the heART of it: An Introduction

Love...

A lifetime of memories, hundreds of adventures,  countless new horizons and one Love who is worth all of it

Four little letters. Statement, question, accusation, wish? However you take the Love in your life, this one word can have the most far reaching and life changing of affects. Whether we like it or not, the world seems to revolve around this one little emotion. Wars (if we believe in the likes of Anthony and Cleopatra and Paris and Helen) have been fought for it, monuments have been erected to the longevity and eternal nature of it, plays have been written chronicling it and the English language has been butchered by the music industry to do it justice. For those in it, those looking for it, and those futilely trying to hide from it, Love is everywhere.

The Love/Hate thing... I remember when a boy pushing a girl over meant that he liked her. Weird how these playground antics carry over to bundling in the snow at the age of 28

Now before you all reach for the emergency chord to bail out of some utterly cringe worthy post, I am not taking about me and my +1. Whilst we’re perfectly content in our little rose-tinted bubble of affectionate bickering and annoying each other, this discussion of the heart goes way beyond both he and I. Forty years of unrequited, fought for, and finally accepted and acknowledged Love is something which not many of us will ever experience. When you come across it though, you can’t help but pay homage to it.

My great uncle was 88 and he was in love with the same woman for 40 years. They never lived together, and they never married because he was too shy to ask her for her hand. Instead they travelled the world, saw so many new horizons and experienced everything they possibly could. He died last week. She is heartbroken.

"Grief is the price we pay for Love"

It is to these two wonderful people that the next couple of posts are dedicated. I don’t believe that words can ever do justice to this emotion and what it feels like when it is snatched from us. That said, some of the most poignant and truthful things written about Love are recorded in the shadow of death. Morbidly enough, one of my favourite sentiments about Love comes from a headstone, it reads: Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

 "Death is a challenge. 

It tells us not to waste time...it tells us to 

tell each other right now that we love each other."
Leo Buscaglia

When words fail though, and that magic cup of tea (or glass of champagne if it's a really special occasion!) simply can’t help you express your feelings, art can sometimes find the right path to tread. So much of what we feel as people travelling through this world is based around or linked to Love in some way; to say there’s a lot of subject matter would be an understatement. Add to that the ways in which attitudes to the depiction of Love have changed over the years and suddenly what you can talk about grows exponentially.

Unimaginable highs and the loneliest of lows, Love can throw them all our way, but with so much scope for subject matter, for artists, the sky is the limit.

 Now we all know I can witter about most things until the cows come home, go to bed and get up the next morning, but I promise I’ll keep these entries palatable and interesting, beginning with depictions of the Classics. Oh yes, we’re going old school!

In the Company of Memories

So I may have been premature with my gushing about Spring. In fact, I’m inclined to believe the weather is doing this deliberately; you really can’t rely on some meteorological phenomena to remain constant in behaviour. So it was with some trepidation that I peeked out at the weather the other morning, and promptly decided the best place to remain was under the duvet, and not in the freezing and frankly Dickensian looking morning. Unfortunately it was not to be, and I cursed loudly and in a very hyperbolic and passionate way that Spring was clearly not playing as I plunged into the streets of the capital for my meeting.

Houses of Parliament on a misty morning

It really is amazing how certain thoughts intrude as you’re pottering along. There is something about a grey day in London which always puts me in a reflective mood. There are ghost here, they peer out at us from dank, cobbled passages and soar over us in the cold and crisp air. Memories of lost friends, lost loves and lost beauty linger amidst the lofty glass towers, the traffic and the dust of this city, waiting to be seen and acknowledged again, waiting in vain it seems for the city to slow down enough for us to see one another.

St. Helen's, Bishopsgate - i love the unexpected pockets of history amongst the modern day, turn a corner and you're a millions miles away from the hustle and bustle of the city streets as we know them

That day I walked from Old Street to Green Park, then back along past Saint Paul’s and through to Moorgate before turning my feet home. I love walking in London, it’s such a refreshing change from the Tubes and Buses and it gives me time to think. My somewhat contemplative disposition was enhance by the weather and a certain nostalgia for times past, and it got me to pondering why it is that in a city which is so full of times past, it seems that it's the next big thing we’re always looking toward – after all, knowing where we’ve been must surely inform where we’re going to?

