Weekday Greek

 Google photo album:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/gZp8gVA4BiiV7tWx7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner https://britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/j-m-w-turner-romance-and-reality  ( archive ) Some bare minimum thoughts: Earlier than I thought. I thought Turner was late 19th century, but he is earlier (1775-1851). A true Romantic. And similarly, he is more romantic than I thought, at least early on. Like other Romantic artists he's interested in sublimity and power of nature (e.g. Vesuvius), and like Caspar David Friedrich he is interested in Gothic ruins in a nocturnal landscape. cf. e.g. this Vesuvius by Dahl, Friedrich's friend. https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/the-eruption-of-vesuvius-in-december-1820 The Yale exhibit convincingly argues that Turner engaged in direct competition with his predecessors, especially the Dutch landscape artist Aelbert Cuyp (the Maas at Dordrecht ) and Claude Lorraine.

Google photos album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/fzTwjXCuCv31dVhr7 The objects in this gallery are from Dura-Europos, a peripheral garrison fort/city in what is now eastern Syria. After a intense period of Roman construction and occupation starting c. 150 CE, the Persians sacked the city in 253 CE and the city was abandoned. As a consequence, the city was well-preserved, especially the frescos of the synagogue (once in Damascus and still now, we hope). Yale participated in the excavations in the 1930s and brought many objects back to New Haven, including the Christian frescos. Initial interest in the site was sparked by “a monograph seductively called Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine Painting ,” ( link ). By contrast to such works, recent scholarly opinion has turned against a) stylistic interpretations of art and b) narratives of decline in late antiquity (e.g. Elsner 2018: 16-7). Overall, though, what I find most striking about this art is a) how different it is from standard contempo...