One-liners

I love one-liner jokes so I've collected a few favourites together to help lighten your mood!
From Tim Vine:

• I phoned the local gym and I asked if they could teach me how to do the splits. He said, "How flexible are you?" I said, "I can't make Tuesdays."
• So I went to buy a watch, and the man in the shop said "Analogue." I said "No, just a watch." 
• I went into a shop and I said, "Can someone sell me a kettle." The bloke said "Kenwood?" I said, "Where is he?" 
• So I went to the record shop and I said "What have you got by The Doors?" He said: "A bucket of sand and a fire blanket!" 
• I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what - never again.

From Milton Jones:

• Militant feminists: I take my hat off to them. They don’t like that.
• I was mugged by a man on crutches, wearing camouflage. Ha ha, I thought, you can hide but you can’t run.
• My wife... its difficult to say what she does... she sells seashells on the seashore.
• My grandfather invented the cold air balloon... But it never really took off.
• Hopefully I’ve got a book coming out soon. Shouldn’t have eaten it, really.

From Tommy Cooper:

• I knocked on the door at this Bed and Breakfast and a lady stuck her head out of the window and said: 'What do you want', I said, 'I want to stay here'. She said, 'Well stay there' and shut the window. 
• D'you know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said "Parking Fine." So that was nice.
• "Doctor, I can't pronounce my F's, T's or H's".  "Well, you can't say fairer than that."
• So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me “Can you give me a lift?” I said “Sure, you look great, the world’s your oyster, go for it.’
• I asked the waiter: “How long will my spaghetti be?” He said: “I don’t know. We never measure it."

From Stewart Francis:

• My wife and I decided we don’t want children; if someone wants them, we’ll drop them off tomorrow.
• My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance; we’ll see about that.
• So I phoned up the spiritual leader of Tibet, he sent me a large goat with a long neck, turns out I phoned dial-a-lama.
• I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together; it was riveting.
• You're looking at a very proud Canadian who is very proud of the educational system in Canadia…

And a final thought: It was hard to believe that my dad was a building site thief, but when I got home all the signs were there.

Parliament Square, London

View across Parliament Square with Westminster Abbey on the right.

Watercolour by Pete Scully, petescully.com

Tower Bridge and The Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben are the two most iconic images of London. Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the building. It has a crack which has been there since it was cast and gives it the distinctive sound which is heard all over the world with the BBC time signal. The UK Houses of Parliament are still sometimes referred to as The Palace of Westminster because since the early eleventh century various royal palaces have stood on the site.  
William I had a castle there after the eleventh century Norman invasion.
Westminster Abbey: In the early eighth century a Saxon Church dedicated to St Peter was constructed on the site. The church became known as the West Minster ('west monastery'), while St Paul's, a few miles to the east was known as the East Minster ('east monastery').

Winston Churchill's Statue in Parliament Square

The modern square was laid out in 1868 by Sir Charles Barry and is famous as the site of London’s first traffic lights.  It is home to 11 statues of British, Commonwealth, and foreign statesmen. In anti-clockwise order starting with Churchill: This 12-foot bronze by Ivor Roberts-Jones shows him wearing a Navy overcoat. HIs 88-year-old widow Lady Clementine unveiled it in 1973, with the help of the Queen. Churchill chose the location himself in 1950. A mild electric current stops pigeons perching and snow forming on Churchill’s bald head!  

Jan Smuts in Parliament Square

Jan Smuts also has a statute, by Jacob Epstein, in the square. Smuts was the South African leader who fought the British in the Boer War but he was on Britain's side as a staunch ally in both World wars and is the only person whose signature is on the German surrender documents at the end of both wars. The other statues are of various British and foreign statesmen; Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are all represented.
However, my favourite statues are both just off the square in Victoria Tower Gardens. Firstly is the suffragette, Emeline Pankhurst, the only female in sight!

Emeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens

Her statue was erected in 1930 just two years after her death, which is very quick by any standards. Her right hand seems to be indicated the way to the Parliament building at her side.

