Lindisfarne and the Farne Isles.

Just reflecting on our weekend spent with friends. We have had the good fortune of enjoying sunshine and blue skies as we journeyed north to Northumberland and the sometimes wild north sea coastline with large beaches and castle topped cliffs. Here where Christianity established one of its first strongholds in Britain is Holy Island or Lindisfarne. Cut off twice everyday by the tides, great care must be taken to ensure a safe passage across the causeway, but a real reward awaits the traveller in this peaceful remote community, of friendly people and beautiful sea birds!

Catching Billy Shiels Glad Tidings boat from Seahouses, we visited rocky Staple Island, with its teaming colonies of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, and the scattered nestings of shags! Landing on Inner Farne, we ran the gauntlet of fiercely territorial and protective arctic terns, attempting to peck our heads as we moved down the path within inches of their nests. This island once home to the hermit St. Cuthbert, now provides safe nesting to arctic, sandwich and common terns, eider ducks and many other birds.

And by the way, just in case you wondered, these are two original photos taken by me!

Mona Lisa

This interesting site about the Mona Lisa! produced by the Louvre, is a revealing in depth analysis of both the subject and the painting. A real piece of patient detective work.

This last week we went to see the film The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks. I have to say that we were somewhat disappointed, but perhaps it is a tall order to transfer all of Dan Brown's code cracking, which is very cerebral, into big screen action. With the current phenominal success of the book, this film really is the 'must see' of the moment.

How fascinating that the mysterious Mona Lisa continues to intrigue and beguile, and to appear in so many guises from the high art down to the marketing of everyday items, including fruit wrappers!!!

In a wood nearby...

...the bluebells are spread like a carpet. Just caught them in time, as they are already starting to 'go over'. What a wonderful herald of the summertime ahead.

The happy hooded bluebells bow

And bend their heads all a-down

Heavied by the early morning dew

Nick Cave

Ouch!!!!!!!

Close shave!!!!! :-((

Simplifying a lot of big words!!

Ran out of time for the TMA, managed to get an extension, and have sent in 'something'!!! I'm now trying to grasp some of these ideas before moving on, and before they vanish forever!! LOL

The area of study centred around 'The Emergence of Abstraction' and what Peter Bürger terms 'The Historical Avant-Gardes'. The three primary movements of Abstract art, represented by the artists Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich, Dada focusing on Zurich and Berlin, and the Soviet Constructivists all shared in a desire for change, the need for change, and an art to assist to bring about or represent that change. They sought an art that would become an integral part of the new daily life.

Dada was driven by angry and idealistic youth, disillusioned with events in Europe at the time of the First World War, and eager to confront the establishment, and bring them down, either by mocking and belittling their values, or by fermenting left-wing politics. The abstract artists sickened by the materialism both of science and society, looked for a new spiritual era. The Soviet Constructivists, caught up in the Russian Revolution, were the ones who got their wish for major change, but their idealism was eventually smothered by the realities.

The TMA question asked for 2,000 words, but in a nut shell the reaction of Dada in Zurich was to create nonsense to confront war and events in Europe. Dada in Berlin was to use the different art forms springing from this 'nonsense', to motivate left-wing politics. The Constructivists supported revolution by revolutionising art, making everything new, with new values, new attitudes,and new meaning, but were idealists not realists. Finally, the Abstract artists sought a new spiritual era, and an 'art' to represent and support that. Peter Bürgers role writing in 1974, was to retrospectively pull these movements together, and link their elements of reaction and change, suggesting that they all sought for art to reintegrate with the 'praxis of life'.