I went to see the exhibition by Christina Kimeze who did the Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School in 2021.  It’s interesting how the zeitgeist has changed and students are being taken up and shown by the mainstream contemporary art galleries, including Hauser and Wirth who are due to show an exhibition by her in Los Angeles this summer. 

Not least I was pleased to see the tapestry which the South London Gallery has commissioned from Dovecot Studio:-

https://www.royaldrawingschool.org/courses/postgraduate/student-stories/christina-kimeze/

We went to see The Brutalist at the Barbican – very appropriately as it’s about the construction of a crazily over-ambitious community centre-cum-library-cum-chapel on a hillside in Doylestown, just north of Philadelphia. 

The plot is half-convincing: about the arrival in Philadelphia of a Hungarian modernist, trained at the Bauhaus, who converts the study of a large colonial mansion into an ultra-modernist, daylit library, empty apart from a single reading couch, which leads to the commission to construct the massive community centre on top of a hill on the edge of the estate. 

There is a lot about Jewish identity and its relationship to Bauhaus modernism and about the desire of the great architect to be unconstrained by issues of cost and practicality.  I kept on thinking not of Marcel Breuer, but of Louis Kahn, who certainly had a magico-mystical belief in the virtues of brutalism.  I could have done with its melodrama being toned down a notch or two, but Adrien Brody is certainly extremely convincing as the architect Tóth.

I went a second time to see Stardust, Jim Venturi’s admirable, illuminating and often funny film about his parents, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, because it is not, I think, on general release, but deserves to be, because it is as much about their relationship as their architecture.  First time round, I was struck by how well Denise comes out of it and not just as the protagonist of Las Vegas.  Second time, Bob seemed to dominate particularly towards the end.  Either way, it tells one far more about them and their buildings, including the Sainsbury Wing, than any amount of architectural criticism.  A brilliant piece of filming by Jim Venturi and of editing by Anita Naughton.

We went to the Versailles exhibition at the Science Museum which is very well worth seeing: beautiful and fascinating things, many of which are totally unexpected; very well displayed (it’s not clear by whom, maybe inhouse); and deeply informative.

It’s not really about Versailles or only tangentially, but about the relationship of science to the French state and the way it was promoted by the French crown through the Académie Française and financial support for the work of individual scientists: gardens, plants, medicine, zoology.

The Marly Machine, which pumped water by a massive aqueduct to Versailles:-

Fountainheads:-

Peter Boel, Study of a cassowary:-

Model of a new-born baby to teach obstetrics:-

‘Marie-Antoinette’ Breguet No.160 Watch:-

Model of a chemistry laboratory:-

Not so many people so you are not jostled going round it.

Some things I will remember about Tim Hyman’s memorial event at the RA this morning.

• One of his early drawings was of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings

• He thought he peaked at eleven

• He was taught at Charterhouse by Ian Fleming-Williams, the Constable scholar who had previously hired Howard Hodgkin as the assistant art master

• He did an exhibition in 2000 on the Carnivalesque which was structured round themes from Bakhtin – the Tumultuous Crowd, The World Turned Upside-down, the Comic Mask and the Grotesque Body

• His classes at the Royal Drawing School were always oversubscribed

• He will miss the great Sienese exhibition which will open at the National Gallery in March

In his obituary of Fleming-Williams, he describes how ‘the sense remained that, beyond any specific role, he was pursuing some disinterested, and less easily definable, quest’.

The same might be said of Tim.

It was the funeral today of my beautiful, fragile, sad, tough cousin Rose, who looked after our garden for a while until it became clear that she was a pioneer in preferring weeds to flowers:-

I went to get some fishcakes from the farmers’ market in Victoria Park.  I have never seen the Regent’s Canal frozen:-

Talking of distinguished female museum directors, I am very upset to discover that Ros Savill, the former director of the Wallace Collection, died on December 27th. without me knowing she had even been ill. 

She was the nicest possible person – always cheerful, always a good ally at meetings of the Museum Directors’ Conference in the 1990s.  She renovated the Wallace Collection with great independence of mind, making it more lovely than it already was.  And she produced scholarly museum catalogues.  A grievous loss.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jan/02/dame-rosalind-savill-obituary?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Hearing Ian Collins read a poem by Lorca at Elizabeth Esteve-Coll’s memorial service reminded me that I never wrote a post to say how much I enjoyed and admired his recent biography of Ronald Blythe, Blithe Spirit.  A model of its kind: a fascinating subject, born in humble circumstances, but a remarkable observer and writer.  Collins says he wasn’t much interested in sex, but he seems to have sex with most of the people he meets.  He manages to steer a clever path between friendship and a sense of perspective, not easy when writing about a friend.  Maybe he should write Elizabeth’s biography next.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/dec/18/blythe-spirit-the-remarkable-life-of-ronald-blythe-by-ian-collins-review-village-voice?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

A beautiful sunny day in Norwich for Elizabeth Esteve-Coll’s memorial service.  Not a Cathedral I know well, but impressively well preserved, with all the paraphernalia of shop and catering in a new building designed with great sensitivity right alongside the cloister by Michael and Patty Hopkins.  I had not known how high Anglican Elizabeth was. Bach, Purcell and excellent readings and addresses.  I did not know she played hockey at school.  Born in Ripon (a Cathedral town).  And her degree from Birkbeck was in history and history of art (for the record):-