1908 cast of Rodin's Burghers of Calais

The second statue is a cast of Rodin's Burghers of Calais. This one was cast in 1908. The French Government strictly limits the number of casts that can be made of any of Rodin works. This one is the third. The maximum allowed would be 12.

View across the square toward the Houses of Parliament,aka The Palace of Westminster.
You can just see Churchill in front of the red bus.

And on another side of the square is Westminster Abbey......

but that's a story for another time!

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I'm listening to Amoureuse by Kiki Dee. This version, on You Tube, has the beautiful lyrics displayed ("When I am far away, I feel the rainfall on another planet"). Helen Reddy's song Emotion is the same tune with different lyrics. That's because they are both new English lyrics added to an original French song.

Painting of the Month (65) Sept 2016: Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley was born in London, England in 1931 and is still working at age 85. She was the darling of the London art scene in the 1960s and was largely responsible for the increased popularity of Op Art at that time.

'Fall', Bridget Riley, 1963

Op Art had its origins in the early twentieth century but it was not known by that term then. Freudian theory and Gestalt psychology were both influences but Riley’s main inspirations were the pointillist George Seurat and the abstract painter Jackson Pollack. She saw an exhibition of Jackson's work in London in 1958. The figure-ground concept describes the perception of the difference between foreground and background object figures. You might say it's about optical illusion. The illustration, below, can be seen as either two people face-to-face or a candlestick - leaving one's eye-brain co-ordination to make the decision.

So, Bridget Riley's Op Art depends on this process to draw the viewer in. If you stare at the top picture (click on it to enlarge), you should see some movement. In fact these works can make you feel a little giddy if seen in large scale in a gallery. Psychedelia was the order of the day and Riley used art instead of pills to reveal a new reality in vision.

Figure-Ground example
Two faces or a candlestick?

In the late sixties she started working with colour and her work certainly had a different appeal from then on. I have shown a selection of her work below and, whatever one thinks about modern art, especially Op Art, ('op' is short for optical of course),  She became interested in the visual and emotional response to colour.
I find much of her colour works have a wonderful calming influence and I could easily live with one on my wall.

A 1989 portrait of the artist. I think this a wonderful photo. (by Jane Brown).

I'm listening to the only version of the much-recorded song Mr Bojangles that I really enjoy. It's by the man who wrote it; Jerry Jeff Walker and here you can hear the version I prefer.

My Heroes (41): Jake Thackray

It's been a few years since my last post in this series so I am going write about and probably introduce you to Jake Thackray.

Jake Thackray 1938 -2002

John Philip 'Jake' Thackray was a true English eccentric who wrote and sang wryly comical and poignant songs. He was also a teacher, poet and journalist and his music is rather hard to pigeon-hole. He was the epitome of 'lugubrious' and can be compared to the French chansonnier singers like Jaques Brel and was a good friend of Georges Brassens.
Jarvis Cocker, Morrissey, Ralph McTell and Jasper Carrot were also influenced by his style. He accompanied his rich baritone voice with his nylon-stringed classical/jazz-style guitar playing. He is very English and may not have much appeal beyond these shores but he was a great talent who died too young, aged 64 in 2002.
He was a modest man who has been called 'The Noel Coward of the North' but he refused to accept that flattering comparison. I feel that he never quite achieved the acclaim he deserved.

My favourite of his songs are 'La-Di-Dah' - see above and Sister Josephine, below:

Painting of the Month (64) August 2016: Leutze

Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Leutze, 1851
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Domain, 

My American friends will have to excuse this Brit for writing about what is possibly the most famous of American paintings. Emanuel Leutze, 1816 – 1868, was a German-American ‘History Painter’; History painting was at the summit of the hierarchy of genres, meaning that it was considered the most important because, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, it required all of the skills that were needed for all other types of painting.  This painting was completed  in 1851, around the time that those hierarchies were starting to become less important.  In keeping with the genre, it is of a monumental size, measuring more than 12ft by 21ft., (3.78 by 6.47m). He started to paint the picture in 1849 but it was damaged by a fire in his studio in 1850. It was restored only to be destroyed in Berlin in 1942 by a bombing raid. He did, however, make at least two copies and many other artists have copied and pastiched this painting.

