‘Picture This’…at the National Gallery

 

A boy growing up in Birmingham having been born in England with parents from Barbados  is not easy. At home and school OK but on the street with skinheads and an old man that said ‘go back home you bastard’. It was a life of trying to learn about oneself and at the same time the community and country you lived in. 

His story is no doubt but one in many millions. A black boy in a white society; no role models only acting to keep you safe and ignorant of reality. At least then there was just the National Front he remarked. Today there are Nazis and mums and dads! 

Well all was revealed about the life of David Harewood who in a candid, relaxed and self effacing conversation revealed all. From growing up in Birmingham, to going to RADA, to having a breakdown and spending time in a mental institution to regaining himself and moving into theatre, film and writing. His is a life  of luck, persistence and skill. Today he speaks out for the mentally ill, the black community and the disadvantaged. But importantly why did he chose the painting ‘Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba’ by Claude? 

We were attending a National Gallery series titled ‘Picture This’ hosted by BBC presenter John Wilson. Tonight David Harewood was on a very relaxed couch on stage in the Pigott Theatre. 

Harwood is known for his roles in Homeland, Supergirl and Blood Diamond and his staring role in The Man in the High Castle and in the BBC’s Sherwood and the Night Manager. As a documentary maker hsi works include Black is the New Black, Could Britain ever have a black Prime Minister and Why is COVID Killing People of Colour.

But back to the paining! Why did he chose this painting? Art Historian, Melissa Baksh provided an insight into the painting explaining that Sheba is almost hidden from view and is remarkably white in appearance. 

David reflected on his own life being almost hidden from view and having to deal with those who were only to ready to typecast him only in black roles and until recent times recognising his skill as an actor. He reflected on his breakdown as being directly linked to his lack of knowing who he was in a world that denied his existence. 

Today he had just concluded playing the role of Othello and is President of RADA as well as completing or about to commence new productions. It was a ‘this is your life’ conversation and concluded with an explanation of his surname ‘Harewood’. This was the name of the plantation owner who owned his forebears. 

Recently he met the owner of the Harewood mansion in England who commissioned his portrait  to hang in the mansion revealing  the name of those who had built the mansion though their slavery. It was a telling moment in a momentous evening! 

European Writers Festival at the British Library

 

 It quickly became apparent that this would be an ‘interesting day’ at the British Library for the biennial European Writers Festival. The train to Kings Cross bypassed two stations and on exiting the station we were confronted with all things British;  flags, caps, scarves, badges. Police and their vans filled the plaza 

As we made our way along Euston Road toward the British Library we had to navigate men, women and children with their flags and paraphernalia. They came in largish groups and they milled around the pubs. They were heading into the city for  the extreme right rally. We walked against the rising tide;  the feeling was surreal.

The opening of the festival recognised that we were in a time of wars, political and social conflict, and with climate change underway. We had all felt the troublesome times that confronted us having all been swept along the footpath by the flag waving crowds. 

The aim of the festival was clearly and unambiguously stated; to inspire, connect by writers from across Europe and to reflect the breadth of voices, languages and perspectives shaping Europe today.

The day was filled with writers describing their most recent books and the thinking and life experiences behind them. The themes included personal and collective histories, urban life, migration and belonging, nature and environment, truth and secrecy, coming of age, freedom of expression, democracy and the experience of living in a time of great upheaval

It was a wide array of writers from and the moderators were exceptional in their inquiry with searching questions into the books and authors that took to the stage. 

We heard authors from many European countries with ther own languages, cultural, social and political issues. 

It was truly an inspiring, exhausting and most valuable day of learning.

The Price….

Last night we went to the intimate Marylebone Theatre to be engrossed and moved by Arthur Miller's play ‘The Price’.  This is one of Miller’s less known plays set during the depression and perhaps is best defined by Miller himself who once said - “Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.” The play highlights the price we when we make that mistake!

The play is a drama about two estranged brothers, Victor and Walter Franz, who meet after 16 years to sell their late father's furniture. However it reveals a confronting and long-buried resentment and the true cost of their life choices. 

Victor's sacrifice to care for their father during the Depression is played out against Walter's successful but distant career as a surgeon. It is volatile, loud, intense and moving. 

Overseeing the negotiation is an elderly, wily appraiser, Gregory Solomon, who brings dark humor and wisdom to the emotional battlefield as the brothers' conflicting memories and justifications are revealed. 

His role is taken over in the second half of the play as the brothers express their frustration in the other. 

It is a play that will have an extended season following understandable rave reviews. 

Miller was a playwright of incredible courage and conviction and reflected the personal  and societal tensions that conflict America today. 

I hazard a guess that his plays will be more widely played out on the stage because of its resonance in today’s volatile and valueless world. 

 

David Hockney: A Year in Normandy

Hockney’s new paintings for the Serpentine Gallery reflect his lifelong fascination with looking, “affirming his belief that simple beauty is worth celebrating”.  

It’s an exhibition that at its heart is the environmental cycle  as we now know it but will change over climate change time. The Hockney frieze surrounds the gallery like a ribbon of his time in Normandy. 

It has Hockney’s brush strokes, meanderings  and simple narrative. The drawings are projected from his iPad onto the interior wall of the Serpentine Gallery North like a film; its edits enabling a continuous moving image of winter through spring summer, autumn and back to winter. It’s simple, atmospheric, and is  time lapse journey.

 

Cecily Brown at the Serpentine Gallery

Cecily Brown at the Serpentine Gallery and is known for her ‘vigorous brushwork, vivid colour and dynamic compositions’. 

The works provide ample evidence of her approach plus her love for the outdoors. In fact the gallery is located in amongst the green grass and trees of Kensington Gardens and some of her paintings sit with a view of the outside. 

She works at a scale, with the flashes of brush and of colour with recurring motifs, such as ‘amorous couples, woodland scenes, and uncanny nature walks’. The exhibition responds to early memories of the landscape nd her fascination with children’s book illustrations. The works rely on finding those children tales in amongst the forest and grass  of the outdoors. 

This is her first major solo show of paintings in the UK since her 2005 exhibition and represents her homecoming from New York where she has spent the past thirty years.

 

Call me Trace…

The Tate Modern describes Tracy Emin as ‘one of the most  important contemporary artists of her generation’. Since her Turner Prize nomination of ‘My Bed’  in the 1990’s ‘her disregard for any separation of the personal and the public, along with her commitment to unapologetic self-expression, came to define a historic moment in British culture and global art history’.

The exhibition at the Tate Modern exposes 40 years of her groundbreaking practice alongside new works that include painting, video, textiles, neons, writing, sculpture, and installation, Emin uses the ‘female body as a powerful tool to explore passion, pain, and healing’.

An art critic wrote ‘Don’t come here looking for a good time – you won’t find it. But come looking for pure, unapologetic, undiluted, full-frontal love, grief, heartache and sadness, and you will end up feeling more feelings than you’ve probably felt for years’. Not wrong! 

 

London matters!