Art gets me every time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My un-birthday continues as my mind works reality into a progression of gifts (free swimming lane; excellent cup of tea in the café; delicious menu del dia; a glimpse of sunshine etc) as well as an actual gift, the catalogue from the National Gallery’s exhibition of Poussin and The Dance, which I have now read.  It always helps the process when so many of the pages are illustrations!

     I have a soft spot for Poussin, even though I often find his paintings repulsive in their Classical, static, theatricality.  He was the first painter that I studied in the History of Art section of my O Level Art.  The list of French painters we were asked to consider stretched from Poussin to Picasso – even though Picasso was Spanish, born in Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain (though Catalonia claims him, and Picasso himself said that his soul was Catalan) though I think that the course talked of French Painting rather than French painters, so with the amount of time he spent in France, and the importance of his early work being completed in France, they might have a claim as well.  I might add that all the painters were white and male – surely something that would not be tolerated today!

     The Catalogue of Poussin and The Dance is something that can be held in one hand and the essays which make up the academic content of the tome are very readable and approachable.

     As is usual for me, the art that I find the most engaging is the preparatory work of sketches.  There is one compositional sketch where you have to keep telling yourself that this artist was born in 1594 – because the sketch looks like something that could have been produced by an artist from one of the -isms of the early twentieth century!

     The catalogue ends with a concentration on A Dance to the Music of Time, which was painted in the 1630s, and is now in The Wallace Collection in London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     If you have not been to The Wallace Collection, then you should go.  It is free, it’s in the centre of London and it has treasures – as well as an excellent café in the refashioned courtyard.  I always enjoy pointing out that The Wallace Collection and the building in which it is situated (Hertford House, Manchester Square) was given to the nation in an astonishing gesture of generosity by the FRENCH widow of Sir Richard Wallace in 1897.  

 

     

 

 

 

 Just remember that when the Brexiteer cretins start bad-mouthing our closest neighbours.

     Go to the Wallace Collection website at:

https://www.wallacecollection.org/art/collection/history-collection/

to get a flavour of what is FREE for you to visit in real life.

     I am conscious, as I urge others to go to see a collection, that I have not been to an art gallery for far too long.  Admittedly in this benighted country, national collections are not free to view, and I am sure that if many Conservatives had their way (as they did under the odious Heath) they would impose museum charges.  In my view FREE ENTRY TO NATIONAL COLLECTIONS is a right, there should be no restrictions for a person to view what is a distillation of their heritage.  To get a sense of the range of FREE entries to places of wonder that I greedily visited when I was resident in Wales, check out:

https://museum.wales/

     It is about time that I revisited MNAC in Barcelona which, even if it is not free, I do have a very reasonably priced season ticket, so I am never under the obligation of “having to see everything” when I go there to “get my money’s worth”!

     One thing that reading about Poussin has prompted me to do, is think about reading A Dance to the Music of Time sequence by Anthony Powell, in all its volumes.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have one or two of the novels lurking on my bookshelves, but I have never started it because I hadn’t collected the “full set” – a specious reason for literary inactivity, but one I think I will begin to remedy.

     If I can find the books in the grotesque disorder of my so-called library!  Whatever, it is always fun searching and I will probably end up reading something entirely different, having been seduced by the magic of long closed pages.

Sunshine after rain

No sooner had I started for my Catalan lesson on my trusty bike than the skies opened and lashing rain assaulted me.  I had to wait for the protection of a bridge before I could dismount and rootle around in my backpack for the bike rain trousers (there must be a single word for them, surely, that phrase is just so unwieldy – leggings perhaps) and go on my less damp in the nether regions way, conscious at the same time of the amount of static electricity I had to be generating from the swathes of waterproof nylon in which I was now encased.

     God alone know what impression I made as I eventually dripped my sodden, baggy way into the class – though one member of the group was delighted that she had finally seen me in a pair of long trousers, albeit of a strictly utilitarian persuasion!  I divested myself of various wet garments and eventually I was able to sit in remarkable dryness given the ferocity of the storm.

