Lunch With Lucio

And so to the Tate for a long awaited meeting with international man of mystery, intellectual culture vulture and prince of erudition, Lucio.

Click on us. We get bigger!
And note the Turneresque light.
Entirely deliberate – Ha!

It turns out that not only is he devilishly handsome but also completely charming, utterly delightful company and great fun, too. I can't wait for our next meeting.
For any who may not know and are of an artistic temperament, Lucio's main blog is over here. It now features some lovely photographs from his recent European travels.

Anyhoo, when at the Tate one must look round, and look round we did (after enjoying lunch, which Lucio insisted on paying for, bless him).
First up is a big Hoorah! At last, after a two year absence, my favourite Millais paintings - Ophelia and Maryann - are once more hung together in the Pre-Raphaelite Gallery so we started there. You can get right up close to these paintings and wonder at their luminescence and detail. Millais painted them into thick wet white ground with a tiny sable brush and managed about a square inch a day.

The Tate is always swapping things around just to confuse me. Yesterday my favourite Bacon (Study For Three Figures At The Base Of A Crucifixion) was out on tour but there was plenty new to gawp at, including the BIG Hockneys in their own room. Well impressive!

The spooky Cholmondeley Sisters were there, bonkers and sad as ever. I always stop off to say hello to them. Also Robyn's infamous man with no trousers.

But the main reason we were there was the big 'Turner And The Masters' show.
Go see it. But more importantly, go see what they've done to fill the gaps taken by the paintings in the main show.
By removing all of the big early classical scenes from the Clore Gallery (the home of the Turner Collection) to put with the Titians and Canalettos et al in the big show, those lovely people at the Tate have unwittingly given us an even better show.
And it's FREE!

The Clore Gallery is currently filled with room after room of late and unfinished Turner masterworks; the insane, passionate orgasms of light that most ascribe to failing sight and galloping senile dementia.
A breathtaking display that is easily the best art exhibition anywhere on the planet this year.

Lucio and I were transfixed. We were like kids in a candy shop. Everywhere we looked was a masterpiece of colour and light: Turner at the pinnacle of his power. We stalked from room to room stopping to gasp in awe at the sheer numbers and mind-blowing intensity of emotion on display, getting increasingly worked up in our own passionate enthusiasm (lots of splendid arm-waving and expostulation - yay).

Whole months worth of glorious Turner sunsets are on display that have never been gathered together before. Getting up close and personal we were overwhelmed by the sheer insanity of his palette knife work. Lucio said that he was painting not light but luminescence and he was right. And Turner was painting it in a way that nobody had done before, or indeed since.
At the centre of a massive sunset, the very last stroke of one painting was the sun itself. We could see how carefully he had mixed the color; an intense custardy, egg-yolk yellow infused with tints of crimson; but then he had simply thrown it onto the canvas with one big splat of the palette knife. And it was perfect! Such passion, such confidence were awe-inspiring. And to paint this way in the 1830s, long before Monet seems amazing to us. Dozens of mad, bright, brilliant canvases assailed us everywhere we looked.

One painting in particular I had never seen in the Clore or indeed anywhere else. Its combination of fine detail and unchained chaos gives the lie to theories that his later works were due to failing eyesight or the onset of madness. He could still paint in the classical style but he could also unleash himself in a frenzy of pure, undiluted passion.
It is a frankly astonishing painting.
Only a few years after Joseph Wright of Derby painted many a similar scene Turner let himself loose on the hellfires of the Industrial Revolution. The inside of an iron foundry at night, filled with BIG light and dark, massive contrasts of flame and deep shadow.
Down at the bottom right hand corner, taking up no more than a quarter of the painting, tiny, highly detailed figures of steelworkers huddle in the dark, dwarfed by mighty machinery, massive cogs and wheels churning and hammering in the darkness.
But where, in a Joseph Wright painting the crucible itself should be, in Turner's vision all Hell has broken loose … Dante's Inferno has come to life and leaps out of the canvas at us in an apocalyptic fiery furnace of coruscating light, molten steel, sparks and flame.
After such careful and lifelike rendering of the tiny figures cowering in the corner, the rest of that mad, incredible painting looks for all the world as if Turner has attacked the canvas with fistsful of lead white, chrome yellow and cadmium red, hurling great wads of thick impasto, shards of light, explosions of blinding colour at the surface before diving in there himself to attack it in a thrashing frenzy of intense screaming passion, a desperate fight to the death to render light and colour more intensely than the eye can ever see; smearing the glistening oils, slashing and stabbing with palette knife, clawing with fingers and nails (you can still see every mark), shrieking, possesed by madness and desire until at last collapsing, sated, gasping and spent on the floor beneath what is inalienably, even today, a shocking, daring, modern and completely fucking bonkers masterpiece.
Of course I could be wrong, but that's how it looks like he painted it.

