This selection is something very specific to English music - even more specifically to the North of England. I don't know when I first heard a brass band; probably as a child, even though the part of the North of England where I grew up was not a strong band playing area.Even so, I can't hear a brass band without getting shivers down my spine. There is something about the instrumentation I think, that creates such wonderful overtones.

Outside the UK, many people will have come across this music via the movie 'Brassed Off'. This clip shows the band from the film playing outside a hospital, where the conductor is terminally ill. It is a wonderful scene, played by the real-life Grimethorpe Colliery Band - and yes, that is a real place.

Brass band music is very varied. It includes transcriptions of classical and popular music, specially written pieces, hymns and religious music. This one is the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band playing 'Autumn Leaves'.

Here is the same band with the tune 'Horsley', one that you will probably recognise when you hear it.

Many of the bands were associated with industrial firms. This is the Leyland Band (a car company) playing the march 'Army of the Nile'.

Another factory band - the Foden Band (Foden was a lorry firm) playing a transcription of 'Suite Gothique' by Boellman. Originally for organ this was transcribed for Brass Band by Eric Ball.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_Gothique

Finally we have the Grimethorpe Colliery Band again playing 'Gresford', popularly known as the Miners' Hymn.

Gresford was written about a mining disaster. This film tells more about the event.

It's St Valentine's Day, so let's have some Romance! Chris de Burgh seems to be best known for 'Lady in Red', allegedly the song most sung by drunken maudlin men of a certain age(NSFW) but I prefer this one - "Missing you"

The really romantic voice for my generation is I suppose Nat King Cole. Also a great pianist of course, but his rich velvety voice gave him an audience way beyond his jazz roots and in the process did a great deal to damage racial prejudice as he captured women's hearts everywhere.Here he is with "When I fall in love."

For later generations there was a different voice and on the face of it an unlikely heart-throb - Barry White of course, here with "My first, my last, my everything

For one lady of my acquaintance though, despite the lack of a great voice this is the ultimate - Bob Dylan with "Lay Lady Lay"

Later still we have the more poppy sound of Police and "Every breath you take."

I'm not a great country music fan I have to confess, but there are a few singers I could listen to all the time. The wonderful Patsy Cline is one of these, in her own way I think comparable to the great Billie Holiday for the way in which she could pack such emotion into relatively simple songs. Here she is with "I fall to pieces."

I've got a post coming up on Latin music, but for the time being here is Ibrahim Ferrer, from the Buena Vista Social Club and "Dos Gardenias." It was Ry Cooder's great album of the same name that brought mne back to Latin music in fact.

Another great and sadly neglected voice is Julie London. Here she is in a clip from a film with "Cry me a river"

Not much commentary this time, just let the music wash over you.

I've been working on some small monotypes over the past few weeks. I started making these as a quick way to try out palettes and different ways of mark-making on the plate, keeping the size down for economy and to save time. I'm increasingly finding however that I like this size - the largest being no more than about 5" by 4" - especially the concentrated focus and the way in which marks have to be kept simple and graphic to show up. Despite that subtlety in shading is still possible.

I haven't put any of these in  my shop here. I'm not sure how much interest there would be in what are in effect studies. They have been uploaded to flickr however so have a look and if you think they have worth in themselves, please let me know. I would love some feedback.

I've included some examples below, but the full set, currently eight in number but with another half dozen or so still to scan, can be found here.

Some of the prints still to scan were made while trying to get out of my creative block that I posted about a few days ago. I'll put them into a separate post that will tie into the series of posts on 'appropriation' that I started here.

I've put back the Music for Sunday post I had planned. Listen instead to Whitney Houston at her peak, displaying her fantastic vocal range.

Have you come across 'pocahotties'? I hadn’t either until a few weeks ago. It is apparently the term used for young women who dress up in 'Red Indian' outfits in which to prance around on Halloween. I have to confess that until recently, being as happy to watch scantily dressed young women capering around as the next male, I would have seen this as essentially harmless, although it isn’t prevalent in the UK. However, reading the reaction of those on the receiving end made me realise that in practice this is just as offensive as would be putting on blackface and an 'African Princess' outfit. While there are, and probably always have been, people who respect Native American culture and see virtue in emulating it, dressing up for a party is not respect.

