Penn Portraits at the NPG

I noticed this blue banner advertising Irving Penn Portraits when I was out taking pictures one morning around the National Portrait Gallery.

Then I noted a special exhibition talk by the exhibition curator Magdalene Kearney to be given today. All I know about Penn is that he is an American photographer, well known for his portrait, still life, and fashion photography.

I left the apartment earlier this afternoon than I needed to, so that I could get a place in the line-up for concessions at the Coliseum for Wyona and Greg. Greg had expressed an interest in seeing the new Tosca tonight. But my final destination was the lecture on the portraits.

When I told the woman behind me in the line-up that I was just holding this place for my sister, who would be here on time to buy the tickets, she looked me in the eye so kindly and said, “I must say, that is noble of you.”

I let her statement go. It would be too embarrassing for me to say that Wyona has stood in similar line-ups for me at least 20 times this month and no one has thought to called her noble.

Other people in the line up were complaining about how slowly the queue was moving forward. I tried to figure out what the rush was, in the first place. I do know that it takes longer to figure out which are the stalls and which is the Royal Circle on the map when the ticket agent asks you if the seats she is offering would be fine. And sometimes the queue has moved so slowly, my mind has to be refreshed about which opera tickets I am buying.

The couple ahead of me on Tuesday purchased their tickets and then took a few minutes to chat about the weather with the ticket seller before they shuffled their way out the door. That held up the speed of the line. Part of the reason the lines moves so slowly is everyone’s ID is checked. I consider it a compliment when the ticket agent asks to see I.D. to make sure that I am over sixty. I think it is easy to tell just by looking at my face.

The woman in the line-up with me, who also sat on the floor to relieve her tired legs, had to get up about 10 minutes before I did. She said it would take her that long to make it up to a standing position.

My free tour of the exhibition was connected with my timed ticket of entry so I had to wait until 7 pm to go in, which was just enough time to take a look at the Alex Katz Portraits. The hour spent walking around the exhibit with the curator was well worth waiting for. She showed how Penn was using thematic devices as early as the 1940’s and how these kept creeping into his work as he moved from full length portraiture to the depth and nuance that comes with his later work where only the face and the shoulders are framed.

I stayed later in the gallery and toured the exhibit again, the catalogue in my hand, looking in detail at what Kearny had only had a little time to draw attention to. To gather this collection together, she had toured all of the famous portrait galleries in America, gathering just the pieces that would show how he photographed the cultural icons of our time -- the artists, musicians, actors and writers.

I love the National Portrait Gallery. Here you can see its initials, NPG written in the floor tile just ouside of its doors.

You can also see me catching the shadows of the gates of the gallery reflected in the floor tile. I also caught shadows I didn't now existed. For example, I even caught my own shadow in this picture.

When I get back home, I am going to borrow the catalogue that was produced for the exhibition from the library.

I thumbed through it in the bookstore and it will make a lovely afternoon's reading.

Arta

National Gallery

David, Connor and I did the survey tour of the National Gallery today. A bit of Gothic, Renaisannce, the Impressionists. I love the tour for it shows how painting has moved through the centuries, from the early 13th century technique of adding gold leaf and using the deep blue pigment, the most expensive of the paints in religious painting, to the quick brush strokes of the impressionists and their desire to catch the changing moment.

We took a quick look at the Jan van Eyck painting, The Arnolfini Marriage, before the tour began. So when the tour guide took us back there and stayed 20 minutes at the painting, it did not matter that we were at the back of the crowd for we had a clear view of it just a few minutes previously. The guide told us facts about history that the picture captured. I am not skilled at reading images. Black and white text always moves along, a paragraph at a time. I was learning how to linger at a painting for a long time, to study the depth of the colour, to notice how natural light is reflected on chandeliers and streaming through windows.
I have heard many lectures in the Impressionist rooms in past trips, every trip hanging out there long after a tour ends.

Hogarth is who I am going back to study next, for I am interested in the satire around the set of pictures called “Marriage à-la-mode”. On tours of the National Gallery, we often stop to see those works in the Hogarth Room. Each time I make that determination and never get to it – study up on Hogarth.

