Art, Books, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW2

The Pineapple Party

Norman Pearson returned towards the end of January, after an absence in Spain and Portugal, bearing two bananas, two oranges and a pineapple. The bananas and oranges were simple, Hilda and I had one each. Apart from a few green apples and some berries in Cornwall, it was the first fruit that we had tasted for two years. It seemed…

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Art, Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Rise and Fall of Spurious George

Two centuries after William Hogarth published his engravings of the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, Rebecca West wrote a morality tale of decline and fall updated for the C20th –The Modern “Rake’s Progress” 1934. Eighteenth-century Rakewell was the spendthrift, dissolute son of a rich merchant who goes to London and wastes his money on luxurious living, prostitution, and gambling…

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Art, Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb, The Sex Wars, WW2

Literal Nazis and the Retro-transing of History

 Researching Marienbad and the Savoy led me to Erika Mann and all the gossip, scandal, politics, and drama of her family. I wanted to read her account of life in pre-war Germany The Lights Go Down in part of my preparation for the 1940 Club and here. I couldn’t track down a copy so I read School for Barbarians: Education…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Water and Light Part Two: C19th Danish Art

The third destination of our Met Museum art extravaganza was Beyond the Light – Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish art.  Plenty of light and lots of water. Plus wonderful drawings and paintings of Denmark, ancient ruins, lonely figures on beaches, ships, harbors, woodlands, portraits, and empty rooms.  The exhibit overview includes the following background information: Denmark in the nineteenth…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Water and Light

A wander crosstown to the Met with a destination. Or rather three. The first – Water Memories – explores water’s significance to Indigenous peoples and Nations in the United States through historical, modern, and contemporary artworks. The second – right next door – Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection rotation honors the diversity of Native life with…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Shadows

Gloomy drizzly start for today so time to remember some recent sunshine and shadows. Covid-19 testing tents are all up and down Broadway with a whole cluster close to Columbia University.  This one left – is at 113th Street. Photos here of Wave Hill in the Bronx, the Metropolitan Museum Cloisters in Manhattan, Untermeyer Gardens Conservancy in Yonkers, Jackson Square…

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Art, Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Sail Away – Oceans, Seas, Rivers, and Rainstorms

There’s a lovely exhibit currently on show at the Morgan Library. It’s the work of artist-illustrator Ashley Bryan (see below for the Morgan’s description.) Many of the pieces are collages in the vibrant colors of the kind of elementary school construction paper. I could imagine school group trips and the response to the words and the pictures as inspiring “I…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

A Beach, a Dip, and some Wiggles

Last week saw a short foray into Connecticut. This included a day at Hammonasset Beach State Park, a dip in the sea (Long Island Sound), and a visit to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. The weather cooperated, the days were sunny and the rain confined itself to overnight and early morning. The beach made for a lovely walk…

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Art, My Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

To Look at Simple Things

                                    “I like to show the beauty of things that no one looks at twice.”                                  — Eliot Hodgkin In a letter written to Brinsley Ford in 1975…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Four Little Girls

Carole Robertson (14), Carol Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14) died on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded during Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bombing came just days after the federal ruling came for Alabama to integrate the school system. Four Little Girls, September 15, 1963,…

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Art, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Women Artists of WW1: Anna Coleman Ladd

In his series of WW1 epitaphs, Rudyard Kipling comments on the all too common fate of a new soldier at the front who – curious about the enemy – cannot resist taking a look and unwittingly exposes his head to a sniper. The beginner On the first hour of my first day     In the front trench I fell.…

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Art, Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Anna and Gertrude

“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” – Gertrude Abercrombie After Pied Piper and The Thinking, my explorations led me into the byways of British literature of WW2 evacuation and evacuees. On that journey, I made – and continue to make –  discoveries: Writers and…

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Art, Books, My Poetry, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

All Our Yesterdays with the #1936Club

There was a period in the early 1960s when my parents had a television (in those days you rented) and one of the programs I liked to watch was All Our Yesterdays produced by Granada Television. It was a look back in time based on the newsreel footage of that week twenty-five years ago –  a week-by-week journey through the…

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1943

1943 I think about Morandi painting on top of a hill surrounded by fascism, I think about Picabia finding inspiration in soft-porn magazines on the Côte d’Azur, I think about Marinetti returning sick from the Russian Front, I think about Duchamp playing chess in his New York apartment, I think about Ronald Searle POW in the Kwai jungle, I think…

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Art, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Wisdom of the Ages

Looks like having government officials who are Ignorant and Stupid is nothing new. Chinese poet Su Tung-Po nailed it centuries ago.  I was browsing through the International Times for 1969 – the way one does. And there – amid the fevered, underground, counter-cultural world of macrobiotics, head shop ads, rock and roll, anarchy, activism, and psychedelia as seen from North…

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