Usually, I post my ‘News’ report a few days into the following months. However, this time, I am posting it a few days early into the preceding month. This because I know I shall be travelling here and there a bit, and not much time to sit and consider with the system open before me.

 

 

Also, in order to break the pattern a bit, I thought I would do a ‘special’ art posting, since I have done quite a few exhibitions in the past few weeks.

It began with David Haughton at the Penlee Gallery in Penzance. Not a name I had really come across before. It seems he ‘discovered’ St Just in Penwith after he moved to St Ives, Cornwall in 1947. Anyway, he appears to have had an epiphany there  and he spent several years painting and drawing not much else. The work had every lane and road of this small village/ town perched up inland from Cape Cornwall. He joined the Penwith Society of artists and exhibited with the best of them, but it was an epiphany that had its drawback as this work completely overshadowed anything else he did after he left to teach in London. Still, interesting stuff.

 

 

 

Another Cornwall-based exhibition was the new one at Tate St Ives with the theme: ‘Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition inspired by her work’. The paradox was that it included some great pieces of art from female artists. However, it was not clear to me at all to what extent Woolf came into the show, or indeed should have. Just sloppy curating in my view. Also, some rather over-exaggerated remarks about Ithell Colquhoun and her network of associates. I have no evidence IC ever read Woolf let alone was influenced by her.

 

Incidentally, my article on Ithell Colquhoun is now published.

 

http://www.michaelgrenfell.co.uk/art/ithel-colquhoun-painter-and-magician/

 

More London shows…

 

First one of epic proportions by the German photographer Andreas Gursky. It is difficult to suggest the scale of these pictures on a small screen. They tower above you with clarity and colour. Of course, we are talking about photography in a ‘post truth’ world, so they have all been ‘doctored’ to exaggerate certain aspects of the pieces – various figures repeats, re-positioned, and other elements removed. They suggest that what we see is not what exists, amongst other messages. Sometimes they are fun; at others there is a gaping silence when confronted with the essence of a situation, now distilled out into sharp relief.

 

 

 

 

 

Two cracking shows at the Tate Modern:

 

Joan Jonas and her incredible installations: again, we are talking ‘post human’, ‘post feminist’, ‘post truth’, indeed post post…..’

Each one brings you face to face with an angular aspect of life.

 

 

 

The Picasso exhibition displays work from a single year 1932. I went thinking I had seen it all before and was again completely balled over by his level of creativity – and in some many different forms and media. Kind of humbling as well when one thinks about what British artists were doing at the time – he was moving so fast!!

 

 

 

Then, Tacita Dean and things ‘about to disappear’. She really brings a kind of spiritual regard on both the mundane and epic. One almost ends up looking at one’s own ‘looking at’. Very moving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book reading is Karmic Traces, which does the same sort of thing in writings.:

 

 

 

 

February is know as a wicked month: this year came in like a lamb and went out like a tiger. So, all was well and we were chugging on to spring – flowers arriving in the garden, etc. – when the ‘Beast from the East’ struck and then danced a merry tune with Storm Emma. In practice, this meant, sub zero temperatures for the last days of the month and then intense snow for the very last day. It was the speed and intensity of the snow that hit me. I left the house in Cornwall saying, ‘I did not believe it’, only to be in a crisis snow situation 30 mins. later. I then had to abandon my car when I lost all control of it. Luckily, I was near a farm and got to the house after a little walk. Then, frozen up for a few days only to be hit by high rains and winds of Emma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, Lent, and a time to give up things – but not food with this climate. Not just yet.

 

 

 

 

Earlier in the month, my neighbours – Caroline and Marc -celebrated the arrival of their first child – Martha – into the world. Photo has me with holding a baby for the first time ever!

 

 

 

I managed to get over to Berlin for the Guitar Ensemble of Europe’s guitar courses: Intermediate and Beginners. Good teams and a lot of work done. Snowy there too, but some nice lake side scenery.

 

 

 

 

Played this rather lovely Ovation there – loaned to me by Hernan Nunez.

 

 

The chairs seemed to be radioactive!!:

 

 

 

 

Back to London and the Modigliani exhibition. Quite impressive; although after the Cezanne portraits, these seemed a bit derivative. Still, he did fashion his own recognisable style, and surely stuck to it through a series of portraits and still life figures. Once he had it, however, that was pretty much what it was/ is. That being said, he did die at 35, so we shall never know what else he might have done.

 

 

 

But, it was School Half-Term!!

 

 

 

 

Off to the theatre and Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, first performed in 1957. In those days, it was badly received and shut after a week or two. Now, however, it is seen as a modern classic: a kind of mix of Beckett, Kafka, Agatha Christie and Ben Travers. So, farcical in a very noir way, and focussing on the way we use language to subjugate each other. Also, the way memory is refashioned to suit our wants. A stunning performance from an acclaimed cast.

 

 

 

It is the 100th anniversary of the death of the French composer Claude Debussy. So, I have been listening to his wonderful chromaticism; especially in his solo instrument and quartet work.

 

 

 

 

Also, reading Julian Barnes’ latest: The Only Story.
He has really matured as a writer in recent years. He always was a good story teller, but now he adds a new depth. As in recent books, the themes include memory, the impact of singular events on life, the nature of love in its glorious manifestations.