Why I love the British Museum...

I love the British Museum. It houses seven million objects documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present day. 

Established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1887.

When I’ve travelled to places like Egypt, Greece, Greece and Turkey, there is always a sense of guilt when the tour guides say, “and this particular beautiful thing is a copy, the original is in the British Museum.” Debates whether to repatriate those objects rage on. In the meantime, we have such a enviable collection of objects that tell stories about some of the most momentous periods in history.

By comparing between ages and objects you make inferences about how mankind’s beliefs and attitudes have changed.

My favourite objects in the British Museum are the:

Rosetta Stone – which is such an amazing icon of understanding. The work that went into decoding the script and the insights that then brought about Egyptian and Greek society are quite incredible.

Statue of the Pharaoh Ramesses II – I work in public relations and have a general interest in how leaders create and manipulate their own image for immediate political and personal reasons but also to create legacy. This sculpture shows a "desiny politician" at work.

Elgin marbles – Some pieces from the Eglin marbles are incredibly beautiful. I love the horses in particular.

Tomb of Halikarnosos - The Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, designed by the sculptor-architects Pytheos and Satyros, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The workmanship and artistry are amazing.

Portland Vase - This is most famous cameo-glass vessel from antiquity. The scenes on the Portland Vase have been interpreted many times with a historical or a mythological slant. It is enough to say that the subject is clearly one of love and marriage with a mythological theme. I just can’t believe it was made so long along - perhaps from Rome, Italy, about AD 5-25 – and is so finely worked. No wonder it went on to inspire Josiah Wedgewood in the 18^th century, one of our great ceramicists.

My favourite children's toys

This was a really easy list to write. Without question, no debate or any further ado, my top ten children's toys are:

Scrabble

Giant jenga

Yatzee

Micado

Kerplunk

Buckaroo

Space hoppers

Slinkies

Connect Four

Lego


And I don't think that needs any further explanation. I did almost include Monopoly but I've always found that a bit dull to be honest.

My favourite poems...

Two more of my favourite poems...

There Was a Child Went Forth
HERE was a child went forth every day; 
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became; 
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. 
 
The early lilacs became part of this child, 
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,         
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf, 
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side, 
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid, 
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him. 
 
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;  
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, 
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road; 
And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern, whence he had lately risen, 
And the school-mistress that pass’d on her way to the school, 
And the friendly boys that pass’d—and the quarrelsome boys,  
And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls—and the barefoot negro boy and girl, 
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went. 
 
His own parents, 
He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and birth’d him, 
They gave this child more of themselves than that;  
They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him. 
 
The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table; 
The mother with mild words—clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by; 
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust; 
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,  
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture—the yearning and swelling heart, 
Affection that will not be gainsay’d—the sense of what is real—the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal, 
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time—the curious whether and how, 
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks? 
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?  
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, 
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves—the huge crossing at the ferries, 
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between, 
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off, 
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat slack-tow’d astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping, 
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by itself—the spread of purity it lies motionless in, 
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud; 
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Walt Whitman

I love the way the child in this poem absorbs everything he looks upon in a day and in a lifetime and it becomes part of his being. The universe is full of life (‘the song of the phoebe bird’) and meaning (‘the curious whether and how’). Whitman offers this sparklingly brilliant composite of impressions – ‘flashes and specks’ – so that we might open ourselves to experiences.


To Whitman, all the objects and memories are how we become ourselves, by truly connecting with our own experience, by realising, I am that child that went forward.

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran

The thought of children being the product of "Life's longing for itself"...the instinct for survival is an amazingly powerful one. The poem is about how children will strive and thrive no matter what if we give them a stable environment in which to grow up.

I think these poems pair well together...and I like them both immensely.

My favourite poems

I love the way poems are published on the tube in London, giving sustenance for the soul for the hundreds of thousands of commuters on the network each day. I saw this yesterday and it particularly struck me as a particularly lovely thing:

The way the red sun surrenders 

its wholeness to the curving ocean

bit by bit. The way curving ocean 

gives birth to the birth of the stars 

in the growing darkness, 

wearing everything in its path

to a comic smoothness.

The impulse of the stones rolling

towards their own roundness.

The unexpected comets of flying fish. 

And Forest-Great-Breathing-Spirit,

rooting to the very end for the life of the planet.

Grace Nichol, From the Life of This Planet. (b. 1950)

Grace Nichols is a Guyanese poet which perhaps makes her reference to Forest-Great-Breathing-Spirit particularly poignant. Guyana is the home to prime rainforest which is under threat, just like the Amazon further South.

Although it's not a focus here, the oceans drive the winds, the winds drive soil erosion in the Sahara and that very iron-rich soil from the deserts feeds the nutrient-hungry rainforests of South America. A while back I read how climate change is threatening the currents, winds and those vital dust deposits so it's a poem that made me stop and think. 

In my very first post I talked about loving the way the sun suddenly disappears like a tuppence below the horizon which is particularly noticeable at sea. In many ways, it's a really lovely poem.

“Poems on the Underground” celebrated the 25th anniversary last week. Every season, the British Council Art Group selects six poems. This season’s selections address the value of the written word and include the well-known opening lines from John Keats’ “Endymion.” A good choice for the “gloomy days” of winter:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health,
And quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

“Lines to a Movement in Mozart’s E-flat Symphony” is a rare, hopeful poem about spring and love from the usually dour Thomas Hardy:

Show me again the time
When in the Junetide’s prime
We flew by meads and mountains northerly!–
Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fullness, fineness, freeness,
Love lures life on…
Show me again just this:
The moments of that kiss
Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree!–
Yea to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,
Love lures life on.

