National Gallery Grand Tour Catalog
I am quoted (rather liberally and prominently) in this new National Gallery book, right over some of the reproductions-- which is a thrill. If I wasn't before, I'm a Londoner now. It's the catalog for The Grand Tour, an exhibit of reproductions hung around Soho and Covent Garden last summer. I took a lot of photos and blogged about it on http://feralstrumpet.wordpress.com. The four large quotes are from my blog.
From the book's fly leaf:
"One warm(ish) night in June 2007, while most people were tucked up in bed, paintings from the National Gallery were being 'set free' in London. The streets of Soho, Chinatown and Covent Garden were turned into an open-air gallery..."
This book does capture perfectly the feeling that "instead of the public seeking out its art, the art sought out its public." And this was like the dream-scene in Will Self's Book of Dave, where all the statues in London come to life and flock to Trafalgar Square.