Following this up, I came across the term 'cultural appropriation’, defined on Wikipedia as “the taking – from a culture that is not one’s own – of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artefacts, history and ways of knowledge.” It is perhaps best used to describe the broader process of acculturation from the perspective of a minority or weaker culture.

While I understand the 'pocahottie' issue, I have immediate problems with this wider concept. Almost every term used in that definition has further problems of definition. What does ‘taking’ mean? What is a culture? Can we locate the source of ‘intellectual property, cultural expressions or artefacts, history and ways of knowledge’ at a cultural level? Can the appropriation of objects like works of art be considered in the same way as appropriation of content like artistic styles or culturally significant rituals?

Moreover. as the term has passed into wider usage, its meaning has become confused, muddled and riddled with inconsistencies. In particular it has become used to justify claims that the use of concepts from other cultures is in some way unacceptable, to be avoided and perhaps even racist. Dig into blog comment threads and you will arguments to that effect about judo and other martial arts, yoga, textile patterns, music and a huge range of artistic endeavours. Most of these arguments moreover take the ‘donor’ culture at face value, without looking to see how far it is itself a synthesis. The implied suggestion that these cultures cannot stand up for themselves but must be defended by others and, implicitly, fossilised is also at best patronising and potentially racist.

To take this further let’s look at some cases of alleged content appropriation in the arts.

Jazz and blues are generally considered to have their roots in African-American culture. It has been argued in the past that when non African-American musicians attempt to play jazz or blues they are cannot perform with the right sensitivity and feeling and are also damaging the culture from which they are ‘stealing’.

So far as the first argument is concerned there is plenty of contradictory empirical evidence. Many years ago I saw a TV interview with musicians Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee in which they recounted how, when they first heard a recording by the British artist Lonnie Donegan, they thought it was by Leadbelly, so accurately had he captured the sound and feel.

Philosopher James O Young in his book Cultural Appropriation and the Arts" target="_blank" title="Cultural appropriation and the arts">Cultural Appropriation and the Arts recounts how the trumpeter Roy Eldridge (Young calls him ‘Ray’) bet the music critic Leonard Feather that he could reliably tell the difference between jazz performances by African American and non African American musicians. Eldridge failed miserably.

A third example can be found in the almost universal praise for the work of Eric Clapton from black artists like Muddy Waters and B B King.

The second argument about damage to the donor culture also fails to stand up to investigation. The classic 'St James Infirmary Blues' is a case in point. The words and melody have their origin in an 18th century traditional English folk song called "The Unfortunate Rake" (also known as "The Unfortunate Lad" or "The Young Man Cut Down in His Prime"). There are numerous versions of the song throughout the English-speaking world. It evolved for example into other American standards such as "The Streets of Laredo". Effectively the song is the product of a long process of adoption, adaptation and transmutation into the blues we know.

A similar case is the song ‘Goodnight Irene’ recorded in 1950 by Pete Seeger and the Weavers. This was an adaptation of a song called ‘Irene’ by Leadbelly and proved controversial at the time. It turned out however that the Leadbelly song – which he had copyrighted – was based on a traditional Southern folk song he had learned from his uncle. That song was in turn an arrangement of a waltz written in the 1880s by Gussie Lord Davies, an African America composer who wrote however for a largely white audience. Probably Leadbelly’s uncle had come across it via that non African-American channel. Davis of course had in turn appropriated the waltz from the music of Vienna. The song has now permeated British culture to the extent that it has become the club song for supporters of the English football club Bristol Rovers.

In both cases these songs have been passing in and out of African American culture over an extended period. The extent to which they can be placed within a specific culture is minimal and the extent to which any culture has been harmed by the process is probably zero.

Film is another example of appropriation resulting in positive outcomes. The great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa made numerous films based on Western literary sources. Perhaps the greatest of these are Ran (derived from King Lear) and Throne of Blood (derived from Macbeth). Another of Kurosawa’s films Seven Samurai was in turn remade as The Magnificent Seven, while his film Yojimbo became A Fistful of Dollars.

