British Museum – At Home He Feels Like A Tourist

Catching up (Part 7)

July 2021

Out West – The Overseas Student – Blue Water and Cold and Fresh – Go, Girl – Lyric Hammersmith – 7^th July – *****

Rachel O’Riordan, the AD at the Lyric Hammersmith, might be as good if not better at programming plays as she is directing herself. And she is a mighty fine director. There has been no duds at the LH under her tenure and the current season, once again, is the equal of anything else in London. New plays, updated classics, revivals of lesser known works by contemporary greats, established and upcoming directors, deft casting, everything fits into place. The Tourist can vouch for Frantic Assembly’s Othello currently showing, and the forthcoming hilarious Accidental Death of an Anarchist which he had the very good fortune to catch at its open in Sheffield. And he has high hopes for the Nina Segal adaptation of Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan also on loan from the City of Steel (pound for pound still the best place to catch theatre outside the Smoke).

Here was another great example. Three top drawer playwrights, Tanika Gupta, Simon Stephens and Roy Williams, all closely associated with the LH, contributed three new monologues, with very different styles , subjects and structures but all, one way or another, confronting questions of race, identity and belonging. Just the ticket for the post pandemic opening,

R O’R shared directing duties with Diane Page the 2021 JMK Award winner 9who then went on to, bravely, stage Athol Fugard’s Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act at the Orange Tree, of which more in a future post. Soutra Gilmour designed the common wooden ziggurat set, sound and composition came from Simon Slater and lighting was delivered by Jessica Hung Han Yun (who, at least when it comes to colour play, might just be the hottest designer around right now).

Tanika Gupta’s The Overseas Student reimagines Gandhi’s formative student years in Victorian England with Esh Alladi utterly convincing. Gandhi arrives with his own privilege, dressed for the Englishman part, and taking to English society and women with cheery gusto, even if he can’t find any vegetarian food. But he is still an outsider, the victim of not so casual racism, enduring prolonged spells of loneliness. TG’s script is more description than drama, and just a tad over-extended, but it still captivates. And scrupulously points out just how the economic exploitation of India, which powered Victorian capitalism, was constructed. Fuel for the Mahatma’s emerging consciousness.

Simon Stephens’ Blue Water and Cold and Fresh, was inspired by a series of conversations with collaborator Emmanuella Cole (who, wisely out turns out, jumped ship from the dreadful McKellen/Mathias Hamlet). Tom Mothersdale plays history teacher Jack addressing his late racist father, who, in the chilling denouement, simply could not hide his hatred of Jack’s black partner. As with SS’s Sea Wall monologue there is a degree of circumspect ambiguity at first, which suits TM’s earnest style perfectly, but this allows the tension to build as Jack vents his rage on his father and on his own white male privilege.

BD, who was pleased to come along for the ride, was most taken with Roy Williams’ Go, Girl however, a celebratory story of Black female empowerment and everyday heroism. RW is just really good at writing immediate dialogue for powerful characters. Ayesha Antoine plays Donna, a security guard and proud single Mum, funny, sassy, positive, who picks a beef with a contemporary at school, who is now a famous photographer, who Donna feels misrepresented the day her class met Michele Obama. But just when we look for conflict RW deftly swerves into a feel-good story about Donna and her daughter. It doesn’t all have to be doom and gloom see.

Turner’s Modern World – Tate Britain – 4^th July – *****

Unsurprisingly the Tate was able to wheel out the big guns for this blockbuster. After all the great man himself bequeathed his work to the nation (after a bit of a tussle over the will I gather). It remains the biggest ever donation to the National Gallery though most of the permanent displays are now in the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain itself. A few choice loans, (with one notable exception), as well as work from his contemporaries and a detailed timeline, created a completist fever dream of JWMT’s engagement with a changing world. Admittedly the idea, political and technological advances, forged from the white heat of Enlightenment, could be stretched to include just about anything with so prolific, and reclusive, an artist, but, hey it’s Turner, so who cares. There are stark messages, not least in the painting most conspicuous by its absence, but it isn’t always clear if JWMT was driven by political conscience or artistic licence.

Mind you Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), which was too frail to be transported from Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is horrifying even in reproduction. Slavery might, by 1840, have been, at least in legal theory, abolished, but JWMT still determined to show the evil of the Zong massacre from 60 years earlier. 130 slaves were thrown overboard to save on water. The slave owners made an insurance claim on their “cargo”. The law and a jury found for the slavers though this was overturned by the Court of Appeal and the case, albeit slowly at first, fuelled the abolitionist cause. Of course the irony is that JWMT was himself an investor in a plantation and there is no clear evidence that this was his apology.

Whilst there is much to be gained from understanding the context and content of Turner’s paintings and drawings, which we, BUD, KCK and the SO, very much did, ultimately this bad boy is all about the light. Obviously he had most fun when sea, smoke, spray, clouds, fire, sunrise or sunset were on the agenda, and it is the famous, large, almost abstract, canvases that still wow the most, let us call it the Turner reverie. But the Tourist has a fondness for the more smaller, less Sturm und Drang landscapes, especially those captured in watercolour. Not too many make the cut here given the exhibition’s dubious concept but there was still more than enough of interest.

Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint – British Museum – 20^th July – ****

Had been keen to get along to this after it re-opened and finally managed to carve out a suitable slot for MS, who else, and I to make the pilgrimage (see what I did there). Our interest was primarily historical and cultural; TB’s murder and its subsequent impact across the Christian world was a big deal, but we were unprepared for the some of the aesthetic beauties revealed herein. 29th December 1170, 4 knights, under instruction from Henry II, raid Canterbury Cathedral and, not entirely intentionally, hack to death its uppity Archbishop incumbent. TB, born to a middling family, became Henry II’s chief confidante after a meteoric rise but, after he was surprisingly installed as England’s chief cleric, they fell out big time. TB sought to assert the primacy of the Church, and its ecclesiastical privileges, over the Crown. Cue exiles, legal wranglings, appeals to Rome, the murder, sainthood, which suited the Pope, just 3 years later, and a martyrdom that resonated loudly across the centuries, through the Reformation, even to this day, despite Henry VIII doing his best to erase TB’s legend. (Note to a future, albeit unlikely, King Henry. Beware a PM called Tom from humble beginnings).

The celebrity cult, for that is what it become as TB was ascribed miraculous, and, for the seller, profitable, powers, was the, often gruesome, inspiration for exquisite stained glass (notably four segments from Canterbury itself), illuminated manuscripts (including the Alfege Psalter from Corpus Christi Cambridge) and, especially, reliquary caskets, which the curators have painstakingly assembled. If you like, and we most certainly do, the Medieval art that preceded the “Renaissance”, you would have loved this. If you are a history buff you would have loved this. If you are interested in how “culture” is formed and spreads, in an era before the printing press, you would have loved this. And if all you care about is picture book stories, including a miraculous knob restoration for one Eilward thanks to TB, and why not, then take your pick.

It’s not like the exhibition rams all this down your throat but in the relatively confined space (one of the reasons I like the exhibitions here), lucid text and multiple visual cues combine making for short and sharp, but nonetheless, deep, learning. The Church came out victorious in this clash of authority with Henry II having to make very public penance but what is also clear is how much the people venerated TB, not just because of the injustice of his gory end, but also as a symbol of their ultimate authority over their rulers. Remember it is pilgrims on the way to TB’s shrine which brought out the best in one G. Chaucer.

As is happens consent and co-operation in rural England in the Late Middle Ages system of justice is MS’s specialism so Dad was able to annoy with a few numpty questions. Hard then to think of a more magical trip out.

Best of the rest

BD was chaperone for the other events of note this month. A couple of exhibitions. And a comedy caper.

Mohamed Bourouissa‘s ungainly titled HARa!!!!!!hAaaRAAAAA!!!!!hHAaA!!! at Goldsmiths CCA (****). M. Bourouissa is an Algerian artist now based in Paris who uses photography, video, sound and other media to create installations which explore power relationships in contemporary societies with more than a nod to art history. Telegraph readers look away now. Plainly a very clever chap he claims his art is not political. Well if so I would love to see what he would get up to if he took an activist turn. By immersing himself in the marginalised communities he describes he makes telling points about capitalism and exchange, history and colonial legacy, identity, race and inequality within the context of arresting ideas and imagery. Horse Day from 2014 tells the story of a Black community in North Philadelphia where M. Bourouissa orchestrated and documented a kind of urban horse fair. The exhibition title references the call drug dealers’ lookouts make in Marseilles to warn of any approaching police presence, which M. Bourouissa has turned into a burst of distorted sound. Temps Mort (2008) tracks the artist’s lyrical smartphone exchanges with an incarcerated friend, Peripheries (2006) recasts Parisian banlieue street life post the 2005 riots into Delacroix-esque posed tableaux, Shoplifters (2014) shows the demeaning photos a NYC shopkeeper took in return for not reporting the subjects to the police . You get the picture. Except you won’t if you never see it.

James Barnor: Accra/London: A Retrospective at the Serpentine Galleries North (****) surveyed the British-Ghanaian’s studio portraiture, photojournalism and editorial commissions over six decades to build a picture of cultural life in Accra and African diaspora London pre and post independence. No little glamour on show as well to set alongside the social commentary.

The Three Musketeers: A Comedy Adventure from physical theatre company Le Navet Bete at the Rose Kingston (***) wasn’t particularly surprising or innovative as the genre goes but if you want something easy on the old noggin with plenty of chuckles if not bellyaches, then this is just the ticket. There is a joy in physical comedy theatre that stems not just from story, performance and spectacle but from seeing how a team of, in this case four, talents combine text, set, props, movement and, notably, timing to create an entertainment. Nick Bunt, Al Dunn and Matt Freeman are the founders of LNB (based in at the Northcott in Exeter – yeh!!) and here they have combined with John Nicholson from peers Peepolykus (The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary). There have a few shows touring as we speak, Treasure Island, Dracula, Extravaganza, so if they come your way don’t hesitate. If only to support those who put more in than they take out, what with all the education outreach work they do, and plainly toil for love and pleasure and not for money.