The 11:30 am and the 2:30 pm Taster Tours of the Collection are never the same pictures, though the general format is to show one create piece of work from each century. On Monday the tour guide focused on a book she reading called If Frames Could Talk. The author did the research on the style of frames used, the guide did the reading and I got to walk around the gallery having not the picture the focus point of the lecture, but the frame it was in. Perhaps my favourite line of hers was when she got close to show us how the work we were looking at was once a door cabinet, and then she pointed with her finger to show where the hole from that hinge had been filled and covered over.

Laynie and I did Lucinda Hawksley’s Highlights of the Collection tour of the National Portrait Gallery. I had been there the day before with David and Connor. When they saw the full length portrait of Judy Dench, white on white, Connor said, “Hey, that looks like Mum, David.” I thought he was talking about Janet and that she should die happy with that compliment. But no. I was wrong. He was talking about Judy Dench in a movie he had seen.

At the portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, Lucinda pointed us to a book by Clare Tomalin’s The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft should we want to know about the woman behind that portrait. Next we saw Mary Shelley and heard about the night of lightning and thunder that triggered, Frankenstein. That was followed by a bust of Virginia Woolf, the group leader rattling off a long list of Woolf’s work and then apologizing that the main portrait they have of her is on loan. We stopped at other busts – perhaps 30 on three rows of shelves for Hawklsey had just given a lecture on what we can learn from the beards that we say exhibited there. That is the beauty of the tours for me, someone pointing out the facial hair, shaved half way back under the chin and then a full beard flowing from there.

We saw the new portrait of the two princes, William and Harry, a portrait that will catapult that artist to instant fame.

Sweet Charity

Monday all others went to Sister Act.

I, alone, slipped off to see Sweet Charity which has moved to the West London venue of Theatre Royal Haymarket. You will know some of the tunes: “Hey Big Spender”, “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, and “The Rhythm of Life”. I love what I think are the scenes that “trap” Charity Hope Valentine. With a name like that, it’s a slam dunk that the show is going to be about love, about a guileless and gullible woman who is not only trapped in a nightclub as a hostess, but she gets trapped because she can’t swim and is in danger of drowning in a lake, trapped in a closet of an Italian movie actor Lothario, trapped in an elevator with a nerdy accountant and trapped on the bucket of a broken ferris wheel. I came home making my feet resist dancing up Regent street. I was unable to restrain humming phrases like "The minute you walked in the joint / I could see you were a man of distinction / A real big spender / Good looking, so refined / Say, wouldn't you like to know What's going on in my mind?"

The others party of theatre goers from our house were already home were humming “Hey, lady in a long black dress ....”

National Gallery

I took my camera with me this morning to catch the early morning sun, having strolled through Queen Mary’s Gardens in Regent’s Park yesterday. I was seeing pink blossoms or the red bill of a duck, or a six-foot high waterfall and wishing that I had my camera with me. So it was in hand this morning as I was leaving, and Glen said to me, “If my knees felt better I would be going with you photographing old buildings and bridges. We can catch flowers and water anytime out at the Shuswap.” So I changed the direction I had decided to walk, moving down New Cavendish Street, pausing to steady my hands on fence or a sign post to take advantage of the new morning light.

I paused at Hynde Street at a Methodist Church for I thought the light was just right. I was focusing on the sky and the steeple, using my zoom lens the columns, and taking advantage of the pauses in the traffic to snap pictures of the church in its best form.

It was here a by passer who confirmed to me that what I was doing was fun, stopping his brisk walk to say to me, “Aren’t the buildings magnificent. Every time I come to London I bring my camera, though I don’t have it with me today. I don’t have any sense of what the architecture means. I just take the pictures because I love the look of the buildings.”

I slipped down another block, turned a corner and was startled to see the back of a street person who was only a head higher than the handles of his cart.

His shoulders slopped, his ankles were thick and his legs roughly textured.

I saw the glistening of brilliant fuchsia green on a Harrods bag that was tied to the handle of his trolley. Notable, too, was as a plastic bag underneath the Harrods bag with the word Gorgeous written across it.

I was at my subject’s back and listened to him was calling out words I didn’t understand to people across the street. I didn’t have the good sense to approach him and ask to take picture from the front. Next time.

