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.

It's all in the definition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is much to be said to a Carrollian approach to life, that is, using the work of The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, in books like Alice Through the Looking-Glass, as a guide.

     I was thinking of one aspect in particular, the concept of the “un-birthday” that Humpty Dumpty explains in Chapter VI of Through the Looking-Glass.  You have only one “birthday” a year, but you have 354 “un-birthdays” in most normal, non-leap years.  Thinking about it, the idea of an “un-birthday” is more like something Pooh could have discussed with Piglet and Owl, rather than something out of the altogether darker pages of Carroll, but Carroll has the credit.

     Further thinking about it, I do have a (borrowed) copy of The Tau of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, where the Pooh books are mined to show how far the stories and the characters exemplify elements of Taoist religion, with Pooh himself of course being the prime example of someone or something that can just be!

     Far from being a mere frippery, this book is well worth reading.  Yes, it is witty and amusing, but it is also serious – and a gentle way into one of the world’s major religions.

     The “reading in” of meaning also reminds me of a book that I have treasured for some time, ever since I found a compelling Penguin paperback version in the sixties, The Annotated Alice with the texts by Lewis Carroll, academically (if indulgently, and nothing wrong with that) edited and footnoted by Martin Gardner – any book that prints foreign language versions of the Jabberwocky nonsense poem has got my vote! 

     And there is a lot to think about in what Carroll wrote.  The footnotes do not seem forced, and the wealth of information and thought prompted by discussion of the text can be demonstrated by the fact that Gardner’s book has been republished as More Annotated Alice and Annotated Alice – The Definitive Edition - I am only writing out their titles in a vain attempt to stop my purchasing them!

     So, “un-birthdays”.  These have been on my mind as my birthday was on United Nations Day and, for the second year running, the people with me to celebrate were limited by the pandemic.  To compensate, therefore, I have decided to have a week-long birthday with treats on each of the seven days!

     So far, apart from The Day itself, on other subsequent days I have, so far, had a lane to myself for my morning swim; a truly outstanding menu del dia; the arrival of the catalogue of the Surrealist exhibition in The Tate (ordered months ago); tomorrow a book on the French painter Poussin arrives, so my extended festivities are going well and look set to continue.

     I hope you enjoy your un-birthday days as well!

Costly domestic fountains

 

A curtain of falling water is a most attractive feature to grace a garden – but when that feature is obviously leaking from the first-floor kitchen then its beauty is rather limited.

     Entry into said kitchen was also entry to a sizeable paddling pool, surrounded by electro domestic items that do not do well in standing water.  Displaying remarkable technical knowledge, I turned the water off at the mains and then, with even more technical ingenuity used the dust pan to scoop up the flood and deposit it in the sink.

     The problem was our water heater and, as this is gas fired, I always have an added element of fear when things go wrong with machines of this sort, so we turned it off.   

     Unfortunately, with the heater turned off and the water stopped so that it did not continue to pour out onto the work surface, we were then without any water at all, except that we had in bottles.  As it was the weekend (of course) the idea of getting anybody out without paying a king’s ransom to get them to the house, was unthinkable.

     A weekend without water, except for that in bottles.  We did discover that the outside garden tap was still operational and so Toni traipsed up and down stairs to bring water in buckets to use for essentials.  Cleaning one’s teeth and washing one’s face with water from a bottle of mineral water might have an air of the exclusive and indulgent about it, but it is practically, um, difficult.  And I prefer not to talk about the practicalities of the toilet!

     Monday was a day for phoning around and finding someone, anyone, to come to the house and work the technical magic to get the bloody thing operational again.  Hopes were raised, only to be dashed, but eventually we found someone who promised to come out the next morning.

     He came, he did his stuff and asked for 400 euros!  It is at this point that I should mention that our house is rented.  You would therefore be justified in asking why we were doing anything about something that was clearly the responsibility of the owners, and not, emphatically not, the concern of the tenants.  To ask such questions, merely shows hat you do not rent accommodation in this part of the world!

     God knows, Estate Agents do not have a good press, in these parts they are held in even less esteem than The Press and Politicians!  If you can imagine such a thing.  

   To say that our estate agents have been less than helpful is a woeful understatement – they are militantly unhelpful.  Anything that you might think would be the responsibility of the owners, here isn’t.  All they do is take the monthly rent and do virtually nothing to justify the rake off that they get.   

   In a twist to the usual tale, our estate agent is actually the owner of the house that we rent, but it is done via a Company that we are supposed to assume is an entirely different entity, but the owner of the estate agency is also the director of the company.  We find ourselves in an almost Dickensian situation where the poor estate agents tell us that they are hamstrung by the demands of the evil company – which they also own! 

     Even though we know about their machinations there is little that we can do about it.  The contract we signed indicated that we had responsibilities (a bloody sight more than the bloody estate agents) towards things like sinks, toilets, taps and the heater that one would usually assume is the responsibility of the owner.  Assumptions do not pay bills, and the 400 euros is gnawing away at my very being – that is 25% of the cost of buying a new heater!

     But, enough of moaning about legal thievery.  Let one story stand for the whole despicable lot of them.  When we first arrived in the house, we obviously checked things to make sure that we were getting what we were paying for.  In the kitchen we noticed that there were fitted kitchen cabinets, but, when you opened them the lack of shelves limited their usefulness.  When we told the agents that there were no shelves in the units, they simply shrugged their shoulders and did nothing!  Unbelievable, but an unbelievability that applies to many other stories about the callous disregard of estate agents in this part of the world.  400 euros!  The more I try not to think about it, the more I do.

We have just had a phone call from the company that sent the guy to fix our heater.  It appears that the guy got his figures wrong when he made out the bill for the VISA machine and transposed two figures, so that we have underpaid.  They want their extra money.  I wonder if they would have been so eager if the sums had worked out in their favour?  Doesn’t the parallel meaning of “Let the buyer beware” referring to the seller, obtain in this case?  I am sure that it does, but I don’t think that I am going to be the beneficiary of the mistake.  It somehow makes the paying of the money even more difficult to take!

At least the sun is shining and I have done a little light sunbathing.  We are both taking ‘Sol’ capsules, bought from one of the supermarkets, that are supposed to aid tanning.  The capsules contain carotin and copper and various vitamins and are quite cheap so we have decided to give a month’s worth a go.  They are not artificial tanners, but are supposed to ‘aid’ the process.  I have taken a picture of my skin against a sheet of white A4 typing paper and I will take another photo at the end of the test period.  I will have been out in the sun during this time, but the depth of tan will be the key to success.

     While I am regarding this as little more than a half-joke, Toni – with his proverbially white skin – has rather more invested in this experiment than I.  Perhaps all that the capsules do is focus the mind, and that directed thought will ensure exposure and therefore a tanned skin.  We will see- but as the price of the individual capsules is about 13 cents, not much is invested in the success!

 

Next week, Opera, La Boheme – something to hum and cry along with.  Our production in the Liceu (if it is the same as the one I saw last) is rather showy, but good fun.  I have two criteria for success for a production of this opera: firstly, I want to see people actually eating real food in the Café Momus scene; and, secondly, I have to cry at the end.  Usually this is a cast-iron delight, whatever the production (as long as the voices are half-way decent) and there has only been one true disaster of a performance in my experience where “Your tiny hand is frozen” aria was greeted with stony silence at the end!  I left before the first act had ended.  I expect much better on the 14^th of the month when I go to my isolated seat in the stalls.

     Last month the scheduled performance of Tannhauser had to be Covid-cancelled, so I have been having opera-deprivation symptoms and, let’s face it, La Boheme is something you can wallow in.