Update

Right, so it's been awhile since i've updated...busy with papers and such.

First, some haikus that i wrote awhile ago:

(1)

My television
Likes to play tricks on me when
It's humid outside.

(2)

Two lilting lillies
By the mossy brook's bank are
Whispering lovers.

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So, i went to the Chelsea football match last Wednesday, so great to see some football/soccer again! Really made me want to buy a ball here and kick it around in Regents Park or Hyde or something. Chelsea stomped Everton, 4-1, with Everton's only goal coming on a fluke handball by Chelsea in their penalty box. And, we had 4th row seats! How about that? ..yeh, you like it. There was one header by Crispo that was especially nice.

My coffee addiction is picking back up...it's been over 5 weeks in London, and at first i stuck to tea and only tea, since we don't have a coffee pot in the flat, and everything is blindingly expensive here, even a cup of joe. Plus, i've really been enjoying my tea. But, i knew i couldn't hold out long. Had two cups today, one being an uber-powerful double shot mocha. woh! i was talking a lot of gibberish this afternoon. alone, to myself, mostly.

Saw the Tom Hunter exhibition at the National Gallery last wednesday, and was very impressed. The artist, Hunter (who lives in Hackney, in East London...partly an artists' community, but even moreso a slummy run-down place, but certainly not lacking in aesthetic character), uses scenes of the Old Masters or other notable oil painters in the past, like Vermeer, Millais, Velazquez, and di Cosimo... Scenes that encompass some universal aspect of the human experience. So, using these as a model or loose frame at least, and often inspired by the Hackney tabloid-news headlines about death, rape, etc., he adapts the original scenes into modern settings with modern perspectives on the original masterpieces. Really fascinating. He is the artist-in-residence now at the National Gallery for 2006, and a fine choice i think. The exhibition is entitled, "Living in Hell and Other Stories."

For example, he takes Millais's painting "The Vale of Rest," which is actually housed in the Tate Gallery not but a few miles from the National Gallery. Anyway, so this painting shows two nuns, in a graveyard, one digging a fresh grave, the other holding her rosary and looking directly at the viewer. The figures are unknown in identity, so this mood of mortality is the most prevalent aspect of the work. A pastoral landscpae with bell-tower is in the background.

MILLAIS - "The Vale of Rest" .....

Now, Hunter takes this scene and places two female "squatters," (migrants, basically) dressed in cheap plain clothing, set against a similar beautiful glow of a sunset sky. But, they are in an abandoned industrial lot in Hackney, with a burnt-out motor bike and chain-link fence in view. They sit about a fire, one looking directly at the viewer (like Millais) and the other feeding the fire, similar to the other nun digging the grave. I mean, already so many themes could be drawn from this comparison. Also, significantly, Hunter keeps the same title, "The Vale of Rest." I'm not going to break down too much here of what i think (it is only a blog, children, take your seats), but what a haunting photograph Hunter has created! And the blonde dreadlocked woman's stare...certainly draws painful pity, at the very least. Hunter mentioned how he loves landscapes where man has left the area after ruining a plot, and then Nature slowly begins to reclaim her spirit. That is the case here, where weeds and shrubbery are growing up through the cracks of the asphault and rusted piles. The women are not burning sticks or wood from actual trees; rather, they are burning old lumber, treated and shaped by men....almost as if they are helping Nature reclaim her area, by eliminating that which man has distorted, the lumber. BUT, it is a fire, whose real purpose is to keep these women warm. THAT is what is important to them...they need light and warmth for the night - two vulnerable females, wandering and destitute. The red lighter on the ground makes me wonder if it was only made to light the fire...maybe they smoke cigarettes?...robbing them of what little money they have anyway. Ahhh, so IS this their vale of rest ? Is it their graveyard ? Digging their own graves? Hunter raises so many intricate issues here. And this is one of maybe 25-30 photographs (which by the way, are blown up to HUGE size) in the exhibition.

HUNTER - "The Vale of Rest" ...

Millais and the Pre-Raphaelites were so obsessed with "truth to nature"...nature as an untouchable force. Hunter reverses this in a lot of the photographs, making nature a breathing and struggling force, Nature's struggle as almost humanized, if you will. A lot of his other stuff deals with sexuality, and defining the boundary between pornography and art. He jeopardizes a lot of our sentiments by sordidly manipulating treasured icons of human history.

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This week has flown by, with two papers due, one for English class and one in architectural history. Long weekend ahead, so many possibilities ...still marinating on my plans.