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.
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.
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/
New in the garden.
Crab apples:-
Angelica Gigas:-
And Eucomis, not yet properly out:-
I went to Liane Lang’s new exhibition at the James Freeman Gallery in Islington – highly topical because it’s an exploration of statues of well-known women, a project begun some time before this became such a topical subject.
The works are based on photography, but then manipulated in three dimensions – rock, marble and stone. I particularly admired the piece of Queen Victoria. The original statue was done by her daughter, Princess Louisa:-
I have been following with the utmost interest the plans and proposals for the new LACMA a) because it is a project by Peter Zumthor, a great architect and b) because it encapsulates so many of the trends of recent museum thinking – thematic displays, the abolition of history, less Eurocentrism, no sense of an encyclopedia, everything on the same level, no front door. The attached is a long and considered discussion of the project, well informed, but only half sympathetic:-
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/new-lacma-learn-to-love-it-because-its-happening/
I’m sure I’ve done posts about the Bromley-by-Bow gasholders before, but as the surrounding area is developed, I suspect their future may be at risk in spite of them being rightly listed, designed by Vitruvius Wyatt for the Gas Light and Coal Company and very obvious monuments of high Victorian engineering:-
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