k-punk makes an interesting point here on icons vs “madeleines” and the capacity for time-travel… that the things that take us are increasingly overlooked and private and unexpected, rather than public and shared (though i do wonder if our sense that this is a problem ONLY WE HAVE EVER FACED isn’t more to do with the extreme temporal parochialism of our age)
anyway rather than get into that, i just wanted to note in passing the strongest madeleine-effect i had from an artwork recently = in front of one of JEFF WALL‘s photos at tate modern, of a little street-furniture monument (a stone ball on a pillar) in an otherwise empty canadian street, except for cars
wall is more famous for the pics he does which elaborately restage some incident he saw but maybe didn’t photograph — or else restage eg hokusai’s “papers blown by the wind” — but this pic wz unassuming and unpeopled, and (unlike many of his pics), NOT pregnant w.the sense that something strong is ABOUT to happen; more than nothing had ever happened…
anyway it called to mind welwyn garden city, where i wz taken often as a child to visit my mum’s parents (but have never visited since they moved in i think 1966)… and i don’t know why it reminded me of this