M J Johnson
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The Shape of Water

4/3/2018

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The wife and I rarely make visits to the cinema these days, mainly because we don’t find very much that we consider worth watching, it’s quite common for us to have torn the film to shreds before reaching the car park. Our local cinema, despite the fact that it operates ‘eight screens of magic’, generally only shows the most commercially successful offerings. I read Marvel comics as a teenager, and watched the original Star Wars in my early twenties, but don’t want to see these stories endlessly re-packaged again and again, and have become a little weary, not to say wary, of any more feel-good movies (save me, please!). The current state of the movie industry is I think what happens when money dictates the rules to creativity - the loser is always originality. Nor do I like the way in which the film industry has cynically increased the violence and bad language (in my view, they’d probably disagree, but then they would) in films graded as suitable for younger audiences.

When The Shape of Water was released I was unusually eager to see it. I’ve watched a number of Guillermo del Toro movies, and although I can’t say I’ve adored every single one, I certainly found them absorbing and often thought-provoking. I hadn’t read any of the reviews when I saw The Shape of Water, and still haven’t, so the views stated here are entirely my own. I did know however that The Shape of Water cost very little money to make by movie standards - probably less than some movie stars pick-up for headlining on a picture. From the pre-release blurb about the film I was led to expect something along the lines of a fifties Sci Fi B movie, cross-pollinated with some art-house touches. Yes, all these elements are there, however for myself, and for aforementioned wife, what came across most loud and clear to us was the film’s allegorical voice. I very much doubt whether this will become a ‘must-see’ film in the Trump White House, for it is a tale deeply ingrained with liberality and liberal values.

The story is set in Baltimore in 1962, at the height of the Cold War, presumably at a time before it was necessary to ‘Make America Great Again’. The central character, Eliza, played by Sally Hawkins, works as a cleaner along with her friend, Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, at some kind of secret military establishment. All the main characters in this movie are outsiders, outcasts even; Eliza is mute and Zelda is a down-trodden black woman; Eliza’s friend and neighbour, Giles, played by Richard Jenkins, is a lonely gay man. Eliza, we glean, has a fascination for water, and when an amphibious man, played by Doug Jones, is brought to the secret establishment where she and Zelda work as cleaners, she is immediately fascinated and starts to communicate with him through sign-language. There is a strongly subversive undertone in this movie, with its authority figures, a secret-service man Richard Strickland, played by Michael Shannon, and General Hoyt, played by Nick Searcy, shown to be corrupt, sadistic and decadent. These two share a powerful scene with some excellent dialogue about the quality of ‘decency’. Even the (normally) bad guy, a Russian agent posing as a research scientist, demonstrates more humanity and understanding than these bastions of the establishment.

I don’t do spoilers, so I’ve said more than enough already. I liked this film and can honestly say that I enjoyed watching every frame of it. At a moment in time when the voice of reaction seems to be getting louder and society’s ‘outsiders’ are accorded little value, I am delighted to watch a film, albeit a fantasy, that favours difference and diversity. My previous blog was a review of Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny, who interviewed Franz Stangl in Dusseldorf prison shortly before his death; Stangl had been Kommandant of Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in Poland where approximately a milion ‘outsiders’ perished. As we came out of the cinema, Judith and I agreed that the Nazis would almost certainly have despised and banned this movie and labelled it decadent art.
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So do please see it, if only to piss off a Nazi!

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First Post 2017

4/1/2017

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PictureThe Bullshiteers (with a nod to Hans Holbein) - limited edition print by Tom Johnson
​A friend sent me an email recently enquiring if I was okay because he noticed I hadn’t updated this blog in a while. The truth is that since 23 June, 2016, I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged, and for the first time in my life probably, I began to feel uncomfortable about my British identity. I had always enjoyed the feeling of connectedness to our friends  in mainland Europe that EU membership brought us, along with the longest period of peace and cooperation between nation states in European history. The xenophobes and far-right may view the Battle of the Somme or the Battle of Britain (perhaps backed by the Dam Busters’ theme) as our finest examples of British nationhood; personally, whilst I don’t gainsay the brave sacrifice of those men and women, I ‘d personally opt for the abolition of slavery, the creation of the welfare state and the NHS.

