A grey but mild day. The rain has gone. There are a few things to seek out in London this Sunday, so I shall set out for a walk around the city. Train journey, reading Christoph Ransmayr’s novel The Dog King. Ransmayr is my great literary discovery of these past few months, but the novelRead More
Category: Art
A pilgrimage to Wreay
At last I have been to Wreay. It has been a long ambition, but time, distance and transport have each played their part in making me put off the pilgrimage to another day. Last week, that day eventually came. It was a damp, overcast late autumn day, and I was staying in Carlisle. Wreay isRead More
Seeing and photographing
To Tate Britain, to see an exhibition of the paintings of Frank Bowling, of whom (I am ashamed to say) I knew nothing before now, but to whom I am now absolutely devoted. Bowling is a Guyanese-born artist, who moved to Britain in 1953, trained at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney andRead More
The horizontal view
To the Garden Museum, in Lambeth, a museum I’d not visited nor indeed knew existed before now. Of all the small, quaint museums devoted to minor subjects that can be found in London, few can be more quaint yet more rich in interest than the Garden Museum. It is constructed out of a medieval church,Read More
Scully, Turner and Sheerness
On steps leading down to the pebble beach at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, the words of an uncredited poem are painted. The white lettering has worn away to invisibility in some places, nor is it possible to see the text in its entirety in one view, as half has to be read fromRead More
Figures and forms
To the Royal Academy on a Friday evening, joining those neglectful souls rushing to see the Bill Viola / Michelangelo exhibition before it closes (on March 31st). It was very impressive – it could hardly have been otherwise. The exhibition brings together the work of video artist (for want of a better term) Bill Viola,Read More
Looking at paintings
There was a piece in The Times recently in which assorted experts – artists, art historians, gallery owners, critics – were asked to tell us the best way to appreciate a painting. Their responses ranged from the practical (choosing the picture you admire and devoting deep time to it), to the impractical (visit the galleryRead More
2017 – the year in art
Next up in this short series of posts on my cultural highlights for 2017 is art works. So, a minimum of words, letting a few favourite pictures seen this year speak for themselves, but naming the gallery where I saw each work (which is not necessarily its permanent home) as well as art and artist.
Friar’s Crag
The Lake District is my home from home. I have been coming here for years, the first time on a family holiday when I was eight or so. I became entranced by the rugged beauty of the places, the clearness of the rivers, the colours and roundness of the stones, the single-word poems that wereRead More
MirĂ³ in Bologna
To Bologna for a few days, mostly on film matters, but I also found time to visit the Joan MirĂ³ exhibition at the Palazzo Albergati. The seventeenth century building is one of those grand palaces dotted about the city whose pomp is now past, but whose pretensions and hauteur still linger on. It serves asRead More