Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, totally worn out, and screaming "Woo hoo! What a Ride! I wanna go round again”
The inscription in my birthday card from my wife Sarah, paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson
It was my birthday last weekend. As Paul Simon puts it in his song 'Have A Good Time'…. "I hung one more year on the line". And my line is a long one by now. And as it was my birthday, I've taken the liberty of making this a meandering of all meanderings...
While I enjoy many things as someone new to living a single life (and I know there is still some novelty), celebrating a birthday alone is not one of them, so I ventured south for a long weekend to meet with family and friends.
I stayed with my wife Sarah for my southern venture and spent the day of my birthday with her. In the past, and when we were together, we travelled to various locations for such celebrations. Indulging ourselves in such things as Opera in Verona, fine dining on a small boat while travelling the canals of Amsterdam and sipping Sassicaia on Rome's Capitoline Hill with the city stretched out before us. This year it was a gentle day in each other's company in and around Sarah's home. Present and card opening, strolling, shopping (shoes for me), a lazy coffee stop, a treat from Sarah of a pub lunch, and a visit in the evening to a beautiful contemporary Indian restaurant (another treat from Sarah). A comfortable birthday throughout which I could sit back, relax, and engage in many conversations with Sarah. A long face-to-face conversation is a treat I miss in my single life.
The next day, I met up with my eldest son, Mark, and some of my grandchildren (Mark's wife, Leanne, currently working night shifts, was understandably catching up on sleep). We thought a picnic was a good idea. But this being summer in the UK, the weather thought otherwise. We did enjoy a picnic together but of the indoor variety. And, of course, more conversation. Particularly engaging was that with my eldest granddaughter, who is soon to complete her first year as a student nurse. She's finding it challenging but rewarding and, most importantly, enjoying it.
The following day it was to lunch in London with a dear friend of long standing, Rob. Pre-Covid, it was a tradition that Rob and I would meet twice a year for lunch or dinner somewhere in London. In early December, as a pre-Christmas celebration. And in July, when we both celebrate birthdays. This time, we met at the Narrowboat on Regents Canal with the plan to converse while ambling southward across London before enjoying a late lunch at The Swan at the Globe Theatre. Sadly, we lingered a little too long over our catch-up conversation in the pub, so a black cab ride supplemented the walk to the restaurant. The ride interrupted our stroll but not our conversation, which lasted through a long lazy lunch, a saunter to Borough Market, and a parting drink.
But before all this getting together, I gave myself a birthday treat of a visit to London's National Gallery. A place I've frequented often through the decades when living in and around London. I've seen many exhibitions there alone and with family members. And when feeling agitated or stressed, I've taken time out there for a few hours and relaxed within the superlative artworks on offer.
In my piece 'London Reflections' from three years ago, I wrote of some of my adventures in my first months living there in 1974. And while I much enjoy my meanderings around the towns and cities of the northeast, it was in London that I learned the art of being a flâneur. While I cannot match the stamina for the long walks that Pepys, Dickens, or van Gogh regularly made when they lived in London, I have never lost my love for wandering London's streets. And I don't do as Wilde allegedly did and catch a cab for any distance over two hundred yards! That may not be true, but it's a beautiful anecdote that matches the man's incredible decadence.
When visiting the tiny downstairs museum of James J Fox's Cigar shop on London's St James, I discovered that a packet of Wilde's hand-rolled and monogrammed Turkish cigarettes cost the equivalent of the then-average weekly wage. After Wilde's imprisonment, Fox sued Wilde for his unsurprisingly sizeable unpaid bill.
As I've shared in other pieces, I've always loved exploring city streets. And I don't mean walking from one tourist attraction to another. It's not to everyone's taste, but I enjoy nothing more than an exploration of the so-called 'poorer quarters'. Delving into the back streets and side streets, you better appreciate a place, its people, its character, and its atmosphere. And that's especially so if you stop for a bite to eat and a coffee in an unprepossessing cafe or a drink in a delipidated bar. I've yet to find an unfriendly welcome from owners or patrons (well, only once, on the Buda side of Budapest) and struck up many an interesting conversation in a melange of languages, hand gestures and smiles. And such places are much easier on the pocket too.
