Friday Rambling On...

I'm just posting this picture in the hope that it will inspire the sun to come out from behind those clouds once again.  I possess no confidence that this will work.  All is quiet.  The neighbours are off on a sun soaked holiday somewhere sunny.  Wine will flow, foreign food will be tested, they do like that, and I suspect little touring the neighbourhood will take place.  Here, I have reached Tesco, and returned the glass bottles to the recycling box.  Life is so unfair!

You may have noticed that the latest Pope has died, at the age of 88.  He was not one to retire, nor was he one to stop working just because one lung did not operate properly.  The theology on offer did not resound well among reformed circles, though it is fair to say his work among the poor and downtrodden, long before he became Pope, was better than most evangelical works.  

Now the conclave begins, with an Irish cardinal at the top of the selection committee.  I suspect they will do this better and quicker that the Anglicans are doing with their Canterbury operation.  None will be following scripture of course.  If scripture was followed there would be less hierarchy, more workers, more believers, and a better Christian witness in most churches.  Office Johnnies like to build their own empires rather than do the work before them.    

One laugh was Darren Grimes, a well known far right proponent of whatever Tufton Street offers him.  Consider a BBC photo of a short row of black hooded nuns at a service for the Pope somewhere in Italy.  Darren asks 'Why have the BBC shown Muslims?'  

You have to laugh.  

 

It is unfortunate when valuable 'works of art' are mislaid.  Maashorst Municipality, unfortunately did mislay several copies of Andy Warhol's prints of Queen Beatrix.  Anyone can make a mistake and during renovations fill wheelie bins with art works as there is nowhere else to store them.  Anyone can then sit back and watch the rubbish men take the bins, empty them in to the lorries and smile happily not realising what was inside.  Simple life really.  

Of course, if it were up to me all such 'artwork' would be disposed of in similar fashion.  Art is seen in the eye of the beholder, and art is one of the great cons of the world, just like fashion.  The people who matter dictate what you are to like, and galleries are soon stuffed with people liking what the chattering classes tell them to like.  It would not be good to be seen to demure from their opinion.  

So much art is junk.  Yet museums and galleries, and even town councils pay vast sums for the items that keep them in with the right people.  Councils art works usually do not keep them in with the people who vote of course.  I loved art way back in time when I went to school.  'It is too early to say whether he has any real talent,' lied the art master to my mother, breaking off from touching up the teacher from the other art class.  I had no talent, none has ever shown, but one of my abstract junk pieces did get put up on the school corridor wall.  It was nice, but it was junk really.     

Contrasts - 1905   William James Aylward (1875-1956)