The New Absinthe

The Bloggist and his friend, Alfred Jarry, while walking through the Quartier Latin, are dumbstruck at this misspelling of Absinthe. The Bloggist and his friend go in search of two magots or a mad shepherdess to elucidate this error, in the process visiting the Taverne du Panthéon and the Cabaret des Quat'z'Arts before ending up, further afield, at Madame Dunknow’s staminé on the banks of the river.

A previously unrecorded Hancock Sculpture in south-east London

Woodland Spirit

 

The sculptor of this piece, Woodland Spirit, is the famed artist Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock. Situated in Beckenham Park amid a boscage of evergreen and deciduous trees this woodland spirit is admired by art lovers and the general public. A short film of Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock’s almost complete oeuvre can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/52396543

Mr Hancock, of 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, achieved fame in the 1960’s for his acting career but at the time his painting and sculpture was less well appreciated. Since the exhibition at The Foundry, https://www.atlaspress.co.uk/theLIP/dora-hancock.html , a stone’s throw from fashionable Hoxton Square, his status in the artworld has steadily risen with many young artists now being compared to the indomitable Mr Hancock.

Below, a still from the the documentary, The Rebel, directed by Robert Day with script by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, which charts Hancock’s life as a clerk in a London office and his decision to move to Paris to dedicate himself to his art.  

The Artist sculpting Aphrodite at the Waterhole,
was Woodland Spirit a companion piece?

’Pataphysic Landscape

 

Gruinard Bay, the Triumph of Culture

The island of Gruinard is located in Gruinard Bay, between Ullapool and Gairloch, on the west coast of Scotland. Contaminated with Anthrax in 1942 as a result of biological warfare experiments and declared safe in 1990.

Dr Brian Moffat, archaeologist, "I would not go walking on Gruinard. If anthrax is still active at Soutra (Bloggist: medieval Scottish hospital excavated by Dr Moffat), there is no reason to suppose it has not survived on more recent sites. It is a very resilient and deadly bacterium."

For your information: initial symptoms after inhalation might include mild fever, malaise, fatigue, coughing and, occasionally, a feeling of pressure on the chest. The sheep experimented on in 1942 died three days after exposure to the anthrax spores.

Greendale Declaration

The Bloggist commends the artist for his forthright declaration of affection.

Heligoland Obelisk

“Desolate and sparsely occupied, in the dunes of Heligoland a glowing obelisk-like triangular fetish, anachronistic yet beautiful, turns the harsh terrain into an ethereal alien world punctuated by geometry”, review by Buil de Onplezierig, academic and sciolist, in the modernist cultural magazine Contemporary Regional Art Periodical, a publication best known by its acronym.

The New Politics

The Bloggist and his friend, Alfred Jarry, talk about the new politics based on falsehood, xenophobia, nationalism, and isolationism and the politicians who use falsehood and advocate xenophobia, nationalism, and isolationism. They agree with Martin Luther King that, "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring". Mr. Jarry suggests, “Take my advice, whenever you meet any politician that talks about nationalism, globalisation and isolationism and fraudulently claims to be showing compassion and benevolence, or ought to be showing compassion and benevolence and isn’t, keep your eyes on them and their henchmen and look for the exit”. Despite his atheism and anti-clericalism, Mr. Jarry mutters lines from the third Psalm, “Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked”.

Marcel Duchamp on holiday at Pont Aven

The young Marcel Duchamp, while staying at the Hotel Gloanec in Pont Aven, on the Plage De La Belle Etoile at Concarneau runs to meet Alfred Jarry, Paul Gauguin and Armand Séguin whom he sees eating seafood, local jams, pastries and cooked meats at the Brasserie des Bretons dans l’amour after the attack by local fishermen on Gauguin and Séguin.