"London: a nation not a city": Thus, wrote Disraeli and if he was right then he is even more right today. I stepped out of the Embankment tube station yesterday and walked over the Thames on the pedestrian bridge. The sun was shining and the view was simply superb. On the north bank were the neo-classical traditional London buildings and on the south were the first, not entirely successful, efforts at 'modernism' undertaken post WWII. In the middle distance was St. Paul's in all its pristine glory but behind was the fantastic (in all senses of the word) skyline of the new 21st century City of London. As I strolled along the South Bank on my way to meet 'SoD' I wondered again who in the past had been responsible for safeguarding that promenade and thus holding off the rapacious demands of the post-war developers who would have built right up to the water's edge. The tide being out, not the least of the delights is the sight of dozens of people people, including children, down on the muddy ground between the river wall and the river's edge scrounging for any interesting finds. If any of you find yourselves in London with time to kill, just stroll along the South Bank from the 'Eye' to the Globe and back again.
'Tate Modern' tits!Unfortunately, part way along you will have to pass the Tate Modern gallery which, if the IRA had lacked a target 'back in the day', I would have urged them to do their best-worst on it. It is a hideous building which looks more like an armoury than an art gallery. Most of the art in it is total tripe but, as in all things, there are the occasional exceptions of which the Paul Klee exhibition was a prime example of beauty inside a beast! Needless to say, we entered the fortress and whilst there were plenty of big posters advertising the Paul Klee exhibition there were absolutely none telling us where it was situated. A security guard pointed the way to the lifts and stairs leading to the first floor where, he assured us, we would find it. Arriving at that level, again we looked in vain for any sign to tell us where they were hiding his works and again we had to ask for directions. Do the people who run the Tate Modern have their heads so far up their arses that they never give a thought to the visitors? Needless to say, a huge collection box asking for £4 a head by way of charitable contribution to the gallery was prominently displayed - and determinedly ignored by me - tits!
Yet more 'tittery':The choice of paintings and the layout was superb because they ran from his early pre-WWI efforts as a young man through the inter-war period up to his death in 1940. Thus, you could see the way he experimented with different forms, how he analysed the individual elements that go into a painting - line, shape, colour, composition, texture and so on - until in his later years he brought them altogether in forms that delight and excite the senses. Looking at the very best of Klee's works is like looking at the universe, or looking at the world of sub-atomic particles. Each of the small linked galleries had works from different periods of his life and very large wall-mounted information boards giving background detail of his life at that time. Needless to say, the 'Tate tits' placed these by the entrance/exit between galleries so that the passage was filled with people trying to read the information and other people trying to get in! Anyway, yesterday was my Christmas present from 'SoD' and it was terrific!
'Dr. Dalrymple' knows best: And not only does he know best, he tells it better than most, as well! Here are three quotes via the good excellent offices of In Pursuit of Copiousness from his book "Our culture, What's Left of It":
"Many a man is the Macbeth of his own little world, and the measurement of evil is not the same as a body count."
"Those who think that an understanding of the double helix is the same as an understanding of ourselves are not only prey to an illusion but are stunting themselves as human beings, condemning themselves not to an advance in self-understanding but to a positive retrogression."
"... four centuries before neurochemistry was even thought of, and before any of the touted advances in neurosciences that allegedly gave us a new and better understanding of ourselves, Shakespeare knew something that we are increasingly loath to acknowledge. There is no technical fix for the problems of humanity. Those problems, he knew, are ineradicably rooted in our nature; and he atomized that nature with a characteristic genius never since equalled: which is why every time we moderns consult his works, we come away with a deeper insight into the heart of our own mystery."
More rumbles later . . .
