-
Video: Bob Dylan, When The Deal Goes Down
My favourite track from the 2006 Dylan album, Modern Times, is the song When The Deal Goes Down. The video casts a different angle on the song, and features current it-girl Scarlett Johansson in a nostalgia-drenched American dreamscape. Not too sure what the relevance to the song is, but it’s worth a look if you…
-
Was William Blake Mad?
GK Chesterton put it like this: And now, after a due pause, someone will ask and we must answer a popular question which, like many popular questions, is really a somewhat deep and subtle one. To put the matter quite simply, as the popular instinct would put it, ‘Was William Blake mad?’ Alexander Gilchrist, Blake’s…
-
William Blake, The Ghost of a Flea
I was fascinated (and entertained) by this discussion of a picture of William Blake’s in Chesterton’s short biography of Blake. It’s not only a highly entertaining read, and a valuable insight into the picture under discussion, but I think it reveals a lot about the artist William Blake, both as painter and poet. As it’s…
-
Fine Art on YouTube
Terry Teachout, the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal, has effectively created a cultural video-on-demand site from material uploaded on YouTube. Read his article about it at WhoseTube? ArtsTube – WSJ.com. Quote: YouTube, like the other new Web-based media, is a common carrier, a means to whatever ends its millions of users choose, be…
-
Jack B. Yeats, O’Connell Bridge
My contribution to the nightcap at our first session was an oil painting by Jack B. Yeats (brother to WB Yeats), called ‘O’Connell Bridge’ (1927). According to the book I was referencing, this is currently in the collection at the Pyms Gallery in London: Jack B. Yeats, O’Connell Bridge, 1927 I discovered the work of…
-
Edward Calvert, The Chamber Idyll
KC’s ‘nightcap’ during the first Culture Club meeting was Edward Calvert’s ‘The Chamber Idyll’. Here is a reproduction of the engraving from the Tate site: Edward Calvert, The Chamber Idyll, 1831 The Tate says: ‘”The Chamber Idyll” is a truly original image, and is usually regarded as Calvert’s masterpiece. It is a sensuous vision of…