only in the Hebrides, on a large, strange island among other islands, on an island consisting of fjords, peat, rocks and summits. I collect coloured shells among the blue or flaxen pebbles and by a special grace of heaven even find the droppings of a wild elk, which is the milch cow of Gaelic water nymphs. The hillsides drip like a saturated sponge, the bruach heather catches at my feet, but then, folks, the islands of Raasay and Scalpay, Rhum and Eigg are visible and then one can see mountains with strange and ancient names like Beinn na Callaich … It is beautiful and poor, and the original shanties look as prehistoric as if they had been built by the long-departed Picts, of whom, as is well known, nothing is known.

Interspersed with the text are occasional thumbnail sketches by the author: naïve but humorous. And Čapek meets people, often well known people, like George Bernard Shaw, who sketches, twice:

GBSThis is an almost supernatural personality, Mr Bernard Shaw. I couldn’t draw him better because he is always moving and talking. He is immensely tall, thin and straight and looks half like God and half like a very malicious satyr, who, however, by a thousand-year process of sublimation has lost everything that is too natural. He has white hair, a white beard and very pink skin, inhumanly clear eyes, a strong and pugnacious nose, something knightly from Don
Quixote, something apostolic and something which makes fun of everything in the world, including himself; never in all my life have I seen such an unusual being; to tell you the truth, I was frightened of him. I thought that it was some spirit which was only playing at being the celebrated Bernard Shaw. He is a vegetarian, I don’t know whether from principle or from gourmandaise. One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.

If you want a criticism, the prose does get a bit tedious and turgid at times, however all in all this is a delightfully eccentric and amusing small volume; very readable in small doses, so eminently suitable for dipping into or light bedtime reading.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

arts, books

Book Review

1 Comment

Flavio Febbraro
How to Read Erotic Art
Ludion, 2011
I’ve read this book, over many months, by dint of dipping into it from time to time at bedtime. I found it interesting and absorbing although I didn’t really get any “wow factor”. I did find it hard to put down, but also hard to pick up again – if only because it is chunky and not a comfortable bedtime read.
Although the major emphasis is on western art, the book covers painting and sculpture from China and Japan through India and Europe to Meso-America. It also covers the complete timespan from pre-history to the present day. This wide-ranging subject matter demonstrates that neither the ancients, nor other cultures, had any less interest in the erotic than we do – they just had different artistic styles and way of presenting it within their culture and ability.
The erotic is not just mainstream heterosexual; the vast majority of (non-fetish) erotica is included: male, female, heterosexual, homosexual, mythical, fantasy, even some BDSM.
But the book is more than this. As it is organised chronologically it provides a timeline for the development of art from pre-history to the present day – especially useful as it gives the art historically ignorant like me a much better grasp of who was working when, and who were contemporaries.
Most entries in the 380 pages are double page spreads (a few run over 4 pages) depicting a particular painting/sculpture with a short general explanation and one or two even shorter detailed explanations of what one is looking at. Many entries also contain a couple of paragraphs of historical context; these are often highly interesting.
The book is well produced with excellent colour reproduction on heavy art paper; it is between A5 and A4 in size and 3 cm thick; which makes it quite heavy. The cover is soft; somewhere between hardback and paperback with some nastily sharp corners. That plus the weight make it uncomfortable to read in bed.
Finally a word for the unwary. This is a book about erotic art. Do not go to it looking for titillation, because you won’t find it. It is about art, not pornography. It is worth a look if you are interested in art or the development of artistic erotica.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆

arts, beliefs, nudism

After the Storm

Nude girls perform Shakespeare’s The Tempest in New York’s Central Park. Which is absolutely brilliant. Good on them. It just goes to show there is sanity and common-sense around and this should be encouraged — and not just those with the courage to perform but the vast majority of the audience too.


