|
|
Monday, June 30th, 2003
|
3:34p - Bonfire of the Vanities
Am debating on whether or not to take the train to Bambang station to buy glass slides. It's very, very hot outside. Friday is a scary day: I'll be checking whether or not my plankton foraging-trip to Breakwaters was successful. Here's hoping I find something at least vaguely recognisable, because I assuredly do not want to go through the whole wet and messy business all over again.
I'm pleasantly hooked on The Agony and the Ecstasy; it's rather strange because I'm not typically struck (FAME word!) by a book unless it has an unusual writing style or turn of phrase to recommend it. The writing isn't especially good, and the author tends to gloss over a lot of things. His forte, however, is his insight into Michelangelo's views on sculpture and the way he reacts to the world in general. Stone (the author's name is something of a delightful coincidence) lovingly details every aspect of every sculpting commission Michelangelo performs. His protagonist is by no means lofty and ethereal: Michelangelo Buonarroti is like any other neurotic, paranoid, hot-tempered man in his twenties, with appallingly bad taste in clothes, who just happens to be an artistic genius. He's raggedy and perpetually smelly because when he's in the middle of a project, he can go for weeks without changing his clothes. He's ugly. And violently envious of his more fastidious peers -- such as Leonardo da Vinci, whom I find myself becoming less and less sympathetic to, although after I finish reading this book I suspect my fondness for him shall return. But he has a passion for creation that I find unmatched in any artist other than Rembrandt.
I've realised so much about art, from a writer who was never a visual artist. I've finished two paintings over the weekend. And I feel like making more. And more.
May we all have our own panacea for our own periods of drought.
current mood:  artistic |
|
|
|