Expotition: Tate Britain and Putney Bridge But No Thames Path
I noticed the Muybridge exhibition had a warning about nudity - in photos the size of a matchbook. Some things are clearly sensitive.
Today I'd planned to see the Watercolours exhibition at t'Tate and may be the Bridget Riley, plus a visit to Oxfam and Hurlingham Books in search of copies of The Thirty-Nine Steps. I figure, what with watercolours being all chocolate box and all, an early arrival would get me ahead of the crowds, and an 8.00am train would see me arriving as they opened. A 7.30 train would see me have time for a coffee. But that would require me getting up at 6.30, unlikely on a weekend and double so since I got to bed at 2am.
Hollow laugh. After four hours' sleep I was awake in plenty of time and caught that train.
Even at 10.10 the exhibition was too crowded, or perhaps it attracted the wrong kind of punter. The punter who not only gets in your way, but pushes in front of you and looks at you as if you've been in theirs. Who come damn close to putting their damn dirty ape fingers on the work. About half of the art was what I'd feared - biscuit tins and clotted cream - with the early stuff and late stuff being the best. As with the Moore, the war stuff stood out - and that was what got the great reviews which made me want to see the show. There was an interesting room on developing technique and technology, which came a little late, and Turner kept recurring to give it a boost. The impressive stuff was the Dadd (every blade of grass!) and the familiar Ravilious and Nash, and of course the Tudor miniatures are amazing. Howard Hodgkin, I need to follow up.
But much more striking was the Susan Hiller exhibition - which I had no idea I'd see and which was packageable with the Watercolours. If I'm being honest, I'd say see this first, because you might need the Watercolours to calm you down, because this is a show that came with no warning. (But Watercolours will get busy. It's nice art. Mostly.) I confess I'd never heard of her, but I've seen her From the Freud Museum at Tate Modern (and note she is American, though long resident in Britain). She specialises in ready made and deconstructive art - hundreds of postcards of storms at seaside resorts, the evidence in the boxes, looped films of teen telekinesis, pictures of ships at sea, paintings burnt, sliced and diced, unravelled or deliberately faded in the light. There's a slide show about recording spirit voices, a surreal living room with a documentary about Nebuchadnezzar and faces in the tv signals after close down, dangling speakers recounting close encounters and - most terrifying of all - a film about Punch and Judy worthy of Grotowski and mind blowing. I've been moved, uplifted and transformed by exhibitions before, but never so terrified.
I had to do a bit more of the Tate's art to calm myself - a new hanging of twentieth century art, waving at artists whose styles I recognise now, the latest version of Blake on physiognomy and phrenology. Then a walk to Oxfam, where I score a Love's Labour's Lost (I hope a missing Arden) and thence to a rather good bakery, then the District Line to ...
Parson's Green, rather than Putney Bridge. Planned engineering buggering around - which I'd not thought to check on. And stupidly I turned left out of the station - which should follow the line of the railway south, rather than right, which would have been quicker. But I found a Starbucks, and had a second coffee, which had been the plan on the other route, and eventually I was back on track. And then, as I counted up to 91, I had this awful feeling that the place had closed down.
Fortunately, I looked around the corner, and found the shop. I also realise I've been there before, or at least past it, when visiting someone in Putney. I'm not sure I found it open. Another Thirty-Nine Steps, one novelisation of Flash Gordon.
I decided to walk along the Thames rather than tracing the route I should have taken from Parson's Green - I decided, but failed, as the Thames Path is somewhat inland. I soon gave up and found my way back to New King's Road, and a very slow district line.
Today I'd planned to see the Watercolours exhibition at t'Tate and may be the Bridget Riley, plus a visit to Oxfam and Hurlingham Books in search of copies of The Thirty-Nine Steps. I figure, what with watercolours being all chocolate box and all, an early arrival would get me ahead of the crowds, and an 8.00am train would see me arriving as they opened. A 7.30 train would see me have time for a coffee. But that would require me getting up at 6.30, unlikely on a weekend and double so since I got to bed at 2am.
Hollow laugh. After four hours' sleep I was awake in plenty of time and caught that train.
Even at 10.10 the exhibition was too crowded, or perhaps it attracted the wrong kind of punter. The punter who not only gets in your way, but pushes in front of you and looks at you as if you've been in theirs. Who come damn close to putting their damn dirty ape fingers on the work. About half of the art was what I'd feared - biscuit tins and clotted cream - with the early stuff and late stuff being the best. As with the Moore, the war stuff stood out - and that was what got the great reviews which made me want to see the show. There was an interesting room on developing technique and technology, which came a little late, and Turner kept recurring to give it a boost. The impressive stuff was the Dadd (every blade of grass!) and the familiar Ravilious and Nash, and of course the Tudor miniatures are amazing. Howard Hodgkin, I need to follow up.
But much more striking was the Susan Hiller exhibition - which I had no idea I'd see and which was packageable with the Watercolours. If I'm being honest, I'd say see this first, because you might need the Watercolours to calm you down, because this is a show that came with no warning. (But Watercolours will get busy. It's nice art. Mostly.) I confess I'd never heard of her, but I've seen her From the Freud Museum at Tate Modern (and note she is American, though long resident in Britain). She specialises in ready made and deconstructive art - hundreds of postcards of storms at seaside resorts, the evidence in the boxes, looped films of teen telekinesis, pictures of ships at sea, paintings burnt, sliced and diced, unravelled or deliberately faded in the light. There's a slide show about recording spirit voices, a surreal living room with a documentary about Nebuchadnezzar and faces in the tv signals after close down, dangling speakers recounting close encounters and - most terrifying of all - a film about Punch and Judy worthy of Grotowski and mind blowing. I've been moved, uplifted and transformed by exhibitions before, but never so terrified.
I had to do a bit more of the Tate's art to calm myself - a new hanging of twentieth century art, waving at artists whose styles I recognise now, the latest version of Blake on physiognomy and phrenology. Then a walk to Oxfam, where I score a Love's Labour's Lost (I hope a missing Arden) and thence to a rather good bakery, then the District Line to ...
Parson's Green, rather than Putney Bridge. Planned engineering buggering around - which I'd not thought to check on. And stupidly I turned left out of the station - which should follow the line of the railway south, rather than right, which would have been quicker. But I found a Starbucks, and had a second coffee, which had been the plan on the other route, and eventually I was back on track. And then, as I counted up to 91, I had this awful feeling that the place had closed down.
Fortunately, I looked around the corner, and found the shop. I also realise I've been there before, or at least past it, when visiting someone in Putney. I'm not sure I found it open. Another Thirty-Nine Steps, one novelisation of Flash Gordon.
I decided to walk along the Thames rather than tracing the route I should have taken from Parson's Green - I decided, but failed, as the Thames Path is somewhat inland. I soon gave up and found my way back to New King's Road, and a very slow district line.