I don’t think the EU is perfect, but then, what political model is? The European Court of Human Rights is something to be admired, and we may well lose some of our workers’ rights by leaving. Of course, the right wing press has whinged on for years about Brussels red-tape, but it’s always easy to find fault. I certainly don’t share the UKIP leader’s disgust for the EU passport; in fact, I’m fairly sure I share none of Nigel Farage’s Little-England views. I find it extraordinary that this man, the product of a private education at Dulwich College, an ex commodities dealer, and proclaimed worshipper at the shrine of Margaret Thatcher, has somehow promoted himself as the crusading hero at the forefront of an anti-elitist battle to reassert the rights of the ordinary man (sorry, I should have inserted the word ‘decent’ - ‘ordinary, decent, man’ - which in the lexicon of the right wing seems to mean ‘xenophobic reactionary’). Farage is a man who has regularly demonstrated his utter contempt for the intellectual lightweightedness of his fellow UKIPers, so I am incredulous that he can actually embrace ‘ordinary people’ -  at arms length perhaps, whilst wearing latex gloves and a nose-peg. But Farage didn’t pull off Brexit alone, although he’d like us to think he did; let’s give credit where credit is due, Boris Johnson was actually the campaign’s figurehead with Michael Gove at his right hand. When I consider this opportunistic pair, I  can’t help thinking of Jabba the Hutt and his sidekick Salacious Crumb from Return of the Jedi. This unattractive twosome, so deserving of each other (as demonstrated by Gove’s subsequent stabbing of the Johnson back), once guaranteed their loyalty to David Cameron, now a former tenant of 10 Downing Street as a result of trusting them. They seemed prepared to sink to any level of vulgar populism during the debacle that was the referendum debate.

Shortly before standing down as Prime Minister, David Cameron claimed that he didn't regret holding the referendum because he was so completely committed to democracy. He blamed EU rules on immigration as the reason he lost - nothing whatever to do with any of his domestic policies, like his party’s failure to build enough decent homes for our people or the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Apparently, he’d once joked at a meeting with EU leaders, when some had voiced caution about holding a referendum in the first place, “Don't worry, I'm a winner”. So, this pain we're all suffering could be seen as stemming from one man's arrogance. I daresay the Murdoch press or one or other of the big publishing houses will see him alright with a million or two as an advance on his memoirs. I now hear that our failed Prime Minister is being tipped for the top job at NATO. Mmmmm ...
2016 was a very odd year indeed. Does anyone recall the public vote In March called by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to suggest names for their new research ship? Overwhelming numbers voted for ‘Boaty McBoatface’ - 124,000 votes with its nearest rival polling just 34,000. However, it seems that ‘the will of the British people’ a phrase so often quoted at us by our politicians post-Brexit, could in this particular case be waived in favour of upholding our national dignity - the ship was subsequently named RRS David Attenborough (phew!). Yet, when it came to the most important referendum there has ever been (whose remit was always stated as advisory), less than 38% of the eligible voting population was enough to stand for the overwhelming will of the British people.

The thing that upset me most about Brexit was the lack of intelligent debate during the campaign, especially, if not solely, from its victors. However, the Leave camp did plumb depths which I personally have never witnessed before in a British electoral campaign. The Leave politicians all seem to have recently distanced themselves from their much-paraded claim “We send the EU 350 million a week - Let’s fund the NHS instead - Let’s take back control”. And no politician with any decency could have stood before that poster, as Farage did, of (brownish-skinned) migrants streaming across the Slovenian(?) border with the caption “Breaking Point - The EU has failed us all - we must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders.” Or what about Michael Gove’s derogatory remarks about the considered opinions of experts on the bad effects of leaving the EU?

It’s hard to gauge the Brexit referendum’s impact on that other big election of 2016, the US Presidential election of Donald Trump in November (or, is that the Precedential Election, Donald?); it was a double-whammy for Remain voters like myself. The victorious campaigns had many similarities: they were shockingly light on fact-based argument, didn’t shy away from making outlandish statements, were quick to berate the press as biased whenever it criticised them, and both campaigns were remarkably swift to identify, claim and draw to their hearts the large numbers of disenchanted voters on both sides of the pond who found themselves hurting and seeking someone to blame for their ills. What came to light shortly after the US election was the influence that the (presumably self-named) Alt-Right Breitbart News organisation exercised over both events. I had never even heard of Breitbart or of its executive chairman Stephen Bannon before; he’s the man now destined to become Donald  Trump’s Chief Strategist at the White House. Yikes!

