I went to Tate Britain today, its the biggest best gallery that is closest to my house, I will also reccomend the Dulwich picture gallery who’ve been having excellent exhibs recently- dont miss the Tirzah Garwood if you get get down here.
Anyway we went to see the Ed Atkins, I’d never heard of him I didnt like most of the show, I find a lot of installation very hard work, its kind of bossy how much of your attention it tries to control- Oh fuck off, also AI stuff ( yawn). I was started to mutter by the end of this show, until we stumbled on the last installation, we didnt watch all of it, I think its quite long, but we watched twenty minutes of Toby Jones reading Atkin’s father’s hospital diaries, written when Atkins senior was in hosptal with cancer. Now this was profound, this was real, this was moving, I could see every patient his father described in my head. Toby Jones wife was watching her husband read this diary, it was heart wrenching, but my partner in his seventies and he could only take so much. I dont blame him. The rest of the show left me unmoved and I dont go to galleries not to feel something.
Sometimes I like laughing at pictures, as much as i like admiring them, the picture below is by an Artist called Carel Weight-painter, war artist and tutor, who taught the likes of Hockney and Peter Blake, I fell down a bit of a google rabit hole with Weight, he mentored John Bratby and wife Jean Cooke- two more of favouite painters. Do you see how these things work? Painters are like comics, they come along - every generation having its stars, but those stars being influenced by people most of the public have never heard of.
Guess who posessed a Carel Weight painting, only David Bowie.
This painting was done during the thirties, the same decade the poem Albert and the lion was made famous by the monologuist Stanley Holloway ( Sophie Dahl’s grandad)
when i put his photo up on twitter a couple of people asked if they were related. No, and just in case you didnt know,Albert and the lion was actually written by an old boy and Panto dame Marriott Edgar, who in himself, both Holloway and Edgar are pure vaudeville- a world that stand up sort of is and sort of isnt. I might write something else about that, another day.
Finally, this painting also made me laugh, its by Joseph Wright in 1791. Its three of William Arkwrights children playing with a ram. Arkwright was a working class boy made good, industrial revolution, Hargreaves spinning jenny and all that shebang. Basically he was loaded, if his kids wanted a pet ram then so be it- I did a bit of googling and wished i hadnt, only one of his children survived into adulthood. That took the smile off my face.
Oh, I know what you mean about tracing children in old paintings to see what became of them. It's awful when you find out that the lively little people preserved in oils never grew up. But perhaps it was a consolidation to the parents that they had the portraits - something few in society then would have.
Yes - art installations can be very hard work for the viewer/listener. I've only been to the Tate Modern once. It seemed to be full of men in black rollnecks with square glasses (like the "It's Grim Up North London" strip in Private Eye), all taking everything (especially themselves) far too seriously. They kept glaring at me! There was a model of a toilet in clear, yellow-tinted plastic (like wee, basically) which I had a good old laugh at, but a man in a rollneck jumper, who was stroking his chin as he contemplated THE WEE-COLOURED LAV looked up at me and glared! Then there were tectured tiles you're meant to walk over, so I did, and got glared at by another rollneck jumper for my troubles. What boring, pretentious farts they were.
Brilliant thanks