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.
Showing posts with label Royal Academy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Royal Academy. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
number 23 for the revolution
Since I've got the Royal Academy Friends card, the Systems Administrator and I went to the exhibition of Russian architecture, Building the Revolution. This closes shortly, so once again I'm dashing to see something at the last minute, and Cardunculus is not a helpful guide to planning your cultural day out. We'd been meaning to go since last November, when the SA's eyes fell upon the RA magazine article about it and lit up with genuine enthusiasm. But then we both had colds, one after another, and time ticked by, and we didn't go, until suddenly it was a case of this week or never.
We went to Piccadilly on the bus, which was a novelty for me. Indeed, I can't think when I last travelled on a London bus. I think it was in Oxford Street on one of the old Routemasters, probably over twenty years ago. My failure to use London buses doesn't reflect any snobbish disdain for them, merely the fact that I don't know where any of them go, and in the pre-Oyster days I was anxious that I'd get on the wrong bus, inadvertently stray outside whatever zone I'd paid to be in, and be hit with a penalty fare. Or else miss my stop, or get lost, or not be able to find the stop for the return bus going the other way. Tubes are easy. The action takes place in tunnels with diagrams showing exactly where the train is going. Bond Street will follow Oxford Street as night follows day. It couldn't possibly be anything else, while a bus could go anywhere. However, the SA cracked buses some time ago, and knows what number goes to Picadilly (23), and where it goes from, and that you only have to swipe your Oyster card getting on and not getting off the bus.
The view from the top deck of the number 23 was great, once we'd taken twenty minutes to get to get as far as Mansion House (I could have walked to St Pauls in only two minutes more than that). I notice all sorts of architectural details and bits of buildings that normally I'd have missed. Apart from being higher up and getting a different viewpoint, being on a bus frees up all the parts of one's mind which would otherwise be occupied with not walking into people, or crossing the road without being run over. We passed Charing Cross, and I realised that I couldn't remember which queen the monument was raised for, and that today was No Wikipedia day and I wouldn't be able to look it up easily when I got home.
The exhibition was interesting, although there's not much point in my saying that, as there's scarcely time for you to go, if you haven't been already. It featured pre-war buildings that reflected and symbolised the new Russian socialist society, with factories, communal living blocks, schools and infrastructure projects. There was a strong International Modernist aesthetic, the same movement that was at the same time influencing the British seaside in the form of the De Lar Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea, and the Midland Hotel at Morecombe. Indeed, the former was designed by the same German-Russian partnership of Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff who were responsible for some of the buildings in the RA show.
It is not an original thought that seeing where a society puts its architectural efforts tells you a lot about that society. In Medieval times people built cathedrals, in Victorian times railway stations, and in modern times banking headquarters and shopping centres. The Russian revolutionaries took industry and communal living very seriously. The Victorians built some grand mills, and the 1930s saw the construction of the Art Deco Hoover Factory (and Fort Dunlop was built at some point but it's No Wikipedia day and the Fort Dunlop site tells me a lot about the redevelopment but not when it was built. Or at least not quickly). But I can't offhand think when I last read a review in the Guardian's architecture pages of an exciting new industrial building.
An extra twist of the exhibition is that there aren't very many extant photographs of most of these buildings when they were new, so modest drawings of the time were displayed next to large, recent colour photographs of the buildings. Some are still in use for their original purpose, especially the schools and some residential schemes, and a vast radio mast. Some have been converted into artistic spaces. Many of the factories are derelict, some in danger of collapse. This is rather poignant, because of their historical significance, and because many of them are beautiful. Well, beautiful if you like the International Modernist look, which on the whole I do. Those rounded walls and balconies and internal circulation by curving ramps and spiral staircases like big abstract white sculptures, they're good.
If you go into RA exhibitions on a Friend's card nobody seems to give you a gallery guide, so I can't remember where the Russian city is, that still has its white concrete water tower, now defunct as a water tower but still functioning as an eye-catcher at the end of a long boulevard. They could twin with Colchester, if twinning weren't going out of fashion. Two towns united in their devotion to their derelict, iconic water towers. I was too mean to buy the exhibition catalogue. I generally am. There seemed to be lots left, with four days left to go, so I wouldn't be surprised to get one cheap later.
Then we walked across Green Park and St James Park and got a number 11 back. I think I'm getting the hang of buses. Also embarking on a new stage of my cold. The SA's was a two-parter, so that's not unlikely.
We went to Piccadilly on the bus, which was a novelty for me. Indeed, I can't think when I last travelled on a London bus. I think it was in Oxford Street on one of the old Routemasters, probably over twenty years ago. My failure to use London buses doesn't reflect any snobbish disdain for them, merely the fact that I don't know where any of them go, and in the pre-Oyster days I was anxious that I'd get on the wrong bus, inadvertently stray outside whatever zone I'd paid to be in, and be hit with a penalty fare. Or else miss my stop, or get lost, or not be able to find the stop for the return bus going the other way. Tubes are easy. The action takes place in tunnels with diagrams showing exactly where the train is going. Bond Street will follow Oxford Street as night follows day. It couldn't possibly be anything else, while a bus could go anywhere. However, the SA cracked buses some time ago, and knows what number goes to Picadilly (23), and where it goes from, and that you only have to swipe your Oyster card getting on and not getting off the bus.
The view from the top deck of the number 23 was great, once we'd taken twenty minutes to get to get as far as Mansion House (I could have walked to St Pauls in only two minutes more than that). I notice all sorts of architectural details and bits of buildings that normally I'd have missed. Apart from being higher up and getting a different viewpoint, being on a bus frees up all the parts of one's mind which would otherwise be occupied with not walking into people, or crossing the road without being run over. We passed Charing Cross, and I realised that I couldn't remember which queen the monument was raised for, and that today was No Wikipedia day and I wouldn't be able to look it up easily when I got home.
The exhibition was interesting, although there's not much point in my saying that, as there's scarcely time for you to go, if you haven't been already. It featured pre-war buildings that reflected and symbolised the new Russian socialist society, with factories, communal living blocks, schools and infrastructure projects. There was a strong International Modernist aesthetic, the same movement that was at the same time influencing the British seaside in the form of the De Lar Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea, and the Midland Hotel at Morecombe. Indeed, the former was designed by the same German-Russian partnership of Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff who were responsible for some of the buildings in the RA show.
