Tag: silence

  • The artist from behind

    The artist from behind

    What’s happening when artists choose to portray themselves in their work?  The self-portrait was an invention of the Renaissance, but it’s just as common today, in painting (Jenny Saville’s work, now on show in a big retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, is a striking example) and in many other forms.  Perhaps the most famous…

  • Reading and silence

    Reading and silence

    I’m working my way, slowly – that seems the best way – through Sara Maitland’s A book of silence, and I’ve reached the part where she discusses the paradoxical relationship between reading and silence.  On the one hand, reading the way we do it today is a silent communion between writer and reader.  Silent, on…