We are being told on both sides of the Atlantic that our real enemy is a global liberal elite. Across the water, Donald Trump’s cunning plan to ‘drain the swamp’ of Washington insiders is to backslide on a number of promises he made to his electors during his campaign and fill his White House team with lobbyists and insiders of the very worst kind. What strikes me as particularly scary is Trump and the Alt-Right’s lack of respect for democracy. One of the greatest vulnerabilities in democracy is a requirement on the part of those who partake in elections to conduct themselves with a certain level of decorum, honesty and fair-mindedness. Do you think Vladimir Putin (who may, or may not, have authorised a few computers to be hacked in order to help Donald win)  really admires him, or does he think he’s a moron, like the three million majority of Americans who voted against him?

The first book I completed in 2017, which I sincerely hope doesn’t demonstrate any kind of prescience on my part, was The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans.  It charts the forces at work in Germany from the end of the Bismarck era, through the Wilhelmine period which led up to the end of WWI, then on through the years of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis from fringe group to power. I always believed Hitler was elected Reich Chancellor by popular vote. This wasn’t the case; he was installed as Chancellor through a deal with some right-wing politicians who were under the woeful misapprehension that they would easily be able to control him. They couldn’t have been more mistaken. The Nazis, who possessed no respect for democracy whatever, never won an election by fair means, and once they’d achieved power, they quickly suppressed (often by killing) any opposition. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the way they seized and held onto power is the speed with which they managed to silence any opposition - within just weeks of assuming power they had established the notorious Dachau concentration camp along with several others to detain their political opponents.  This is the first book in a trilogy by Evans about the Third Reich which was clearly written with the layman in mind. It is beautifully accessible in its writing and Evans’ scholarship gives a superb overview of this terrible period in European history.

In light of our Brexit referendum and the US elections, the banal rhetoric, the racist slurs, blatant lies, these words seemed even more chilling words whilst reading The Coming of the Third Reich:

"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be ... The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but the power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (Mein Kampf)

Can’t allow Hitler the final word on my blog.
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I wish all lovers of freedom and democracy, however they may have chosen to vote, a happy, healthy and prosperous 2017!

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Musical Weekend

3/5/2016

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My wife is currently reading the autobiography of Helen Keller, who, from a very early age, lost both her sight and hearing. I simply can’t imagine what that must be like - a very different kind of life I guess, though, certainly in Keller’s case, not without joy and a sense of fulfilment . It’s hard for anyone born (especially since the invention of broadcast sound) to conceive of a life without music; it’s all around us a lot of the time. Just step into the garden a moment: hear the radio blaring from the guys working on the loft conversion in the next street, the pounding bass of a passing car as it drives by, or the sound of a child practising piano scales.

A running theme of our past Bank Holiday weekend seems to have been popular music - not intentionally planned though, things simply fell out that way.  We’d booked several months back to see Eric Bibb in concert at the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells. We possess several of his albums and have always enjoyed listening to these, so it was very satisfying to get an opportunity to catch him live. He is a highly accomplished blues performer, a beautiful songwriter with a distinctive and very pleasing voice. On Sunday evening he had a band of excellent musicians and backing vocalists accompanying him. His daughter Yana Bibb,  a skilled jazz vocalist, provided the support for the first part of the evening.  The Bibb family are something of a musical dynasty: Eric Bibb’s father Leon was very active in the New York folk music scene of the 60’s, his godfather was the legendary Paul Robeson and his uncle was the jazz pianist and composer John Lewis. You get the feeling that the musical luminaries of the sixties like Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Odetta  etc regularly dropped by the Bibb family home like my mother’s neighbours in the valleys of South Wales used to pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. Eric Bibb himself moved to Sweden in the Seventies and now lives in Finland. I see one of the dates he has for his current tour is Porthcawl in South Wales - a favoured holiday destination of my family’s when I was a child. I’d love to see him again if I had the opportunity and excuse to pay a visit to Wales at the end of the month! He’s playing at a number of locations all over the UK - so I hope you take the opportunity to see him. Check out Eric Bibb's website for details.