It is not an original thought that seeing where a society puts its architectural efforts tells you a lot about that society. In Medieval times people built cathedrals, in Victorian times railway stations, and in modern times banking headquarters and shopping centres. The Russian revolutionaries took industry and communal living very seriously. The Victorians built some grand mills, and the 1930s saw the construction of the Art Deco Hoover Factory (and Fort Dunlop was built at some point but it's No Wikipedia day and the Fort Dunlop site tells me a lot about the redevelopment but not when it was built. Or at least not quickly). But I can't offhand think when I last read a review in the Guardian's architecture pages of an exciting new industrial building.
An extra twist of the exhibition is that there aren't very many extant photographs of most of these buildings when they were new, so modest drawings of the time were displayed next to large, recent colour photographs of the buildings. Some are still in use for their original purpose, especially the schools and some residential schemes, and a vast radio mast. Some have been converted into artistic spaces. Many of the factories are derelict, some in danger of collapse. This is rather poignant, because of their historical significance, and because many of them are beautiful. Well, beautiful if you like the International Modernist look, which on the whole I do. Those rounded walls and balconies and internal circulation by curving ramps and spiral staircases like big abstract white sculptures, they're good.
If you go into RA exhibitions on a Friend's card nobody seems to give you a gallery guide, so I can't remember where the Russian city is, that still has its white concrete water tower, now defunct as a water tower but still functioning as an eye-catcher at the end of a long boulevard. They could twin with Colchester, if twinning weren't going out of fashion. Two towns united in their devotion to their derelict, iconic water towers. I was too mean to buy the exhibition catalogue. I generally am. There seemed to be lots left, with four days left to go, so I wouldn't be surprised to get one cheap later.
Then we walked across Green Park and St James Park and got a number 11 back. I think I'm getting the hang of buses. Also embarking on a new stage of my cold. The SA's was a two-parter, so that's not unlikely.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
the National Art Fund
I have started trying to arrange a trip with my mother to the Royal Academy's exhibition of large and recent landscapes by David Hockney. It has crystallised my feeling that it is not worthwhile her renewing my annual birthday present subscription, as once again advance booking is required, even for Friends. Since she gave me the sub three years ago the RA has unilaterally altered the terms and conditions, by limiting my guests to family members (undefined, unenforceable, unenforced) and jacking up the annual cost to a hundred quid (or £90 by direct debit). Their website nowadays says 'free entry to all RA exhibitions' which is true, in that Friends don't pay when they book tickets, but when you are travelling up from the country (40 minute rail delays this morning due to signalling problems at Ilford) a pre-booked entry time is a nuisance. It means we have to build slack into the timetable before our slot in case the trains are late, which will leave us wandering around the west end for an hour or so in February if they're not, or else forego lunch if there are delays. It used to be that you just waved your card and went in, even for popular exhibitions like Van Gogh.
My replacement is already lined up, as my National Art Pass has arrived. For fifty quid (reduced to £37.50 in the first year if you pay by direct debit) I have got a card giving me free entry into some museums and galleries I should like to visit, and half price admission to exhibitions at others. In London it gets me into the Courtauld, a gallery I adore and visit regularly, and the Garden Museum, which I'm partial to (provided they are covering design or history and not community vegetable growing). It will also get me free into several places I've thought about visiting and not got round to it, including The Handel House Museum, Leighton House and Eltham Palace. I get half price entry to exhibitions at The National Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Imperial War Museum. These are all fine institutions I was planning on visiting this year (well, maybe not the Imperial War Museum. I haven't looked yet to see what they've got on). I checked on the Portrait Gallery website before buying the card, and the booking options for Lucien Freud did include buying a ticket with an Art Pass (as well as about seven other concessionary tickets) which allayed my concerns that the card might not work for exhibitions where I needed to book in advance.
There's an element of duplication with other memberships, as some National Trust properties are in the scheme, and I'm a member anyway. Have been since I was four, courtesy of my parents. So is the Tate, and I'm inclined to keep membership of that one going, as the members' room at Tate Modern is so nice, and being able to walk straight into the likes of the Rothko exhibition is worth a lot.
With the Art Pass came a book of participating venues through the UK. All have benefited from art purchases funded by the scheme. Some offer free access anyway, so holding an Art Pass doesn't confer any immediate benefit, but it looks a useful book. Unless I had picked up a brochure somewhere, I wouldn't have known about the Cromer Museum (with Victorian fisherman's cottage and history of Cromer's incarnation as a seaside resort) or the Time and Tide museum at Great Yarmouth (about herring fishing) but they sound interesting. It's the sort of booklet it will be worth taking along on holiday (not forgetting the tile gazetteer).
The proceeds raised by the Art Fund go to help museums and galleries pay for acquisitions. I like the idea of helping to do that. All in all it looks like a pound a week well spent, signing up for your National Art Pass.
My replacement is already lined up, as my National Art Pass has arrived. For fifty quid (reduced to £37.50 in the first year if you pay by direct debit) I have got a card giving me free entry into some museums and galleries I should like to visit, and half price admission to exhibitions at others. In London it gets me into the Courtauld, a gallery I adore and visit regularly, and the Garden Museum, which I'm partial to (provided they are covering design or history and not community vegetable growing). It will also get me free into several places I've thought about visiting and not got round to it, including The Handel House Museum, Leighton House and Eltham Palace. I get half price entry to exhibitions at The National Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Imperial War Museum. These are all fine institutions I was planning on visiting this year (well, maybe not the Imperial War Museum. I haven't looked yet to see what they've got on). I checked on the Portrait Gallery website before buying the card, and the booking options for Lucien Freud did include buying a ticket with an Art Pass (as well as about seven other concessionary tickets) which allayed my concerns that the card might not work for exhibitions where I needed to book in advance.
There's an element of duplication with other memberships, as some National Trust properties are in the scheme, and I'm a member anyway. Have been since I was four, courtesy of my parents. So is the Tate, and I'm inclined to keep membership of that one going, as the members' room at Tate Modern is so nice, and being able to walk straight into the likes of the Rothko exhibition is worth a lot.
With the Art Pass came a book of participating venues through the UK. All have benefited from art purchases funded by the scheme. Some offer free access anyway, so holding an Art Pass doesn't confer any immediate benefit, but it looks a useful book. Unless I had picked up a brochure somewhere, I wouldn't have known about the Cromer Museum (with Victorian fisherman's cottage and history of Cromer's incarnation as a seaside resort) or the Time and Tide museum at Great Yarmouth (about herring fishing) but they sound interesting. It's the sort of booklet it will be worth taking along on holiday (not forgetting the tile gazetteer).
