Week 28: Berlin

Woohoo welcome to my holiday blog!! Last week I had the joy of visiting Berlin, and Germany, for the very first time and it was damn good! I stayed with my lovely friend Anthony who now lives out there and kindly put me up on his very comfortable sofa bed for the week – THANK YOU ANTHONY!!! Whoring oneself around friends floors/sofas is definitely the way forward in terms of holiday accommodation/choice (thanks again also Yael!). I intend to scab floor space in New York next – maybe I will never have to pay for a hotel again!!?

So Berlin, what a fascinating city! So much history!! So many crazy things have happened to it!! First though I will start, as always, with the food. Having never been to Germany before I was obviously keen to sample the local cuisine, the most important element of any society/culture, and started with the key element to the German culinary tradition – Kinder Surprise!! Over there though they have about 10 times the number of kinder products and the best by far seems to be Kinder Joy – looks like a Kinder Surprise but is in fact made of plastic and one half is filled with this weird gooey white chocolate concoction with 2 ferrero rocher style chocolates in it and you eat it with a little spoon that comes with – EXCELLENT.

Then I has currywurst – a sausage covered in tomato sauce and curry powder – not impressive frankly – and a schnitzel, yum. I also had a German croissant which is dark brown and made with some sort of savoury element so it’s kind of like having a normal croissant with salted butter – excellent. The best meal by far however had to be that which Anthony’s delightful girlfriend Lea cooked for us (yes it was she who lured him out there with her Germanic-feminine whiles). Annoyingly I meant to send her a message asking her to forward me the name of the dish and a good online recipe but haven’t done that so THINK she made us Kohlrouladen, or cabbage roles, which I THINK the below may be a recipe for, but this also may be wrong!! Either way they were dumpling style things made of cabbage stuffed with meat and baked/roasted and served with yummy sauce and mashed potatoes and more cabbage and were DEFINITLY the nicest thing I had out there – they were delicious. I clearly have Germanic routes as really do love cabbage. It was ace – thank you Lea!!

http://www.recipegoldmine.com/worldgermanI/kohlrouladen.html

Other than that I was delighted with all the beer drinking that goes on out there, and am particularly impressed with the prices – bottles of beer being no more than about 1 euro usually!! Also Anthony introduced me to the concept of walk beers – he claims that it’s more than normal to walk along the street drinking bottles out there, but in fairness it is here too just the people who do it are usually skanky alcoholics. We went to a couple of cool bars – one on a barge sort of thing and one on the 16th floor of a tower block that obviously had amazing views across Berlin – definitely better than paying to go up the Reichstag or whatever. Had a yummy lychee martini.

Right, that’s the culinary aspect out the way – now for the art. I got a little overwhelmed when I got there and actually bought a guidebook (had left the one the lovely Justin had leant me at home but that’s probably a good thing as it was from 2004 or something and clearly would have been miles out of date – that city is changing fast!), there is just so much to do! I ended up spending a small fortune on admissions and as ever was made to truly appreciate the free element of London museums. Also postcards over there are 1 euro EACH!!! What’s that about??? Must have sent about £25 on them alone and was truly horrible having to limit myself in the gallery shops – made me realise that they are always worth it though as basically every other painting I have forgotten about already. My first port of call was clearly the Alte Nationalgalerie, as this is where all the 19th century stuff is. It wasn’t until I got home by the way that I realised I have a whole book called ‘Masterpieces from the Alte Nationagalarie’ which I picked up cheap in a National Gallery sale about 8 years ago and do look at occasionally as has so many pretty pictures in. I have never noticed the name of this book or where it came from before. This is worrying. Anyway, they have some truly fab stuff here and was definitely my favourite of all the many museums I visited. However, I would like to discuss just how shit German audio guides are. They would spend at least the first 4 minutes, which in a gallery is a long time, telling you what’s in the painting, the painting you’re standing in front of – its like ‘yeah I know am looking right at it’. They then tell you how you should feel when standing in front of the painting, again – ‘thanks I’m standing here you don’t really need to tell me that and frankly it’s not only patronising but also highly presumptive and plain irritating’. Then you have to put up with some mindless gush about nothing – and then there is no bloody real information at all at the end of it! I gave up after the first few galleries.

Anyway, highlights of the Alte Nationagalerie have to be works by the amazing Romantic artists Caspar David Frederick and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the later being pretty new to me. Interesting works by him include Morning (below) which is a comment on Napoleon pissing off finally out of Prussia leading to the dawn of a happy new German era:

Another interesting piece by this artist was Gothic Church as one thing I was able to glean from the hours of audio guide crap was that in this period, as everyone (wrongly) thought Gothicism sprang from Germany, any Gothic element included in a composition/narrative was a sign of German independence and pride, again mostly as a response to the Napoleonic invasion.

