In which my last few days come together...

[nineveh_uk]

I wish I had known as a 12 year old painting fantasy landscapes that traditional Chinese landscape painting is not intended to be literal depictions of places in a mode of realism, but symbolic and imaginary*. I would have been so into it. As it is, I know naff all, so apologies to the art tradition.

Anyway, this is what you get when you combine watching the final couple of episodes of Nirvana in Fire** with current British politics. In this famous work, Two men atop a waterfall we see the tiny figures of two men, one yellow-haired, as they grapple beside a castle above a cascade. Is it a battle or a rescue? Surely one will plunge into the depths? But which? Though considered crude in execution, the work is one of many of this moment of symbolic importance.



*That is putting it extremely crudely because I only understand it thus. I want to read a book. Or better websites.

**An ending successfully pulled off, thoughts to follows

Comments

[sir_guinglain]

Excellent. Who is the master, and who the follower, and will one or both fall? Have they both fallen and neither noticed? Some say that they had no heights to scale to begin with, and they only dragged others down into the underworld whence they came...

[nineveh_uk]

I see that you are a master scholar of the legend depicted!

[azdak]

This is a wonderful sketch! I love the perspective, it gives such a sense of depth and plungingess. You should do a version without Boris Johnson in it so my appreciation would be unsullied by loathing and contempt.

[nineveh_uk]

Thank you! I have some new brushes to try out and am quite tempted to do a 'real' version, though I might feel compelled to leave Johnson in. Or perhaps his absence could itself be the point: landscape without a man.