A powerful new play, The Ides of March, which I can only guess is written by a Sydneysider, since it imagines Melbourne being wiped out, has opened in London – exploring issues about freedom in the age of terrorism.
It proved timely, since I emerged from the opening night to hear about the arrest of an opposition shadow minister by anti-terrorism police. Why this really, really matters, even though he’s a Tory, is ably outlined by Matthew Parris.
There’s much to admire about Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, and not just that she deserves to be placed high indeed in the ranks of the painters of history. Some of them I’ve learnt from reading Gita May’s biography, subtitled The Odyssey of an Artist in the Age of Revolution.
Unlike many women of the early modern period, she didn’t immediately try to disassociate herself from other prominent female artists. When asked to contribute ta self-portrait for the Grand Ducal Gallery at the Uffizi, she was expecially pleased that among the contemporary self-portrats in the collection was one by Angelica Kauffmann, who she greatly admired as “one of the glories of our sex”. (And she would go out of her way to vsit Angelica soon after she arrived in Rome.) p. 81
And I entirely sympathise with her approach to the sites… “She preferred going by herself to the churches, galleries, and palaces where artworks were to be seen so as to avoid having her enjoyment spoiled by idle conversation.” (p. 85)
And she was a fan of Catherine the Great of Russia, taking “obvious pleasure in stressing the fact that Catherine’s accomplishments as a great monarch were on a par with those of the most notable rulers”. (p. 135)
Yet, somehow, its hard to really warm to her. Perhaps it is because she was a fervent and unwavering monarchist who was never able to understand why anyone would want a revolution; in part perhaps it is because most of her art swings far too far in the direction of sentimentality for our taste, although her portriat of Hubert Robert shows her true potential when that inclination is suppressed.
As a biography this seems flat, but then I’ve had several goes at Vigee Le Brun and she always seems a little so… It raises the question: does a great artist have to be a great character? Maybe not, but it certainly helps in promulgating their fame.
Putting together some policy material, I was reminded that I haven’t linked to the Sex and Power 2008 report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which “reveals women hold just 11 per cent of FTSE 100 directorships and only 19.3 per cent of the positions in Parliament” (and lots more beside).
And browsing around a subject that I’ve been exploring, Norway’s provision ensuring that 40% of directors on boards of major companies are women, a report that explores how that’s worked out, and how the rest of Europe is faring.
Over on Comment is Free I’ve been writing about the background to the current sad troubles in Thailand. It’s hard to see a way out.
Closer to home, the Modern Liberty conference, with strong blogging links and a stellar speaker list, has been announced.
* I couldn’t be there myself, but after reading Sarah’s post on the Reclaim the night march it felt as though I was. Although there are issues around it, as Don’t Stray makes clear. I’m glad that the Green Party placards chose to focus on domestic violence – it does worry me that the concept that the streets aren’t safe for women actually propagates unreasonable fear (and I think young men are under at least as much risk on the streets as women) rather than an understanding of where the risk really is – in the home.
* An interesting take on contraction and convergence – or how we all need to live – apparently most promulgated by the Swiss – what we all need is the 2,000-Watt lifestyle. I doubt I make it, but I try. (Astonished to read that people send £1,000 a year on energy. Okay I have a reasonably small flat, and I try, but my electricity comes to about £10 a month and gas about £15 in winter.)
* Just been pointed to WorldMapper, a site that takes the map and morphs it according to hundreds of characteristics, from poverty, to maternal mortality, to greenhouse gas emissions, on which the US looks very fat indeed.
A weekend of escape to France gave me the chance to read the entertaining and informative The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in 17th-century England by Adrian Tinniswood. (Don’t worry about the title – that’s just the publisher going a bit OTT.)
To quote: “It wasn’t just Molly, the heiress who eloped and married for love, who broke with convention; or Pen Stewkeley, the spinster who slept with and then married her sister’s unsuitable boyfriend. There was Aunt Eure, the widow who scandalised the Verney’s entire social circle by marrying a Roman Catholic; Sir Ralph’s sister Susan, who started her married life in Fleet Prison; Peg Elmes, who decided to separate from her violent husband , and Pen Denton, who according to the family broke her heart for joy when hers died. Mall became pregnant by a servant and eventually married him. Betty ran away with a poor clergyman. Even Cary, the ultra-genteel Cary, contrived to flout orthodoxy in her own small way by insisting on retaining her first husband’s name when she married her second… It was only Sir Ralph’s wife and mother who didn’t rebel. And they didn’t need to; both women were in successful and intimate relationships with head of the family – and both were in positions of power as a result of those relationships.
…driven variously by love, passion, courage, stubbornness and a fear on spinsterhood, they simply refused to do what they were told but .. they demonstrate that no matter what commentators said about the submissive position of women in 17th-cenury England, the reality of individual experience was at once more complicated and more compelling. (p. 478)
And there’s also news that the US today isn’t quite so bad at murders as was the England of the period…
Historical homicide rates are notoriously unreliable, but recent estimates suggest that in Restoration England they stood at around six per 100,000 of the population – more than four times the current rate in the United Kingdom in the first years of the 21st century, and about 10 per cent higher than current rates in the United States.(p. 406)
And a Google search doesn’t throw up anything on her, but it sounds like there’s a great story behind this career woman:
There was only one place to stay in Florence if you were an Englishman in the 1650s- Signora Anna’s house, close by Brunelleschi’s Santa Spirito on the south bank of the Arno. Anna, who only took English travellers, was a Florentine institution: Dr Kirton recommended Sir Ralph go straight to the lodgings … when he arrived in the city; the author of Sir Ralph’s “Directions for travel” agreed, saying that she ‘entertains her countrymen like princes, both for chamber and diet’. (p. 264)
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