Caspar David is always good for a bit of paint and very much did not disappoint in the flesh. Images that particularly stood out were the fabulously gloomy Monk by the Sea and Abbey in the Oakwood which are intended to be viewed as a pair. Apparently Frederick envisioned many of his works as pairs like this as he viewed the world and his art as an ever repeating cycle of life and death – each image has an answer so in this case we have the solitary contemplation of a monk, alone against nature, and in the second we have the funeral of a monk, being guided slowly into the next life through the abbey which has 2 faintly glimmering light above the entrance, the only thing that guides us to the unknowable beyond, the journey we all take alone – etc etc. Anyway I think this is quite interesting.

Some other images I enjoyed from this gallery were those by Franz von Stuck, a symbolist artists who I hadn’t heard of before who not only paints damn well but was clearly CRAZY, having an ego the size of a planet and basically building himself a house to memorialise just how amazing he thought he was – his self portrait below depicts him within this building. Here we also have The Sin and Circe.

They had devoted most of the bottom floor to an artist who I hadn’t heard of but must be pretty important in Germany as, well, they gave him the whole floor! This guy had numerous official commissions, many of them HUGE, and painted an incredible variety of work:

They also had the amazing Manet painting The Conservatory and apparently the first Impressionist painting by Monet:

The next gallery I visited was the Hamburger Bahnhof which is a bit like the Tate Modern meets the Musse D’Orsay as it’s in an old Railway station. I got slightly lost trying to find it (story of the trip) and stumbled upon what I thought was a terribly cutting edge contemporary gallery around the corner but then I realised it was the Haunch of bloody Venison and was a bit embarrassed/disappointed – god damn it!! Anyway, this gallery starts with people like Warhol (the famous and HUGE Chairman Mao) via all the greats of this era moving through minimalism, pop art, video art (a lot – snoar) and various other movements whose names I don’t know as well as a hell of a lot of stuff by Joseph Boys, who I can never really make my mind up about but definitely always makes me feel a bit sick.

While I was there they had a Bruce Nauman show on and it’s like yeah yeah whatever but I did very much enjoy one piece by him, recommended by Anthony, where you walked into a little room filled with bright green light and when you come out everything around you looks bright pink!! Amazing!! The stuff that in many ways interested me the most though was upstairs in these little temporary show spaces – one, Hans-Peter Feldmann was filled with little rotating carrousels covered with children’s toys with lights shining at them casting strange and sinister shadows on the walls:


The other space was filled with a weird collection of giant carved insects teamed with a collection of brightly coloured glass objects which I assume was something of a piss take:

The Gemaldegalerie was where I attempted to make the most of Thursday evening free entrance but fuck me it was a bit of an intense experience trying to get round there in 2 hours. It’s basically the National Gallery times 10 and was a pretty darn impressive collection of art from the Renaissance to about 1800 (I think). Stuff that stood out were the Frans Hals Portraits:

The Holbein’s were mind blowing in the flesh, such amazing painting really took my breath away:

They had some of the great Caravaggio’s including this one which frankly I have always thought completely grotesque:

What I was most excited about seeing though were the Lucas Cranach’s as I LOVE him, and they did not disappoint. What really surprised me though was the size of some of them; I have only seen the little ones in the past and didn’t realise he painted such huge pieces such as The Fountain of Youth which is HILARIOUS – showing old haggard saggy people getting into a big swimming poor and coming out the other side young and beautiful and then going off to a party to have fun and get laid – hilarious:

Earlier that day I went to the Neue Nationalgalerie which was meant to be showcasing artworks from 1900 until about 1960 but seems like half of the place was closed and paid 10 euro’s to go and see about 5 rooms of exhibition space. What they had in those 5 rooms was admittedly wonderful, but 10 euro’s was just a total rip off specially as in my guide book it said it was filled with loads of stuff that just wasn’t there. This particularly annoyed me as the entrance way to this strange place was the entire ground floor of huge museum space totally totally empty apart from some 70s style carpet and an enormous chandelier – what’s the point of that??? I guess space just isn’t at a premium in Berlin. Highlights however included some amazing work by Munch including this great piece of someone called Kessler!! I didn’t actually even notice the name until I got back to London and someone pointed it out to me though just thought it was a beautiful portrait!!

There were some incredible paintings by the expressionist artists Kirchner who I know very little about but knocked out some incredible stuff. This one in particular, of Potsdamer Platz was really breathtaking; depicting the hustle and bustle and disconnected existence of metropolitan living at the turn of the 20th century Berlin.

Some other pieces that really stood out were the beautiful bauhaus style poster art they had on display which annoyingly I cant remember the artist or find anything online for. Oh well. They also had a room full of really beautiful 1920s German Painting. This was the movement away from Expressionism after the First World War towards new sobriety and simplicity – still some expressionist elements but with a more detailed style such as this fab one io girl about town in her little black dress with her packet of Camels:

They also had this fabulous Dada collage, not usually that much of a fan of the Dada but rather like this:
This has all gone on rather too long to say the least so will quickly mention the Jewish Museum which I studied a bit of in first year Courtauld and, although then I thought it was frankly rather naff, in person it worked very well and was extremely effective and full of crying Americans. It was also the place where I got to go on one of those great machines where you squash a penny and print something on it – love those, nothing like a bit of currency debasement on holiday. The Holocaust memorial was also good. I attempted to go to the Stasi museum TWICE – once I went to its old location as guide book was clearly not that up to date and then when I went back to where it has now relocated to it was closed for refurbishment – tres annoying. Did a thousand other things but doubt anyone will have got this far anyway so will leave you all alone and just say a last thank you to Anthony for putting up with me for 5 days!! THANK YOU ANTHONY!!

