Invasion of Light

The Patriot
Turner and the drama of history.
by Simon Schama
From the New Yoker

Poor old Turner: one minute the critics were singing his praises, the next they were berating him for being senile or infantile, or both. No great painter suffered as much from excesses of adulation and execration, sometimes for the same painting. "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon Coming On" had, on its appearance at the Royal Academy, in 1840, been mocked by the reviewers as "the contents of a spittoon," a "gross outrage to nature," and so on. The critic of the Times thought the seven pictures—including "Slavers"—that Turner sent to the Royal Academy that year were such "detestable absurdities" that "it is surprising the [selection] committee have suffered their walls to be disgraced with the dotage of his experiments." John Ruskin, who had been given "Slavers" by his father and had appointed himself Turner's paladin, not only went overboard in praise of his hero but drowned in the ocean of his own hyperbole. In the first edition of "Modern Painters" (1843), Ruskin, then all of twenty-four, sternly informed the hacks that "their duty is not to pronounce opinions upon the work of a man who has walked with nature threescore years; but to impress upon the public the respect with which they [the works] are to be received."

Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhon coming on ("The Slave Ship") 1840; Oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The reasons for both the sanctification and the denunciation were more or less the same: Turner's preference for poetic atmospherics over narrative clarity, his infatuation with the operation of light rather than with the objects it illuminated. His love affair with gauzy obscurity, his resistance to customary definitions of contour and line, his shameless rejoicing in the mucky density of oils or in the wayward leaks and bleeds of watercolors—these were condemned as reprehensible self-indulgence. Sir George Beaumont, collector, patron, and, as he supposed, arbiter of British taste, complained noisily of Turner's "vicious practice" and dismissed his handling of the paint surface as "comparatively, blots." The caustic essayist William Hazlitt was especially troubled by Turner's relish of visual ambiguity: the sharp line melting into the swimming ether. Contrary to Ruskin, Hazlitt thought it was unseemly for Turner to fancy himself playing God, reprising the primordial flux of Creation. Someone, Hazlitt commented, had said that his landscapes "were pictures of nothing and very like."

To read the rest of the article click here.

To see a slide show of Turner's work click here.

A tourist vists Bangladesh

clipped from jhkinseyweb.com

Peter Trent - Bangladesh - October 2010

October 25, 2010

I am in my 4th day in Bangladesh, and what an adventure! A quick spin through Dhaka (12 million and counting), then a heart-stopping drive to Chittagong, where we saw an amazing open fish market, then on to Cox's Bazar, in the southeast corner of the country, on a 120 km long wide sand beach.

This country is beautiful and the people are so friendly. Beautiful children - no child labor laws and they are doing heavy lifting at an early age. No visible tourists. I have seen only one white face since arrival, a sergeant at the WWII grave site. Hotels are adequate to on the edge of luxurious. Food is passable if you can pick out the green chilies, which are dynamite. Weather is hot and humid; sunny skies except for one brief downpour.

October 28, 2010

Here almost a week, and many adventures and mishaps. The countryside is beautiful and the people are very friendly and attractive.

Dhaka is the pits: at least 12 million people, all in continuous motion, on foot, by pedicab, tuk-tuk, ancient buses and an occasional Toyota. Then traffic jams are unlike anything I have ever seen. We left the airport at 4:30 for a 10k ride to the boat dock for the "Rocket" paddle wheeler to the Sundarban and by 7:00 we had still not reached it and gave up because it had already sailed. We turned back to our hotel in Dhaka and reached it after 10PM.

I am now in Khulna, to take a 5:30 AM boat for two days in the mangrove forest. Hope to see a Bengal tiger before it sees me!

Two days ago, at Cox's Bazar, I was tipped off a sampan into the Bay of Bengal. Other than a bump on the head, a few scratches, and some loss of dignity I survived, but one of my cameras did not. Fortunately the stick is ok so I didn't lose the photos.

Prices are unbelievably low. Dinners run about $4 to $9. The food is undistinguished at best. Liquor is not generally available, hotels are $30-50 a night for plain but perfectly decent, clean accommodation.

November 12, 2010

I am back, from one of the most challenging and interesting trips I have taken. The country is beautiful- lush green rice fields, verdant jungle and swamp areas, very friendly and attractive people, particularly the children, It is teeming with people (160 million in an area just slightly larger than the State of New York). It is the seventh most populous country in the world, and the fourth largest Islamic country. 90% of the population is Islamic, mostly Sunni, the balance are Hindu, with a smattering of Buddhists and Christians.

