Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at the British Library looking at the development of writing. I’d never really thought about the evolution of writing and this show told the story in a clear and engaging way. I found it very moving how often early pieces of writing concern mundane personal things like a person’s wages or how much someone sold goods for. In particular I loved a small piece of broken pot from 110AD which was a woman called Thinabella’s licence to be a sex worker for a day. The only record we have of that person. I was fascinated to see how letters developed and the display that took the capital letter A from a hieroglyph of a antelope’s head turning round to form the letter we know today. Also to see how Renaissance humanists changed writing from the Gothic script to a text which became the basis of modern printed text. There were sections on the different materials and techniques from sticks to keyboards and on how we learn to write and what writing means to peop...

Fantastic exhibition at the Accademia in Venice looking at the life and work of Aldo Manuzio, a 15th century publisher and humanist. I had thought this show might be quite dry but it was a fascinating insight into early publishing and put it into the context of the time. I loved one commentary which described Venice as the “Silicon Valley” of the Renaissance comparing the changes brought about by printing to the internet. Aldo started by spotting a niche market with the growth in humanism for re-edited versions of the Greek texts in an affordable form. In turn these new versions of the texts revived ideas and lead to painters being compared to Apelles. He introduced the idea of small portable books which were easy to carry and created the idea of reading as a quiet, private, intimate pastime. The exhibition ended with a wonderful series of portraits of people with these small books, showing that they were fashionable items and held as a sign of learning. He also inven...