Still at large

comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, current affairs


Today, and on Saturday, it happened a year ago. In some ways it wasn’t all that new, nor unexpected — jihadist terrorist attacks have happened all over Europe with increasing frequency for the last 10-15 years, and several lower key attempts had been made to silence Charlie Hebdo. In fact, it remains scandalous that they weren’t protected better — the attack on their offices could have been prevented.

Anyway, it seems like a watershed in Europe, creating a “before and after” in many people’s minds. The even more horrible attack in Paris on 13 November, while certainly shocking, only confirmed that everyone is at risk, not only cartoonists or Jews. Beyond that, there is a creeping, dangerous sense of “business as usual.” Probably because that is what it has become to us. Jihadist terrorism is surely here to stay for the foreseeable future, because its root causes are not going to disappear any time soon. And sadly, the influx of refugees from various Muslim majority countries probably isn’t going to help that particular problem. While we should clearly be doing more to help refugees — it is the only right thing to do — the challenges of integration are hard to deny, just like the prospects of peace in the Middle East and Afghanistan remain depressingly bleak.

Florentine portraiture in the Burlington!

commentary and criticism, hype & linkage, pictorial arts

Jacopo Pontormo, Portrait of a young lute player, c.1529:30. Oil on panel, 81.2 by 57.7 cm. Private collection.


Just a quick heads up: the latest issue of the Burlington Magazine January 2016, No. 1354, vol. 158) includes my review of the excellent exhibition of Florentine sixteenth-century portraiture. Curated by Carlo Falciani, it is showing at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris till 26 January. Do go see it if you can, it’s a real treat.

An excerpt, on the amazing portrait reproduced above:

…Pontormo’s rarely seen and excellently preserved portrait of a Portrait of a young lute player from a private collection (c.1529:30…) Everything is shaped by the artist’s peculiar temperament: the globular head, the swelling torso, the voluminous lute and the tubular pink sleeves that billow as though hot hair were blowing through them: a picture as much about circular movement as it is about the boy behind
the mask.

The Week

comics and cartooning, current affairs, journal

Writing extemporally what’s on my mind was kind of the point of these posts back when I was doing them regularly (i.e. almost weekly), so I guess that’s what I’ll do here for this brief resurfacing on my blog.

It’s a new year, and as usual it holds promise while simultaneously carrying a lot of baggage with it. Just these first few days remind us that people are still dying on the beaches of Europe while an increasingly destructive civil was is going on in the Middle East, Sweden — my neighbouring country as I write this — is instating universal ID checks at the border for the first time in generations, costing the country millions and reminding us all of the profundity of the problem we’re facing in Europe. Oh, and so-called Islamic State has just released another piece of vile agitprop promising bloody murder in Britain, my country of residence. And so on.

Yet, all of this seems strangely unreal to me, in the grip as I am — at least in unguarded moments — of a kind of apocalyptic paralysis. For obvious reasons 2015 was a stark reminder that climate change is almost certain to change the world as we know it over the course of the next generation. All the current problems are negligible in comparison to what’s on the horizon. COP21 arguably provided some cause for optimism, but it seems foolish fully to trust that we will be able to avert the cataclysm science tells us is coming to an extent that doesn’t profoundly upset life everywhere on Earth.

Happy New Year!

journal


It’s been a slow year here at the Bunker. Don’t know that 2016 won’t be the same, but I’ll be sure to let y’all know when and if things kick up again. Thanks for stopping by and all best to you and yours.

Merry Christmas

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Giorgione, The Adoration of the Kings, 1506-7, London, National Gallery