Lazy lacuna

For a person who enjoys writing as much as I do, there is not really any convincing excuse for not having produced more entries in this blog than the inescapable accusation of laziness.

            Admittedly I have been completing the last assignment for the Open University course on Modern Art of the Twentieth Century – but that was handed in (or at least sent off via the internet) on the 26^th of May, and while that might have explained the lack of other written work leading up to this date, it does not really explain the lack of words after it.

            I propose to ignore everything and write as if there was an unbroken daily chain stretching back to when there really was an unbroken daily chain of blog entries.

Come September I will be plunging back in Art History and doing my last course for my degree (I think, you never really know with the Open University, as you need much more than a mere degree to work out the fiendish complexity of how a degree is actually worked out given the courses, modules, exemptions and the phases of the moon than have to be taken into consideration.  And don’t get me started on the impenetrable calculations which go into deciding the class of degree that you get!) in Renaissance Art.

            I am fondly hoping that this course will have less pretentious theory and more taking about the actual paintings.  It says something about the works of art that we will be considering that I have had to search out my old copy of The Penguin Dictionary of Saints so that I can work out why the various slaughtered fanatics with the shining heads are carrying miscellaneous hardware, botanic specimens, weapons, models, keys, books or body parts.  Decoding paintings is hard work at the best of times, even in the modern era when we have plentiful primary documentation to work with, it is even more taxing when we are dealing with paintings whose moral, religious, social and artistic purpose is more distant.            

          But it is stimulating to find out that even the smallest and seemingly most insignificant details might have a truly significant importance.  And this is not just like finding a bee in an Italian painting and being told that the name for the insect in Italian is a pun on the name of the family that commissioned the painting; or that the material used in a tomb is actually an elegant comment on the antiquity and power and wealth of the person who caused the tomb to be built well before his own death. 

            You will notice that there are no specifics in those examples because I am too hot and sticky and lazy to go downstairs and find the books that I would need to fill in the names.  I can, at least, remember that the material was porphyry – a word that I knew and I have used, though it is only recently that I actually looked it up and discovered its unlikely source.  I am sure that I will not be able to stop myself ‘sharing’ my discoveries as soon as the next course gets under way.

            Assuming, of course, that I have passed this one.  Although the work was given in at the end of May the results are not due to be posted until, possibly, the end of this week.

The ‘proper’ restaurant in MNAC, Barcelona’s main and most prestigious art museum on Montjuic came into its own again last week when I met Suzanne on Tuesday and had lunch and catch-up.  Both the conversation and also the food were excellent.

            I have always recommended the restaurant as having the most breath-taking non-view from the large windows.  The restaurant is in the front of the museum and, as the whole edifice is on a hill it commands a sweeping vista of the city up to the surrounding hills.  But, and this is the point, not of the most interesting parts of the city.  Admittedly the large fountain was, for the very first time in all my visits to the museum, working!  That made up for the lack of detail in the expansive panorama which you always assume will be more impressive than it actually is.

            If the restaurant had been on the side of the building then you would have been able to eat looking out towards the sea and would have had an excellent view of all the more famous monuments in the city.  But it isn’t.  Still worth going there and having a meal.  Never let me down, and the lamb shank I had this time was outstanding.

            I did also go and visit a possible candidate painting for the final essay that I have to do on the Renaissance Course.  You have to write about a work or works that you have actually seen, so one of the vast collection in the museum is a given.

            The one that I glanced at was actually commissioned by the city of Barcelona almost 500 years ago, or possibly more (again, I am not prepared to go downstairs to determine exactly when) and there seems to be an interesting divergence in the appreciation of the painting: some critics claim it as one of the first works to bring the Northern Renaissance and the techniques of oil painting and a particular approach to perspective to this area.  They also laud the particularisation of the characterisation of the five donors which appear in the painting and say that this is a dramatic moment in the history of portraiture.  One other critic that I noted while browsing through expensive books that I have no intention of buying dismissed the painting as a mediocre copy of a Van Eyck and complained robustly about its lack of originality.  At least there is a controversy, I am sure that I could make something of that!