Week 27: Renaissance Drawings/British Museum

Hello!! Annoyingly despite the lateness of this blog I did in fact get this weeks cultural pursuit done well within time, I just didn’t have time to then actually write about it as buggered off on holiday soon after (following weeks holiday blog to follow!). However, as coincidence would have it I don’t have an awful lot to say about this weeks pursuit anyway. I managed to squeeze in to the last Friday opening of the Masterpieces of the Uffizi: Italian Renaissance Drawings exhibition at the British Museum, for the princely sum of £12, and although I guess I am glad I went I wouldn’t be over enthusiastic with my recommendations to others, which is lucky considering the show is now over. For one thing it was SO packed that it was basically impossible to see the pictures and in general not a fun viewing experience. If you go to a show of, lets say Banksy, it doesn’t really matter if the place is crowded as frankly you can have one glance over peoples heads and you’re done. However, a show like this, where everything is on tiny scraps of half faded paper, you really need to stand close and have a good old view and that just wasn’t possible half the time. The British Museum, being the British Museum and stuck with a god awful exhibition space, organised the whole thing round a sort of spiral going inwards, so everyone was literally queuing along the walls to be able to shuffle past each piece. It was vile and not something I am prepared to do, especially when I just don’t care all that much. Cut to me running over every part of the exhibition in random order just trying to duck in where I saw a free space. This was fine but meant I didn’t really have the appropriate and intended viewing experience and lost the chronological development, which I assume was one of the curatorial schemes. This wasn’t the end of the world but a frantic hopping approach isn’t really ideal in any gallery and certainly didn’t work here. Also that exhibition space is just so awful it kills almost any exhibition I have been to see there. I just don’t understand why they have raped the old reading room like that, previously one of the most beautiful indoor spaces in the whole of London. I use to go there when I was at uni, especially in the first year when I lived close by, and was able to sit there and do work. Admittedly most of the time was spent frowning at the stupid tourists who would come in to make too much noise but all in all it was fabulous – and frankly a good opportunity to feel superior to other people, especially tourists, who clearly weren’t privileged enough to use such a high brow space. I mean for gods sake Marx use to work there!! Now however they have turned it into an exhibition space which means you can’t see the fabulous room at all and instead are forced to go to an impossible to curate dungeon-like place where you spend the whole time walking round in circles, feeling claustrophobic, not knowing where you are going, missing things and in general feeling like this would be much better in a SQUARE room. I understand space is always an issue but if that’s the reason then I’m sure they could find another room somewhere which is currently full of old pots no one cares about or something. Or that STUPID thing in the back entrance way which has now been there for over 9 years and is just some crap bit of community artwork made out of pills and wool and some shit and has absolutely no conceivable reason for being there. You could have got the whole exhibition in that space, saved the reading room for what it should be, and binned that mangy piece of crap that has no relation to anything and is always ignored,. Why is it there???

Anyway back to the exhibition; I don’t know much about the Renaissance other than the obvious stuff I learnt in A-level History (yeah thanks for that 3 years of art history degree). But I always like a nice bit of drawing, as most people do, and this stuff was damn old. Stuff that stood out for me, a week and a half later, were the Head of a Woman by Verrocchio, which as you can see is really rather lovely:
Also this landscape by da Vinci from 1473 which according to the label is the first landscape in Western Art, which I think you will agree is pretty exciting – although debateable surely??

Da Vinci in general had a good show, particularly interesting was the drawing he did for a tank, which frankly wouldn’t have worked at all:

They split the exhibition geographically, going around via Florence, Rome, Venice etc to show the different artistic developments in different parts of Italy and this worked quite well I felt, especially with the above which was an attempt by Leonardo to impress the Milanese court, who were v v military minded.

Other highlights were the Cartoon for St George by Michelangelo from 1504-ish, which is rather good:

There were several other very beautiful images but I don’t know what any of them were and frankly haven’t got time to do the research, so this is a particularly useless blog, but I hope you enjoy the images I HAVE managed to find!! One thing I will say though is that this exhibition was meant to be the triumphant once in a lifetime unification of the collections of the Uffizi and the BM – but frankly most of the drawings that I particularly liked were in the BM anyway, and typically those were the only ones that they had postcards for, a major part of any gallery trip in my world. Berlin blog to follow x

Week 26: Art from the New World a Big Brash Exhibition of the New American Art Scene/Bristol City Art Gallery

Hola boys and girls. I would apologise for my slightly condensed version of blog last week had a bit of busy/nightmarish week and alas had to skip what would have been a sparkling insightful laugh fest (???) but by the sound of it (and yes Chris I mean you) it was a relief. For anyone who missed the point though I did pretty much fully approve of the Serpentine Pavilion.