Rembrandt’s Light at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (and others) review *****

Rembrandt’s Light

Dulwich Picture Gallery, 17th January 2020

The Tourist has been a bit remiss in keeping up the records on art exhibitions over the last few months so in addition to the above he will offer a few thoughts on other visits.

Rembrandt‘s Light first. The DPG exhibition space is bijou. Just four rooms. Which means you have to time your visit to get a good look. Left this late in the run but not too late but was still worried it might be busy. No need to worry. Late in the day worked.

It’s Rembrandt. With a twist as the rooms imagine the kind of light that the old, (and young with plenty of early/mid work on show,) boy was trying to capture. Like some sort of modern designer/cinematographer. Hence the drafting in of one Peter Suschitzy, a cinematographer on shite like Star Wars to light the show. Daft idea no? Still doesn’t matter. It’s Rembrandt. And by cobbling together loans from the great Rembrandt collections, including the likes of the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum, these 35 often still breathtaking paintings, and a fair few drawings and prints, show just what RHvR could create from one light source and often simple subjects.

So if you ignore all the stupid effects and dispense with an audio guide, (why do I need to listen to someone chirruping on when I should be looking and seeing, information can come later, or before), you’ll be reet. No need to filter these marvels through contemporary reception. If a punter wants to turn art into a flat, lifeless, colourless thumbprint on a phone let ’em I say. Though why they feel the need is a mystery to me. But if you want the hair-raising thrill of imaging just how RHvR fight multiple ways to shine a light on darkness, metaphorically as well as figuratively, then stand and stare.

The portraits at the end, (though I was floored by the Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet from a private collection – lucky bastard), some of which will be very familiar to Londoners, and the earlier works (and School of) are a little less diverting. However the core of the exhibition, either side of the fake candlelight octagon, (and excluding the mess the concept made of Christ and Mary Magdalene at the Tomb from the Queen’s collection), play a blinder, largely with more intimate works than the blockbusters left at home in Amsterdam. The Flight into Egypt (see above), The Denial of St Peter, The Presentation in the Temple, the studio room etchings and drawings, many just student exercises, Philomen and Baucis, The Entombment, present drama where the biblical sources barely matter. Who’s that there lurking in the darkness? What’s going on in their minds? What happens next?

But mostly you wonder how this complicated man could churn out this sublime stuff for money and why pretty much no-one frankly has been able to match him since.

What else then? In reverse order.

The Bridget Riley retrospective (****) at the over-lit Hayward gallery was proof that less is more when it comes to the impact of the work of the eye-boggling Op Art pioneer. I much preferred the early, monochrome dotty and “folding” checkerboard works, recently revisited with the latest, (she is still had at work aged 88), limited colour palette but was also quite partial to the candy stripes and parallelograms. The Goldsmiths student drawings and life studies, and the later, private, portraits, were new to me but the plans and sketches felt like padding. I might have preferred a little more information on the how and why of her work; the response to nature and her lifelong fascination with how we perceive and see, though the debt to Georges Seurat was acknowledged. And maybe a little bit of science: after all experimental neuroscience and psychology now offer explanations for her magic which weren’t really there in the 1960s when she found her practice. Having said that the way she messes with eyes and brain, rightly, continues to delight pretty much any and every punter who encounters her work. Perhaps explaining her popularity; this was her third retrospective in this very space.

Lucien Freud‘s Self-Portraits (****) at the Royal Academy highlighted both the honesty and the cruelty the great painter brought to his depictions of the human form. The early work reveals the egoist presenting a front to the world – plainly this was a geezer who loved himself. The game-changing addition of Cremnitz white to his palette to create the full fat flesh in which he revealed. The room of often disturbing portraits of friends and family where he lurks in the background, often in reflection. Through to the final, famous, aged nude self portrait where finally he turns his unflinching eye truly back on himself. Seems to me he channeled a fair bit of Grandad Sigmund’s nonsensical methods and conclusions into his work. There is confrontation in every painting: artist and subject, subject and observer and, thereby, artist and observer, this latter being the relationship that most intrigues. It seems he wants to exert control over us but ultimately he cannot, in the same way that however hard he looks, (his sittings were notoriously punishing), he cannot truly capture what he sees.

I like to think that Anselm Kiefer would be the life and soul of the party, a witty raconteur, putting everyone at ease. If you are familiar with his work you might see this as optimistic. AK is the artistic conscience of Germany, now 74, but still constantly returning to its past and particularly the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust. The monumental scale of his works, the materials, straw, ash, clay, lead and shellac, the objects, names, signatures, myths and symbols, the themes of decay and destruction, the absence of humanity, all point to his provocation and engagement with his birth country’s history. And, in this latest exhibition at the White Cube Bermondsey, Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot (****), apparently the devastation that we have wrought on the earth itself. The blasted landscapes are thick with paints, emulsions, acrylics, oils and, of course, shellac, then overlaid with wire, twigs and branches, as well as metal runes, axes and, another AK constant, burnt books. The vitrines which make up superstrings are full to bursting with coiled tubes overlaid with equations in AK’s trademark script. As scary, as sinister and as insistent as all his previous work.

