We are just passing by. We have been for coffee at The Bridge cafe on Shoreditch high street, and then to buy arancini for lunch at an Italian takeout next to the Jaguar Shoes. We go to Hoxton square to eat the arancini because its warm enough to sit outside, for the first time in months, for the first time this year. The sun is out, bright and warm but you still have to wear a coat buttoned right up to the top, and its freezing in the shade. The square is nice today. A few people milling about under the first sun of the year. A little boy doing demented laps. Some students making a film, interviewing a stranger with a big furry mic. A man in a long overcoat, sitting down, his girlfriend in front of him, standing up. They are exchanging a rose, but in the act of passing its in both of their hands. I cant tell who brought it, who is giving it to whom.
In the white cube are people in second hand jumpers, thin belts and too short trousers. Everyone is really tall. The exhibition we see consists of large pictures of the sea in various tormented states, waves whipping foam smashing water frothing and gurgling. I’m not sure how they’ve been taken but they seem like old photos, washed out blue, seeped of colour and drained of hue. Attached to each photo is a real object; a gynaecological instrument, big long forceps and clamps, and a thing that looks like a stethoscope only much longer. The instruments are old, they look like they’re from the forties, from some horror film. It says in the catalogue that they are supposed to represent birth, as does the sea; the place from where everything came. I don’t like them, they look like old beer mats or something. But it doesn’t matter. We’re just passing by.
5th March 2011 - An American Experiment@the National Gallery
I go the national gallery. Its a freezing day, early in the morning, and the cold gets everywhere, it whips up your sleeves and you try and stop it by bunching your hands together, but all you end up doing is making cold fists. I walk through Trafalgar Square, shivering, the cold seeping through my clothes like water. The square is a frozen stone, the fountains look as though they’re pumping snow. I would like to watch them, but I want to get inside.
I plan to go and look at the Klimt – Portrait of Hermine Gallia – but I am distracted by a temporary exhibit called “An American Experiment” so I push through the double doors and in. It’s a very small exhibition, only a dozen or so paintings. Maybe it’s because of the cold day, maybe it’s just me, but I go straight to a painting called Blue Snow: The Battery, by George Bellows.
It’s a picture of Battery Park in New York, immersed in snow. Commuters are ploughing their way through the park, heading home after a day in the factories, which you can see in the distance, looming like Gods, judging the tiny faceless inhabitants as they struggle through thick snow. They throw long shadows, and the shadows are blue, and its the kind of blue you only ever see when there is snow.
I plan to go and look at the Klimt – Portrait of Hermine Gallia – but I am distracted by a temporary exhibit called “An American Experiment” so I push through the double doors and in. It’s a very small exhibition, only a dozen or so paintings. Maybe it’s because of the cold day, maybe it’s just me, but I go straight to a painting called Blue Snow: The Battery, by George Bellows.
It’s a picture of Battery Park in New York, immersed in snow. Commuters are ploughing their way through the park, heading home after a day in the factories, which you can see in the distance, looming like Gods, judging the tiny faceless inhabitants as they struggle through thick snow. They throw long shadows, and the shadows are blue, and its the kind of blue you only ever see when there is snow.
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