Wednesday 19 November 2008

Catherine Mortimer Memorial

Mention of Catherine Mortimer (aka Catrin ferch Owain Glyn Dwr) reminds me that there's a monument to her and her children in London. A picture is linked here. I can't honestly say that it appeals to my personal taste, but then modern art rarely, if ever, does.

The monument is on the site of St.Swithin's Church, where they were buried, and is also supposed to represent the suffering of women and children in warfare, which is a noble enough aim.

Catrin was buried with her daughters at the expense of Henry V's government, four years after her capture at the fall of Harlech. The cost was a massive £1, apparently. What happened to her son, Lionel, is unknown. He simply disappeared. Many people conveniently 'disappeared' while in Tower custody over the years, notably during Henry VIII's time, but, with two exceptions, this tends to get overlooked.

3 comments:

Jules Frusher said...

I never knew there was such a monument - but I agree, it's not to my taste either. To me it looks more like some mutant sprouting daffodil bulb than a mother protecting her child. Still, what do I know...

Unknown said...

Not my taste either -- it looks like something alien. But I guess it's nice to have a monument -- no matter what it looks like. Or is it?!

JJF said...

Strange but true historical tidbit... my country's own ditheringly incompetent CIA may be responsible for the popularization of "modern" "art".

In all seriousness this seems to have been one of the brainchildren of the certifiably insane Frank Wisner, along with Radio America and Latin American dictatorships.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

In another sense of course the contemporary visual artistic style of "replicate something a drunken bonobo might do" is an extension of the broader movement of humanistic post-modernism, which is dependent on the "Homer Simpson fallacy", the tendency of mildly intelligent people to believe that something they can't understand must be too profound to be understood by normal humans.

Thankfully, History and Economics are too scientific to be susceptible to this disease, although I'm given to understand that String Theory might be based on similar principles.