I was quite cultured this weekend as it was the fabulous Open House London, something I almost always miss but managed to be quite organised about this time round. How popular has this got lately?? I remember a few years ago no one seemed to even know it existed but this weekend the entire city seemed to be open house crazy – you should have seen the area around the Guildhall on Sunday; there were about 20 large walking tours starting off every 30 seconds or so and literally millions of people milling round the streets was amazing and very different to the usual weekend in the city experience which is more like a ghost town. Anyway I’m very glad this has become more and more popular although it does make it harder to get into things – half of it seemed to be booked up weeks ago. And before I go any further can I just say how incredibly impressed I am by all the hundreds of people who must have given up their time to organise and carry out the tours for free. The 2 I went on were absolutely brilliant, both proper job architectural historians and stuff – amazing, so thanks to them and everyone else involved.
Anyway, to the actual cultural experiences:
My boss (who is a big architecture buff) had been organised and booked herself onto about 15 tours which she then had to cancel due to a dodgy knee playing up again (which by the way I’m pretty sure was my fault) so I managed to nab her booking on Saturday morning for Highpoint in Highgate, a building about 10 mins walk from me which I have always wanted to see inside. I was going to do lots of research about this before writing my blog but frankly I have neither time nor inclination so I’m just going to make some stuff up and elaborate a bit from Wikipedia. Ahh, I love Wikipedia. Hmm so have just had a quick look on Wikipedia and its all a bit confusing as they differentiate between Architect, Structural Designer and Construction but I’m going for: ‘this building was designed by the Russian born architect Lubetkin’ who was, clearly, influenced by the great god Corbusier.
Highpoint was originally designed to be social housing for the white collar workers of the industrialist (I think) Sigmund Gestetner. By the time it was finished though as per usual these lot had been totally forgotten and it went to the great and the glitterati as always. Built in the mid 30s it is one of the finest examples of the International style – I think, is that true? I don’t know – I’m not totally sure of the difference between Modernism and the International Style. I do know that it’s definitely not Deco. The poor tour guide had to spend about 10 minutes explaining how Modernism really really wasn’t Deco to this bat shit stupid art student who was on the tour. She was very very good, very patient but eventually this idiot Hoxton twat obviously just wouldn’t get it and the poor women concluded with ‘I think Lubetkin would turn in his grave to hear you say this building had Deco influences’. Hahahahaha. Anyway, she was amazing, lived in the building and was dressed in full on ‘I’m an architect don’t you bloody know so fuck off’ costume of long shapeless black silk sack dress, black boots, architect glasses and abundant architect red hair stuffed into very architect black hat. She was fucking fabulous and v knowledgeable. Anyway, it really is a truly incredibly building and we got to look round 2 of the flats!!!! It’s so fun to be able to look round all these rich arty peoples houses. One a 2 bed and one a three bed and my god those places are nice –the 2 bed had a lot of the original features such as the gorgeous gorgeous concertina windows which stretch across the whole main room of all the flats and can be opened all the way across. They also had the original bathroom and kitchen fittings which is really important as obviously being Modernist these elements were designed as thoroughly as any other part of the building and are all fabulous. The 3 bedroom one we looked around didn’t have original features although they had recreated a lot including things like the original door handles and cork flooring but my god those people must have been RICH. They had commissioned a bookcase to be a cross section of the building for example – so yeah they had a fair amount of artistic clash floating round clearly. I have actually managed to find a picture of the bookshelf although looks like they have redesigned the flat since this was taken!! We also got to look at the beautiful gardens and most stunningly I think the lobby/foyer which must be the ultimate Modernist space, so so startlingly, arrestingly beautiful:
They talked a lot about the journey through the building and how much that was focussed on as part of the architectural design. I think I may start applying this to my day to day life.