Shakespeare was himself an arch appropriator, from Holinshed and others. His themes and plots have a mythic quality that stands above any specific culture and so easily slip from one medium to another and from one cultural setting to another. As well as the Kurosawa films, Lear was the inspiration for the film Broken Arrow Lance, the musical Kiss me Kate came from Taming of the Shrew and most well known of all perhaps, West Side Story, from Romeo and Juliet. His work was also the stimulus for the suite “Such Sweet Thunder” by Duke Ellington.

Appropriation of content then has been the source of much great work. The adoption of artistic elements from a culture and their remaking into something new is a positive thing. Examples have been cited from jazz and film, but there are many others. In music, tango, salsa, Tejano, flamenco and high life are all syntheses from a range of cultures. Surprisingly perhaps the Mexican Tejano music includes elements from the brass band music of German immigrants, while flamenco incorporates Arabic and even Indian influences via Gypsy music. None of these examples cited have taken anything away from their culture of origin, in fact by their creation the sum total of human happiness has been increased.

Cultural and artistic change is inevitable. Without it we would still be picking wild berries and fleeing from predators. Trying to prevent change will be as successful as King Cnut. Everyone loses.

I think I have more to say on this, but this post is already rather long.

Running late this week, so here is a delayed, 'Music for Sunday'.

I have always like the female voice in music. I'm particuarly fond of the pure sound of the soprano, without heavy overtones or strong vibrato, although as these selections will show, that isn't an exclusive preference.

Here to start however is an operatic voice, the inimitable Frederika von Stade singing Bailero from 'Songs of the Auverne' by Canteloube.

Despite what I just said, one of my absolute favourite albums, the one I would pick above all others for my Desert Island Discs is 'Lady in Satin' by Billie Holiday. It is the absolute antithesis of von Stade. Her voice is gone, but you only have to hear a couple of bars to hear pure magic. Here she is with 'You don't know what love is'.

Another wonderful performer, almost as intense as Billie in her own way, was the late Etta James. Here she is with 'I'd rather go blind'.

Being a child of the '60s, you would expect of course to find a track by Joan Baez. Here she is before she was famous, aged only about 17, singing 'Barbara Allen'. A pure voice indeed, without any overtones, yet instantly recognisable.

I haven't always liked Maria Callas' voice. I suspect I allowed myself to be influenced by those who decried her lack of technique, as if technique was more important than voice and performance. This is 'O Mio Babbino Caro'.

Back to pop now, with Linda Ronstadt. I came to her late, with an album recorded with a big band that included this song, written by Kate and Anna Mcgarrigle, 'Talk to me of Mendocino'. The lyric is beautiful, a description of a cross-country car trip in which the songwriter takes leave of the mountains of Quebec and other natural markers of her youth, only to come face-to-face with the majestic power of the Mendocino redwoods.

Finally, with this one we are going back a long way to an object of my teenage lust - the British singer Kathy Kirby with 'Secret Love' from 1962. She projected an incredible sexuality for those days. Alas she died not long ago.

As with Duke last week, I have lots more to choose from. No Ella yet, no Astrud Gilberto, Beyonce (yes!), Diana Ross or Dinah Washington, so watch this space...

I went to Tate Modern in London a few weeks ago to see Panorama - works by Gerhard Richter (now closed). As I said in an earlier post, I was a little disappointed and overall had a mixed reaction to his work.

His approach appears very intellectual. Even his dependence on chance in his 'squeegee' paintings does not appear to be for any sensual reason but academic.

The show is arranged chronologically. Much of the early work left me cold, especially the grisaille paintings made from photographs. The exception was the series of paintings about the Baader-Meinhof group. Somehow - for me anyway - the slightly detached coldness of these paintings chimed with the nihilism and the essential empty destructiveness of the groups ideology. For the rest though, nothing...

He clearly has great technical ability. Paintings like The Reader (1994) for example are photographic in their rendering, but I wonder then, as I always do with super-realist work, "What's the point?" Painting, for me at least, is not about capturing a likeness, although that may be an element. It must offer more than that, something I certainly cannot get from a photograph. In the case of a painting like Folding Dryer (1962) I don't get anything. Perhaps for Richter, fresh from East Germany, the abundance of consumer goods available to him in the West perhaps triggered something that led to this image, but away from that context it has no wider, universal meaning. I actually preferred  a series of linocuts, Elbe from 1957. Made while still in the East these have an atmospheric quality, a depth, that the later monochrome works lack.