The Council also selected "Riddle” by Gerard Benson, a fourth-century translation of “Loving the Rituals” by Palladas, and a Seamus Heaney translation of lines written by Colmcille, a sixth-century Irish saint. Heaney and Nichols, notably, were also featured in the very first set of London Underground poems.

"Poems on the Underground" has inspired similar programmes on public transport in Dublin, Paris, New York, Vienna, Stockholm, Helsinki, Athens, Barcelona, Moscow, St Petersburg and, most recently, Shanghai and Warsaw. It's a great thing and long may it continue.

Why I love photography...

I love Henri Cartier-Bresson’s idea of the "decisive moment" – of capturing the “whole essence of some situation” that is “unrolling” before your eyes with a single photograph. It’s the neatness of it – the concision of saying so much with just one image. And the very greatest photos will always reveal more and more to you as you live with them over time.

Cartier-Bresson talks of how he, “prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life - to preserve life in the act of living."

For him a, "slice of ordinary life is picked almost at random, and acquires a new meaning by its recontextualization through the strategy of dépaysement".

"Dépaysement" means to "decountrify oneself" and is defined as the experience of re-seeing. "One leaves one's own culture to face something unfamiliar, and upon returning home it has become strange – and can be seen with fresh eyes."

This chimes with theory of many of the surrealists at the time. However, for Cartier-Bresson this find expression in the capacity of the photographer to uncover facets of everyday life  that go unnoticed until the photographer reveals them. He hunted in the street for juxtapositions whose ironic contrasts would surprise people and make them see the world with new eyes.

This approach has been taken forward by many famous photographers, some of whom talk eloquently, movingly, about what they do. Steve McCurry, most famous for his shot of the Afghan refugee on the cover of National Geographic, commented:

"Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face. I try to convey what it is like to be that person, a person caught in a broader landscape that you could call the human condition.”

It’s another tough one to choose my top ten, but I’ll give it a go...I won’t even attempt to stack rank them though!

Ansel Adams
Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Edward Weston

Dorothea Lange

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Bill Brandt

Galen Rowell

Art Wolf

Ami Vitale

Yousuf Karsh

Why I like Bill Hammond...

Hello again...today's post was supposed to be about my top ten classical composers and works. I'm very close to finalising my list, but not quite there, so I'll delve a little deeper into one of my favourite artists from an earlier post.

Bill Hammond took as his motif Buller’s birds for a substantial period of his career. The Victorian ornithologist Walter Buller documented New Zealand’s birdlife in a beautifully illustrated book. He viewed native birds as being on the verge of extinction and saw no irony in encouraging the large scale destruction of the birds on which his own success was based. Like many Victorians of his time, he continued to collect specimens for his own research.

Hammond looks at the idea that man sought to civilize a wilderness, when in fact he was destroying it. So, in some paintings you see a string quartet playing against a vast backdrop of turmoil.

Birds in all cultures across time feature in creation myths, sagas, parables, liturgies and fairy tales. They have come to represent among many things, the realm of the spirit world. They are harbingers of both fortune and evil, and in dream mythology they represent the personality of the dreamer.

Hammond's hybrid bird, horse, human and serpent figures change and morph before our eyes. Egyptian-looking, always in profile, theoretically capable of flight but never flying, they are meticulously and disturbingly recorded. They stand in a denuded, but beautiful, landscape.

His version of Horus, Lord of the skies in Assyrian/Egyptian legend, is in fact the extinct giant New Zealand eagle. Narrative stone bas-reliefs from Nimrud, in particular Protective Spirit in Sacred Tree 875-860 BC, depicting a winged eagle-headed magical figure, inform these paintings along with burial sites, rock drawings, moa in pre-historic New Zealand (prey for the giant eagle), and the shape of the landscape in and around Banks Peninsula.

Hammond’s paintings show a collapse of foreground and background that provides a sense of infinite space in the art of traditional Chinese painting and Ukiyo-e. Often reminiscent of Italian Renaissance painting and tapestries, Hammond’s compositions combine a graphic ability with delicate decorative qualities. Daubed backgrounds overrun with trails of dribbling paint, patinas of embellishment, reminiscent of the intricate textiles of the Middle East and Asia.

I love the vast sweep of events unfolding in his paintings and the sense of foreboding. There's many stories waiting to be told of mythic proportions about these works and for that reason you will never tire of them. That has to be a defining characteristic of the very greatest works of art.

Ever so caring elephants

The African bush elephants are the largest living land mammals. They always seem to be constantly in motion – flapping their ears to create a cooling breeze, swishing their tails at flies, breaking off grass or tree branches and nuzzling each other.

Although elephants are typically greyish in colour, they often seem brown or reddish from wallowing in mud holes of the iron-rich volcanic African soil. The elephants love squelching in the mud which acts as a sunscreen, protecting their skin from the harsh ultraviolet radiation of the sun. After bathing, they even use their trunks to blow soil on their bodies to help dry and bake on their new protective coats.

Trunks are pretty useful things really. African elephants have two “finger-like” projections at the tips of the trunk which are sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass, yet strong enough to rip the branches off a tree. They even greet each other by entwining their trunks, much like a handshake.

They’ve also got great hearing and are great at making deep, low frequency sounds that enable them to communicate with other elephants up to 10 km away.

Elephants listen by putting trunks on the ground and carefully positioning their feet. Their trunks are sensitive to vibrations, they have special receptors in their feet which pick up the sound as it travels through the ground, and hearing receptors in their ears.

Now, isn’t that amazing?!