We also had a quick look in the foyer of Highpoint 2 which is next door to Highpoint 1 and build a few years later. This is a much more luxurious space apparently and the flats are all duplex with lifts leading up directly into each like you’re always in Pretty Woman – amazing!! But it wasn’t nearly nearly as nice as the foyer for Highpoint 1 even though it’s much plusher. It’s funny how all my Open House visits seemed to revolve around class and social housing, maybe that’s an element always present in architectural design. I guess my weekend was a tour of different forms of middle class architecture for different purposes though.
I got so chilly on that bloody hill garden on Saturday morning that I ran home and got straight into bed (where I essentially stayed until going to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy that evening which by the way was beautifully shot, acted, written, made etc but was unbelievably boring – may be worth just reading the book I suspect) but I did make it out again on Sunday afternoon where I ran to the Guildhall and managed to pick up a ticket to a walking tour around the Barbican Estate. Yay me. I will go into the Barbican first. Our guide was a lovely architectural historian who lived there, lucky bugger. This time we didn’t get to go into any of the flats but we did get into some of the private garden/square things which was great and its always nice to walk round that part of London on a sunny autumnal afternoon looking at all the lovely angles and vistas created by the skyscrapers (well London’s version of skyscrapers). He didn’t dumb it down at all which was great and used lots of fancy architectural terms which I either didn’t know or had a vague memory of once knowing and then forgetting. I didnt realise that it was never intended to be council housing but rather affordable housing for a mix of social classes. He also made some really interesting points about the intentions and vision of Brutalism, something I have always rather detested, hence my lack of enthusiasm for the Barbican in the past. For example, although concrete is the name of the game the architects had always envisioned the space to be mitigated by the people living there. For example they wanted people to use their balconies to grow plants and flowers, thus ‘softening’ and domesticating the harsh sharp lines of concrete. I still think it looks like a multi-storey car park with or without the pot plants though, and not in a good way and I think it says A LOT that this building was created to be inward looking – the outside seeming impenetrable and uninviting.
It was fun looking round the tree filled squares which can only be accessed by residents – the guide went into some detail about how the architects had created these spaces to evoke the private squares of West London, which I think again says a lot. He also went into some depth about the socialist intentions of communal living and a multi-use urban space. This was very appropriate considering my tour of Highpoint the day before which was also infused with the socialist utopian ideas of the early part of the 20th century.
Last and by no means least; The Guildhall, although I was busy trying to track down my sister and get to my Barbican tour quickly so only got to run through and didn’t really find out anything about the actual building or design. It was great to have a look round though – it felt a bit like I was in Moria from the Lord of the Rings in some kind of endless complex of grand underground halls from various periods – seemingly never ending and for god knows what function. Anyway there was some fab glass work, painting and other stuff and it will be number one on my list for next year!! Sorry not much in-depth analysis and insight in this weeks blog oh well but hey 25 mins to write all the above not bad huh? HUH!!?!?
It was fun looking round the tree filled squares which can only be accessed by residents – the guide went into some detail about how the architects had created these spaces to evoke the private squares of West London, which I think again says a lot. He also went into some depth about the socialist intentions of communal living and a multi-use urban space. This was very appropriate considering my tour of Highpoint the day before which was also infused with the socialist utopian ideas of the early part of the 20th century.
Last and by no means least; The Guildhall, although I was busy trying to track down my sister and get to my Barbican tour quickly so only got to run through and didn’t really find out anything about the actual building or design. It was great to have a look round though – it felt a bit like I was in Moria from the Lord of the Rings in some kind of endless complex of grand underground halls from various periods – seemingly never ending and for god knows what function. Anyway there was some fab glass work, painting and other stuff and it will be number one on my list for next year!! Sorry not much in-depth analysis and insight in this weeks blog oh well but hey 25 mins to write all the above not bad huh? HUH!!?!?
Hello all and welcome back to my blog which I missed last week on account of not being arsed to do anything cultural – oops. This week I did quite a number of culturally related activities, however they all took place yesterday and I was rather hungover and out of it and to be honest didn’t quite catch the crest of any of the exhibition waves at any point alas. My cultural companion this week was the delightful Andrew, who I fear I have to apologies to for my slightly out of it countenance!
