My eclectic reading

                                   

This time I am reading Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong. I mean, I really read few other books at the same time like Dunbar - the Hogarth version of King Lear, a Polish book about a spirited Polish painter Stryjenska and others as well. Just listing some of them made me aware that such eclectic reading may cause a great confusion in my thinking. It most likely does but my attention span shortened somehow and this has influenced my ability to complete a book in a single stream. My chaotic reading has its pluses, I would like to say. Like coming across Glenn Murcutt and getting sidetracked to look at architecture from a new perspective. My preferences have been mostly for European architecture with Gothic as my favourite church style. I know that most of the people would not share my liking of old churches. I am not sure where it came from, but I get mushy and nostalgic when I think of old European towns their market places, town-halls, palaces and churches. Always churches. I remember when I discovered the Pelplin Basilica. My husband and I were traveling from Warsaw to Gdansk by car. Looking through my tourist guide I found out that we were going to pass one of the national treasures in Pelplin. As it was time for lunch I did not have much problems to convince my husband to make a little detour to see the place and have something to eat in this small town. The church was closed but there was a possibility to open it on requests of tourists. I made such a request and the huge doors of the cathedral opened for us. Somebody turned the lights so we could see the interior. It was magnificent, the paintings, the sculptures and most of all the vaulted ceiling from the XIII century.

                             

I was spell bound. My companion did not quite share my artistic euphoria so we did not spend all that much time there, but some years later I went to spend few days in the place and had an opportunity to see the church at more than one occasion and many more beautiful things there.  Like shrine Madonnas or one of the original Gutenberg's bibles.

  

I can feel the next post taking a shape in my head already. But this will be one of my next posts and this was only a “small” introduction to write about that beauty has many names and many representations. Thinking about all those treasures that the history and various artists have left for us to admire one may think that the young countries do not have that much to offer. So, Australians travel to foreign countries to find more beauty there than we can see around us. Often, we even do not notice this unassuming beauty that Australia offers in abundance. And here I read about Art as Therapy covering subjects of: Methodology, Love, Nature, Money and Politics and discover artists I never heard of and find out much more about those I thought I knew well but really did not. At one point to my surprise come across a picture of War Memorial in Canberra. The caption says – One is moved by the sacrifice, but unsure quite in whose name it took place. On the next page there is a picture of Glenn Murcutt House in South Australia. Here the caption says: An Australia to love – and, if it comes to it, die for. The picture of this country house shows the corrugated iron, big cylindrical water tanks, and the shed and the garage doors. All the elements beautifully belong to one another and the whole composition is magnificent in an unassuming way. So clever, so aesthetically pleasing and so Australian. Suddenly I saw something different to a Gothic cathedral but making me feel quite similar as when entering a monumental church and in owe thinking wow…. I wish I could see the house in reality. Maybe one day?

P.S. My list of books “in reading” has grown again;  I just got To Kill the Mocking Bird from the library.