Terminology

Twice today I have read the term steampunk in relation to HG Wells - The First Men in the Moon as steampunk classic (to be dramatised by BBC Four and Mark Gatiss) and as a forerunner of steampunk (which feels less wrongheaded).


I'd always thought of steampunk as being dependent on a vision of a nineteenth century that might have been - or a subsequent period which has evolved form that different nineteenth century. I'm not sure that steampunk as alternate present quite cuts the definition for me - it's missing a dimension of, what, nostalgia, disappointment, etsrangement?


Am I wrong?

Pink String and Ceiling Wax - Part I

Deep into plan d mode (I have converted an unwished for weekend in Milton Keynes to a day trip to Manchester), I met up with FJM at the Caffe Nerd near to Green Park, and more to the point near the Royal Academy of Arts. Whilst this was due to the logistics of the Victoria Line, we moreorless walked past the other Piccadilly Nerd on the way to Wagamama (and I tried not to be sidetracked/distracted by the waiting staff).

Steps were then retraced to see the Anish Kapoor and the Paper Cities exhibitions - after a brief queue - and the unexpected decision to go to Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill which had opened just before. I had already regretted leaving my camera behind - the silver baubles piled up in the court by the RAA and RCS is very photogenic but will have to wait - but I cannot recommend the Kapoor highly enough. I knew him from two works - the ear trumpet thing that must have been one of the earliest in the Unilever series in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, and a mirrored dish outside Nottingham Playhouse.

It would be easy to snoot - the canon that fires something at the wall and the large slab of wax that scrapes itself past the walls of three rooms of the Academy are both crowd pleasers, and it's a while since I saw so many smiling faces of viewers and attendents in a gallery. The wax slab is slow, the canon hard to see firing, but there are other joys which i will hide behind a ( cut. )

Great art should have an impact on the viewer - I'm not sure if great would be an overstatement here, but this really had an impact - beautiful, estranging, disturbing, sublime. Go see.


More to follow.