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​The reason why I said our weekend had a musical theme was because we also watched the George Harrison documentary, Living in the Material World, directed by Martin Scorsese.  This is a film in two parts, beautifully realised through hundreds of clips and interviews with those who knew George. If you grew up in the Sixties as I did, The Beatles were inescapably part of your life. And George, the youngest of the four, was in many ways the most fascinating and complex character, often upstaged by Paul and John in the song-writing stakes, he too created some wonderful songs including Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, My Sweet Lord and dozens more. If you haven’t seen this film (I’d caught about half of the second part on TV a few years back)and if you’re interested in The Beatles, The Sixties, George Harrison, or all three, this is an excellent film which I can highly recommend.

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The Complete Maus

22/6/2014

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Occasionally, but very occasionally, a piece of literature or a work of art pops up that grabs you by the ruff and shakes you up.  It sends a shiver down the spine and sets off an echo that goes on reverberating through the depths of your being. It’s the kind of response that sadly seems to occur less frequently as one grows older, possibly because our field of vision has broadened; at least I hope this is the case and it isn’t simply because we’ve become jaded by years of exposure to all the various stimuli that constantly bombard us! I’m not talking about the current swift-hit flavour-of-the-month - the must-see book, play, film or exhibition that five years on is barely recollected. Anyway, all I really know is what pure joy it is when you discover a piece of work that can still stun you in this way, that has power to alter your perception of place and time, make you reassess something you believed was understood and assimilated long ago.

For me The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman was just such an experience. It traces Spiegelman’s own parents’early lives in Poland and their journey through the Holocaust. It won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1992 - becoming the first graphic novel ever to do so - in my view an accolade very well deserved. Spiegelman depicts his comic-book cast as animals: Jewish people are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, Americans are dogs, Swedes are reindeer. By impersonalising the characters in this way and with a deceptively simple drawing style, Spiegelman in Maus manages to achieve something utterly remarkable, he makes us look at and see again stuff that most of us will have encountered with open-mouthed horror many times before, but in a totally new way. It becomes one of the most powerful personal testimonies I have ever read, as he, Spiegelman, interviews his not always endearing father in Rego Park, New York for his planned account of the Holocaust. We understand something of Spiegelman junior’s guilt about his mother’s suicide in 1968 shortly after he’d experienced a nervous breakdown, and the lifelong angst he felt about the death of a brother he never knew - at one point in Maus he starts drawing himself as a man hiding behind a mouse mask. He very cleverly conveys to the reader the extremely long-cast shadows of Auschwitz and Dachau, and the power of these camps to go on souring the lives of those who not only survived their inhuman cruelty, but were not yet even born.

I would simply run out of superlatives explaining this book’s worth.


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Turner, The Sea and Therese

17/4/2014

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PictureNational Maritime Museum, Greenwich
If, like us, you enjoy a wide range of interests, then you’ll appreciate the regular dilemma in the Johnson household is simply choosing what to prioritise out of the many great things always available to see and do. Judith has been pointing out since last November how much she wanted to visit Turner and the Sea at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. We managed to get there about a week before the closing bell - the exhibition ends very shortly on 21 April. A lifelong admirer of this great English painter, I am so glad that we didn’t miss it. As a schoolboy who pursued Art as a main subject, I was deeply captivated by his paintings, more so probably than by any other British artist. I was mesmerised by the painterly virtuosity he possessed. He seemed to own an ability to bend light, to create both movement and momentum in his works, to blend, morph and fade his palette almost to the point of abstraction. He is unique, and it has always saddened me that there isn’t a Turner Museum entirely dedicated to his work and the large legacy of paintings, studies and sketches he bequeathed the Nation in his will. There is of course a large changing display at the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain.

It was marvellous to experience this current Greenwich exhibition, entirely dedicated to Turner’s lifelong fascination with the sea. In 1796, aged just twenty-one, Turner exhibited ‘Fishermen at Sea’ at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition - the first of many marine paintings he produced throughout his fairly long life. I suppose the sea as a subject is not altogether surprising for someone of our island race, where it’s never possible to be more than seventy miles from a coastline. Incidentally, the majority of Turner’s sea paintings were concentrated in the earlier and later years of his life.