I'm going back on Monday to see it again. Woohoo!

And that is only one of dozens of astonishing canvases on display. They won't be there much longer; when the big exhibition is over they'll be hidden away in the basement once more. Maybe in a decade or two, if someone has the vision and the money, such a glorious display of late Turners will be put together in a big, blockbuster exhibition. But don't wait up. It is there right now and it is free! Both Lucio and myself were privileged to catch such a magnificent moment. You'd be mad to miss it yourself.

So steal, maim, kill if you have to but get there!

Toodle Pip!

Worth The Wait

Last Wednesday evening finds Old Dive the Samuel Beckett fanboy sitting, tense with excited anticipation in the middle of the third row, around ten feet from the front of the stage at Norwich's beautifully refurbished Theatre Royal.

I am waiting for the start of one of my very favourite plays. I've seen eight productions since we made a mess of it in the sixth form at school, but this promises to be the dream team production and it doesn't disappoint.

Samuel Beckett's glorious Waiting For Godot, with Patrick Stewart as Vladimir and Sir Ian Mc.Kellen as Estragon.

I mean Holy crap! What's not to love? The most wonderful play ever written about the comedy and despair of the human condition, starring a couple who were born to play Vladimir and Estragon and who have just reached the perfect age to do so.

I won't bother going through these guys' stage, cinema and tv history; we all know and love them.

Suffice to say that Sir Ian Mc.Kellen and Patrick Stewart are both blessed with THE VOICE and at seventy and sixty-eight years old respectively at last have the gravitas and credibility to play these two fabulous rôles.
They are at the peak of their powers and - like Didi and Gogo - have been building a genuine relationship for fifty years in some truly wonderful plays.

So … The curtain rises …
How did they do?

Godot is a very easy play to get spectacularly wrong. All eight productions I have seen have been wildly different.
A lot of productions go for the easy option and play it for laughs.
Which is fine as far as it goes, as Beckett has written a gutbustingly hilarious script.

But that is only half of it.
From around 500BC and the first Greek theatre, the masks of comedy and tragedy have been inseparable and this play needs them both in perfect balance.

One particular production - and a very good one - eschewed the comedy altogether, making the funny lines bitter or wistful and omitting the slapstick routines Didi and Gogo have developed over fifty years of life on the road together.
The result was overpoweringly bleak. Hugely impressive, but not the most fun I've ever had in a theatre.

The Guardian theatre critic must have been a fan of that particular production as he criticised Mc.Kellen and Stewart (mildly in an otherwise rave review) for "playing it for laughs" in the first act.

I find their double act perfect.
To feel the full tragedy; the shock, horror and devastation of the latter parts of the play, you need to build up sympathy for Didi and Gogo and this production has, in my view, given us the perfect Godot.

The set is reassuringly dark and bleak, with the tree bare for the first half of the play … the pitiful display of leaves that bedeck its broken branches as the second act opens betokening the pathetic hope life gives us a moment before dashing it away.

But the first act …
Mc.Kellen clambers painfully and slowly - as befits a seventy year old man - over a pile of masonry rubble and enters the stage; sits, exhausted and tries forlornly - and with little success - to remove the remains of his boots from his swollen and bloody feet.
Enter Patrick Stewart as an only slightly more dapper Vladimir and we are off.
Their rapport is instant and marvellous to behold.
Like an old married couple who have long ago forgotten why they married in the first place they bicker, fight, make up and bicker again. They are the most believable and instantly lovable Didi and Gogo I have ever seen.