Eighteenth century London and the royal family have been on the minds of many. During the year, Glen has been working his way through Dickens, by now reading about half of his works. Laynie reads madly on the royal family, so she was hanging out in the Tudor Wing of the National Gallery and has high on her list, a return visit to the Tower of the London, this time to really see the places she has been reading about. I slipped off on Monday to hear D. Shawe-Taylor lecture on Winter Halter’s Royal Family in 1864 and the Conversation Piece.

One lecture leads to another, for he highly recommended the new exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum called “Victoria and Albert: Art and Love”. I thumbed through the catalogue that goes with the exhibit: £45 and maybe four pounds in weight. With the recent cut back as to how many suitcases a person can bring on the plane, it is not the cost of the book, but the weight of material goods that precludes buying much in London. I only have room for 1 ½ more pounds of luggage, which makes buying anything except jewellery out of the question. And I can’t think of another piece of jewellery I want to buy.

More later ...

London The Execution of Lady Jane Grey

Of my own free will, I got trapped in the Painting History: Paul Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey Exhibition on Friday, a pre-paid ticketed exhibition to prevent too many people entering the space at the same time. All of the rooms were empty when I got there. I set aside the day to be there, not something an ordinary visitor to London could do. Someone who has to see all of the sights of London in 14 days or less would be out on this one, but only because the major attractions are many.

I was alone for the day and when I am, my modus operandi is to take a quick walk through every room to get an overview of what I am about to see, and then to begin in earnest, the hard hours I know I am going to spend there.

First, I watched the continuous running movie to see how what the curators wanted me to know.

Next, I did a slow walk of the gallery with the audio guide, knowing that I would do the same thing with the audio guide at the end of the day, walk the gallery, listening to the text once more, to solidify what I had learned. I love the sound of the theatrical diction of the voices and the swelling of the music in and out of the clips on the audio guide.

Finally, I went back to the exhibit’s beginning, this time to check out every original and print that was not on the audio guide for only about 20% of them were described that way. I know that the plaque on the wall beside the pictures is packed with information, but I wear out reading it.

Read the text, step back a few paces to take a look, then going back to read it again. Given all of the other factors that make up museum fatigue, I could see I wanted to eliminate this one.

So I tested out the large-print guide. It is not so much seeing the text with large print that is good, but the fact of having the text in front of me and not having to return to the wall.

I can sit down, read the text and then do a number of pictures without having to refer to the words on the paper again.

As well, this exhibit was so intellectually exhausting for me that I began to take out another of my tricks to keep me going. I put myself in a position on one of the viewing boxes as though I were on one of the pews at church, and then drop my eye lids. I can be asleep in 30 seconds, only to wake when the pencil in my hand slips to the floor or when the book slides off of my lap.

At one point, sitting down, I was thinking of Leo always working with wood, because I sat on beautifully hand finished boxes lined up so that 3 to 4 patrons can sit in front of the painting at the same time. The wood is so beautiful that I run my hand along its edges and can feel a six inch strip of wood etching along both sides of the boxes. I quit look at the paintings to look at the details on the furniture. That is when I notice that the style of it exactly matches the trailing vines and leaves of white stencilling to the left of the explanatory text on the wall of each room as I have been entering it.

At a wall called the Shakespeare Gallery, I stop to look at prints: mezzo-tints, a grey/blue/brown wash over graphite, etchings and all hanging on the wall together, brought together by a theme. Boydell opened a gallery and wanted to found a school where painting was done of historical events. He was successful in that he published 2 books: one, an illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s plays and the second book was a folio of 100 prints, illustrations supplied by artists all across Europe. They were looking at dramatic and historical composition. Boring to other patrons, for they move quickly on by. Fascinating to me and I linger to see which of the Shakespeare plays were illustrated.

For a small break I go into the shop where I can buy a catalogue from the exhibition: £20, which is too much for me, though I doubt it is the price that is holding me back from the purchase because I really enjoy what I scan on the pages. It is just that I have figured out how many books I can read in the rest of my lifetime, and bought them already.

Pearls, medieval candles holders, a hand-carved Tudor rose to hang on my wall, a red moleskin book, so soft that I open it up and examine the binding of it and the grosgrain ribbon that is attached to it for a book mark. Still I buy nothing yet read a few more pages from the catalogue. There is so much interesting detail there that is not on the audio guide or on written the walls beside the paintings, but still I resist its purchase.