But to return to the National Gallery. For some years close to Christmas, I would reserve one of the window tables for a late lunch in the quiet sanctuary of the National Dining Room in the Sainsbury Wing. While a small menu, the food offered was always from the best in-season ingredients, and any of the reasonably priced wines from the short wine list never let me down. But my true enjoyment came from the view over Trafalgar Square and watching, as the afternoon progressed, the fading sunlight cast a soft golden glow down Whitehall and over the buildings around the square. Then as the sky deepened to a darker shade of blue, a quiet calm would settle. Where people would usually hurry and scurry, their pace slowed as the now extinguished sun allowed the brilliant white lights of the 'Gift from Oslo' Christmas tree to shine their splendour. Alas, any such lunch treat can't happen right now, given how much work is ongoing around that part of the National.
However, my visit this time was not to dine but to see the 'After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art' exhibition highlighting the innovative artistic movements from Post-Impressionism to Fauvism through Cubism and beyond. The exhibition offered an illuminating journey through that transformative period of art. When the revolutionary spirit of some artists dared to challenge conventional norms and redefine the boundaries of artistic representation, breaking with established tradition and laying the foundation for what we now consider modern art.
I found the exhibition a stunning showcase of that artistic redefinition featuring around one hundred works by some of the most influential artists who broke away from traditional styles to explore new techniques and ideas. There are far too many artists to list. Still, it will be no surprise that the exhibition included paintings from Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, and Wassily Kandinsky.
posts a daily piece of art on Substack supported by a wonderfully insightful narrative. George Bothamley is someone to follow if you'd like to understand more about the world of Art. If he reads this, he'll be pleased to know that a couple of the artists he's featured recently appear in the exhibition, Théo van Rysselberghe and Paul Sérusier. In a recent exchange with George, I mentioned how much I liked Rysselberghe's 'Coastal Scene'. I think it about keeps that position, but I'm wavering now I've seen both it and his full-length 'Portrait of Mademoiselle Alice Set' in the Flesh. Interestingly the exhibition gave much prominence to Sérusier's influence on the Pont-Aven group and his 'Talisman' that George included in his piece on the artist.The exhibition offered a comfortable journey through this incredible period of change in pursuing that universal question, what is art? The exhibition introduced us, the viewers, to each artist's innovative approach and offered a fascinating glimpse into the emergence of Modern art, from the vibrant colours of Fauvism to the bold, geometric forms of Cubism that led to Abstract art. The exhibition also highlighted the internationalist element of the innovation that stemmed from French Impressionists to a pan-European and beyond, modern art movement.
The Impressionists were interested in capturing the effects of light and atmosphere on the natural world. But the successor Post-Impressionists / Neo-Impressionists looked to shift away from naturalism in art. They were more interested in exploring the expressive qualities of colour, line, and form, looking to infuse their works with emotional intensity and subjective interpretations. Vincent van Gogh used vibrant colours and thick brushstrokes to convey his emotional response to the world around him. Cézanne broke down objects into geometric shapes and arranged them to emphasise their underlying structure. Gauguin meanwhile experimented with simplified forms and stylised patterns in his paintings of exotic locales. These and others, such as Seurat, pushed the boundaries of traditional representation; through their paintings, you can see a shift towards the artist's unique vision and a departure from the constraints of naturalistic representation, laying the groundwork for the following avant-garde movements.
Henri Matisse and André Derain, the leaders of the Fauvist movement, unleashed a vibrant explosion of colour along with free brushwork. Matisse's striking works display his use of bold, bright colours and loose brushstrokes to create vivid and dynamic compositions. He and Derain challenged traditional notions of colour representation. They created a new visual language that emphasised emotional expression over literal accuracy. The exhibition of paintings from this movement allows viewers to immerse themselves in Fauvist masterpieces' intense energy and audacity.
