On Saturday morning got tube to Mansion House and walked down a delightfully quiet Queen Victoria Street in the middle of the City - a man casually cycled down the middle of the empty street.
One turns left and there is the new footbridge straight across the river to the wonderful Tate Modern. (The bridge is called the Millenium B and was part designed by the great sculptor Sir Anthony Caro whose obituary I read with sadness yesterday - he was in his nineties and still working.)
and looking left there is the extraordinary Shard
you really need to check out the house at its foot to get some scale
My main reason for going to Tate Modern on this occasion was that I had a ticket booked for the Paul Klee retrospective. when I had heard that this was opening two days before I was coming to London I couldn't believe my luck and better still when I arrived about an hour too early the gatekeeper laughed and said ' you're fine - go on in'. This was really good because when I was coming out - about an hour after my specified time, it was really packed and I missed all that
Paul Klee falls into the same category for me as Henry Moore - a very powerful influence at a very formative time.
[I should perhaps note here that I was very law-abiding and did not take any pictures so the images I show are of pictures I saw there, but downloaded]
The exhibition was really excellent and if you were to read any of the reviews they are uniformly extremely warm.
Here are some pictures and a story or two.
I was walking and looking when I rounded a corner and was faced with this:
It is variously known as 'Battle-scene from the Comic Opera The Seafarer' and
'Sinbad the Sailor' and it is a w/colur from 1923.
When I saw it I was stunned, for the last time I was in front of this was in it home gallery of Basel in the mid- sixties. I was hitching around Europe with an art student friend - Mick O'Sullivan' - and we purposely stopped in Basel because we knew there were Klees there.
Some years later when he had his first show the biog said that he studied in Basel..........yeah,for about an hour! - I've always been a bit suspicious of biogs since.
Anyway a year or so later I bought a reprod of this on card and it has been with me ever since ( a bit battered now) - the first thing put up in any new abode.
I went on an just marvelled at the drawing and water-colour work:
Historical Site -1927
Harmony of the Northern Flora -
Uncomposed Objects in Space - 1928
Greeting -1922
Low-lands - 1929
I particularly liked this one for the subtlety of the colour-balance and the tranquillity of wet landscape receding to the horizon - maybe Julian Opie looked at this
Part of the ticket deal was that I got a ticket to another show - a retrospective of Mira Schendel, an artist with whom I was completely unfamiliar:
Now the confession;
I'm afraid I wasn't quite so altruistic at this exhibition mainly because I was so astounded at what I saw:
this was a terrific installation of hanging threads filling a whole room
Really these shots don't do the artist the credit she deserves and I intend to investigate a lot more - there was another installation consisting of a large number of different sized white cards with black text, except for one black card with white text - description is poor it - needs to be seen.....experienced.
[later addition -I had forgotten that I did a rough sketch on the spot so her it is just to give you some idea:]
You know, I nearly 'didn't bother' going in - what a loss that would have been. The other thing that struck me was how Eurocentric we really are: because Mira Schendel's artistic life took place in Brazil, I knew nothing of her; I am ashamed.
I went for a tour around the gallery to see what of their permanent collection was up; reduced because they are undergoing a major building programme to open late next year I believe. Even the Turbine Hall was out of action:
Anyway, the collection:
Tanguy
up-and- coming young Spanish artist
I loved the windows but I and Joseph Beuys don't really get on
great collection of Russian revolutionary posters
Love the texture and tone here
I have seen this many times but it still affects me deeply
this exhibit plays interestingly with the Orientalist idea - I wonder what Edward Said would have thought about it
As I was going down the escalator this reflection appeared - I think I am going to have to gather all the reflective pieces together and see what happens
I left Tate Modern and headed upriver by boat to the next visit - Tate Britain - but along the way some images presented themselves:
A wave washed over he front of the boat
The ceiling of the ferry terminal
You realise in somewhere like London how rural ones normal surroundings are and even that Limerick is not a very big town.........but that's not a bad thing
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