So, this weekend I went home and enjoyed the delights of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery – which I LOVE. We use to go there pretty much every rainy weekend throughout the majority of my childhood (if it was sunny we went to Bristol Zoo) and it’s great, highlights include the glow in the dark semi-precious gems where you get to press the button to make them glow and the Egyptian mummy remains which are displayed in a way that forces small children to balance their entire bodies over the side of this pit filled with sand and it’s only when your face is about 4 inches away that you see this gross mummified skeleton head thing starring at you – it’s terrifying and great! Anyway it still smells exactly the same which is nice and actually has some really nice pieces in the art gallery upstairs. It also has lots of touring exhibitions and this weekend we had Art from the New World a Big Brash Exhibition of the New American Art Scene. This is what they have to say about it online:

“Art from the New World features a collection of 49 new works by a diverse range of some of the finest emerging and noted living US urban and new Contemporary artists, spanning the artistic spectrum from pop surreal to neo-figurative to street”

So that’s nice. What a weird, but cool exhibition. You all know I know NOTHING about contemporary art – here or in the states, so I don’t really know how much this work is part of some kind of new ‘school’, but it certainly seemed very different and yet pretty coherent as a whole! I very much approve of what the exhibition leaflet claimed they were all trying to do which is basically to get contemporary art off its jumped up pedestal and allow it to appeal to a wider audience using a ‘low brow’ visual language influenced by things like comic books, tattoo art and children’s illustrations. Influences of Pop Art and Surrealism (and all the many shades of the various movements in-between) are clear throughout the show as well as a definite lean towards ‘whimsy’ (my new favorite art word ‘cause it makes you sound less thick than just saying ‘that work is FUNNY’).

To be honest I cant’ really think of anything to write which sweeps the entire exhibition apart from the words kitsch, kitsch and WOW THAT’S REALLY KITSCH, so I will concentrate on individual pieces instead. I do, however, really very much approve of anything that ‘low-brows’ contemporary art, and the further away from conceptualism, the most elitist school of anything across any medium ever, the better.

One of the ones I particular enjoyed was Wet Tea Party by Natalia Fabia - I tried scanning this but gave up after 8th go so the one below is 'similar' the the one I saw. Lots to be said about this along the lines of female sexuality, ideals of femininity, narrative imagery – blah blah blah. I really like it because it’s weirdly Victoriana – playing with traditions of femininity, feminine spaces and the Victorian narrative painting. It’s also beautifully executed.

Resurrection by David Stoupakis also deals with contemporary attitudes to female beauty, celebrity, age and obviously religion.

(DARN cant find a pic of this on internet sorry al! - it's basically a naked, agenign beatuty surounded by red roses ala American Beauty dripping in blood against a black background)

I loved the work of artists such as Marion Peck, who were clearly influenced by children’s illustrations to create a nostalgia seeped but unnerving world where painterly traditions such as in this case the equestrian portrait have been played with and subverted to create a feeling of an eerie, distant world of faded childhood memories:

Similar, surreal worlds are seen in the work of Kukula:

Some of the pieces, although very enjoyable, had definite elements of A-Level Art piece to me. A bit too ‘sun moon stars’, swirly colors and long pre-raph hair stunk of a 16 year old girls wet dream for me really. I feel somewhat torn as I quite liked them, but tacky didn’t really do them justice.

Some of the pieces were clearly influenced by comic books, video games and graffiti art such as the work of Buff Monster who is apparently featured in some video by Banksy – who is everywhere in Bristol. To be honest although enjoyable this work to me seems highly derivative and very dated surely?

Anyway have to go as have shit to do for once but another artist definitely worth mentioning is Eric Joyner for this rather hilarious and totally surreal image (one in show not online but this similar idea):


All in all if this is what’s coming out of the states at the moment for the most part I’m very pleased – it may not be earth-shatteringly original stuff but I like the idea of bringing art back from the avant-garde and imbuing it with a really palpable language of cultural references. Thumbs up.

Week 25: The Serpentine Pavilion/Kensington Gardens

Well, it was very red:

Would it have been any good if it wasn’t red?
Does it matter?
Can colour be the only element of an architectural scheme?
Were ‘pavilions’ created purely to enable architects to do the professional equivalent of wanking into a cup?
Is the Serpentine Pavilion the most middle class place in London/the world?

Week 24: Sketching

Dear all. Apologies for my slight lateness of blogging this week – not that any of you CARE! To be honest my blog this week is a bit of a cultural cop out which I will blame wholeheartedly on Sam and Zarah who DISTRACTED me from my cultural do-gooding by sitting on my balcony for too long on Sunday and totally sapping all my cultural motivation. Instead we all decided to decamp to Hyde Park and do some ‘sketching’ – and yes that DOES count as a cultural pursuit so there.

