After the Whitechapel Gallery I went to Tate Britain, taking the District line from the handily located Aldgate East tube station and walking down from Westminster. This works fine as long it's not raining (hard) and you enjoy a bit of a walk, and you get a nice view of the Houses of Parliament (and the tourists, and the rather depressing anti-terrorist barriers now ringing parliament).
The show I went to see at Tate Britain also finishes on 4th September, so you have even less time to see it. However, acting as a spoiler for my own post I would say that you may not necessarily want to. They are showing The Vorticists: Manifesto for a modern world. Even after going to the exhibition I am not too sure what The Vorticists stood for, which you could say suggests that it was not a very well curated exhibition, though in fairness to the Tate, my eyesight in dim light is not what it was and I had forgotten my reading glasses and didn't bother to try and read all the little labels. The cheerleader for Vorticism was Ezra Pound, who must be forgiven much because of his role in bringing Eliot's poetry to the world. I think The Vorticists believed in the future, energy, virility, modernity and the power of the machine, though apparently they got very cross when people confused them with Futurists. They brought out their magazine Blast, just before the Great War started, and then in 1915 brought out the second issue, but by then people had other things on their minds, and one of The Vorticists' brightest and most shining talents was killed in the trenches, and Blast folded.
I find most of The Vorticists' aesthetic ugly and rather tiresome. Think drawings of piles of girders that have been accidentally dropped from a crane, and a muddy palette, and you are more or less there. However, the Royal Academy included some sculptures by some of their members in a show it did a couple of years back, and there were a couple of those that I wanted to see again, and thought they would probably feature in the Tate exhibition. They are by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who was killed in 1915, and they are very beautiful. Both carved out of stone, neither very big. One is of a girl singing. She stands on chunky legs in a vaguely suggested dress, and I'm sure we are looking at the influence of African art on Western sculpture. Her arms are behind her back, one twisted round to hold her long plait. Her head is slightly tipped back and tilted to one side, her mouth open, her eyes mysterious. It is piecingly sad, all the sorrow of Nina Simone and Amy Winehouse locked into a little lump of stone. I should love to possess it. The other sculpture is of a kneeling faun, that looks self-possessed, wary and strangely lively.
Apart from those there were a few prints I liked, some semi-abstract black and white little pictures of northern scenes, and an etching and a pastel drawing of marching troops. I have Tate membership, so found it worth nipping in just to look at the two sculptures, but I wouldn't want to shell out £14 or make a special trip to London just to see that exhibition. You get a booklet, but having read it I'm really none the wiser, and as the R.A. showed the more famous pieces in this exhibition quite recently I'm not entirely sure why the Tate bothered. The lovely sculpture of the singing girl actually belongs to them, so in theory I ought to be able to go and see it any time, but I've never discovered where or whether it is on regular display. I think the Tate should put its entire catalogue on-line, together with the current location of every piece: room 17 Millbank, on loan to The National Trust at Montacute House, in a cupboard. We could then vote for which ones we'd like taken out of the cupboards and put on display (and maybe what should take their place in the cupboard).
I had a ginger beer in the cafe at Tate Britain. It is not so nice as the one at the Whitechapel, being in a cellar, noisy and rather hot. Postcards cost more, at 65p, though I didn't buy one.
Then I yomped up to Somerset House to visit The Courtauld, and had a cup of tea and a flapjack. Their cafe has an outside courtyard, which looked inviting, but it turned out that it was waitress service and they didn't have enough staff on duty, and I sat waiting for twenty minutes for the tea. Fortunately I wasn't in a hurry, but while I was sitting there a pigeon landed on my head.
The Courtauld has an exhibition running until 18th September of Toulouse Lautrec and Jane Avril. Lautrec was one of the first graphic artists I came to admire, and I have loved his posters since my early teens, so I was keen to catch that, and I was not disappointed. Their exhibitions are only ever small, and almost always well done. We got posters, paintings, preparatory sketches, lithographs, photographs of Jane Avril and her fellow dancers, all linked together with clear, useful text. The system at The Courtauld is that you have to pay to go in at all (it has gone up to £6) and that gives you access to both the temporary exhibition and the permanent collection.
My mother took me to London to see the Courtauld collection when I was in my teens, and I have been visiting intermittently ever since. It has moved since my first visit, and now occupies Somerset House, a fabulous eighteenth century building that would be worth a visit in its own right. The permanent collection is based on the private art collection of textile magnate Samuel Courtauld, and has been added to since. Samuel had a very good eye for a picture, and managed to pick up The Bar at the Folies Bergere, a couple of fabulous Van Gogh paintings, a nice collection of Cezanne, and two completely wonderful paintings by Gaugin, as well as a good handful of Gainsboroughs. The beauty of seeing these in their permanent home rather than an artist-themed temporary exhibition is that The Courtauld is so much less crowded. Gaugin at Tate Modern was a complete bunfight, whereas there were times yesterday afternoon when I had these two paintings virtually to myself, so much that I was able to sit down on the floor in front of them and just contemplate.
The gallery has rehung some of the permanent collection since the last time I was there, in a way that actually makes more sense. There is now a room of Renaissance art, a room devoted to Rubens and the Baroque, another for eighteenth century art, and all of the Cezannes have been gathered together into a little room of their own instead of being dotted throughout the building. There are also more seats than there used to be (though not in front of the Gaugin). These themed rooms include some good paintings on loan. The collection is too large to all be on display at once, and some Bloomsbury set paintings that I rather like have disappeared from show, but it's interesting to go there and find something new on successive visits.
Postcards at The Courtauld are even more expensive, at 70p, but overall it is a wonderful gallery, and considerably better value than The Vorticists. If it isn't on your list of places to call in when visiting London then I would say add it (but maybe get tea in Pret a Manger).
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