out of the train window

On the train to Manchester, passing Banbury, Leamington...
A million miracles of life in the sweep of an eye. Tender green shoots of early spring grass, urgent cellular buds on the  dry twigs of mighty oaks and sycamores. Fitted into the cycle of life, death, decay, new lives, over the millennia, ravaged by gradual and savage change in ages past but always gravitating towards critical states of balance. The old farms the same. Nature transformed into cropped fields and mapped hedges, but they live in intimate collaboration with each new state of balance to preserve the viability of the harvests.
Along the flat, dark tarmac of the sharp roads scuttle our enamelled armadillos. They consume, consume, excrete, excrete, converting noxious substance into noxious substance. They know no cycle, no renewal. They are metaphors for what WE are doing to the earth.
I drive fast cars. Not good.

Shell oil spill

On the news it was announced that Shell had settled private damage claims for the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The news said it was "a" leak not "the" leak.  How long does it take for a news item to become about "a" rather than "the"? Not long it seems.

Titian and the National Galleries

So the two National Galleries (Scotland and England) have jointly purchased the second of the great Diana paintings by Titian, having bought the Action painting a few years ago.  This seems about the best that can be done in the circumstances. But the circumstances are not good. Let me give some background.
When I was a trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland in the 1980s, the Sutherland Trustees decided they needed to raise money and approached Sotheby's (not the National Galleries, where the Sutherland paintings had been held for many years). Sotheby's said they thought they "should test the market with a Titian". When the Nat Gall got word of this they contacted the Sutherland estate, and opened negotiations to secure a good deal with the available tax concessions. "We" secured a Tintoretto (which cleaned up a treat), a somewhat damaged Lotto and a Steen and the estate got the sum it wanted.  Sotheby's of course acted as agents for the sale to the nation and advertised their public-spirited role.
There 3 bad circumstances at work here:
1) the auctioneers have a prime interest in getting a work into their salerooms not into public collections. They should be disqualified from acting as agents for the sale to the nation because they have no interest in giving their clients the best advice;
2) the National Galleries have held the paintings for many years, conserving them, protecting them, researching them, facilitating public access. They would be within their rights billing the Sutherland trustees for the services they have rendered, accepting of course that the Galleries have benefitted from their presence;
3) the Sutherland Trustees seem to operate a bottomless pit. How long before the auctioneers want to "test the Market" with the Raphael?

Marius Neset

I went with a friend to the Spin Jazz Club in Oxford. The obligatory semi-slum, dark paint peeling off distressed walls, banks of unused spots amongst which a brass chandelier hangs impotently, and an overworked bar selling concoctions whose names promise paralysis. A surprisingly wide age range - more so that in the classical concerts.
The star of the show, the 25-year old Dane, Marius Neset, was simply astonishing. He moves like a rag doll high on speed, and plays with a passionate virtuosity, drawing sounds from the saxophone that ranged from singing voices to growling animals, from deep echoes to birds tweeting.  Somehow, he played  duets with himself in a kind of counterpoint. The quartet kept up with him!
I felt as I did when I heard Andreas Scholl, the German counter-tenor, sing for the first time.  Walking on like a gawky schoolboy, he promised little. But the first notes were those of an angel.
It takes only a few moments to know that someone special has arrived.

Greece

I have 2 former students working (or in one case being thrown out of work) and one art historian friend in Greece. The situation is dire, and we should not feel superior for not being part of it - at this stage.  It seems bizarre the the old monetarist programme of austerity should be automatically applied to an economy that has no capacity to cope with it. A starving patient is being put on a diet to loose weight. This is a symptom of the bankruptcy of thinking in the worlds of government and finance. Where are the creative alternative analyses that do not predicate growth on a sinking raft of debt?

the latest fantasy

A reply to M Domoretsky .

This search for mystic geometry is totally misguided, as, in general, is the search for "codes". None of the huge body of evidence about the design of Renaissance paintings (Leonardo's included) provides the slightest encouragement for the imposing of detailed surface geometry (using thick lines on small reproductions) on paintings in this way. The most there may be is an adherence to certain canons of bodily proportion, but none of his drawings for specific works of art contain even this. Renaissance paintings contain allegories and symbolism, but there are no "codes".  The nature of a code is that it's meaning is as unlike surface appearance as possible. Allegory and symbolism convey deeper meanings that are consistent with the immediate content of the image.
"Da Vinci" is not his name - that's an ugly Americanism. It's like calling me "from Woodstock". It was not a surname.

Radio 3 etc

I almost always work with the radio on. The normal fare is Radio 3 and the sports commentaries in Radio 5.
For some reason and on some days in the afternoon Radio 3 goes religious with choral evensong. The staple diet seems to be the tuneless dirges that are exemplary of the English choral tradition. Today's effort came from Worksop College, which I see from the internet is a private school. It is celebrating its centenary. The service included some of the worst music immaginable on radio 3. The choir, imported from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, sung Bach's Komm Jesu in an incredibly flaccid manner, when it should be a fervent anticipation of Christ's arrival on earth and release from earthly toil. The organ playing was soupy throughout, climaxing in an unspeakably meandering and purposeless prelude and fugue. I could not believe that it was by a professional composer. It tuned out to be by Vaughan Williams, which explained all.
Then Sean Rafferty and "In Tune". I find him highly informative and intermittently annoying (well, more than intermittently). He seems to be a prime example of how people with Irish accents are allowed to get away with gratingly contrived charm on the radio. Somebody (I missed the announcement because my central heating interferes with the signal when it is switching) played the first movement of a Brandenburg at a breathlessly fast pace as if the Women's Guild were taking part in a speed knitting contest. The slow movement then struggled slowly from one seizure to the next.
The redeeming features of this afternoon were the saxophonist and composer Andy Shepherd and Chapelle du Roi. Andy Shepherd played solo with wonderful speaking intensity, including a quite magical duet with a recorded blackbird. Hello rather than bye-bye blackbird.