David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


10 July 2015

Ça va? On we go...


Today, a TAR follow-on from our previous scene of capital regard.

tableau (n.) 1690s, "a picturesque or graphic description or picture," from French tableau "picture, painting" (12c.), from Old French table "slab, writing tablet" (seetable (n.)) + diminutive suffix -eau, from Latin -ellus. Hence tableau-vivant (1817) "person or persons silent and motionless, enacting a well-known scene, incident, painting, etc.," 19c. parlor game, literally "living picture."

Wikipedia writes of Olympe Aguado
Count Olympe-Clemente-Alexandre-Auguste Aguado de las Marismas, born in Paris in 1827, was a Franco-Spanish photographer and socialite, active primarily in the 1850s and 1860s.  
Some of Aguado's most interesting images consist of a series of staged family portraits, or "living pictures," taken in the 1860s as an apparent critique of Second Empire nobility. The most well-known of these include Admiration, which depicts several people with their backs turned to the camera admiring a painting, and La Lecture, which depicts a man reading to a bored audience.     

La Lecture [Reading]
by Olympe Aguado (1827-1894)
albumen print from a collodion glass negative 
between 1862 and 1864
collection Musée d'Orsay
                     
The Musée d'Orsay writes of La Lecture (Reading) :
Olympe Aguado's career as a photographer was devoted mainly to reproductions of paintings or 'studies from nature', mostly landscapes and photographs of animals, inspired by the paintings of Constant Troyon and Rosa Bonheur. 
He is now also known for the playlets he photographed in the first half of the 1860s but did not exhibit. They are living pictures, a favourite game within aristocratic and bourgeois circles during the nineteenth century, in which the photographer staged himself with his family and friends. Here he is playing the role of the listener nodding off on the right. The women in the photograph however are harder to identify with any certainty. The one on the far left may be Emily McDonnell, the photographer's sister-in-law, and the woman dozing beside her, Bertha Aguado, the photographer's wife since 1860. The man reading aloud remains nameless. 
La Lecture and Admiration (below) are both among the favorites of visitors to the archive of the Theatre of the Actors of Regard :

Admiration !
by Olympe Aguado (1827-1894)
albumen print from a collodion glass negative 
circa 1860
collection Musée d'Art Modern et Contemporain de Strasbourg, France
   
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

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