Monday's Wanderings

A library visit for more Patti and shoot research (this time a unbelievably huge Guy Bourdin reference book), riverside walks and imaginative window displays at Frame shop

Fog on the Thames

 

A misty (and grey) London afternoon by the river yesterday.

 

Charing Cross Bridge

1899

Claude Monet

Charing Cross Bridge, Fog on The Thames

1899-1901

Claude Monet

 Monet was one of the first painters I remember learning about as a child, and going to see his water lily paintings at the National Gallery. I think his Thames paintings get better as they get more and more blurred. Monet came to live in England during the Franco-Prussian war, and was inspired by Turner and Constable.

Stone Faced

This solemn bearded face caught my eye last night while walking along the river at Temple

Friday at an Exhibition

It seems that I am making a habit of spending part of Friday at an exhibition. At the end of last week I made the journey over to the Tate Modern to see the vast display of Yayoi Kusama's work. Unfortunately the glorious weather of Thursday hadn't stretched itself to morning of my visit, although the mist and clouds over the Thames really did seem to have a silver lining

Most people who take any interest in what goes on at the Tate will probably have seen images such as these below to advertise Kusama's show

And rightly so - these two rooms are amazing. Absolutely disconcerting but thrilling. A weird psychedelic disco. I loved it. Dots are repeated again and again throughout the exhibition, especially in the final rooms: 

'My desire was to predict and measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from my own position in it, with dots - an accumulation of particles forming the negative spaces... I wanted to examine the single dot that was my own life.'

But I also really enjoyed the first room of Kusama's early work too. These were beautiful drawings in improvised materials (she was unable to get hold of oil paints, so mixed household paints with sand and used seed sacks as canvases), often odd but delicate and intricate.

 

Top: Leaves, 1954

Bottom: The Germ, 1952

I liked this one from her 1970s NY years too

Man Catching the Insect, 1972
Quite like that this one is stuck on a page in my scrap book with a £2,430 pair of shoes - coincidentally the exhibition is sponsored by Louis Vuitton....
As a new week starts I am buoyed by Kusama's statement of unquestionable girl power 
'Bring on Picasso, bring on Matisse, bring on anybody! I would stand up to them all with a single dot.'

Doubled

I managed to catch both sides of the river on my phone's (awful) camera yesterday on my way to work. I love this cold weather even if it means my hands are constantly purple.