Sunday was cold and gloomy so instead of doing a planned walk, we went to the Tate Britain to see the Turner and the Masters exhibit that opened a few weeks ago. Turner is not one of my favourites, and I know very little about him, except for the tons of information that permeates English culture because he is after all "England's greatest artist" who painted England's favourite painting. A Cockney prodigy, he enjoyed besting his contemporaries and the old masters who came before. He famously added a speck of red to his seascape in the 1832 Royal Academy Show when he saw that it was hanging next to Constable's red splattered Waterloo Bridge. This exhibit hangs the two works side-by-side for the first time since 1832. The entire show is made up of Turner paintings side-by-side with the work of artists he wished to emulate or more to the point to outshine in skill. He competed with all of the greats: Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Poussin, Claude Lorraine, Canaletto and dozens of other very good artists. The Tate holds a huge collection of Turners because of the Bequest to the nation that settled his estate's death duties — and the idea for the show comes from Turner in his will leaving a few of his works to the nation with the condition that Dido Building Carthage be displayed next to Claude's ...Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba in the National Gallery. The interesting thing about the show is that curator David Solkin chose to exhibit as many misses as hits for Turner's scorecard. There were some where Turner's version of another artist's subject was a clear winner, especially when atmosphere was a defining element. There were some perfectly dreadful pastiches of master works. Sadly, for me and for Bob who is a bit more of a Turner fan than I, there were some perfectly lovely paintings by Turner that paled when sitting next to a master, so we have another show where opinion of the artist declines as the show progresses. In our family that is known as the Bonnard effect, after a huge show at the Tate in 1998. We took time out from our moving-to-a-new-country chores to see the show, and Susan, Bob, and I agreed that the only Bonnard we really liked was the famous Dining Room Overlooking the Garden at the Met in New York.
While at the Tate Britain, we stopped in to see the Turner Prize nominees work which has just gone on display. Why it is the Turner Prize I have no idea except he is Britain's best/favourite artist. He would have no problem whatsoever competing with these artists and winning hands down. This is the Prize that has featured unmade beds and light bulbs flashing on and off in past years. I couldn't possibly comment on any of these nominees so I will let a link do that.
And I found a new artist to admire in a room display on women artists who had a hard time because they were women. Stanislawa de Karlowska was married to the Camden Town painter Robert Bevan. The Tate owns three of her works and these two were on display.
Last night we did something we rarely do anymore. We went to see a dance performance. This is the centenary of Diaghilev's Paris company Les Ballet Russes, and Sadler's Wells' contribution to the celebration is this programme where they asked four choreographers to create pieces In the Spirit of Diaghilev. We went primarily because one of four, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, choreographed a fabulous programme we saw last year titled Myth. His contribution was Faun, based on the music Afternoon of the Faun with additions from Nitin Sawhney, and featured two remarkable dancers. Afterlight, danced to wonderful Satie piano music, was an homage to Nijinsky, danced by a solo male with a light show playing over his body movements. Quite fantastic. Those were the two successful parts of the evening.
The first piece featured many dancers, several large TV screens with bright red machines turning and black and white stripes rippling, plus a bright strobe light that unfortunately was directed right at Bob's retina, so he had to hold his hand over his eyes for most of the piece. The TV screens were very distracting, as any neuroscientist knows, the brain is wired to watch moving impulses of light, and as any parent buying an infant mobile knows, red, black and white are the colours that can be discriminated first and best. I have no idea what the dancers did, I watched the TVs. When we were riding home on the Tube, and I finally had a chance to read my programme notes, I discovered this piece was made by "an ongoing collaborative enquiry into the distributed nature of choreographic thinking with the Interactive Cognition Lab, UCSanDiego" — the very place Bob did his cognitive science post-doc 30 years ago!!!!!! So it was neuroscience after all.
We had gotten an e-mail from Sadler's Wells last week noting this production included "adult content" material, and that would have been directed at the final piece which included rape, sodomy, a Pope, a garotting, blood, and an electrocution. This was very much "in the spirit of Diaghilev" measured by the people walking out! But no fist fights as far as I could see. A powerful blast of incense permeating the theatre did nothing to improve my reaction. The music was a lovely waltz — my programme says Ravel's Mother Goose — so ho hum, violence and nursery rhymes, must be a commentary on our times or something.
I also finished another book this week, Gardens of Water, a first novel by Alan Drew, written when a student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The book has one of those Readers' Guides for book groups in which we learn that Drew and his wife took teaching jobs in Turkey, arrived in Istanbul four days before the huge earthquake hit in 1999, and lived there for three years. The latter means they were there pre- and post-9/11, never mentioned in the interview, but clearly what helped shape the text. A Kurdish family of four has been uprooted from their Southern Turkey homeland because of the PKK rebellion. The Turkish forces are of course funded and supplied with weapons by the US — it's just what we do — and the father hates Americans — it's just what they do. They have settled in a city near Istanbul, but when the earthquake hits, they lose their home, shop, and extended family. The Turkish government is unable to respond to the crisis so they rely on American aid workers to feed and house the population. These aid workers are Christians who offer succour, but at the price of intense proselytising. The novel sets up clashes in world view: evangelical Christianity in a Muslim community; traditional parents trying to maintain their values — values that are mostly abhorrent to those with Western values such as the readers of this book — but whose children are swayed by the toys and treats of the modern world; the deep distrust of anything associated with the US by the millions of people whose lives have been tragically altered by one US policy or another. I won't be giving anything away if I say this is not a happy book.
Cold weather has arrived in London this week along with quite a bit of rain. We haven't yet turned on the heat, but we will this weekend. After spending a day shivering wearing three sweaters and my bathrobe, I finally pulled out my winter clothes and sweaters. My closet and drawers are stuffed full so that means no shopping trips for me. I find myself drawn to the window displays this season because so much of it looks familiar — 1965 familiar. The last time these cute tunics and miniskirts were around, I was the target market! There are articles in the paper about Twiggy because she is turning 60. How could she have been younger than I was? And suddenly through Facebook I am in contact with high school classmates who haven't crossed my mind in 40+ years. I seem to be simultaneously moving backwards and forwards in time.
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