The proceeds raised by the Art Fund go to help museums and galleries pay for acquisitions. I like the idea of helping to do that. All in all it looks like a pound a week well spent, signing up for your National Art Pass.
Saturday, 12 November 2011
the value of Friendship
Yesterday I went with my mother to see the Degas exhibition at The Royal Academy. She likes Degas, and bought me my subscription for my birthday. We should have been a month ago, on 11 October, but they sent tickets for the wrong day. The exhibition was very good, and I'm still irritated with the RA.
They call having an annual season ticket being a Friend of the RA, since the term member is already reserved for the academicians. This makes it difficult to know what to call my mother's present, since calling it a Friendship sounds ridiculous. She first bought me an annual sub three years ago, at my suggestion when she asked what I'd like, and since then the cost has rocketed from around the sixty pound mark to ninety pounds if you pay by direct debit, and a round hundred if you pay on a one-off basis. The ticket entitles you to take a guest in (though the UK tax system has introduced a glitch there), and with tickets to Degas costing £14, or £13 concessions, and the other show currently on costing £9 or £7, a ticket holder has to notch up around eight entries in the course of a year to recoup the cost of the season ticket, compared with buying tickets on a pay as you go basis. The RA doesn't put on as many as eight exhibitions each year, so you have to go to each one more than once, or take a guest pretty much every time, to make it pay.
You could say that getting your exact money's worth isn't the point, and that it's good to support arts organisations. That's true, and indeed the Systems Administrator and I have supported the RSPB for years without ever visiting one of their reserves. We're happy to help conserve birds, but don't want to spend our spare time sitting in a bird hide. We don't get full value out of the National Trust on an aggregate cost of entry basis either, because they don't have many properties in the Eastern region. However, while I'm happy to pay £14 to go into an art exhibition, if it's a good one, I'm not sure I want to support the RA so much that I want my aged mother to pay £90 on my behalf for around £60 worth of entries. And I reckon around £60 worth of entries is around what I get. I don't live in London, so I can't pop into the RA, it's a full day's excursion. And I do take guests, but not every time I go. I don't know that many people who want to come with me, my principal art loving friend is also a Friend, and sometimes I prefer to go round galleries by myself.
One of the advantages of being a Friend is that you don't have to queue, or book. Instead you can drop in whenever you want to, if you are passing, for as short a time as you want. That's a big advantage. Except that it doesn't apply for Degas. For the Degas exhibition, in order to control overcrowding, you have to apply in advance, for a timed entry slot, and there is no readmission. So I booked in advance, and they sent tickets for the wrong month. Fortunately I noticed as I was putting them in my purse so that I wouldn't forget them, a couple of days before we were due to go, and my mother was very nice about it, but it was a nuisance. And I don't like having to book tickets in advance anyway. Especially when I'm going to London by myself, I'd prefer to decide at the last minute when to go, the weather playing a big part in that decision. I'd rather not have to spend the one fine dry day in the week in London when I could use it in the garden, and be free to go to town the next day instead when it drizzles. And with timed slots, you have to aim to arrive early in case the trains are all screwed up, and then if they do run to time you can't just go in when you reach the RA and get on with your day.
The other glitch is more theoretical than actual, but is a deeply depressing indictment of the state of our public administration. A year or so ago the rules on Gift Aid were altered, so that if a charity claimed Gift Aid on subscriptions, benefits provided by the charity were limited to the person paying the subscription, and members of their family. The RA responded by changing their subscription rules so that in theory I can only take family members in as my guest. That's what it says on their website. My mother is clearly a member of my family, as presumably is my brother (not that he'd want to come), and I assume that children, spouses and civil partners also count, but it is not at all clear where family stops. Cohabitees not married or in civil partnership? Fiancees? Anybody you've been sleeping with for at least a year and you spend most of your time round at their's even though you don't technically live together? Grandparents? Cousins? Second cousins? Step-siblings? Of course it is an entirely academic question because the staff on the door don't ask. As I walked up the stairs of the RA with a former colleague to see the Hungarian photographs I wondered idly what relationship we should claim, but our acting skills were not put to the test. It is ludicrous, unenforceable and unenforced, and it exasperates me that we have politicians and civil servants wasting public money thinking up and then drafting such idiotic legislation.
I can see that it was necessary to control crowding in the Degas exhibition, given that it was expected to be very popular, but if the RA is going to withdraw most of the advantages of being a Friend for the popular exhibitions, I might as well not bother to be a Friend. The British Museum and the Coutauld both charge a lot less to be a supporter, both are admirable institutions, and I have never been to a duff special exhibition at either.
The Degas, when you get there, is very good. The pictures are beautiful to look at, and it is well and intelligently curated, linking Degas' interest in portraying movement with contemporary developments in photography. We both enjoyed it very much, and then we went and looked at The National Portrait Gallery, since the earliest train we could get home was the 18.48 out of Liverpool Street, and enjoyed that as well. The trains ran to time, service was good on all tube lines, we had a nice lunch and a nice tea and it was a successful day out. But I'm irritated with the RA.
Addendum My mother told me a piece of family history I never heard before. It is quite bizarre. In 1936 or 1937 my paternal grandfather decided that he was tired of capitalism, and would like to go and live in Russia. He got as far as having an interview with the Russian ambassador in London, who listened to his story and explained that Russia already had enough Jewish intellectuals, and that my grandfather would be well advised to remain in England. The mind boggles.
They call having an annual season ticket being a Friend of the RA, since the term member is already reserved for the academicians. This makes it difficult to know what to call my mother's present, since calling it a Friendship sounds ridiculous. She first bought me an annual sub three years ago, at my suggestion when she asked what I'd like, and since then the cost has rocketed from around the sixty pound mark to ninety pounds if you pay by direct debit, and a round hundred if you pay on a one-off basis. The ticket entitles you to take a guest in (though the UK tax system has introduced a glitch there), and with tickets to Degas costing £14, or £13 concessions, and the other show currently on costing £9 or £7, a ticket holder has to notch up around eight entries in the course of a year to recoup the cost of the season ticket, compared with buying tickets on a pay as you go basis. The RA doesn't put on as many as eight exhibitions each year, so you have to go to each one more than once, or take a guest pretty much every time, to make it pay.
