feeling pissed off (and slightly stupid for not having hitherto realised) that the bp national portrait award doesn't accept work in gouache on paper. not sure whether it's snobbery, a disinclination to handle breakable works or an attempt to keep the floodgates closed.
... of the odyssey by zachary mason. one of the most insightful books i've read about the odyssey and the iliad in a long time, even though it's not about the poems, rather a series of shorts fictional variations upon sections of the homeric poem and events in the margins. it reminds us - well, it reminds me at any rate - among many other things, that the canonical versions of the stories of odysseus, indeed the canonical version of pretty much all the characters in greek myths, are merely the winners in a long game of tales waring against one another for dominance.
they reckon it was owl-strike, or a collision with one of the bigger witches. the sleigh jack-knifed, shearing the traces. this was four, five hundred feet up. they found the wreck a couple of miles above the saw mill. a rorschach of struts and runners, the man himself face-down on a pillow of red snow and a shrike’s larder of elves impaled on broken branches overhead. the sacks had split and the forest was peppered with gifts, many lodged in the trees like bright, little birds’ nests.
i'm already nostalgic for certain kinds of spam.
... what you're doing and read this. out on boxing day, oddly. a collection of essays from vintage about the joys / importance of reading from zadie smith, carmen callill, tim parks, michael rosen and others.. including me.
a wonderful exhibition just opened at modern art oxford. graham sutherland: an unfinished world curated by george shaw (a painter whose humbrol coventry landscapes i love). i had, for a long time, thought of him, along with john piper, as a rather dowdy, insular painter of half-hearted not-quite-abstractions. i was wrong. it's also a joy to see mao - a place i love - packed with warm human stuff (the artwork and the people) after some cool, cold and less-than-popular shows.
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