How to be Bohemian with Victoria Coren Mitchell, BBC4
After my partner’s RA picture got a split second exposure on TV last week, it was my turn; a glimpse of my grizzled head, appearing like a growth on another artist’s shoulder for a whole second, left of screen. BUT – later in the programme, my hands drawing in close-up for about five whole seconds. Fortunately, they didn’t show the drawing.
As to the programme’s content, Eric Gill was the most interesting topic; as well as being a stunning artist and craftsman, he had sexual intercourse with two daughters, his sisters – and his dog. He recorded, or alluded to, all these exploits in his diaries. The obvious question is: does the awareness of this depravity undermine the art? VCM said it did for her – but she may have been playing angel’s advocate. Fiona MacCarthy said, what about Wagner? Well known anti-semitic views – do you listen to the music or turn it off? VCM went for the latter.
No-one mentioned timing in this; Gill’s criminal habits weren’t known when he was alive and producing fantastic work, such as Prospero and Ariel; his biographer, MacCarthy, revealed them in 1989, a previous biographer having omitted any reference.
Prospero and Ariel, Eric Gill
False Memory Syndrome
Last week, I walked half the Ridgeway long-distance path, from Avebury in Wiltshire to Goring on Thames in Berkshire – around 40 miles. I first did it 30 or so years ago, with a tent, and camped beside the path – this time, we got B and B.
I had vivid “memories” of being under the stars next to the path, by my tent, opposite the 3000 year old White Horse at Uffington, fully visible across the way on the flank of the down. When we arrived at the horse this time, I was astonished to find that you can’t see it from the path – you have to go a hundred yards or so, maybe more, across a stretch of lush grass and psychedelic buttercups. Then, you are just above the head and can see just a few dazzling white lines in the downside (it was made by being dug out and filled with chalk). You can’t see it properly from below either – apparently, the only good view is from a car on the B4507. And yet, I could have sworn that I’d looked at it by starlight all those years ago.
Uffington White Horse
So what’s the significance of all this? Last week, I wrote about a “circular” joke in the Polish film, “The Saragossa Manuscript”, in which someone inexplicably falls from height into a laundry basket, an incident which is explained later in the film. But I was only halfway through the DVD – it’s 180 mins long. It transpires there are no laundry baskets; the circular joke involves a voice, supposedly from Purgatory and a fall into a barrel. It’s far too complex to explain in detail. And yet, I could have sworn… Maybe the laundry basket thing is some corruption of the Merry Wives of Windsor, where Falstaff hides in the dirty laundry and gets chucked into the ditch (reference to same in “Breaking Bad” – I think – can’t be sure of anything any more).
Fighting History at Tate Britain
A review, or random selection of “history” works old and new. panned as “moronic” and overly left-wing by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. I suppose the inclusion of memorabilia and filmed reminiscence of Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave reconstruction is a bit lefty – here are some of the other works:
- “The Battle of Hastings” by Allen Jones – nice painting, Pop Art style, impenetrable.
- “A Visit to Aesculapius” by Poynter – group of beautiful women, no pubic hair, was “the chief centre of attention” at the RA in 1880.
- A Flood by Dexter Dalwood, containing a quotation from a nearby (awful) Turner Flood, a Guston head, a Lichtenstein wave and a pile of swiss rolls.
- Another Flood, by Danby; I like the terrified lion, clinging to the tree.
- A huge King Lear, Fuseli eyes and a fleshy dead Cordelia, by James Barry.
- The battle at Jersey, by Copley, the one with the dead officer and the black servant firing at the French; there are some Rubens/Pugwash women fleeing on the right.
- Zoffany’s “Death of Captain Cook” – a very brown painting, compared with his famous one of the Indian Governor and the Cockfight. Jones likes this one because the feather headdresses have been accurately rendered.
Go and see it; it’s not that bad and the Deller stuff won’t turn you left-wing if you’re not that way already.
A life drawing and a work in ?Progress? to finish with:
Amanda on her Front
Work in Progress
Blackpaint
21.06.15
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