I Shot the Sheriff / Last Beer in Brixton

Here's a video of Liam and I having one last pint (or two) in Brixton before I left for Rome the next morning. On at least two occasions between the tube station and the pub we were offerred 'wicked skunk, wicked skunk mun!' - the Jamaican guys here were clearly not the 'trustafarians' we saw in Notting Hill (see earlier post, 'Flogged in Notting Hill')!

Stepping out of the KFC (where you can buy a bite-sized burger for 99p) we plunged into a haze of gunja smoke. Liam then pointed nonchalantly across the road at the McDonalds and said, "Someone got shot there".



The first half of this video is very shaky, but the second half is still. It is is fairly uneventful, just us at the bar; and the whole thing seems slightly warped, as I took it while the camera was on it's side, and had to alter it afterwards. Still, fun for a bit of a laugh...

5 Signs you migh be Getting Over Impressionism (& Postimpressionism!)

1. You find yourself intellectualising Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.
2. Cezanne’s large Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) fails to actually move you.
3. The time you spend looking at Monet’s The Water Lily Pond can only be measured on a digital stop-watch.
4. The pleasure you take from Renoir’s The Umbrellas is entirely due to the fact that it reminds you of a poem. (In this case the poem is by Luke Beesley… I don’t remember the title, but I know it ends with umbrellas opening at once all over the city.)
5. You are compelled to write a somewhat (but not altogether) facetious list such as this, and post it on a blog.

(Cezanne, Les Grandes Baigneuses 1894-1905)

Since seeing my first major da Vinci, Raphael, Caravaggio, so on and so forth, my respect for those artists loosely known as the ‘Impressionists’ has started to wane (and for the sake of this discussion, I’m including Manet and Cezanne in this group).

The controversial nature of their exhibitions around the fin di siecle was of course due mostly to their apparent disregard for mimetic fidelity, in favour of some other insight into the nature of human perception; whereas many of the figures in mimetic art, from the Renaissance (particularly da Vinci, Michaelangelo's and Bernini's scultures etc) onward, are so lifelike it wouldn’t be a surprise to see one start breathing right there on the canvas.

My gripe is not solely based on this unfortunate comparison between Impressionism and Renaissance painting and sculpture, in terms of ‘realism’ or mimetic fidelity. But the fact is I now seem to be able to only take an intellectual pleasure from most of the so-called 'Impressionists'; how Cezanne flattens the canvas for others to follow, how Van Gogh’s sunflowers are strangely tormented. In short, whereas once they meant something in and of themselves, they have been reduced, for me, to little more than a stepping stone, ie. to Cubism and Abstract Expressionism etc.

In short, give me a good Pollock, Frank Stella, Rothko or whomever else over a good Monet, Renoir, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec etc any day. For the record, my two favourites from this exhibition of Impressionist paintings in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, were Monet’s The Houses of Parliament (partly because I’d only just seen these in London myself and because I like sunsets) and Camille Pissarro’s The Boulevard Montmarte at Night (because I haven’t yet seen Paris, and it looks pretty at night on this canvas).

(Pissarro, Le Boulevard Montmartre, effet de nuit 1897)

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

Ext. Abbey Road Studios - My final day in London before heading off to Rome was a relaxing one. I didn't leave Liam's place until after lunch, but even so, failed to make it to Lords (aka the home of cricket - forgive me guys) though it was only 400 yards down the road. I had to hurry off to meet Liam at the National Gallery after he'd finished work.

There was a handful of fellow pilgrims around, stopping the peak-hour traffic, which kept tooting. Wasn't able to get the exact angle from which the Abbey Road album covershot was taken, as I'd gone on my own.

I still, however, managed to get a rather dorky video of me crossing the road (see below). (The tripod I bought on the advice of both Emma and Katie has probably turned out to be the best 5 quid I've spent so far).

Soho

This pub is called The White Horse.

Evensong / Marriage of Heaven & Hell

After visiting the Tate Britain (see earlier post) I caught the tube to Westminster to work on the poem I'm writing for Pete Minter for the SWF this year (which Pete has organised to appear on postcards during the festival) - and found my way to The Red Lion, a pub about two minutes walk from Downing street, a stone's throw from Big Ben.

