"O, CLOUDS UNFOLD!"

This glorious, image-laden stained glass window commemorating William Blake – artist, engraver, printer and poet – is found in St. Mary's Church, Battersea Church Road, Wandsworth, London. 

 

The work of John Hayward of Edenbridge, Kent, this is one of four windows installed in  St. Mary's between 1976 and 1982, each representing a famous person associated with the church. The other subjects are landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner; General Benedict Arnold of the American Revolutionary War; and the celebrated Eighteenth-Century botanist, William Curtis.

 

William Blake was married to Catherine Boucher in the church in 1782. Many will be surprised to learn that the wife of one of our greatest poets was illiterate, and could only make her mark with a cross in the wedding register. The wedding is suggested by a wedding ring between two pencil portraits; on the left is William drawn by Catherine and, on the right, Catherine as drawn by William. 

 

The design of the rest of the window attempts to give expression to the diversity of Blake’s talents as an artist and poet. Among his more insistent themes are those concerned with how we perceive both the greatest and the smallest elements in our world and the idea that all things contain a male and female principle.

 

The verse on the lower right-hand side of the window is the opening four lines of Blake’s poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence’, assumed to have been written in 1803, but not published until 1863:

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

 

The figure in the roundel is from Blake’s illustration ‘Albion Rose’, etchings of which carried the artist’s inscription: ‘Albion rose from where he labourd at the Mill with Slaves / Giving himself for the Nations he danc'd the dance of Eternal Death’. The figure of Albion, is a personification of humanity and of Britain and is depicted freeing himself from the shackles of materialism.

 

At the bottom right is a picture of the Houses of Parliament to mark the connection with the late William Hamling, MP, in whose memory the window was given.

 

 

[Photo: Brian Sibley, May 2011]

MR DODGSON'S GIFT!

On this day: 26 November, 1864 – one-hundred-and-sixty years ago –– Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known to us now as 'Lewis Carroll') presented an early Christmas present to his young friend, Alice Pleasance Liddell, daughter of Henry George Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

Mr Dodgson's gift was the hand-lettered and illustrated manuscript of Alice's Adventures Underground, a story he had to told to Alice and two of her sisters during a summer river expedition on the Isis on 4 July 1862. 

 

In 1865, the story, significantly expanded, was re-gifted – this time to the world – when the story was published, with illustrations by John Tenniel, under the title, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

"A VISIT FROM ST. ––– SNOOPY?"

 Eat your heart out Mr. Clement C. Moore!

 

 [illustration: (c) Peanuts]

FACING UP TO 'AI'

 

There is a lot of disquiet about the pros and cons of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and, specifically among artists, about ‘AI-generated art’, including strident protests that even the use of such a term is totally abhorrent! 

   

I am more ambiguous on the topic: partly because I have seen some highly original and inventive AI-imagery and because I think that, for millennia, art has always been subject to the vagaries of frauds and fakers as well as those who have a taken a broad perspective on such identifications as ‘after…’, ‘inspired by…’ and ‘in the style of…’

 

This liberality of accreditation can be seen in the output from the 'workshops' of the Old Masters; among those creating art with collage and photo-montage; and in Andy Warhol’s screen-prints featuring a ‘borrowed’ publicity-image of Marilyn Monroe from the 1953 film, Niagara, or that humdrum household staple, the Campbell’s Soup Can.

 

However, even I balked at finding an internet entry on Lewis Carroll featuring an AI likeness of the author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass alongside genuine, well-attested photographic images of the man.

 

 

Arguably, it is the best of a less-than-brilliant bunch of imaginings which range from the patently risible to the truly creepy... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, again, I tell myself, the National Portrait Gallery in London contains a variety of artworks variously portraying the well-known features of, say, her late majesty Queen Elizabeth II, so what the heck? Does it actually matter?

 

Perhaps, in the end, it just comes down to being able to identify, ‘What’s What and What’s Not’, between artefact and artifice.

 

**********

 

‘So [Alice] got up, and held out her hand. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” she said as cheerfully as she could.

 

‘“I shouldn't know you again if we did meet,” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake: “you're so exactly like other people.”