E G Leutze

I think it is a very beautiful picture which has been executed with great skill. There are various inaccuracies and ‘impossibilities’ of which it may seem petty of me to mention. However, it won’t stop me because they are all interesting points. Firstly, the man standing on Washington’s right (who is James Munroe, a future President), is holding the Stars and Stripes flag which did not exist as such until well after this depiction – on the dawning of 26^th December 1776. The Delaware is much narrower than depicted here at that crossing point and when it freezes over it tend to be in sheets, not chunks as depicted. The artist used images of the Rhine to create the river, where the ice does form chunks. Incidentally, Washington was leading a surprise attack on the Hessian troops based in Trenton, New Jersey, who were German mercenaries employed by the British; they formed fully 30% of British troops in the War of Independence!

The boats, shown carrying a selection of ‘types’, eg. a Scotsman, a Negro, a Frontiersman etc, are of the wrong kind with sides that are much too low. The light is all wrong, appearing to come from several different directions at once. Also, Washington, reasonably enough, is shown in an heroic pose but would not have been able to stand up like that. None of this matters much- it is a magnificent piece of work which creates real depth by the way in which the background boats are spread into the distance and one can almost reach out to touch the ice-chunks.
I'm listening to Carole King singing her own song, "I Wasn't Born to Follow" made famous by The Byrds but I love her version best!

Abbey Road Studios

The Abbey Road Studios and that crossing, St John's Wood, London

The Abbey road studios in north-west London are, of course, famous for being the place where the Beatles recorded nearly all of their singles and albums but it has an interesting story of it's own to tell.

Firstly a brief bit of historical background: In the year 1130 Kilburn Priory was established for a community of nuns and lasted until the Dissolution Of the Monasteries in 1537 by Henry VIII. The property at number 3 Abbey Road was originally a nine-bedroom Georgian private townhouse built in 1830 on the lane that lead to where the priory had once stood. There was never an abbey as such but the road was so-named after the religious community. The building is now an English Heritage Grade II Listed Building - for historical rather than architectural reasons. Incidentally, it might be of interest to British readers to know that the Abbey National, now part of Santander, was founded in Abbey Road in 1874 as The Abbey Road & St John's Wood Permanent Benefit Building Society.

In 1931 The Gramophone Company bought the building and Sir Edward Elgar then conducted the recording of some of his own music. They soon combined with The Columbia Gramophone Company to form EMI. Many famous recordings of classical and popular music were made there over the years by artists ranging from Pablo Casals and Paul Robeson to Pink Floyd. George Martin, worked at Abbey Road from the 1950s mainly producing comedy records for people like Peter Sellars and Spike Milligan. Brian Epstein had tried in vain to get the Beatles signed to a record label but George Martin was the only one who saw something in them. After their first recording session he asked the Beatles if there was anything that they did not like. George Harrison said "Yes, your tie for a start!" and a rapport and a mutual admiration was formed which propelled the recordings and the band into a sensational world-wide phenomenon. On August 8th, 1969, at 11.35am the Beatles walked onto the pedestrian street crossing outside of the studios for a ten-minute photo session for the cover of their new album, Abbey Road. 

Abbey Road, 1969

Now the crossing itself is also Grade II listed and is the most famous street-crossing the world. The studio and crossing has people from all over the world hanging around in awe all of the time. There is even a website where one can observe the scene, live on camera twenty four hours a day!    

See:  www.abbeyroad.com/crossing

(PS: OK, I just visited that camera and there is nobody around at 6:30 on a Sunday morning. So sue me!)

Finally an interesting footnote. The studios were actually named after the Beatles album, in 1970. Before that they were known as The EMI Studios!