You could say that getting your exact money's worth isn't the point, and that it's good to support arts organisations. That's true, and indeed the Systems Administrator and I have supported the RSPB for years without ever visiting one of their reserves. We're happy to help conserve birds, but don't want to spend our spare time sitting in a bird hide. We don't get full value out of the National Trust on an aggregate cost of entry basis either, because they don't have many properties in the Eastern region. However, while I'm happy to pay £14 to go into an art exhibition, if it's a good one, I'm not sure I want to support the RA so much that I want my aged mother to pay £90 on my behalf for around £60 worth of entries. And I reckon around £60 worth of entries is around what I get. I don't live in London, so I can't pop into the RA, it's a full day's excursion. And I do take guests, but not every time I go. I don't know that many people who want to come with me, my principal art loving friend is also a Friend, and sometimes I prefer to go round galleries by myself.
One of the advantages of being a Friend is that you don't have to queue, or book. Instead you can drop in whenever you want to, if you are passing, for as short a time as you want. That's a big advantage. Except that it doesn't apply for Degas. For the Degas exhibition, in order to control overcrowding, you have to apply in advance, for a timed entry slot, and there is no readmission. So I booked in advance, and they sent tickets for the wrong month. Fortunately I noticed as I was putting them in my purse so that I wouldn't forget them, a couple of days before we were due to go, and my mother was very nice about it, but it was a nuisance. And I don't like having to book tickets in advance anyway. Especially when I'm going to London by myself, I'd prefer to decide at the last minute when to go, the weather playing a big part in that decision. I'd rather not have to spend the one fine dry day in the week in London when I could use it in the garden, and be free to go to town the next day instead when it drizzles. And with timed slots, you have to aim to arrive early in case the trains are all screwed up, and then if they do run to time you can't just go in when you reach the RA and get on with your day.
The other glitch is more theoretical than actual, but is a deeply depressing indictment of the state of our public administration. A year or so ago the rules on Gift Aid were altered, so that if a charity claimed Gift Aid on subscriptions, benefits provided by the charity were limited to the person paying the subscription, and members of their family. The RA responded by changing their subscription rules so that in theory I can only take family members in as my guest. That's what it says on their website. My mother is clearly a member of my family, as presumably is my brother (not that he'd want to come), and I assume that children, spouses and civil partners also count, but it is not at all clear where family stops. Cohabitees not married or in civil partnership? Fiancees? Anybody you've been sleeping with for at least a year and you spend most of your time round at their's even though you don't technically live together? Grandparents? Cousins? Second cousins? Step-siblings? Of course it is an entirely academic question because the staff on the door don't ask. As I walked up the stairs of the RA with a former colleague to see the Hungarian photographs I wondered idly what relationship we should claim, but our acting skills were not put to the test. It is ludicrous, unenforceable and unenforced, and it exasperates me that we have politicians and civil servants wasting public money thinking up and then drafting such idiotic legislation.
I can see that it was necessary to control crowding in the Degas exhibition, given that it was expected to be very popular, but if the RA is going to withdraw most of the advantages of being a Friend for the popular exhibitions, I might as well not bother to be a Friend. The British Museum and the Coutauld both charge a lot less to be a supporter, both are admirable institutions, and I have never been to a duff special exhibition at either.
The Degas, when you get there, is very good. The pictures are beautiful to look at, and it is well and intelligently curated, linking Degas' interest in portraying movement with contemporary developments in photography. We both enjoyed it very much, and then we went and looked at The National Portrait Gallery, since the earliest train we could get home was the 18.48 out of Liverpool Street, and enjoyed that as well. The trains ran to time, service was good on all tube lines, we had a nice lunch and a nice tea and it was a successful day out. But I'm irritated with the RA.
Addendum My mother told me a piece of family history I never heard before. It is quite bizarre. In 1936 or 1937 my paternal grandfather decided that he was tired of capitalism, and would like to go and live in Russia. He got as far as having an interview with the Russian ambassador in London, who listened to his story and explained that Russia already had enough Jewish intellectuals, and that my grandfather would be well advised to remain in England. The mind boggles.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
art and nature
I went to London today. The plan was to meet an old friend and former colleague I hadn't seen for some time, look at an art exhibition and get some lunch, and then visit this year's Serpentine Pavilion in the afternoon, while my erstwhile colleague returned to the world of real work and a meeting requiring a suit. The meeting was on his initiative, but I was left to come up with a list of potential exhibitions, and in the event required to choose. I thought it was magnaminious of him to let me have the final say, given that I fully intended to go to whatever didn't make our shortlist later anyway, so if he were only having one bite at the cherry he might has well have chosen whatever he liked best.
It boiled down to a choice between Hungarian photopgraphy at The RA, which ends on 2nd October, and Dutch landscapes at The Queen's Gallery, which ends on 9th October, so once again I'm leaving things to the last minute. I opted for the landscapes, but when we got past the queue of people waiting for the 12.15pm entry slot and made it to the ticket desk we discovered that the next entry available was timed for 3.30pm. I was rather chagrined by this, since the previous time I visited I got straight in, but apparently it is busier when the rest of Buckingham Palace is open, as people buy gallery tickets as part of the whole tour. We agreed that it would be Hungarian photographs after all, and yomped back across Green Park to Piccadilly, from whence we had both recently come. Fortunately it is not very far and we are both stout walkers (indeed he runs, an occupation I consider to be an invention of the devil, designed to store up ruin for human joints, while giving us a foretaste of suffering).
There are pelicans in Green Park. I had a look at them on the way to the Queen's Gallery, as I had time in hand. Also lots of coot, which are the ones with white faces, as distinct from moorhens which have red faces. Coots have the most extraordinary feet. They are black, and not webbed like a duck, but each individual toe has broad scaley scalloped flaps down each side, to increase surface area and resistance when paddling. I never looked close up at a coot's feet before, but of course the birds in Green Park are extremely tame.
The Hungarian photos were very good. Some were of rural life in Hungary between the wars, others produced under Soviet influence portraits of heavy industry. There was a beautiful sequence of shots of Paris, and my absolute favourite, Washington Square in the snow. The branches of several trees curled elaborately, iron railings looped, and there were two ornate lamp-posts, two people walking separately, and several seats. The viewpoint was high, the depth of field not great, and the foreground trees were truncated mid-crown. The effect reminded me of Japanese and Chinese pictures, where there is no conventional Western perspective and important features are made larger irrespective of actual size, as the snowy background made it impossible to judge how far away anything was, and the furthest tree was significantly bigger than those in the foreground. I shall investigate whether they sell a copy of that one, as we didn't stop to look at the shop.