On the same day, we managed to get across to the Finborough Theatre, Earls Court to see an excellent musical adaptation of Therese Raquin. The novel is of course by Emile Zola, a book which I’m sorry to say I’ve not (yet) read. I mentioned that we were  planning to see this production to a friend who is not only very well-read but also a great aficionado of musical theatre. However, I couldn’t persuade him to come along with us, his email back read, “Oooh, I read the novel at university, it’s an awfully dark subject for a musical ...” My wife, Judith, who has also read the book, was equally quite intrigued at the prospect of seeing it staged in this way.

The show, I am pleased to say, exceeded expectations. We were totally drawn in and captivated by the action. The production design managed to conjure up the grim claustrophobic environment where these lower middle-class Parisians act out their sad drama of betrayal, repressed sexual passions, murder and hellish despair. It’s hardly any great surprise that Zola’s novel was considered scandalous in its day - it is still immensely powerful stuff!

The main roles are fully inhabited by Julie Atherton, Tara Hugo, Jeremy Legat and Ben Lewis. The singing, by a surprisingly large ensemble cast for such a tiny venue, is excellent. I imagine the ease with which the drama appears to unfold before its audience, only goes to demonstrate the skill of its performers. I am no singer myself but I know enough to understand how technically demanding performing this work has to be. The musical score is composed by Craig Adams with book, lyrics and direction by Nona Sheppard. It seems a shame that such a powerful production, due to close shortly when it comes to the end of its allotted run, can’t be re-mounted in a bigger venue for a larger audience to appreciate what is a wholly impressive piece of work from everyone concerned.


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Art and Gravity

13/11/2013

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Over the past week my wife and I have had the pleasure of visiting our local cinema twice. The two pieces of work we saw had relatively few things in common: they were projected onto a screen; they were well crafted; they were both excellent. However, that's about it as far as the similarities went!

The first was The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett in the NT Live season. This was an encore performance - so not exactly 'live', as it had been recorded a few years back. And I am so glad we managed to see it. Anything written by Alan Bennett is always worth seeing in my book, and it was lovely to see the late Richard Griffiths in what must have been one of his last stage performances. He played the poet WH Auden in the latter years of his life and the play culminates in an imagined meeting between Auden and his estranged friend and former work collaborator Benjamen Britten (Alex Jennings). The play is very funny, yet touching at the same time. The structure Bennett has chosen for his play is fascinating, because he has set the piece in a rehearsal room. The real actors are portraying fictional actors in a rehearsal space, preparing to put on a play about an imaginary meeting between Auden and Britten. The stage manager, whose task it is to take charge of the 'run through' on the instruction of its absent director, is played with great warmth by Frances de la Tour. The play was directed by Nicholas Hytner and the supporting cast, many of whom are familiar faces in the NT repertory, were all very accomplished. All round a superbly crafted piece of theatre.

Our second visit to the Tunbridge Wells Odeon a few days later was to see Gravity. This has only just been released in the UK, stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and has quite deservedly received nigh-on a hundred percent perfect notices from all its reviewers. I tweeted shortly after watching it that it is the first 3D movie I've seen that I actually really liked. I normally find the rigmarole of wearing the glasses and waiting for the next bit of 3D action to make me go 'Oooh' or 'Ahh' simply annoying (my wife has implied on occasion that I'm a 'grumpy old man'! To this I say - Hurumph!). However, I'd never seen a 3D movie before that totally engaged me from its opening to closing credits. Although I'm sure this movie would have done so in 2D too! Its stars are both excellent, particularly Bullock, who is on screen for about ninety percent of the picture. The dialogue is sparse and lean, the CGI effects are truly astounding, yet it's the human story (another thing in common with The Habit of Art!) unfolding before our very eyes that really commands the audience's attention. I can't imagine Sandra Bullock not receiving an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for this, and it may well prove a fruitless year for any other film actress about to put in a career best performance. It was directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who I suspect will be up for an Oscar as well. And I daresay the film will be nominated in several other categories too. This is definitely a movie worth seeing on a cinema screen as it is truly spectacular.