The audience erupts into gales of helpless laughter. Mc.Kellen and Stewart turn out to be a classic and wonderful comedy double act, yet through the sheer class of their acting the pain and despair of the two protagonists is constantly there, nagging at us as we roar with mirth, both with them and at their misfortune.

Being as close to the actors as if they are here in my living room with me is amazing. Although Vladimir and Estragon are completely alone in their desolation, some audience interaction is inevitable and there are several instances of eye contact with them both; one in particular, where Mc.Kellen sits musing and gazing out over "the fog" that is the audience, he catches my eye and keeps it for a long, long time. There is such an intensity, such a sparkle in the old charmer's gaze that I am transfixed. He's still a seductive old bugger at seventy!

There is indeed a magic about both of them; in the programme notes I had read over coffee in the upstairs restaurant beforehand while studying my old script, they had discussed how they approached the rôles. There was reverence there, but also a determination to make this Godot their own. Not as two individuals, Vladimir and Estragon, but as a cohesive and inseparable whole.
They succeeded spectacularly.

One passage in particular, shortly before the first arrival of Pozzo and Lucky is so tricky to get right and can often appear crass:

Vladimir: What do we do now?

Estragon: Wait.

Vladimir: Yes, but while we're waiting.

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?

Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection!

Estragon: (highly excited) An erection!

Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?

Estragon: Let's hang ourselves immediately!

Mc.Kellen and Stewart play this with such a rush of pure, innocent, childlike wonder it is marvellous to behold. A pair of old, old men, careworn and hopeless seeing a glimpse of light in the darkness; the opportunity for one last erection and then blissful oblivion …
But of course it - like all hope - fades …

I've seen that played straight, played for laughs, played cringe-inducingly badly, but with Mc.Kellen and Stewart at last I really believe it.
And they keep it up (no pun intended) for the full two and a half hours.

Of course even a top-drawer Vladimir and Estragon can see all their work ruined by a poor Pozzo and Lucky.
No so here.
The casting for this production is peerless.
Simon Callow plays the rôle of his life as Pozzo. He takes the part of the casually vicious, Stalinesque buffoon and plays it to the hilt as the monstrous ringmaster of his own hideous freak show.
Wonderful.
Hilarious.
Horrifying.
An explosion of light and colour and noise and brutal violence against the grey but cheerful innocence of what's gone before; he is shockingly good.

And cowering, half-dead at the other end of the rope in mute submissive resignation is Ronald Pickup as Lucky.

I've seen him play Beckett before and I knew he would be good, but he is simply astonishing.
His breathless, rabid, bespittled and totally insane "in spite of the tennis" monologue/diatribe shakes the audience with its intensity; he starts stark raving mad and gets more psychotic by the second, building to such a frenzied climax that - as Vladimir siezes his "speaking hat", wrenching it from his head and Lucky freezes, wild-eyed and staring blindly out at us, drool running down his front - there are five long seconds of dead silence and stillness and then - as he collapses - the auditorium erupts in a thoroughly deserved and prolonged ovation while poor Ronald lays prostrate and exhausted at the front of the stage.

I am not usually a fan of spontaneous applause during a play, but this is the first of many on the night and every one brings a twinkle to the eye and the twitch of a grin to the corner of the mouth of the cast.
They are brilliant and they know it.

The first half is perfect, but the second even better.

Mc.Kellen and Stewart are just as funny, sparking off one another, totally believable as Didi and Gogo but suddenly the laughs are uncomfortable; the humour the deepest black.

The false hope of the leaves on the tree is about to be dashed and our whole world will tumble, crashing around us in bitter ruin.
They have indeed played it for laughs quite deliberately, but only to set us up for the fall.

The slow-dawning realisation of the hopelessness and despair of our heroes' purgatorial dilemma creeps like dread out over the audience and freezes our hearts.

