Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

Art again, and Animation

[REVISED & UPDATED SUNDAY, 1ST SEPTEMBER 
AND TUESDAY, 3RD SEPTEMBER 2013]

Can you recognise where we are again?

A friend of Alice's persuaded us to go to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Two, in the pretty Dean Village area, and then to a talk about the exhibition, held at the Scottish National Gallery, which is in the town centre. [Dean, you'll be interested to learn, means "deep valley". Ain't surfing educational!]

It was a day of intense cultural input, not to mention much perusing of bus timetables and glances at watches. The wonderful Number 13 saved the day, as it turned out the Gallery bus was full. 

Johann H Füssli 1783

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This is what we were going to see: and then be lectured to about - or upon. [I just can't get the prepositions right and my typist is cross when I say it doesn't really matter.] A whole exhibition devoted to images of witches and witchcraft through the ages!

Macbeth's meeting with the three in Shakespeare's play, as on the poster, was a favourite subject. Click on the images to see them bigger - or open in a new tab for full size.

This one on the left is also by Fussli. It was huge, and Macbeth seemed to tower over you, so you had to look hard to spot Duncan just behind him, and the witches were fainter, in the background. We really liked that one. Alice said this Macbeth could have been painted by Blake, he was so majestic.[Alice insists on adding here that  there's a really facinating artist and poet!]

On the right is a William Blake painting: the Whore of Babylon. His typically idiosyncratic interpretation puts her into the category of a gorgeous and powerful figure, rather than old, ugly and wicked, as were most of the ones in the exhibition.

Alice's friend was quite outraged at the amount of misogyny on display. But see this review in the FT. Alice says wait until the talk for some answers to that...
Above is The Witches' Rout by Agostino Veneziano. Witches were always being pictured riding different objects or creatures, not just the familair broomsticks. [Do check out that link for some interesting lowdown on witches' use of drugs.] Drooping breasts seemed to be a common feature in the "ugly and old" category, you'll notice here. There were lots more like this in the exhibition.

Entitled simply Hooded Witch Rides a Colossal Phallus, on the left is a very rude one indeed. It's based on a design by Parmigiano. Like the cheese, he came from Parma.  

Witches in a Cellar (above right) is by Jacques de Gheyn II. [I reckon I must be "Monkey MMMMMIV"- at least...]  He's been called  "a proto-scientific skeptic" in a learned book by Claudia Swan. Alice insists on including the reference, even though it's all double-Dutch to me. [That's true, but it's also a rather nice pun - one of my weaknesses, I know.]

A much more strikingly beautiful "witch" is this Medea by Anthony Frederick Sandys. Notice the toad in the corner, and the Salamander motif on the brazier. In the frieze behind is portrayed Jason's ship, and the Golden Fleece of the legend. Alice says if I'd been paying attention in the talk later on, I'd have found out the model was a real gypsy, called Keomi Gray, one of Sandys' two mistresses. And he already had a wife! Very gorgeously Pre-Raphaelite, though, isn't she?
There were just a few rather more modern paintings in the exhibition. We rather liked this one by John Bellany, called simply The Witch. Not exactly beautiful, we admit, but full of raw character - especially the fish...  Right click and open in a new tab to see the details.

If any of you are complaining that almost all of Alice's links for the artists take you to Wikipedia, her response is that she tries to vary the sources, but in most cases it was simply the best.

Photo by Dan Welldon

We got to the Scottish National Gallery in plenty of time to grab a nibble and a drink before the related talk, Fatal Magic: The Attractions of Witchcraft. It was given by the renowned scholar and academic, Marina Warner. She came to wider public attention when Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary caused a furore in 1976. The title says it all, but you can also read an interview she gave The Telegraph on its recent reissue.

"Much of her writing is concerned with an analysis of the mythology, folklore and archetypes surrounding the feminine throughout history, as expressed in art, literary texts and fables." That's from the British Council's page on her. Gives you an idea of her scope - and style.

This link to Stanford University has loads of infomation about her "voracious research and writing", often focussing on legends and fairy tales. They have also included synopses of her many books, and excerpts as well. So feast away there, if she's your kind of writer.

I have to confess that most of the talk was way over my head - not just extremely intellectual, or even highfalutin to my little mind, but literally so. Alice wouldn't let me sit on her knee, and as I couldn't see the lecture slides, I dozed off and on in the bottom of her bag. My recollection of what was said is therefore somewhat patchy.

Gryphon, Alice & Mock Turtle

She started by explaining that in previous ages it was mostly older women who presided over the Great Mysteies of Life, such as Birth, peri-natal mortality and the afterbirth - and Death, laying-out and so on, with all the attendant rituals and superstitions. Men would have found it scarey stuff to imagine these women had special powers, so they set about denigrating them. And Uglified them, I imagined Alice saying.

[The Gryphon explains this in Alice in Wonderland in answer to a question about the four branches of Arithmetic: Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision. Yes, there we go again!]

Miniature by Caroline Hayes

Later Ms Warner said that in other cultures, such as the Japanese, or the Hindu, what we would think of as frightening evil demons were often protective figures, who scared off the really nasty spirits or beasties. Interesting. Then I dozed off. 

I came to as she started to talk about a version of the Solomon and the Queen of Sheba story, where they have to test if she's a witch or devil by turning the stream she's crossing into mirror glass, so they can see if she's got hairy animal legs. [Oh, yes? That's a good one!] There are other versions of this story, too. More nodding off...

Lotte and her husband Carl Koch in Rome

It was a suppressed Ooooh of pleasure from Alice which brought me round again. The talk had progressed to the The Arabian Nights, on which Marina Warner has written a whole book, Stranger Magic, reviewed somewhat critically in The Telegraph.

This had led on to the topic of the wonderful 1926 film - the first ever feature length animation! - The Adventures of Prince Achmed, created by an amazing woman, Lotte Reiniger. She made her films by cutting silhouette figures out of card, which she placed over a light table and moved little by little to capture one frame at a time. There's a video of her at work here. See also this fascinating article, with lots of information about the film, Lotte's work, and an early restoration.

If you put her name into the search box at YouTube, you'll find plenty of clips of this and her other films too.

Carl Gustav Jung

As soon as the Chairman asked for questions, Alice shot up her hand and asked if the speaker considered the "uglification" (though she didn't use Lewis Carroll's useful term) was related to Jung's theory of the Shadow. Showing off a bit, I thought - she's quite a fan of the man, has actually read some of his worthy tomes, and believes we do project onto others the subconscious parts of ourselves we don't want to acknowledge. She didn't seem very satisfied with the answer.

Later, when she dipped into some of Marina Warner's own books, she discovered that MW doesn't subscribe to Jung's idea of a Collective Unconscious, but considers the historical connections and social implications of the tales, literary and oral, that she researches.

Finally, Alice asked Marina Warner after her talk if the film was still available, and was told that the BFI had just released a BD-DVD copy. So she sent away for one the very next day, and I can tell you it's just beautiful.  The collage below gives you a hint.
A very happy outcome from our day of culture, wouldn't you say?