Category Archives: Art

More London

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Thursday’s ticket gave me half-price entry into the London Transport Museum, so I decided to visit it, if only for the exhibition of art deco posters. Perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say that every other adult had a pushchair, but I certainly felt out of place without a small child in tow. They were pinging about all over the place. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there, so it was familiar. I did linger at the steam locomotive used on the Metropolitan & District underground for over 40 years; it had a condenser to capture the steam but nothing to alleviate the smoke. At first I thought how awful it must have been for passengers . . . and then I thought of the drivers and stokers.

I enjoyed the exhibition of art deco posters from the underground. They implied affordable modern luxury – a visit to Kew Gardens, the zoo or the West End. There were a couple by Sybil Andrews/Cyril Power that I’d seen in Dulwich.

Then, since I was nearby, I headed towards the Courtauld Gallery. I was briefly sidetracked by a youthful band celebrating the anniversary of the founding of RAF air cadets. I looked at the”Courtauld bag” (from Mosul, 1300-30) and was rather taken with Tobias and his fish in the Botticelli painting of the Trinity. There was also a small exhibition: A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860. I’ve seen a lot of Turner and Constable landscapes recently, and I can’t see that Elizabeth’s Batty’s is markedly inferior.

Leeds today

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It was too cold and dank a day to want to do anything more than mooch up to the art gallery and look at the J Atkinson Grimshaw exhibition, “Nocturnes”.

No great surprise to learn that, as an artist, he was self-taught. (He obviously didn’t spend hours in life drawing classes.) He also churned out favourite scenes, as I discovered when looking online. But, oh, the light and shadows by Roundhay Park! The exhibition included some modern works to complement Grimshaw; they rather faded into insignificance beside his, but I noticed paintings by Judith Tucker that had been on display in the Burton Gallery – chosen, presumably, because of the lighted windows in dark landscapes.

There were also two extracts by Charles Dickens and James McNeill Whistler. Given yesterday’s visit to the Thackray Museum, I was inclined to view Grimshaw’s murky, polluted River Aire through Dickens’s eyes.

But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the bans were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.

Charles Dickens

And when the evening mist cloths the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens and fairy-land is before us – then the wayfarer hastens home; the working man, and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master – her son in that he loves her, her master in that he knows her.

James McNeill Whistler

As for the rest: I would happily have stolen the Inchbold, the Tunnard seemed to approach Ignatius Riley’s “geometry and theology” criteria (although undoubtedly falling short doctrinally), and on my way back I noticed a bus going to Roundhay Park. Grimshaw lives!

Turner in Time

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A very wet and windy day, but the trains were running and that was enough for me. To the Whitworth for yet another Turner exhibition. This one was of Turner’s watercolours (low status compared to oil painting) from his teens to his old age – from precision to impression. I enjoyed watching the change in style as I wandered around the room and noticed how he embraced innovation (e.g. coloured paper for his watercolours). Some scenes were already familiar, like the fall of the Clyde in Lanarkshire.

As usual, there were other small exhibitions to dip into. One on trees in art, which was rather lovely, and one on abstract art, which wasn’t. Minimalism is OK, but the “messiness” of, say, Gillian Ayres means nothing to me, Well, my loss perhaps. Included in the exhibition room were fabric and textile designs from Edinburgh Weavers and Hull Traders – abstraction tamed and tidied into repeating patterns.

Turner and Constable

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I set off for the Tate on foot and continued walking when the rain started, preferring to avoid crowds while I could for I knew the exhibition would be busy. It was indeed sold out for the day, and the cloakroom was quickly full.

The exhibition looked at Turner (b 1775) and Constable (b 1776), comparing their works and their success (the former seen at the time as “poetic”, the latter “truthful”). Turner travelled widely, portraying the sublime and maximising income from his output through his prints; Constable painted closer to home, often out of doors, trying to capture natural features and atmospheric effects as truthfully as he could. There was a sketch of Helmingham Dell which I wanted to steal: it combined the charm of poohsticks bridge with the elemental forest scenes in Hamnet. I much preferred his smaller works to his “six-footers” – paintings designed to be noticed at exhibitions. (Turner had learned that lesson early on.) It was interesting to compare Constable’s experiments with his brushwork – usually textured (which critics had divided opinions about), but occasionally smoother.

Again, I preferred Turner’s later, less finished paintings. There are only so many scenes of ravines, cliffs and castles that I can take. His unfocussed views leave more room for interpretation.

I wandered around the regular galleries too, and noted a painting of Mrs Mounter by Harold Gilman that I was sure I had seen last month at the Walker. Yes, I had – Mrs Mounter was a regular model for Gilman; I’ve even seen her in Leeds. The main hall had a selection of Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, and I was struck anew by the Rock Drill torso. Epstein changed the sculpture (originally more sinister) after WWI, amputating some of it and casting it in bronze, and the result is somehow sorrowful – almost like a Pietà with bowed head and arm reaching out in supplication.

I also spent time with William Stott of Oldham. Undemanding . . . but so lovely.

Anna Ancher and London

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It was such a nice day and I was ready so early that I decided to walk towards the river and pick up the train somewhere en route. After yesterday’s crowds around Covent Garden, I opted for Gray’s Inn Road and Holborn, which I was sure would be deserted. I’m still infected by the locations in Hidden City; walking stirred memories of what I know about London – my own experiences (here I used to cycle, there I attended someone’s Call to the Bar) and what I have read (fact and fiction). I stopped to photograph Holborn Viaduct not only because of Hidden City but also because I recalled a line from a novel:

‘Of course I don’t expect you to come. You’ll do as you like. But I believe the Pont du Gard -’

‘My dear, I’ve seen the Holborn Viaduct. Life can hold no more . . .’

