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Art

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”

Yesterday, John Keats’ poem Endymion came to mind yesterday as I concluded Alice Mansfield’s thoroughly absorbing Rust post on Courbet’s The Origins Of The World [10th July] and thereafter spent many hours contemplating the ideas and issues that it brought to focus. One of the features of [...]

July 11, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Origins of the World/Gustave Courbet 1866

A popular figure in the National Rust is our picture editor Malcolm. One of the joys of us contributors is – after we have completed our post as a draft – seeing what accompanying photos Malcolm has selected for it. He has a totally free hand but if he feels them to be inadequate he [...]

July 10, 2020 // 0 Comments

Lives of the artist

When I studied French and German literature for my A levels our teacher had a rather pedantic view that little was served in studying the life of the writer. In fact as I soon appreciated it’s crucial. Michael Stuart was complaining to me that in his music course he learned far too little [...]

July 3, 2020 // 0 Comments

Great Paintings of the World/Sunflowers

Andrew Marr continue his series with Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh, one of four of the subject the Dutch master painted. It did not really tell you too much you did not know already but I guess the series is not pitched at the connoisseur – more the interested learner. My friend Martin [...]

June 15, 2020 // 0 Comments

Great Paintings of the World/Channel 5

I was pleasantly surprised by the first programme presented by Andrew Marr on the Mona Lisa. Would it be more about Andrew Marr than Leonardo da Vinci ? What could Marr tell us about the Mona Lisa we do not already know? On both counts I  was wrong.  Marr knows and loves  his art and brought [...]

June 8, 2020 // 0 Comments

Christo

There are several notable features about the artistic work of Christo who died recently aged 85. His large scale outdoor works were not commissioned – he received nothing for them – and although they took years sometimes decades to plan with his wife Jeanne Claude they were dismantled [...]

June 2, 2020 // 0 Comments

Creative paradoxes

Donald Macleod on BBC Radio 3 has been presenting an excellent programme on the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Perhaps the most significant aspect of a composer widely acclaimed as the greatest of all was that from 1814 he was totally deaf. Not only could he not hear his music but it’s [...]

May 22, 2020 // 0 Comments

Tintoretto

I  finally watched this SKY ARTS appreciation of the Venetian artist of the sixteenth century Tintoretto whose real name was Jacopo Robusto. His father was a dyer (tintoro) and, as the Italians like to add “etto” or “ino”  on a surname to denote “ little”, he acquired the moniker [...]

May 12, 2020 // 0 Comments

Becoming Matisse/BBC 2

In any art programme the presenter is all. Will he/she let the paintings speak for themselves or will they interpose themselves? In this programme it soon became obvious that the presenter Sophie Matisse was the latter. She’s the great granddaughter of Henri Matisse, the granddaughter of Pierre [...]

April 26, 2020 // 0 Comments

Virtual reality v actuality

I would like to start a new Rust debate of virtual reality, which I will call virtuality, against actuality. In a recent article in The Spectator Martin Gayford considered this as museum and art galleries shut down, then offered the possibility of viewing their art on line. He felt a photograph of [...]

April 12, 2020 // 0 Comments

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