I don’t know what you count as “normal” life, but for the first time in ages today I feel that I am getting back to it. First of all, the new season of my on-line Italian conversations began, and it was an enormous relief (and I have to confess, something of a surprise) to discover … Read more
A little while ago (12 October to be precise) I touched on the subject of memory in art, and I’ve been returning to this over the past few days. I’m just about finished with a piece in my new bout of engagement with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. On the whole I’m quite pleased with … Read more
A couple of days ago I used the blog to draw attention to the (often under-rated) importance of imagination. Quite by coincidence today I came across an illustration of Giuseppe Vermiglio’s Judith and Holofernes. It struck me as a seventeenth century re-working of the far superior treatment of the same idea by Caravaggio. What is … Read more
Regular readers of this blog might remember that on several occasions I have shared thoughts about the balance of “inspiration or perspiration” as the more important factor driving creative work. I have tended rather to be cautious about what I have always seen as the over-valuation of inspiration, and the notion that artists are somehow … Read more