i'd probably do the same, Roger, but doesnt that speak more to our
desacralized way of being, even before such art, than to what his
original viewers might have derived from the experience? i cant get in
to what they felt, i cant begin to comprehend it, so i too would
probably 'see' these works the way you do. and for me, whatever i might
mean by 'the sacred' would be found in those marks, how they seem to
express the actual 'work' of making the art what it is.
i certainly have great problems with Milton, but take your point; for
me, as a modernist reader, a work that feel much more 'transcendent' is
Ronald Johnson's great 'reading through' of the first 4 books of
Paradise Lost, Radi Os. An amazing work.
Doug
On 19-Mar-06, at 9:47 AM, Roger Day wrote:
> spent this afternoon in the Fitzwilliam
> (http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/) admiring the drawings of Federico
> Barocci in an exposition called 'A Touch of the Divine'. In contrast
> to the "perfection" and high camp, of his paintings, the sketches,
> with their imperfections, reduced colour and detail, seem starker,
> simpler, more in line with modern taste. Barocci was a contemporary of
> Raphael, and his subjects religious.
>
> As I walked around the exhibition trying to work out the line and
> getting irritated at the numbering scheme, the religious iconography
> became an occasional source of amusement. The hovering figures looked
> campy sci-fi or a bad drug trip. In one painting, a figure seems to be
> pointing at hoverers and saying to the viewer:"look, this is what you
> get when you have cheese for supper!" Instead I was drawn to the marks
> and how interesting they are, trying to decipher their construction,
> the contours, the minimalist representation, the shading, the use of
> materials, coloured backgrounds etc.
>
> Milton just seems more of the same: the D&D sci-fi of the action and
> plot underwhelms me; the technique, now that's interesting.
>
> For David Jones, I think Drew Milne says that Jones's interest in rc
> was rc as an ideology.
>
> Roger
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
What’s received’s given out
in smaller measure. The speaker as hearer
comprehends what he can’t
say, a music of what sounds him.
Wayne Clifford
|