As you all know by now I strongly believe that nudity needs to be normalised rather than marginalised. More of the likes of this would do a lot to help.

arts, history, photography

Weekly Photograph

Over the weekend I’ve been running the Anthony Powell Society Conference in York. Thanks to University of York we were able to use the magnificent King’s Manor, the university’s city centre base.
King’s Manor was originally built to house the abbots of St Mary’s Abbey, York and the Abbot’s house probably occupied the site since the eleventh century. However the earliest extant remains date from the 15th century. Following the abbey’s dissolution in 1539, Henry VIII instructed that King’s Manor be the seat of the Council of the North, a role it fulfilled until 1641. Following the Restoration the building was for some years the residence of the Governor of York. But since the late 17th century King’s Manor has been leased to various institutions until acquired by York City Council in the late 1950s and subsequently leased to University of York. It now houses the university’s Archaeology and Medieval Studies Departments.
Much of the original structure remains, and as you would expect is Grade I listed. This is photograph is the main entrance door and (although heavily restored) gives a good idea of the magnificence within.

King's Manor Door
King’s Manor, York, Doorway
York, April 2016
Click the image for a larger view

There is some more about King’s Manor on the University of York website.

amusements, arts

Oddity of the Week: Not Taxidermy

Should you be of a mind, it is quite easy to buy examples of taxidermy: just go to a few local auctions and you’ll soon find all manner of creatures in glass cases.
But you can now go one better: Upholstered Faux Taxidermy Heads and Animals.

head

American artist Kelly Rene Jelinek fabricates life-sized replicas of taxidermied animal heads using fragments of upholstery fabric. The results are surprisingly modern sculptural objects that mimic traditional anatomical mounts.
See more on Colossal.

amusements, arts, ramblings

RoboLit

There was a brilliant piece in last Monday’s Guardian in which Stephen Moss asks what robots might learn from our literature. I give you a sample:
[A] new generation of robots combining artificial intelligence with great physical power may not … wipe us out after all. We can be friends, united in a common appreciation of Middlemarch. But a less sunny outlook is suggested by … the Shepton Mallet School of Advanced Hermeneutics [who] fed the entire world’s literature into a robot (called HOMER16) fitted with a high-powered computer; preliminary results are worrying.
Here are some extracts from the HOMER16’s initial readings.
Hamlet: Dithering prince with unhinged girlfriend demonstrates how dangerous it is not to act decisively. Interminable and convoluted plot obstructs the central message that your enemies should be dispatched quickly, brutally and mercilessly. Cannot compute the meaning of the strange “To be or not to be” speech. In what sense is that the question?
A Clockwork Orange: Frightening study that shows the extent to which a love of classical music can damage the human brain. The works of Beethoven seem to be especially dangerous. Fail to understand why this material is still played, even on radio stations that very few people listen to.
The New Testament: Ludicrous set of stories in which the sick are miraculously healed, fishes and loaves materialise from nowhere, and a young man comes back to life after being executed. The telling by four narrators is interestingly postmodern, but the plot is too ludicrous to hold the attention. Could not compute the long introduction called The Old Testament, which seemed very dull and repetitious.
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu: A book in need of an editor about a protagonist in need of a psychiatrist. Good on the dangerous consequences of eating cake.
[With thanks to Julian Miller.]

amusements, arts

Oddity of the Week: Edo Farting

This week we return to juvenile humour [which may be NSFW].
There’s a curious scroll of images from Edo period Japan (1603-1868) of he-gassen, or a “farting competition”. The images show men and women happily expelling their gasses at cats, horses and even at each other. Apparently no one is safe!


According to the website Naruhodo “similar drawings were used to ridicule westerners towards the end of the Edo period, with images depicting the westerners blown away by Japanese farts”.
There is more over at Dangerous Minds, and you can find images of the whole scroll at the Waseda University Library.

amusements, arts

Oddity of the Week: Pencils

A train on tracks, carved delicately out of graphite pencil lead, emerges from inside a carpenter’s pencil …


More details at Colossal and Laughing Squid.
Yes, there are other proponents of this art, see for instance Dalton Ghetti and Cerkahegyzo.
As someone who can’t even sharpen a pencil properly by hand (just one of the many things which made my woodwork master tear his hair out), I find these absolutely incredible.