There are times in life when you have to make a decision. When you have to push aside everything that's been standing in your way and go after a dream. That happened to me on Friday, when I finally stood up and said, "Yes! I'll do it! I will attend the free Way of Tea demonstration in the Japanese gallery at the British Museum!"
I've been seeing these demonstrations advertised forever, and always thought it might be fun to go. But they're usually held on a weekday, and whenever I've had a day off, either I've had something else to do, or it wasn't taking place, or I just didn't think of it. But on Friday I found myself in London with a free afternoon, and there was a demonstration scheduled that very day. So I joined the standing-room-only crowd in front of the model teahouse in room 92.
I have to admit that I wasn't expecting the presentation to be led by a tall Englishman in a kimono. But it turns out that tea ceremony circles attract both Japanese and non-Japanese members all over the world. The demonstration was given by the London branch of the Urasenke Foundation; there are other tea schools, which all differ slightly from each other.
After giving a short talk on tea cultivation and the history of the Way (and passing around a little box of matcha powder, which almost got lost), our host explained the ceremony to us while a colleague performed an abbreviated version, with two volunteers from the audience serving as guests. They took us through the various steps -- ritually purifying the utensils, warming the bowl, whisking the tea, offering sweets and so forth -- and also instructed the "guests" in the rather complex etiquette they had to follow. The ritual we saw was for "thin tea"; I was intrigued by the presenter's description of "thick tea", which apparently is made with much more powder and has the consistency of yogurt.
I would have liked to have heard more about how the tea ceremony fits into Japanese culture and thought, but it's understandable that a short demonstration focused on the practical side. I'm glad I went, and hope to learn more about the subject in future. If you're interested in attending a demonstration yourself, you can check the museum's events calendar to see when the next one is.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Still more WWT photos
I'm slightly embarrassed to post this after having seen such amazing photography yesterday, but I've entered three more photos in the WWT competition. (See previous entries here, here and here.) This will probably be the last lot. Have a look and vote if you're so minded:
The crane, by the way, was featured in the Wetland Centre's "Duck of the Day" talk when I last visited. OK, he's not a duck, but we forgave him that because he was utterly delightful -- friendly, vocal, inquisitive, and already eye-catching despite still being in his juvenile plumage. I'm very glad these birds are being reintroduced to Britain.
The crane, by the way, was featured in the Wetland Centre's "Duck of the Day" talk when I last visited. OK, he's not a duck, but we forgave him that because he was utterly delightful -- friendly, vocal, inquisitive, and already eye-catching despite still being in his juvenile plumage. I'm very glad these birds are being reintroduced to Britain.
Friday, 22 October 2010
Wildlife Photographer of the Year
For quite a while, the young Hungarian photographer Bence Máté was a fixture of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. He could be relied on to scoop up the Eric Hosking Award, and usually earned prizes or commendations in a few other categories as well. Then, in the 2008 and 2009 competitions, he seemed to disappear. They didn't even bother awarding the Hosking prize in his absence.
Well, this year he's back -- and he's finally claimed the top prize. His delightful picture showing the silhouettes of leafcutter ants as they go about their business in Costa Rica is the wildlife photograph of the year.
While there's no denying the photo's excellence, I did wonder if the judges' choice of a picture of insects had been influenced by last year's tame wolf fiasco. Presumably no one can claim that Máté got his subjects from a local ant farm!
Máté also won the Hosking Award yet again, for a portfolio of six photographs that included the ant picture. I particularly liked the King Vulture and the playful Burrowing Owl chicks. Next year will be the last year that Máté is eligible for this particular award, so they will need to either find another worthy young photographer or retire the category for good.
The WPY exhibition is always one of the most satisfying of the year. No photo on display was less than brilliant, but there were certain ones that stood out for me. Like Jochen Schlenker's stunning scene of a single ibex in the vastness of the French Alps, its reflection captured perfectly in the lake below. Or David Herasimtschuk's haunting picture of a lachryphagous moth drinking from a tapir's eye. In the bird behaviour category, two very different photos stayed with me: Arto Juvonen's winning image of a goshawk carrying off a screaming gull nearly as big as itself; and Yossi Eshbol's charming picture of a Black-Winged Stilt and her chicks in their salt-crystal nest.
