Well, it’s “overnight” for you lot. Here it’s nearly 9 a.m. and the clouds are gathering. Glad I was able to take Friday off and go down to the Cotswolds with a friend. We visited Broadway Tower, an 18th-century folly – a fake “ancient” building – that a rich landowner had built for his wife. In this case, it’s supposed to be a Saxon tower:
This particular folly has had a useful life, serving as a printing press, as a vacation home for a number of late-19th/early-20th century artists (including William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the American John Singer Sargent), and then as an observation post during WWII – the tower has clear views to the north towards Birmingham and Coventry, two industrial centers that the Germans bombed frequently.
For about 30 years there was an artists’ and writers’ colony in the town of Broadway, which entered around Sargent, Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, and an actress-turned-society-hostess named Mary Anderson. Broadway Museum had some works by Sargent on display. I liked this sketch of Mary Anderson best:
Elsewhere in the museum there was a lot of material related to Broadway’s past as a key hub on the coaching network. I was particularly struck by this . . . horse? from an 18th-century painting.
That horse – if it is indeed a horse, and not some alien species – has Seen Things. That horse is all of us these days. Anyway, it was good to switch off after a very intense week of news, both here and in the US, and look at pretty things. And now here we go into another week, God (or alien horses) help us all. Open thread.
J.
Thanks for this post! I loved visiting Broadway Tower and Broadway last May on my Cotswolds hiking trip! Did you have a scone with clotted cream at the little cafe by the tower? So good. Sadly, I did not know about the museum — that it had Sargents — or would have gone. (I did buy a very nice pair of blue suede shoes in town though, which I did not hike in.)
Gloria DryGarden
I used to have a few friends who were excellent companions at art museums and shows. They’d point out aspects and details of the subject, the light, the brush strokes, tiny details. I remember coming around the room in an exhibit of impressionists, and there was a painting by Mary Cassatt. Oh the joy. There is no one who paints light around peoples in the way she does.
One time there was an entire show of Van Gogh paintings while we were on a family trip to DC. There were free tickets if one stood in line at the right time and place, but my sister got me a ticket for $40 through a concierge friend of hers. Those paintings were amazing. To look at Van Gogh, I first look straight on, to admire all the swirls and composition.
But then, essential to me, I must look sideways at the painting by standing close to the wall. This is almost a religious experience for me. The paint is so thick and comes so high off the canvas. I could spend hours looking at his paintings; my sister gave me an hour. But they were so good.
sab
I am even more in awe of Sargent’s mastery of his craft with that drawing.
Very odd looking horse. Tiny ears. Huge eyes. Tiny jaw. Artist is at other end of the talent spectrum from Sargent.
Baud
That horse will haunt my dreams.
sab
@Baud: I am glad we can’t see the groom holding him.
Gloria DryGarden
Has anyone seen the unfinished marbles by Michelangelo, the Escapari? They used to be on display, we walked down a hall of them to get to the atrium where the David was on display. In Florence, Firenze. The velvet cordon was close to the blocks.
I was 3 feet away from chisel marks and gouges in these huge blocks of marble, with rough drafts of bodies, faces, feet reaching out of the rock.
Those chisel marks changed my view of sculpture, forever. I grasped that it was sheer intense hard work, probably with hammer and chisel to get that far.
I still weep when I tell people about it.
Gloria DryGarden
Looking again at the horse, above. It’s a war scene, or so it appears. Interesting use of pinks and golden shades. Maybe the horse is feeling shrunken and frightened from being around battle.
Makes me of how I feel when I read, or skim, the daily Ukraine thread.
Rose Judson
@sab: The groom appeared to be wearing a velour tracksuit, hundreds of years before the advent of Juicy Couture. This only confirms my hunch that we’re looking at something extraterrestrial
@Gloria DryGarden: It was a painting of a race meeting, actually. I tried to get more of the whole image in, but there was a window causing lots of glare.
Gloria DryGarden
@Rose Judson: oh, ok, a race meeting. Phew. I forgot about that kind of big gathering.
Still. Horse looks kind of spooked.