When it comes to the climax it is shattering.
Pozzo's shocking blindness. The horror of knowing that there but for the grace of God-knows-what go Didi and Gogo; how close Vladimir might have come to the tyranny of Pozzo and Estragon to the Hellish hopelessness of Lucky.

As Lucky lays unconscious, with Mc.Kellen administering a shockingly violent and realistic kicking to his unresisting body we are aghast!

And then comes the truth …
The stage is quiet and dark; Pozzo and Lucky have once again departed as we wait for the inevitable appearance of the Boy with his never-changing message.
Estragon sits, nodding off in utterly exhausted despair and Vladimir wanders the stage, bereft; his soliloquy on the human condition made all the more poignant and heartbreaking by the laughter that has preceded it and set us up for this devastating sucker punch.
We knew it was coming and willingly walked right into it.
Tears sting my eyes and pour down my cheeks. As they do those of everyone present.

And at the last, just before Didi and Gogo turn to go but realise they never can, they try once again to hang themselves but - inevitably - the wretched piece of rope that had been Estragon's belt snaps in half and Mc.Kellen's trousers drop around his ankles.

But we do not laugh … We cannot laugh any more.

There they stand …

Us.

A huge standing ovation goes on and on, with three curtain calls for the cast, variously and all together (including a very fortunate local schoolboy as the Boy) and then Stewart and Mc.Kellen return once more and give us a music hall dance routine, juggle with their hats, strike a pose and are gone …

Like Vladimir and Estragon in their interminable and unreasoning wait for Godot I have waited fifty years to see this production.
However long I live I'll never see a better one.

It is still touring.
If you get the faintest chance of a ticket, take it!
You must see this production.
It truly deserves the classic review: "You'll laugh; you'll cry; it'll change your life".



Apologies to Sir. Ian Mc.Kellen for nicking some of these photos from his website.

Hopper Again

There's a wonderful little exhibition of twentieth century American etchings in the Prints And Drawings section of the British Museum this summer.
I cannot recommend it too highly, especially to those of us like Rich and myself who are Edward Hopper fanatics.

Here are a few of my favourite pieces from the hundreds on display:

Hopper, of course.

And again.
(click on this to blow it up a bit)

And again (okay, so I like Hopper).

This one's by James E. Allen, who's a new name to me, but I'll definitely be checking him out some more.

As I will Martin Lewis, who produced this fabulous scene.

Glorious stuff. Get along there and see it.

It's free.

Wholly Weak

Yup, that's Old Dive …
It's Holy Week and I can't even work up a good rant against the Godbotherers.
Hey ho.

So instead, I shall do what any gentleman surely would under such circumstances and give the ladies another glimpse of cock.

Here's Gary again.

As it's Holy Week, this time he's posing as "Jesus Having A Bit Of A Lie Down".

Sorry, ladies, but he's married.

I wonder if Jesus was ticklish.
Stuck up there on the cross with his naked feet at eye level I know I'd have been tempted to find out.


Addendum: Katherine has posed some splendidly silly questions today.

Painting With Mud

Hokay … No naked and floppy male genitalia for the girls today.
And no jiggly and perky teen boobies for the boys (dammit).

Today we go painting with mud.
I've not done any oil painting for years, but that's what it always felt like to me; sliding around in slurpy mud. I never really got the hang of it.

Here's one of my old ones: the ruins of St.Benet's Abbey (is there a Saint Benaut?), just down the river from my village.

And a slightly closer view (at least it is if you click on it).

I no longer have the spare time to paint in oils, so I gave up a while back.
But Robyn tells me that painting in acrylics is like oils but that you don't have to wait three weeks for the bloody things to dry enough to overpaint, so I might have a go at those.

Has anyone else tried acrylics?
Lynn? You're a successful painter; you know these things.
Advice, please.

Something For The Lay-dees

Well, this is for Lynn and Mme B and I must say you've both earned it with your lovely compliments yesterday.

As it's Holy Week I suppose posting a picture of someone who looks like Jesus is fairly apt.

Click on him for more detail.

