Tag: travel

Splash! A century of swimming and style. This exhibition at the Design Museum is a celebration of fashion, technology and politics of water, swimming and messing around in ponds, rivers, pools and the sea.

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As a keen ‘pond dipper’ I was intrigued by this show and very pleased to see a reference to the Women’s Pond at Kenwood, a place I find very addictive during the summer months, but only once the water has inched its way towards at least 15 degrees and even better when it reaches a balmy 20 degrees. The poster showing Ken Wood suggests the pond nestles beneath high mountains. Hampstead Heath is not that high but I did like romance of the image.

There are a great many swimming costumes on show. I remember my mother describing the indignity of wearing a woollen swimsuit when she was a child in the 1930s. The thing just spread out in the water before slapping back against her body, dragging down to her knees when she emerged from the water covered in embarassment.

But what I’d really hoped to see was the type of swimming costume I wore as a child – blue nylon, ruched by criss-crossed elastic. I have such a strong memory of my swimsuit and the way the little triangles of fabric would fill with water, swell and then gradually empty on emerging from water. Alas, this curious garment was not represented. Instead the star of the show was the red swimsuit worn by Pamela Anderson in Baywatch.

Fun to see the Gold Medal winning diver, Tom Daely’s scanty trunks and also the chunky sweater he knitted to occupy himself waiting for his moment at the Olympics.

Good to see the costume designs for Captain Nemo and the Underwater City. They wouldn’t look out of place in a ballet.

My takeaway from the exhibition was that something had been missed. Because it was so much about the design of objects used in or near water we didn’t get a feel for the spiritual nature of water and the very human, primal desire to be close to the sea, rivers, ponds or expanses of water. We both fear and revere water. There’s a desire to be near it but not for it to come too close, univited and offend us by flooding our homes or disturbing our travel with dangerous high tides or inundated roads. Perhaps that’s something for a different show.

Splash! is on at the Design Museum until 17th August.

The drawings and ink sketches of French 19th century novelist, Victor Hugo, really are ‘Astonishing Things’ and it was fascinating to see a selection of the thousands he produced on show at the Royal Academy. They’re pretty dark, slightly creepy and give insight to a creative mind and a complex man.

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There’s a feeling of vigorous movement to Hugo’s art. These landscapes were inspired by the coastline of his Channel Island homes – in Jersey and Guernsey. They are full of energy, foreboding and danger. I’d say they were created very swiftly using brushes loaded with ink, combined with the swishes of a feather. Very dramatic. I wonder if he had seen some of JMW Turner’s work – such as the very atmospheric impression of a storm?

Victor Hugo is probably best known for his novel, Les Miserables. However, another bestseller in his lifetime was the Toilers of the Sea, (and also The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Toilers is a very compelling novel which involves a ship being attacked by a giant octopus. Judging from these drawings he clearly studied the forms of these sea creatures and, when the book was published in 1882, it included his own drawings.

Above are photographs of his home in St Peter Port, Guernsey. Hautville House is a large town house and Hugo added ‘Le Lookout’ at the top of the building where he would stand at a high desk to write while looking out over the bobbing boats in the harbour. I visited Hautville House years ago and was struck by the very oppressive atmosphere of the place. I’m not sure I would like to have been a guest at the place. Apparently Victor Hugo rigged up gas burners in the spare rooms which he would make flare up at night and terrify the occupants. He also arranged mirrors strategically up the stairs so that he could see into all the room from his Lookout and know who was approaching.

He took control of the decoration of his house (I think his wife must have been very long-suffering to put up with his heavy and rather ‘gothic’ taste.) He even created some of the furniture such as this mirror with a painted surround. Apparently he would walk up to ‘Exile’s Rock’ in Jersey and sit alone upon it thinking and writing before retiring to his study in the Lookout and write his books, poetry, plays and political treatise.

I was impressed to learn about his strongly-held political views. He was fiercely anti-slavery and appalled when John Brown, an American abolitionist was executed in Virgina after being accused of inciting a slave rebellion. Victor Hugo made this image in protest.

He spent a great deal of time travelling around Europe (avoiding France) with his sketchbook, noting scenes and recording landscapes and buildings. He didn’t seem to be so interested in drawing people.

It’s a very interesting show which provides a welcome view of this revered 19th century novelist whose books are still popular. And it’s treat to see his drawings which rarely leave France. The show is on at the Royal Academy until 29th June 2025.

The V&A has just launched a fabulour exhbition celebrating the ‘Golden Age’ of the Mughal court 1560-1660. What a rich and creative time that was, embracing art forms which celebrated a huge and cultural geographic area covering a vast swathe of central Asia. A vast array of objects on show, from woven and printed fabrics, drawings and paintings on paper, books, weapons, clothing and vessels.

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Before visiting this exhibition I had no idea that the Mughal dynasty was founded by a Central Asian ruler, Babur, in 1526 and lasted a hundred years. And in that time there was a spectacular flowering of artistry and creative excellence. The Mughal empire spanned India, Iran (Persia), Afghanistan, Gudjerat and Bangladesh. It’s so interesting to see how the art forms from these different countries and cultures merged. We regard them so separately these days but they all combined to create a beautiful Mughal aesthetic.