Last year's harsh winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere meant that the competition included plenty of snowy shots, like 14-year-old Sam Cairns's landscape of a snowy loch with swans, and Orsolya Haarberg's muskoxen emerging from a winter nap. Also, though I could be mistaken, it seemed to me that rather more of the entrants than usual had taken their photos close to home instead of travelling abroad. The effect of the recession, maybe?
I usually come away with the name of one photographer to watch. This time it was Francisco Mingorance, with his long-exposure shots taken at dusk in volcanic landscapes in Spain. His "Bugloss at Sunset" is one example; he also won the Creative Visions of Nature category for an aerial image of the Rio Tinto.
One of the competition's aims is to highlight environmental issues and humanity's often cruel treatment of animals. This means some entries are always hard to look at -- like everything in the One Earth Award category, or Mark Leong's shocking portfolio of the illegal wildlife trade, which won the new Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year prize. More optimistic, perhaps, was Kai Fagerström's specially commended entry in the same category, which showed the variety of animals that have taken over a house abandoned by humans in the Finnish woods.
I also found reason for hope in Haijun Pei's portrait of a Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey, which won first prize for photographers aged 10 and under. These monkeys, like many of China's rare species, are endangered. If there are enough children in China who love them, their future may be more secure.
Well, this year he's back -- and he's finally claimed the top prize. His delightful picture showing the silhouettes of leafcutter ants as they go about their business in Costa Rica is the wildlife photograph of the year.
While there's no denying the photo's excellence, I did wonder if the judges' choice of a picture of insects had been influenced by last year's tame wolf fiasco. Presumably no one can claim that Máté got his subjects from a local ant farm!
Máté also won the Hosking Award yet again, for a portfolio of six photographs that included the ant picture. I particularly liked the King Vulture and the playful Burrowing Owl chicks. Next year will be the last year that Máté is eligible for this particular award, so they will need to either find another worthy young photographer or retire the category for good.
The WPY exhibition is always one of the most satisfying of the year. No photo on display was less than brilliant, but there were certain ones that stood out for me. Like Jochen Schlenker's stunning scene of a single ibex in the vastness of the French Alps, its reflection captured perfectly in the lake below. Or David Herasimtschuk's haunting picture of a lachryphagous moth drinking from a tapir's eye. In the bird behaviour category, two very different photos stayed with me: Arto Juvonen's winning image of a goshawk carrying off a screaming gull nearly as big as itself; and Yossi Eshbol's charming picture of a Black-Winged Stilt and her chicks in their salt-crystal nest.
Last year's harsh winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere meant that the competition included plenty of snowy shots, like 14-year-old Sam Cairns's landscape of a snowy loch with swans, and Orsolya Haarberg's muskoxen emerging from a winter nap. Also, though I could be mistaken, it seemed to me that rather more of the entrants than usual had taken their photos close to home instead of travelling abroad. The effect of the recession, maybe?
I usually come away with the name of one photographer to watch. This time it was Francisco Mingorance, with his long-exposure shots taken at dusk in volcanic landscapes in Spain. His "Bugloss at Sunset" is one example; he also won the Creative Visions of Nature category for an aerial image of the Rio Tinto.
One of the competition's aims is to highlight environmental issues and humanity's often cruel treatment of animals. This means some entries are always hard to look at -- like everything in the One Earth Award category, or Mark Leong's shocking portfolio of the illegal wildlife trade, which won the new Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year prize. More optimistic, perhaps, was Kai Fagerström's specially commended entry in the same category, which showed the variety of animals that have taken over a house abandoned by humans in the Finnish woods.
I also found reason for hope in Haijun Pei's portrait of a Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey, which won first prize for photographers aged 10 and under. These monkeys, like many of China's rare species, are endangered. If there are enough children in China who love them, their future may be more secure.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Cézanne's card players
Often a small, little-hyped exhibition will impress me more than a major show. That happened again today, when I went to the new Cézanne exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. This show takes up just one room, and you can see it as part of the museum's normal admission price. Yet I enjoyed it far more than the Gauguin show at Tate Modern.
The Courtauld have displayed three of Cézanne's five paintings of card players (the owners of the other two weren't willing to lend them), along with preliminary sketches and related paintings. I was especially impressed by the two earliest paintings -- slightly different depictions of the same scene -- which expressed a tremendous amount while using minimal detail.
