Posted with apologies to the Italian Baroque artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Guercino) on whose original Et in Arcadia Ego this is based.
Archive for the Art Category
Et in Arcadia Lego
Posted in Art with tags Art, Et in Arcadia Ego, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Lego, painting on May 27, 2025 by telescoperSpring Undergrowth – Joan González
Posted in Art, Barcelona with tags Art, Joan González, Sous-bois printanier, Tate Gallery on April 29, 2025 by telescoper
The artist Joan González was born in Barcelona, and lived from 1868 to 1908; the title of this work in Catalan is Sous-bois Printanier.
A Day in Cardiff
Posted in Art, Biographical, Cardiff, LGBTQ+, Opera, Politics with tags Art, Cardiff, Cardiff Bay, Miners' Strike, National Museum of Wales, Wales Millennium Centre on April 5, 2025 by telescoperI got up at Stupid O’Clock this morning to catch an early morning plane from Dublin to Cardiff. It was very cold when I arrived but it soon warmed up and turned into a lovely day.
I had a nice breakfast at Bill’s when I arrived in the City then did tour of the National Museum of Wales where there is an exhibition about the Miners’ Strike of 1984/5, from which this display case caught my attention:
I also had time for a round of Name That Artist (scoring a miserable 3/12, for Sutherland, Ernst, and Magritte).
After that, I took a stroll around Bute Park before heading to my hotel in Cardiff Bay to check in and have a rest before the reason for my visit, an event which will take place here at 7pm:
I won’t be able to blog about that until I get back to Maynooth tomorrow afternoon.
Meta Theft
Posted in Art, Books, Television with tags Artificial Intelligence, copyright, Large Language Models, LibGen, meta, The Atlantic, Theft on March 21, 2025 by telescoperBeware, all thieves and imitators of other people’s labour and talents, of laying your audacious hands upon our work.
Albrecht Dürer, 1511
I’ve remembered that quotation since it was uttered by Inspector Morse in the episode Who Killed Harry Field? Albrecht Dürer wasn’t referring to Artificial Intelligence when he said it, but it does seem pertitent to what’s going on today.
There’s an article in The Atlantic about a huge database of pirated work called LibGen that has been used by Mark Zuckerberg’s corporation Meta to train its artificial intelligence system. Instead of acquiring such materials from publishers – or, Heaven forbid, authors! – they decided simply to steal it. That’s theft on a grand scale: 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers.
The piece provides a link to LibGen so you can search for your own work there. I searched it yesterday and found 137 works by “Peter Coles”. Not all of them are by me, as there are other authors with the same name, but all my books are there, as well as numerous research articles, reviews and other pieces:
I suppose many think I should be flattered that my works are deemed to be of sufficiently high quality to be used to train a large language model, but I’m afraid I don’t see it that way at all. I think, at least for the books, this is simply theft. I understand that there may be a class action in the USA against Meta for this larceny, which I hope succeeds.
I think I should make a few points about copyright and authorship. I am a firm advocate of open access to the scientific literature, so I don’t think research articles should be under copyright. Meta can access them along with everyone else on the planet. It’s not really piracy if it’s free anyways. Although it would be courteous of Meta to acknowledge its sources, lack of courtesy is not the worst of Meta’s areas of misconduct.
In a similar vein, when I started writing this blog back in 2008 I did wonder about copyright. Over the years, quite a lot of my ramblings here have been lifted by journalists, etc. Again a bit of courtesy would have been nice. I did make the decision, however, not to bother about this as (a) it would be too much hassle to chase down every plagiarist and (b) I don’t make money from this site anyway. As far as I’m concerned as soon as I put anything on here it is in the public domain. I haven’t changed that opinion with the advent of ChatGPT etc. Indeed, I am pretty sure that all 7000+ articles from this blog were systematically scraped last year.
Books are, however, in a different category. I have never made a living from writing books, but it is dangerous to the livelihood of those that do to have their work systematically stolen in this way. I understand that there may be a class action in the USA against Meta for this blatant larceny, which I hope succeeds.
