Broken Oars Everything Changes and Technology Changes Everything Series: Turner and the Fighting Temeraire #1

Hullo,

 

Can't sleep?

 

Me neither.

 

The Northern One returns with a follow-up to last year's Summer Shorts series.

 

Inspired by a chat with a medical friend about the advances in technology in their career, your favourite Northern One takes a spin through representation in art. As everything in modern Britain is a footnote to the Victorians, in much the same way that Western Civilisation is a footnote to the Greeks, we go to the nineteenth century to look at how art changed in response to new technology and new social and economic realities.

 

Specifically, we look at how the invention of the daguerreotype changed the way that painting developed. Liberated from the religious strictures, from the Enlightenment on art had increasingly been about accurate representation and heightened representation - accurate representation meaning being able to accurately express a given scene / landscape / person; and heightened representation meaning being able to express an idea, emotion, or image in doing so.

 

With the camera increasingly rendering that irrelevant, art then became about the representation of art as a representation of an increasingly complex world.

 

We look at how that came about amid changing social, cultural and economic realities.

 

And if that sounds as dull as ditchwater, remember that this is the Northern One talking about this stuff. There's a joke or bad pun coming at any moment.

 

First - Turner. Now chocolate box, then ... revolutionary.

 

And determined to fail in order to succeed.

 

Listen on.

 

And buy us a coffee.