So, sketching. I did A-level art, being a pathetic girl, and the joy of that experience turned me off creating anything artistic for nearly a decade. This was due entirely to my retarded art ‘teachers’ who frankly should have been struck off. I mean talk about money for old rope; they would turn up, sit around in class reading the paper and occasionally, VERY occasionally, comment on the stuff we were doing – usually along the lines of ‘oh why don’t you make it into a lino print’. Knowing what I know now it was actually quite criminal– I was doing bloody proto-cubist stuff and it didn’t even occur to them to point me in the direction of a book on Picasso etc – luckily I was able to make that connection myself but still, it was really pathetic. Luckily towards the end of the A-level ‘experience’ we all went on a day trip to Salisbury where they were having, if I remember rightly, a really rather good sculpture exhibition around the city. Of course we didn’t bother to look at any of that being 16 – instead we went to the pub, ate cheese on toast and then got tattoos done hahahahahaha!! Teacher was SO shit scared made up for the massive bollocking we all got from the head of Sixth Form on our return – he thought he was going to lose his job!!! HAHAHAHAHA - that served the lazy useless fucker right wish he had been bloody fired. Humph.

Anyway, that said sketching, or ‘draftsmanship’ as they insisted on calling it back in the day for some reason, was always my (only) strong point in the study of ‘art’. I couldn’t paint for shit, really didn’t get on with those lino prints at all and frankly messing round with clay is just like messing round with your own shit really isn’t it? Not that we would have got the chance anyway the kilns were over in the GNVQ scum (as we fondly called them) block and we didn’t go there for fear of being beaten up. Now that I think about it though most of the people in my A-level class were pretty damn scummy themselves – I think a good two thirds of them went on to do ‘Interior Design’ at ‘University’!?! Ahh apart from my friend Nicky of course we were the only points of reason in that shitty shed of madness. Photography obviously wasn’t considered an art form back in provincial West Country world. Whatever, sketching was my strong point – either in pencil or pen, although I do remember enjoying a bit of charcoal in my time. (Gosh isn’t this an enjoyable ramble all about ME – is anyone still reading??)

Post A-levels however I literally didn’t put pencil to paper again for about 9 years because the experience was so damn awful. This all changed about a year and a half ago when my then boyfriend moved into a rather nice flat in Kentish Town. He had a very large window in his living room/kitchen which overlooked the car park at the back and more importantly some very cool old school Victoriana warehouse style buildings now clearly turned into posh or not so posh flats. Point is I decided to do a drawing of this view and slowly worked away at it for many a month until we broke up and he refused to give it back. I was actually pretty much more upset about losing the drawing than about losing the relationship which says a lot – I had invested a lot of time in both after all!! What really annoyed me/annoys me still is that he almost certainly binned it, or worse (I have visions of him and his wanker brother dancing round a bonfire throwing my possessions in one by one and chanting evil spells as they stuck pins into blonde haired wax dolls) because he didn’t even want it and I really really did!! After that I swore I would do another, BETTER picture next time I came across a conveniently placed view. It took about a year for this to happen but having now moved into my swanky swanky new flat with THE LOVELY KIND JUSTIN (happy now boy?) I have such an opportunity at hand; the view from our balcony is ACE – the back of all those old school Victoriana London town houses and muses and there is even a blue plaque etc – it’s ideal! I bought my sketch pad (A2 – am thinking big for this one people) and pencils a good month ago and hadn’t got round to starting it until this weekend though oops!!!

So, back to the matter in hand – off we went to Hyde Park in the surmounting wind, to find the perfect spot somehow encompassing our various needs: sun, shade, privacy (away from roads and more importantly evil police – NEVER had that problem on the Heath) a view of architecture of some kind (have no interest in drawing trees or hills or god forbid people!) and not too far from the toilets. We finally settled on quite a windswept spot overlooking Kensington Palace and the sketching began, for a good 30 minutes at least!! The problem is I was quite far away and it was sunny so couldn’t see THAT well. I enjoy doing the details in sketching – the textures of brick or whatever, which is why the view from my balcony is so perfect, not so much the overall ‘form’ which was clearly what this picture needed. I decided to take a short break when Zarah, the professional artist who even did it as a degree (!!) took over and did her own which very much did take in the overall ‘form’ and made me feel bad L. It also started to get colder and windier as we had spent most of the sunny part of the day smoking on the balcony - so that was the end of that really. HOWEVER, not to be deterred for long I have now been inspired to start the actual, official, view from the balcony and so far all is going well. Unlike last time I have actually sketched out the overall view first before I start beavering away at them there bricks and am rather impressed with my foresight. So far I have completed a whole section of wall!! Some people may think my extreme attention to texture and detail slightly OTT but that’s really what I enjoy doing!! It also adds a real sense of achievement to the finished product, not that I have experienced that sense of achievement for 9 years now thanks to my STOLEN drawing.