At 5 o'clock, after two pints, I headed for the Westminster Abbey to partake in the evensong. No, I'm not suddenly bjorn again, but neither do I really want to admit that I went just to get free entry to see the place, particularly the famous Poets' Corner.

I walked in late (ie. after the Lord's Prayer) and took a seat on the right, in the very back row. Recalling my Catholic boarding school education - though the abbey is Anglican - I pulled out my pious face and sang along to the hymns. If the truth be known, it is a very moving experience, listening to the wonderful choir singing along to Bach arrangements, enough almost to convert a fairly godless soul such as myself.

It turned out that I'd stumbled on a particularly special event - the consummation of a 25 year-long dialogue between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Anglican... with the Archbishop of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Canterbury addressing the congregation in their appeal for harmony (which seemed fairly heavily politicised).

Now the funny thing is, when mum decided it was finally time to splash some water on my head at the age of about twelve, it happens that it was in the name of the Orthodox church, so I found some personal significance in the event.

Anyway, throughout the whole thing, a bust of William Blake happened to be staring me down at about five paces (certainly ironically). It wasn't until the end of the service that I got up, took two steps to my right, and realised I'd been virtually sitting on Shakespeare's bones. I was the closest person in the entire place to Poets' Corner.

I scribbled down a list of all the writers apparently buried there, but it turns out some of the memorials were simply that, memorials, and not the peeps' final resting place - though some of the following are, apparently, actually buried there:

Jimmy Dryden, Dylan Thommo, Wazza Auden, Al Tennyson, Davo Lawrence, Tommo S Eliot, Will Owen, Bill Wordsworth, Chuck Dickens, Sammy Johnson, Matty Arnold, Geoff Chaucer, Bobbie Browning, Jim Keats, the Bronte babes, and Peebs Shelley. And of course, Bill Shakers.

Waterloo to Tate Modern / 5 Favourite Headfucks at the Tate Modern

(Disclaimer: this list is somewhat predictable and may be boring for aficionados... Nick, Dave ;-D).

1. ‘The Rothko Room’ by Marc Rothko. Of course, any Rothko is moody – think the look on a Shapelle Corby’s face when convicted, expressed as variegated colour. But in this room, moody is an understatement.

(The Rothko Room)

The four walls are like a migraine just as the valium’s kicking in: the throb with the receptiveness, the thump with the rush. There’s a guilty pleasure to be had here also in the subtle figurations; gaping squares like mental yawns, straight lines like lazy sneezes. (Come on, it is abstract art after all). To me the room seemed to express the whole gamut of consciousness.

2. Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) by Francis Bacon. Long before an otherwise unknown actor begged of Sigourney Weaver, “Kill me!” in the Aliens franchise, there was Francis Bacon. If you ever hear anyone complain about being treated like a piece of meat, refer them to the plight of Bacon’s sitters. These ghastly abominations sum up your worst imagined idea of suffering (probably a bit like being nailed through the wrists, having your legs broken etc) physical and mental. For some reason, the deep arterial-blood-red background always comes up as orange in the prints.

3. The Uncertainty of the Poet (1913) by Giorgio de Chirico. I'd never really understood this iconic painting before, but standing before it I felt something slip out from under my feet like, well, a banana-skin.

(The Uncertainty of the Poet (1913) by Giorgio di Chirico)

The comparatively pliant feminine torso turning to face us is juxtaposed with the bunch of bananas, which is much like the feminine torso as if it were lying down. The bananas are, of course, individuated, but as a group, they constitute a body.

The key, perhaps - and also to the title - is the single banana that is detached from the bunch. How can a bunch of individuated objects respresent something else - without there being something left over? How does a poet assemble a bunch of individuated words to imitate life? How can a bunch of words be a body, and why is there always a word that doesn't fit, a remainder - something that can't be said? These and many more imponderables saw this de Chirico make my top 5 headfucks at the Tate Modern.

