Lions in the Street

"Lions in the street and roaming ..."



"... dogs in heat rabid foaming ... "



" ... a beast caged in the heart of the city."

How better than a little Jim Morrison to get the old story off and on its way? What we're looking at here are some pictures of Athens by the light of the full moon taken last night. Apparently, it is a long-standing custom here that, on such evening, the lights that normally illuminate the Parthenon are turned off and all comers are let up on the Acropolis for free.

Although the images don't really register the fact here, we were told that in the moonlight the marble of the Parthenon "glows." What I like about this photo are the silhouettes of the visitors in the foreground; indeed, in the moonlight, the mingling of shadows cast by people and fragments of the temple itself made the whole expanse look like a kind of gorgon's garden filled with the petrified handiwork of some sinister Medusa.

Such a poetic mood was clearly not taking in all of the visitors. One snatch of overheard conversation went as follows, between a Dutch tourist (speaking in English) and a local guard:

"Why are all the lights turned off?"

"This is done every full moon so that people can visit the temple."

"But I can't shoot my video!"

"Well, why don't you just enjoy being here and seeing the site for yourself?"

"But I can't shoot my VIDEO!"

The mind boggles! To recover from that nonsense and to reclaim the poetic mood, let's get back to Jim Morrison:



" ... one morning he awoke in a strange hotel, with the strange creature groaning beside him."



Okay, this was a strange hotel where I found myself waking up and sitting on the toilet. More disturbingly, I was trying to read this "sanskrit" on the back of the door. (Obviously, the worms who did this lovely eating didn't really know sanskrit, but that cut little ice in my dream-state).



I'm not sure what the problem was: maybe the room was too hot in this B & B in Dorset and I should have turned down the temperature on my Dimplex!



Or maybe it was the excessively loud ticking of this carriage clock on the mantle. A family heirloom, you say? Perhaps a retirement gift? Surely, too nice to just leave a fine clock like this in a guestroom in a B & B?



Or then again, maybe not! I picked up this P.O.S. expecting it to weigh five pounds or something and my hand nearly shot through the ceiling. What a piece of crap!



But, good times were had and dear friend Catherine was very kind to put us all up. Fun!

Best Art Commentary Ever?

While at Knole, a lavish country house in Kent, over the past weekend, Old Ken heard what was probably the best art commentary of all time. Standing before this stunning portraity of Renaissance painter—and real looker—Sofonisba Anguissola by Anthony Van Dyck, one person said to the other in full period accent: " 'I say, squire, I'll pay you 100 doubloons to paint my mother-in-law as I see her.'"

Priceless!

The Christmas Grotesque

With the arrival of the holiday season, a new and strange feature has appeared on the British cultural landscape: Santa's Grotto. As was intimated in the previous images from the "Eskimo fiesta" in Croydon, these spaces are installed in shopping malls, in community centers and so on. But why, so Old Ken found himself asking, should Santa Claus inhabit a grotto? And what do grottoes have to do with Christmas?

Obviously, some fieldwork was necessary to get to the bottom of these mysteries. So, Old Ken set out for one of the West End's busiest shopping centers to see Santa's Grotto in action.



What becomes rapidly clear is that whatever exactly Santa's Grotto is, it certainly is difficult to see. Installed below ground level in the bowels of the department store, a truly circuitous path must be followed to arrive at the Grotto; one clerk in this particular store described the path to the Grotto as "maze-like." I think she is right—there is something labyrinthine about Santa's Grotto and, more generally, about the Christmas Grotesque.



Alas, here the fieldwork foundered. For, manned by several officious, clip-board carrying guards and the hulking baby carriages visible in the photograph above, our entry into the Grotto was completely blocked. All we were allowed was the small peek depicted in the previous image. But where exactly was Santa? And what happened in this grotto? Turning to our friend the internet, Old Ken found some answers from a surprising place. Apparently, in the Cambodian village of Arey Ksach, the grotto shown above was constructed to mark the Christmas season. According to http://www.parish-without-borders.net:

"Outside the church the villagers had erected a large grotto to represent the cave where Christ was born. It was almost as large as the church itself and seemed to be made of piled fish traps covered with plastic rice bags stitched together and spray painted a mottled green. After mass the whole congregation went outside to pray before the grotto and then to go in to kiss the statue of the baby Jesus."


