Gavin McDermott

Listening to Mathew Syed’s Radio 4 Sideways show about the passage of time and inevitable decay got me thinking about (amongst other things) my ‘fondness’ for the pastoral ruins of paintings by Claude. Obviously, there’s the incredible light and the ‘pastoral’ nature–these aren’t untamed wildernesses, and people never feel too far away. Instead, there’s a lovely sensation of nature being close, and of the possibility of things reverting to a more natural state if simply ‘left’, wood and stone, rather than plastic and concrete.

However, there are often ‘classical’ ruins in the painted landscapes, too, and art historian Dora Apel has something interesting to say about that, and suggests than such ruins almost provide a safe way to explore the inevitability of death and decay: they’re all falling down, but I’m not.

I was curious about some of the people talking in the show so first looked up William Basinski and his Disintegration Loops and then a couple of the others… and couldn’t resist the urge to sketch them (in charcoal), not least to put faces to names.