Paul Delaroche had a love affair with the model he used for Lady Jane Grey: Madame Annais, a woman who played ingénue parts in the theatre. Research for the exhibition brought the correspondence to light. A glass covered case in the middle of the room with two examples of the letters and a translation from the French to the English. I read the text there and wonder if anything was lost in the translation, so I try to check English translation against my basic and now rusty French. Looks good to me since I do know the word amour. Delaroche’s tender and playful letter to Anaiis Aubert give a sense of the relationship that was between them at the time when he was preparing to paint The Execution of Lady Jane Grey. The fact is that the letters are touching and I lingered over them, looking at his careful handwriting, re-reading his beautiful phrases to her, and looking again at her face as he had captured it on the sketches he did of her, preparing for the larger work, which I then go back to view.

I began to study the small print on the plaques, the tiny line that tells where each of the paintings came from: the British Museum; Gallery de Terrades, Paris; the Louvre; National Museum, Liverpool; Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; Koninklyk Museum voor Schone Junisten, Antwerp; Musee National des Chateaux de Main Maison et Bois-Preau; Depot de Musee Carnivalet, Paris; plus many paintings gathered together with only the words, Private Collection. I start to become overwhelmed, for I know that in the lifetimes of those who have lived before me, they could never have seen such a collection of the world’s treasures. A world of travel to other countries and negotiations to get into private collections could not have revealed what I saw, and there, for the price of $20 and 5 hours of my time I get to drink it all in.
The frames that the curators have chosen catch my interest. I have a measuring tape – my hand. I know that from the tip of my thumb to the end of my baby finger is six inches. I get close enough to the paintings that I can measure the depth and width of the frames – one of them is 12 inches deep and twelve inches wide, gold, sculptured, the relief revealing flowers and vines. So I go on for a while, frame to frame, trying to get words to describe their differences.

Next, I am drawn to the picture of St. Joan being interrogated by Cardinal Bauford of Winchester. This print is from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I have flashback to all I know about Joan of Arc – the George Bernard Shaw play of the same name, the movies where she was the star and I was young girl watching her, and I remember a few years ago, me as a mature student, studying Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), -- seeing the inquisitors pass by in that stunning long shot of the close-ups that reveals their wrinkles and warts. All of that seems to be mixed into the painting I am seeing in front of me.

I am getting tired and go for another of my power naps.

The audio guide promises a wrap up if I will push the play button once more. The text reminds me of Delaroche’s dramatic use of space and his careful attention to accurate detail. Further, the words remind me how he was a precursor to the visual culture of cinema with its moving frame that scans fields and draws the viewer into what is outside of the field of the frame.

When I leave the exhibition, there is one thing more I must do. A Delaroche painting, thought to be destroyed during one of the World War II bombings of London, has been unrolled, and the restoration committee of the Gallery are going to have it repaired. That will take a couple of years. But for now, it is hanging in Room 1, so that all can see the shrapnel damage to it, a painting called Charles I, Insulted. The interrogators are around him, one blowing pipe smoke in his face, others in positions mocking him. I stop by to observe for the text tells me to think about how this pose is a mirroring scenes from paintings where Jesus is mocked. I sit for a long time there before returning to the real world where I hop on the Bus 24 or Bus 29 and head home.

Love,

Arta

Pollaiuollo Brothers

Pollaiuollo Brothers and The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian
Feb 17, 2010

I am spending my day trying to figure out how to spell and then pronounce the Italian name of the brothers who created the altar hanging called The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Pollaiuollo. I can get the “polla” syllable and the “ollo” syllable, but I can’t make those 2 vowels work in between, though the presenter could.

This week, I am a regular at the National Gallery Theatre lectures now, so I hurry to take my place at the appointed hour. And when I am sitting there, I decide that I am never going home.

I went to the gallery early today to preview the paintings of the early 15th century artists but there was an announcement on the intercom that due to “industrial action” most of the galleries would be emptied. People couldn’t get back into the building until 2:15 pm. That is the moment when I saw how many people are really in the National Gallery at one moment, when they all try to stream out of the building at the same time. Rows of employees stood, arms outstretched, silently pointing to Exit signs.

