feeling a tad groggy after a fine night out with the lovely Sarah O’Keefe, the irrepressible and mysterious Patrick Hollander and old friend (and highly collectible creator of prints!) Sam Mcewen…(go check her great site!) at Chelsea Arts Club I got up for my morning meeting with Ted from Kirker holiodays. That was all good, I seem set for some tour guiding..something that will fit well with my itinerant life…then, seeing as I was in the Waterloo area I decided to check out the Damien Hirst at Tate Modern show.
Coming in to the Turbine Hall I saw a queue of devotees gathered around a black box..could be a pilgrimage to the al-Haram Mosque from where I stood but of course it was people waiting patiently in line to see Hirst’s ‘For The Love of God’ skull and of course, with some irony I noted the connection there..I declined to join the queue and went upstairs where I was super-glad for my Tate membership and sailed past the mob.
Inside it was far less packed than I’d feared. I still like his early works; the first Medicine Cabinets and the hairdryer and ping-pong ball that have resonance, with their cap-doffing to Jeff Koons and Joseph Cornell. His latest version of The Physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living seemed strained and tame..the shark had zero menace and that’s part of the work’s strength…but it struck me that a lot of his work depends on suprise and the change in mind that his work creates. Once done they offer little else. The flies still breed and die, as do the butterflies…but I could stare at a Rothko or a Bacon for decades…most revealing to me, and saddening of course, were the endless opportunities for selling all sorts of memorabilia. Nothing is left unexploited.
Next stop, Zoffany at the Royal Academy. Squeezed away in the Sackler Wing, these paintings explode with irreverent humour and sexy vitality. There’s a painting of Queen Charlotte that has Gainsborough poise and the obsessive attention to detail reminiscent of Ingres (see image)…a quality show that I highly recommend..Zoffany was a hero of The Grand Tour but largely ignored.
Then off to help my lovely friend Jane Glover change her system to Apple…it’s always a bit of a struggle but she’ll get there! …. it’s a Zen thing, I tell her..but she’s struggling..but game!
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