He also changes his style quite regularly. His grey paintings were followed by a series of colour charts. These paintings, flat slabs of colour arranged at random almost deny painting. There is no sense of brushwork or texture, no pretence o meaning, just flat rectangles of colour. Comparisons might be drawn with the work of Bridget Riley, but Richter is not concerned with playing tricks with our visual cortex. He seems to be saying simply 'This is it, make of it what you like'.

Later he reverted to monochrome with among others, a series of Townscape paintings. These are Impressionist in technique, blobs of paint in shades of grey that only resolve into an image as you stand back.

By the 90s he is back working in colour again. Some of these involve over-painting of photographs - seemingly arbitrary blotches of colour ignoring, even destroying, the image beneath. He also begins to produce a series of Abstract Paintings, experimenting with the use of squeegees and building images through a process of adding and removing layers of paint. Most successful of these I think are a set of four, Forest from 1990, where the title is post hoc, based on the impression created by the paintings, rather than any prior intent.

By now his obsession with chance appears to be coming to the fore. Many paintings from this period include large areas where a layer of paint has been physically peeled off to reveal what is underneath in ways that can only be arbitrary. Others involve applying paint at random to paper then photographing it, selecting details and then painting at large scale those semi-random (in the sense that they were not planned, only selected) details. The technique adopted is however flat and soft, removing any sense of texture or impasto from the image, so that the final painting looks like nothing more than an brutally over enlarged digital image, albeit without the characteristic qualities of digital.

Finally, in this review at least, we come to the last pieces, a set of 6 paintings called Cage, so-named because they were painted while listening to the music of John Cage. These huge works, each 10 feet by 10 feet are wholly abstract, made by a process of layering over a period of weeks. Paint was added using huge squeegees. The monograph on the series shows a unique set of work in progress photos, that vividly demonstrates the way in which they changed and developed over time. I'm reserving judgement on these. Clearly they are a major piece of work, and in fact they have been acquired as a part of the Tate Permanent Collection. I'm unsure however whether there impact comes from any innate aesthetic quality as 'art' and how much comes from their sheer scale.

However, I am reminded of this quote from Sir Terry Frost, which I have used before in relation to the work of Mark Rothko.

"To look at a painting which gives you the opportunity to have solitude, to be yourself and to be able to wander into reverie, is more than hedonistic, it's spiritual".

Perhaps this quality of reverie will emerge the next time I see these paintings.

I discovered the music of Duke Ellington when I was about 12 or 13, so probably around 1959. I've loved his work ever since; all of it from the 1920s till he died in 1974. In the words of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington." I can't remember the original album I listened to back then, but I'm pretty sure it contained classics like Caravan, Rocking in Rhythm, Perdido, Satin Doll and Warm Valley.

Duke was a great pianist, although he always maintained that his instrument was his orchestra. Certainly, despite many changes in personnel over the years, his sound was always instantly recognisable. I'll save his piano playing for another post, but let's start where I began with Caravan, recorded in 1952 and featuring Juan Tizol on valve trombone.

Duke's music had many moods; he could be lyrical as in Caravan and he could produce a piece that swing along as hard as anything by Count Basie, Woody Herman or any of the great swing bands of the era. Here he is in 1931 with Rocking in Rhythm, a piece that continued in the band's repertoire for decades.

As an example of its continued popularity here it is again, played this time by Weather Report, in 1980.

Duke had less success with his singers than with his instrumentalists. None of them that I have come across were anywhere near his league as performers. His collaborations were something else however, including greats like Ella Fitzgerald and in a different style, the incomparable Mahalia Jackson. Here's Ella and Duke with Take the A Train.

Over the years Duke wrote many suites, perhaps the earliest being Black Brown and Beige. Here is Mahalia Jackson, with a live recording from 1958 of Come Sunday from that suite. Whatever your religious views, if this doesn't make your spine tingle and the hairs on your neck stand up, you must be dead!

