As a result of a labyrinthine hunt for Roberson Matt Glaze Medium, which is a rare thing in London just now I found myself in Cornellisen's in Bloomsbury this week. This is a shop I love but also enter with trepidation. It is the most expensive place to buy Roberson's (but the best place to buy pigment), also as a result the only place in London with the last few bottles of this medium available. I share this valuable information with you only because I have just bought a litre and have a promise from Atlantis (the cheapest place to buy it) that they will let me know as soon as it is returned to stock.
Hunt over I went to a local cafe and overhear a lovely conversation going on between staff and customers about Polish wedding plans, the waitress has been back to Poland to plan her wedding, and within a week has sorted everything from church to dress to invitations...and the story softens into the story of how they met, how long they have been together, whether he asked her or she asked him...and at this point she tells us ( entranced, we have all become her audience) that he proposed on Westminster Bridge, her voice once confident and calm now breaking not wanting to make the connection with this week but having to.
I walked the short walk to the British Museum, once in Bloomsbury and having a little time it would be crazy not to go there. I am currently rereading The Iliad, so am planning on going to the classical galleries. On my way through the main hall I saw this sign, which made me smile, the best of London reactions possible.
Going through the Assyrian a galleries looking at the first writing ever, a writing that was initially developed to keep tally of trading, but which later became used in politics and for aesthetic purposes
Most of the imagery in the initial Assyrian galleries is political propaganda boosting the strength of the King, showing hunting imagery,
and in particular the killing of a lion with his own bear hands, very macho, and of masses of people coming to worship at the foot of the leader and war..
you can find the cultural antecedents of the publicity campaigns of the likes of Putin here, although it has to be said done far more beautifully. What is significant is that by the time of Darius the imagery celebrates the diversity of his empire, to show his geographic reach, but at the same time showing a state comfortable enough with itself to acknowledge the cultural differences within its population. And in the imagery of these galleries are the starting points of the Greek aesthetic. So Greece presents a culturally homogenous imagery, however its basis is in cultural exchange with its neighbours. There is a pair of small galleries (Room 18) explaining the origins of the imagery on the Parthenon just before the main gallery including the image above which explains this is detail. And it is interesting to me that some
how so often when we look for cultural antecedents in the West we stop at Greece. And yet there has always been cultural exchange with the rest of the world, and that exchange is entangled with trading, trading of goods and trading of ideas and technological developments, the only difference is whether those bonds of trade sit in the bounds of agreement and respect for difference, or insularity and war like exchange.
This week London is hit by the result of the ideologies violence, Syria for years by the ideologies of war. Re-reading the Iliad brings to the fore how much war like behaviour is based on vengeance. The only way to end this is with a thirst for justice not revenge.
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