Circe Invidiosa

What I was expressing was a personal view. My own feelings. It’s not something I can intellectualise, and I generally don’t try to.

I am firmly non-religious. I don’t believe in God, or soul, or spirit. I sincerely believe these concepts to be comforting fantasies, born out of fear and ignorance, in the infancy of our race.

Nevertheless, I find I have a deeply emotional response to some art.

When I look at Leonardo, or Michelangelo, Titian, or Caravaggio, I can appreciate the skill and mastery of the artists. I can see the beauty of their work. But I don’t feel the emotional response that I get from Monet or Renoir. Stubbs and Gainsborough were skilled and thoughtful artists, but their work doesn’t take me out of myself in the way Holman Hunt, Millais, or Klimt can.

For me, something happened in the mid 1800s. The best art from that period, and for 100 years after, has the ability to move me and emotionally charge me. It’s not just painting. Architecture of the period does it too. Sculpture, graphics, industrial design - everything was infused with a set of ideas and ideals that resonate for me.

Whatever it was, it began to die in the 1930s. In the 1950s it fizzled out altogether. Everything since has been a pale imitation.

That’s not to say there aren’t still good ideas, or pleasant art works. We have a Gormley installation only 500 yards from where I live (“Another Place” - Crosby beach). It’s amusing, and visually striking. But, unlike, for instance, J H McNair, it doesn’t make me feel as if I’ve been turned inside out.

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Banksy moving - and an awful lot of money involved.

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Yes-Giger was involved in designing the Alien which is where I was introduced to him. I had an oversized art book of his, Necromicon-wish I still had it. Very strange but facinating!

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