Duke's music often showed great humour too. One of my favourite fun pieces, also from a suite (The UWIS suite) is Klop, which believe it or not is a polka. Still recognisable as such but unmistakably Ellington.

Let's end with a real snorter of a performance, from the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, with all 15 minutes of Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, featuring a rabble rousing solo from tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves.

Duke wrote over 1000 compositions so this post can only offer a taste. I will be back with his piano playing and almost certainly with more from the band.

I didn't do any printmaking or painting over the Christmas holiday period. This holiday for me has always been about relaxing with family, reading lots of books and generally not doing a great deal.

However, trying to pick up again after the break has been hard. I seem to have hit a dry spell. Such few ideas that have struck have not worked out in practice. I've done some painting, but all of it so far has been picking up existing work. Getting inspiration for new stuff has been hard.

After a while I decided to stop trying to force things and do some writing instead, for here and for my other, politically focused, blog. For me though, writing anything over a few paragraphs takes time, because I need to build a logical structure to a piece even before I begin the process of editing and polishing.

So blog posts for here on the idea of 'Cultural Appropriation' and about my visit to the Gerhard Richter show at Tate Modern and for my other blog on a range of topics including the Occupy movement, pop up shops and galleries and on the increasing trend for political power to become increasingly concentrated in a small political class are all unfinished!

Advice for writers on beating writers block is usually to keep writing. It works because if all else fails the only thing you waste is time, and if you work your way through the blog block that isn't in the end wasted. Printing is something else though. My last three sessions at college have been a total bust, with nothing to show at all, while several days work in my own studio have been frustrating and depressing, with nothing produced worth keeping and many false starts, wasting ink and paper.

So how do you get through a creatively fallow period? Do you work on regardless, knowing much of what you do will be wasted or do you change tack, perhaps drawing or taking photographs instead of working in your usual medium? Please share your own experiences and practice - in the comments below rather than in the various fora to which I usually post links to blog posts.

I'm going to try and do a regular(ish) post on Sundays about music, or at least the music I like to listen to.

Many years ago, while still at school I think, so perhaps 50 years, I heard a wonderful voice, that turned out to be that of Amalia Rodrigues, probably the best exponent of the musical form know as fado.

Fado has been called the Portuguese blues, and it has much of the same sense of desperation and loss as the traditional blues. In the hands of a singer like Amalia Rodrigues, with an astonishing timbre and resonance, it probably reached its peak.

I have no idea what songs I saw her singing, but here are a couple of examples from Youtube, including one of my favourites 'Coimbra'. The first though is 'Fado Português'

'Coimbra'

I don't really know many other singers in the genre because it was the voice that drew me to the genre, not the other way around. Here however is Mariza, who whenever I've seen her seems to be wearing a black wedding dress!

Here is Mariza with another great Portuguese singer, Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde

As an experiment in ways to increase the visibility of art on Etsy, I have made a treasury, all fine art and focussing on landscape images. Click on an image to be taken directly to the item on Etsy.

There has been a discussion going on for a while on Etsy they could can improve its coverage of art. The basic premise is that when Etsy refers to art it ignores much of what is on the site, favouring twee or quirky illustrations and reproduction prints when selecting for its front page or in other promotional activity

The thread starts here:

http://www.etsy.com/teams/7714/ideas/discuss/9472004/page/1/

As part of the discussion and in order to widen the scope we are having a 24 hr round the world tweetathon using the Twitter hashtag #etsyandart.

Please join in with ideas, links or anything else that seems relevant.

I'm not looking for comments to this post for once (although if you can contribute no other way please feel free to do so) so if you want to join in the discussion go the thread above and/or join in on Twitter.

Last week I went to the Gerhard Richter show at Tate Modern in London. To say I enjoyed it would not be entirely accurate, but it was thoroughly thought provoking in terms of both technique and subject. One set I did very much like was his enormous 'Cage' series, now permanently at the Tate, six paintings each 10ft square loosely inspired by the music of John Cage. I bought a monograph on these paintings which includes many photographs of work in progress, so that it is possible to see the underpinning layers of paint and texture.

