Tag: silence

The artist from behind

August 29, 2025 1 Comment
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 […]

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Reading and silence

August 20, 2017 2 Comments
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 […]

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