The sitters for the portraits in the exhibition were all peasants who worked on Cézanne's father's estate. With the Gauguin show still fresh in my mind, I couldn't help thinking of how different Cézanne's attitude toward his subjects seemed to be. Where Gauguin saw the Breton peasants and Tahitian natives he painted as characters in his primitivist fantasies, Cézanne portrayed his sitters with individuality and dignity.
I ended up walking through the exhibition twice, having looked at the rest of the Courtauld's small but wonderful collection in between. I didn't know much about Cézanne's work before, but this intimate study of a single theme made me want to know a lot more.
The Courtauld have displayed three of Cézanne's five paintings of card players (the owners of the other two weren't willing to lend them), along with preliminary sketches and related paintings. I was especially impressed by the two earliest paintings -- slightly different depictions of the same scene -- which expressed a tremendous amount while using minimal detail.
The sitters for the portraits in the exhibition were all peasants who worked on Cézanne's father's estate. With the Gauguin show still fresh in my mind, I couldn't help thinking of how different Cézanne's attitude toward his subjects seemed to be. Where Gauguin saw the Breton peasants and Tahitian natives he painted as characters in his primitivist fantasies, Cézanne portrayed his sitters with individuality and dignity.
I ended up walking through the exhibition twice, having looked at the rest of the Courtauld's small but wonderful collection in between. I didn't know much about Cézanne's work before, but this intimate study of a single theme made me want to know a lot more.
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Canaletto at the National Gallery
Yesterday morning I was ordering some new prescription sunglasses, and a senior optician argued with his assistant about the tint she'd chosen for me. "Too dark", he said. "The sunlight doesn't get that strong here. You'd only need that if you went abroad".
It's true, the quality of sunlight varies hugely from country to country. I was reminded of this later in the day, when I walked into the National Gallery's exhibition of 18th-century paintings of Venice. The works by Canaletto and his rivals (the two elements that make up the exhibition's subtitle) showed light of a kind you simply don't see in London. This was true even in the paintings of crowded urban areas, where the buildings cast shadows on each other. And of course, in the more spacious scenes of the great canals and piazzas, the sky was the deepest, clearest blue.
The exhibition started with some of the earliest creators of "view paintings" (vedute). These were the artists Canaletto had to beat when he started out. I found that the two painters who appealed most to me from this group, Johan Richter and Luca Carlevarijs, gave the people in their paintings far more individual character than Canaletto did. Canaletto seemed to consider the crowds in his scenes to be just another element of the overall composition.
Next the exhibition's focus turned to Michele Marieschi, the biggest rival to emerge after Canaletto was established. It was hard not to like Marieschi, a poor kid who quickly rose to challenge the older, higher-status painter. Several of his works, indeed, were good enough to be mistaken for Canalettos until the 20th century. But when his paintings hung next to the real thing, you saw that he never quite achieved the brilliance and clarity of Canaletto's light.
Canaletto's nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, came a bit closer. But rather than compete with his uncle, he eventually headed north and painted scenes of Dresden and Warsaw. His paintings from Venice left me wanting to see his later work. Finally, at the end of Canaletto's life, Francesco Guardi took the vedute in an entirely new direction, anticipating Impressionism by a century.
Unfortunately, the crowds in the exhibition (it was quite full even on a Monday afternoon) meant I couldn't stand in front of each painting as long as I would have liked. You could spend a long time taking in the details of each one.
My only criticism concerns the ticketing. Not only is the price of £12 rather high for a relatively small exhibition, but the Gallery has turned its online booking system over to Ticketmaster, which rips off customers by charging a per-ticket booking fee -- something I've never seen for an art exhibition before. Do see the show if you can, but try to buy your tickets in person.
It's true, the quality of sunlight varies hugely from country to country. I was reminded of this later in the day, when I walked into the National Gallery's exhibition of 18th-century paintings of Venice. The works by Canaletto and his rivals (the two elements that make up the exhibition's subtitle) showed light of a kind you simply don't see in London. This was true even in the paintings of crowded urban areas, where the buildings cast shadows on each other. And of course, in the more spacious scenes of the great canals and piazzas, the sky was the deepest, clearest blue.
The exhibition started with some of the earliest creators of "view paintings" (vedute). These were the artists Canaletto had to beat when he started out. I found that the two painters who appealed most to me from this group, Johan Richter and Luca Carlevarijs, gave the people in their paintings far more individual character than Canaletto did. Canaletto seemed to consider the crowds in his scenes to be just another element of the overall composition.
