Posts
I’m currently reading – to be precise, re-reading, having retrieved it and a few other things from a box at my mother’s – this:
The Birds Fall Down - Rebecca West.
I had forgotten what a masterly piece of writing it is. I have been completely gripped and cannot wait to get back to it tonight. I’m not sure I can collect my thoughts enough to explain why it is so superb.
It’s quite slow to get started, and quite a solid read; someone who disliked solid novels would find it hard going. But the steadiness of the beginning becomes meaningful as the story goes on. I won’t give away any details of the plot in case anyone reading this hasn’t read the novel and is intrigued, because it’s a mystery, and a thriller, in the truest sense of the words. It’s also one of the finest examples I’ve ever come across of a very tight third-person narrative; and in this case the narrator is both aware of some things that other characters are not, and helplessly unaware of other things which the reader can see – yet which we see through her eyes, aware ourselves that she is so uncomprehending as not even to see that she is missing something. In that respect it is a dazzling display of the technical craft of writing. But Rebecca West also pulls off my favourite trick of creating a balanced tension between technical genius and emotional sincerity; one suffers with Laura, with the Count, and one feels the dreadfulness of the betrayals that are exposed during the narrative, and the further layers of betrayal they provoke, and the further betrayals underlying these. And the quiet, steady build-up of tension is horrendous. Hence my desire to get to the end of the day, go home, and settle down to reading again.
Rebecca West once said something along the lines of that in her opinion Mozart was at the highest end of a scale of genius that also encompassed someone baking a good cake; in other words, talent is a continuum and is not the privilege of some tiny elite. In celebration of that honourable and democratic thought here’s the recipe for the bread-and-butter pudding I baked last night. It’s an easy recipe, great for using up slightly stale baked goods of almost any type, and far nicer than its simplicity would suggest.
Bread-and-butter pudding
A couple of slices of slightly stale bread per person. Or fruit bread, fruit cake, malt loaf, teacake. Probably good with most sorts of biscuits, too. You name it, really. Not sure it would work with shortbread, or with Mrs Crimble’s coconut cakes…
Dried fruit. I like to add chopped candied ginger or chocolate chips as well.
Butter
One egg per person
Milk
Sugar
Butter the bread/cake/whatever. Make dried fruit (& ginger/chocolate) sandwiches and cut up. Put in a greased oven proof dish. Sprinkle with a little sugar – less if the bread is rich fruit bread or cake, more if it is plain bread. Beat eggs and milk together – about ½ a pint of milk to every three eggs, although obviously also bear in mind the depth of the baking dish so you don’t end up with a huge amount of excess fluid. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the bread and fruit and leave to soak for 30-40 minutes. Bake in a medium oven for 30 minutes or so until the egg custard is set and the top is risen, golden and puffy. Good hot, warm or cold.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Monday, 5 October 2009
Erato strikes again...
At least I think it would have to be Erato - the Muse of lyric poetry. The other two poetic muses (Calliope and Polyhymnia) deal with sung poetry and epic poetry... I seem to have had an attack of poetry, anyway. The first piece is a bit ironic in retrospect, as it was written on the RFH terrace before the concert in which the lights failed; brighter dusk, indeed...
I had an encounter with Terpsichore this weekend, too, as yesterday evening was the start of the Scottish Country Dance class I have signed up for. Tremendous fun, though my legs ache horribly today. I am out of shape!
Back to Erato; thank you, dear Goddess, dear Muses!
October the First.
Nine months of the year
Gone by
Already, and I
Sit here
Under the luminous
Blue rosé wine
And cloudless sky
Waiting
For the concert to start.
Trees still in full leaf,
Men still in shirtsleeves;
Handsome, some drunk
In the dusk
Waiting
For the darkness to come
For the Thames to turn
Fire-red with sunset
Like my neighbour’s wine.
They shake hands, noisy,
Hearty, talking
As the evening
Draws closer in.
I rise to go.
The neighbour with the wine glass
Makes eyes.
The concert hall
Offers a brighter dusk, and I
Go in.
Saying goodbye.
Easy to let go
One who is so happy.
Your hope, your shape
Of the world
Once would have matched
So well with mine. Still
No matter. You stand
Grim with embarrassment
Admitting it – yes,
You’re happy, you have
Enough to have enough
And contentment
Has caught your sleeve
While you were planting
This garden.
I can step back
Releasing dreams,
Letting you go.
It is better so.
Sinfonietta. (for E-P S)
As autumn begins,
Cercis and sweetgum,
Cherry, rowan tree,
Also in turn begin;
Virginia creeper, berberis,
All turning, in
The light, the wind, the cold.
Autumn's brisk wind
Along the river
Slants through the trees,
Filling my mind
With light and air.
The bright leaves
Fall to the water.
The season spins
Its clear-coloured skein
On the spool
Of my mind, and rings
Bell-like, singing
With the memory
Of fanfares in the wind.
From the river
To the stars
Through the way of the leaves;
And from the music
To living heaven;
This turning world,
The light, the cold,
The fanfares on the wind.