"History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity." Cicero, Pro Publio Sestio

Now, whilst this is perhaps no bad thing for the majority, being a student of history firstly, and art secondly, it really got me down – to the extent that I was starting to get somewhat distressed at our short-term, progressive view point. Geographically stumped as to my exact location, I was wandering (slightly) lost in a forest of glass and concrete towers, when suddenly I came across the most wonderful building which stopped me in my tracks. It’s funny how a small thing can have such a dramatic effect on ones subconscious, but this one really did – the St. Albans Church Tower – is what I would describe as a beacon in the dark, and it reminded me that there are some places in this city where the past and present merge with an image of the future to create something unique, something beautiful and something ineffably hopeful…

St. Albans Church, Wood Street - a welcome diamond in the rough

I’m putting it down to the Dickensian murk shrouding my brain – others may call it one of my blonde moments – but when I thought about it that day, and subsequently, there are many example of ghosts being made flash and blood amongst us. My favourite incarnation has to be the Sir John Soane’s Museum, Lincoln Inn Fields - a stone’s throw from the hustle and bustle of High Holborn. Soane (1753 – 1837) designed the house to live in, but also as a setting for his antiquities and his works of art. After the death of his wife (1815), he lived there alone, constantly adding to and rearranging his collections. It is the perfect place to spend an afternoon, a window onto the past enhanced by the fact that the museum is a house, a home, making it feel as if you have literally stepped back two hundred years, the hum of the modern world hushed to a mere memory.

Sir John Soane's Museum - the proverbial Aladdin's Cave, and a haven for getting away from it all

 Artistically though are there similar moments where past and present collide? Do we still yearn to see those men and women who inspired modern masters, or are they too dispatched to the realm of memory, languishing in museums populated by other ghosts? Shakespeare (brainy bard that he was) once wrote that “what is past is prologue”, and so it seems to me that to ignore the subtlety of past artists in favour of all the showmanship of today would be a great tragedy. Luckily the artistic community still recognizes the contribution of those who have held brushes before them; they recognize the value of images like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Jan Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring and Claude Monet’s famous Water Lilies series – if only grudgingly at times. Having been to the Da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery, I have witnessed first hand the passion we still hold these artists in, and whilst they may not be seen in the most cutting edge of galleries, they are still a part of modern culture, if only as a footnote to the contemporary.

Jan Vermeer, Girl with the Pearl Earring, 1665. Oil on Canvas.

Whilst I guess in the end we’re all ghosts in this great metropolis – passing through, leaving memories for those who remember us and just another empty space for those who don’t – there seem to be some places where we can immerse ourselves in these spirits of bygone eras. Whether it’s walking through the streets or sitting quietly in a museum, I would council us to keep the company of these memoirs every now and again – not at the expense of the present you understand, but as a silent companion to it every once in a while.

Pablo Picasso, James Bond and Some Art Thievery...

What does one do with a day off in London? In my case it involves a little shopping, a food trip to Selfridges and going to the new Tate exhibition with my lovely +1. I’d like to interject here and say that I was in no way dragging him along with me, but considering for our second date he took me to see Da Vinci it seemed fair to repay the favour. My turn came in the form of Picasso.

Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937. Oil on Canvas

Now, don’t ask me why I feel this is true, but every now and again I manage to link two entirely different cultural figures together. In this case, James Bond and Picasso – weird huh? I don’t know whether Picasso was a fan of a good martini like Mr Bond, in fact I believe he preferred Absinthe, but they do share one common factor – the power of their names. The mere whisper of either conjures images of exotic places, beautiful women and decadent lifestyles. Along with Bond, whose character and image will be forever linked to things like an Aston Martin, a smoking gun and some great tailoring, Picasso too has some strong associations like Post-Impressionism, political iconography (in the shape of his piece Guernica) and holding the (somewhat dubious) honour of having created some of the most expensive artworks in the world…

Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,1932. Oil on Canvas At 66m, this Picasso is renowned for being the most expensive painting of his ever sold. Can we ever forget the price tag though and enjoy it as an image?