Anyway, it was only took 9 years to remind myself that sketching could be quite fun if it’s not being produced for a deadline or to be viewed by all the bitchy commoners in your class. It doesn’t matter if the end product looks like shit as it’s only being done for my enjoyment – I’m not being graded or judged on it so who cares!! It’s very much like my experience doing this blog – finally 5 years post Courtauld I have just about managed to shake any of the limited art historical discourse from my head and am now once again allowed to just walk into an art gallery and enjoy a fucking picture – not because of who painted it, not because of what it relates to in the art historical canon, not because Roger Fry said it was good – but just because I enjoy it!! Similar deal with this.

It’s also a highly beneficial experience for my fragile and highly strung mental state - there is something totally calming and therapeutic about just switching off and thinking about the texture of tiles for a while every day. This is why I enjoyed doing the last drawing so much (god knows I needed to switch off in that flat) and this is why am very excited about the summer/autumn ahead doing this one. I expect it to be finished in about 4 – 6 months depending on how quickly I get bored. When I have finished I will frame it and put it up on the wall near said view whether flatmate objects or not! However, am VERY dedicated already – I actually got off my arse and went across the road to the shop to buy a rubber on Monday!! Yes I ACTUALLY left the house for a reason other than tobacco which just shows my extreme and impressive level of commitment. On a side note though do you remember at school everyone use to laugh when you said rubber because it supposedly meant condom?? Does anyone use that term anymore?? On that note see you next week chums xxx

Week 23: Wolfgang Tillmans/Serpentine Gallery

Hello pursuers everywhere, despite major dental surgery this week am still on the ball in blogland woohoo me. This week I used up my get out of jail free cultural pursuit card; the Serpentine Gallery. I live 5 minutes walk from Hyde Park (smug smug smug) so it was always my back up for v lazy (and hot, prey to god there are more like that) weekends when couldn’t be bothered to travel anywhere. Am already planning on 'going to the pavilion' and also maybe 'going to see something at the pavilion' - ooh a fantastic summer of blogs awaits...? Anyway, I dragged my codined-up self from the shady fab spot had been languishing in for 5 hours and managed a whole 25 minutes of standing up and looking at art before collapsing back in the exact same spot for another hour or so. God I love summer.
The show: Wolfgang Tillmans. So, a few weeks ago I wrote an even more crap than usual blog about a really rather good photography exhibition I had seen at the Tate Modern. Somewhat, I suspect, to many peoples dismay and consternation I vocalised my belief, which still stands, that almost any photograph can look 'good' if blown up, framed well, and put on the wall of a gallery. Obviously anyone who knows about photography (unlike me clearly) will disagree with this, which is fine, but they must surely agree that Wolfgang Tillmans has made a career out of doing just that, in the best best possible way. I mean his entire canon seems to be about making things look good by hanging them in certain, differing ways, or at least that’s what they seemed to think in the little booklet that came with the exhibition. His work is all about placing random, lets face it in many cases pretty damn standard pictures on walls in different interesting ways and seeing what happens. Pieces from different times in his career (apparently - I didn’t read the labels) are juxtaposed, creating interesting cross references and associations, changing the meaning of pieces from the way they would have been viewed in different settings. I like this idea a lot, and I liked SOME of the images, but a hell of a lot of them were a load of crap, I mean I get the latent romanticism of the domestic and all that but a lot of these were either boring, badly realised, or, well, boring. That’s fine though I enjoyed it mostly for the over arcing concept anyway.

I like the site-specific nature of his work and also the way he articulates my personally experience of moving through a gallery space. This is particularly strong when in galleries which I know well, with pieces I have studied or really love; they are all like old friends who you are meeting briefly in a crowd, or like having a conversation you have had over and over again but changes constantly and never gets boring. Each piece speaks to the others, saying different things depending on what you look at, in what order, at what time, depending on where they are placed in relation to each other – etc, I love that!!
Anyway, enough of all that gush. One thing I will say for the guy is that he really bought the best out of the space. I can’t remember the last time the Serpentine looked so fab. The last few shows I remember seeing there (obviously not going that often) have really closed up the space, all dark rooms for video projections or stuffy small spaces filled with felt (although that may have been a dream). Anyway, the place looked bloody awesome and about 3 times the usual size - it was all light and airy and lovely and the whole experience was totally summery and delightful.
There was quite a lot of stuff which no doubt 'challenged our perception of photography as a medium, or object’, or whatever. To be honest I thought this stuff was all as dull as dull could be but could see the appeal if you like that sort of thing or were employed to write essays on such things but was not much fun for me as an experience. I guess he was playing with the idea of the photograph as an object as well as a canvas-like space – creating photographic 3-D sculptures by bending and folding photos so they exist in different planes of space, both physically and theoretically – or whatever. Once again he is using the display as part of the work – placing the images in glass cases which somewhat fetishise them. I do like the way he clearly plays around to get different effects though, stretching the traditional processes to create new types of images, obvious may be a word that springs to mind personally but there we go:

He explores this display device further in work that’s use vitrines, or semi-vitrines, out of collections of found objects such as newspaper articles, adverts, napkins in one instant, and other such images and objects. There were 3 of these in one central space and they were each about a different theme. Unfortunately I have forgotten what the first one was about, think the second one was about homosexuality and religion/Catholicism, and couldn’t for the life of me work out what the third was on about; something about consumerism and us ruining the planet by going to Pret? Am not sure, they were fun though – one had some carpet on it, but that’s the one I don’t remember anything about - oops.