 

‘“The face is what one goes by, generally,” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

 

‘“That's just what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has — the two eyes, so —” (marking their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance — or the mouth at the top — that would be some help.”

 

‘“It wouldn't look nice,” Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes, and said “Wait till you've tried.”’

 

**********

 

But we’d probably better not start a conversation on Pablo Picasso…

PUMPKIN PANORAMA

 

Now that it's safe to go out into the pumpkin patch once more, I thought I'd share this forbidding piece of graphic art, Nico Delort, celebrating (if that's not an inappropriate word of so 'dark' an artwork) the Great Pumpkin!

 

 

Explore more of Nico Delort's amazing art HERE

THE WITCH-HUNTING SEASON

 

From 61-years-ago today: the cover of The New Yorker with Halloween-themed art by that irreverent spook-meister, the great Charles Addams (1912-1988).

NOVEMBER

 

 

No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon –
No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day –
No sky – no earthly view –
No distance looking blue –
No road – no street – no 't'other side the way' –
No end to any Row –
No indications where the Crescents go –
No top to any steeple –
No recognitions of familiar people –
No courtesies for showing 'em –
No knowing 'em –
No travelling at all – no locomotion,
No inkling of the way – no notion –
'No go' – by land or ocean –
No mail – no post –
No news from any foreign coast –
No Park – no Ring – no afternoon gentility –
No company – no nobility –
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,–
November! 

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

MY FRIEND, MR MOUNDSHROUD...

 

Mr. Moundshroud, who are YOU?

 

And Mr. Moundshroud, way up there on the roof, sent his thoughts back: I think you know, boy, I think you know. 

 

Will we meet again, Mr. Moundshroud? 

 

Many years from now, yes, I’ll come for you.

 

And a last thought from Tom: O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death?

 

And the thought returned: When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

 

Tom listened, heard, and waved quietly. 

 

Mr. Moundshroud, far off, lifted his hand. 

 

Click. Tom’s front door went shut. 

 

His pumpkin-like-a-skull, on the vast Tree, sneezed and went dark.

 

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, 1972

 

 

[Illustration: 'Mr. Carapace Clavicle Moundshround' by Joseph 'Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992)]

IT'S HALLOWEEN, LINUS!

  

I'm just saying – on behalf of a friend...

 

                                                                                           (c) Peanuts Worldwide LLC

A TRAIN OF THOUGHT

Today would have been the 104th birthday of legendary fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, with whom I was fortunate to have a 38-year friendship from 1974 until his too-early death in 2012. Whenever I visited Ray at his home in Los Angeles, I always made a point of pausing in front of this oil painting hanging on his sitting-room wall. 

 

Entitled ‘The Carnival’, was painted in 1952 by Joseph ‘Joe' Mugnaini (1912-1992). Long before Ray was sufficiently established in his career to purchase the original canvas, he had spotted a lithograph of the picture in the window of a Beverly Hills gallery. 

 

‘The Carnival’ presents an enigmatic vision of a crowded, flag-and-banner-bedecked train which is either coming out of nowhere (bound for a destination equally unknown) or is, otherwise, reversing towards the abrupt and perilous end of both railroad-track and viaduct. For Ray, it seemed to chime with some of the bizarre and fantastical themes that he had explored in his 1947 debut collection of short stories, Dark Carnival.

 

The result was the first of many meetings between two men with minds wide open to the eloquent and extravagant possibilities of an unfettered imagination. For Joe, it was the beginning of his collaboration with Ray: illustrating, decorating or providing evocative jacket-art for a succession of books beginning, in 1953, with The Golden Apples of the Sun and including such story collections as The October Country, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy and the novels, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Halloween Tree.

 

Joe's carnival train also, unquestionably, contributed to the shaping of Ray's book Something Wicked This Way Comes in which Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, with its entourage of monsters and misfits, arrives by locomotive, under the cover of night, in a sleepy American town to disrupt the fates and fortunes of the local residents and, in particular, the destinies of two young boys.

 

I'm sharing this haunting image today with grateful, affectionate memories of my many encounters and long years of correspondence with Uncle Ray and with respect and admiration for his creative collaboration with the talented Mr. Mugnaini.