I chose a restaurant for lunch because it had an elevated view of the river and St Paul’s – and, yes, there was the needle spire of St Bride’s Church from the film. On my way back I stopped at a former telephone exchange and noted the phone-like decorations on the front.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

None of this was the aim of my day: I was going to Dulwich Picture Gallery for an exhibition on Anna Ancher (1859-1935), a Danish artist from Skagen, right on the northern tip of Denmark. Skagen was something of an artists’ colony, but Ancher was born and lived there all her life. She was admired for the way she painted light – and, certainly, some of her paintings were utterly delightful. It wasn’t just the depiction of light but also the colours.

My head was buzzing with other images by other artists, and once I had spent time with Ancher’s paintings I sat down and tried to separate them out. The little girl made me think of Philip Connard in Southport; the doorway of Gwen John’s corners of rooms (although more vibrant); there was something of Vermeer – and almost something of Rembrandt in an early portrait. There was something of the Glasgow Boys too, but with more sunshine. She painted local and domestic scenes of people she knew: her travels were to study other artists.

An enjoyable day all round.

Liverpool

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I went to see the “Turner: Always Contemporary” exhibition at the Walker, which was very good. Liverpool’s Turners have been brought together and exhibited with later 19th century and modern artists. The modern art link was a bit hit and miss; I smiled as the gallery attendant regularly asked people to stay outside the floor-taped cordon sanitaire around Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde-encased “Two Similar Swimming Forms in Endless Motion” as if she were part of some performance art. What was more interesting was comparing Turner to water scenes by Monet, Courbet and Ethel Walker. Their pictures seemed so lifeless and stilted beside Turner; somehow the mistiness of his work kept the images in motion as they came in and out of focus. I don’t think it was just a matter of fewer straight lines.

Serendipity: amongst the non-Turner paintings was one of Dordrecht, which reminded me of waterbus journeys to Rotterdam. (Turner learned from older paintings.) You could follow his move from representational landscapes (albeit ones where features were re-arranged for greater artistic impact), through his “mass” prints in the Liber Studiorum (some of which I saw in Manchester) to his later quasi-abstract paintings. J Atkinson Grimshaw also secured a spot with his paintings of Liverpool’s Custom House on the front; they are indeed wonderful, and you can see the build-up of paint in the foreground like mud on the cobbles.

Then I wandered around the rest of the Walker, venturing into galleries I barely recall visiting before. Elizabeth I by Hilliard, comparisons of Flemish and Italian Madonnas, a Rembrandt, wall after wonderful wall of 18th-century ladies and gentlemen that I didn’t have the headspace to look at individually, a Nocturne by Marchand, a view of Berne by a follower of Turner (I wonder why he didn’t make the exhibition?), and a horse painting that looked like one I had seen before.

Other things before I forget: a 1783 ceramic dish with a painting of a slaving ship, “Success to the Will”, was referenced in a modern work, “English Family China”, from 1998. They are cast from real skulls (never have the words “bone china” sounded so sinister) and implicitly comment on the link between wealth and horror. There was a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, which, unsurprisingly, made neither the National Gallery nor this exhibition. I gazed at a lovely 15th-century Book of Hours and clocked another Beuckelaer. He must have churned them out.

The Christmas market was set up in the square outside and I contemplated a ride on the big wheel – but it was raining steadily and there was no inviting movement from the wheel, so I headed off for lunch instead.

Then the Museum of Liverpool for an exhibition on treasure unearthed in Wales and the north west of England. (A magnifying glass would have been useful.) Some of it was indeed treasure – gold or silver – but some had little value even at the time. The third-century Agden Hoard, for example – c 2,500 Roman copper alloy coins (“radiates”) from a time when galloping inflation made them almost worthless. There was also the golden Mold cape, which I have seen at the British Museum.

The sky was brighter as I left, but the big wheel was still static so I caught my train instead.

Birmingham

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One of those whims you’re not sure is worthwhile. But it always is. I booked the ballet on impulse and then I came across a big wheel – which I had all to myself. Vindicated already! I then went half-heartedly to the Ikon Gallery (I still go blank in front of contemporary art) but the café was closed and the advertised mini-tour wasn’t happening; a nice lunch beside the canal seemed a better idea. However, had I not tried to go to the Ikon Gallery I wouldn’t have seen Birmingham’s Second Church of Christ Scientist (where’s the First, I wonder) nearby. Now a nightclub. My kind of mental catnip.

The Birmingham Christmas market does have some link with Germany so I was pleased to find some Nürnberger Lebkuchen. (I’m sure I can get some in Sainsbury’s, but it’s not the same.) The slowly re-opening art gallery and the Staffordshire hoard (this time with a magnifying glass) next. And I was upgraded to a suite on the tenth floor. Better and better.

I heard quite a bit of spoken German in the street; combined with the number of jovial blokes in scarves, I realised I should have checked the football fixtures. Yes: Villa v a Swiss club this evening. One other thing I noted was the glumness of the three people engaged in outdoor Christmas events whom I encountered. Note to self that it’s easier to make the best of things when they are stacked in your favour.