I have walked miles today, and looked at so many things, my feet and my brain are both aching. But it was a good day out. A friend and I visited Turner at Tate Britain, that is Late Turner: painting set free, and not the Turner prize nominees. It was wonderful, and each time I look at the caption of a Turner picture I am amazed again at how early he was. I particularly like the oil seascapes and landscapes that are so abstracted the subject matter is barely there, and some of the really wet and free watercolours, but that's a matter of personal taste. You might go for the less abstracted cityscapes, or the mythological scenes. All are good. And within three canvases of the way in to the exhibition I knew which I loved more, Constable or Turner. Constable at the V&A was fine and bold and ground-breaking, and I'm happy that his view of Salisbury was saved for the nation, but it's Turner's layers of blue and brown paint that can reduce me to the same state of reverie as Rothko.
It is on until 25th January, so you have plenty of time left to go and see it. Do go if you possibly can.
We had lunch in the members' room, and by dint of taking an early lunch and then hitting the pictures at 1.00 found neither too crowded, or perhaps it was a quiet day. The Turner has been on for about five weeks, so the initial rush has had time to die down. The members' room is stylish, tucked in under the dome, and we both agreed that last year's refurbishment was well done, with the big new spiral staircase going down to the lower floor, and subtly repeating tessellating leaf motif borrowed from Islamic architecture.
From Millbank we walked up to Covent Garden to see the art installation. Using the principles of counterweights, a mocked up classical portico appears to levitate above broken columns. The building is a clever pastiche of the surrounding architecture, with the floating part sculpted out of polystyrene to minimize the weight, and the supporting steel upright hidden inside a market cart. You know, if you are of a rationalist cast of mind, that there must be a concealed upright, and the cart is the only place the support and counterweight can be, but it's skilfully done. What I really like is that it does not profess to mean, symbolise or signify anything. It's there for fun, a big, clever, visual joke. I don't think it will be on for very long, so hurry if you want to see it.
Our final stop of the day was the Tower of London, to see the poppies in the moat. Blood swept lands and seas of red, 888, 246 ceramic poppies, one for every British and Commonwealth soldier killed in the Great War. The volunteers haven't quite finished putting them all out yet, they'll finish for Armistice Day, but it is already a vast and moving spectacle, running all the way around the tower. The poppies are planted in the ground, fixed to metal spikes, and the array has been given a textured, sculptural quality by varying the length of the supports across the field, so that some areas are taller than others, while the occasional tall poppy stands among the short ones. In a few places they crest up (or pour down, depending on your point of view) the stone walls.
We were lucky with our timing, in that I saw on the evening news that the Queen and Prince Philip visited today, and with no disrespect to her Majesty, we were there to see the poppies, and to have got caught up in a crowd trying to see the queen would have been a nuisance, as would being held back by her security people for the duration of her visit. The very last poppy is due to be placed on 11 November, and we debated who should do the honours, and agreed before knowing of the visit today that it should only be the queen. The poppies will be sold off afterwards in aid of service charities. It's for a good cause, but I'm not sure that one would have much impact, or even three or five. You need quite a lot, approximately 888,246.
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