I did enjoy the narrative quality of the very intricate drawings and paintings. You get a terrific sense of life from these images – crowded with drama and people expressing politics, emotion and events.

Such delicacy to the painting of this goshawk, made about 1650-1700. Falconry was a familiar sport right across Asia. These birds were a luxury item, often given by merchants to the emperor as gifts.

There were many examples of traditional carpet weaving, fabrics and hangings such as this poppy floorspread (celebrating the opium trade), made for a palace.

Very attractive and interesting exhibition which is open at the V&A until 5th May 2025

What an enchanting show! It’s a joy to visit the National Gallery and ‘Discover Constable and the Hay Wain’. This picture has graced millions of biscuit tins and chocolate boxes but there’s so much more to the image. Fascinating to see the painting in the context of a contemporary painter of the 1820s channelling the aesthetic of traditional landscape painting and establishing a British school of landscape. Fabulous

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The Hay Wain is such a familiar image and conjures thoughts of ‘Merrie England’, the countryside fantasy of rural beauty, a simple life and the contented relationship between people who till the earth and the beauty of the fields where they work. At the press preview, listening to curator Christine Riding, it was fascinating to hear the context of the Hay Wain explained and then illustrated by a charming selection of complementary paintings, drawings, sketches and cartoons.

Took a couple of close-ups of the Hay Wain. It’s one of John Constable’s ‘six-footers’, a very large painting which was started in 1819 with the intention of grabbing the attention of collectors and fellow artists. Size does matter when you’re competing with other people to gain a reputation in the art work; this was an epic work, produced in his studio, but very much based on sketches and paintings made ‘en plein air’ in the Suffolk countryside Constable knew so well.

This is a large-scale (6ft) dry run which Constable painted. I love the liveliness and free painting. He does not become bogged down in detail yet all the elements of the composition are there.

On the left is a work by Constable entitled The Wheat Field. It makes rural life look very clean, romantic and relaxed. On the right is Golding Constable’s Kitchen Garden (his father) which was very personal to Constable and he kept it for himself and it was never sold in his lifetime.

This painting is by Thomas Gainsborough (1748) Like Constable, he was born and brought up in Suffolk and was familiar with the same landscape. This work depicts Cornard Wood, common land at the time. The painting belonged to Constable’s uncle, David Pike Watts and would have been familiar to the young artist as he was developing his interest in landscape painting and admiring Gainsborough’s technique.

Always wonderful to see an artist’s sketch book and this shows how Constable studied field-workers and rural activity. On the right is a tiny oil sketch showing the composition of the Hay Wain. We learned that the house on the left, known as Willy Lott’s Cottage was, in fact, owned by Mr William Lott and it was a house, and a substantial dwelling. Perhaps Constable is guilty of loading his seminal work with a dose of sentimentality in order to appeal to the ideal of the rural idyll?

This is very charming set of tiny models depicting the best singers in the East Bergholt church choir. It has been attributed to the young John Constable as creator but we can’t be sure. They are very enchanting, tiny carved and painted wooden figures.

The show is just wonderful. It’s part of the National Gallery’s 200th year celebration and well worth a visit.

Tropical Modernism – a new show at the Victoria and Albert Museum – puts the spotlight on an architectural style which emerged in the late 1940s. British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry were commissioned to design and build developments which were inspired by very different aesthetics from their work in the UK. Creating buildings in hot and humid locations demanded progressive ideas which were enthusiastically adopted by leaders in Ghana and India but have not all stood the test of time.

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If you’re going to build a new nation following freedom from colonialism then you want to commission buildings which are symbolic of new independence. The Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Ghanaian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah both commissioned the British architects Drew and Fry to come up with ground-breaking buildings which would define their countrys’ post-colonial status and celebrate new freedom.

In Chandigarh, India an audacious plan was conceived to create the first Modernist city in the world to be built from scratch. Nehru wanted the city to be ‘unfettered by the traditions of the past … an expression of the nation’s faith in the future”. The city was created on a strict grid with a river running through it and the city plan was based on a design by Le Corbusier.

What’s so interesting is that where architects aim to enforce order, artists create interventions and counter that order. In 1957 Nek Chand was a road inspector in Chandigarh. He began collecting discarded material from the construction and turned it into a secret kingdom of over 2000 sculptures hidden in a forest near the Capitol Complex. This very personal creation countered the order of Le Corbusier’s vision in a wonderfully subversive way. It remained hidden from view until 1973. Now his ‘vast ruin’ intrigues visitors to the city.

Edward Lutyens designed the new colonial capital in India as if he were rebuilding ancient Rome, enforcing an expression of Britain’s power in the country. This playful bust of Lutyens, below, has a mocking feel about it.

There are blueprints, sketches, photographs and a really interesting film about the movement which lasts about half an hour and is well worth watching. Very intriguing and thought-provoking exhibition which brings to life the history of a fascinating architectural movement. It’s on at the V&A until 22 September 2024