Sir George Martin, 1926 - 2016
I'm listening to Revolver, my favourite Beatles Album

Painting of the Month (63), July 2016: Gustav Klimt

The Kiss, Gustav Klimt, 1907-8, Österreichische Galerie, Vienna

 In the opening decade of the twentieth century Klimt had been vilified for his work, Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence, which he had painted on the ceiling of the University of Vienna. It was derided as “pornographic” and “perverted excess” for it’s nude images. It was, of course, none of those things, especially by today’s standards. His reputation had been damaged and his career was in a downward spiral.

He painted The Kiss in 1907-08 and it was a huge success being sold before it was even finished for a fee much higher than the previous record for an Austrian painting. It is now, beyond any doubt, one of the most iconic and well-known pictures in the world. It’s a huge square painting measuring 1.8 metres, or 6 feet, along each side, although it is often truncated to a rectangle for marketing purposes.

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter born in 1862 in Vienna. Symbolism is the expression of an idea over a realistic description or depiction of the natural world.

Like many great works of art it reflects a collision of artistic styles. The prevailing style of the day was Art Nouveau, characterised by intricate linear designs and flowing curves based on natural forms but the simple form and bold patterns of their cloaks also shows influence of the organic forms of the earlier Arts & Crafts movement.

A few years before creating this beautiful work Klimt had seen the Byzantine mosaics in the San Vitale Church in Ravenna. He was inspired by the use of gold-leaf and the flatness of the paintings and lack of perspective which had the effect of making the gold seem to shimmer and stand-out. He achieved a similar effect by combining gold-leaf and oil paint. Other clear influences were the fin-de-siecle spirit of sensuality and decadence. Also, I think it’s clear that Japanese painting had an influence.

'Poem' by Donald Justice

When I first read this poem I did not fully comprehend what was going on but I knew that I really liked it. Justice was a very experimental poet but also wrote in a wide variety of forms from formal, traditional to blank verse. It is paradoxical in many ways; the first line (which is repeated as the last line) states that the poem is 'not addressed to you', when clearly it is.
How should we deal with this? What is the poet saying to the reader?

POEM by DONALD JUSTICE (1925-2004)

This poem is not addressed to you.

You may come into it briefly,

But no one will find you here, no one.

You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,

You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.

The poem will go on without you.

It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.

Once perhaps it was so sad, no one knows why.

It prefers to remember nothing.

Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.

Night is the sky over this poem.

It is too black for stars.

And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.

Listen, it comes without guitar,

Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.

And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.

You will forge the poem, but not before

It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.

It has been most beautiful in it’s erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!

Nor is one silence equal to another.

And it does not matter what you think.

This poem is not addressed to you.

The last lines of Shakespeare's Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day are:

    "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

     So long lives this and this gives life to thee".

Justice makes a similar point, that the poem will not change over time ('You will have changed before the poem will') but the reader will. Poets usually form a relationship between themselves and the poem but in this case the reader is also involved, despite what the poem says. 

I think he also says that the poem is not important (his poetry was often self-effacing): 'do not look for any illumination'.  If we had said to the poet "Ah gotcha! If the poem is not addressed to me, why am I mentioned?", he might have riposted something akin to the answer in Monty Python: "I might be arguing in my own time!".

It's ironic that the poem is profound while claiming not to be ('There is nothing in it to comfort you'). One cannot help being drawn into it and seeking meaning!

Listening to The Doors singing 'Touch me' (it's on the radio!)

Painting of the Month (62) June 2016: Cimabue

Cimabue: Fresco in the Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi c.1278

The picture depicts the Madonna and Child with four Angels and St Francis 

Sometimes in art, as in life in general, greatness is soon eclipsed by a still superior greatness. Cimabue (1240 - 1302) was the last great Byzantine painter but his pupil Giotto is generally regarded as the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance.  Today the name of Cenni di Pepi, known as Cimabue (pronounced as Cheema-boo-ay) is barely known while the genius of Giotto is rightly recognised. The characteristics of Byzantine painting were; an almost total concern with religious expression, mainly icons;  flatness and lack of perspective; often a severe almost abstract other-worldly style was used and background and highlights were of gold which had the ability to make a solitary figure appear to be floating somewhere between the wall and the viewer. The intention was to depict images of the divine that were raised above the mundane. Despite, or possibly because of these restrictions, the art managed to convey great beauty.

