Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 May 2005 13:18:04
Yesterday I got up ridiculously early for a Saturday, but all in a good cause - for I'd managed to bag a friend's spare ticket for the Turner Whistler Monet exhibition at Tate Britain. And absolutely marvellous it was too. I can't say I knew any of Whistler's work, and Turner and Monet I could very often take or leave when I've seen their work in isolation, but this has to be the best put-together art exhibition I've seen in a long time, it worked beautifully and the paintings were displayed in a way that Just Made Sense. Stunning stuff. I even shelled out shedloads of money for the exhibition guide, even though often they're really overpriced, because it was so good. Usually in exhibitions I see at least one thing I don't like, but absolutely all of this was just fantastic. It's not on for much longer though, so if you get the chance do go - the queue will be worth it! I particularly liked the Whistler Nocturnes (both the London and Venice ones) and some of the Monet Venice paintings (especially "San Geiorgio Maggiore at Dusk" which was a riot of colour). I didn't buy any prints though - partly because prints are never as wonderful as the real thing, but mainly because I liked so many of the paintings I'd never have been able to only choose one or two.
Yesterday turned out to be a very cultured day - after meeting up with two friends from the Ship to go to Turner Whistler Monet, we had lunch after walking back past the Houses of Parliament and along Whitehall (to point out touristy things of interest to the non-London-inhabitant) and then decided to do another museum. So we spent another couple of hours in the Science Museum, which I'd not visited in nearly 30 years (I was last there on a school trip in 1979, needless to say it's changed a bit from what I remember!). Lots of fun was had pushing buttons and touching screens and pulling handles and playing a sort of space-invader type game with giant footpads on the floor (it was something to do with capturing renewable energy sources), although I did start brewing a headache so after a while the flashing lights and stuff got a bit much. But another "worth seeing" place for sure, again recommended.
Of course, although I've been doing this culture thing for a year now, there's bound to be someone doing it (and writing about it) better than me. And in the case of London culture, that person is Diamond Geezer. Check out his April 2005 archive - despite being a London resident, he took off a week towards the end of April to stay in London and did a series of reports from a number of places that are on my list of places to see. He writes really well too. Oh well. When I move UpNorth maybe my culture vulture reports will be more original.
Oh and he writes really very profoundly and eloquently about his new MP (he lives in Bethnal Green and Bow, where one of the biggest upsets of the election happened). One of our acts of rebellion whilst culture vulturing yesterday was to tear down a couple of Respect posters that had been stuck up in our Tube carriage. Read DG's post-election entry (currently almost the most recent one) to find out why I'm no fan of Respect (despite being anti-Iraq war). Gah. I've lost all this weight to get my blood pressure down, and every time I think about George Galloway I can feel the BP racing back up again. Horrid, odious little man, I really can't see why his whipping up and taking advantage of existing community, racial and religious tensions is any different from the tactics of the BNP, frankly. It's very rare for me to feel so strongly negative about someone, but having opportunistically selected a constituency in which he has never lived (and had probably never heard of before last year) purely on the basis of it having a large Muslim population rather than giving a toss about any of the constituency, he seems so drunk on power for its own sake that I find him very very frightening.
I'm off to the gym. Maybe yelling at a few slightly-too-heavy weights whilst trying not to look like a sweaty tomato-faced blob will get my BP down again now I've got myself all worked up.