Most of the southern part of the country is either water or low lying, swampy area. Not hard to understand that the water lily is the national flower. Rice is the main crop, and there is lots of lush jungle-like area. I was one of two, traveling with a driver and guide. After an early morning arrival we took a brief tour of Dhaka (population 12 million) and got our first exposure to its incredible traffic. There are thousands of pedicabs, motorized tricycles, trucks and crammed buses, also vying with a few cars, almost all reconditioned Toyotas, and daredevil pedestrians trying to thread their way through the massive traffic jams at great peril. Most of the city is old and dilapidated. One exception was the striking government complex designed by Louis Kahn. There is some building going on, mainly apartments and office buildings, a lot of which is financed by repatriated funds from overseas workers. Almost all of it is financed by equity rather than debt. There is, by the way, a surprisingly large and active stock market. We drove the next day to Chittagong, the second largest city (3.8 million) and main port. Upscale a bit from Dhaka. On the way we visited a small, tidy and moving WWII cemetery, and then the boat yards where they cut up massive ships for scrap, a very controversial business.

We spent some time in the sprawling Fish Landing, one of the largest fish markets in the entire country. We also made a brief stop at the only Christian church we saw, a RC cathedral originally founded by the Portuguese in the early 16 century. It has a lovely cemetery and two schools, one for boys and one for girls.

The trip to Cox's Bazar took the rest of the day. We had an hour wait for gas, as they turn the power off for parts of the day and the pumps were not working. Then we had a breakdown with the car which ate up another 1 1/2 hours. We reached Cox's at sunset, and checked into the best hotel we stayed at. Cox's Bazar is the northern end of a broad white sand beach which extends for 125 kilometers, to the border with Myanmar.

Our trip to Moheshkhali Island to visit the local tribe there was a fascinating look at a tribal culture hardly touched by civilization, except for a scattering of satellite discs. No cars. The return trip was the occasion of my unexpected dunk in the Bay of Bengal, being tipped out of a sampan while disembarking.

We flew back to Dhaka and then Jessore to reach our boat in Khulna, on which we spent three days and two nights exploring the Sundarban, at 10,000 square kilometers the largest mangrove forest in the world and the home of the largest population of Bengal tigers, of which we saw none. It is a low lying preserve which extends up to 80Ks inside Bangladesh, and is mostly water and swamp. We took some silent boat excursions into some of the smaller waterways, The flora is so thick that we saw few animals, mostly spotted deer and birds. We had one grueling trek through the slime of a tidal flat, and a 10K walk on a sand beach, fording a tidal canal in knee deep water. We were turned back at one grassy field which was overrun with snakes. We were 18 on the boat, plus crew: 6 Aussies (5 of whom were working for various NGOs, three Swiss who were involved in an agricultural project in Afghanistan, two females from the UK, three Bangladeshi couples. Only three of us could be considered as tourists. These people were the only Western faces I saw throughout the trip, until we got to the airport for departure to Doha.

The final highlight was 24 hours on the "Rocket,' a large paddle wheeler built in the 1880s, which is the principal mode of transportation of people and goods throughout the delta area. I had a comfortable private cabin, but a good bit of Bangladesh were bedded down just through the door to the main part of the boat, from babies to grandparents and an occasional live chicken. Watching the flow of people on and off the boat was truly amazing.

Our final stop was in the tea country, 200Ks north of Dhaka: large groves of tea plants, and a very interesting rain forest. Food throughout was basic, the best meals were on the boats, but it is not a culinary destination. As a sign of how un-touristy things are, I could not find a postcard anywhere in the entire country, and requests for same were generally greeted with blank stares. Sorry everybody. I do have some unused stamps for any collectors out there.

There are at least two English language papers which are quite good. Their emphasis is on local and national issues. Sports are featured, with cricket and worldwide soccer most prominent. Key current issues are stalking; the selling of children and daughters into prostitution or other servitude, mainly to India and the Middle East, and the widespread corruption of the bureaucracy and the courts. The stalking issue is quite serious, because the stalkers killed two people while I was there, one a mother and one a 'good Samaritan' who had intervened. The police had not intervened or apprehended the perpetrators. I am glad I went, I don't expect to return, and it is definitely for the more intrepid traveler. I am editing pictures and hope to have some available in the near future.

Peter

November 16, 2010

Faces of Bangladesh

The thing is

clipped from writersalmanac.publicradio.org

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass\

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2002