
John Dee painting originally had circle of human skulls, x-ray imaging reveals - Hooke
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/17/john-dee-painting-circle-of-human-skulls-exhibition
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vvpan
"should we remember him as brilliant pioneering scientist, or as an occultist
who thought he could talk to angels?" I don't understand why it's a problem to
say that he was both.

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frozenport
Because some of his methods would not be considered scientific. For example,
his beliefs have a significant streak of Platonism, trusting acients texts
without a testable hypothesis. Sometimes he would try to improve upon rituals.
On the other hand, Angels and magic arent real, so he probably made some stuff
up. On the other hanx he destinguished himself with knowledge that today we
associtae with scientists. The debate concerns the essense of the scientific
method and its evolution.

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lostgame
Angels and Magick are not real to the uninitiated.

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anonbanker
found the Golden Dawn/O.T.O./A.O. member.

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gerbilly
Maybe it's an 18th century version of: "Just Remove the Duck"
([https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/06/05/duck/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/06/05/duck/))

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huuu
I don't think this is shocking. A lot of painter do something like this
because it's somehow easier to draw the form of skulls than the form of a
face. So the skull is there as a framework for painting the face.

There are also a lot of painters who start with naked people and then dress
them. This also helps with 'transparent' clothing.

And when you learn to draw comics most of the time you start with a 'skull' of
the character.

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geon
Your comment would make sense if the skulls were painted under the faces of
the audience. But from the x-ray (and the description in the article), it
looks like it was a circle of skulls laying on the floor, used as props by the
performer.

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TrevorJ
With all the art that's created digitally, I wonder what this sort of art
research will look like in 200 years. Finding an original photoshop file on a
hard drive, reverse engineering the .psd spec and discovering hidden layers
they were turned off in the final image?

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arca_vorago
For those of you who don't know, John Dee was also the original 007, was
probably a spy for the queen, and had the largest library in the kindom at the
time. He also heavily influenced Bacon... A very interesting man indeed.

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anonbanker
Canadians are told that William Stephenson[0] was the original 007.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stephenson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stephenson)