            I may work on the painting through the summer and see what information I can get together without too much ‘research effort’ to see whether it is a viable candidate.  I am greatly encouraged by the fact that the contract for the painting figures in one of my set texts and is conveniently translated into English as well.  That is a very good start.

Toni is now back home after an eleven-day stay with his mother, looking after her as she recovered from her recent and successful operation.  To celebrate his return, any excuse, we went out for lunch to the restaurant of the hotel where most of Cardiff will be staying for the publishing event of the year in October.

Talking of which.  My bits are done and edited.  As the days follow each other I am starting to worry, a little, about whether my original plan is going to become a reality.  I still have faith, though each day when nothing happens lessens my optimism.

Still, the sun is shining and even at night there is a more than pleasing warmth.  Admittedly, sleep is impossible without the gentle wafting air of an electric fan, but that is a small price to pay for the sun.  Though not at night.  Obviously.

I am trying to get back to putting my poems on line and have added one, Fatal Flaw, which can be found at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es  Though, come to think of it, I am not sure now that the second word should start with a capital, no, I think that Fatal flaw is better.

Wednesday we are back up in Terrassa for a birthday.  Never a dull moment.

Some sort of milestone!

Half a Million!

It hardly seems believable, but I have now had over 500,000 visitors to this site!  I have reached some sort of significant point in my writing.  Or not, of course.  I know that some kids have millions of followers who regularly read their work; I have two or three followers and a silent readership!

            But I appreciate other eyes getting something from my writing and I look forward to the next half million so that I can reach seven figures!

            Readers are the reason that I keep writing.  So, thank you!  All of you!

Essays now and then

My itching fingers return to the keys to write further episodes in my life in Catalonia.  The gap has been due to the pressures of not writing my final piece of work for the OU course that I have now completed as the penultimate step towards squaring my BA!  I may not have been writing my final essay submission, but not writing something (in academic terms) is a full time occupation and precludes doing anything else.  And the more you don’t do, the more time doing nothing takes up time!  Prevarication is bloody hard work!

            However, now the EMA is done.  Or at least it is sent off.  There was much more that I could have done and even as I sit here typing I realise that there are minor and major elements that should have been written in a slightly different way.  But there is only so much that you can do before you begin to think that the rock of Sisyphus was a mere speck of grit compared to completing an essay.

            I do not make things simple for myself by wanting (always) to take a slightly off-centre approach to what we have been asked to do.  This is not the Open University way and I am determined that my next (and final) course will exemplify a more coherent and strictly OU line on what I do.  Probably.

            As a sign of how I intend to work from October of next year, I have, already, written in the deadlines of each of the assignments that I have to complete.  I have also started a general bibliography in which I am determined to list all of the texts that I have and I refer to so that the writing of the assignment bibliography is not the final fatal icing on the cake when you least need complications.  There are, as there always are, simple ways to make academic life easier.  And I intend to find out the truth of the suggestions that I have assiduously ignored throughout my career.  Many of these approaches, of course, I have taught – but that is just another case of the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ approach to life.  Perhaps it is time for me to follow the advice that I have been peddling throughout my time as a teacher and actually apply it to my life as a student.

            Although the end of module essay is finished, or at least as finished as I am prepared to make it, I do not think that it is in the form that people outside the OU will appreciate – so I am considering rewriting it to reflect more the pseudo-research that I did to complete it.  I do not think that the final essay reflects my interest in the art of Guevara, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the extent of the generosity of the owners of the Guevara paintings that I was allowed to see and photograph in the private collection in London.

            I think that a rewritten essay could reflect more of the work that I have seen, rather than being restricted to one major piece by Guevara.  Let’s face it, my other chosen painter, Hockney, is hardly obscure and it is very easy to find reproductions of any of his works.  The same cannot be said for Guevara and my work should, I think, do something to keep the memory of Guevara alive and anything written about his works should have a wider circulation. 