So all in all a week when any personal requirements for mental and visual stimulation were met most satisfactorily.


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Innsbruck and Emperor Maximilian's Tomb

16/10/2013

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PictureStreet performers taking a rest in Innsbruck
This summer we opted for two weeks, mainly walking, in the Tyrol. The only real variation in this plan was a daytrip to Innsbruck by bus and train for a day of 'culture cramming'. This was the second time we've visited Innsbruck, and hopefully not the last, as we still have more to see. We spent the morning at the Ferdinandeum Art Gallery/Museum where they have a collection that is well worth viewing, notably a Rembrandt and a charming painting by Peter Brueghel the Younger. We also particularly enjoyed the paintings of Austrian artist Albin Egger-Lienz.

After a break for lunch we revisited the Hofkirche, to be once again awed by the magnificence and artistry of the Tomb of the Emperor Maximilian 1. The tomb, as its intended to do, dominates the central nave of the church. However, the Emperor himself is actually buried elsewhere and had already been dead for many years by the time this monument to the greatness and the might of the Holy Roman Empire was completed. The work has understandably and deservedly been hailed as the finest example of German Renaissance sculpture. At the centre of the monument is a massive black marble sarcophagus (presumably empty). Sited at the top of this structure is a bronze statue of the Emperor Maximillian, proudly kneeling in humble supplication before God. It is a truly marvellous piece of propaganda!

The skill of the many master craftsmen who produced this incredible work of art has to be seen to be believed. To produce such a masterpiece, the Habsburgs employed many of the finest artists and craftspeople at work in the sixteenth century. The intricacies of the wrought iron screen around the tomb were achieved by a Prague master craftsman called Schmiedhammer, and the bronze statue of the Emperor himself and the 24 (quite stunning) marble reliefs around the tomb, depicting scenes from Maximilian's life, were mostly the work of Alexander Colin. However, there is still more to see: surrounding the tomb, standing  in a kind of homage, are 28 larger-than-life-size statues of Maximillian's ancestors and contemporaries, with a few mythical characters like King Arthur of England thrown in for good measure. This particular statue and several others were designed by the artist Albrecht Dürer, and it is widely regarded as the finest depiction of a knight found anywhere in Renaissance Art.

The bronze statues have acquired an austere dark patina over time. But I have to admit to taking a little profane delight when I saw the shining bright codpiece sported by Rudolph 1 - irresistibly prominent and within easy reach, Rudolph's lucky charms, polished to a fine sheen by countless touching fingers over the centuries. What an ignominy!

The following images which concentrate on the workmanship and detail rather than the overall majesty of the tomb, which no photograph could ever really capture, were taken by Tom Johnson and are presented here with his kind permission.


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Vlaho Bukovac

30/1/2013

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PictureView from Atelier Window, Cavtat
I thought I might do an occasional blog piece about museums/interesting places I've visited that may not always get the attention they deserve. I mean, there's little or no point at all in me singing the praises of really well known tourist spots is there? Let's face it, finding out about somewhere that's well-known is a bit like trying to get a book about one of the top-twenty artists - basically, just pop along to any remaindered bookshop and I can almost guarantee they'll have books on Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Gaugin, Cezanne, Rodin, Vermeer and all the other usual suspects. However, the work of so many exceptional artists is often astonishingly badly represented on our high streets.

How about the work of Vlaho Bukovac for instance? Unless you've been to Dubrovnik you've quite possibly never heard of him. His family home was only sixteen km from Dubrovnik in the beautiful coastal town of Cavtat. He was born there in 1855 and from his earliest years showed a definite precociousness as an artist. In 1877 he went to Paris where he was swiftly accepted as a talent. He travelled widely in his lifetime, however Bukovac retained his link with Cavtat all his life. He took a post as professor of fine Art in Prague in his late forties and spent the final twenty odd years of his life working there before his death in 1922. He was prolific and produced over 2000 works of art in his lifetime.

PictureTwo Nudes From His Time in Paris
During his life his work attracted the interest of a couple of Northern British Industrialists, the LeDoux and Fox families of Liverpool and Harrogate. The National Museum, Liverpool and the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate still have examples of his work which you can see by following this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/vlaho-bukovac

There is however a feast of Bukovac's work in various churches and galleries around Dubrovnik. It's possible to see some very good paintings of his at the excellent Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik. But for my money, and best of all, is to see his work in his own charming house at Cavtat where you can enjoy a large number of his paintings from just about every period of his life (even childhood doodles!). His painting ability was really exceptional, somehow managing to combine a light impressionistic touch with an almost photographic quality.

