Carousel (2004)

Oil on board, 35.5x35.5cm

Private collection

This picture began from the starting point of the photograph of the fairground animals, taken like those photographs used to construct Your Future Now at Carter's Steam Fair. The centaur, half horse, half British soldier, seemed odd enough to warrant taking the photograph in the first place. Behind this is a photocopy of Botticelli's Pallas And The Centaur, an allegorical painting about the duality of the soul, which, according to the humanist Marsilio Ficino, is half-animal, driven by instincts and sensual desires, and half-human, capable of reason. Pallas Athena (Minerva), the goddess of wisdom, guides the centaur, thus implying that we should let reason control or channel our base drives and desires. This seems to have some relationship to the construction of the fairground centaur as half-animal, half-soldier.

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©copyright 2005 Nicholas Middleton