We have been to the Villa Jones once before, but not for ten years at least, and had forgotten its architectural purity on a steep hillside north of Bargemon: each of the interior spaces beautifully composed on a grid, all with distant views across the valley towards the Massif des Maures. It’s a homage not just to Le Corbusier and the machine-à-habiter, but to an older tradition of Edwardian landscape gardening – Cecil Pinsent’s Villa Le Balze above Florence and Shepherd and Jellicoe’s Italian Gardens of the Renaissance. You can rent it and I can’t recommend it more highly.

https://www.villajones.com/

I have done a piece for the August/September issue of The Critic on the subject of gaslighting. At the same time that Westminster City has spent £2 million on a carnival mound disfiguring Marble Arch, they are quietly sending workmen round the back streets of Westminster getting rid of gaslighting, which it always had since the first gas lights were installed in Pall Mall in January 1807. There has been no debate or discussion round this. They probably thought no-one would mind. I can now attach the photographs I took in St. James’s Park, the Mall and off St. Martin’s Lane of historic gaslights which are, not surprisingly listed.

It will not surprise readers of my blog that Historic England have not apparently objected to the change.

St. James’s Park:-

The de luxe version in the Mall:-

Cecil Court:-

And the amazing Goodwin’s Court, if you want a real taste of surviving Victorian London:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/august-september-2021/gaslighting-london/?s=09

I had completely forgotten how wonderful the carving is in the tympanum of the Cathédrale St.-Lazare in Autun: so early, so full of life – and signed by Gislebertus underneath the feet of Christ:-

To the right (Christ’s left) is the Archangel Michael:-

And Satan (I hope I’ve got this right):-

More great carving of the capitals, which look, to my untutored eye, to be by different hands.

This must be Noah’s Ark:-

And Simon the Sorcerer descending head-first to hell:-

A treat….

We visited L’Hôtel-Dieu with its wonderful big room for the sick with cubicles constructed by Maurice Ouradou of the Monuments historiqeues in 1876, following an inventory of 1501:-

A magnificent late medieval painted roof:-

Even if some of the detailing is nineteenth-century revival, it’s done very beautifully:-

Such an amazing Rogier van der Weyden, Last Judgment, commissioned by Nicolas Rolin in 1443 for the Hospices:-

Not a bad place to be vaccinated:-

The cathedral at Laon is so wonderful, high on a hill above miles of flat agricultural landscape and visible from far off on the autoroute, gradually acquiring definition as one approaches:-

Early Gothic, late twelfth century, beautiful carving, perfect interior:-

We made it to France – in spite of all the difficulties, the requirement to quarantine, the forms that have to be filled up, the need to show that we’ve been double vaccinated, we travelled in trepidation, amongst relatively few who are likewise brave or foolish, through the tunnel into the wide open spaces of Picardy, lunch in Laon, down to Beaune: it felt how it was pre-EU, an adventure, full of unknowns and uncertainty. But we’ve survived so far.

I have been alerted to the listing of the 25 most significant works of post-war architecture in this morning’s New York Times, selected by, amongst others, Annabelle Selldorf, recently selected to review and revise the Sainsbury Wing.

It’s an intriguing parlour game: starts off conventionally with the Farnsworth House and the Seagram Building, doesn’t include the Guggenheim Museum or Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House, but does include her SESC Pompéia; includes obvious icons like Sydney Opera House and the Centre Pompidou; is pretty thin on the 1980s and 1990s, apart from Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals; then, no doubt rightly, goes global and anti-canonical, including Amanda Williams in Chicago. A snapshot of current mainstream architectural taste.

https://nyti.ms/2WBI5GQ

I was asked to speak today at the new EA Festival, held in the grounds of the castle at Castle Hedingham. It was such a pleasure to be in a tent instead of on Zoom. I had nearly forgotten the pleasures of interaction with a live audience – the feeling of audience engagement and response.

The Castle is Norman. Between 1713 and 1719, much of the castle’s surrounds were demolished and a small Georgian house built in their place with ornamental grounds which half survive:-

There’s a big and very obvious problem with the FT‘s front page story this morning, which the FT perhaps doesn’t need to spell out.

If there is indeed a shadowy Advisory Board which helps fund the Tory party and influences government policy in exchange for big cash gifts, this is quite clearly and obviously deeply corrupt in a way in which the government is too implicated possibly to understand: it’s straightforward purchase of political influence, undocumented, by non-UK taxpayers, entirely extra-parliamentary and apparently unknown to senior figures in the party.

If, on the other hand, it is an Advisory Board which does not give advice, but charges £250,000 under false pretences, then this is also corrupt, although perhaps less so.

They don’t say it, but the Augean Stables springs to mind.

It’s well worth £4 for a copy.

https://on.ft.com/377l0xM

I was very sad to hear of Phillip King’s death yesterday (he died on Thursday). He was one of my ex officio trustees at the National Portrait Gallery when he took over from Philip Dowson as President of the Royal Academy. I always liked and admired him in spite of the fact that I know he had a difficult time as President and he couldn’t have been more welcoming when I arrived. I hadn’t realised that he read modern languages as an undergraduate, then studied under Anthony Caro who had read engineering. A big figure in the world of 1960s sculpture.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/phillip-king-sculptor-dead-1234600427/