One of the reasons that I love this country is that, at the end of the class, I went out to ride home in blustery sunshine.  There is none of the spitefulness of the lingering rain syndrome so common in British weather.  In Catalonia it can be raining, misty, cloudy, cold, blowing a gale – but you can virtually guarantee some sunshine at some point in the day.  It is a rare occurrence indeed when the sun stays away for an entire twenty-four hours.  Delightfully rare!

The waterproofs (that’s the word!) were bought during my last visit to Wales and haven’t been used since I returned, so I will have to ensure that they are thoroughly dried before they are put away, because it might well me months before they are needed again and I do not want to withdraw a moldy garment from its packaging when occasion calls.  In the UK you can put them away in their damp state because they will be called into use far sooner than any mold could form!  Or at least, I like to think so, it makes me jocose when the weather here is not as equitable as I would wish it to be!

The fear of the upcoming examination in Catalan is developing.  One of the participants in the class asked for clarification of what exactly was going to be in the test (a much more comforting and less intimidating word) the week after next, no, at the end of next week I now realize.  We have done two pieces of writing (that have been corrected) that will be models for what we will have to complete in the test and we have been given pretty clear indications of what sort of vocab we will need to be conversant (exactly!) with.

In the description of my house that was one of the topics, I tried to explain that of the three stories that comprise the dwelling, the ground floor is taken up with the entry and the staircase, the living quarters start on the first floor with the living room/dining room and the kitchen.  The problems came in the way that I translated ‘living quarters’.  I went for a literal translation from English to Catalan “els quarts d’estar” which I suppose would be something like “quarters of being” – perhaps unsurprisingly this stumped the teacher who demanded to know what I meant.  My explanation ranged over three languages and was not easily resolved.  There is a Catalan phrase for “living room” which is “sala d’estar” – the ‘room of being’, so I think that my attempt is more than reasonable.  But it didn’t pass muster, and I was offered the complex alternative of “l’allotjament” or the much simpler “l’habitatge”.  The ore astute among you will have realized that my typing all of this is merely a device to try and fix the words in my mind so that they can be used to great effect in the examination.  Anything is worth a try, to get a foreign word to stay in my mind!

The other topic we had to complete was an email to a friend.  Given a free hand to write what we liked, I always tend to veer towards my own interests, so exhibitions in art galleries or operas in the Liceu tend to be my stock in trade for such pieces of writing.  I told my friend that I had been to an excellent exhibition in MNAC and I was then able to list the Catalan artists whose work was featured in this fabricated show.  Outside of Catalonia how many of the following artists would be known: Ramon Casas, Joaquim Mir, Joaquim Sunyer, Modest Urgell, Joan Brull, Ramon Alsina?  The Catalan artists with world recognition are probably Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró – and Picasso, of course.  Yes, I do know that he wasn’t Catalan, but Pablo himself said that he had the soul of a Catalan and so he is counted!

It is one of the delights of living near MNAC in Barcelona that I have been able to get to know a whole range of Catalan artists of whom I had never heard before I lived here.  All of the names above now mean something to me and I can link specific works of art to the names.  Of all of the artists that I have come to appreciate living in Catalonia and being able to see their paintings relatively easily, the artist whom I most admire is Ramon Casas – a draftsman and painter whose charcoal sketches of the good and the famous in Barcelona (his sketch of a young Picasso is constantly reproduced) are astonishing.  Yes, perhaps his art did not develop in a way that influenced world painting, but he remains a remarkable second or third order artist and one who deserves a wider audience for his work.

Not long after I first arrived in this country a local newspaper produced a whole series of books featuring Catalan artists, all of which I bought and which provided a firm foundation for me to begin to build my knowledge of a whole new school of art.

Always learning!

Failure works!

 

I’m not going to MNAC (the Catalan National Museum of Art) because of the shower.

I am not, I am the first to admit, the most mechanically minded person in the world.  Although I take a passing interest in how things work, I prefer to remain in the area of the theoretical than actually getting my hands dirty.  And the (eventual) making of competently constructed IKEA Billy Bookcases remains my signal achievement in full-on construction.