By the time we emerged from the RA the promised sunshine had appeared, and Hyde Park looked very pretty as I walked across it. I'd thought on a whim as I went around Hyde Park Corner that I could go and look at the Wellington Museum, but that turns out not to be open on Tuesdays. A treat for another day. This year's Serpentine Pavilion is a Hortus Conclusus by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, with planting by Piet Oudolf. Put like that it sounds as though I have heard of Peter Zumthor. Actually I hadn't, until I saw he was responsible for this year's pavilion. I have heard of Piet Oudolf, obviously, him being a famous garden designer. I didn't bother to go to last year's pavilion, as the best that anybody seemed to be able to find to say about it was that it was red, to mimic the buses. The year before that there was an amoeba shaped roof made out of polished aluminium, which did really reflect the buses, upside down, and the year before that a brutal, multi-level stucture of glass and timber that I liked, though some architectural correspondents were very rude about it. This year's pavilion is a credit-crunch pavilion, covered in what looks like black painted hessian, and I think we can safely assume that it was cheaper to build than the amoeba or the tiered glass and timber. It presents a vertical face all round, no visible roof. Inside you pass through a fairly narrow, tall, (black) corridor into an enclosed rectangular garden, surrounded by a walkway with a shallow pitched, (black) roof, wide in proportion to the space it encloses. Think cathedral cloisters meet Zen garden and you're there, except that this Hortus Conclusus incorporates a bench around the entire perimeter plus lots of tiny galvanised cafe tables and white canvas stools, so you can have a sit down.
The planting was full, and in Piet Oudolf style used plants close to the wild species, some of which had finished blooming and, in Oudolf style, the seed heads remained. The cloister was also full, of young people with sketch pads. The roof kept the sun out of our eyes, while it lit the central planted area, and it was pleasant to sit listening to the chatter of young voices and watching the bees working the plants. Actually, I think the bees were working harder than some of the students. It struck me, as I looked at the planting, that I might be seeing a very different thing to the students. I couldn't have identified the exact species or cultivar of all of them, but I recognised autumn flowering Aconitum, hardy geranium, Joe Pye Weed or Eupatorium (which had largely finished), Actaea, Astrantia, Rodgersia, Liriope, some sort of Veronica, Aster, and thought that the grass, which looked like one used at Scampston, was Molinia. I was puzzled by something with red petals like ragged claws. I've just done a quick search on-line for a planting list and not found one, which seems a curious omission, though from an article in The Telegraph I think the red flowered thing could be a form of Monarda. If you aren't interested in gardening, which probably covers the majority of teenage artists, I presume the planting is a pure jumble of colour. It was very nice, predominantly soft colours with muted blues, greens, browns, and the odd flash of pink and soft red.
I once saw a TV programme in which subjects were given the individual elements of Matisse's snail as cut-outs, and invited to arrange them into a pattern, which turned out to be very hard to do. It would be interesting to be given free rein of a couple of top-quality herbaceous plant suppliers and that amount of space (and sorry, I didn't pace it out and I can't find a web article that gives the dimensions. I wish people would be more specific. It's quite big.) and see how difficult or easy it would be to be Piet Oudolf. Can anybody make a large rectangle of late flowering plants look good for that limited period, given access to some nice plants, or does it in fact take artistic ability? I really don't know. It's on until 16th October, if you want to go and see for yourself.
It boiled down to a choice between Hungarian photopgraphy at The RA, which ends on 2nd October, and Dutch landscapes at The Queen's Gallery, which ends on 9th October, so once again I'm leaving things to the last minute. I opted for the landscapes, but when we got past the queue of people waiting for the 12.15pm entry slot and made it to the ticket desk we discovered that the next entry available was timed for 3.30pm. I was rather chagrined by this, since the previous time I visited I got straight in, but apparently it is busier when the rest of Buckingham Palace is open, as people buy gallery tickets as part of the whole tour. We agreed that it would be Hungarian photographs after all, and yomped back across Green Park to Piccadilly, from whence we had both recently come. Fortunately it is not very far and we are both stout walkers (indeed he runs, an occupation I consider to be an invention of the devil, designed to store up ruin for human joints, while giving us a foretaste of suffering).
There are pelicans in Green Park. I had a look at them on the way to the Queen's Gallery, as I had time in hand. Also lots of coot, which are the ones with white faces, as distinct from moorhens which have red faces. Coots have the most extraordinary feet. They are black, and not webbed like a duck, but each individual toe has broad scaley scalloped flaps down each side, to increase surface area and resistance when paddling. I never looked close up at a coot's feet before, but of course the birds in Green Park are extremely tame.
The Hungarian photos were very good. Some were of rural life in Hungary between the wars, others produced under Soviet influence portraits of heavy industry. There was a beautiful sequence of shots of Paris, and my absolute favourite, Washington Square in the snow. The branches of several trees curled elaborately, iron railings looped, and there were two ornate lamp-posts, two people walking separately, and several seats. The viewpoint was high, the depth of field not great, and the foreground trees were truncated mid-crown. The effect reminded me of Japanese and Chinese pictures, where there is no conventional Western perspective and important features are made larger irrespective of actual size, as the snowy background made it impossible to judge how far away anything was, and the furthest tree was significantly bigger than those in the foreground. I shall investigate whether they sell a copy of that one, as we didn't stop to look at the shop.
By the time we emerged from the RA the promised sunshine had appeared, and Hyde Park looked very pretty as I walked across it. I'd thought on a whim as I went around Hyde Park Corner that I could go and look at the Wellington Museum, but that turns out not to be open on Tuesdays. A treat for another day. This year's Serpentine Pavilion is a Hortus Conclusus by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, with planting by Piet Oudolf. Put like that it sounds as though I have heard of Peter Zumthor. Actually I hadn't, until I saw he was responsible for this year's pavilion. I have heard of Piet Oudolf, obviously, him being a famous garden designer. I didn't bother to go to last year's pavilion, as the best that anybody seemed to be able to find to say about it was that it was red, to mimic the buses. The year before that there was an amoeba shaped roof made out of polished aluminium, which did really reflect the buses, upside down, and the year before that a brutal, multi-level stucture of glass and timber that I liked, though some architectural correspondents were very rude about it. This year's pavilion is a credit-crunch pavilion, covered in what looks like black painted hessian, and I think we can safely assume that it was cheaper to build than the amoeba or the tiered glass and timber. It presents a vertical face all round, no visible roof. Inside you pass through a fairly narrow, tall, (black) corridor into an enclosed rectangular garden, surrounded by a walkway with a shallow pitched, (black) roof, wide in proportion to the space it encloses. Think cathedral cloisters meet Zen garden and you're there, except that this Hortus Conclusus incorporates a bench around the entire perimeter plus lots of tiny galvanised cafe tables and white canvas stools, so you can have a sit down.
