I wanted to see the new Louvre early in the day before it’s too hot later. It hovers mysteriously in a big parkland of fresh planting:-

Up close, it’s impressive – a great shallow dome of what look like watch springs, close to the water:-

From some angles, you get no more than a glimpse of what happens under the dome:-

I will discover later:-

I have already done a post about the restoration of Wickham’s, the local East End department store which was built to rival Selfridge’s and has now been impressively repaired and repointed in all its 1920s, neoclassical glory. It looks like Valhalla:-

I fell into conversation this morning with the man who sells bread at Stepney Farmer’s Market. I had always assumed that he baked it himself as he is often late setting up his stall, as if he he has only just managed to extract himself from the oven. But, no, it comes from an industrial estate in Inkpen on the Berkshire Downs, made by Syd Aston of Aston’s bakehouse and supplied to farmer’s markets all over London. I’m not complaining: it’s very good:-

We were also able to see and admire the collection of works assembled by Caroline Lucas MP to show the qualities of the local landscape and, by implication, how far it is at risk from the catastrophe of radical climate change. It has been done deliberately in parallel with the David Nash exhibition, exploring some of the same themes of art and its relationship to the natural world. Not least, the exhibition reveals some of the great and often unseen wealth of the Towner’s collection.

William Nicholson, Judd Farm:-

Alan Reynolds, Moonlit Orchard:-

Eric Ravilious, Beachy Head:-

We drove down to Eastbourne to see the David Nash exhibition, including grand, monumental wood sculptures from his studio in Capel Rhiw:-

It’s about the poetry of wood – its texture and characteristics when cut and warped, atavistic:-

Drawings, too:-

Upstairs are smaller works, simple, but unexpectedly profound:-

Since the election, I have taken a break from reading political commentary, since one of the benefits of the result was that it was definitive, at least for the next five years.

But I found the attached piece of long-form journalism in the New York Review of Books fascinating because it suggests that one of the reasons for the result was a widespread revulsion not against neoliberalism or London, but what the writer describes as ‘The Center’: the capture of the middle ground by self-interested managerialism. I’m not sure whether I agree with it, but the way it is written makes it unexpectedly plausible.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/13/the-center-blows-itself-up-care-and-spite-in-the-brexit-election/

I went to Lionel Barber’s leaving party at Tate Britain.

I am incredibly full of admiration for the way that he has kept the FT as a paper of proper public record, not subject to the same level of propaganda as his sister papers, still employing a large number of intelligent, independent-minded journalists, whose views are not predictable before you have read them, with a weekend section on the Arts which is unlike any of the other newspapers in terms, best of all, of its internationalism. I don’t know how he has done it, other than being impressively wide-ranging, independent-minded and internationalist himself, as well as a champion bicyclist.

I was interested to read the views of Tim Parker, the chairman of the National Trust, on the occasion of its 125th. anniversary, because he makes clear that the Trust is now at least as interested in industrial history as in its legacy of great country houses. As he indicates, attitudes to the past have changed and people are now as fascinated by how ordinary people lived in the past and how things were made as they are in how the rich lived.

Perhaps this may encourage the National Trust, with its great campaigning tradition, to take an interest in, and express a view on, what was until recently the greatest surviving example of a working late medieval foundry, which thus far, I can’t help noticing, the National Trust, along with Historic England, has chosen to leave to its fate.

Or does it perhaps still prefer its properties to be in the home counties than in old, historic, working London ?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/11/national-trust-favour-terraced-houses-stately-homes-visitors/

I much admired the new copper drainpipe on the side of an old pub on Stepney Green:-