The standalone star of the show was definitely the large and incredibly rich oil painting At the Moulin Rouge which I have seen in reproduction but never in the flesh where it is a totally different and jaw dropping experience. When you think of Lautrec, or I suppose when I think of him, one naturally thinks of his strong graphic poster style or his sketchy textured painting style. This piece however was very highly worked with a decidedly choreographed composition (ok well clearly most compositions are well choreographed but you get what I mean!) and was somehow more surprising to me than the other works in the show. It has an incredible seedy air to it; the viewer is drawn towards the conspiratorial group in the centre yet at the same time repelled, turned away at the door perhaps by the sickly and haunting looking woman in the foreground. You’re not quite sure if she is accosting you or turning you out, probably because you are in no way going to be cool enough to hang round with the crème de la crème of avant garde Paris sitting in the centre. The central group, like the majority of the figures in the painting, are portraits of people who frequented or worked at the Moulin Rouge, I could list them but I can’t be arsed. They look engrossed yet somehow disjointed from each other, tightly knit in the same social circle yet you get the impression that each of the protagonists is in someway separate, caught up in their individual cares and concerns. In this group Avril has her back to us, showing us her elaborate coiffure, her high neck richly trimmed coat, and not much else. It seems to be the way Lautrec preferred to depict his favourite model; detached, unapproachable and unknown.
The only time she doesn’t have this far away look in her eyes is when she is depicted dancing. However, even here she has an unnerving look about her. I didn’t really know much about her before the exhibition and assumed she was just the bog standard high kicking eye brow raising Moulin Rouge style dancer of the day but I was apparently wrong. Avrils fame, which was certainly bolstered by Lautrec yet at the same time independent of him, was linked to her notorious past where she was, for a time, put in a sanatorium style place because of a nervous breakdown or something. The popular press of the day loved to associate her jerky, dangerous dancing style with that of the hysterical woman, a theme close to the heart of the 19th century. This was a reputation which Avril, consciously or subconsciously, allowed to flourish and I can imagine it was the dangerous nature of her dance and her personality that attracted the avant garde of Paris at the time. The underground, unknown and seedy nature of the Moulin Rouge and its famous clientele is where the attraction lay no doubt, the thin line between the elite and the degenerate walked on a daily basis. Lautrecs own illness, mental and physical, was perhaps what attracted him so much to this particular woman. This is well represented in the below work.
One of the few works on display not depicting Avril was this work of the dancer La Goulue. One of the more risqué performers she was famed for wearing highly controversial see-through dresses for her dances. Here she is depicted in one such plunging outfit standing between her sister and her lover. She is grotesque and looks like one of the ugly sisters in Disney’s Cinderella. She stares at the viewer in a direct and slightly terrifying way. It seems this mix of the exotic, the repulsive, and the sexually deviant is what enticed the crowds of late 19th century Paris. 
After we had done with the Courtauld we wondered up to the National Gallery to see the show Devotion by Design; Italian altarpieces before 1500. I didn’t expect an awful lot from this as it’s just a reorganisation of pieces already in the collection and we assumed it would be in one of the small rooms they use to show free exhibitions in the main section of the gallery near the central foyer place. However, they had actually spent some cash on it and it was situated in the main exhibition space in the basement of the Sainsbury wing. I imagine I have moaned about this place before as it really is one of the worst exhibition spaces in London, which says a lot as my god there are some awful spaces in the main museums, I name the British Museum and the V&A as top offenders. However, like the Relics show currently on at the BM, the curators had embraced the dark claustrophobic gloom of the space and used it to their advantage – low lighting, purple walls and choral music helped create a really quite immersive experience. The central room was particularly fine with those clever pretend spluttering candles and a cross arranged in front of one altarpiece and the room around it arranged to resemble a haunting church to give the viewer a different experience to the usual National Gallery renaissance displays. The show went into some detail about the commercial nature of altarpiece production as well as the techniques and processes involved but to be honest by that point I had reached my information absorption limit and instead I just enjoyed looking at some familiar pieces afresh in a new context. 
