Why This Is Hell

Partially updated - more to follow.

I wanted to go and see the Eadweard Muybridge exhibition, and the Turner Prize shortlist, if only to see the Otolith Group entry. Tate Britain offered a number of different exhibition combinations, but not Muybridge and Turner Prize, so I was forced to see the Rachel Whiteread drawings.


Let's dispense with her - here's her drawing of a floor, and of wall paper ... okay, more interesting are designs for sculptures, such as House and the Fourth Plinth, and various found objects, but whilst it's sort of fascinating to see someone drawing a keyhole rather than a lock, I find the other people in the exhibition more interesting than the exhibition itself.

Muybridge, though... First, let me warn you there is NUDITY, yes, NUDITY. Not rope stuck up the jacksie nudity of Mapplethorpe, but among the action photographs Muybridge took are athletes in the altogether. And this includes self portraits at 56. Given each of these pictures is about 2cm by 3cm I cannot help think that this is over reaction. One hopes all the nudes in Tate Britain are similarly warned about.

Muybridge is most famous for the invention of bullet time a century or more before The Matrix - images of horses, dogs, elephants, athletes and such like in action, with some of these then animated zoopraxiscope style. I see there is more of these in the Kingston museum, which demands a visit early next year. He also did action photographs of throwing buckets of water - capturing movement in stillness.

But that's the second half of his career. He also travelled extensively in the Western US, taking landscapes and stereoscopic photographs of Yosemite, Alaska, San Francisco and so forth, including native Americans (of the Tlingit variety, among others). His waterfalls an lighthouses are very striking, as is his anthropological stuff. The discovery that he had a business on Montgomery Street triggers a vague memory of PKD's address at some point, and his association with Leland Stanford triggers something about androids. There's also stupendous panoramas of San Francisco c. 1878. Astonishing.


The four artists on the the shortlist for the Turner Prize are Susan Philipsz, Angela de la Cruz, Dexter Dalwood and the Otolith Group. Philipsz offers soundscapes - folk songs sung through three speakers in an otherwise empty room. I could take or leave; I'm guessing you need to spend an hour listening. I couldn't be bothered. de la Cruz offers single colour canvases, which are then crunched up. Clever clever but not clever. Cute. Although they look vaguely kinky. Dalwood offers traditional canvases, and is my favourite, although probably he won't win. He's inspired by various novels and novelists, and there's a nice political edge. The Otolith Group are Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun (he of the book More Brilliant than the Sun on Sun Ra etc) and offers sf - they've dressed up as aliens before. Here we have a dozen screens showing episodes of a Chris Marker documentary on Greek culture and philosophy (each is 26 mins - you can't see them all) and a film which public service announcement starts on the hour and is about 50 mins. The film is based upon the conceit of filming an unrealised Sanjit Ray script The Alien, and is a mixture of found footage, clips from Ray and new stuff, mostly trying to cast the various parts, which include Arthur C. Clarke. When you hear the words "Its a not an easy thing to meet one's maker" an "I want more life, father", you wonder if Ridley Scott is reaching for his lawyer. I suspect it's half an hour too long - but then I tend to find that I get the point of video art long before it finishes.

In the meantime, I found a copy of a book secondhand which is the first step in a little artistic project of my own. Only another dozen copies to find.

I need to sit down again and update this, and I'm 11 days late, but,hey, this is a public service not a job. I'm still hoping to get to London to do the two exhibitions which close tomorrow but I doubt I will. I really, really should.


Closes September 2010

• * Surrealism in Sussex 29/5/2010-12/9/2010 Pallant House, Chichester
• * Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries 30/6/2010-12/9/2010 National Gallery
• The Surreal House 10/6/2010-12/9/2010 Barbican
• John Bock 10/6/2010-12/9/2010 Barbican
• Kati Horna: The European Years 16/6/2010-12/9/2010 Pallant House, Chichester
• * Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna 19/6/2010-12/9/2010 Pallant House, Chichester
• Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera 28/5/2010-19/9/2010 Tate Modern
• The Courtauld Collects! 20 Years of Acquisitions 17/6/2010-19/9/2010
• BP Portrait Award 2010 24/6/2010-19/9/2010 National Portrait Gallery
• Walk in the Park: Images of the South Downs 1/5/2010-26/9/2010 Towner Gallery, Eastbourne
• Sargent and the Sea 10/7/2010-26/9/2010 RAA
• Lily van der Stokker 15/5/2010-26/9/2010 Tate Liverpool
• Tate Collection Display: The Languages of Modernism 15/5/2010-26/9/2010 Tate St Ives

Closes October 2010

• Frederick Cayley Robinson: Acts of Mercy 14/7/2010-17/10/2010 National Gallery
• Camille Silvy, Photographer of Modern Life, 1834 - 1910 15/7/2010-24/10/2010 National Portrait Galley

Closes After November 2010

• Salvator Rosa (1615-1673): Bandits, Wilderness and Magic 15/09/2010-28/11/2010 Dulwich Picture Gallery [I am semitempted by this]
• Tate Britain Duveens Commission 2010 28/11/2010 Tate Britain
• Turner Prize 2010 5/10/2010-2/1/2011 Tate Britain
• Move: Choreographing You 13/10/2010-3/1/2011 Hayward Gallery
• Peter Lanyon 9/9/2010-6/1/2011 Tate St Ives
• Rachel Whiteread: Drawings 15/9/2010-16/1/2011 Tate Britain
• Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals 13/10/2010-16/1/2011 National Gallery
• Cezanne's Card Players 21/10/2010-16/1/2011 Courtauld Institute
• * Eadweard Muybridge 15/9/2010-16/1/2011 Tate Britain
• Gaughin 30/9/2010-16/1/2011 Tate Modern
• Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes 1900-1939 18/9/2010-16/1/2011 V&A
• Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion 15/10/2010-16/2/2011 Barbican
• Nam June Paik 17/12/10-13/3/2011 Tate Liverpool
• Love, Magic and Power 10/9/2011-8/1/2012 V&A
• Toulouse-Lautrec And Jane Avril 16/6/2011-18/9/2011 Courtauld Institute
• Postmodernism 8/10/2011-15/1/2012 V&A Rooms 38 and 39, and North Court
• Aestheticism: Beauty in Art and Design 1860-1900 4/7/2011-// V&A
• Mondrian || Nicholson: In Parallel February – May 2012 Courtauld Institute
• 100 Years of Hollywood Costume: Virgins and Vamps, Saints and sinners (TBC) 4/2013-7/2013