As wonderfully weird as this mixture of cultural traditions is, a certain consistency can be observed. That is, according to one tradition, Jesus was actually born in a grotto below the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (reputedly constructed by the mother of Constantine, the emperor who converted the Roman empire to Christianity) and then moved to a manger nearby. By this tradition, below the marble floor in the image above—just visible through this hole perforated in the silver, fourteen-pointed star—lies the grotto in which Jesus was born. Accordingly, what has happened in this Cambodian village is that a grotto is created to house sculptural representations of the characters from the Nativity scene.

But, what are we to make of these British people who place into this grotto Santa Claus—a figure who certainly had nothing to do with the Nativity in the Bible? And what does any of this have to do with the grotesque? Let's take that second query first. As we know, grotesque is etymologically derived from grotto. The English term "grotesque" comes from the early modern French "crotesque," an adaptation of the Old French "crote" or Italian "grotta" (meaning cave)—a corrution of the Latin (and ultimately Greek) "crypta". The Renaissance in Italy was a time of extensive excavation as ground was cleared for rebuilding and ancient remains uncovered. Promptly thereafter, the word "grotesque" seems to have entered numerous modern languages. As the Oxford English Dictionary explains: "The etymological sense of grottesca would be ‘painting appropriate to grottos’. The special sense is commonly explained by the statement that grotte, ‘grottoes’, was the popular name in Rome for the chambers of ancient buildings which had been revealed by excavations, and which contained those mural paintings that were the typical examples of ‘grotesque.'"

But, "grotesque" has come to mean much more than this. It connotes the exaggerated, the absurd, bizarre, and ludicrous—that which is fantastically strange, and not a little spooky. As literary critic Geoffrey Harpham has claimed: "The groteque is a structure, the structure of estrangement. Suddenness and surprise [...] are essential elements in this estrangement; the familiar and commonplace must be suddenly subverted or undermined by the uncanny or alien."


Now, I would suggest that popular culture has produced many recent versions of this Christmas grotesque. From Billy Bob Thornton's filthy-bearded, hard-drinking, anal-sex-loving "Bad Santa" ...


... to the elongated, furry fingers of Jim Carrey's "Grinch." Yet, as the student of popular culture will readily recognize, these modern Christmas grotesqueries come from a long and storied past.


Social historian Ronald Hutton has admirably described how the "ritual year" of late medieval England began with the run-up to Christmas—a season of revels, when houses would be decked with the greenery and the work-a-day cycle of life interrupted by excessive behavior. Overseeing these festivities were a cast of playful miscreants—Lords of Misrule and Boy Bishops (children who acted as the leading religious authorities of the land). But, like the aesthetic of the grotesque itself, these figures of excess were transitory, serving to puncture holes into the fabric of everyday life, which would then be repaired once the decorations had been taken down and the Christmas season was over.

And so it is at the shopping malls. That is, the grotto structures in which British children visit Santa Clause are not permanent. They are temporarily erected for the holiday and typically taboo behavior—such as taking pictures in malls, as Avid Vermont Reader has keenly noted—is positively encouraged. Thus, Old Ken wonders if the Santa's Grotto and the Christmas grotesque really superimpose two fantasy structures upon one another. On the one hand, you have some random guy who, for a period of three weeks, is hired to dress up like a buffoon in brightly-colored clothing and to exaggerate (by means of prostheses) his girth and hairiness, thus signalling his appetitive, excessive nature. During this small segment of time, such a temporarily-transformed man is not only allowed but paid to do what otherwise would be completely taboo (at least in Britain): hang out all day in a mall wearing funny clothes as one stranger after another pays to place their child on his lap. In his grotto, Santa Claus is surely an exaggerated figure of this jolly, seasonal relaxation of taboo and, thus, centerpiece of the Christmas grotesque.

But, surely there is (at least) one other fantasy operating here. I think it works something like this: down into the depths of a structure we track, following a labyrthine pathway, seeking a hidden and closely-protected cave. From such a cave, we know, once came a divine being. Now, we need not draw upon psychoanalysis to observe that such a passage brings us to a kind of womb—a point only underscored by the strange, Medusa-like tendrils surrounding the Sancta Sanctorum in Bethlehem visible in the photograph above.

