What's in a name?

click photo to enlarge

Names are rather like hairstyles: many people want to change the one they have. Parents who give their children more than one forename offer their offspring a choice, the opportunity to choose one of the alternatives if the given one isn't liked. But if you've been saddled with just one forename you tend to be stuck with it and can only shorten it or go to the trouble of making a legal change. The Linnean system of naming plants and animals seems to avoid these problems (not that plants and animals have strong opinions on their names). A country-specific name - in my case English - is accompanied by a Latin name that prevails everywhere regardless of the language(s) spoken in the country. I've written elsewhere about my preference for English names over Latin because of the history and beauty that they often display. However, it isn't always so.

In my garden there are a couple of plants with unfortunate names. The small, attractive blue, pink and purple flower with green spotted leaves that is called lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis) seems lamentably named. Lungs, though vital, have never had the appealing associations of, say, the heart. So, we like the name heart's ease (Viola tricolor), for the small pansy-like flower, but lungs, well they conjure up images of dissection, disease and offal. The name arose for the way the spotted leaves recall diseased lungs. One might wish that a different association had been spotted!

Then there's the spurge (Euphorbia sp.). The very name sounds like an uncontrolled exhalation of something unpleasant. And in a way it is, the plant long being used as a purgative. The Latin name comes from the Greek physician, Euphorbus, who noted the plant as a laxative. It also has the unfortunate similarity - just one letter too many - to the word euphoria, a word that means well-being or feeling good. Not a quality that immediately comes to mind when you look at the plant or when the irritant sap gets on your skin. All that being said, I find myself photographing this plant quite a bit. I like the way some of the varieties grow, particularly how the rosettes of leaves present themselves with a slight twist. Today's plant was growing, not in my garden, but in a churchyard. I photographed it with my pocket camera and thought I'd try a black and white version to accentuate the shapes.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spurge and the empty plinth

click photo to enlarge
Does it matter if we can't define art? Many, particularly contemporary artists, are, in the language of today, "very relaxed about the issue." Well, you might say, they would be wouldn't they, because it allows them to pass off any old rubbish as art! I was thinking about this as I read of Antony Gormley's transformation of the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. For those who've missed the news about his latest work here's the background. This particular plinth has long been empty, and discussions about what piece of sculpture might fill it have taken place over the years. In recent times artists have put forward designs and displayed pieces on it on a temporary basis. However, from 6th July this year Gormley's idea took effect. It involves a person dressed as they wish, doing whatever they like (within the bounds of legality and decency) occupying the plinth for one hour, after which they are replaced by the next person for the next hour, and so on, twenty four hours a day until 14th October. That's it.

There are many who are excited about this "installation", seeing it as a creative, "involving" piece, offering four times Andy Warhol's "15 minutes of fame" to thousands of anonymous individuals. Others see it as an abrogation, the passing of the creative element to others, with Gormley responsible only for the initial "idea". And then there are those who see it as another example of the new-found primacy of conception in art and the accompanying abandonment of skill and technique. It's fashionable to say that anything can be art, or that anything defined as art by an artist can carry the title. I've even heard someone recently quoting the old saying that "art is anything taken out of context", which I think was Duchamp's justification for his signed "ready-mades". For me the problem is this: without the intervention of the artist and their words, we often can't distinguish a piece of art from, say, a joke, an arrangement of domestic objects, a pile of litter, a piece of street theatre, etc, and consequently the "works" are incapable of standing on their own. Nor is much art today judged solely on their merits: it is mediated by the surrounding verbiage of the artist and their acolytes. Moreover, with art of this sort the critical tools that we traditionally use to judge quality are useless, and that means we can't separate the good from the bad, the charlatan from the inspired. If we accept the "anything goes" world of art we get the artists we deserve including the juvenilia of Banksy, the gadfly hollow glitter of Damien Hurst, and the emptiness of Anthony Gormley's offerings.

Which brings me to today's photograph. It shows some leaves of a variety of Euphorbia characias, a perennial that belongs to one of the most diverse genera of the plant kingdom. Its Latin name comes from the ancient Greek physician, Euphorbus, who made use of its purgative properties. The English name, Spurge, derives from the Middle English/Old French espurge meaning "to purge." I liked the arrangement, simplicity and colours of the leaves of this variety of Euphorbia which appealed to me more than its quite complex flowers. And the connection with some of the art of today? Well, you might have guessed that I think it is in sore need of a cleansing dose of Spurge!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On