A belated updating - red events should be open now. Check with venue before travel.

Closes in May 2010

• Chris Ofili 27/1/10-16/5/10 Tate Britain
  
• Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World 4/2/2010-16/5/2010 Tate Modern Recommended
• Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey 24/2/2010-23/5/2010 National Gallery
  

Closes in June 2010

• Irving Penn Portraits 18/22/2010-6/6/2010 National Portrait Gallery
• Christen Kobke: Danish Master of Light 17/3/2010-13/6/2010 National Gallery
• Paul Sandby RA: Picturing Britain, A Bicentenary Exhibition 13/3/2010-13/6/2010 RAA, Sackler Wing
• Modern Times: Responding to Chaos 3/4/2010-13/6/2010 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea
• Tony Bevan 3/4/2010-13/6/2010 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea
• Barbara Rae RA: Prints 19/4/2010-20/6/2010 RAA
• Underwater 3/4/2010-20/6/2010 Towner, Eastbourne
• The Indian Portrait 1560 - 1860 11/3/2010-20/6/2010 National Portrait Gallery
• Relics of old London: Photography and the spirit of the city 10/2/2010-22/6/2010 RAA, Architecture space
• Treasures from Medieval York: England’s other capital - 27/6/2010 British Museum

( Closes after June 2010 )

Not quite a cultural day as planned - I caught earlier trains there and back so I was in London for 10.30, but in need of coffee. Not having found any Cafe Nerds in the Bankside vicinity (but two Starbucks) I failed to complete my loyalty card but did mark a third dissertation after two on the train (am slow at these).

Thence to Rodchenko & Popova, two Russian artists from the dawn of the Soviet age, who engaged in non-objective painting, sculpture and I guess typography. Lots of triangles and lines painted onto canvas - the sort of thing that makes you feel you could do this. Not exactly disappointing - worth the fiver it cost me avec Art Fund card - but I didn't feel I needed the catalogue.

Then, delayed by a 99, I have an hour to walk to Haymarket, and buy lunch. I had ten minutes to spare, and the Upper Circle feels vertiginous when you are winded from a fast walk. On the other hand, I suspect there was no Tube route that would have been that quicker.

I don't think I've seen Waiting for Godot since a school production, in the round, so it was interesting to see how a major production would handle it. The set looked like a bombed out tenement, all grays and shadows, concrete and a lone tree, on a rake. Didi (Stewart) and Gogo (McKellen) are the two bowler hatted tramps, not quite as Laurel and Hardy as they could be, and not quite as music hall in the patter - Didi is more performative, especially on his own, and in the second half. The post curtain call exit owes something to Underneath the Arches routines.

Didi is the more cheerful of the two, the one who risks being brought down; Gogo, on the other hand, is Northern grim, looking on the dark side, seeing the cloud to every silver lining. He's also got less of the gift of the gab, relying on repetition in the tennis match of dialogue. It's a dependent relationship, one can't live without the other, as they wait together for the unseen Godot. Always it's tempting to read for metaphor - the living each day as if it's the last, the risk of dying in a state of sin (why else the speculation on the fate of the crucified thief mentioned by two of the evangelists?). And yet - Pozzo (Simon Callow, perfectly cast) and Lucky (Ronald Pickup - you'd know his face if you've seen any Dickens, or any ongoing British crime series) cut across this. Another dependent relationship - the master who cannot live without his slave, though the slave has no agency but to kick. If Waiting for Godot is a play where nothing happens twice, and The Tempest where nothing happens once, then Lucky is Caliban. He knows how to curse - or at least to kick and stamp - and gets the longest speech in the play. It's a thankless part, but he did get a round of applause so maybe not. Are they an older version of Didi and Gogo?

If the play were pure fantasy we wouldn't seek for subtext.

Rewatching, it's striking how far Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead lifts conceits and techniques, although it's tempered by the Hamlet intertext. Still, Hamlet feels like a ghost behind this play, in conversations about graves, in looking at clouds, in passing the time.

Then, after a slow exit (so many stairs), a march back to Charing Cross to catch the earlier of the two trains I'd scoped out, rather than going to the National to do the Picasso prints, or to the Haymarket Cafe Nerd. In fact, the previous train is still there, and I sneak on it, although without more than an apple and the dregs of water. I mark the remaining dissertation I have with me.

At Tesco (and here you need to insert the four letter f word, the six letter f word, at least two different four letter c words and a side order of seven letter c words, not to mention the b word (six, seven, and indeed nine) and even, I'm afraid, the twelve letter s word) to buy tea - and there are no tills. I am forced to use the self-scan; the first item won't. Five minutes later help arrives. Then I keep getting into a loop where it keeps asking for a Club Card - it cannot compute that the credit card is the clubcard but I want to pay with a debit card (and I wanted cash back). Fifteen sodding minutes. Leaving aside the queuing.

Thence to pub, and too many pints.