High on the hilltop village of Macherado, Zakynthos sits the Greek Orthodox Church of Agia Mavra and Agios Timotheos. This popular church has a miraculous history. Regardless of how you feel about miracles, the story of this church is inspirational. It’s a metaphor for rising from the ashes, for starting over, for never ever giving up.
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The Witches’ Well (1894) is a drinking fountain dedicated to over 300 witches burned at the stake here at the Castlehill in Edinburgh. Hundreds of people, mainly women, were executed at this site for crimes of witchcraft. Here, they were burned at the stake after being strangled to death.
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Take a walk into West Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh and you might stumble across an outdoor theatre with subtle art deco features and a vintage feel.
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Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns spent some time in Edinburgh, where he met Agnes (Nancy) McLehose. This meeting sparked a secret love affair, Sylvander & Clarinda, a Scottish love story that inspired the writing of Ae Fond Kiss.
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Every January for over 100 years, the National Gallery of Scotland has shown 38 watercolours by Joseph Mallord William Turner, free to the public in a dimly-lit room without windows. It’s a highlight for many, locals and visitors included. For many it’s a New Year treat or, in my case, a
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For most of 2020 there’s been a danger in touching, there have been all sorts of face coverings, a feeling of ailment is in the air, a loss of energy and now a changing of seasons bringing new dangers. When I saw this painting again in 2020, it seemed to offer a different context than before. It’s an artwork that has been through its own devastating challenges too. Let’s have a long stare at Val Prinsep’s At the First Touch of Winter, Summer Fades Away (1897):
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Noli me Tangere by Fra Angelico is an artwork and a phrase to spark contemplation. It asks us not to cling to anything, for nothing that you can touch is permanent and no thought that you have can be held or clung to.
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John Lennon would have been 80 today. It’s difficult to imagine what he would have done in the years since his death in 1980. Most of us, though, will have heard about the time he and artist Yoko Ono gave some of their honeymoon over to promoting the idea of peace. After getting married on the 20th March 1969 in Gibraltar, the couple staged perhaps the most perfect of publicity stunts in Amsterdam and Montreal from their hotel bed.
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Six degrees of Artravelist.
Well, sort of…let’s step into the time machine. We’re starting in 1980s Scotland, travelling via tinsel town to Harlem in the 1930s and then Lindy Hopping around the world.
Step into the time machine and set the dial to 1900. Let’s discover what took place in culture, art, design, cinema, fashion and photography in 1900, as a new century full of hope and curiosity begins. It’s all just a little bit of history in the year 1900.
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