Kathe Kollwitz was an artist who confronted war, as well as poverty and the role of women, not as abstract history but as immediate reality. The small, but perfectly formed, Portrait of an Artist (*****) exhibition at the British Museum (after a UK tour), showcased 48 of her most important prints, woodcuts and lithographs, drawn primarily from the BM archives and elsewhere. Self portraits, premonitions of war, maternal grief, working class protest, all subjects stir powerful emotion but also mastery of line and form.

Elsewhere, Bomberg and the Old Masters at the National Gallery had minimal new to me works on show by IMHO the best British artist of the C20, Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece at the NG was a joke, I have no idea why anyone would like William Blake‘s (Tate Britain) childish illustrations and Nam June Paik‘s (Tate Modern) admittedly prescient artistic investigation into technology from the 1960s onwards left me nonplussed. The Clash collection of memorabilia at the London Museum was, like so many of these music surveys, just pointless nostalgia.

We (BD and I) didn’t really devote enough time to Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life (****) at Tate Modern, it was pretty busy, but message and invention overwhelm, even if it all feels just a bit too Instagram slick. I dragged the family around Kew Gardens one evening in September last year to see Dale Chihully‘s (****) beautiful organic glass sculpture. I was mightily impressed, SO, BD and LD less so. Bloody annoying traipse around the west end of the park when all the action was concentrated around the Palm House.

Which just leaves the massive Antony Gormley (*****) retrospective at the Royal Academy. I know, I know. There is nothing subtle about AG’s work or “brand” but it is undeniably effective, even if its meanings are often frustratingly unspecific. Coming at the end of an already dark November day, to peer at the utterly flat, and silent, expanse of briney water which filled one room, called Host, was worth the entrance fee alone. It triggers something in collective memory and experience though fuck knows what he is trying to say with it. Same with Iron Baby nestling in the courtyard. Thrusted iron shell men modelled on AG himself, famous from multiple public art installations globally, coming at you from all angles, defying gravity. AG’s body reduced to arrangements of cubes. The imprint in toast. A bunch of rubbish drawings and body imprints. A complex coil of aluminium tube, 8km in total filling one room and a mega-skein of horizontal and vertical steel poles, enclosing, of course, a figure in an empty cube, in another. A metal tunnel that the Tourist was never going to enter in a month of Sundays. Sculpture as engineering to signal an eternal, and inoffensive, spirituality. AG as Everyman. Easy enough to pick holes in but just, er, WOW.

I Am Ashurbanipal exhibition at the British Museum review ****

I Am Ashurbanipal King of the World, King of Assyria

British Museum, 15th February 2019

Crikey. Those Assyrians had a way with reliefs carved in gypsum/alabaster. Even if it was primarily all in the service of terrifying aggrandisement. The King hunting, the King and his soldiers slaying his enemies, the King relaxing with the ladies. It is all about the big man. Seeing these panels adorning the main rooms of the Empire’s palaces, painted in bright pigments, you certainly would have known who was the boss.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire took in most of modern day Iraq, Syria and Iran from 911 BCE to 612 BCE and Ashurbanipal was in the hot seat at its zenith from 668 BCE to 627 BCE. One way or another the Assyrians had been a big noise in the region for the previous 1500 years or so but it is only when the factions came together, and decisively defeated their neighbours, that the Empire was able to take in Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Turkey, Egypt and the Persian Gulf. The Neo-Assyrian Empire kicked off with Adad-nirari II but it was Ashburanipal’s daddy, Esarhaddon, the son of a “palace-woman” not the Queen, who did the blood-thirsty groundwork for his favourite son. Even so little Ashurbanipal had to initially share with big brother Shamash-shum-ukin who ruled the rebuilt Babylon.

Whilst Ashurbanipal’s geographical inheritance was vast it needed looking after. First he had to take on the various Empires in Egypt including the Nubians. Then he had to decisively crush the Assyrians’ arch-enemies, the Elamites, and finally he had to take on his own older brother when Babylon rebelled. There is plenty of pictorial and written evidence to show just how cruel Ashurbanipal could be when it came to waging war but, as all you students of ancient history know, you can’t build an empire on brain-dashing alone. You needs brains that stay in heads as well. And this is where the exhibition steps in showing just how learned the great king was, (he had been trained to rule, and to spy and intrigue, from an early age), as he amassed his great Library, oversaw an unrivalled system of communication across the Empire, negotiated treaties and vassalships too hold together his various, proud peoples and turned Nineveh into the greatest city on Earth. He wasn’t troubled by modesty mind as the translations show. It all went to sh*te when he died, isn’t that always the way, but what is on show graphically reveals just how magnificent, (assuming you were on the right side, and ideally you weren’t a lion), it all was at its peak.