And that is where Ignacio’s work about his great-grand uncle comes into play.  I have been invited to contribute version of my essay to be placed on a site which Ignacio is setting up and which will contain modern references to the artist.  It will be especially gratifying to have work completed for a couple of tutors give a wider audience.  All it needs is writing – and this time I can take a freer approach.  In theory.  Let’s see how it works out.  At least I have said that I am going to do it, and this site is a place to check up on my progress!

Flesh Can Be Bright

Now is the time for me to get to grips with the editing of the book that is going to be published on United Nations Day this year.  There is a lot to do, and I am still waiting for some parts of the book to be completed.  I am, it must be admitted, a little more confident that my original plan for the book can be realized, though I am also conscious that October is only a few months away and six (count them!) elements in the book are not complete.  But I have faith and at least three of them are in active progress.  I think.

            The physical production of the book is a challenge.  I have my ideas about how I want it to look, but finance and practicalities might dictate that I have to modify my ideas.  I have a series of fallback positions to accommodate reality, but there are some things on which I am not prepared to compromise.  At least, not without a fight.  I have a vision about its final appearance and I want to stick as closely as possible to what I have in mind.

            Now the real work begins as I get the content ready for publication.  October seems very near!

Sun

“Mother, give me the sun!”  I do agree with the sentiment in that phrase, though not, obviously wanting to be in the same position as the young ‘hero’ in Ghosts by Ibsen.  I have been too long not “i’ the sun” as one of the characters in Much Ado has it and I can feel myself getting paler by the moment.

            I have vowed to got to the beach more this year, on the basis that the on-shore (do I mean that, or is it off-shore) wind is more likely to tan the skin – or flay it!  One has to take one’s chances.

Holiday

Just to complicate all of my carefully thought out timetables, we have decided (almost) to go on holiday.  We want to see if there is anything left of the beach that used to be at the far end of Gran Canaria.  Maspalomas used to be one of the triumphs of any holiday on the island, but the last time that we were there we were horrified to see that the beach had become a stony waste and the kiosks had become sea-threatened bastions from a previous existence!

            I do realise that the beach is actually part of a National Park, or at least the dunes are – but it cannot be right to let the beach go to rack and ruin without doing anything substantial about repairing it.  It will be interesting to see what has happened in the intervening years to what was one of the best beaches that I have been on.

            And, of course, it will be time for tanning.

Last efforts!

Count the aches

I have aches in more parts of my lower body than I knew existed.  From my feet to my thighs I am a catalogue of discomfort.  It’s all the bloody walking.  I used to think that the Barcelona underground system was absurdly ‘connected’ and I regularly bemoaned the ridiculous distances that one had to walk between junctions, when the map indicated that they were intersections!  I will complain about Barcelona no more, not after my experiences of the distances that there are between lines on the London underground!

            Perhaps starting a journey in the double station of Kings Cross and St Pancras International means that there is extra walking and I do appreciate the fact that the entrance to the underground, while nowhere near the actual rails, is at the end of my hotel’s street, so at least I don’t have to wait at the irritatingly large number of traffic light systems to get over the Euston Road!  But the walking that is involved in getting around has pushed my daily limit well above what is acceptable!

Once again!

After an unsettled night I did decide to go to Tate Modern and was resigned to the fact that there is a fair amount of walking involved in getting to the front door whatever underground station you decide to use.

            After having got mildly lost I made my usual way to the Rothko room and sat on the bench like seat and wondered, yet again, if these paintings are any good.

            The room looked somehow smaller to me this visit.  Perhaps it was the chatty number of Sunday people clearly unintimidated by the subdued lighting and the massive canvasses who filled the room.  Or perhaps it was a function of my continuing exhaustion – these pictures are not really restful.  At least not to me.  There is a sort of confident expression and a satisfying monumentality, but to be truthful they left me a little cold.