So, what are we doing if - - imagining ourselves here as the Grotto's ideal visitor, the parent with child - - we bring our young being to this womb's replica. What is the purpose? Is it a sacrifice? Is it some sort of initiation rite? Although Old Ken's first-hand fieldwork is admittedly limited here, neither of these possibilities seem terribly convincing.

A more compelling option is suggested by comparison with the standard "Santa encounter" in the US. There, children are simply brought to the mall to sit on Santa's knee in full, public view. By contrast, isn't the implication of placing the child in a re-creation of the birthplace of Christ that he/she could be the second-coming embodied? Perhaps, this helps us to understand the seemingly-incomprehensible presence of Santa Claus in this primal scene. In this reading, the frightening, apocalyptic possibilities of this grotesque revelation about one's own child are mitigated by the reassuring presence of Santa who effectively functions as a fetish. In Santa's Grotto, we meet and embrace both possibilities of the Christmas Grotesque.

The Quaggy Cup: On Fire!

Where there's smoke, there's fire. Words to live by, those. And such wisdom is particularly appropriate when one is wondering where to spend a glorious sunny August Sunday afternoon while in the greater metropolitan region of South London. Well, Old Ken has got two words that I'd like you to pronounce with true feeling. Please say them out loud as you read them, summoning up all the "intenstinal fortitude" (to quote Gorilla Monsoon) of the Macho Man Randy Savage when going against the wily likes of the upstart Koko "The Birdman" B. Ware. The words are these: Quaggy Cup!

Now, you may recall that Old Ken has something of a fondness for the Quaggy, one of the most important tributaries to the Ravensbourne River (itself a meaningful player in the formation of the greater Thames estuary). Indeed, the Quaggy helped me overcome a bout of projectile vomiting back in the spring. Well, when I heard that an entire day of fun and frivolity was going to be devoted to this majestic waterway, I made my preparations.

Was it appropriate, I wondered, to take it upon myself to dress as the spirit of the Quaggy—a kind of irrepressible water sprite whose antics could charm one and all? Well, upon arrival it became readily evident that conventional dress (specifically, shirts) was hardly to be observed.



Blessedly, this free and loose spirit caught hold of all and sundry, making no discrimination of age as the ivory-haired gent in the photograph above so deftly displays.



But look! What's that up in the air? Is it some sort of strange bird—perhaps, the dreaded Raven Spirits of the Ravensbourne River come to terrorize the small village festival of the peaceful Quaggy tribe, taking us down, down deep into the mines where we will be forced to dig for precious ores for all eternity to feed to the power-mad schemes of the mighty raven overlord, Optal-Max Schreek!



No, thank goodness, no. Instead, we realized, that it was raining men. Hallelujah!



In what actually turned out to be a pretty impressive spectacle, these four intrepid parachutists landed on a cordoned off patch of the field. Unfortunately, their landing was not accompanied by "Eye of the Tiger," which was reserved for a later exhibition football match.



Now, when you think about a summer festival of this kind, what springs to mind? Greased pole climb? Dunking booth? Tractor pulls? Rummage sale? Hot dogs and burgers on the grill? Corn on the cob? Well, Old Ken can honestly say that none of those mentioned above made it to the first annual Quaggy Cup. That said, we did get quite a show from a truly unusual and, with some luck, endangered species in the British Isles: English Cheerleaders!



Yes! Big Win!



Of all people, Old Ken realizes that human bodies come in different colors, shapes and sizes, all of which can be beautiful and it is only small-mindedness that makes us think otherwise. But what about tattoos? Is this not the sort of willful intervention into personal appearance that—more often than not—simply begs for critical scrutiny?



While you mull over those tasty ethical queries, feast your eyes on but a few of the awful tattoos on display at Quaggy Cup. As you may perceive from the images above, this devilish morsel was coyly concealed beneath a startling platinum mane—and might well have remained there, had Old Ken anything to say in the matter.