Now the British Museum has the lion’s share (haha) of the world’s Assyrian artefacts so curating this exhibition wasn’t too much of a struggle, I imagine. Even so much of this material is not on permanent display, there are plenty of astonishing loans on show and the way the story is told, as is usual at the BM, is superb. Most Assyrian art was lifted in the mid C19, (the Victorians went mad for it), having previous been ignored by scholars in Europe and the US. You can argue about the ethics of such an enterprise, but then again you might also want to consider the centuries before when the exquisite calcite alabaster palace reliefs, lamassu and large scale statuary went walkabout, and you also need to think about the wholesale destruction of what remained in situ by ISIS especially around Mosul. At the end of the exhibition this part of the story is highlighted including the work of the BM in supporting and training local archaeologists to examine and conserve what is left.

Highlights? The small-scale lion hunts, (though I reckon, based on the casual manner in which Ashurbanipal is despatching the beasts, that these reliefs may incorporate a little poetic licence even if they are anatomically perfect) . The Garden Party in the palace of Nimrud. (Let us hope Queen Liz doesn’t take up the custom of decorating the Buck Palace gardens with enemy heads). The wall of cuneiform on clay tablets, a summation of the Knowledge of the day, (a word to the wise – if you want your library to resist a fire, use clay). The copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first ever work of literature. The battle scenes illuminated with modern technology. The “painted” relief similarly enhanced. The lamassu, the human headed bull/lions with wings that stand guard. (How do you move these things? With great care I should imagine and without enlisting the services of the congenitally weak and clumsy like the Tourist). The sphinx of his arch-enemy. Taharqa. The imported Nimrud ivories. The decorated bronze helmet.The tiles. The obelisks. The statue of the big fella himself, alongside his bro. The Elamite art, pedestrian when compared to its Assyrian overlords.

The thing with the reliefs is that not only are they historically and aesthetically pleasing and interesting but they also tell an immediate story. It is this clear, (well, with a bit of help from the curators comments), narrative which makes this art and this exhibition special even if you aren’t normally one for the “dusty” as LD terms most History. Obviously some of the content, the pre-flaying, tongue-ripping, the bone-grinding, the beheading, appeals to our voyeuristic cravings, (don’t worry it isn’t TOO realistic), but it is the muscle, the movement, the energy, the vivid impression of something happening (even if the perspectives are that odd mix of profile and frontal/three-quarter that characterised pre-Grecian art), that makes it special.

And a lesson to all would-be tyrannical despots. If you are going balls-out to subjugate your people, do show an interest in reflecting your “glory” in art. Otherwise no-one will remember you.

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms at the British Library review *****

Anglo-Saxon Kingsdoms: Art, Word, War

British Library, 30th December 2018

I mean it isn’t all books. There are charters and letters as well. And pottery, coins, art and jewels. But there are a lot of books. Oh my word though, what beautiful books. If you are at all interested in this period of history and the formation of our country, and you like, as Tubbs would say, precious things, (which haven’t been burnt, or otherwise destroyed, notably by the dispersal of monastic libraries in the 1530s), then this is unmissable. The British Library has wheeled out some of its finest treasures from the period, Beowulf, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the St Cuthbert Gospel and Bede’s works, but it doesn’t stop there, with some extraordinary loans from the British Museum, Cathedrals (Canterbury, Durham, Exeter, Lichfield and Rochester), Oxbridge colleges (notably the Parker Library at Corpus Christi Cambridge) and generous institutions around the world (notably France, the Netherlands, Sweden and, maybe best of all, Italy).

The exhibition begins with the first Anglo-Saxons coming to Britain in the 5th century, takes us through the kingdoms that emerged, Kent, East Anglia, Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex, before England was created, as well as the continuing influence of the Danes, and, finally the Normans. We see how the history, art and literature of these Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms developed, and we see the emergence of the English language, (though don’t expect, unless you are an expert in these things, to be able to read the manuscripts. but do listen to the spoken originals and modern translations provided).

The earliest evidence of the language is contained in some cynic inscriptions and a Kentish law code in the first room, Origins. My first highlight though was the unique Spong Man urn lid from the 5th century, he looks so crestfallen, but then again so might you if you were sat atop someone’s ashes. The St Augustine Gospels from the late 6th century are something special, but the Moore Bede from the mid 8th century, copied out soon after the Venerable’s death at his own monastery Wearmouth-Jarrow, is a jaw-dropper. This is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the page on show tracing the journey of St Augustine, in letters. The script is pretty dense but this is basically the beginning of our written history.

