Julian Stair has done an exhibition, Art, Death and the Afterlife, at the Sainsbury Centre (UEA) in which he has mixed the ashes of people who died during the pandemic into ceramic vessels which are essentially funerary urns:-
It’s a very simple device, but unexpectedly profound in prompting ideas about appropriate forms of commemoration – past, present and for that matter, future as well:-
Having got interested in issues of social housing – what works, what doesn’t – I went to see Goldsmith Street, the model development in Norwich which, very deservedly, won the Stirling Prize in 2019.
It is, indeed, very straightforwardly successful: low-rise, dense, terrace housing, conceptually traditional, but not so traditional as to annoy the anti-traditionalists in the architectural establishment:-
We were at the Barbican a week ago for the latest Simon McBurney production, when after twenty minutes, someone appeared on stage to tell us that Kathryn Hunter was unable to perform, a slightly surreal experience mitigated by being able to see it this afternoon. The whole drama does indeed revolve round a single, complex performance by Amanda Hadingue as the animal rights activist – brilliantly played. I haven’t read the book and now should.
For those who do not necessarily read my comments section, I am re-posting the characteristically thoughtful review which Ivan Gaskell has sent me about a relatively recent exhibition of hers at Hauser & Wirth in New York. More sadness at the death of someone who was still so immensely creative, dangerously so, as Ivan rightly implies.
https://www.west86th.bgc.bard.edu/exhibitionnotes/phyllida-barlow-tilt/
I love visiting Castle Howard: its combination of architecture and landscape; the way Vanbrugh treats architecture as something to be enjoyed, a visual adventure, not necessarily – or at all – logical, but done with a sense of unexpected vitality, sometimes a bit surface deep, but designed for effect from a distance as well as close up:-
So, the obvious question is: what did Vanbrugh and the Earl of Carlisle think they were doing in constructing a line of medieval fortifications at the entrance to the estate ?
It is not as if there was an enemy to keep out. They are surprisingly serious, proper fortifications, not a piece of eighteenth-century game playing or ornament.
Of course, Lord Carlisle had been Earl Marshal. And Vanbrugh was a herald. In some way, it must be associated with Carlisle’s interest in his lineage, not least because they are accompanied by a pyramid dedicated to the memory of his ancestor, Lord William Howard. But no-one at the time thought it particularly unusual, apart from Horace Walpole and he described it in the 1770s:-
I don’t think I know anything architectural quite as exciting as the approach to Castle Howard: the way one feels the landscape begin to change and straighten out as one approaches from the York-Malton road and then the road descends steeply to the Carrmire Gate, which is hard to get through, and must always have been even in the days of a coach. And the Carrmire Gate is itself such a strange combination of authentic medievalism, so unlikely for the 1720s, and a sense of free, abstract design sensibility:-
Then the road climbs equally steeply up to the Pyramid Gate:-
I used to be cautious of treating Vanbrugh as having a theatrical sensibility, but what could be more straightforwardly theatrical in creating a ceremonial sense of arrival, which the Marlboroughs didn’t encourage at Blenheim ?
It’s a long time since I’ve walked it, but necessary in order to experience the full impact.
If anyone is interested in my views of the Castle Howard mausoleum a mere thirty three years after I published The Building of Castle Howard (Faber and Faber, 1990), I am giving a lecture on it next month. Being asked to give the lecture has got me back into Vanbrugh/Hawksmoor studies, which is partly why you have been reading less of me:-
Three years ago, it looked as if Charleston could be a victim of the pandemic. It had recently completed an expansion into the adjacent barns. It is dependent on visitor income. No visitors were able to come and its annual festival was online. Now, three years later, there is something impressive about how resilient it has been: a good and lively café; two exhibitions; the house in good order; an ambitious public programme; a concert which we can’t go to this evening.
It is presumably testimony to the generosity of philanthropists who rightly admire it and have supported its survival.
It was a great treat to be able to talk to Hylton Nel about his life and work: his time in London in the late 1960s when he was working against the tide by doing work which was ornamental/historical/figurative. And the great variety of his later work and the wide range of its historical antecedents.
Chinese:-
Greek:-
Christian:-
And playful:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
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