St Francis, detail

It can be seen from the detail, left, that Cimabue was beginning to get some individual expression into the faces he painted. Before his time there was no individuality shown in portraits. It's important to realise that new styles in art don't just cut in with the suddenness of a banjo chord; Cimabue was a genuine link between Byzantine and Renaissance art. Little is known about his life although a few details are given in Vasari's Lives of the Painters (1550).

I'm listening to a cast recording of the 'American Tribal Love-Rock Musical' Hair. The current track is 'What a Piece of Work is Man', lyrics by W.Shakespeare. Listen here.

The Symbolism of Mermaids

                           Rembrandt

Various myths and histories from around the world have featured mermaids and mermen for thousands of years. They were first recorded in about 1200 BC in Assyria and have featured in many ancient and modern stories since then. There were half-human sculptures of Babylonian fish-gods even hundreds of year prior to that. The ancient Assyrian goddess Atargatis was supposedly in love with a human shepherd-boy but accidentally killed him and, filled with remorse, she flung herself into the water hoping to become a fish. However, her great beauty prevented this happening but she became half goddess-half fish.

Famously, Christopher Columbus reported seeing mermaids on his transatlantic voyage; they are now thought to have been manatees which belong to group of animals known as Sirenia. 'Sirens' was the name given to the mythical creatures who lured sailors to their deaths with their songs which clearly has influenced later legends.

Frederic Leighton               

In 1614 Captain John Smith saw a mermaid from his ship she was 'swimming about with all possible grace'. In fact, Smith was so taken by this lovely vision that he began "to experience the first effects of love" (take that as you will) as he gazed at her before his sudden (and surely profoundly disappointing) realization that she was a fish from the waist down. This dilemma is reflected in a popular song titled "The Mermaid," 

"Cause her hair was green as seaweed

Her skin was blue and pale

I loved that girl with all my heart

I only liked the upper part

I did not like the tail'"

Mermaids represent many things symbolically in art: seduction, flirtation, beauty, divine feminine essence, the ocean, danger, provocation, treachery but possibly most of all unattainable love.

They have long been a popular subject in art and fiction. Hans Christian Anderson wrote The Little Mermaid in 1836 (there is a famous statue in Copenhagen harbour of the mermaid); the film Splash was a big hit in 1984. Although there is no actual real evidence of their existence, reports of sightings continue with 21st century reports from Zimbabwe and Israel. In 2009 Shlomo Cohen reported seeing a mermaid performing tricks off the coast of the town of Kiryat Yam. We have no knowledge of what kind of cigarettes Shlomo had been smoking......

         John Reinhard Weguelin

Greek mythology contains stories of the god Triton, the merman messenger of the sea, and several modern religions, including Hinduism and Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian belief), worship mermaid goddesses to this day.  Homer's Odyssey, written around 800 B.C., tells the story of Ulysses, whose ears were tortured by the sweet sounds of the sirens. In other legends, for example from Scotland and Wales, mermaids befriended and even married humans. 

By the 1800s, hoaxers churned out faked mermaids by the dozen to satisfy the public's interest in the creatures. The great showman P.T. Barnum was well aware of the public's interest in mermaids and, in the 1840s, displayed the "Feejee Mermaid," which became one of his most popular attractions. People paying 50 cents hoping to see a long-limbed, fish-tailed beauty comb her hair were surely disappointed; instead, they saw a grotesque fake corpse a few feet long. It had the torso, head and limbs of a monkey and the bottom part of a fish. To modern eyes, it was an obvious fake,but it fooled and intrigued many people at the time.