The second room, Kingdoms and Conversions, has some exquisite jewellery from, amongst others, Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard, but once again I was drawn to the scripts. The fragment of a letter from St Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, possibly from the late 4th century, brought here by Abbot Hadrian, various charters, letters and rules from the 7th and 8th centuries, the beginnings of our systems of law, and the Book of Durrow from c. 700 with its various decorative influences. These are trumped though by the beautifully preserved Echternach Gospels, maybe from Ireland, maybe Northumbria, maybe Echternach itself in Luxembourg, the even more spectacular Lindisfarne Gospels also c. 700, and, drum roll please, the Codex Amiatinus.

OMG. Now even if your are some bored teen being dragged around by your pillock of a Dad I defy you not to be impressed by this. First off, it is bloody enormous, 1030 leaves in total. Secondly the page it is open to, a full page illumination of a scribe at work, is just so vibrant and, finally, the history of the Bible itself is just so fascinating. One of three made at Wearmouth-Jarrow in the early years of the 8th century it was taken in 716 by Abbot Ceolfrith and chums to Rome. AC, poor chap, died on the way but in the 1300 years until now it has been cared for in Italy, latterly at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. Welcome home then Codex Amiatinus, if only for a short visit. It is the oldest complete Latin Vulgate version of the Bible; only the fragmentary Leon palimpsest is older. It was assumed to be Italian, from the 6th century, until some top-drawer research revealed that it was actually created during Northumbria’s Golden Age.

Take your time surrounded by these gems. There are more treasures to come but this room, for me, was the pinnacle. The next room, Mercia and Its Neighbours, details the rise of that kingdom, through military power and political skill, and the creation of a third archdiocese at Lichfield alongside York and Canterbury. Once again the Gospels (Barberini, St Chad, Harley Golden) will draw your eye, as will the Lichfield Angel if you have not see it before, but I was particularly interested in the various charters, from King Aethebald dated 736 and from King Offa dated 783, and the evidence of links with Charlemagne in mainland Europe. It made me reflect again on how the powerful choose leaders primarily to validate their own appropriation of land and capital, and spend an awful lot of time arguing with each other to secure leaders more amenable to their ambitions.

The Favourite, Richard II, C18 British history, Brexit newsflow, this exhibition. All entertainments and/or learnings on the Tourist’s plate in the last couple of weeks, all variations in part on this theme. Similarly the next room, The Rise of the West Saxons, which charts the ascendancy of King Alfred and his successors and the idea of an England. Now the Tourist cheerfully confesses that he is addicted to The Last Kingdom, the TV series now in its third season, based on Bernard Cornwall’s The Saxon Stories novels. Now it is a bit daft at times, and cheesy, and the main protagonist, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, and his mates, do, implausibly, get about a bit. He may be fictional but many of the other players on show were for real and, in David Dawson playing Alfred, it has a top-notch actor showing his class. Like I always say, take your education wherever you can.

By 880 Alfred had made peace with the Danes, who were increasingly “naturalising”, and promoted a cultural leap forward, with the development especially of the English language. This legacy continued through grandson Aelthelstan, the first King of England from 927 to 939, who claimed control of Northumbria and submission from the Scots, Welsh and remaining Britons. Aethelstan centralised government, expanded the reach of the law, founded places of religion, (his personal psalter, a pocket gospels, is on display), and got stuck into European politics. So there you are little Englanders. Even when little England first became a reality we were tied to that pesky Europe. It will never go away whatever you may think. BTW, in my final, I promise, “look at me” moment in this post, I walked past the very spot where Aethelstan was crowned not a few hours ago. Outside the police station in Kingston-upon-Thames. I kid you not.

So no surprise that I took a long look at the Council of Kingston document in the exhibition which dates from 838 and confirms the alliance between Ecgberht, Alfred’s grandad, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The beautiful Stockholm Codex Aureus, on loan from, er, Stockholm, will also detain you but it is the famous historical documents, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Asser’s Life of King Alfred, the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum the Dane, a translation from Alfred himself and the Foothill Letter from the early 10th century, the oldest letter in the English language, that require careful examination. History. Boring. Think again.

Highlights of the next room, the self-explanatory Language, Learning and Literature, include the only surviving manuscript of Beowulf, the greatest Anglo-Saxon literary relic, the Junius Manuscript, 1000 lines of Old English verse, the Old English Hexateuch, the first six books of the Bible and the Old English translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. If your interest extends to natural sciences, medicine and mathematics then you will be fascinated by this section.

The next room, Kingdom and Church, is focussed on the elevation of the Church under King Edgar, Alfred’s great-grandson. The highlight here comes at the end with the display of the Utrecht (825), Harley (first half 11th century) and Eadwin (c. 1150), Psalters displayed side by side. Seeing how one was copied into another into another is just amazing. Prior to this though the room is stuffed full of dainties, notably the Benedictional of Aethelwold from the 970s, the Vespasian Psalter from the second quarter of the eighth century, (the earliest Biblical text in the English language), the Boulogne and, especially, Trinity Gospels and the Winchester Troper.

The final room, Conquests and Landscapes, looks at the return of the Danes under Cnut and then the Norman Conquest, culminating with the BL’s Domesday Book and a short video.