4. The Metamorphosis of the Narcissus by Salvador Dali. Well, does having a print on one’s wall back when one was still listening to The Doors mean it too is to be grown out of? That’s for you to decide. But for me, seeing this up close and personal was like, well… like Ovid cumming all over my retinas. (Okay, so that one’s a bridge too far... oh no! I'm sounding like Kevin Rudd.)*

5. Piet Mondrian. This one’s lengthy but worth it. Now normally Mondrian wouldn’t make such a list, but this is an exception. Though I don’t recall the exact name of the painting, it was one of his famous ‘red, yellow and blue’ compositions. The headfuck begins like this: in such a Mondrian the red, yellow and blue is usually snug within the vertical and horizontal black axes, so that from front-on, all is clearly contained; but peering around to the edge of the canvas, I noticed one tiny moment ie. about 1 cm sq where the red ‘bleeds’ out, into where the black line should be – clearly intentional. This is not done with any other square of colour. Now I thought this was perceptive of me, and I believe I mumbled ‘smartarse’ aloud. But that’s not the headfuck. About an hour later, I recalled that around seven years ago at uni, my sometime art history lecturer Rex Butler had described this very detail to us once in class (HA105). Later that night (ie. a few nights ago now) – and this is the screw – guess who appeared in my dream – and actually shook my hand. The one and only Rex Butler. It wasn’t until a few hours after I woke up that I realized the significance (at first I wondered, why the hell did I see Rex Butler in my dream?). So I’d noticed Mondrian’s smartarse detail; then remembered Rex Butler describing it to my class seven years ago; then that night dreamt that I shook Rex Butler’s hand, and didn’t figure it out until lunch the next day.

And to top it all off, two days later, I came across another Mondrian in the Tate Britain, same vintage, in which he’d done exactly the same thing – only this time with the yellow square, rather than the red.

Tate Britain

Int. Chelsea. Today I hoped to see Van Gogh's Portrait with Bandaged Ear at Somerset House, but changed my mind at the last minute and headed for the Tate Britain (which was free, whereas Somerset House is about £5) in the hope of seeing some more Francis Bacons (which were promised). In effect I was swapping one tortured soul for another...

Of course the sandwiches at the gallery cafe were around five quid each, so I ducked despondently across the road and fortuitously noticed a doorway into the Chelsea School of Art and Design, through which I spied a good old uni refectory. This made me feel at home, particularly with a sandwhich and coffee for two quid fifty.

As it turned out, the Bacons weren't on display - this is something you have to learn to deal with when visiting galleries: sometimes the works that are your entire reason for going aren't displayed - but this gives you a chance to see something you otherwise wouldn't.

The surprise highlight for me was the Turner Wing. I'd never really been a fan of Turner's, but this is overwhelming. Massive canvasses, perhaps forty or more, depicting some of the most dramatic scenes of the ancient world (the rise and fall of Carthage, the coupling of Echo and Narcissus, Hannibal crossing the Alps etc), amid heaving oceans, treacherous mountains and shitscary storms. They are usually dazzling with light and the style is, to this amateur, proto-impressionist; or, as Liam put it, it's as if at times he out-Monets Monet.

(Turner, Hannibal Crossing the Alps 1812)

Then there was Ophelia (1851-52) by Sir John Everett Millais. Being a bit of a bardolator, there was a definite thrill in seeing this one up close.


Hey there Emily Tomlins! This post is dedicated to you! (Let me explain for others who might not be aware, that Ms Tomlins is to play Ophelia in the joint QTC/SATC production of Hamlet in '07). I do believe I first saw this on her's and Mars's wall in Herston, circa 2001. (Yes, I was a latecomer!).

The detailed foliage (top left) into which, or rather through which the drowning Ophelia gazes, was considered during its day to be the most precise representation of nature ever achieved. This is, obviously, more evident on close inspection.

All in all, though, the National Gallery is probably more exhilirating if you like the older stuff; if it's now you're interested in, see my post below on my 5 Favourite Headfucks at the TATE MODERN...