Now, it's one thing to take a photo of a terrible tattoo on a woman's back when she is engaged in conversation. It is something quite different, I submit to you, to try to get a photograph of what has to be Old Ken's entry for the worst tattoo ever, while the proud owner is male, with two thuggish friends, and looking your way. (If you have evidence of a worse tattoo, by the by, I challenge you to post it on the comment section with your description).



Nonetheless, this tattoo struck me as being so bad as to be worth the risk. Cast your eyes, if you will, upon the oh-so-delicate shading and the clever trompe l'oeil technique of affixing those bellicose gloves to a pictorial tack, which is presumably embedded in the dude's calf (which only begs the question of why it is there rather than on a more logical locale like a shoulder or bicep). Finally, note the attention to iconographic detail: on the upper wrist band of each glove is a minute ensign of St. George—the flag of England upon which the design of the more familiar British "Union Jack" is based. In other words, this is English boxing—none of that namby-pamby British stuff! RRAR!

Big Rock at Ragley Hall

Do you like to go to new places? Well, Old Ken has been to lots of places of late, some new, some old. Needless to say, the whole thing has been such a business that, well, by jing, I just haven't been quite able to keep up with all things blog-wise. But, here I am, back talkin' at you in crystal-clear hi-fi.

The story I want to tell you about at the moment is a little visit I might have made to one of the few remaining private residences built by Robert Hooke, a famous experimental philosopher of the later seventeenth century and—so I'd like to think—someone close to the heart of my admirable namesake, the Right Honorable Sir Kenelm Digby. So my guide book tells me, Bob (as I like to think of Señor Hooke) built Ragley Hall for Lord Conway ca. 1680. As you may discern from the photograph above, Bob is still remembered on the gorgeous site with an appropriate monument: a coffee shop named in his honor. As you'll no doubt recall, Bob was a big fan of the coffee shop, which was something of a novelty in his day; his famous diary is packed with tales of meeting both intellectual luminaries and "friends in low places" at such places as Jonathan's or Garraways and enjoying a good chin-wag over a cup of coffee, chocolate, and even the inestimable cock ale. (Please tune back in for a subsequent blog entry for Sir Kenelm's cock ale recipe, which is soon to be a gift. Wink!)


But, let us not allow such digressions to take us away from Ragley Hall itself, which truly is a stunning building. Now, the photograph above shows the eastern face of the house—a view that requires a little imaginative intervention if we want to see it the way that it would have been built in Hooke's day. For, the portico and the twin ceremonial staircases leading into the Great Hall, which you see at the very center of the photograph above, were mid-eighteenth century additions.


Similarly, the loggia attached to the western face of the house (visible as the recessed, shadowed space in the photos above and below) seems to the Old Ken's mind to have been a subsequent addition. Upon what grounds would such an assessment have been ventured? Well, more qualified as an experimental philosopher than an architectural historian as I know myself to be, the loggia seems to give the house something of an edentate look. When in shade, as seen here, the open space of the loggia compromises the verticality of the house and makes it almost look as though it could be levitating.


Comparing with the dark, heavy decoration surviving from Hooke's period inside the house, which I was sadly unable to photograph, one wonders whether this lighter, airy effect might have been closer in spirit to the wonderfully bizarre rococo fantasies played out across the Great Hall than Bob's baroque inclinations.

But enough of such fancies. I'd like you to appreciate the beauty of the house from a distance, which really did feel like a kind of island amidst the rolling farmland of Warwickshire. Baroque or not baroque, I think we can all agree that this is some seriously big rockin' from Mr. Bob!

What in the World is that Giant Stucco Anteater Doing?

Perhaps there are some places that you have been to a few times, but—given some chance, serendipitous twist of happenstance—you are given the opportunity to see said location in an entirely new way. Now, place and revelatory circumstance will of course alter; Old Ken, for one, knows that he will never look at his flat in quite the same way after a session of projectile vomiting on the bedroom door a few weeks back. But, happily, the reconceptualization we have at hand here is nothing so nauseating; if anything, it might be considered sickeningly exciting. Well, maybe that is a bit of stretch.

