London Lives

For it was written that There Must Be Hares at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. It’s the law. These are by the late Barry Flanagan RA and are wonderful.

Lots of splendid stuff as usual (the Weston Rooms are my favourite; packed with smaller pictures of all kinds). Familiar favourites were there too (Bill Jacklin and Ken Howard), along with loads of new people to look up. In one of the main rooms, David Mach RA exhibited a piece called Silver Streak: a fabulous gorilla made of wire coat hangers. Stunning and clever.

Afterwards I wandered through Shepherd Market, a smart little enclave of restaurants in Mayfair. The area was still waking up at 12.30. These shabby old buildings (below) are nearby. An amazing contrast.

Later, I walked from Maida Vale to Paddington. Not in a very ordered or direct way, but along streets of mansion blocks overlooking Paddington Recreation Ground and others with semi-detached houses and smart cars outside. There was almost no one about. I’ve said this before, but sometimes London’s silence is astounding. It was like a silent suburban street from another time.

Back in Paddington, I ambled around some streets getting background for my novel. It’s not enough to look at maps on the internet or wade through archives (useful those these are). It’s important to walk it and to feel it. My brother said recently that I was having a big love affair with London. He’s right.

This is quite splendidly mad and I utterly approve: At the Barbican, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has set up a walk-through aviary for zebra finches, with electric guitars and other instruments and objects. As the birds go about their daily routine (perching, feeding and so on) their presence on the various pieces of equipment creates a live soundscape. Fabulous.

In the library, I found a fabulous quote about London by Henry James:

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.

From the window of the bus at Paddington, I saw a woman in a long dark fur coat, perhaps aged about sixty. She hurried along with a slightly care-worn look. She had no luggage, so I presume she lived locally. She seemed adrift and slightly out of time; a person one sees increasingly rarely almost as if they are disappearing from London. People like this fascinate me and have long been one of the things informing my writing: Who are they? What were they? What are they?

A couple of years ago I saw an exhibition at the Tate in Pimlico called How We Are: Photographing Britain. It affected me enormously, much more than I could have anticipated. The photographs therein not only form an important document of changing social history, but there, staring out at us, are faces and types of people that are disappearing and that we may never know again. I remember one series of photographs about a factory works outing from the 1950s, with lots of women lined up in front of the coach. There were fearsome matriarchs among them who had a look about them that was absolutely of the era and of their time. Not only are they almost certainly no longer alive, but these women as a particular type no longer exist.

The first truly blustery and rainy day of Autumn. I am snuggled here on the sofa and have no plans to move. I’m catching up on things I’ve recorded this week: a documentary about Alfred Hitchcock, Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain and now something from the Age of Glamour series about Al Bowlly.

The Marr programme is the first of six and was brilliant: this episode covered the period from the death of Victoria to the illness of Joseph Chamberlain in 1906. Along the way, he explored the horror of the Boer War, nepotism in Parliament, music hall and Votes for Women. An extraordinary era which is of great interest to me (1900s, Edwardian Britain, inter-war Britain). I look forward to the remaining series. Next week, we move inevitably to WWI.

The Age of Glamour strand on BBC4 is also fantastic and has covered people of the age (the Bright Young People), golden liners of the era and Art Deco icons (loads of brilliant stuff about the Tube, particularly at St James’s Park station). These programmes also cover interests of mine (Art Deco, design, luxury design, social history). Al Bowlly was a very popular crooner of the era. I love documentaries like this, even about people I have only vaguely heard of because of the social history that is inevitably on display. In fact, I was surprised at how many of his songs and recordings I knew from hearing them round and about on many programmes. Dennis Potter was inspired by him to write Pennies From Heaven. I haven’t watched any Dennis Potter stuff for ages; I must see if they’ve got DVDs in the library. After surviving the bombing of the Cafe de Paris previously, Al Bowlly, poor man, was killed when a Luftwaffe bomb hit his house during the Blitz in 1941.

After a brief glimpse of sunshine, it is clouding over again. It’s very, very quiet today. No noise from the other flats downstairs, barely a car to be heard on the road. Last night, I could see the BT Tower flashing lights and today I discovered it now has a screen counting down to the Olympics.

Foodwise, I have some nice salmon and dill tartlets that I made last night, as well as tomatoes and spinach, some crusty bread, halloumi and biscuits. I need not step out of the door if I don’t want to. I’m aware that this is a very lazy-sounding post, but that is what this particular London life is doing today.

The JW Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy has long been on the summer agenda. We left it until the week before closing, which probably explains why it was quite tediously packed to start with.

Beautiful, beautiful stuff  though. Inevitably, the Lady of Shalott was there and was superb. The picture I really wanted to see, Echo and Narcissus (usually at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool) was there, which was especially pleasing. The colours, composition and lines were lovely to look at.

There were also some new favourites: Consulting the Oracle, Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus and Hylas and the Nymphs. Fabulous stuff and makes me want to look out my copy of Ovid’s Metamorphosis again.

Then along to the Corot to Monet landscapes at the National Gallery. I haven’t looked at landscapes for ages and many of these had a very satisfying quality, with lovely use of light.

In the NG shop I picked up The National Gallery in Wartime, about the arrangements for preserving the collections in the event of sustained bombing. The social history and photographs look wonderful and I look forward to reading it.

August 2009 at the Royal Academy

For me, the smaller pieces worked better this year. As ever, the Weston Rooms produced some of the best pieces (in terms of technique and subject matter).

The Damien Hirst piece (St Batholemew Exquisite Pain) was astounding. I always think that I don’t like his stuff until I actually see it. This was a sculpture actually holding its own skin. Astounding.

Image from The Guardian here and video introduction from The Times here.

I bought two postcards: Angus by Maciej Urbanek and Discussing Beryl’s Bypass by David Fawcett. The second title is genius.