John Singer Sargent at the National Portrait Gallery

I went to this yesterday - I booked the last time slot on the last day of the exhibition. I think the staff had just decided to let everyone in because it was incredibly crowded, but there was a lovely hushed atmosphere among the crowds (of course, lots of people have those audio commentary things). The lighting was dim apart from the subtle lighting showing the pictures to best advantage, and it did remind me of going to church on a particularly Holy day.

Oh what beautiful pictures! Mainly of men, friends of the artist, often his fellow-artists like Monet and Rodin, and some musicians like Faure. (This blog programme does not have e acute.) There were many other musicians I have never heard of.

The interesting thing about John Singer Sargent was that he was a very international man. His parents were American but he was brought up in Italy and other countries as his parents lived economically in various European countries. He went to Art School in Paris and was happy making his name in France until his portrait of Madame X caused a scandal; he made her look too sexually available for a married woman. He came to the UK and seems to have liked life here, and he also made a series of paintings of his fellow artists in Italy. So he was in two senses a man of the world. You get the impression of someone who networks well and knows everyone worth knowing and has understood his business really well, but the paintings have this wonderful shine to them, and the way he renders black coats, for example, is lovely. Because this exhibition is only of portraits it probably doesn't do Singer Sargent justice as a painter in the round. He painted his own way, and although he rather wanted to be an impressionist like Monet, he was more old school, like an Old Master with some new American pizzazz. His pictures seem to show how much he liked drama.

Portrait of Carolus Duran

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth -This is actually full-length - a very fine picture and likeness

Monet painting - in the style of Monet!

Robert Loui Stevenson - so thin! - and his wife.

Grayson Perry:Who Are You?

This art exhibition was also a TV series on Channel 4 looking at how to explore questions of identity in a portrait. The people Grayson chose to explore did not have a straightforward identity, apart from Chris Huhne, the Great White Male, who seemed to Grayson to be incapable of change - unbearable really, so he made his portrait as a pot and then smashed it, mending it with gold. It was to remind Huhne that vulnerability can be an asset.

Grayson has portrayed himself as a map of days - a walled city, with things inside and outside the walls - a map that takes a long time to take in. He has portrayed the British with a huge, brightly coloured comfort blanket, with all the many things we love and identify with on it.

Grayson lived with the Jesus Army for sometime, observing how they have rescued people from their old self-destructive ways or life on the streets, to become a family in a shared house with a shared way of life. They sing in the evenings and instead of watching TV and they also share their money so he made their group portrait in the shape of a money box styled like a reliquary. Rather wittily it has "Jesus Saves" written at the top.

Another person who was going through an identity crisis was a man who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and this was also shattering for his wife. All their shared happy memories were disappearing. I loved the pot Grayson made them - the wife's scarf making a protection for them both, her face buried in his chest, perhaps with grief, and his face smiling - but vacantly, not understanding the nature of the problem.

You can see the exhibits here.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/grayson-perry-who-are-you-national-portrait-gallery-review-sublimely-beautiful-9820710.html

We could have spent hours looking at this.

This is on at the National Portrait Gallery, where the portraits are mostly rectangular objects with paint on them. But none of Perry's portraits are that. There were a lot of people looking at the Perry exhibits and talking about them with great animation and awe.

A good day - London

Stan was at a loose end yesterday and I thought we should go and do something. So we agreed to go to London. Caught train easily, walked over the Hungerford bridge, down escalators to Villiers Street. I really like Villiers street. Went into Gordon's Wine bar which is in a cellar and sells nothing but wine. Obviously I really wanted beer but behind the bar, instead of a range of drinks, there are 4 large barrels of sherry. I do love sherry. We had a glass of water and a schooner of amontillado, which we shared, it was not any more expensive than wine and was really lovely. We sat in a candlelit thieves' den and listened to the trains rumbling. This cellar is quite an institution; Hillaire Belloc and GK Chesterton also drank there. This fact is kind of wasted on Stan as he knows nothing about literature: but he likes looking at people and is brilliant at sizing them up.

For food we went to the Pret near St Martin in the Fields. Then to the National Portrait Gall for the annual portrait exhibition. This is so interesting - so many styles of portraiture - I liked the mass portrait of Yorkshire Hell's angels, the triple portrait of the magician (Drummond Money-Coutts, whose stage presence came across, and the movements of his hands)  and some of the more classically-styled portraits. The winning picture was plain boring. The second placed one was better but not particularly memorable. The one on the poster was brilliant - a man looking in a series of mirrors.

Walked a very strange route to the Tate on Millbank which is being "done up". A good selection of pictures is still on view and we just enjoyed having a good appreciation and discussion of the pictures that took our attention. I tend to be interested most in our wonderful history of crazy artists, and their remarkable visions, e.g. Blake, Dadd, and Spencer. I particularly love Spencer's conviction that heaven is actually Cookham. I sometimes think so myself.

Probably Heaven

Cain and Abel

Dadd, fairyland

Stanley Spencer - the resurrection in Cookham churchyard

A strange film installation was in the main rooms with the most bizarre creepy noises as the soundtrack. Apparently the creepy noises were made by the motor of the camera with which the piece was filmed. It was very interesting. Stan was riveted as he loves film.

He said: "can we go to that little DVD shop?" he meant the shop in the British film Institute. The cinemas and bars and restaurant seemed to have escaped his notice. I like the BFI and one day I will go there and see everything I have missed.

On the way back we tried to take some artistic pictures with Stan's phone, as after looking at art everything looks like art, even the paint on the road.