            I think that I was expecting more after taking a course on Modern Art and a course which spent some time on this artist and indeed on these paintings!  But the frission that I have felt on previous visits was not there this time.

            I am sure that I will make a beeline for them the next time I am in the gallery and it will be instructive to see if my attitude changes again!

Lunch and a lesson

I took a bus (how often do I ignore the existence of these vehicles when they could take me nearer to my destination than the tube!) to Trafalgar Square and decided to go to the pub on the corner opposite St Martin in the Field for lunch.  I have this idea that they served the most reasonably priced beer in central London.

            Well, I had a meal of olives and feta cheese as a starter with steak and kidney pudding with mash and veg for a main with a pint of beer – for sixteen pounds and ten pee.  And not worth it, so another tradition goes down the tubes.

Rejection!

Much walking later I almost got to the British Museum, but I simply couldn’t be bothered and made for the Tottenham Court Road tube station and the hotel room.

            The bell didn’t work or the people inside ignored it and they also ignored an increasingly forceful application of the room key on the glass of the entrance.  It took minutes before the 24-hour reception service opened the door and a fairly grumpy me stomped off to the room.

            And here I have stayed, resting, reading and eating the remains of the M&S goodies that survived from the gorging last night!

            Tomorrow the meeting with Clarie and Mary, but before that I have decided, after glancing at a poster on the underground, to go and see an exhibition devoted to Charles Rennie Macintosh in the RIBA in Portland Street.  And why not!

Dedication!

Study Day

A day without a swim is like a tortoise without his lettuice – there is something missing and wrong with the world.  Well, I went without my customary swim in the interests of getting to Camden Town on time for the Study Day.

            It turns out that my abortive attempt to go to the wrong place on the wrong day on Friday saved me the panic of finding out that all my so-called careful planning would have been to no avail and then I would have had to have panicked in real earnest when I found out that I was in Kings Cross and that the OU centre was nowhere near!

            However, that did not happen and I got to the centre in very good time, indeed I was the first person there – even beating the tutor though she, to be fair, had gone to get a breakfast cup of coffee before the start.

            The Day went well and it was fascinating to hear the art choices that the other students had made for their end of module assessments – ranging from Jeff Koons’ Hoover vacuum cleaner to Aboriginal Art!

            We were given valuable practical advice from the tutor and the Day passed quickly and enjoyably.

            One disturbing element was that we found out that tutors are not paid for these Study Days, they are given expenses for travel and accommodation but not paid for their tutoring!  This was something of a shock and is yet another example of how the OU is pressed for cash.

            The cost of a 60 module course nowadays is two thousand seven hundred quid!  I was a dammned sigh more shocked to find out that students in Northern Ireland were paying a quarter of that price!  Indeed I seemed to be the only person paying the full wack.  The others were paying ‘transition’ fees as they had started their degrees within the last few years and so were not socked with the new full amounts.  I did think for one moment that I would be eligible for lower fees as I had already started my OU studies – but it turned out that the 70s was an era too far away to qualify!

            As long as this year goes as it should and I successfully complete the course on the Renaissance next year, I will finally have completed my degree some forty years after starting it!  Slow and steady etc.

           

Swim?

I was stymied in my attempts to go for a swim after the Day by finding that my ‘local’ pool had closed at half past five.  Further enquiries elicited the response that all other pools owned by Camden would be closed as well.

            By way of compensation I went into the concourse M&S in St Pancras and bought whatever took my fancy for a slap up meal in the hotel room.  It cost a fortune, but then what hasn’t in London, and was delicious: smoked salmon and spicy dressed crab accompanied by layered homous – and that was only part of it.  And part of me is appreciative of the fact that I eschewed the opportunity to buy overpriced red wine and settled for tap water!

            An earlyish bed time and I arose, aching in every joint to greet a grey, damp depressing day – as of course befits a British Bank Holiday.

            Well, I do not intend to spend my time on the outside, I will flee to the more comfortable (and considerably drier) surroundings of a few of our Great Galleries!

            Bring the Culture ON!