A Blog of Bosh

At Staten Island Academy, a reason for every rhyme
Seventy students took their turn in the spotlight yesterday at Staten Island Academy’s annual poetry recital, sharing the rhymes of their favorite poets…
First-place eighth-grade winners were Carey Shuffman, reciting “Host House” by Robert Frost, and Joseph Konigsbert reciting “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” by Edward Lear.
silive | 10 March 2004

Music by women, but not for women only
In addition, the concert will include the works of Margaret Ruthven Lang whose life spanned the years 1867-1972. ‘Her “Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures” are short and easy, a perfect complement to the more complex work of Marion Bauer, who was composing around the same time, Held said, adding, that she plans to include the pictures, by Edward Lear, in the program. Hazel will sing the lyrics and Held will be at the piano for both pieces.
Tri-Town News | 11 March 2004

Neil Ardley
Neil Ardley, who died on February 23 aged 66, achieved distinction in two entirely separate professions, as a jazz composer and an author of informative books for young people; in the former role he wrote and recorded such acclaimed albums as Le Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe and Kaleidoscope Of Rainbows, while in the latter his work sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
[Neil Ardley composed what I consider the best Lear arrangement with his and Ivor Cutler’s version of “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”.]
Telegraph

See Heaven in a wild flower
[A review of Tate Britain’s Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature, until 3 May, by Rachel Campbell-Johnston.]
Art had been suffocated by an overlay of traditions and conventions, straitjacketed by stock academic formulas. A return to nature was Ruskin’s clarion call. “Go to nature in all singleness of heart,” he commanded in his first volume of Modern Painters, “. . . having no other thoughts but to penetrate her meaning . . . rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing.”
The Pre-Raphaelites and their followers did this quite literally. Leaving their stuffy artists’ studios (and the even stuffier compositions that had been concocted on Claudian principles inside them), they headed for the great outdoors, dedicated practitioners of plein-air painting some 20 years before French Impressionism and the era when Manet would paint Monet painting in his open boat. […]
Holman Hunt set off for the Holy Land in the company of Thomas Seddon and Edward Lear; his mission to bring authenticity to biblical depictions. He tramped to a spot “which few travellers visit and none revisit . . . the wretchedest place in the whole world” (the place he believed to be the location of the ancient Sodom, accursed of God) to paint his Scapegoat. Every hair of the sad, cowering creature � it died after the experience of being tethered in a tray of salt for months (animals were harmed in the making of this show) � is counted. Every feature of the mountainous geology is studied with painstaking accuracy.
And yet it was this obsession with geology and consequent realisations that the world was far older than biblical traditions suggested, that led to alternative theories that shook the foundations of faith and eventually led in some quarters to the foundation of a new religion � the religion of art. The birth of Aestheticism was heralded.
Times Online – Entertainment |18 February 2004

Wisdom of David Brent ‘more memorable than Shakespeare’
Shakespeare’s most famous quotations are less well known than the cringeworthy sayings of David Brent, the fictional middle-manager from The Office, a survey claimed yesterday…
Classic literature proved more recognisable than contemporary in only one instance. Thirty-two per cent of people knew that the owl and the pussy cat in Edward Lear’s verse took “some honey and plenty of money wrapped up in a five pound note”. But just 14 per cent knew that J K Rowling’s Harry Potter caught his train to school from King’s Cross station.
Telegraph | 4 February 2004

Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature
Pre-Raphaelite Vision is the first exhibition to focus solely on the deep fascination the Pre-Raphaelites had for the natural world and enables visitors to explore a whole new dimension of their work. The exhibition brings together around 150 works including celebrated paintings such as William Holman Hunt�s Our English Coasts (Strayed Sheep) 1852, John William Inchbold�s Anstey�s Cove, Devon 1853-4 and of course John Everett Millais� Ophelia 1851-2, all of which explore the scientific, religious and social culture of the age.
[I don’t know whether any Lear paintings are included, but, while no pre-raphaelite himself, he was no doubt influenced by Holman Hunt in his landscape painting.]
Tate Britain | 12 February – 3 May 2004