And as Lynn would pout (most fetchingly, no doubt) if I kept his genitalia hidden, here's a quick pen study of Gary with his cock out.

Enjoy.
Hee hee

More Stiffy Trouble

Rich has been running an occasional series of posts about his art classes (and the girl he had a crush on), which are not only excellent in themselves but have the admirable side-effect of taking me right back to university and my own art college days (and a girl I had a crush on).

So I dug around in my studio and found some dusty portfolios (I never throw old crap away) stuffed with my college work and fired up the scanner.
Today I present to you a Monday bonus:
Gratuitous Nudity, a pretty girl and a Dive stiffy embarrassment story (what another one, you ask?) … Yes, another one.

Hokay … Let's hit the swirly effects and head back in time to 1978 (cue Kate Bush singing "Wuthering Heights" and a suddenly slim and hirsute college-boy Dive).

And here we are in life class (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), where we get to sit and chat with Gary (who drums in a rival band to Dive) while he poses, stark naked, for us to draw.
It's either Gary or Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a lovely, middle-aged woman who always starts each session holding herself in; all firm and slim and upright. But we soon learn to anticipate "the sag" and draw accordingly, her body gradually surrendering to gravity until at the end of the session she actually looks like what we have drawn … What looks to me now like a wonderful, soft, rounded and beautiful middle-aged woman's body but back then just looked saggy and old (sigh).

So now we take a quick sidestep back to school and Dive being in the same class as a certain Louise, for whom he has the unrequited hots …

Are you still with me?
Then you'll have already guessed what happens next.

Sure enough; Elizabeth goes on holiday and we get a stand-in.
We're milling around in the life studio when in walks Louise, all jaunty and "Hi, Dive! How are you?"
"Wow! Louise! Are you joining our class?"
"No. I'm modelling today."
Cue what must have been the most comical expression my face has ever made, which reduces her to a fit of the giggles.

And the next three and a half hours pass chatting and catching up, whilst trying desperately to hide my whopping stiffy.
Sitting nekkid in front of me is a girl with whom I have sat in class, mentally undressing her many times in my spotty teenage schooldays.

Of course, Louise knows full well how I feel - and the trouser mayhem I am suffering - and flirts outrageously.

Anyhoo … This is my favourite of the half-dozen poses from that morning, because it actually looks like her.
And because moving round to get her in profile meant that she couldn't keep catching my eye and grinning and staring at my crotch, so I could actually concentrate on drawing her.
Click on the pic for more detailed perky teen … er …

After class we shared lunch in the refectory and had a damned good laugh about it all.
But my feelings remained - inevitably - unrequited so we just stayed on chatting terms.
And she never came back to life class, no matter how much I tried to talk Elizabeth into taking another break.

I wonder where she is now.
And if she's as saggy as me …
Sigh …

Light

Wandering along beside the Thames this morning I got to thinking of Rich's Edward Hopper post. Thanks for the reminder, Rich.

I love Hopper; I have a couple of nice Hopper lighthouse prints over my bedroom dresser to cheer me in the mornings. They just fill the room with fresh air and a sea breeze (or it could be my open window and an easterly from the North Sea, but hey).

More specifically I got to thinking of the light in Hopper's paintings. That "hard" light he emphasises in his interiors.

London light is different. It's softer.
Like Venice, London is a city built on water; a lot of the old centre is reclaimed from marsh and estuary and the light which so delighted Monet is often diffused with mist, especially on my morning walks to work.
It's a sparkling, mysterious light.
A beautiful - if occasionally pestiferous - luminescence that washes over the morning city; the dome of St.Paul's is often afloat on it.

Hopper's light, on the other hand is harsh and almost solid.
I love it. Probably because we just don't see it here. It's a peculiarly American light.
Hopper paints that wonderful clear sharp light you see in movies like "Chinatown" and "L.A. Confidential".

There's a marvellous Raymond Chandler line that always reminds me of Hopper interiors. It's from "Farewell, My Lovely".
We're in Philip Marlowe's office …

"A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet."
I think I'm gonna go home and wallpaper my house with Edward Hopper paintings.