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I’m trying to parse the ‘shocking’ part of the Adam and Eve image. I think I understand pretty well why Ai Weiwei’s Han vase piece got the reaction it did, and

I’m trying to parse the ‘shocking’ part of the Adam and Eve image. I think I understand pretty well why Ai Weiwei’s Han vase piece got the reaction it did, and what he was trying to do with it. But, I can’t help but feel our essayist here is holding back. I’d be interested in some art historian’s perspectives on this — is there some controversy on the idea that this is a painting of a tapestry? If so, what’s the implication? What’s the shock part? I guess he’s perhaps trying to help us see it as a similar image of ‘breakage’ in which case, what, is this tapestry itself supposed to be hung in God’s or the devil’s house in the hamptons? Maybe the essay is just a bit of insider baseball, but I feel like I missed the hook.

wruza 2y ago
Getting art is in a large part being overly impressible and seeing things. One guy may create a joke under some influence and thousands will interpret it through time as something daring mind-blowing meta-deepness. Humans just tend to do that. You swap water with wine, tell a couple of very cool stories and millenia later like wat??
ArtHeresy 2y ago
Hi, thanks for your interest in my blogpost! It's great how much this forum seems to have warmed to the theme of my project. It's like giving a paper, and then the questions seem to anticipate where the research will go next This is my first piece looking at the actual paintings. The Courtauld Institute puts a conservative estimate of thirty-nine on the number of individual scenes at Hardham: if you include the images which have been lost to architectural alterations it's in fact well over fifty. Plus there are two more ensembles at Coombes and Clayton from the same artist. So there's a wealth of material waiting to be reassessed. I'm not intentionally holding back, just going with the sequential blogpost format. Eventually it will, I hope, come together as a guide book to the three churches. atm it will build as an open access resource to help folk enjoy the frescos. In the end it's religion, so not always easy to put your finger on why a someone might find something so repulsive, although poor Germanos II's meltdown is typical. That's why I'm going to use a few posts to unpick what's going on with the trompe l'oeil 'Deception' scene, starting with Greco-Roman antecedents, before looking at how these same ancient ideas were taken up by the Wachowski Sisters in their screenplay for The Matrix (1999). Do come back to find out where what the Hardham artist was up to!

wruza 2y ago

Getting art is in a large part being overly impressible and seeing things. One guy may create a joke under some influence and thousands will interpret it through time as something daring mind-blowing meta-deepness. Humans just tend to do that. You swap water with wine, tell a couple of very cool stories and millenia later like wat??

ArtHeresy 2y ago

Hi, thanks for your interest in my blogpost! It's great how much this forum seems to have warmed to the theme of my project. It's like giving a paper, and then the questions seem to anticipate where the research will go next This is my first piece looking at the actual paintings. The Courtauld Institute puts a conservative estimate of thirty-nine on the number of individual scenes at Hardham: if you include the images which have been lost to architectural alterations it's in fact well over fifty. Plus there are two more ensembles at Coombes and Clayton from the same artist. So there's a wealth of material waiting to be reassessed. I'm not intentionally holding back, just going with the sequential blogpost format. Eventually it will, I hope, come together as a guide book to the three churches. atm it will build as an open access resource to help folk enjoy the frescos. In the end it's religion, so not always easy to put your finger on why a someone might find something so repulsive, although poor Germanos II's meltdown is typical. That's why I'm going to use a few posts to unpick what's going on with the trompe l'oeil 'Deception' scene, starting with Greco-Roman antecedents, before looking at how these same ancient ideas were taken up by the Wachowski Sisters in their screenplay for The Matrix (1999). Do come back to find out where what the Hardham artist was up to!