Personally though, before we pottered down to the Tate Britain to see the new Picasso and Modern British Art show, I have to honestly say I wasn’t that enamoured of the great man. Like Bond before the Daniel Craig reinvention, I felt that things had become a little samey. I knew a lot of the images, I knew a little of the man, and I was kind of ambivalent to the dizzy heights of value that his pieces seem to inspire. The thing that has always got up my nose about Picasso, is that even his minor (and I’m not about to sugar coat it - bad) works have taken pride of place in museums over much better works by ‘less significant’ artists. So I know that it’s Picasso, but to me it would be better to have great work on show to inspire those who come to see art, rather than bad pieces which could irrevocably damage someone’s perspective. I mean, hello? A bad painting isn’t made better by having a famous name attached to it, in fact it’s often rendered worse…

Pablo Picasso, Nude Woman in Red Armchair, 1932. Oil on Canvas. Not one of my favourite images, but in the flesh it was absolutely stunning...

Okay, rant over… just. So what did we find when we stepped through those double doors into the exhibition? Well, we discovered that my +1 believes that jacking in banking and becoming an international art thief would be a good idea, that after all my misgivings I do really enjoy Picasso, and that both of us actively dislike crowds. The visual mixing of muse (Picasso) and artists whom he inspired created one of the most visually stimulating exhibitions I’ve seen at the Tate in a while. The perspective which the combination gives, not only to Picasso but to the British artists whose work is exhibited there, is the most interesting part – for the geeky such as myself – and the juxtaposition of the different painters provides a optical feast as well as an intellectual one.

This juxtaposition of 1933 (coin and musical instruments) by Ben Nicholson (top right) and Picasso's Guitar, Compote Dish and Grapes (right) from 1924 shows the influence the abstract forms used by the Spanish master (bottom right) had on his British near-contemporary.

So what were the highlights? Well, it entirely depends on what you like in your paintings and sculpture. For me I enjoyed the room entitled Picasso in Britain 1937-39, primarily for the political and social issues which it dealt with. Guernica was a piece which was commissioned for the Spanish Pavillion at the Paris Exhibition of 1937 and is Picasso’s most political artwork. It deals with the Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in April 1937, and is held as a world-renowned memorial to the civilian suffering and horrendous loss of life. For me it demonstrates a more serious side of Picasso as an artist, the fact that he could capture so vividly the emotional and physical spectrum of such a catastrophe, should give all those who write him off as being just a name pause for thought.

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937. Mural

I was also particularly partial to the Francis Bacon and Picasso room. Now I love Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixtion and have to say that besides Graham Sutherland’s Crucifixtion and Picasso’s Nude Woman in Red Armchair that is definitely the other one I would ask my newly thieving other half to procure for me. Whilst there are definite parallels between Bacon and Picasso, to me it wasn’t the influence of Picasso which made this work interesting, it was seeing it in the context of another surrealist artist. Now I’m not about to deny Bacon doesn’t disturb me somewhat, but now I realise that this was only in isolation – studying the work beside that of Picasso who also favoured extended bodies and polyp-like heads reminded me of something which Bacon said of his own work when he admitted that he saw the scene as "a magnificent armature on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation". I can now look at Bacon’s contribution and see that it was about the way in which we as humans experience the world around us; a physical depiction of an emotional expression.

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixtion, 1944. Oil on Board

Is it worth it? Of course it is. Even if like me Picasso still comes across somewhat of a rogue and an arrogant master of paint, there really is no doubt that this is a brilliant feast for the art lover. Picasso was a  brilliant painter, and those who hang beside him are his equal in every way. For those who aren't art lovers, well, save your pennies and enjoy a dry martini instead…

The Art of Smoke

Andre Derain, London Bridge (1906). Oil on Canvas. Derain was a leading exponent of Fauvism, but in early 1908 he destroyed most of his work to concentrate on tightly constructed landscape paintings, which were a subtle investigation of the work of Cézanne.

There is something in the air today in London… A bitter winter is lessening its claw-like grip on this beautiful city and there is a lightening of mood. The perpetual grey of the buildings have softened to dove, pewter and pearl, the people seem to smile more and the constant wind which has been howling through the streets of the City since November is tamed for a moment. I’m not fooled into believing for a moment that this is the first day of spring – there have been too many false starts already for that to be the case - but there is definitely something stirring out there which speaks of long sunny days, warm pavements and shady parks to be enjoyed sooner rather than later.

David Bomberg, The River and Saint Paul's (1937). Oil on Millboard. Bomberg was the one of the most audacious painters of his generation at the Slade, and is predominently known for his angular, at times violent, figurative images. This painting dates to a period of his life which was a direct reaction against the mechanisation of war and his experiences in WWI, leading to a more humanising and rounded period of painting.