Artists such as Matisse and Picasso then began to explore ways of representing the world that did not rely on traditional perspective. They used simplified forms, flattened space, and bold colours to create works more about the artist's subjective vision than the world's objective reality.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is the collection of Picasso's works that show the progression of his style, from the early, more traditional pieces to the ground-breaking Cubist work from which visitors can see the deconstruction of objects into geometric shapes and the rearrangement of reality into abstracted compositions. Cubism made Picasso a household name and, along with Georges Braque, shattered the traditional understanding of pictorial space. By fragmenting forms and incorporating multiple perspectives, they challenged the notion of a single fixed viewpoint.
The exhibition also touches upon the emergence of Abstraction, a significant turning point in the history of modern art. Artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich pushed the boundaries by removing recognisable subjects, exploring pure form, colour, and composition. This movement opened new avenues for artistic expression, liberating art from the constraints of representation and paving the way for non-objective art.
And it's not just painting; the exhibition also featured a choice of sculptures by artists such as Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel. Rodin pioneered modern sculpture, rejecting the traditional academic style in favour of more expressive and naturalistic works. Claudel was a student of Rodin's and one of the most significant female sculptors of the 19th century. A characteristic of her work is its emotional intensity and exploration of the female body.
Moving from piece to piece, I felt privy to a fascinating glimpse into a pivotal moment in art history. The works on display were visually stunning and offered insight into the creative process and how artists of the time were audacious and innovative in their relentless pursuit of artistic freedom—constantly pushing the boundaries of what others considered acceptable in the art world. By challenging the status quo, these visionaries reshaped the art world, laying the foundation for the vibrant and diverse artistic expressions that define modern art today. Overall, the exhibition proved a wonderful birthday gift to me from me.
And going back to my birthday, if anyone is wondering just how old I am, I'm 43. Well, I am in hexadecimal, and being able to count in that number system betrays my ancient history of working with computers that had less power than a Fitbit but filled whole rooms. Editing a programme back then involved punch cards and paper tape. And debugging required an intimate knowledge of how to step through a programme to read the contents of CPU registers, along with an understanding of different base numbering systems. All computing archaeology to those of today.
The world of computing, as in art, has come a long, long way, although not necessarily in the same direction. I recall back in my younger days many a conversation with fellow computer programme designers and developers (the terms software and hardware - never mind shelfware and vapourware etc, somewhat in the future) as to whether a computer programme was the result of science or 'art'. In those days, we 'wrote' a programme within 'grammatical' rules to follow a 'storyboard' design. We 'writers' of five decades ago took immense pride in individualising the programmes we produced. These were days before design and coding standards etc. In a way, computing followed the reverse of Art from the individual 'abstract' to modern conformity to make its production more deterministic. And yet ...
Through the decades of my working life, I've read many papers and heard many theories on why software projects go wrong. All interesting stuff, yet none genuinely offer an answer—a modern search for the Holy Grail.
Maybe we should accept that designing and writing software is an art form and reconcile ourselves to the fact that imposing a deadline, in the spirit of Douglas Adams, is something to love, especially the whooshing noise it makes as it goes by...
Happy belated birthday Harry. Your writing gave me the vicarious pleasure of being there.
The National Gallery exhibition wasn't on my radar and I'm visiting London tomorrow. I may have to rethink my plans.
Wishing you a Happy Birthday for last weekend Harry.
I appreciate the kind shout-out here - and it was great reading about your views on the after Impressionism exhibition too. (Especially with regards some of the work that we have discussed over the last few months).
Also, you write so wonderfully about your whole time in London - from the Pubs and Markets to the Cigar shops and Art Museums! It makes me look forward even more to my own visit there soon too.