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Museum as Muse: The Origin of Painting
THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING
"How Pliny could think the line she made to which her father fastened clay that stuck against the wall she'd sketched upon-- well, it boggles,'' the scholar of cultural production says. Out the window, the long spiked fronts of grass wave their frantic hands. "Myth and metaphor, it was, but in Romney's time, we've seen--" she says, burping, "excuse me-- we have seen how the era sentimentalized its slop, and here the painter-- who hated the prettifying that was his bread and butter-- 'I'm shackled by portraiture!' we're told he said--" Starlings startle from the plumes of grass and flee. "So we 've got the potter's daughter-- Lady Hamilton gussied up, in yet another peplos, tracing her beloved's face by oil-lamp as he sleeps the night before he leaves. But here-" Could a nest be made of the scholar's hair? You will watch-- "is where the wacky walks-- her father makes the bas-relief. Can you see your own dad helping to fashion a casting of your best beau?" --her rise from the gallery floor, pitched like a hag on a broom-and, rising, skim the ceiling and vanish there. No. Like a starling. On a steed.
--Susan Wheeler
"How Pliny could think the line she made to which her father fastened clay that stuck against the wall she'd sketched upon-- well, it boggles,'' the scholar of cultural production says. Out the window, the long spiked fronts of grass wave their frantic hands. "Myth and metaphor, it was, but in Romney's time, we've seen--" she says, burping, "excuse me-- we have seen how the era sentimentalized its slop, and here the painter-- who hated the prettifying that was his bread and butter-- 'I'm shackled by portraiture!' we're told he said--" Starlings startle from the plumes of grass and flee. "So we 've got the potter's daughter-- Lady Hamilton gussied up, in yet another peplos, tracing her beloved's face by oil-lamp as he sleeps the night before he leaves. But here-" Could a nest be made of the scholar's hair? You will watch-- "is where the wacky walks-- her father makes the bas-relief. Can you see your own dad helping to fashion a casting of your best beau?" --her rise from the gallery floor, pitched like a hag on a broom-and, rising, skim the ceiling and vanish there. No. Like a starling. On a steed.
--Susan Wheeler