The planting was full, and in Piet Oudolf style used plants close to the wild species, some of which had finished blooming and, in Oudolf style, the seed heads remained. The cloister was also full, of young people with sketch pads. The roof kept the sun out of our eyes, while it lit the central planted area, and it was pleasant to sit listening to the chatter of young voices and watching the bees working the plants. Actually, I think the bees were working harder than some of the students. It struck me, as I looked at the planting, that I might be seeing a very different thing to the students. I couldn't have identified the exact species or cultivar of all of them, but I recognised autumn flowering Aconitum, hardy geranium, Joe Pye Weed or Eupatorium (which had largely finished), Actaea, Astrantia, Rodgersia, Liriope, some sort of Veronica, Aster, and thought that the grass, which looked like one used at Scampston, was Molinia. I was puzzled by something with red petals like ragged claws. I've just done a quick search on-line for a planting list and not found one, which seems a curious omission, though from an article in The Telegraph I think the red flowered thing could be a form of Monarda. If you aren't interested in gardening, which probably covers the majority of teenage artists, I presume the planting is a pure jumble of colour. It was very nice, predominantly soft colours with muted blues, greens, browns, and the odd flash of pink and soft red.
I once saw a TV programme in which subjects were given the individual elements of Matisse's snail as cut-outs, and invited to arrange them into a pattern, which turned out to be very hard to do. It would be interesting to be given free rein of a couple of top-quality herbaceous plant suppliers and that amount of space (and sorry, I didn't pace it out and I can't find a web article that gives the dimensions. I wish people would be more specific. It's quite big.) and see how difficult or easy it would be to be Piet Oudolf. Can anybody make a large rectangle of late flowering plants look good for that limited period, given access to some nice plants, or does it in fact take artistic ability? I really don't know. It's on until 16th October, if you want to go and see for yourself.
Friday, 18 March 2011
two exhibitions
It was drizzling this morning when I got up, and the forecast was for rain, so I went up to London to look at some art. I'd managed to miss the exhibition I wanted to see at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, as I haven't been up for weeks, so I chose today's entertainments on the basis of picking the two things on the list of shows I'd like to see that ended soonest. It was raining properly by the time I got to Liverpool Street, but not windy, and I like London in the rain as long as it isn't driving horizontally, so I yomped down to Tate Modern, taking a short detour into St Pauls churchyard to look at a large magnolia that was just coming into bloom, and over the bouncy bridge. The Thames was on the flood, looking ominous and full of strange back eddies as the natural flow of the river ran against the tide.
Gabriel Orozco is a Mexican artist. I'd never heard of him until the Tate retrospective came along, but it's good to try new things, and the papers I'd read about him had sounded quite enthusiastic. The exhibition was a mixed bag. There were some good bits, and then there were some other bits. Actually quite a lot of other bits. My favourite room, which really was good, was the one that dealt with death. The artist had got hold of an entire human skull somehow, which he had painstakingly painted with a strictly geometric checkerboard pattern of black and white, carrying it over the different planes and angles which distorted the checkerboard to harlequin diamonds. It looked unexpectedly jaunty, and I presumed it referenced the Mexican day of the dead, as well as being a very elegantly executed feat of draughtsmanship. The skull was good. The best bit was the headlines from New York Times that lined the walls, stripped of the names of their subjects. These read like something by Evelyn Waugh, dozens of lives compressed into five or six words that managed to be both touching and ludicrous.
I didn't find the rest of the show so much fun. There were some pictures based on circles, that looked like the bastard offspring of a Mandelbrot fractal and the BBC i-player animated doodle. There was an extra sized chessboard with nothing but knights on it, which was quite amusing, but not very. There was a large room full of photographs of yellow scooters, generated by hiring a common make of scooter and driving around looking for other identical (stationary) scooters, then parking next to each scooter and photographing the two scooters together. Look, after I got a Skoda Fabia I began to notice how many other Skoda Fabias there were on the road, but I didn't call that art. Likewise, squeezing a lump of a malleable substance with your legs and elbows so as to leave the imprint of your body on the lump doesn't make it art, or if it does then on that basis the flan case I made the other weekend was art. Then there was the room full of bits of shredded tyres, collected by the artist from the side of the road in Mexico and arranged by him in a special way. They were tyres. They blew. Please explain why putting them in rows in a converted power station next to the Thames makes them art (I am beginning to feel like Francis Bacon dismissing parterres with the observation that you may see as good in tarts). There was a Citroen DS cut down the middle and very neatly reassembled with its central third missing, which was clever, but seemed like a waste of a rather nice classic car, and I'm not sure what message it was supposed to give me. And the white cardboard box placed casually on the floor, which echoed the shape of the gallery room. Seriously, that's what the blurb on the wall said. I've had a shoebox on the floor next to my desk for weeks, because I am too disorganised to put it away. It is being promoted to art forthwith. Then there was the room with lines strung across it, from which hung bits of grey fabric that from a distance looked like dishcloths hung up to dry. They turned out to be fluff from Mexican laundromats, which the artist had collected. They are supposed to make you think about the transitory nature of life. Or something. And the ceiling fan with loo paper stuck to it. I don't know how you negotiate to earn a living sticking loo paper to ceiling fans and hanging up gunk out of washing machines, instead of lifting several times your own body weight in compost in a day, in between trying to be unfailingly helpful and polite to people a sizeable minority of whom appear to be either deaf, terminally indecisive, or moderately dotty, but I should say that Gabriel Orozco is a sharp operator. Whether he will be remembered in four hundred years as fondly as we remember Rembrandt van Rijn is another question. I don't think so (but what do I know. They laughed at the Impressionists at the time).
I walked on to the Royal Academy. The south bank had a wistful out of season air, with few people, and the book stalls under the bridge by the national film theatre all shut up. I bought a Big Issue from a vendor on the Hungerford Bridge, not so much because I wanted a wet magazine as because nobody else was stopping. He spoke in the accents of Eastern Europe. Lettuce picking and mushroom farming can't have worked out for him. Somebody else then stopped, and asked the vendor if he had change before giving him a bank note and assuring him that it was a Scottish note but it was legal tender.