One room, which looked out onto the park rather beautifully, had some lovely painterly pieces which were all swirly and pretty-pretty and enjoyable by anyone on earth. I’m not knocking that, but I have to say that there was definitely something a tad saccharine about them:

Anyway, have to say don’t remember much else from the show, was pretty out of it, but enjoyed it for the overarching experience as opposed to most of the photographs – but I really really think that’s the point of it anyway so it’s fine.

On the way to the gallery/my picnic spot I did incidentally find ANOTHER Watts monument – he must have filled London with various weird things which is bloody great news and may lead to a new weekly, or as frequent as possible, section of my blog called Watts Spots. This week it was the monument to Physical Energy (below) which was really rather good I thought. For one thing it was facing the Albert Memorial and yet covering his eyes – as if he was protecting himself from the glare of all that hideous (yet fab) bloody gold. It was also perfect timing as the sun was directly in front and the hand was casting shade exactly over the eyes of the statue so it looked pretty good! According to the internet this is Watts’s moist ambitious sculpture and there are versions in Cape Town and somewhere else which is important for some reason. I don’t know but it feels pretty dynamic and worth a slight detour if you haven’t seen it before. What Watts will it be next week I wonder?

Week 22: Empire Mail / Guildhall Gallery

Merry Monday pursuers everywhere! Tomorrow I am going in to have my evil mutant wisdom tooth of doom surgically removed and am taking the rest of the week off – I therefore have a thousand and one things to do today but am I doing any of them – HELL NO! Hoho. Instead I am championing odd cheap exhibitions everywhere, as usual.

This week I was joined in my cultural pursuit by the lovely Sam, or PhD Sam as he has been known when gracing this blog previously. We had originally intended to go to the Surreal House, or whatever it’s called, at the Barbican. This was Sam’s idea and alas I hadn’t quite made the link in my head that this was about SURREALISM, rather than just being some weird installation piece. Therefore, come Sunday in the City the last thing either of us really wanted to do was be intellectually and artistically challenged and instead were desirous of looking at some pretty pictures, preferably old ones. Thus at the suggestion of clever Sam we headed instead to the lovely, and much underappreciated, Guildhall gallery– GOOD call!

The Guildhall is totally ace. For one thing it is only £2.50 to get in which includes both the exhibition and the rather wonderful permanent collection AS WELL as arguably the best bit = the Roman amphitheatre in the basement!!! You therefore get three things for the price of one woohoo! Would highly recommend a visit to the amphitheatre alone if for nothing other than the funny illuminated green bums they have all over the place to symbolise athletes and gladiators etc. It’s hilarious and truly 80s. The poor bastards didn’t realise it was there until they started building the gallery and had to stop for about 20 years until it was properly excavated– must have been TRES annoying for them! The permanent collection is fab fab fab as they have some really wonderful Victoriana in there including My First Sermon and My Second Sermon by Millais and the CRAZY Woodman’s Daughter by the same artist:


They also have the amazing Israel in Egypt by Poynter which my old tutor Caroline Arscott wrote a very cool essay on all about muscular Christianity if I remember rightly: (check out the hot bods in this):


She also did a very strange class once which discussed the below Moore painting called Pomegranates in-terms of swirling vortexes of times (???):

They also have this rather fabulous early Holman Hunt, who is one of my favourite’s, and some really beautiful Alma-Tadema’s to name but a few:

Last and by no means least is the very weird statue they have of Margaret Thatcher shoved into a corner upstairs, scary:
So, that’s the rather fabulous permanent collection, now onto the exhibition. I have been to see a couple of really rather fabulous shows at the Guildhall in the past, most notably the Watts (more on him later) last year. I have to admit, however, that whilst very enjoyable the exhibition now on is somewhat… well, odd, frankly. Empire Mail: George V and the GPO, according to the website, looks at the passions of King George V, the 'philatelist king', alongside an extraordinary period of design and innovation in the General Post Office during his reign. Basically the point of the exhib was showing how the social and political history of this period is demonstrated through stamps and the development of the post service. So yeah pretty fucking random I think you’ll agree. Cool though, in an ‘I can’t quite believe I’m here but enjoying this anyway’ type of way.

