One of the strong moments in Margy Kinmonth’s film about War Art is the way that the viewer is compelled to confront the drawings which Henry Tonks did of the facial disfigurement of wounded soldiers in Aldershot Military Hospital after the battle of Ypres and which belong to the Royal College of Surgeons. They are extraordinarily unflinching images, informed as much by Tonks’s surgical practice as by his training as an artist (he studied at the London Hospital under Sir Frederick Treves before becoming an Assistant Professor at the Slade).
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War Art
We went to a preview of a television film that Margy Kinmonth has made with Eddie Redmayne on the impact of the first world war on art. He comes across incredibly well – knowledgeable and unself-important, with an interest in the subject based on reading art history at Cambridge. The Royal Academy appears because of the memorial outside to the Artists’ Rifle Brigade and because the female students in the RA Schools were employed to paint the dazzle camouflage on the ships employing the pictorial devices of cubism. We were so inspired by the number of pictures shown in the storerooms of the Imperial War Museum – works by Nevinson, Bomberg, Sargent and both Nashes – that we set off to see them.
We found the dazzle boats which were apparently found in a store in Duxford:-
Islip Odell
Who exactly was Islip Odell ? He was a builder, based in Upper Clapton, who worked for Sir William Middleton when he developed his estate in Haggerston, making an agreement with him for the development of the eponymous Middleton Road in 1840 and also supplying the bricks for the building of Middleton’s country estate, Shrubland Park in Suffolk. Middleton’s surveyor was called George Pownall, who may have been responsible for the layout of Albion Square. I missed out that one side of Albion Square was occupied by Albion Hall, leased by the Kingsland, Dalston and De Beauvoir Scientific Institution, which gives some clue to the aspirations of the neighbourhood. It taught chess, French and book-keeping and hosted the local choir.
Haggerston
Our trip to Cambridge was cancelled, so I spent the morning trying to make sense of Haggerston instead. I had never been to Albion Square, laid out in the 1840s by Islip Odell, a brick-maker, and was surprised and impressed by its stateliness, its sense of municipal improvement, with drinking fountains and public gardens:-
Olympicopolis
I attended the discussion this afternoon about Olympicopolis, with Munira Mirza, Martin Roth and others on the panel. What’s the idea ? It comes from the Olympic Legacy Development Corporation and from Boris Johnson as Mayor. Some of it is the neo-Victorian idea of social improvement, bringing culture to an area of urban deprivation, as the Bethnal Green Museum did nearly 150 years ago. They’ve provided housing and sports facilities and a big public park, but nothing so far for the arts. Then, there’s the link between the arts and practice, providing visible studio space where artists and designers will be expected to interact with the public. Also, it’s neo-Victorian in being a grand initiative of central government. As Munira Mirza described it (excitingly), it’s about the sexiness of Victorian self-confidence, inspired as much by Cedric Price as Prince Albert.
Victorian Futures
I’ve spent the day at a conference called Victorian Futures which is exploring the ways in which ideas and ideals of the 1830s which led to the Great Reform Bill and the Select Committe on Arts and Manufactures have continued to influence the action and rhetoric surrounding all subsequent government cultural initiatives, including the Great Exhibition, many aspects of the South Kensington Museum (Henry Cole was an ardent utilitarian), the Festival of Britain, and now, it is suggested, Olympicopolis. I was sceptical of the latter until I heard that Boris Johnson’s original idea for the Arcelor Tower was to produce a version of Trajan’s Column. And listening to Kieran Long talk about the V&A’s plans for the Olympic Park made me think that he is a reincarnation of Cole in his beliefs in the power of display, the politics of objects, and the Museum’s social mission.
Venetian Streets
I didn’t have much time to walk the streets of Venice, the calli and the sottoportegi, to enjoy Venice early in the morning when there are only a few tourists catching an early morning flight and otherwise it is quiet with only dogs and the rubbish boats loading up.
A back street in Cannaregio:-
Lots of carved keystones:-
S. Maria della Salute
Everywhere one looks, one sees the Salute: from the hotel, across the canal, from where we had lunch, from the terrace where we had dinner: grand and majestic and slightly larger than life with its spiral volutes, designed by Baldassare Longhena, who was small and dapper and lacking in self confidence. But I’ve never actually seen it close up, so this morning I walked across the Accademia bridge and through the back streets of Dorsoduro to see it close up:-
Palazzetto Pisani
We had lunch in the Palazzetto Pisani in a first-floor room on the Grand Canal.
This is the façade of the Palazzetto:-
We arrived by water taxi:-
Chiharu Shiota
After an afternoon wandering through pavilions in the Giardini which were variously political, it was a pleasure to walk into the Japanese Pavilion which is about pure visual pleasure, a complex piece of blood red lattice work holding up an infinite collection of keys: if symbolic, not political, but about life experiences sublimated:-
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