PictureA Late Self-Portrait of Vlaho Bukovac



If you're not planning a Croatian holiday in the near future, then why not search images for Vlaho Bukovac on Google?

Definitely worth a look!


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Artist/Animator Interview

29/8/2012

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PictureTom Johnson directing a member of the cast
Very shortly I plan to release the third and final part of the animated cat and mouse trilogy of short promotional films that began with A Gripping Tail and continued with The Purr-fect Crime. I thought it was time to praise the excellent hard work of my son Tom Johnson who has been responsible for almost all the artistic presentation of Niedermayer & Hart. This is the first blog interview I've ever done! Here goes!

Martin: Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
 
Tom: I studied Fine Art (Painting) at Wimbledon School of Art and spent three or four years afterwards doing various jobs to pay the bills as well as putting on a few shows in and around
London. I've been working full-time as an art teacher and running an art department over the last four years but have continued to produce art work as well as doing some open studio
exhibitions. My work has mainly been commissioned portraiture. I still paint people but have stopped taking on commissions for the time being because of the limited time I have.
 
Martin: Where did the idea of making an animation to promote the book come from?
 
Tom: I'd been running a local community art project the previous year and the theme had been stop-motion animation, so it was a medium I'd been experimenting with already. I've always loved the animations of Ray Harryhausen - in particular the famous fighting skeletons scene from Jason and the Argonauts.  So animation was something that I'd always wanted to try, and I think it was my mother who suggested it might be fun to do an animation to promote
Niedermayer & Hart.
 
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Martin: Why did you choose two cute characters to promote a fairly dark and disturbing horror/thriller?
 
Tom: The cat and mouse theme immediately conjured-up a sort of Tom and Jerry rivalry - the idea is that the book (because there's only one copy) is compulsive reading and unputdownable - they both want to get their hands on it.

Martin: Art imitating life then!

Tom: You hope!

Martin: Alright, carry on!

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Tom: There's no tie-in to the actual plot of Niedermayer & Hart at all. Their characters developed as I made them out of plasticine, although I did have an idea about how I wanted them to look.  I often doodle cartoon cats and mice.  Their personalities really began to emerge once I'd started shooting. You feel that although there's some animosity between them they reluctantly accept each other too.
 
Martin: How long does it take to make each animation, start to finish?

Tom: After making the figures and the initial set-building and painting, and making the tiny props for the characters to use, I suppose the first two (A Gripping Tail and The Purr-fect Crime) took about two whole days, to shoot the scenes and then to edit everything together before adding sound effects, music and all the titles and credits. The third instalment took longer - more like four days - because of a few more complicated and fiddly bits that were involved.
 
Martin: What kind of software did you use to make the films? 

Tom: A Gripping Tail was made with a piece of software called ZU-3D on a PC, but the second and third were made with i-Stop Motion on the Mac. There's not much difference between the picture quality of the animations but I found i-Stop Motion easier to use and there were more options when it came to the post-production. 

Martin: How did you do the sound effects, voices etc? 

Tom: I recorded all of the sound effects myself, straight into the computer, with the exception of the music tracks (although you can hear my ukulele and some singing in the animations). I spent quite a bit of time recording and re-recording sounds whilst sitting on the sofa, watching clips over and over again. Sometimes I had to overlap several sound effects in order to get it right. It's the kind of thing you need to have a bit of privacy for - anyone except for my girlfriend that heard me making snoring-cat sounds and little mouse noises would think I'd gone barmy.

Martin: Most people don't know you like I do!

Tom: Thanks, Dad.

Martin: Would you like to do more animations in the future, or have you had enough of  messing around with plasticine?
 
Tom: I'd like to do some more in the
future but my main priority right now is my painting.

Picture
Martin: You also designed the book cover for Niedermayer & Hart. What did that entail?
 
