Sometimes I think I lead a rather odd life. Today 11th
July 2012 I had breakfast consisting of a stale old roll left from some I made
last week after impulsively trying out
Kamut, an Egyptian bread flour which it said on the bag, contains lots of
selenium. I also had a piece of Hovis
wholemeal toast from a bag of bread I found unopened on the pavement outside my
flat. I also found a beef tomato in good
condition on the pavement in Chiswick yesterday and ate that. Perhaps I am
turning into one of those people who eats road kill?
Set off for the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery, in the rain as usual, and the bus driver
pointed out that my umbrella was “all broken up.” I told him I had only used it twice. I was nurturing the futile desire to “get some wear out of it,” just like my
mother would have done.
There are three paintings on show, Diana and Callisto, Diana
and Actaeon, and the Death of Actaeon, all made for Philip II of Spain in about
1551. If you are trying to find anything good about Philip of Spain and his
vicious reign, this must be it.
These great paintings are together again for the first time since the 18th
century, but not for long as two of them
are soon off to Scotland
on permanent loan, so I for one will never see them again.
I tried to foment some anti-Scottish feeling about this
among the old ladies and unemployed gathered in the gallery, it’s a free
exhibition, and they were suitably disgruntled.
Attached to this show are some contemporary installations by Chris Ofili
who is famous for his elephant dung, Conrad Shawcross and Mark Wallinger. Don’t
know what they are famous for but it’s bound to be something disturbing. There are also three ballets opening at the Royal Opera House
called Metamorphosis, tying in with Titian’s
work.
We had a look at set design, costumes, a film shot very
close up and low down of ballet rehearsals, and at the installations and
paintings. Very dreary they were apart from an installation by Wallinger
consisting of a locked wooden box containing
a naked woman inside having a wash. Several women change places during the
day to do this chilly task.
We were able to spy on her, like Acteon on Diana, through a
break in the misted glass and slits in the closed window blinds. These were set
so high that my friend and I couldn’t
see anything. We agreed that they were placed at man height. Men were obviously
meant to be cast as peeping Toms.
I was a bit annoyed and banged on the door, shouting: “Are
you going to be in there all day?”
A good question in the circumstances but from out of the
Stygian gloom the prissy voice of an attendant said : “They would prefer it if you didn’t do that.”
At least I wasn’t turned into a stag and torn to bits.
My friend noticed a key hole, painted black in the black door. The
traditional and best method of snooping.
We had a peer and all I could see was the woman’s bottom filling the expanse of
the key hole. Surely a repressed, prurient English perv’s dream come true but
it didn’t do anything for me. Then I got
an eye full of unpleasant Scottish looking red pubic hair.
I was glad to have seen something but it was a rather a
mundane experience. Perhaps we should
have left it to the men.
After that we went off to room 35, to see two small
paintings by Andrea Schiavone, showing
Zeus disguised as Diana seducing Callisto. Now is that is a very odd idea,
which assumes that most women at the time were Lesbians. The other shows Arcos
shooting his mother Callisto by mistake, after Diana had turned her into a bear. Well
these things happen.
They were in room 10 and took some time to find, but were
worth it. Vibrant, beautiful little paintings and I would like to use them in
my work and my friend felt the same. Then we had a conversation about all the cross-dressing
men we’d known in the past. One of her friends had been tricked into sleeping
with a prostitute in Paris who looked like a lovely girl but turned out to have
5 o’clock shadow. I noticed an elderly man standing near us covertly listening to what we were saying. Thanks
to Titian and his friends it was an afternoon of prying and snooping.
Must go and have a look at that prurient sight for a sore eye.
ReplyDeleteThere is a cartoon in the new Private Eye about the men in dirty macs lining up!
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