'...not one of you cares for the loss of them now when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box.'

I hate to fall into the category of prototypical arts student, but over the past month, I have subjected myself to that Paterian 'continual vanishing away' and fancied myself as that notorious 'illusive inscrutable mistakable self.' It has been a month since my last proper post and for this I have a list of scapegoats: my energy-deficient camera, no internet in my room, marking first-year coursework, a conference and trying to write a chapter for my thesis. All these things left me in the academic prison-house (really recommend you read some works of Walter Pater if you want to understand these references) and I slumped into feeling quite content about this and refused to lift myself out of my late-winter flatness.

From now on, the blog will take a different form. Rather than take a photo everyday, I will do so as I please. This is more in keeping with the artistic values to which I subscribe and theorize. The theme of inconsistency in late-Victorian aesthetic discourse is one that I am working on now for publication(!!). My proposed inconsistency might frustrate the dedicated 'follower,' but sometimes, the artist cannot afford to satisfy the expectations of her audience.

Also, the activity of taking a photo everyday is immensely tedious and forceful. This, for me, goes against the principles of high art; it makes artistic production utilitarian, turning the whole thing into a machine-run process. Writing on photography in 1871 John Ruskin notes that the photographer only cares for her subject once she realizes the profitable aspects of capturing it for the sake of a brown image, and through doing so diminishes the value of the natural world that she sees through a lense:

'You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you. That was also a discovery and may some day be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown but in green and blue and all imaginable colours, here in England. Not one of you ever looked at them then, not one of you cares for the loss of them now when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box.'

And so, like the best of all NY resolutions, this one is officially broken, but in a state of repair. This follows suit with a raft of others such as go to the gym every other day!

For today's picture...This is from Valentine's Day. I didn't take this photo, but rather my other half did, by mistake and to slight artistic effect. On that one day of the year when relationships are commercialized, we sat down to have a meal with a glass of wine. It gave us an opportunity to take a day off from work and relax, which was really great and an essential thing to do in late-winter. Unlit candles. If only they had been lit, which we hadn't thought to do, I could have made another Paterian reference, which is one of my favourite quotes: 'To burn always with that hard gem-like flame and to maintain this ecstasy is success in life.' And on that I return to working on my thesis.