I could go on and on but no purpose would be served in this. I have my catalogue accompanying the exhibition and can safely say, as one who regularly purchases such items, (and doesn’t always look at them immediately), that this is one of the most informative, involving and attractive I have ever seen. Even the short exhibition guide is a mine of information and the notes to the exhibits themselves could not be clearer.

All in all, and given the potential bone-dry bear-trap of a subject, early English history, and exhibits, in a word books, (though there is, as I said, plenty of other material on show here), this is a triumph. Maybe not enough to persuade those for whom history and manuscripts are anathema but if you have any interest at all, from any angle, don’t hesitate. No need, as ever with these things, to dutifully read every note or take in every exhibit. But if you can’t find at least a few items that command your attention I would be amazed.

It is on until 19th February. Usual rules apply. First thing in the morning. Sunday afternoon or the later slots on Tuesday when this opens until 8pm. And avoid the last week.

Scythians exhibition at the British Museum ****

telemmglpict000137671553_trans_nvbqzqnjv4bqoqs0bxrj0vmcthymjmv0p4xicgr5rwvxeifgf8inawq

Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia

British Museum, 2nd November 2017

I have been bowled over by most of the recent exhibitions I have seen at the British Museum, covering the history of Sicily, the art of South Africa, US modernist art printmaking, (The American Dream at the British Museum review ****), British Watercolour art (British Watercolour Landscapes at the British Museum review ****) and the culture of the Celts. I am also, as the preponderance of glowing “reviews” on this blog testifies, pretty easily pleased. I like to think I have discerning taste in what I choose to see and am open-minded. The reality is I am childishly indiscriminate.

So based on past experience and the reviews I was looking forward to this exhibition. I dredged up what I knew about the Scythians from my early teens as a speccy, bookish, solitary swot who had a brief fascination with ancient history (yes I did play wargames, on boards, before we have computers kids). Good with horses, large empire ranging over big chunks of Northern Asia, pointy hats, gold. I remember I quite liked the idea of them though I might have got confused with Parthians. Mind you so did Kit Marlowe whose Timburlaine the Great is portrayed as Scythian when he was obvs Turkic-Mongolian.

Anyway turns out Siberia was their manor. It also turns out that Siberia is not the snowy tundra, forests, god-forsaken Soviet compounds and mining desolation of popular imagination. At least not when the Scythians were in charge from 900 BCE to 200 BCE. They were nomadic yes, old Siberia wasn’t that hospitable, but they had a rich culture, with fancy threads (squirrel coat anyone?) and luxury tombs (kurgans), and they were a match for anyone else on the planet when it came to art fashioned from gold. especially when that art was based on animals. And especially when those animals were their beloved horses. You know when someone is said to be a bit “horsey, in that they are so keen on Dobbin. Well these Scythians were pretty much indistinguishable from their clippety-cloppety friends. They were even buried with them. They were also very handy with bow and arrow. from atop their horse. Lethal.

They were, even at their territorial height, a loose confederation of peoples and tribes, with Western and Eastern arms, with no state apparatus as such, primarily defined by their Greek and Persian neighbours. In one of the more fascinating insights from the exhibition though, they could trade at scale, in goods, grain and, it seems, people. It seemed they acted as the trading glue between Greece, Persia, India and China who all went on to bigger and better things. In fact it seems that, by around 500 BCE, these Scythian lads may have had a capital in Ukraine bigger than any other settlement anywhere in the world at that time.

They were also not shy of getting stuck into Middle Eastern affairs, controlling parts of modern Iran, knocking on the door of Egypt and fighting with the Assyrians and the first Achaemenid Empire (that’s the Persians to you and me). Whilst this is described by the exhibition I am not sure that the warring history of these people is fully brought to life. Nor therefore is the way in which in the Ancient, and even Early Medieval, worlds the “Scythian” came to symbolise all warlike, Barbarian outsiders. That’s Greek propaganda for you. Old Shakespeare has a Scythian nibbling on his kids in King Lear. Stravinsky had them writhing around in The Rite of Spring, probably the most important piece of music in Western culture.

What are undeniably fascinating though are the remnants of Scythian culture that do survive precisely because of chilly places they frequented. Weapons, saddles and harnesses, fabrics, clothing, a giant coffin, some cheese and, in eye-catching fashion, bits of tattooed skin and a bashed in head, have survived through freezing, (I got a bit lost on the exact science of preservation). To add to the alarm it seems sacrifice, a lot of booze and a bit of reefer played a big role in Scythian culture. They even, in a Pythonesque twist, seemed to wear false beards. These artefacts, together with the metalwork, largely in gold, and with clear links to craftsmanship in China, India and Greece, are the highlight of the exhibition. I think a majority of the most interesting exhibits come courtesy of the State Historical Museum in Moscow so Спасибо. We see how carefully Russia’s past rulers have treasured these objects, once they realised they came from their own predecessors.

