I went with my mother to see the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. It was rather a faff getting there. The trains into London ran OK, but when we filed down to the Central line we found a train standing at the platform, doors open, for an ominously long time, and then there was an announcement that the delay was caused by a customer incident at Oxford Circus. That could have meant anything from a minor scuffle to a suicide, so we went back up the escalators and caught the number 23 bus. A bus arrived almost at once, and I felt rather triumphant at knowing how the buses worked, but the traffic was very slow (or maybe just going at normal central London speed) and after huffing and puffing at the delays in Great Winchester Street my mother declared at Charing Cross that it was time to abandon the bus and walk. I was concerned that by the end of the day she would probably have done more than enough walking, but we got off.
The Hockney exhibition is very large, and good. Enough art critics have said enough about it that I am not going to join in and even hazard a guess whether or not he is the natural successor to Lucien Freud (OK, he's not), but if you like extremely big, brilliantly colourful evocations of the English landscape you'll like this. Lots of people do. You could tell that from the length of time they spent in front of individual pictures and groups of pictures, and the conversations that were going on. Anybody from Yorkshire was in triumphant mode, able to inform their companions how like the real place the picture was, and I heard the comment 'I could live with that' oftener than, say, at Gerhard Richter (actually, I don't think anybody expressed the desire in my hearing to live with a Gerhard Richter). Hockney paints Yorkshire with warmth and love, and people respond to his warmth. I did myself.
Various critics had mentioned the drawings made on his iPad, and I thought the RA missed a trick in not having a small display somewhere explaining how exactly you do draw on a tablet. I don't have one and I hadn't a clue. I managed to gather the basics (or at least a version of them that may turn out to quite misleading when I look it up) from an overheard conversation between some fellow visitors, and a helpful security guard who showed us the iPhone equivalent. Apparently a stylus and a colour menu are involved, plus the ability to visualise what something done on a tablet is going to look like when it's blown up to be 4 metres high. I liked the scribbly, graphic quality of the iPad drawings. And I liked his two early paintings, done when he was 19 (and included to show how far his style had progressed), though if he had continued as he began he would now be having a nice retrospective at the Minories Gallery in Colchester rather than the Royal Academy. And I enjoyed the video installations shot from multiple viewpoints, though my mother said they made her feel seasick.
It was rather a bun fight, but fortunately most people were pretty sensible about staying back from the walls so that we could all see the paintings, and the paintings were mostly huge. It is a big show with a great many rooms, and after an hour and forty minutes our brains were full and our legs tired, and we had to totter off, but it was worth the effort. The RA still haven't got their ticketing sorted out, though. On arriving at Somerset House I had to queue at the members desk with my computer booking printout to get actual tickets, which seems a pointless extra step. The British Museum just checks your home printed proof of purchase at the door as you go into the exhibition. They don't have enough loos either. We didn't even attempt to use the Friends room after our viewing, and went for a cup of tea at Pret a Manger, which was much more civilised.
Then we walked to the Courtauld Gallery to see the Mondrian and Nicholson exhibition, and about half way along the Strand my mother asked plaintively if it was much further. When we got to the end of the road leading down to Waterloo Bridge we were engulfed in a sea of French school children, and glimpsing the end of Somerset house and panicking at the quantity of children she suggested that we head down towards the bridge, so we entered Somerset House by the river entrance, and found that the courtyard was occupied by a large, noisy marquee surrounded by trendy young people and photographers, and that we were in part of London fashion week. I ploughed on round the edge of the tent, on the grounds that we hadn't crashed through any barrier to get into the courtyard, and that you can walk through all sorts of places if you look confident and keep going. Nobody wanted to photograph us, though I read in the Evening Standard on the way home that shearling is coming back into fashion, which is handy as I'm still wearing a shearling coat from twelve years ago.
Mondrian and Nicholson were friends, who had adjacent studios in Hampstead for a few years. There must have been some tricky moments when Nicholson left the first Mrs Nicholson, who was a close friend and patron of Mondrian, to take up with the second Mrs Nicholson, who was Barbara Hepworth, but they seem to have weathered them. I really like both of their work, and if I had to choose I'd give Nicholson the edge, because it is less strictly geometric and more 3-D. I loved some of his white carved wood reliefs, and liked the domestic detail that one of the larger ones was cut from a leaf of a mahogany table he bought in Camden Market. As the people were saying in the RA, I could live with that.
Then we looked at some of the permanent collection and made use of the seats, which are very comfortable. One of the advantages of the Courtauld for visitors to London on cheap day returns is that it stays open until six, and is a civilised place to wait until the off-peak trains start again. We got a bus back to Liverpool Street, slightly too early because my mother was nervous about missing the train. One of the reasons why I normally travel from Colchester and not Wivenhoe is that there are more trains, and one of the reasons why I tend to walk around central London, unless it's raining hard, is that I know how long it will take. Getting on the bus I found that my Oyster card had run out.
For once I've been to exhibitions early in their run, so you have plenty of time to go and see them. Both are well worthwhile. You need to allow plenty of time for the Hockney. It is big.
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