We also had a very quick look around another free show there called Forests, Rocks and Torrents; Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes from the Lunde collections. I’m assuming said Lunde collection, wherever that may be, are having some sort of refit or flooding problem and asked the NG to take some of their crap off their hands for a bit so it doesn’t get damp or something because my god this show was pointlessly dull. I thought maybe they would be some Romantic landscapes, and you know I like a bit of the sublime as much as the next person, but there was decidedly no sublime here, no sublime at all:
Cheerio folks xx
Hello all
Anyway, Tyntesfield is an incredible Victorian Gothic masterpiece of a house. As befits its glorious optimism and pretention it was built by the Gibbs family who were self made millionaires, apparently at one point the richest non titled family in England. Even more appropriately their money was mostly made through shit, literally shit – or guano which was popular form of fertiliser made out of bird poo. Hahahaha. Anyway one mans shit is another mans fortune and these guys were seriously loaded – according to the NT website the £70,000 cost of building Tyntesfield - which started in 1863 - represented less than one year's average profits for their firm. It seems money was no object and they could indulge themselves in any architectural whim and decorative fancy they liked including an aviary in the garden built to look like a wendy house which was later converted into an actual play house for the children/grandchildren of the family. The building was designed originally by the architect John Norton with turrets, gables, pointy windows – the whole shebang. The inside is as elaborate, if not more so, than the outside with every surface covered in the most beautiful wallpaper, carvings over every section of wood and ceiling and my particular delight a huge number of tiles, everywhere, my favourite!! These include beautiful tiled gazebos in the garden as well as an amazing tiled roof – every element was patterned and rich, it kind of reminds me of St Chappell in terms of a jewel box of colour, pattern and texture. Its all just SO ARTS AND CRAFTS – it’s amazing!! I lusted after the beautiful Morris-style soft furnishings. Totally gorgeous.
Hello world
Saying that I have to admit the exhibition this time was only so-so, although I don’t think that’s particularly their fault. Sir John was wildly popular during the Victorian era. He was very, very much a man of his age and consequently fell quickly out of fashion, even within his own lifetime. This show is the first major retrospective of his work and although I think very much worth having, there is none the less a sneaking suspicion prevalent throughout the exhibition that there is, perhaps, a reason why he fell so quickly out of fashion; I don’t think he was actually very good!!
These images, which were definitely better executed that the majority of the other pieces in the show gave an insight, I think, into why he was so popular. It wasn’t simply his love of the narrative painting, something the Victorians seemed to be orgasmic about, but it’s also his whole aesthetic. His paintings were designed for the walls of the wealthy, not for the academy. His paintings mirror exactly the tastes of the Victorian bourgeois – every single inch of his paintings are covered in intense decoration – pattern, colours, swirls etc. It’s exactly like the interior of the average wealthy Victorian; every section of wall tightly packed with some form of decoration, image or artefact. They are almost afraid of a blank space in which to be allowed to think!
Really though, I think there is a reason this guy may have been forgotten!!! Apologies byt the way cant seem to get many clear images of his stuff.
The exhibition opened with the rather fabulous painting Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring by the 2nd World War artist Laura Knight, or Dame Laura Knight RA if you like. This was accompanied by a fabulous war time news reel showing Laura and Ruby visiting the picture in that years summer exhibition with lots of comments such as ‘wat a lovely gal wat-ho wat-ho’ etc etc:
This theme of the domestic is carried through many of the works in this exhibition. The work of Flora Lion who was commissioned to depict factory work in the First World War concentrates on the interaction of the women when off duty, in the canteen or elsewhere. Unfortunately, maybe for this reason, the work was not bought by the collection after they commissioned it but was eventually donated years later. The women do indeed look rather independent and forceful, no doubt a terrifying prospect to the establishment at the time.