So, the metallic unravelling of the coiled steel flexible surround to the shower hose was a problem that could be easily ignored because, although aesthetically irritating, the water still flowed and was as efficient as when the metal was ravelled.  Until you take into account going to the beach.

No matter how still the day, when you leave the littoral sand will have adhered to your legs, and hairy legs mean that the sand seems to adhere more closely.  And it further little matters how efficiently you shower the leg-sand forms a sort of carapace which shrugs off vertical attempts to clean.  You stand under a shower and the leg-sand stays; you need to unhitch the shower head and direct the water jets directly at the stubborn silica.

And that is where the problem with an unravelled surround begins to play a major part because the cheap, anemic plastic tube that is revealed as the metallic trappings fail becomes susceptible to kinking and stopping the water flow.  It has to be replaced.

Now, I have done this before and I know that it is not really that difficult.  The only problem arises if you lose one of the washers that seal the joints or if its rubber or plastic has perished and only the pressure of its situation keeps it operating.  Opening up the joint sometimes is the last gasp of the washer’s efficiency and the thing has to be replaced as soon as it touches the atmosphere.  This did not deter me as I have a supply of washers.  Where they are I know not of, but I know that they exist.  

 Probably.

I had bought a new tube and it has lain in my bathroom like some sort of fashionable snake for the period of time necessary to galvanize me into eventual action.  And the old one did not unscrew by finger power.

At this point it is probably necessary to inform the reader that the water in Castelldefels is a trifle hard.  And when I say trifle, I am being ironic.  Our water is virtually undrinkable.  Undrinkable, but safe.  

Virtually everyone here buys bottled water to drink.  Water for everything else, e.g. the dishwasher, washing machine etc all need to have an anti-calc tablet added to the cycle.  I do make tea and coffee with tap water, but that was only after a battle royal with Toni who regards tap water as a necessary evil rather than an essential part of everyday life.

The shower head came off quite easily – but that particular part has been replaced on numerous occasions – it was the bath tap connection that was the more problematic.  Even the application of mechanical force via pliers did not budge the thing.  A tentative exploration of the under-tap connection revealed something that felt as though it had been hung in Mother Shipton’s cave for a considerable period of time.  It appeared that the connection was fused on to the tap screw.

After considerable thought stretching into the Nano seconds, I squirted a variety of cleaning materials at the joint and gave it a brisk rub with a scourer.  

 And tried again.   

Nothing.

I then had recourse to a more substantial pair of pliers and what passes for brute strength for me, and, lo and behold! something moved.

When I had finally unscrewed the hose, I discovered that the hose connector and the tap connector had come out as one piece.

Separating those two is something that I could not, and Toni (the reserves had been called in at this point) could not budge.  So, I went to bed.

But just before I hit the sheet (it’s too hot for more!) I attempted to screw the old thing back in again so that I could have a shower in the morning.  And it didn’t work.  So, I went to bed and dreamed uneasy dreams about replacing the old tap with new and the resultant cost and floods that would inevitably ensue.

Once you have got used to showering, the mere idea of washing yourself in a sink is tantamount to pre-Victorian barbarity.  I therefore asked Toni to “have a look at it”, which he did and, of course, managed to get the old hose back on to the tap and I was able to have my customary extended shower.

However, the emotional stress of uneasy dreams together with the ritual humiliation of plaintively asking for help sapped my determination to go into Barcelona and get a parking space before the hordes descended.  Also, I had slipped back to sleep and, once you get anywhere near the 10.00am opening time for MNAC then the chances of finding a parking space anywhere in the (free) car park adjacent to the gallery are non-existent.  So, I gave up and settled for the old routine of typing and a swim to fill the time from here to lunch.

The changing of the hose has just been delayed until the requisite number of spanners can be found to give extra heft to intent.  For somebody other than my good self!

And I have also told myself that my visit to the library of MNAC will be of more use when I have received the first of my Elsheimer books that should start arriving in the next few days.  I will be able to give myself a more thorough grounding in the artist’s life and work and I should also be able to start developing a bibliography that should be give more concrete points of reference for use in an art library.

It is truly wonderful how ineptitude, failure and laziness can all be manipulated into coherent strategy!

Don’t knock it, it’s a way of life!