Gloria DryGarden
The folly looks like a fun place to have a writing retreat. Nice to hear it’s been inhabited and enjoyed by lots of people.
prostratedragon
“Primal Message,” Nokuthula Ngwenyama; perf. with Chamber Music Northwest
Tony Jay
Yesterday saw the streets of Liverpool painted red in glorious celebration as hundreds of thousands gathered along the route and in the centre of the city to cheer the Liverpool FC team bus’ procession displaying the Premier League trophy. We do it every time we win a major honour, but this one was special. It was a 30 year gap between the last Championship win and our victory in 2020, but with Covid we didn’t get to celebrate properly. This time everyone got to show their love and appreciation for the boys in red, and the fact that it put us on 20 Championships alongside the rudderless hulk that used to be Man United FC only made the pudding taste sweeter.
So of course – OF COURSE – the whole thing has been recast into tragedy after a large car went barrelling through the packed crowds on Water Street in the town centre, with dozens injured, some seriously. The footage is stomach churning. At first I thought it was some kind of CGI fake, someone’s idea of a sick joke, but then the messages and texts started coming in. It was real, alright.
No one knows yet what caused it. Was it deliberate (it definitely looks like it from the footage), was it someone having a panic attack or a stroke? All we do know, because the Police released the information almost instantly, is that the driver is a 53 year old white British man. And they released that information so quickly because already, seconds after the footage hit the Internet, the scumbags of the Far-Right misinformation wing were flooding every social media outlet with lies about the driver being a Muslim asylum seeker. It’s what they did last summer in the wake of the Southport stabbings and the intent was obviously the same, to spark a repeat of the racist street riots that erupted in poor, white communities aimed at terrorising and murdering foreigners.
What should happen now, but probably won’t, is for the Police, the Government and the Media to use the Far-Right’s kneejerk propagandising about the horror last night to hammer into the public’s head that these bastards, and the Far-Right politicians who work hand in hand with them, are openly LYING TO THEM. They don’t care about ‘Real British People’, they aren’t the only ones ‘brave enough to tell the truth’. They’re just malignant filth who see every tragedy as another opportunity to exploit for the gain of their big-pocketed donors, and lying to spread hate is all they do.
They should do that, but I doubt they will. The people up top couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to expose the Far-Right for what it truly is, but the UK Media is owned by the same people who have spent decades fostering the culture of division and blame that the Far-Right have weaponised, the Police are culturally averse to seeing any serious threat coming from the Right, and are much more comfortable targeting anti-genocide and pro-environmental ‘terrorists’, while the current Government is more likely to spout a few meaningless platitudes about ‘ignoring the voices of hate’ than join the dots between social media misinformation and the politicians and organisations that mainstream it, chained as it is to the strategic genius of people like Mandelson and McSweeney, who wouldn’t want to draw the ire of America’s own Far-Right Government and see ‘their’ Labour Party’s future as actively seeking the votes of the same people who the Far-Right is lying to.
Tragedies are never singular. They metastasise so quickly it’s heartbreaking to watch. I only hope that the people of Liverpool, some of whom attacked their own city last summer after swallowing the lies, will understand what the scumbags tried to do here and start treating the Far-Right the same way they do Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Sun’ tabloid.
Not Welcome In Liverpool.
NotMax
Judging by the ears there’s some hippo in the animal’s bloodline.
;)
Gloria DryGarden
@NotMax: I knew there would be a good explanation..
Baud
@Tony Jay:
That’s terrible. Glad the terrorist was a white guy. That’ll help calm the people.
Rusty
I’ve had the pleasure of walking in the Cotsolds, it really is beautiful, but somehow we missed this. Hopefully someday we will get back. One of may favorite parts of living there when my job took us over to London for 4 year were the Sunday afternoon walks with all our kids, over the Chiltern Hills where we lived but other places too.
Rose Judson
@Baud: As Tony Jay notes, the fact that the driver (not clear what his motive was yet) is a 50-something white dude isn’t stopping the far-right fash on social media from claiming he isn’t, or that he’s a false flag operation.
Baud
@Rose Judson:
Yeah they lie because some people want to believe the lie.
I still think the normie reaction would be worse if it were an immigrant terrorist.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
“White guy, or apostate convert to Jihadi Sharia? Who knows? Could be. Someone on Xitter said he was. Any anyway, what’s white? Didn’t you read about asylum seekers using skin whitening treatments from India to masquerade as South African refugees? Can you prove that’s not what happened here? Why are you trying to protect face-painted terrorists? Who do you work for?”
