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.

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.