“Am I going to miss the lecture at 1 pm,” I asked.

“No, just the galleries are closed. Not the lecture theatre,” one nodded.

The only person who missed part of the lecture was the man who startled me half way through the lecture – the loudest catch of a snore that I have ever heard in a public place. As well, he woke everyone else up who had nodded off.

I looked for the collective personality of people who sit waiting for a lecture since I am so happy to have found a group like this – like-minded people. My cohort.
l see the dyed white hair of women in front of me, sparse and thin, a raspy orange red color now, dry, frizzled at the ends and I am so happy for her. Still dying her hair. Crooked lipstick. A sparkling pin on her lapel. Coming to lectures and sitting with her friends. I want to be old like that.

A man in a flowing ankle length wool coat walks by, the hem of it fluttering against his khaki pants – a circle of baldness rimming the top of his head and the long hanging shocks of hair hanging down by his ears and along his neck.

Some of the people here are definitely artists. A woman wears her body as art, so beautifully decorated in old age. Another has on a finely knitted yellow sweater full of complicated stitches – the colour flashing somehow under the lights.

Another walks by and nonchalantly pulls off the obviously silk and flowing scarf, a Van Gogh pattern with the sunshine colours of sunflowers from his painting by the same name.

My contemporaries sit alone or perhaps they are with each other. No pre-performance chatting goes on between them. Have they said everything in life they want to say to each other, I wondered. One has a pen in hand and I can see the black ink from its nib filling in the squares of the crossword puzzles.

Another has the daily newspaper stretched out before him, slowly scanning the columns and then flipping the pages.

The lady beside me is eating grapes out of her yogurt container. She reminds me of a woman in a Greek painting at a feast, lounging on a velvet couch and eating grapes? It is the way she is picking the grapes out of the bowl or the leisure with which she raises them way to her lips.

After the lecture is the first time I see groups together talking, ... and eating, couples reaching into a bag that is placed between them. They sit on round benches, the backs of which or beautifully crafted into a long bow that takes the shape of the long curve of the alcove they are sitting in.

I am looking at my contemporaries: the ones who love what I love. Tomorrow I am going to take on a new regime. I am going to use that little bit of pre-noon hunger to work for me, the hunger that staves off an afternoon nap in the middle of a lecture today.

Wyona took Zoe to Jersey Boys for the afternoon matinee. I met them there. We had seats three rows from the front. When Moiya and Dave come next week we have seats mid-centre. The difference in the perspective of the different viewing places is amazing, since we are stating to have tried them all.

Today we were close enough to see the mechanical details that make the performance work. For example, there is a loud knock on the three separate doors which are slammed in his face, when Frankie Valli is trying to find producers for the group’s newest songs. I thought ouch, that must have killed the performer’s hand. He is going to die an early death of arthritis of the knuckles.

Wyona had seen this as well, but noticed hat he took a device out of his pocket and had it hidden in the palm of his hand, probably a microphone, so that when he knocked the sound was heard to the top of the third balcony. When the knock was over, he slipped the unit back into the pocket from which it had come in his trousers.

We saw where the microphones are attached to the wigs, how the costuming changes from jeans and a T-shirt to immaculate suits with silver bracelets on men’s wrists, exquisite silk lapels on tuxedos. We laughed at the capsule of fake blood in a cheek, ready to bite so it looks like the holder of it has been shot in the head.

Jersey Boys, an old show always new one to us.

A toasted cheese sandwich roasted in a Teflon pan for meal for Zoe – that was the full extent of our cooking when we got home. Later Zoe was invited into the front room with us to practise the dance steps we had seen at the matinee. Though she loves to dance when she is with her peers, she resisted, first shrugging her shoulders and then quitting long before Wyona and I could stop our feet from dancing.

Sometimes she just mutters and whispers to herself, “Seniors”.

When Greg came home from work our feet were still going. He sat down tired from work, to watch us and was soon interested in how that dip of a back step is made by using the first and third beat of an eight bar measure as the strong beats and not first and fifth. He was a good dancer in the old days as well. I can see his feet moving to the music but his body is not out of the chair, ... yet.

Am using dangling participles and half sentences today.

Too much fun here to write with real English.

Or to even tell all.

Love,

Arta