An active and contemplative life
There is an unbroken line of thought in western civilisation extending all the way from Cicero through St. Augustine and Coluccio Salutati right up to the present day, in which we have regularly weighed the significance, respective merits and competing priorities of the “active” versus the “contemplative” life . Can they coexist? In many respects this fine new photographic portrait of Mark Loane by Joachim Froese (b. 1963), commissioned last year with funds made available by Patrick Corrigan AM, encapsulates that ancient paragone , and indeed powerfully suggests that the answer to that question is yes . But in a far more specific way, this portrait also makes the obvious connection between specialist surgery and élite sport here in contemporary Australia by positioning its distinguished subject in a spare, unadorned locker room in which the garments of daily life are exchanged for apparel suited to, indeed necessary for, the complex and challenging task...