Sometimes it's 'today I did', and other times it's a bit random. I guess that's part of the fun. Click here for the 'About - Dispelling the Awkwardness' page for a bit more info.
Over the next few months, I'm going to be uploading some of my favourite photos. You'll be able to see them all together by clicking the photography link on the left hand side, or clicking on the photography tag on any photograph post.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
A short trip to Paris just over a month ago was filled with a variety of joys, most notably my engagement to the wonderful Alex - a most magical moment, and we’re both very excited. I always feel a little odd about posting personal things on the internet, and I generally feel it’s something we should all avoid, but I kinda want to shout this from the rooftops, and this is the modern equivalent.
In other news, the relevance of the elephant-gonad photograph here is not a symbol of my impending marriage, but in fact an example of the testicle-penis obsession of Parisian sculptors. There are a number of animal sculptures outside the Musee D’orsay which we got a good look at during our 45 minutes of queueing, and each of them is incredibly well endowed. The elephant drew particular attention, even so as to become photo-worthy, as elephants have internal testicles. This hilights their presence on the sculpture as an unhealthy obsession with pendulous cajones, rather than a slightly more healthy obsession with anatomical accuracy.
Perhaps the sculptor was sculpting from (a sexually-falsified) memory, or, more likely, from a painting of such a beast? Maybe this painting was also emblazoned with massive balls? Where does the buck stop? How many 19th century artists had ever actually seen an elephant, let alone get close enough to discover its apparent eunuch-status. I think the attitude was (and probably still is) almost certainly - “What a gigantic and terrifying beast. It must have huge balls”. Interesting, no?
I think a worldwide search of elephant sculptures is required to find out where the ‘pin the bollocks on the bull’ outlook sprang from.
![Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1914) Le Grand Cheval
Harking back to a recent visit to the Tate Modern, I managed to track down an image of one of my favourite sculptures. There’s something really lively about this sculpture; you can almost see the shoulder and hip joints winding up to jump. Alex pointed out to me that in 1914, the world had just started moving over from horse-power to engine-power, and this sculpture really captures that transition. Unfortunately you can only see it from one side here and you lose the whole 3D effect, but there are many images online taken from all angles.
Duchamp-Villon was an expert horseman, serving as an auxiliary doctor in a cavalry regiment during the war. This sculpture developed from his studies of a leaping horse and rider to become an abstract evocation of dynamic energy and power. His work has been compared to that of the Futurists in the way it aims to capture a sense of motion. The tension between the mechanistic and the natural world echoes that between solid bronze and the representation of movement. [From The Tate Modern]](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l07xc88ySN1qbp44wo1_500.jpg)
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1914) Le Grand Cheval
Harking back to a recent visit to the Tate Modern, I managed to track down an image of one of my favourite sculptures. There’s something really lively about this sculpture; you can almost see the shoulder and hip joints winding up to jump. Alex pointed out to me that in 1914, the world had just started moving over from horse-power to engine-power, and this sculpture really captures that transition. Unfortunately you can only see it from one side here and you lose the whole 3D effect, but there are many images online taken from all angles.
Duchamp-Villon was an expert horseman, serving as an auxiliary doctor in a cavalry regiment during the war. This sculpture developed from his studies of a leaping horse and rider to become an abstract evocation of dynamic energy and power. His work has been compared to that of the Futurists in the way it aims to capture a sense of motion. The tension between the mechanistic and the natural world echoes that between solid bronze and the representation of movement. [From The Tate Modern]
