We set off tomorrow morning for one of our regular “raids” on London. These usually combine an attempt to meet my wife’s need for doses of theatre, and my craving for more gallery visits. She has been longing to see Six I think ever since it was first staged, and we also want to see what a stage version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe might turn out like. They each in their own way suggest interesting theatrical challenges.
My choice is the Lucien Freud retrospective at Tate Modern and Cezanne at the National Gallery. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Freud for a long time. I know that he was a rat-bag, but I have been attracted both by his capacity for careful observation and his use of paint. There is also in my mind a deep sense of puzzlement about exactly what kind of relationship he had with his sitters. Are the things we see best regarded as “portraits” or as “life-drawing”? (And does it matter?) No doubt there will be plenty to work at here.
With Cezanne my puzzlement has rather different origins. I know the conventional reasons why he is lauded as an innovator, but very often I have had difficulty in actually seeing in this work evidence of the things that are being said about it. Is he the victim (to put it in cruder terms) of “art bollocks”? What do I actually see when I look at a Cezanne?
One way or another it is all well worth looking forward to, adding into the mix lunch with one of my sons and his wife and no doubt a few other restaurant trips also. Ask the song says (I think by Tom Lehrer) “we may even have some fun if it stops raining.”