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Showing posts tagged William Blake
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…go see some ‘art’
I know I haven’t really updated this blog in a while, but I have been busy starting up the new semester. I’m still enrolled in classes about 18th century London and Dickens in London because those were year-long, but I’ve picked up two new classes to fill in for those that ended last semester. The first one, ‘Gender, Race, and Empire in Women’s Writing, 1780-1900’ is pretty intense in terms of the level of discussion expected, but I love that about it, and I already feel like I’m learning a lot about how to approach the kinds of texts we’re discussing.
The other new class I’m taking this semester is called ‘London: Text, Art, and Performance’ and is basically a fantastic excuse to read books, watch plays, go to art galleries, and talk about what they all mean in the context of the English classroom. I just went on my first ‘field trip’ for the class, to the White Cube Gallery in Hoxton, which was exhibiting work by modern artist Damien Hirst, in an exhibition titled ‘Nothing Matters’. Now, I’m the first person to admit that I have almost zero appreciation for modern art. Learning that Hirst thinks that a dead shark floating in a tank and a crystal-encrusted cast of a human skull are art didn’t endear me to him any further. I’m not going so far as to say that they aren’t art — art is, after all, entirely about personal expression — but they’re certainly not the kind of art that I’m interested in.
However, the trip turned out to be pretty awesome anyway, because the bus my friends and I took to get to the White Cube Gallery dropped us off right in front of Bunhill Fields Cemetery, where one of my all-time favorite romantic poets, William Blake, is buried. It’s small but really neat; I’m definitely going back there sometime when I don’t have to rush through.
Tombstone for Blake and his wife. I love that someone’s left a flower there.
Really cool view of the cemetery. I always seem to hit these places at just the right time — trees bare of branches, the sun on its way down, a chill breeze beginning to blow…
I was much more impressed with the cemetery, and with the things that I walked past on my way to and from the gallery were more personally interesting in terms of their artistic value. For example, I found a little shop selling art books — by which I don’t mean books about art, but rather books as objects of art, many of them hand-printed or specially designed. I got into lots of arguments with Peter the printing teacher last year at Berkeley over whether it was alright for a book to be something intended to be looked at rather than (or more than) read, but maybe he’s rubbed off on me at least a little because I really loved that little store. I bought a set of small pins that say things like “READ MORE BOOKS” and “I like reading” and I’ve got one on my coat lapel now.
It’s a bad idea to judge a book by its cover, but this bookstore was just as awesome as its sign suggested it might be.
All in all, it was a good time even if I’m not going to be a fan of Hirst any time soon. And I have plenty to write about in my review — the course is more or less based on the fact that text, art, and performance don’t just happen in museums, theatres, and textbooks. I’ll probably spend more time discussing the stuff I saw on the way to and from the gallery, and that’ll be just fine. This is why I love this course!
One final thing: in the end of February, I’ll be visiting Ireland with a couple of friends. We just finalized bookings of hostels and such. I’m deeply excited to be going — after London, Dublin has been a top European destination for a long time, and it seems like destiny that I’m finally making it there!
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…discover bluebells in graveyards.
I learn new things about the flora of England on a daily basis. In March, it was daffodils. Now, in mid-May, it appears to be bluebells — but only in graveyards.
The Jewish Cemetery in the middle of campus.
Bunhill Fields Cemetery, the final resting place of William Blake.
I fondly remember the moment someone first taught me what the “macro” mode on my digital camera was for.
Some people are afraid of cemeteries. I actually find them rather aesthetically fascinating.
And there’s so much history to be learned there. Reading these grave stones is really moving in a way no textbook can ever be. It’s one thing to know the statistics of infant mortality in the 1700s, another to see a family gravestone listing the deaths of more than five children who never lived to see their third birthdays.
Sometimes I wonder about gravestones — who reads them, and what use they can be, whether they can ever reflect the lives of the people they represent. Sometimes I think the confined space of a grave marker is such a restriction. But sometimes it produces moving simplicity. Two daughters in this family died within 2 days of each other; what remains is their name and an inscription: “Lovely and pleasant in their Lives, and in their Death they were not divided.”