So, George V came into power on the anniversary of the penny black – i.e. the first stamp. He was an avid stamp collector collecting stamps specifically from Britain and the Commonwealth and his collection is now seen as one of the very best in the world containing several unique examples, or whatever. It belongs to the queen still who leant it to the Guildhall for this exhibition, how nice. For a stamp exhibition thankfully there seemed to be much fewer stamps on show than you would expect – which is definitely something of a relief. They had some of the rarer examples up including penny blacks, rejected designs for penny blacks, and things like the first stamp from elsewhere in the British Empire i.e. Mauritius. They also had designs for the first commemorative stamps which were for the British Empire Exhibition in 1924 (image at the top of this blog). Embarrassingly I had basically never heard of this one – The Great Exhibition yes and the Festival of Britain yes but nothing in between oops! The British Pavilion was turned into Wembley stadium though so there you go. Apparently the post office had it’s own pavilion along with a special mail service within the arena it was all considered to be so so important.

The rest of the exhibition was rather more interesting than all these stamps with lots of rather amazing blown up photographs of various things. One room was all about the postal service during the First World War and how important it was for the troops etc. They also had info about the Post Office Rifles which was a battalion made up entirely of postman and people who worked for the post office. Employees were actively encouraged to sign up and get their brains blown out – it was so popular in the 1st world war that they had to create a new division, or whatever military word you would use for this. They also had a section about the Suffragettes who had a big old relationship with the post office I knew nothing about, apparently seeing it as “both a means of mass communication and a symbol of the oppressive male Government; as friend and simultaneously foe”. They often vandalised post offices and poured tar, treacle or acid into post boxes as well as attempting to mail themselves to 10 Downing Street at one point as human parcels for the attention of the PM.

Appropriately, given the theme of the exhibition, George V was responsible for the worlds first scheduled air mail flight as part of the celebrations for his Coronation in 1911. A flight was arranged between Windsor and Hendon and postcards which could be sent on this new revolutionary post service were distributed in the local Windsor paper. This, alas, only happened once and it wasn’t until 1919 (ish) that it properly started. I guess air travel was still unbelievably expensive at this point, even for the mail. They also had an example of old school post boxes specifically for airmail which were a regular site in every town in the country until they changed the way it was collected, or something.


The exhibition then moved onto slightly more aesthetically pleasing ground and we had lots of lovely examples of 1930s poster art. This was due to the appointment in 1933 of Sir Stephen Tallents as the first Public Relations Officer for the Post Office. He set about a pretty impressive advertising and PR campaign and also started a competition to design a logo, apparently an early example of branding. He commissioned some of the best artists of the day to create beautiful posters such as the below:


Kenneth Clark of the National Gallery, amongst other luminaries, was part of the selection committee for these, he was also on the committee that judged the entries in the competition to design the official stamp for the British Exhibition in 1924. Artists who were invited to contribute to that competition included Edward Dulac, one of my all time favourite illustrators!

Below is a poster by Vanessa Bell designed to encourage people not to leave their posting until the end of the day to save crowding, unfortunately it was felt to give the wrong type of message and was rejected!

Tallents was also responsible for setting up the GPO film unit who produced numerous films advertising the postal service, some of which were specifically for educational purposes in schools and churches but they also produced news reels and perhaps most importantly the film Night Train which had a general cinema release.

This hugely popular film celebrated the overnight postal trains which were used to both transport the post and sort it on the go. This film is thought to be responsible for putting British documentary making on the map and was hugely successful. W H Audin’s famous poem Night Train was based on the film and below is a link to the poem in case you would like to read it again!:

http://www.tynelives.org.uk/stephenson/poem.htm

For all those who enjoy poems about trains here is another FABULOUS one which was a favourite of mine as a kid – read it it’s really good!!:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/from-a-railway-carriage/

They also had a very beautifully illustrated/printed version of Audin’s poem on show which alas I can’t find online. A hugely popular poster was also produced around this time to advertise the night train service. Bastard Guildhall refused to make this into a postcard and instead I had to buy it as a greetings card which cost me more than the entrance fee to the exhib annoyingly:
There was some other groovy stuff on show such as the first postal vans from the 30s and the first delivery motorcycles which were both very shiny, sort of thing men who collect stamps would very much enjoy. There was also some cool info about the London underground mail railway which I have always found very mysterious, romantic and exciting:

So, it was a very enjoyable if very random experience but in general go to the Guildhall as it’s great and always empty!

After we had left Sam took me to see a very strange monument that I can’t believe I had not known about before. If any of you have seen the beyond awful film Closer you will recognise it as being in the park Jude Law and Natalie Portman meet in at the beginning and if I remember rightly the end of the movie. For some, highly coincidental reason it’s called Postman’s Park and it contains the weirdest thing I have seen in a while. Conceived by the fabulous Victorian artist Watts it’s intended as a monument to people who sacrificed themselves to save others in every day life. This is intended to inspire us all to be more heroic and get killed trying to save other people. It’s a series of painted tiles, probably about 30 or so, along this random bit of wall and each is dedicated to one of these ‘everyday heroes’. Most of them seem to have drowned saving unfortunate people, or people more fortunate than them it turns out, some of them burnt to death, a few fell into wells or in front of trains. Seriously morbid stuff – high, HIGH Victorianarama. Love it! My favourite has to be to the man who died of exhaustion having saved people from the ice on Highgate Ponds, one of my favourite spots in London, the one below is also pretty good:

That’s all folks!