An unusual start to the day in that I was asked to chair a discussion organised by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Design on the subject of Beauty in Public Life. Luckily, chairing the session meant that I didn’t have to speak about it. Richard Rogers described how he had not been allowed by senior civil servants ever to use the word beauty and lamented the fact that policy makers and parliamentarians seldom included artists and architects. Nick Raynsford MP, the chairman of the Parliamentary Group, revealed that he was one of only two MPs who had been to art school and therefore were comfortable about speaking about art in the House of Commons. Sam Jacob, of the architectural practice FAT (soon to disband after they have provided Britain’s contribution to the Venice Biennale), talked about the experience of designing New Islington in Manchester where they had the temerity to ask the clients what they thought about beauty. The President of the Royal Academy described how he had had been a closet believer in the concept of beauty throughout his painting career. The discussion was – perhaps inevitably – inconclusive because the idea of beauty remains philosophically slippery in spite of the good efforts of Alberti and Edmund Burke. Should it be defined top down by artists and architects, as happened after the second world war, or should it be defined bottom up by engaging the public in the discussion of aesthetics ? The majority took the latter view, but recognised the difficulties of getting the civil service and politicians to engage with it.
Tag Archives: England
Henry Kissinger
Some years ago, I was invited to lunch with Henry Kissinger. I wasn’t able to go. I have always regretted it. Tonight he came to the RA in celebration of his ninetieth birthday. Whatever the views of historians of his role in the past, he spoke with extraordinary authority about international relations, referring to the first mission of the British to China in the late eighteenth century and to the ideas of Bismarck in the nineteenth, talking about diplomacy with a long historical and philosophical dimension.
Sanctioning Day
One of the enjoyable rituals of the Summer Exhibition is Sanctioning Day, when members of the Summer Exhibition committee meet to approve the hang. We meet at 11 am and move from gallery to gallery. Whoever has been responsible for the hang in a room speaks to it, talking through problems and issues, pointing out where members’ work has been hung, sometimes pointing out work by artists who might be members or have been considered. Occasionally, minor suggestions are made by the President or members of the committee: how a work might be centred or a juxtaposition improved or where the work of James Turrell would look best. Then, the artist who has hung the room is congratulated, the room is sanctioned by the President, and there is a small round of applause.
Charleston Festival (4)
Hard to beat Alan Bennett (age 80) reading his own description of first visiting the Leeds City Art Gallery and of his first Room of His Own at Exeter College, Oxford, failing to buy a pot by Lucie Rie whilst on National Service in Cambridge, not buying a chair by Isokon, but a roll of wallpaper instead, which he wasn’t able to hang. He stayed on at Oxford as a postgraduate student of medieval history (he taught Bevis Hillier, who collected ceramics, and David Bindman, who collected Old Master drawings) and he retains just a touch of the intellectual dryness of an Oxford don. His favourite museum is the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. I wanted to ask how he had found it as a Trustee of the National Gallery. He ended with his spoof memoir of Virginia Woolf as if read to the Memoir Club from Forty Years On.
Ⓒ Axel Hesslenberg
Ⓒ Axel Hesslenberg
Early Morning in East Sussex
I got up early to have a swim, walk across the fields towards Hamsey and enjoy the distant views of the fields and the downs:
Charleston Festival (3)
The highlight of the second day of the Charleston Festival was Robert Harris talking about his novel, An Officer and a Spy, which I haven’t read and now want to. He was admirably straightforward in describing how his interest in the Dreyfus Affair derived from a commission from the filmmaker Roman Polanski; had involved a bit of research, including the use of a 1900 Baedeker Guide to Paris, which told him about the relevant restaurants; and then a mere six months of writing from 5.30 in the morning to lunchtime. He compared his technique to that of Dickens and Trollope, believing that the best novels should be written without pretention. He was offset by discussion with Hilary Spurling and came across as impressively convincing.
Charleston Festival (2)
Another thing I like about the Charleston Festival is the presence of the old and the wise. In the front row of the stalls at the first event was Jeremy Hutchinson (age 99), the emeritus Professor of Law at the Royal Academy, whose mother Mary was Clive Bell’s mistress. A few rows back was Olivier Bell (age 97), who served in the Control Commission in the second world war and has just been awarded an MBE. One of the best of the speakers was Asa Briggs (age 93) talking about his third volume of autobiography, still pretty alert, a codebreaker in Bletchley and second Vice Chancellor of Sussex University. When it came to questions, someone asked a tough one about the long delay in the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry. Asa Briggs said, ‘Thank you, Phyllis’. The questioner was P.D. James (age 94).
Charleston Festival (1)
Each year we go to the Charleston Festival in Sussex and have done every year (I think) since 1993 when I became a Trustee. I love it: the windy tent, the excessively knowledgeable audience, lounging about in the sun over lunch, and the magnificent unpredictability of the subjects discussed. The pleasure is not just what happens and is said in the tent, but the beauty of the setting: the garden looking brilliantly lush:
Tom Stuart-Smith (1)
It being nearly summer, people are sitting out having lunch in the Keeper’s House garden at the RA. It was designed (at spectacularly short notice) by Tom Stuart-Smith. He has just had an exhibition of his drawings at the gallery at the back of Alan Baxter’s offices in Cowcross Street. Not only does he conceptualise all his projects through drawings, but he requires all his staff to do so as well. He won the contract through a beautifully presented drawing done not by him, but by a member of his staff. It’s a skill which may have lost currency in art teaching, but remains a pleasure to behold:
Liane Lang
This morning I went to a talk by Liane Lang, a German-born artist who studied at the Royal Academy Schools and whose work I very much admire for the way that it combines history, fiction and installation. Her most recent project is based on the Casa Guidi, the Brownings’ house just south of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence and re-imagines Elizabeth Barrett Browning in situ as a doll. I found it slightly spooky because years ago, when I was fourteen, I stayed in the house which the Brownings lived in in Asolo. When I was coming down to dinner one evening as a suggestible teenager, I saw an elderly lady come out of the upstairs drawing room and cross the landing to the bedroom next door. I’ve always assumed that the lady was Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
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