The first room of the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at the RA was really promising. There was a full scale model of the Cenotaph. I've only seen it from a distance in the middle of the road, and on the TV, and even with Charlie Gilmour swinging from it for scale I hadn't realised how big it was. And there were some photos of plaster models Epstein did for the BMA. The second room had sculptures from different civilisations in prehistoric times interposed with modern works, and was great fun. I loved the forepart of a running leopard from 350BC and the Eric Gill relief of nude girl with hair, and torso of a very flighty girl with more hair, and several other things, and began to feel warm and happy and that this was more like it. Room 3 had a monumental Epstein Adam (with enormous genitalia) and a small sly Henry Moore serpent, and something I've never seen before, which was a sign on the wall about the hessian covered bench, which was a copy of a bench at some earlier exhibition and we were invited to sit on it. In the next room we took a leap back to the nineteenth century, with queen Victoria sitting in a vast and rumpled dress under a crown-cum-canopy, looking not at all amused, and three other figures which I think I was supposed to compare and contrast. One was Lord Frederic Leighton's 1877 take on a muscular nude athlete wrestling with a python, the next a twentieth century muscular, nude and very shiny Adam, with tiny genitalia and no phallic python, who might as well have been from 1877, and the third was Genghis Khan, represented as a purple plastic teepee with bat wings. That was bit odd but I could cope. Then there were some very beautiful Chinese plain celadon and cream ceramics from between 600 and 1100, unbelievably thin and delicate and strangely modern (which I had seen before in the excellent new ceramics room at the British Museum, but they are so beautiful I could look at them any number of times). On the other side of the room were some twentieth century British pots, chunkier but some good strong plain shapes, though I'm not sure I could tell the difference between them and the pots everybody seemed to have in their houses in my village in east Devon in the 1960s (it was quite an arty village). And there was Barbara Hepworth's Pelagos, which I love. I first saw it when the Tate was only at Millbank, then it was briefly in Tate Modern and I saw it there, before moving to Tate St Ives, which is fair enough, and I saw it there, so I was very pleased it had come to London, as it's a long way to St Ives. In the next room was a large Barbara Hepworth abstract scupture, a bronze wedge with a hole near the top, which was perfect. The surface was pitted and mottled in a thousand shades of green and grey and the shape was subtle and absolutely right, the thickness of the piece varying across it like the fin of a submarine or the head of a whale, and the hole in exactly the right place. Its companion in the room was a Henry Moore reclining figure, and we were meant to contrast the abstract and figurative approaches to sculpture, but what would have been more illuminating would have been to get half a dozen of the lifeless abstract Hepworth rip-offs that get marketed as garden ornaments, and explain why the real thing was so much better.
Then it began to go downhill. There was an Anthony Caro exploration of horizontals and verticals, which was made of flat bits of metal and long bits of metal welded together and painted, which looked vaguely like the half assembled beginning of some bizarre machine tool, but it was red and very shiny. If you accidentally stepped over the demarcation line around it the attendant leapt at you anxiously. There were coloured perspex rectangles strung together, which you were allowed to walk among without a guard warning you off, and I did wonder what the conceptual difference was between them and the Mexican laundromat fluff, apart from the fact that the perpex was coloured and more interactive. Then there was the Damien Hirst abandoned barbecue and white plastic furniture in a perspex box, full of live flies. Look, I know that food goes off and that flies will breed in it given half a chance. I have a fridge and a vegetable peelings bin. There was half an apple and half a pear, stuck together and suspended from the ceiling. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain to people that no, their pear tree will not pollinate their apple, and no, nor will their plum tree, yes, they do need two apples. Two different apples. I'm not sure what the artist's point was there, but I think I'm ahead of him. And there was the line of white chalk stones. I think this was meant to make us think about landscapes, or remind us they exist. And the pile of bricks stacked up (inside a white line, naturally) and the row of painted metal bars lined up. I've got a pile of left-over engineering bricks stacked outside the shed, and a pile of planks waiting to be used in the decking. They Are Not Art. When I got to the perspex coffee table with 2000 maltesers in plastic bags on top and a skateboard-like construction underneath I lost all patience, if not the will to live, so I probably didn't give the last room the attention it deserved. This had a lot of page 3 models stuck up on one wall, and a lot of newspaper clippings about sculpture on the opposite wall, but I couldn't be bothered to work out what the point was, apart from the fact that art might be very subjective.
If you want to go and see these for yourself these are the details.
Gabriel Orozco at Tate Modern
Modern British Sculpture at the RA
I've got a season ticket to both galleries, and it was too wet to garden anyway, and each exhibition had a few beautiful or thought-provoking things in it, so I wouldn't say I grudged the day out, but I did have to wade through a lot of what I rather suspect was pretentious guff.
Gabriel Orozco is a Mexican artist. I'd never heard of him until the Tate retrospective came along, but it's good to try new things, and the papers I'd read about him had sounded quite enthusiastic. The exhibition was a mixed bag. There were some good bits, and then there were some other bits. Actually quite a lot of other bits. My favourite room, which really was good, was the one that dealt with death. The artist had got hold of an entire human skull somehow, which he had painstakingly painted with a strictly geometric checkerboard pattern of black and white, carrying it over the different planes and angles which distorted the checkerboard to harlequin diamonds. It looked unexpectedly jaunty, and I presumed it referenced the Mexican day of the dead, as well as being a very elegantly executed feat of draughtsmanship. The skull was good. The best bit was the headlines from New York Times that lined the walls, stripped of the names of their subjects. These read like something by Evelyn Waugh, dozens of lives compressed into five or six words that managed to be both touching and ludicrous.
