Cold Shoulder

Roy Lichtenstein

There is the deception of ease in Lichtenstein’s paintings. So accurately does he recreate the medium of comic books and mass production that one can forget the painstaking work he undertook to hand-paint each benday dot, flat plane and standardised type. Recontextualising frames from the comic books, in this case DC’s ‘Girls Romance’, which were experiencing a new renaissance by the early 1960s, he brought the visual language of the masses into high art. By isolating single frames, outside of the narrative in which they were intended, Lichtenstein frees them to interpretation and makes us question why we see them as different worth if shown on the page versus the canvas. “I don’t think that whatever is meant by the artist it is important to art.”, he said. Instead, we are free to interpret these images, conceived first by comic book artist and then by Lichtenstein, however we please. This, ultimately, is the difference between the source material and finished work – removing the context and narrative removes the intention of the artist, leaving the viewer to finish the piece simply by looking at it.

Saturday 22nd August

The Moon deepens into the constellation of Scorpio, yet during the first part of the day it reaches apogee, the point in its orbit where it is furthest from the Earth. In biodynamic practice, this more distant position is associated with a lighter, more airy quality, giving the morning an affinity with flowers and the blossoming parts of plants. As the day unfolds, the watery influence of Scorpio becomes stronger again, drawing our attention towards moisture, leafy growth and the life carried through water. Later, the Moon crosses another threshold in its journey through the zodiac and enters the constellation of Sagittarius, bringing a warmer, more expansive quality and an affinity with fruits and seeds. Within a single day, we can therefore experience a movement through light, water and warmth, reminding us that the garden is never held by one element alone, but continually shaped through their changing relationships.