So maybe I’m going a little over the top. I can say though, that sitting at a little Vietnamese café on Whitecross Street yesterday afternoon, replaying some banter my +1 and I had enjoyed before he scooted back to work and soaking up the sun, I genuinely couldn’t have been happier. I’ve had a love affair with this city since I was tiny, and watching the crowds of students, be-suited bankers and tourists mingling amongst the stalls and vans selling all manner of food in a shabby chic east-end street, I felt utterly content.  

William Hogarth, Beer Lane (1750). The hubbub of humanity which so characterises this extraordinary metropolis was a favourite subject for Hogarth, who made his name capturing real people and real life rather than the idealised aristocracy that was the norm for the time...

London is a city which inspires those who really see it; there is tremendous beauty in it. Going from the graceful buildings to the landscaped gardens and parks, the small street markets and the sunsets, moments of perfection can be found everywhere. As with so much in our lives, it is through the brush or lens of artists that we can see this most clearly. They filter out what we don’t want to see and give us a shining vision of a city, airbrushed and flawless in some cases, gritty and more real in others but always true. Okay, so this may be only in the most ineffable and romantic of senses , but given my current sunny disposition I’m running with it.

CRW Nevinson, Amongst the Nerves of the World (1930). Oil on Canvas. There is a certain gritty glamour to London at times, and this image by Richard Nevinson is a perfect example of just that. The combination of architecture and futurism makes for a striking and and accurate impression of the London streets.

Some of my favourite images of London are produced by the impressionists and they definitely fit my present feelings about this city. Walking over Waterloo Bridge a few evenings ago on my way to dinner, I was mulling over Monet (as one does) and I genuinely believe that his practice of creating works of personal perception of place and our emotional responses to them, is what resounds most strongly with me when I think of this city. His images capture that fleeting, serene moment that washes over us if we take just a moment to appreciate the combination of nature and humanity which surrounds us all on a daily basis. Some of my personal favourites are sunsets and sunrises around the Thames, where there is a sense of timelessness and transience in the rising mist, burbling waters and beautiful architecture…

Claude Monet, House of Parliament, London, Sun Breaking Through the Fog (1904). Oil on Canvas.

It seems that the views of London, especially those around the river have always fascinated artists. One of my favourite all time artists is Turner – his pieces are just utterly lustworthy – and his image of the Thames (below) is one of those understated depictions which is so easy to overlook, but draws you in a holds you when you really start to look at it. So often it seems that people are enticed toward statements and showmanship, and they forget that the most beautiful of creations can be the most subtle. This image of the city would be utterly lost next to the likes of Andre Derain, but on its own, the delicate depths and faint forms emerge as they in do in reality from the mists which haunt the river banks…

JMW Turner, The Thames Above Waterloo Bridge (1830-35). Oil on Canvas.This unfinished painting takes us to the heart of the smoky commercial capital which, though a Londoner by birth and resident for most of his life, Turner usually preferred to depict from a distance. 

Coming from a sleepy, country back water (beautiful and unpopulated as it is) I love being in the heart of things and one of my favourite places for that was the West End… I fondly remember mis-spent afternoons quaffing wine in Covent Garden or wandering the streets of Soho before diving into the melee of Piccadilly Circus to be whisked off somewhere fabulous for tea. Whilst I now prefer the East End for quaffing and people watching, the West of London still holds a certain thrill for me to wander through. One of my favourite images of the area is Piccadilly Circus by L.S. Lowry; it just captures the hustle and bustle of W1 perfectly. It may not be the prettiest of places to immortalise in paint, but you cannot escape the fact that it is one of the most iconic images of London known around the world, and Lowry has captured it sympathetically, simply (as is his great skill) and somehow at the same moment utterly accurately.

L. S. Lowry, Piccadilly Circus, London (1960). Oil on Canvas.

So whilst spring may be a little way off yet, and the banking fraternity are eagerly awaiting Tit Monday, London it seems is as beautiful as ever, we all just need a moment to see it… For those who can’t though, well, that’s what these artists did best, and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind sharing it.

Frank Auerbach, Mornington Cresecent - Summer Morning (1991). Oil on Canvas. Even the most everday sights can be rendered beautiful...