parenthood, oh joy!
I'm waiting for the call to go and get Wee Cal from the hospital. He has been in there since he broke his arm (third time) three days ago. At least he's in better shape than the laddie in the next bed, who took a notion to jump off the roof into the swimming pool but slipped.
That's me and Wee Cal as drawn by Holbein in the Praise of Folly. We are depicted at precisely the moment when the lad asked me to buy him his first skateboard. Note the artist's masterful stroke in showing the son standing firm, with legs apart while the father is caught somewhat off-balance with his feet misaligned. Notice also how Holbein depicts the father's hand going instinctively to protect his wallet.
Labels: art (1), old books (2), wee cal
posted by Eddie Campbell at
16:20
11 Comments:
Tell him to get a haircut so he can see where he's going.
Wow, three times, not bad. As a notoriously clumsy child myself I must say arms are much much better then jaws... Jumping off the roof into the swimming pool was luckily one of the very few things I was smart enough to not try though.
As a side note, when he tells you he's going to build something called a "street luge" make sure you have the ambulance standing by!
My sister-in-law has a son, Geoffrey, who's 19 now, but when he was 16 she learned that his friends had a nick-name for him: Geoff No.
She braced one of his pals and asked where this nickname came from. He hesitated for several moments and then confessed, "because we're always telling him, 'Geoff, NO!'"
Eddie,
Has anyone mentioned a 'From Hell' sighting on The Simpsons?
ARF!
Poor boy. Imagine being 15 and breaking yer wanking arm.
From hell on the Simpsons?
we were in one of the comic books,
http://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/2006/12/tumbling-into-madame-tussauds.html
but I've never seen it mentioned on the tv.
and... arf! indeed.
geoff no.
that's funny.
OK, I have no idea where my previously posted comment went, so here's trying again:
Hi, I'm a frequent reader of your fascinating blog (RSS to Livejournal) and I wondered about something concerning the Holbein drawings in your latest posts.
I noticed a lot of red in-between scribbles that seem to have nothing in common with the actual drawings. Did Holbein actually draw those later into/above his drawings or is it the work of a bored Erasmus-studying lad (which might be the fact given the underlined (Greek) words or the marked passages)? I guess that would make the edition they preserved in Basel a so called secondhand book...;-)
Any idea?
Thanks, lutos
Hi Eddie,
I'm enjoying the Holbeins (and indeed hayley's mirth at her sibling's suffering).
Off topic as ever here's a link to Joh Sutherland talking about Alasdair Gray's Lanark, 'Text as Illustration'. I'm a little surprised Gray hasn't cropped up here before. You may want his stuff on your list of prose works that combine images in unconventional ways. His Poor Things is another example if I remember correctly.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookclub/story/0,,2212333,00.html
Best,
Ben Smith
John Sutherland that should have been.
Ben Smith
the red scribbles seem to be by another hand. Holbein's schoolmaster was part of the humanist circle in Basel, and gave the decorated book to Erasmus. The biggest source of info on the book that i have is the slim volume that accompanies the facsimile in the same slipcase, but it is in German. I don't think anybody knows for sure.
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