In this sequence of essays, I have written about the transformative capacities of art. I have examined about how art can not only transform space, but how art can also transform us – how art reminds us of our own, human, expressive capacities, of our own abilities to create and communicate and provoke and inspire.
But while Art is a trigger for change – a wonderful, exhilarating trigger – it is only a trigger: no more than that. If art cannot effect something, then it has no purpose.
“Richard Landing at Milford Haven (After Shakespeare)” is a painting by Richard Hamilton, displayed at the John Soanes Museum in London. In 1399, Richard II landed at Milford Haven from Ireland, shortly before his surrender to Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV.
Your faith’s misplaced. I here disown
those expectations you have grown
that tried to make me more than man.
I cannot be but what I am.
I bear your crown. I am alone.
Shakespeare’s King Lear is, in many ways, neither a good man, nor a good father, nor a good king.
His first act is an outrageous rejection of responsibility that obliterates his kingdom. Lear opens the play by resigning his Kingship. He aims to give political power to his daughters so that he can see out his days palace-hopping from one child to another, enjoying the advantages of wealth and power with none of the responsibility. It is the equivalent of Queen Elizabeth abdicating, splitting up the union between Charles, Wills and Harry so that she can swan off into an early retirement to drink champagne cocktails in London nightclubs.
On the Double Double 