Next the exhibition's focus turned to Michele Marieschi, the biggest rival to emerge after Canaletto was established. It was hard not to like Marieschi, a poor kid who quickly rose to challenge the older, higher-status painter. Several of his works, indeed, were good enough to be mistaken for Canalettos until the 20th century. But when his paintings hung next to the real thing, you saw that he never quite achieved the brilliance and clarity of Canaletto's light.
Canaletto's nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, came a bit closer. But rather than compete with his uncle, he eventually headed north and painted scenes of Dresden and Warsaw. His paintings from Venice left me wanting to see his later work. Finally, at the end of Canaletto's life, Francesco Guardi took the vedute in an entirely new direction, anticipating Impressionism by a century.
Unfortunately, the crowds in the exhibition (it was quite full even on a Monday afternoon) meant I couldn't stand in front of each painting as long as I would have liked. You could spend a long time taking in the details of each one.
My only criticism concerns the ticketing. Not only is the price of £12 rather high for a relatively small exhibition, but the Gallery has turned its online booking system over to Ticketmaster, which rips off customers by charging a per-ticket booking fee -- something I've never seen for an art exhibition before. Do see the show if you can, but try to buy your tickets in person.
Monday, 18 October 2010
An open letter
My Sunday got off to a troubling start yesterday when I received a Facebook friend request from someone whose very name gave me a jolt of anxiety. It was the mother of someone who had made my life hell for nearly a decade.
This is the response I have sent to her. I post it here (with names deleted) because it occurs to me that I spent much of my childhood suffering in silence -- either afraid to complain about what was being done to me, or not taken seriously or not believed. This woman's son and his buddies had no qualms about humiliating me in public. I see nothing wrong with publicly calling out those who enabled it.
I grew up in a time when adults considered bullying to be no big deal, just something kids did. Most former victims of bullying I know can quote a standard litany of responses they got from the grown-ups they asked for protection. "They're just teasing -- don't be so thin-skinned." "The boys probably just like you." "Ignore them and they'll stop." "Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you." "Don't worry about what other people think of you, just live for yourself [at age 12]." "You must have done something to make them not like you; why don't you try to fit in?" I heard them all. Needless to say, if the adults saying these things had been subjected to similar torment by their own peers, they would have gone running to their lawyers, if not the police.
Nowadays schools in Britain, at least, take bullying a lot more seriously, and many schools have "zero-tolerance" policies. Of course, having a policy and enforcing it are two very different things, but it's better than having no policy and not even acknowledging the problem, which is what happened in my day.
When discussing bullying with friends, I've noticed two things: 1) many, many adults had traumatic experiences with bullies as children, and 2) every single one of them was convinced at the time that they were all alone. Hopefully, the attention being given to bullying now will at least let future victims know they aren't the only ones.
(For an excellent account of childhood bullying from an adult perspective, I recommend Ann-Marie's "Bully Chronicles", accessible from the right sidebar of her blog.)
This is the response I have sent to her. I post it here (with names deleted) because it occurs to me that I spent much of my childhood suffering in silence -- either afraid to complain about what was being done to me, or not taken seriously or not believed. This woman's son and his buddies had no qualms about humiliating me in public. I see nothing wrong with publicly calling out those who enabled it.
Dear Ms X,
I understand that you are Y's mother. I have also confirmed with my own mother that you were fully aware of his behaviour toward me throughout our school days. That being the case, I trust you will understand why I am unwilling to accept your "friend" request.
Perhaps you do not, in fact, understand the effect on a child of being ridiculed, humiliated and subjected to cruel treatment on an almost daily basis over a period of years. I can tell you that by the time I was 12 or 13, I was afraid to venture further than a small "safe zone" around my home, because of my fear of meeting your son or some of the friends he had induced to torment me. I became severely depressed and even thought of committing suicide to escape their behaviour. (If you watch the news, you will know that some bullied children have done just that.) Worst of all, the bullying had a long-lasting effect on my self-image. It was many years before I could believe that I was not the pathetic loser Y said I was, or that anyone could like me for who I am.
I have moved on since then, and I sincerely hope, for his sake, that Y has too. But I would prefer not to be reminded of that extremely painful time every time I log into Facebook. Also, while I realise "friend" can have a different meaning in social networking than it does in real life, I am still not inclined to be "friends" with those who acquiesced in my suffering.