Social Media – Like lying under the wrong part of the cow and saying “Feed Me!”
Baud
@Tony Jay:
UK has white South African refugees too?
JoyceH
I do love follies, they’re so sweet and silly! Recently I streamed a wonderful British gardening show called Big Dreams, Small Spaces. Monty Don is helping homeowners who have a small space and want to do something different with it than just lawn and floral border. A Japanese garden, an Alice In Wonderland theme. And there was the lady who had a suburban semi-detached with the little slot of ground in back like you’d expect – and she wanted a ruin! Like the gentry used to build on their massive estates, the fake ruins of an old castle or abbey or something. It sounded crazy, but when they were finished it was so awesome! With a water feature and little plants growing in the crevices. I was so impressed.
Chris T.
@Gloria DryGarden:
I saw his “Postes” in person once. Totally different experience than seeing a photo of it: all my hairs stood on end and I got weird chills.
Baud
@Chris T.:
I had a thought the other day of what it must have felt like to experience paintings in the old days when the world not flooded with images.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chris T.: yes. It’s an experience. Chills makes sense.
for me:
heart rate up, breathless wonderment. Jaw dropped.
I did get a little close to the wall, and the cordon. Not touching.. but the guards kept telling me not to. I told them I wouldn’t touch a thing, but I had to, I had to see them this way. Poor guards.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: oh my gosh…
Baud
The morning thread appeared briefly, then disappeared.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Oh, tons. There’s a particular ambulance driver operating out of Southport who encapsulates every lazy, arrogant, sneery stereotype of the breed that winds me up whenever I’m stationed on that control desk.
Then again, my common-law step-brother-in-law is South African, and he’s a very decent fellow.
Gloria DryGarden
OT
My yahoo email has an ad for Starlink in the sidebar. What is the world coming to? If they were microtargeting, they’d know I’m not their target market.
They Call Me Noni
@Gloria DryGarden: Back in 2022 Louisville held an immersive Van Gogh exhibit that was fabulous. A friend and I went and spent a couple of lovely hours surrounded by his art.
Matt McIrvin
There are a lot of these follies in New England. My town has a little castle built as a summer home by a 19th-century chemist, on top of a high hill by the shores of the lake we use as a reservoir. It’s on public parkland now and used for public events occasionally–my daughter used to go to Daisy Scout meetings there.
Raoul Paste
@Tony Jay: I briefly saw a BBC report on the Liverpool incident last night. The false, Muslim attribution reminds me of recent discussions on the reticence of calling some malefactors “evil”. That reticence is definitely fading.
evodevo
@sab:
It’s a part Arabian racehorse – ALL the current Thoroughbred horses are descended from one or two of three Arabian stallions imported to England in the late 16-early 1700’s. I guess this artist was emphasizing the Arabian characteristics, which definitely contrasted with the English mares they were bred to – dished head profile, large eyes, small muzzle, nervous disposition, etc.
anastasio beaverhausen
And don’t forget hermits. Apparently Regency gagillionaires would hire a young man to live on their property for the summer, pretending to be an eccentric hermit. Guests would be taken out to view the hermit and his surroundings. I remember one estate I hiked through had an actual purpose-built hermitage, in stone.
Tony Jay
@Raoul Paste:
Police are now saying the driver was out of his face on drugs and got into the parade zone by following an emergency ambulance through the cordon.
I’ll give it a couple of days before the narrative switches to “drugged up benefit scroungers with big cars are a danger to decent working people. Lock ‘em up!”
Origuy
My housemates and I went up to San Francisco on Saturday to see the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. He was a Sacramento artist and art teacher who emulated a lot of different styles of art. I hadn’t realized that many of his works echo earlier paintings by Monet, Mondrian, etc.; he claimed that art is theft and he stole from the best. My housemate studied at Sacramento City College where he taught, although she was an English major. We went in the afternoon and caught the organ concert they have once a week. The pipes for the organ are hidden behind a false ceiling and when it starts, you can hear the organ all over the building.
dnfree
@Gloria DryGarden: That’s like the difference between seeing ballet on TV and in real life. In real life you hear the shoes hit the stage and you recognize the amount of effort that goes in to producing the ethereal appearance.