Aaah. That last one was posted by Judd, my excellent PA, who has been grappling with the site as well. What she says is right - a talk by Sara Simblet who worked with me for TV reconstructing the technique of the Leonardo portrait on vellum. She spoke about her new version of John Evelyn's Silva (1664) on England's woodland trees. What she is doing is extraordinary in her quest for artistic and functional perfection.
I've found at the moment that if I remain signed in I can post blogs. But I not counting on it...
Sunday, 8 July 2012
Saturday, 7 July 2012
The New Sylva
Aaahh... What a great talk in the tiny village hall in a little West Oxfordshire village last night.
Sunday, 1 July 2012
banks and bonking
Still struggling to get into my own blog... On signing in I keep being told that I don't have a blog. I have to re-set everything each time, sometimes with success, sometimes without.
More bankers bonking to the pop of Bollinger corks. The focus is on bankers, but the all big corporations do similar things. Through the major national boards on which I have served, and my contacts with top 100 companies who sponsor exhibitions I have seen at least a glimpse of the ethos that now permeates huge firms. I have also seen the incestuous nature of remuneration committees, whose members are for the most part determining the comparators for their own levels of remuneration.
The culture is of macho management (perpetuated by boards whose members belong to the same cadre) that sets up the climate for smart-ass manipulators of mechanisms whose only aim is to exploit the financial system, regardless of whether this screws the clients whose interests they are supposed to be serving.
The massive rewards are justified on the grounds that we have to pay for the best at an international level. We can see what the "best" have done. I would be happy to see the best defined in terms of probity, public service, responsibility and competence. Surely we could find people to do this for £1 million a year. Does someone who is paid £2 million work 2X as hard and with 2X the dedication as someone paid £1 million? And so on up the scale. Let other countries pay for the macho manipulators if they want to.
As I have said previously, the nature of what is called the "market" is that it serves to facilitate businesses charge the maximum they can get away with. Since they are all doing this, the predominant impetus is towards ever higher prices for customers, not reduced prices through competition. Competition acts only as an intermittent and partial restraint. At the level of huge corporations the only serious competition is to become big enough to ingest or crush other companies. Since Google and Facebook do not look like traditional companies we should not think they are any different.
But there are no viable political parties that are even thinking about such things.
More bankers bonking to the pop of Bollinger corks. The focus is on bankers, but the all big corporations do similar things. Through the major national boards on which I have served, and my contacts with top 100 companies who sponsor exhibitions I have seen at least a glimpse of the ethos that now permeates huge firms. I have also seen the incestuous nature of remuneration committees, whose members are for the most part determining the comparators for their own levels of remuneration.
The culture is of macho management (perpetuated by boards whose members belong to the same cadre) that sets up the climate for smart-ass manipulators of mechanisms whose only aim is to exploit the financial system, regardless of whether this screws the clients whose interests they are supposed to be serving.
The massive rewards are justified on the grounds that we have to pay for the best at an international level. We can see what the "best" have done. I would be happy to see the best defined in terms of probity, public service, responsibility and competence. Surely we could find people to do this for £1 million a year. Does someone who is paid £2 million work 2X as hard and with 2X the dedication as someone paid £1 million? And so on up the scale. Let other countries pay for the macho manipulators if they want to.
As I have said previously, the nature of what is called the "market" is that it serves to facilitate businesses charge the maximum they can get away with. Since they are all doing this, the predominant impetus is towards ever higher prices for customers, not reduced prices through competition. Competition acts only as an intermittent and partial restraint. At the level of huge corporations the only serious competition is to become big enough to ingest or crush other companies. Since Google and Facebook do not look like traditional companies we should not think they are any different.
But there are no viable political parties that are even thinking about such things.
Friday, 29 June 2012
blog and Facebook
A hiatus. I have experienced big and continuing problems with logging in to my own blog. I'm not confident that it is sorted out for good. I might have to go elsewhere - if it's worth continuing at all. I have reservations about the self-indulgence of the exercise.
I am withdrawing from Facebook. Their decision to reset everyone's default email address to @Facebook is unethical. They did not ask. They did not inform. No doubt the some obscure clause in the terms and conditions let's them do this. It's clearly done for their own self interest.
The pattern is familiar. A company starts with enthusiasm and even idealism. In this phase it is necessarily customer-orientated. Over a certain critical size - probably a combination of staff size with attendant management structures and sheer financial mass - stock corporate behaviour kicks in. The collective interest of the corporation, as defined by one or a few dictatorial managers and powerful investors, takes over as the end in view. This kind of corporate arrogance is all of a piece with Facebook's lying at the time of the stock market flotation. The one consolation is that in this world of fast moving technological fads, the existing dinosaurs, with their ponderous lack of agility, will be wiped out by the next impact of a meteorite strike from a nerd in a bedroom. Where is My Space? Ingested by NewsCorp (ugh!) and then sold on. I give Facebook 12 years, Google 20. Maybe that's too long. I have been to Google's headquarters and seen the bureaucratic ossification close up. It is not a pretty sight, though they try to pretend it's not happening with open-knecked shorts, knackered jeans and California-speak.