Tom: I made a large watercolour painting of Valle Crucis in North Wales for the main image and for this I had to work from a composite image which I made using photos of the abbey taken in summer along with winter photos taken a few years ago in Kent when we had a heavy snowfall. When I was happy with the finished piece I scanned the painting into the computer.  I used Photoshop to set up the dimensions for the front and back covers as well as the spine allowing extra space for what the printers call "bleed" and for crop marks. I added in the text and after a lot of adjustments the file was sent off to the printer. We had to do one extra tweak after seeing the first proof, but in the end I was really happy with the result.
 
Martin: So, what are you working on at the moment?
 
Tom: I've just completed a portrait which I've been working on for some time. The actual time that I've spent on it probably only amounts to a few weeks work, but over the same period I've worked on various commissions and generally been very busy with my day job, so it's a great feeling to finally get it finished. I've also got a few more paintings in the pipeline which I'm looking forward to working on.
 
Martin: Thanks very much, Tom - both for taking part in this interview and for all the help you've given me with the book. Without your help the finished product most certainly wouldn't have had such a professional look. I know I'm probably biased but I think it's a lovely book to look at and hold - a real thing of beauty. 

Please take a look at Tom's website at www.tomjohnsonart.com

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Huge Caravaggio Stash

11/7/2012

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PictureThe Flagellation of Christ by Caravaggio
I don't know if you saw it reported in the media this week but Art historians in Italy have for the past two years been secretly working on a collection of paintings and sketches that were found in the workshop of Simone Peterzano that may be attributable to Caravaggio. The young Caravaggio is known to have worked as an apprentice to Peterzano between 1584 and 1588. The collection has apparently been housed in a castle in Milan, Castello Sforzesco, since 1924. If the find can be authenticated then the paintings could be worth an estimated 700 million euros (£560 million).

I met my artist son yesterday for a coffee and knowing him to be a huge Caravaggio fan, excitedly told him what I'd read. He immediately checked out the report on his iphone and commented, "That would be brilliant - if it's for real!"

Slightly crestfallen, I asked him what he meant.

He reminded me of the Van Meegren forgeries of the paintings of Jan Vermeer and how the art world, desperately wanting to believe, had hoodwinked itself. It made me think of other situations like the notorious 'Hitler Diaries' where serious historians, and the media themselves that time, were fooled into parting with lots of dosh.

Whatever the outcome, it's interesting stuff and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on how things unfold. Caravaggio the man was, from what we know about him, quite a difficult individual, perhaps not someone you'd want at your summer barbecue with granny present. He had a fierce temper and was a renowned brawler. He had to get out of Rome pretty fast after killing someone and he is believed later to have wounded a Knight of Malta in a fight. His death in 1610 at the age of 38 has been put down to a variety of natural causes as well as there being a possibility he was murdered. When you look at his life there were, it seems, a number of people who may have been keen to 'do away with him'. If he hadn't been such a damn fine painter it's unlikely I reckon he'd have survived as long as he did!

PictureBlind Leading the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
A few years ago my wife Judy and I had the privilege of seeing his painting 'The Flagellation of Christ' (oil on canvas, 1607) at its home in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. We had caught an occasional glimpse of the great work as we slowly made our way along the long narrow gallery towards the enclosed room at the far end which is maintained at a constant temperature where the Caravaggio is housed. Our sense of excitement increased as we got closer and closer to the work and to be honest we didn't arrive too fast as our progress was constantly hampered by numerous other great works of art, like The Blind Leading the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (tempura on canvas, 1568). However, eventually we got there and despite being constantly hassled by a guard to move on from the moment we arrived, the experience can only be described as sublime. If the man's handiwork could move us so powerfully from the point where we stand in time, having grown up and lived in a world where we have been constantly bombarded by powerful images, great movie special effects, CGI et al, to be so deeply affected by what one difficult man achieved with a bit of paint on some canvas four hundred years ago is truly amazing, don't you think? Just imagine the effect such realistic painting would have had on a 16th century peasant filled with superstitious belief. It must have seemed like you were there - actually a witness at Christ's passion!

I have always been an art lover, but on this occasion, I was struck dumb by the painting's power. Believe me, the photograph just doesn't do it justice. Perhaps for the first time I was truly able to comprehend why the accolade of 'masterpiece' can only be attributed to a handful of great works.


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