…. In an Italian restaurant. At the moment I’m passing time, having done everything I set out to do. The day in London has been a mixed bag. The journey down was not as expected, as the train broke down, but they soon found us one to which we could transfer. The visit to the Modigliani exhibition at the Estorick collection was a joy. His drawings have a lovely rhythm, and there seems to be scarcely a line that is not complemented subtly by another. Sometimes his drawing is unbelievably delicate. His “Study for the portrait of Mme. Eyraud Vaillant” was just superb.
By accident I bumped into a friend, which was nice. The only disappointment was the cafe, which I think is under new management. Can you imagine an Italian cafe that has run out of tomatoes and red wine?
My next stop was the annual BP Portrait Award, at the National Portrait Gallery. (It took ages to get there, but I’ll explain why later.) I found this year’s show disappointing. There was far too much photo-realism. Yes: OK, you can pretend you are a camera, but otherwise, what is it for? There were too many self-portraits that actually were more interested in saying something about “Art” and not enough about their subjects.
some entries did impress me: David Jon kassan’s “Portrait of Sam Goldofsky” being one, and Helen O’Sullivan Tyrell’s “The Convalescent” another. The prize-winner, Borja Buces Penard’s “My Mother and my Brother on a Sunday Morning” was worthy of its award. (I’m sure all these are on their website.)
some of the items in the general collection did grab my attention. There is a wonderful new portrait by Stuart Pearson Wright, of Mike Leigh. The one I will remember most, however, was Alastair Adams’ Tony Blair, which captures somehow a balance between extroversion and inner doubt (guilt?)
Because of the earlier mayhem on the bus, I walked to the Italian Bookshop, to replace my collapsing dictionary, and then set out back to this restaurant, not far from King’s Cross station. The reason for the mayhem in the streets became clear. Without realising it I have chosen to come to London on the day of the country’s biggest “pride” demonstration. Several streets were closed to accommodate what was obviously a huge event. I was amused by one group of gay men, who wanted to insist that they enjoy conventionally “manly” activities. They carried signs saying, “we climb”, “we canoe”, “we go caving”, and so on. The one that made me smile was, “we camp”.