Thanks for understanding.
Sincerely,
Laura Brown
I grew up in a time when adults considered bullying to be no big deal, just something kids did. Most former victims of bullying I know can quote a standard litany of responses they got from the grown-ups they asked for protection. "They're just teasing -- don't be so thin-skinned." "The boys probably just like you." "Ignore them and they'll stop." "Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you." "Don't worry about what other people think of you, just live for yourself [at age 12]." "You must have done something to make them not like you; why don't you try to fit in?" I heard them all. Needless to say, if the adults saying these things had been subjected to similar torment by their own peers, they would have gone running to their lawyers, if not the police.
Nowadays schools in Britain, at least, take bullying a lot more seriously, and many schools have "zero-tolerance" policies. Of course, having a policy and enforcing it are two very different things, but it's better than having no policy and not even acknowledging the problem, which is what happened in my day.
When discussing bullying with friends, I've noticed two things: 1) many, many adults had traumatic experiences with bullies as children, and 2) every single one of them was convinced at the time that they were all alone. Hopefully, the attention being given to bullying now will at least let future victims know they aren't the only ones.
(For an excellent account of childhood bullying from an adult perspective, I recommend Ann-Marie's "Bully Chronicles", accessible from the right sidebar of her blog.)
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Gauguin at Tate Modern
For me, the big revelation in Tate Modern's much-hyped Gauguin show came while looking at the works he painted in Pont-Aven between 1886 and 1888. I had associated his later style so strongly with Tahiti that I was surprised to learn he had first developed it in the countryside of Brittany. While his early paintings there were naturalistic and in a more or less Impressionist style, he had soon moved on to simpler shapes, bold colours and mystical or symbolic elements (such as the fox representing lust in The Loss of Virginity, and the religious imagery in The Yellow Christ and Vision After the Sermon). To emphasise the continuity with the Tahitian paintings, the curators place Harvest: Le Pouldu next to a Tahitian Landscape. Only the vegetation distinguishes the two.
It's not surprising, then, that Gauguin's attitude toward the Bretons was similar to his attitude toward the Tahitians. Arriving in Brittany, he gushed, "I find the wild and the primitive here"; it was only when his fellow French citizens no longer satisfied his thirst for the exotic that he departed for Polynesia. Although the Tate makes some effort to put these patronising views in historical context -- displaying contemporary cartoons poking fun at the Bretons, racist travel posters and so forth -- the exhibition was disappointingly lacking in any critical examination of Gauguin's relationship to his subjects. Indeed, some of the captions sounded like they could have been written in the 19th century themselves: "Over there he generously defended the gentle and naive indigenous peoples against those who oppressed them".
It would have been very interesting if the exhibition had included a Tahitian perspective: How accurate were Gauguin's portrayals of the island's culture? How do they compare to the native people's portrayals of themselves? What do Tahitians think of Gauguin today? The painter's biography, too, raised questions: What happened to the various children he fathered with teenage Polynesian girls? Did he spread syphilis to the islanders? All were unanswered. Despite the brilliance of the paintings, I went away with the sense of a missed opportunity.
It's not surprising, then, that Gauguin's attitude toward the Bretons was similar to his attitude toward the Tahitians. Arriving in Brittany, he gushed, "I find the wild and the primitive here"; it was only when his fellow French citizens no longer satisfied his thirst for the exotic that he departed for Polynesia. Although the Tate makes some effort to put these patronising views in historical context -- displaying contemporary cartoons poking fun at the Bretons, racist travel posters and so forth -- the exhibition was disappointingly lacking in any critical examination of Gauguin's relationship to his subjects. Indeed, some of the captions sounded like they could have been written in the 19th century themselves: "Over there he generously defended the gentle and naive indigenous peoples against those who oppressed them".
It would have been very interesting if the exhibition had included a Tahitian perspective: How accurate were Gauguin's portrayals of the island's culture? How do they compare to the native people's portrayals of themselves? What do Tahitians think of Gauguin today? The painter's biography, too, raised questions: What happened to the various children he fathered with teenage Polynesian girls? Did he spread syphilis to the islanders? All were unanswered. Despite the brilliance of the paintings, I went away with the sense of a missed opportunity.
Saturday, 2 October 2010
More WWT competition photos
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)