A Fabulous Building! Shame About The Art!
These pictures show the quality of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
Unfortunately, it had a collection of the most indulgent and useless art I’ve ever seen.
Except of course for the marvellous Puppy. But you don’t need to go in to see that.
That was the only art with any colour, except grey and brown.
One whole floor was given over to enormous curved steel structures. They would have been so much better in a public space, rather than hidden in a museum.
But the worst piece, was a slide carousel showing continuous images on the wall. All of the slides were blank. If that’s art, I’m a Chinaman!
I would advise visiting the museum on a fine, sunny Monday, as I did.As then, the museum is closed and you can just enjoy the building, the Puppy and their setting.
Grooming The Puppy
Puppy is an artwork by Jeff Koons outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
As it was Monday and the museum was closed, the puppy was being spruced up a bit.
Hull Is The New City Of Culture
It has been announced that Hull is going to be the new UK City of Culture.
I’ve only been a couple of times and in everything I’ve read about Hull recently, there is nothing about one thing that impressed me.
And that is the display of Roman mosaic floors in the Museum.
They are in better condition, than most I’ve seen in Europe and North Africa.
My Exhibition List
This is a list of exhibitions, that I might want to go to or I have gone and enjoyed. Most are in London.
British Museum – The Mostyn Tompion Clock – Ends 2nd February 2014
British Museum – Vikings – Ends 22nd June 2014
London Museum – Cheapside Hoard – Ends 27th April 2014
National Maritime Museum – Turner & The Sea – Ends 24th April 2014
PayneShurvill – Circulation – Peter Newman – Ends 18th January 2014
Royal Academy – Australia – Ends 8th December 2013
Royal Academy – Daumier – Ends 26th January 2014
Science Museum – Collider – Ends 6th May 2014
To Australia Before Breakfast
The Royal Academy had a special show of their Australia exhibition for Friends from 08:30 to 10:00 this morning.
As my boiler is in the process of being changed and my house was extremely cold, I decided to go and took a 38 bus through the rain.
The exhibition was well worth a visit and for me, the paintings of the desert, brought back happy memories of an amazing holiday some years back, where I hired a light aircraft and flew us both round a lot of Eastern Australia.
But as there were few visitors, at that time in the morning, it was almost like your own private view.
This should be done more often.
Imagine being able to walk round an important gallery like that showing the Turners at the Tate Britain by yourself.
I don’t need to imagine, as I did that last night.
A Preview Of The New Tate Britain
I went to the Members Preview of the upgraded Tate Britain. I have called it the New Britain deliberately!
These pictures don’t do the new building of the art justice.
It was also an absolute pleasure to wander round some galleries and examine the paintings and sculpture virtually alone.
But then that pleasure, is one you get from being a member of the Tate. I also found myself in a similar situation at the British Museum at a Members Party.
Underground Art
I had a letter published in The Times yesterday, under this heading.
I’ve been thinking for a long time about the way large bronze sculptures and statues keep getting nicked by Philistines and criminals, who don’t care one jot about our artistic heritage. We also have the controversy over Tower Hamlet’s Henry Moore statue, that they may have to sell.
So when The Times published a piece on art on the Moscow Metro, I wrote to the paper. This is what I said.
Your report “Moscow’s Metro is transformed into a real work of art” (Nov 7) offers a solution to the problem of what to do with the Henry Moore sculpture owned by Tower Hamlets council, as well as other statues owned by local authorities.
Many of our stations have a suitable space, and given that they are pretty secure why don’t we move some artworks there? Statues would interest more people in a station than they do tucked away in a park or housing estate, as they are now.
The more I think about this, the more I think the idea could be a runner.
Tower Hamlets incidentally, has three major stations; Canary Wharf, Shoreditch High Street and Whitechapel. The latter is currently being rebuilt for Crossrail.
All it needs to find a space for the Henry Moore, is a bit of creative and artistic thinking! To site the statue in public in a station, may actually cost less in the long term, as surely insurance would not be so expensive.
Art Under Attack
I went to this exhibition at the Tate on Thursday night.
It was the private view for members and the best bit about the exhibition was that you could see all the exhibits well, as there wasn’t many people there.
Or perhaps a lot of members had read the review of the exhibition in the Telegraph. It opens with this paragraph.
When some bright spark at Tate Britain came up with the idea of doing a show about the history of Iconoclasm in this country why wasn’t the plan strangled at birth?
And finishes with this.
This show may have been tripe, but as a nation, we can’t afford not to support the arts.
I didn’t think a lot to it either, but then I’m no expert and I went alone. However, I did leave with the impression, that the lady folded in Allen Jones‘s work called Chair, had an unlikely resemblance to the late Princess Diana. But then she was only eight, at the time the work of art was created.
A Good Way To Show Small Paintings
I’ve never seen this done before, but it showed the small painting well.
A Good Way To Show Small Paintings
I’m sure many art galleries have lots of small paintings that are never shown and could benefit from a version of this technique.
Milan Cathedral
Milan Cathedral is one of those buildings that you can’t photograph too many times.
The way the spires and the other carvings interact to create different shapes is almost unique and is far superior to the creations of Gaudi.
Again, I’m drawn back to 2001, when the cathedral was surrounded by a massive army of Ipswich supporters dressed in blue. Sadly, I don’t have any photos of that day.
I also went to see the Jackson Pollock exhibition in the Royal Palace. It emphasised how little I know of modern art. But it was very well presented and thought provoking.
Milan is a place that you can really do in a weekend, as the public transport is good, and the major sites are clustered around a few points, like the cathedral and the castle. I was only in the vicinity of the cathedral for about two hours, but if I’d had more time, I could have wasted a whole day, not going further than say a kilometre from the cathedral.
One regret was that I didn’t get up very early and go to the piazza in front of the cathedral, as only at that hour do you really appreciate the beauty of any place of architectural integrity. It was raining hard, so I chickened out!
The Anonymous Widower 