Bluesky Embed Test
Posted in Art, Biographical, Uncategorized with tags Art, BlueSky, Claude Monet, Japanese Bridge with Water Lilies on January 16, 2025 by telescoperIt’s been a very busy day today so I just have time to test out the new “Bluesky embed” feature on WordPress. That means I can share a selection of my very best shitposts directly here. Try this one:
It seems to work on some browsers but not others. How is it for you?
The Hunters in the Snow – Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Posted in Art, Poetry with tags Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow, William Carlos Williams on December 17, 2024 by telescoper
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565, oil on panel, 117×162 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).
This very famous painting is the subject of this ekphrastic poem, written in 1962, by William Carlos Williams:
The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign
hanging from a
broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold
inn yard is
deserted but for a huge bonfire
that flares wind-driven tended by
women who cluster
about it to the right beyond
the hill is a pattern of skaters
Brueghel the painter
concerned with it all has chosen
a winter-struck bush for his
foreground to
complete the picture
It seems strange to me that the poem misses what I think is the most important feature of the painting: that the hunters are returning empty-handed. It’s that that makes the image so bleak.
The Sun – Edvard Munch
Posted in Art with tags Art, Edvard Munch, The Sun on November 14, 2024 by telescoper
by Edvard Munch (1911, 455 x 780 cm, oil on canvas, University of Oslo; this very large work hangs in the University Aula at the University of Oslo where it is flanked by ten other Munch paintings )
The Opening of the Fifth Seal
Posted in Art with tags Art, El Greco, Opening of the Fifth Seal, painting on September 23, 2024 by telescoperI was trying to find a work of art with which to illustrate the start of teaching term and decided on this remarkable painting by El Greco, usually called The Opening of the Fifth Seal though it has been given other names. Actually it’s only part of the original painting – the upper section was destroyed in 1880 – which at least partly accounts for the unusual balance of the composition. What I find astonishing about this work, though, is that at first sight it looks for all the world like an early 20th Century expressionist work, complete with distorted figures and vivid colour palette. It’s very hard to believe that it was painted in the early years of the 17th Century! El Greco was 300 years ahead of his time.
by Doménikos Theotokópoulos (“El Greco“), painted between 1608 and 1614, 224.8 cm × 199.4 cm, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
From Here – Bridget Riley
Posted in Art with tags Art, Bridget Riley, From Here, painting on August 21, 2024 by telescoper
by Bridget Riley (1994, 1576 × 2278 mm, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection)
Ireland’s First Olympic Medal
Posted in Art with tags 2024 Olympic Games, Jack Butler Yeats, National Gallery of Ireland, The Liffey Swim on July 26, 2024 by telescoperAhead of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, I thought I’d post a reminder of Ireland’s first ever Olympic medal. A silver medal was awarded to Ireland at the 1924 Olympic Games for this painting by Jack Butler Yeats, brother of the poet William Butler Yeats:
Ireland only gained independence in 1922 so 1924 was the first Olympics at which Ireland competed as a separate nation. It may surprise you to learn that art competitions were a part of the Olympic Games from 1912 until 1948, as were competitions in music and literature. The 1924 Gold Medal for painting was won by an artist from Luxembourg called Jean Jacoby who specialized in sporting themes.
Although it was a style Yeats only started to experiment with around 1920, The Liffey Swim (which you can see in the National Gallery of Ireland) is clearly an Expressionist work – the unusual colour palette and texture of the paint are characteristics of that movement – but it also serves as an interesting bit of social history. The Liffey Swim is a regular event in Dublin (except during the Covid-19 pandemic) but only began in 1920 so it was fairly new when Yeats painted it. He captures the excited atmosphere surrounding the event by placing the viewer in the middle of a huge crowd struggling to get a good view, with the swimmers only shown in cursory detail. You see far more of the spectators than you do of the race!
In the Dark 