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| Raphael: Massacre of the Innocents |
Most affecting for me in terms of subject matter was No 70: a line drawing of "Massacre of the Innocents", the subject being the attempt by Herod to destroy all the male children in Bethlehem in an attempt to destroy the infant Jesus. The image had sharply defined short lines building up to the shapes of limbs, hands, arms and a composition of dramatic action which defied easy analysis. Simply speaking, a stark build-up of an emotional drama, made more vivid by the sense of an event encapsulated in a scratched-out moment of incompleteness, snatched out from a moment in time.
From the exhibition description: A woman is running towards us, mouth open in a scream, a baby cradled in her arms. The violence around her seems to part and give passage through the slaughter. What the open pathway through the heart of the horror really gives however, is a heartbreaking visual connection between our eyes and her pain. To look into that terrified face is to feel the full pity of her plight. It is impossible not to be gripped by an overwhelming compassion.
Paschendale Remembered: July 29th 2017
New every morning is the Love.
Paschendale remembered in the News:
It has been a hundred years since, but
There is the danger of the flaccid mind
As if those horrors were left behind.
Tell this to the people of Mosul,
Tell this to the people of Yemen.
Let us not be fed with too-comfortable methodologies
To tickle the sentimental core.
- DB July 2017