I didn't find the rest of the show so much fun. There were some pictures based on circles, that looked like the bastard offspring of a Mandelbrot fractal and the BBC i-player animated doodle. There was an extra sized chessboard with nothing but knights on it, which was quite amusing, but not very. There was a large room full of photographs of yellow scooters, generated by hiring a common make of scooter and driving around looking for other identical (stationary) scooters, then parking next to each scooter and photographing the two scooters together. Look, after I got a Skoda Fabia I began to notice how many other Skoda Fabias there were on the road, but I didn't call that art. Likewise, squeezing a lump of a malleable substance with your legs and elbows so as to leave the imprint of your body on the lump doesn't make it art, or if it does then on that basis the flan case I made the other weekend was art. Then there was the room full of bits of shredded tyres, collected by the artist from the side of the road in Mexico and arranged by him in a special way. They were tyres. They blew. Please explain why putting them in rows in a converted power station next to the Thames makes them art (I am beginning to feel like Francis Bacon dismissing parterres with the observation that you may see as good in tarts). There was a Citroen DS cut down the middle and very neatly reassembled with its central third missing, which was clever, but seemed like a waste of a rather nice classic car, and I'm not sure what message it was supposed to give me. And the white cardboard box placed casually on the floor, which echoed the shape of the gallery room. Seriously, that's what the blurb on the wall said. I've had a shoebox on the floor next to my desk for weeks, because I am too disorganised to put it away. It is being promoted to art forthwith. Then there was the room with lines strung across it, from which hung bits of grey fabric that from a distance looked like dishcloths hung up to dry. They turned out to be fluff from Mexican laundromats, which the artist had collected. They are supposed to make you think about the transitory nature of life. Or something. And the ceiling fan with loo paper stuck to it. I don't know how you negotiate to earn a living sticking loo paper to ceiling fans and hanging up gunk out of washing machines, instead of lifting several times your own body weight in compost in a day, in between trying to be unfailingly helpful and polite to people a sizeable minority of whom appear to be either deaf, terminally indecisive, or moderately dotty, but I should say that Gabriel Orozco is a sharp operator. Whether he will be remembered in four hundred years as fondly as we remember Rembrandt van Rijn is another question. I don't think so (but what do I know. They laughed at the Impressionists at the time).
I walked on to the Royal Academy. The south bank had a wistful out of season air, with few people, and the book stalls under the bridge by the national film theatre all shut up. I bought a Big Issue from a vendor on the Hungerford Bridge, not so much because I wanted a wet magazine as because nobody else was stopping. He spoke in the accents of Eastern Europe. Lettuce picking and mushroom farming can't have worked out for him. Somebody else then stopped, and asked the vendor if he had change before giving him a bank note and assuring him that it was a Scottish note but it was legal tender.
The first room of the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at the RA was really promising. There was a full scale model of the Cenotaph. I've only seen it from a distance in the middle of the road, and on the TV, and even with Charlie Gilmour swinging from it for scale I hadn't realised how big it was. And there were some photos of plaster models Epstein did for the BMA. The second room had sculptures from different civilisations in prehistoric times interposed with modern works, and was great fun. I loved the forepart of a running leopard from 350BC and the Eric Gill relief of nude girl with hair, and torso of a very flighty girl with more hair, and several other things, and began to feel warm and happy and that this was more like it. Room 3 had a monumental Epstein Adam (with enormous genitalia) and a small sly Henry Moore serpent, and something I've never seen before, which was a sign on the wall about the hessian covered bench, which was a copy of a bench at some earlier exhibition and we were invited to sit on it. In the next room we took a leap back to the nineteenth century, with queen Victoria sitting in a vast and rumpled dress under a crown-cum-canopy, looking not at all amused, and three other figures which I think I was supposed to compare and contrast. One was Lord Frederic Leighton's 1877 take on a muscular nude athlete wrestling with a python, the next a twentieth century muscular, nude and very shiny Adam, with tiny genitalia and no phallic python, who might as well have been from 1877, and the third was Genghis Khan, represented as a purple plastic teepee with bat wings. That was bit odd but I could cope. Then there were some very beautiful Chinese plain celadon and cream ceramics from between 600 and 1100, unbelievably thin and delicate and strangely modern (which I had seen before in the excellent new ceramics room at the British Museum, but they are so beautiful I could look at them any number of times). On the other side of the room were some twentieth century British pots, chunkier but some good strong plain shapes, though I'm not sure I could tell the difference between them and the pots everybody seemed to have in their houses in my village in east Devon in the 1960s (it was quite an arty village). And there was Barbara Hepworth's Pelagos, which I love. I first saw it when the Tate was only at Millbank, then it was briefly in Tate Modern and I saw it there, before moving to Tate St Ives, which is fair enough, and I saw it there, so I was very pleased it had come to London, as it's a long way to St Ives. In the next room was a large Barbara Hepworth abstract scupture, a bronze wedge with a hole near the top, which was perfect. The surface was pitted and mottled in a thousand shades of green and grey and the shape was subtle and absolutely right, the thickness of the piece varying across it like the fin of a submarine or the head of a whale, and the hole in exactly the right place. Its companion in the room was a Henry Moore reclining figure, and we were meant to contrast the abstract and figurative approaches to sculpture, but what would have been more illuminating would have been to get half a dozen of the lifeless abstract Hepworth rip-offs that get marketed as garden ornaments, and explain why the real thing was so much better.
Then it began to go downhill. There was an Anthony Caro exploration of horizontals and verticals, which was made of flat bits of metal and long bits of metal welded together and painted, which looked vaguely like the half assembled beginning of some bizarre machine tool, but it was red and very shiny. If you accidentally stepped over the demarcation line around it the attendant leapt at you anxiously. There were coloured perspex rectangles strung together, which you were allowed to walk among without a guard warning you off, and I did wonder what the conceptual difference was between them and the Mexican laundromat fluff, apart from the fact that the perpex was coloured and more interactive. Then there was the Damien Hirst abandoned barbecue and white plastic furniture in a perspex box, full of live flies. Look, I know that food goes off and that flies will breed in it given half a chance. I have a fridge and a vegetable peelings bin. There was half an apple and half a pear, stuck together and suspended from the ceiling. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain to people that no, their pear tree will not pollinate their apple, and no, nor will their plum tree, yes, they do need two apples. Two different apples. I'm not sure what the artist's point was there, but I think I'm ahead of him. And there was the line of white chalk stones. I think this was meant to make us think about landscapes, or remind us they exist. And the pile of bricks stacked up (inside a white line, naturally) and the row of painted metal bars lined up. I've got a pile of left-over engineering bricks stacked outside the shed, and a pile of planks waiting to be used in the decking. They Are Not Art. When I got to the perspex coffee table with 2000 maltesers in plastic bags on top and a skateboard-like construction underneath I lost all patience, if not the will to live, so I probably didn't give the last room the attention it deserved. This had a lot of page 3 models stuck up on one wall, and a lot of newspaper clippings about sculpture on the opposite wall, but I couldn't be bothered to work out what the point was, apart from the fact that art might be very subjective.
If you want to go and see these for yourself these are the details.
Gabriel Orozco at Tate Modern
Modern British Sculpture at the RA
I've got a season ticket to both galleries, and it was too wet to garden anyway, and each exhibition had a few beautiful or thought-provoking things in it, so I wouldn't say I grudged the day out, but I did have to wade through a lot of what I rather suspect was pretentious guff.
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