By comparison I found some of the curatorial notes, especially on the audio guide, so platitudinous as to be laughable. For example when you move in close you can no longer see the content of the picture - I would never have known! A shame - I would have liked to hear someone like Andrew Graham-Dixon talking about the work. He has a good voice and he knows his art. His book on Howard Hodgkin is excellent. I was also disappointed to find that the Tate's 'Seagram' Rothko paintings were not on display. One area had building work going on so they may reappear. The Tate has of course a huge collection - I think 17 by Patrick Heron of which only one is currently on display.

I was singularly unimpressed with the Tacita Dean installation in the Turbine Hall.  To me it totally failed to tackle the huge space in which it was located and was mundane in content.

Shows coming up in London this year I'm hoping to get to:

Picasso and Modern British Art at Tate Britain

David Hockney at the Royal Academy

and this one at Tate Modern that looks very interesting: Yayoi Kusama

There is just time too to see the wonderful John Martin exhibition at Tate Britain.

...and if you are feeling masochistic there is Damien Hirst also at Tate Modern, but not for me!

I'm going to write a more considered blog post about Richter soon I hope.

Early morning on Christmas day is probably the only time London is ever truly quiet.

London is never silent, not even at 3am, but on Xmas morning, it is almost silent. The background drone of aircraft approaching Heathrow has gone, and away from main roads, the streets lack the sound of car tyres rolling over tarmac.

Heading home, also a sound you never really hear now – the pealing of church bells. Not just coming from a single church you are nearby, but from all over the city as the sound carries far further than usual and surrounds you from all sides. Magical.

When my press arrived, I started by taking some impressions from existing plates. After that I started playing around with papers, pressures and colours to make some very small monotypes. None of these are much bigger than about 4" on a side. They were fun to make and when I get going will make a nice set of small pieces at lower price points in the shop. In the meantime here they are on Flickr.

I have had two prints in a local show, in the nearby town of Corsham. I went to pick them up yesterday and was pleased to find this one, 'Regatta', had sold.

So, if the new owner finds their way here, thank you for buying and I hope you enjoy the picture!

Some time ago, I posted an offer on Etsy for artists to be interviewed by e-mail for a profile on this blog. I still intend to carry on with this, but regretfully from now on I cannot include any links back to an Etsy shop. I have been told by Etsy that I cannot have any links at all from my profile there to an outside site, even a blog, so I don't see why I should help them with links the other way.

I'm sorry about this, but it is out of my control.

I'm going to leave existing links.

While reading a book called Writing about art by Marjorie Munsterberg (also a web site), I came across something I found rather shocking. She quotes a passage by John Ruskin in which he describes a painting by Turner.

It is a sunset on the Atlantic after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night.  The whole surface of the sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm.  Between these two ridges, the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendour which burns like gold and bathes like blood.  Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam.  They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying.  Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty* ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight, – and cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea.

[Ruskin’s note]*She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard.  The near sea is encoumbered with corpses.

What I found shocking was not Ruskin's verbosity, which is characteristically High Victorian, but Professor Munsterberg's comments on it.

Ruskin drew upon an immense vocabulary, using many words that are unfamiliar today.  Even his Victorian contemporaries regarded his style of writing as exceptional.  It shows the influence of the King James translation of the Bible and, in this particular passage, Shakespeare.  These are references that Ruskin assumed his audience would understand, although any modern reader needs a dictionary and specialized knowledge to follow them. (emphasis added)

I accept that detailed knowledge of Shakespeare is rare these days (although I picked up the Shakespearean reference without too much difficulty), but reading the passage again I though that there was at most one word - incarnadines - that might cause problems and that the long sentences required care in navigation but otherwise the passage was not especially problematic.

Bearing in mind that the book is intended for degree level students (so far as I can determine from the City College of New York web site) are literacy levels of undergraduate students so impoverished these days? The book overall (especially the examples of assignments) seems to me not so much about the language of art and how to use it, but almost remedial level English.

Am I missing something? I do hope so.

A memorial to the poet Ted Hughes was unveiled today in Westminster Abbey. For me his most remarkable work was the collection Birthday Letters, which remains the only book of poetry I have ever read cover to cover.

Birthday Letters