I am withdrawing from Facebook. Their decision to reset everyone's default email address to @Facebook is unethical. They did not ask. They did not inform. No doubt the some obscure clause in the terms and conditions let's them do this. It's clearly done for their own self interest.
The pattern is familiar. A company starts with enthusiasm and even idealism. In this phase it is necessarily customer-orientated. Over a certain critical size - probably a combination of staff size with attendant management structures and sheer financial mass - stock corporate behaviour kicks in. The collective interest of the corporation, as defined by one or a few dictatorial managers and powerful investors, takes over as the end in view. This kind of corporate arrogance is all of a piece with Facebook's lying at the time of the stock market flotation. The one consolation is that in this world of fast moving technological fads, the existing dinosaurs, with their ponderous lack of agility, will be wiped out by the next impact of a meteorite strike from a nerd in a bedroom. Where is My Space? Ingested by NewsCorp (ugh!) and then sold on. I give Facebook 12 years, Google 20. Maybe that's too long. I have been to Google's headquarters and seen the bureaucratic ossification close up. It is not a pretty sight, though they try to pretend it's not happening with open-knecked shorts, knackered jeans and California-speak.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
The Prado Mona Lisa
The amount of press attention given to the copy of the Mona Lisa in the Prado is astonishing.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Leonardo’s+lover+probably+painted+the+Prado’s+Mona+Lisa/26047
etc. etc.
Would the story have even have made the papers if it had been about Raphael? The idea that a copy should be produced in workshop is hardly a surprise. In our book on the Madonna and the Yarnwinder, Thereza Wells and I showed that the two prime versions developed alongside each other, in this instance with Leonardo's participation in both. The only surprise is that a copy should be made of an intimate, domestic portrait of a bourgeois sitter. Perhaps Francesco del Giocondo wanted two versions. But it is odd. The implications of the landscape for the dating of the Mona Lisa - the background in the copy is aligned with drawings dateable to after 1510 - provides useful confirmation that the painting took a long time, but is not surprising. Was it ever completely finished? Were any of his paintings completely finished? The London Virgin of the Rocks, which was supplied for the frame in S. Francesco in Milan, is not finished. Only the Louvre seemed to think that the ML was completed before Leonardo left Florence in 1507.
Perhaps I shouldn't complain. It all helps sustain interest and helps sell (my) books.
By the way, we have absolutely no reliable evidence about what Salai looked like - and almost no firm evidence of how he painted. The pretty boy with ringlets, often identified as Salai, was a favourite facial type for Leonardo well before Salai came on to the scene.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Leonardo’s+lover+probably+painted+the+Prado’s+Mona+Lisa/26047
etc. etc.
Would the story have even have made the papers if it had been about Raphael? The idea that a copy should be produced in workshop is hardly a surprise. In our book on the Madonna and the Yarnwinder, Thereza Wells and I showed that the two prime versions developed alongside each other, in this instance with Leonardo's participation in both. The only surprise is that a copy should be made of an intimate, domestic portrait of a bourgeois sitter. Perhaps Francesco del Giocondo wanted two versions. But it is odd. The implications of the landscape for the dating of the Mona Lisa - the background in the copy is aligned with drawings dateable to after 1510 - provides useful confirmation that the painting took a long time, but is not surprising. Was it ever completely finished? Were any of his paintings completely finished? The London Virgin of the Rocks, which was supplied for the frame in S. Francesco in Milan, is not finished. Only the Louvre seemed to think that the ML was completed before Leonardo left Florence in 1507.
Perhaps I shouldn't complain. It all helps sustain interest and helps sell (my) books.
By the way, we have absolutely no reliable evidence about what Salai looked like - and almost no firm evidence of how he painted. The pretty boy with ringlets, often identified as Salai, was a favourite facial type for Leonardo well before Salai came on to the scene.
guns and the Countyside Allaince
The new Executive Chairman of the Countryside Alliance, Sir Barney White-Spunner (could Hardy have invented a better name?) is urging children to take up shooting to identify with the country. Sir Barney, please note:
1) guns were designed for killing at that is still their primary function. Even children know that;
2) putting a gun in kids' hands is to identify them personally with the images of violence that permeate our media;
3) guns should not be domesticated in town our country. They should be available and used only excpetionally;
4) using them for "sport" is predicated upon the user gaining pleasure from the death and suffering of a living creature. Such pleasure is degrading;
5) if shooting is necessary in the countryside for certain specific reasons, it should be considered as a necessary evil rather than a source of delight.
There is of course abundant natural slaughter in nature within the complex interactions and balances between hunters and preys. This does not justify our adding to it for motives that gratuitous, unnecessary and unethical.
