bLOGOS/HA HA: Ramshead Revisited

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.

01 April 2021

Ramshead Revisited

An online sale in Bonhams' Fine Books & Manuscripts department this week featured a Georgia O’Keeffe skull of a Rocky Mountain Bighorn ram from Ghost Ranch, which sold for $15,300, well over its estimate of $5,000 to $7,000.

Lot 33. Skull of a Rocky Mountain Bighorn ram, complete with curled horns and portions of first vertebra, approximately 270 x 210 x 120 mm, desiccated, with minor active chipping and flaking.

Provenance: Georgia O'Keeffe; gifted to: Marilyn Thuma (a.k.a. Mym Tuma, recorded in her manuscript diary, July 1971).

Clearly reminiscent of Ram's Head, White Hollyhock Hills, this ram's head was presented to Tuma on July 22nd, 1971, during a sixteen day stay at Ghost Ranch, as recorded in her contemporary sketch diary, as "Ram's head in Studio." She would later add to the reminiscence, "She offered me a skull on the Ghost Ranch patio that I noticed had a bullet hole in it thinking I might like it in remembrance of her, a memento. I said, 'No, I could not take anything that died by trauma' so she took me into her studio and showed me this beautiful skull which I own that she said hung on her house above the gate for 30 years — 'A long time,' O'Keeffe said, 'It's brittle.'"
O'Keeffe's association with the ram's head is etched into our understanding of her — beginning with her iconic 1935 painting Ram's Head, White Hollyhock Hills. The ram's head would figure in a number of her works, but never so effectively. In 1968, photographer Arnold Newman captured O'Keeffe in front of another ram's head, reinforcing the association. In a way, they are the distillation of O'Keeffe's experience of New Mexico.

"When I found the beautiful white bones on the desert I picked them up and took them home too ... I have used these things to say what is to me the wilderness and wonder of the world as I live in it." The skulls for O'Keefe represent not death, but life, "The bones seem to cut sharply to the centre of something that is keenly alive ... even though it is vast and empty and untouchable—and knows no kindness with all its beauty" ("About Myself," essay in the exhibition catalogue for An American Place, 1939).

As kids, we had a pet lamb, Patrick, who soon became Patrick the head-butting ram. When he eventually died, we dropped his body into an old mine shaft out the back. Years later, I brought up his magnificent horned skull.