About the Logo                                Page 1 of 2 (next)

My logo was created by graphic artist, Richard Childs.  It combines images that connote two well known people: one from film (Buster Keaton) and one from the world of art (René Magritte).  It is therefore an index of two powerful spheres of culture: one linked to the idea of High Art and the other linked with what (for most of our century)has been considered middle-brow art.  A further layer of meaning therefore arises out of these connotations; involving cultural class - high and low (sometimes called cultural capital).

"Time Transfixed" (1939)is a painting in oil on canvass, by Rene Magritte (1898 - 1967) contributing to his reputation as a Surrealist (see www.artchive.com for a larger scanned image by Mark Harden).  It demonstrates Magritte's simple, direct, careful and precise style, encouraging the viewer to look through the technique of his brushwork to look again at everyday objects, but arranged in an improbable relation.  A miniature train emerges from a fireplace, suspended on air rather than tracks, its speed emphasised by the stream of smoke.  The train's solidity is also underlined, by the shadow it casts on the back of the fireplace.

It seems to have broken through from another reality into this static, wood-panelled space, where bare floor boards and marble fireplace are mute witness to the slow ticking of a clock, announcing a time that holds little or no connotation (for me at least!).  The candelabra and mirror that reflects nothing, offer no clue either as to the human inhabitants of this space. 

And yet, if one contemplates Magritte's image, the combination of fireplace (with its connotations of heat, hearth, homeliness, family) and the emergent, thrusting, phallic train perhaps suggest a cerebral, masculine sexuality.  In other words, its atmosphere of apparent innocence and contained sterility seems actually to mask  something organic and potentially chaotic.

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