It's 'last chance to see' time for the wonderful summer show, 'Flight and the Artistic Imagination' at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. Once again a relatively small, provincial museum has produced an exciting exhibition around an inspiring theme. The range of work on display is impressive, especially given all the hoop-jumping curators have to do to borrow artworks from some of our major museums.
There's an excellent overview of the exhibition by Richard Cork in the Financial Times. I love the way the show brings together mythical stories like the Fall of Icarus and modern visions of flight; it hadn't really occurred to me before that my instinctive lack of faith in the ability of a plane to remain airborne is rooted in childhood stories. Human flight, so the Icarus story suggests, is a form of hubris (ie having ambitions above your station) which the Gods are obliged to punish.