Now, for some reason I did not share this with you, but, during my visit from a famous anthropologist about a month ago, we made a visit to Crystal Palace Park. A brief primer on Crystal Palace Park: apparently, the famous glass palace (of the eponymous, mid-nineteenth century exhibition) was moved to South London from Hyde Park in the later 1850s. Subsequently giving name to this area of Sydenham, the crystal palace was installed at the top of a hill and fitted out within a large and lovely park. Although the palace itself has long since burned, the famous anthopologist and Old Ken had a lovely afternoon of making rubbings of the hieroglyphs on the muscled skins of large, sculptural sphinxes which once marked the formal boundaries of the palace complex. Other delightful scenes Old Ken has observed on previous visits to the park include: a maze; a rusty, brutalist bandstand on which Bruce Springsteen (supposedly) performed; the Crystal Palace Anglers' Club fishing pond; a bouncy castle; and a go-cart track.



Well, friends Tim and Bev—currently residents of Crystal Palace, but who are departing for Nottingham all too soon—alerted yours truly to an amazing and previously unknown facet of the park design. Apparently, even prior to Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species, the progressively-minded designers of the exhibition had planned the uphill walk to the Palace as a kind of stroll through history. While the glass palace at the summit was to represent the culmination of human—or Man's, to use the terminology of the time—achievement, at the base of the hill were some historically novel and very curious inhabitants: dinosaurs. Consulting the BBC website, I see that one Richard Owen, the Victorian anatomist who devised the name "dinosaur," was also involved in concocting this amazing display. And again, despite Old Ken's affinity to Crystal Palace Park and abiding affection for dinosaurs, I had never known of—let alone seen—these curious beasts. Until now!



Given the substantial deterioration of the sphinxes mentioned above and other free-standing period scultpures in the park, I was shocked at the wonderful state of these dinosaurs. As it turns out, they have only recently been made accessible to the public after a substantial refurbishment. And what a sight they are!



I will not go through the catalogue of all we can see on display, but will instead allow you the flickering frisson as your eyes play across this exercise in haunting dinosaur realism.



Old Ken does wonder a bit about scale here, as we see something of a conversation piece between what would seem to be a leviathan of an icthyosaur and a very daintily proportioned plesiosaur. But who am I to quibble with the artistry?



Old Ken found the propect afforded by the extreme eastern edge of the Dinosaur Lake to be the most satisfying glimpse into our Jurassic past. In the foreground of the photograph above, it seems as though we have arrived just in time to catch the exchange of pleasantries between two massive turtle-toad beasts. As gentle plesiosaurs wriggle in the left middle distance, the majestic golden wings of a pair of adult pterodactyls can just be made out in near the center of the image, wings spread as they, no doubt, cry forth in their shrill, piercing call: AOUYYYGHTUOOOUGHAYOOO!



And even the ostensible ancestors of Twinkle-toes, the very frightening crocodile, are well represented, authentically situated in such a way was to demonstrate their interest in gardening and flower arrangement. As amazing as these dinosaurs are, though, is it justified to show a gigantic anteater having the sort of, em, relationship with a tree as suggested in the photo at the top?

I Love Art (Garfunkel)

Summer is in the air in old London town. Away (thank goodness) go those ridiculous furry boots, and out come the halter tops. Thankfully, the ratios of evil golf shirts to male suffers of the dreaded Dunlop's disease seem to be lower here than in other places that Old Ken has lived. But, whether we take one good sniff in the Tube or just count the tube tops on the Strand, the signs of approaching summer are ripe for the picking!

As if to embrace this buoyant, breezy moment, the Barbican Gallery has staged a show called "Colour After Klein." Now, don't get Old Ken wrong here; I think Yves Klein's work is pretty interesting (an example of which can be seen photographed above). Not only was he a Rosicrucian (!), but he patented a color (International Klein Blue or IKB) and did these completely bizarre (and probably deeply objectifying/misogynist) performance pieces in the 1960s where he would have naked women cover themselves with his patented pigment and, ah, smear themselves on massive canvases. All the while, a symphony would be sawing away in the background. Oh, Art!



