“I was losing so much money that in
desperation I turned to Shakespeare,” so said Lilian Baylis when she was
looking for ways to keep the Old Vic going – High Culture as a Way Out!
While I am not trying to found a
ballet or drama company, I am trying to keep my sanity in a world (or at least
the bits of it that form my construction of life) that appears to be going mad
with a manic intensity.
Every day I make a vow that I
will not listen to the Today Programme on Radio 4 (courtesy of my Internet
Radio) and gnash my teeth in impotent fury at the latest idiocy of the so-called
government of my country, and I will certainly not find out what the latest
inanity, insanity or impertinence of the so-called POTUS might be. Each day I fail, and each day I feel the same
(or perhaps growing) fury about a series of situations that are (at least to
me) patently the result of fatally flawed ideas and characters.
So, much like Lilian, I turn to
(sometimes) Shakespeare, but more often art and music to keep myself sane.
Over the last week I have visited
two art exhibitions (in mental self-defence) and done my 'homework' for an opera that I am going to next
week.
Both the exhibitions are on at
the Caixa Forum in Barcelona. The first that
I saw was “Toulouse-Lautrec and the spirit of Montmartre”[1]
a large exhibition that has a range of material to consider. It is not merely an exhibition of paintings
and drawings, but, as befits the period, it has a range of posters, magazines,
advertising pamphlets, shadow puppets and photographs.
The music, theatre, music hall,
club scenes are all covered and for me the main interest was in finding out how
many of the art movements, at least the more progressive (and transgressive) ones!
It is perhaps easy to take a person
like Duchamp and then go looking for precursors, and find them in the febrile atmosphere
of the fin de siècle demi monde of late nineteenth century France, especially
the bohemian art centre of Montmartre.
This is an exhibition worth visiting
- and searching for your own illuminations in the history of art!
The second exhibition was “Velasquez
and the Golden Age”[2]
which is built around the loan of seven Velasquez from the Prado in Madrid with
each painting being set in the context of other works from a range of artists
to give some sense of where the paintings of Velazquez could have taken some of
their inspiration.
The themes are Art; Learning;
Mythology; The Court; Landscape; Still Life and Religion.
This is an important exhibition. It is not often that one gets the chance to
see this number of Velazquez outside of Madrid and we must be grateful to the
Prado that they have given the whole of their quota (no more than seven
Velasquez to be loaned at any one time) to the Caixa Forum for this exhibition.
I have to admit that I have only
been to see the paintings on a fairly quick trip that was more to get the
catalogue and look through it to gain some background knowledge so that I can
make a more leisurely trip later. As the
catalogue is only available in Catalan and Spanish, it is a labour of mild
misery to read through it! But, the
catalogue “Velázquez Y El Siglo De Oro” is a large format publication and gives
excellent reproductions of the paintings and of details of those paintings (all
59 of them) and that is the most important aspect!
This is a major exhibition and I
will have to steel myself to hack my way through hordes of school children to
get to see the paintings in the future.
I was lucky that I went to the exhibition the day after it had opened
and, as the lady in the shop told me, “That is the first catalogue that I have
sold!” When the trips and visits
schedule gets under way then quiet contemplation of Great Art is going to be
impossible.
But that is a good thing. For kids to see it. I am more than prepared to wait for people to
pass, if there is the slightest chance that the artistic attitude of the young
can be formed by a school trip!
There are certainly paintings in
the exhibition that will have an immediate appeal to the young and, with one
painting in particular, I would love to hear it explained to junior school
kids! This is by the artist Alonso Cano,
is in the section devoted to Religion and has the innocuous title of “San
Bernardo y la Virgen”[3]. Look up the painting on line and think about how
you would explain it.
This is an exhibition to revisit!
While you are here, you might like to consider visiting my poetry blog:
https://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com/2018/11/daily-run.html
where I have posted a new poem.