Eventually these mighty warriors got battered by Macedonians and old rivals the Sarmatians in the West (and eventually subsumed into the Slavic world), and, in the East, by various nomadic sorts so that they ended up in the bits of what is now North West China that no-one else cared about. Always the way. Mighty nation goes downhill and disappears (though rarely self-inflicted through arrogant exceptionalism writ large by facile plebiscite).

So another piece of stunning scholarship, adept curating and generous lending from those flipping “experts” here and in Russia. A leisurely couple of hours is all it takes to bring to life an entire world which, at its peak, was the largest, and one of the most important, in the world. I would have liked just a little on how the “Scythian” impacted contemporary and later culture but I guess the team rightly, didn’t want to detract from the objects. Makes sense if you’ve got a skull with an axe hole in it.

The exhibition runs until January 14th. Perfect material for a Christmas family outing I would have thought.

British Watercolour Landscapes at the British Museum review ****

places-of-the-mind-cmc92815_productlarge

Places of the Mind: British Watercolour Landscapes 1850 to 1950

British Museum, 3rd July 2017

Any right thinking Londoner or visitor thereto knows that time spent in the British Museum (or the V and A for that matter) is never wasted. I have remarked before on the rich run of larger scale exhibitions that the British Museum has delivered in the last couple of years (The American Dream at the British Museum review ****) and this small but very satisfying collection of watercolours keeps up the tradition.

it does exactly what it says on the packet assembling top draw, and maybe a few lesser names, from its own collections to chart the path from precise Victorian realism to post war abstraction. Watercolour is obviously an immediately attractive medium but this also offers up plenty of technical surprise and interest as well. And there are some records of adventures abroad mixed in with the iconic British locations.

Best of the bunch. Mackintosh. Nash John and Paul. Ravilious, Whistler, Sargeant, Steer, Sutherland, Minton. But honestly I was even captivated by the Pre-Raphaelites who normally make me gag.

So take a trip up to the 4th floor (Room 90) away from the crowds and breathe this in. Cost to you – nothing at all.

And joy of joys on the way in you will see the Leonardo cartoon. And if you have time head up to the Japan galleries (92 to 94) – always a joy – or down to the Clocks and Watches (38 and 39). Best of all Rooms 40 and 41, pound for pound the best collection of Medieval and earlier European bits and bobs anywhere. Oh except maybe the V and A.

The American Dream at the British Museum review ****

american20dream_304_280

The American Dream: pop to the present

British Museum, 31st March 2017

So where can you see a stunning survey of pretty much all the major artists, across all the major movements of modern and contemporary art, in the US over the last seven or so decades. The British Museum that’s where. I realise the element of surprise in my rhetoric may have been somewhat diluted by the titles above but you get the idea. This exhibition is focussed solely on printmaking, but given that has proved a vital medium for so many key artists over this period, and given that The British Museum has a few gems in this medium tucked away and begged gems from elsewhere, it means they can mount a humdinger.

It takes in the pop of Andy Warhol, Clas Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein, through the gods that are Jasper Johns, Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, then iconic Ed Ruscha works, a bit of Bruce Nauman, some key Abstract Impressionists (not so much my cup of tea), marvellous pure Abstraction and Minimalism (Josef Albers, Donald Judd, Sol LeWit, Richard Serra), a dose of the photorealism of Chuck Close, Richard Estes and Alex Katz and then more contemporary works (many new to me with Kiki Smith the absolute stand-out).

Clearly as there is no paint or sculpture involved you only get a part of the story but prints are so immediately accessible and so easy to comprehend that you won’t feel the absence. There are maybe more straight lines here than with a survey through paint. But for me that is no bad thing as I like straight lines and it stops those loudmouthed later abstract impressionists taking over the whole shebang. Moreover the curators have smartly brought to the fore the key studios and collaborators who made the screen-printed works possible. Showing the techniques involved in the making of this art was, for this learner at least, a masterstroke.

If I had to single out just a few things for you attention, and to highlight why you should go along, then it would be Jasper Johns’s flags, alphabets and targets – just keep staring – Rauschenberg’s Stoned Moon series, 1969 and 1970 literally there in front of you, Jim Dine’s everyday curiosities, Ed Ruscha’s gas stations (you’ve seen the images before trust me) and his “droplet” prints (which I have wanted to see), Donald Judd’s squares and Sol LeWit’s lines and, as I say above, all of Kiki Smith’s works. I know I should try to be more critical but it’s tough to do so with something that has been as well put together as this exhibition.

There’s a lovely catalogue, a bargain at £15, if you wave your Art Pass you get in half-price, and remember the BM opens late on a Friday, so no jostling with bored students.

The British Museum boffins are on a roll. The South Africa exhibition prior to this was another smart piece of curating, Sicily last year was outstanding (my favourite exhibition of the year – and fortuitous preparation for an expedition to Palermo, Cefalu and Monreale en famille) and the Celts in 2015 put up a good fight too. Less enamoured of the Sunken Cities exhibition but still worth seeing.