Nonetheless, the organizing principle of this show at the Barbican seems to be: art comes in different colours. Privileging the sensual over the theoretical is probably a good idea at times; but the curators of this show seem to have gone for this approach whole hog. Consider the sweet, sweet anti-intellectualism of the following statement from the gallery guide: "'Colour After Klein' isn't about colour rules or theories. Instead it takes pleasure in the rapport between the aesthetic and the conceptual, and the emotive responses colour arouses." To which the O.K. says: thank you, Genius-head!

This is not to say that there aren't some lovely, vertiginous moments to be had staring into Klein's bizarre canvases. But, for all of its talk of color, the Old Ken was more struck by the smells involved in this art than anything else. The piece by James Lee Byars, which you see photographed above, had been constructed with real roses, which were beginning to rot. Not only did this give off quite a stench, but it was literally attracting flies. (I did alert a guard to the fact that there was a fly on the art, but he seemed unconcerned. Could I blame him? He was reading about Wayne Rooney in Metro). Further, several of the galleries on the second level of the exhibition space had recently been fitted with new carpet, which emitted a positively revolting smell. So, did this assertiveness of color produce something like a synaesthetic effect, heightening awareness to some kind of sympathetic resonances between the five senses? Computer says no. Rather, as all of this potentially interesting art had been sufficiently decontextualized such that the only salient link between the pieces seemed to be presence of color, I felt like I was desperately looking for other angles to dislodge this tedious triviality.



It was only when I reached the final gallery and saw the amazing work you see above (by an artists whose name I was unfortunately not able to get) that I made some inroads. As you can see, this collage has as much to tell us about the use of color in the later twentieth century as "The Wizard of Oz" might have done in the first half. Indeed, I think the invocation of the Wizard is not entirely inappropriate here. For, clearly, we have a Dorothy-type figure who has magically been transported away from her drab, monotonous Kansas into a kaleidoscopic Munchkinland where dreams really do come true. Could there possibly be any higher dream than this? Thank you, Art.

Rosicrucian Fun

Are you a Rosicrucian? Would you like to be one? These questions might sound a little random, but I pose them to you as a way of thinking about the resistance (especially in the Arabic-speaking world) to the Red Cross. Now, the two might be entirely unconnected. But, as Old Ken was thinking about this interesting convergence between a major humanitarian organization and the followers of the mysterious Christian Rosencreutz—or the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, a secret society supposedly begun in the early 17th century in central Europe as a Protestant resistance movement to the encroachment of Catholic power—I thought of St. George. Famous as a dragon slayer (see below), St. George is also the patron of another occult society, the Order of the Garter. Curiously, as anyone who watches English football will know, the flag of St. George is a red cross on a white background.



So where is Old Ken going with all of this? Well, nowhere in particular. But I did recently visit a curious hunting lodge built to house the "chemical bride" of one of the original Rosicrucian players, Prince Frederick, Elector of the Palatine. Daughter of James I, Elizabeth Stuart ("the Winter Queen") lived a life of impoverished exile at the Hague after the disastrous Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 when Catholic powers retook Prague igniting the Thirty Years War.



With her husband dead and her children (most notably the dashing Prince Rupert) off adventuring in the European wars, the Winter Queen was sustained by her devoted admirer, William Craven. Supposedly, it was for her that the eccentric Craven built the odd lodge you see in the pictures here—a lonely house in the hills of Berkshire called Ashdown House.



Well, such was the story told to Old Ken by a tour guide at Ashdown. I think the truth of the matter might be a little stranger still. For, consider the architecture house: a full quarter of the interior space is occupied with a period stairway that leads all the way up to the balustraded look-out on the roof. There is little of the formal reception area, banqueting facilities or interconnected rooms that would have been appropriate for the home of the Winter Queen.








Yet, just a few miles away lies the great chalk horse of Berkshire—the outlines of a massive horse carved into a steep hillside in prehistoric times (whose circular eye is visible in the middle ground of the photograph below).



More curiously still, the small hillock visible in the center of the picture (nearly kissing the golden rape-seed fields in the distance, with a whitened patch and a worn footpath leading from it) is traditionally known as Dragon Hill. For it was here, legend tells us, that St. George smote the dragon. Clearly, then, Ashdown House was no house for the Queen but some sort of observatory wherein like-minded Rosicrucians could gather and await the return of St. George (or the dragon) upon the nearby hill. As I like to say: proof!