Legends of mermaids may be ancient, but they are still present in many forms; their images can be found in films, books, movies and even Starbucks.

Starbucks Trademark featuring a Mermaid with a bifurcated tail.

I'm listening to Nina Simone today. At this moment it's Don't You Pay Them No Mind. Listen Here. It's a great reminder of her artistry.

St James Park, London

St James is my favourite of London's Royal Parks. It's quite small at 57 acres and forms part of a green link from Westminster in the east to Kensington Gardens in the west. King Charles II wanted to be able to walk across London from Westminster without leaving Royal greenery. It is named after James the less, one of the twelve Apostles.

London is 40% green open space - the highest for a city of it's size and the sixth highest of any city. 

One of the features of St James is the exotic wildlife, with many species of water-fowl including a small group of pelicans first given by the Russian Ambassador in 1664.

"A remarkable bird is the pelican.

It's mouth can hold more than its belican."

Pelicans in St James Park waiting for lunch!

On Sunday we saw Ruddy Shellducks, Egyptian Geese, Pochard, Red-Crested Pochard, Mute Swan, a black Swan, Mandarin Ducks, Tufted Duck, Mallard, Smew, Coots, Grey Heron and many others which I couldn't identify. At dusk one can see Pipistrelle Bats.

Although the park is very pretty and associated with Royalty it has a dubious history particularly at night-time. John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester (born 1647) was considered by many to be the greatest poet of the age. The reason that you probably have not heard of him is that much of his output was eye-wateringly pornographic. His most famous poem is "A Ramble in St James Park". I'm afraid that I can't quote any here but you can look it up online (which I have done in the interests of research!)

A magical view of London from the bridge across the lake in St James Park
Looking in the other direction with Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial with the golden angel in view.

The Welsh Guard of the Household Cavalry in the park

These red geraniums exactly match the colour of the Guards uniforms.

A view in the park with Buckingham Palace in the background.

Flower beds with Horse Guards Parade in the background

Listening to Etta James version of Stormy Weather. I think her version is as good as Ella Fitzgerald's. Listen here.

Painting of the Month (61) April 2016: Wliiliam Hogarth

This painting is a part of William Hogarth's The Humours of an Election series. His paintings are still very popular today because many of the iniquities he portrayed can still be seen and felt around us.

Canvassing for Votes, William Hogarth, 1754, The Sir John Soane Museum, London

The series of four oil paintings and some etchings is based on an election in Oxfordshire, England in 1754. The three characters in the central foreground represent the two candidates covertly trying to bribe the innkeeper. Only property-owners could vote at that time. 
Peering out from the doorway on the left is a soldier whose purpose is to represent uncorrupted patriotism. In front of him the British lion is devouring the fleur-de-lis of France. At the table on the right two old men, possibly sailors, are arguing about the Battle of Portobello in which the British fought the Spanish in Panama.
In the background a violent mob from one party are trying to destroy the headquarters of their rivals. A humorous note is the man sawing off the pub-sign unaware that he will fall when it does! Hogarth was an adequate and competent artist but this painting was made for satirical purposes exposing bribery & corruption and mob violence.
This series of oil paintings are on a massive scale, measuring five by seven feet; this really elevates them to the genre of 'History Painting'.

Listening to the British folk-singing duo, the formerly married couple, Richard and Linda Thompson's I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Listen here.

Answers to the self-portrait quiz.

Here are the results of the Self-Portrait quiz from my previous post.I have tried to show two self portraits or one plus two photographs, if possible, in each case.
Clearly, the winner was David in a difficult quiz buts there were many good answers as well.

Bazza's Self-portraits Quiz

Here are twenty self-portraits; they are all made by people from 'the arts' in general, not necessarily known as painters and one answer appears twice. How many can you name? Answers in about a week's time. No prizes other than the kudos of winning one of Bazza's quizzes! Come on, have a go!

I'm listening to Matching Mole; (Robert Wyatt will shortly feature in a post). 
This is a sad story from real life: 
Listen to O'Caroline here.