And somebody built it and sold it on eBay?
Colin Hill
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Jon Redpath
To: <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:10 PM
Subject: Re: [HG] Alden's rant on iconography, and a challenge
In Britain and France a great deal of the "Church" carvings I have
seen have been fairly old. All the instruments appear to be very
stylised, I suspect that the "Chinese whispers effect" had a lot to
do with how all these different instruments appear. A Clarsach
player saw a piper playing a new bagpipe ( which was really a
Shawm), who told a sac but player about it ,who passed the
information on to a priest, who new someone was in town that could
draw. The tramp drew the picture, in exchange for a drink, and gave
it to the priest. The priest then went along to where his new abbey
was being built and gave the drawing to the stone mason and told him
to incorporate it in the church. The mason then gave the drawing to
the apprentice, who turned the drawing upside down! This is not
total fiction, a very famous chapel near where I live was added to
like this over the many years of construction. See
<http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/>http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/
In my eyes, and they are pretty old, Alden is right JON
Jocelyn Demuth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
While Alden's question to draw a guitar is an interesting, I don't
think it's an apt comparison. While very few of us on this list are
graphic artists, the guy who did this little miniature was. It
looks like a 14th century miniature done with a fair amount of
lapiz, a very expensive paint. No patron would have given a hack
this expensive material to work with. I suppose if you asked a
bunch of American graphic artists to draw a stradlater and they came
up with something looking more like a cello, that would prove the
point admirably.
In my experience, which I think is the opposite of Alden's - most
people completely discount iconography. I would not suggest that
iconography is completely trustworthy just that rather than dismiss
it because it isn't well drawn, you have to look at many pictures
to see what was drawn. I think what is depicted is probably more
accurate than how well it was depicted anyway.
In my medieval house experiment, I built windows with shutters. I
noticed in the pictures that the shutters were full of these
strange, off center hinges and nothing seemed to be straight. We
didn't think much about this since perpective is always problematic
in medieval pictures. My husband tried to build shutters that
opened and closed in a more modern arc. It was impossible. First
of all since all the windows were small and in a small structure, to
get them to open, we had to add many hinges so that the window could
open fully without banging into a corner or a shelf. One shutter
had more hinges than the other which made them hang slightly
crookedly. When we were done, we had something that without trying
looked very much like many of the medieval pictures we had assumed
were badly drawn.
Well, that's it for me - - happy gurdy hunting. I guess the good
news is that the guy in the picture is actually playing it rather
than tuning and recottoning so I guess the instrument made music,
which is good.
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Jon Redpath
To: <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: [HG] Alden's rant on iconography, and a challenge
Colin, its a sort of Scottish Smallpipe made for Americans, with
lots of knobs and switches so you can change key quickly. JON
Colin <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Stratocaster, is that the two door or four door model?
Heard of it, wouldn't know one if I walked into it, let alone sketch one.
Colin Hill
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 1:29 AM
Subject: [HG] Alden's rant on iconography, and a challenge
OK, you asked for it. ;-)
Arle pretty much made my points for me already, so I'll just say this:
In scholarly circles there is, perhaps, a dedication to the iconography
that
is unwarranted. The scholars go on and on about how the instrument shown
in
this source has this feature while this one doesn't showing that [insert
your
conclusion here]. This is all very well, but any time a conclusion is
reached
by serious study of the available drawings, paintings, engravings and
sculptures, there should be a big disclaimer attached that the details of
the
source materials are suspect. We treat the iconography as if it's a
photograph, because we're used to that level of truth in our world.
So here's the challenge.
Take out a pencil and blank paper. Draw a Fender Stratocaster electric
guitar
from memory.
This is probably the most common instrument in the modern age, and even if
you
have absolutely no interest in rock music, you have probably seen the
instrument literally hundreds of times. Don't worry if you "can't draw",
and
don't worry about showing perspective, or showing the player (though you
can
if you want to). Please DON'T cheat and look up Stratocaster images on
the
web to work from - just work from memory, because that's the point of the
experiment. Scan your drawing and email me the scan, or send it to me via
snailmail. I'll post them all anonymously over the next week or so.
I was going to write what I expect to see, but I think I'll wait until the
experiment is over. Since I'm asking you all to do this, I'll post a
drawing
also. Remember, to make this experiment work, I need YOUR drawing. No
one
will laugh at it, I promise.
Alden
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