I'm looking forward to BBC4's programme on Tuesday about landscape painting in our 'green and pleasant land'. One of the intriguing aspects of the subject is the way artists over the centuries have focused on particular places and types of landscape. Post-war there was a lot of opposition to electricity pylons (as there is today to wind turbines), but there's something compelling about the characters gathered together in this pylon field.
I wonder whether the engineers who built and arranged these pylons had any sense of their potential as figures in the landscape... It would be nice to think that they did. There are certainly plenty of people who appreciate the strange beauty of pylons these days: go here to find out more...
4 comments:
James, I'm sure you know, and were discreetly referring to, Stephen Spender's poem of the 1930s, in which he described pylons as "bare like giant nude girls that have no secret." I'm not sure what this tells us about Spender's sexuality...
Thanks Neil - that poem is new to me. In fact I suspect there are quite a few references to pylons here and there. I'll check it out and maybe add some.
So what did you think of the programme?
I posted something on it yesterday...
Post a Comment