1) guns were designed for killing at that is still their primary function. Even children know that;
2) putting a gun in kids' hands is to identify them personally with the images of violence that permeate our media;
3) guns should not be domesticated in town our country. They should be available and used only excpetionally;
4) using them for "sport" is predicated upon the user gaining pleasure from the death and suffering of a living creature. Such pleasure is degrading;
5) if shooting is necessary in the countryside for certain specific reasons, it should be considered as a necessary evil rather than a source of delight.
There is of course abundant natural slaughter in nature within the complex interactions and balances between hunters and preys. This does not justify our adding to it for motives that gratuitous, unnecessary and unethical.
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Leonardo Battle
Much kerfuffling about the announcement from Florence about the discovery of pigments on a layer of wall underneath Vasari's Battle of Marciano fresco. At one point my 2 'phones at home and my mobile were ringing simultaneously with press queries. The questions continue to come, including one set from Chile. The search is important. It has been underway, on and off, since the late 1970s. It needs to be resolved one way or the other. Maurizio Seracini, who is leading the investigation, has the skills to pursue it. If the unfinished Battle of Anghiari - the central knot of fighting horsemen - is discovered in legible condition, it will be one of the greatest art finds of any era - much like the unearthing of Laocoon. The timing and handling of the announcement is, however, unfortunate, and is clearly driven by political, media and, I guess, financial imperatives. The mayor is pressed by critics, and Maurizio presumably needs funding to be sustained. The timing is also related to screening of the National Geographic TV programme on the search. The whole project over the years has been dogged by premature ejaculations via the press. This, as I know from the story of the portrait in vellum, is precisely how not to secure scholarly assent. I have been fed bits of somewhat garbled information by the media.
It is said that there is "proof" that Leonardo's lost Battle has been discovered. My reactions are:
1) the published data about Vasari having built a wall specifically to protect Leonardo's painting is inconclusive;
2) I have seen no evidence that the layers behind Vasari's fresco feature a continuous, flat, primed and painted surface;
3) the "manganese" pigment that has been identified in the core sample taken by the small bores is said to match that in the Mona Lisa. Manganese is a standard component in umber or burnt umber, and cannot be taken specifically to signal Leonardo;
4) the "red lacquer" in the press reports is presumably a red lake pigment - based on an organic dye. The best red lakes were expensive but were used in tempera and oil painting. They could also be used on walls with a binder;
5) it is claimed that there was no other painting in the Council Hall from its construction in 1494 until Vasari's intervention. The idea that the hugely important Council Hall would have been left with bare plaster walls during the almost 20 years of the Republic is untenable. The precise location of Leonardo's horsemen is not certain, and the pigments could well be traces of other decorations in the hall, such as heraldic shields;
6) if Vasari did wall up Leonardo's painting, what might remain? The long-term adhesion of oil paint on a wall in such circumstances is hugely questionable. We might well have only a micro-jigsaw puzzle of fragments fallen off the surface.
Let's wait until something really definite is found, and let's get the technical material in the public domain at the same time as the press stories. This is what we attempted to do with the new evidence about the origins of the vellum portrait in the Sforziad in Warsaw. The internet facilitates such simultaneous publishing. It would be wonderful to recover Leonardo's painting, but we are a long way from that. Let's hold our horses.
It is said that there is "proof" that Leonardo's lost Battle has been discovered. My reactions are:
1) the published data about Vasari having built a wall specifically to protect Leonardo's painting is inconclusive;
2) I have seen no evidence that the layers behind Vasari's fresco feature a continuous, flat, primed and painted surface;
3) the "manganese" pigment that has been identified in the core sample taken by the small bores is said to match that in the Mona Lisa. Manganese is a standard component in umber or burnt umber, and cannot be taken specifically to signal Leonardo;
4) the "red lacquer" in the press reports is presumably a red lake pigment - based on an organic dye. The best red lakes were expensive but were used in tempera and oil painting. They could also be used on walls with a binder;
5) it is claimed that there was no other painting in the Council Hall from its construction in 1494 until Vasari's intervention. The idea that the hugely important Council Hall would have been left with bare plaster walls during the almost 20 years of the Republic is untenable. The precise location of Leonardo's horsemen is not certain, and the pigments could well be traces of other decorations in the hall, such as heraldic shields;
6) if Vasari did wall up Leonardo's painting, what might remain? The long-term adhesion of oil paint on a wall in such circumstances is hugely questionable. We might well have only a micro-jigsaw puzzle of fragments fallen off the surface.
Let's wait until something really definite is found, and let's get the technical material in the public domain at the same time as the press stories. This is what we attempted to do with the new evidence about the origins of the vellum portrait in the Sforziad in Warsaw. The internet facilitates such simultaneous publishing. It would be wonderful to recover Leonardo's painting, but we are a long way from that. Let's hold our horses.
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