I had an encounter with Terpsichore this weekend, too, as yesterday evening was the start of the Scottish Country Dance class I have signed up for. Tremendous fun, though my legs ache horribly today. I am out of shape!
Back to Erato; thank you, dear Goddess, dear Muses!
October the First.
Nine months of the year
Gone by
Already, and I
Sit here
Under the luminous
Blue rosé wine
And cloudless sky
Waiting
For the concert to start.
Trees still in full leaf,
Men still in shirtsleeves;
Handsome, some drunk
In the dusk
Waiting
For the darkness to come
For the Thames to turn
Fire-red with sunset
Like my neighbour’s wine.
They shake hands, noisy,
Hearty, talking
As the evening
Draws closer in.
I rise to go.
The neighbour with the wine glass
Makes eyes.
The concert hall
Offers a brighter dusk, and I
Go in.
Saying goodbye.
Easy to let go
One who is so happy.
Your hope, your shape
Of the world
Once would have matched
So well with mine. Still
No matter. You stand
Grim with embarrassment
Admitting it – yes,
You’re happy, you have
Enough to have enough
And contentment
Has caught your sleeve
While you were planting
This garden.
I can step back
Releasing dreams,
Letting you go.
It is better so.
Sinfonietta. (for E-P S)
As autumn begins,
Cercis and sweetgum,
Cherry, rowan tree,
Also in turn begin;
Virginia creeper, berberis,
All turning, in
The light, the wind, the cold.
Autumn's brisk wind
Along the river
Slants through the trees,
Filling my mind
With light and air.
The bright leaves
Fall to the water.
The season spins
Its clear-coloured skein
On the spool
Of my mind, and rings
Bell-like, singing
With the memory
Of fanfares in the wind.
From the river
To the stars
Through the way of the leaves;
And from the music
To living heaven;
This turning world,
The light, the cold,
The fanfares on the wind.
Friday, 2 October 2009
Salonen the Golden, or, The Joy of Having Specialist Interests
I know the autumn has really begun when my Philharmonia subscription starts. Last night was the first concert I’d booked this year (I can’t afford to go to every one but I try to do six or eight in a season). It was a stunner. What with this and “Don Carlos” last week, my cultural life has restarted with a marvellous bang after the sluggish hiatus of summer.
I’m a big fan of the Philharmonia; partly for sentimental reasons – my father and my godmother both sang in the Philharmonia Chorus in their younger days – and partly because I happen to think they are a cracking good orchestra. Last night was a perfect case in point. Apart from being a breathtaking performance of three terrific pieces of music – two huge favourites of mine and something new that knocked my socks off – it was a concert marked by a rather unusual event, namely a power cut.
The band, as they say, played on.
They were only in total darkness for a few seconds, but prior to that the lights had spent about ten minutes flickering on-and-off, then dimming and brightening again, dropping to fifty-per-cent strength, and generally mucking about. Then suddenly boom! – pitch blackness. Right in the middle of “The Firebird”. After a moment, someone somewhere switched to a different lighting circuit, bringing on a very cold harsh light just on the stage and leaving the rest of us in Stygian gloom, instead of the normal soft warm ambience throughout the whole hall, and the concert finished under those conditions.
The orchestra were so unfazed one would have thought they rehearsed in darkness just for the discipline of it. I almost wonder if Esa-Pekka Salonen even noticed. I mean, he must have done; but on the other hand, he always gives the impression of being totally physically immersed in the music to the last fibre of every muscle, all of his energy swept into this one wondrous goal. Watching him on the rostrum is like watching someone dancing in a very confined space.
I’m a big fan of Esa-Pekka Salonen. Everything I’ve ever heard him conduct has come out as if new-minted; revelation after revelation. It’s thrilling. I don’t know enough about music from a technical point of view to know what it is he is doing, but he hits the spot for me. He just has the golden touch; he seems to be able to bring to everything he does that combination of perfect lucidity - so that the whole piece is explicated with absolute clarity and I sit there thinking “Of course, how wonderful; that’s how it’s put together and that’s how it works!” - with an equal and heartfelt measure of passionate feeling. That capacity to explore both structure and emotion, the interlayered play between tensioned forces, is one of my biggest delights. So many great performing artists are either great technicians or great stage animals, but not both at once. Those who are both are my big heroes.
I know, I know - it isn’t just him; there’s a big group of people down there, all of them highly skilled and at the top of their game, working with him. It’s just that the conductor is easiest to single out, for obvious reasons. To work as a united force is a significant part of being an orchestra; the conductor is the unifying factor, the wire through which all their multifarious energies are fused (not a good metaphor, excuse me). The musicians all come on quietly, and take their seats quietly, and quietly they tune up – that lovely stage when one is sitting in blissful anticipation – then suddenly this slender man with beautiful hands and hair the colour of manuka honey springs onto the rostrum, looking like a slightly wild hobbit in a suit, and everything just takes off.
Sorry, bad attack of the purple prose there. I have a bit of a crush, you will gather; if the man weren’t a) happily married and b) several inches shorter than me, it would be a huge crush, but these two useful limiting factors keep it to manageable proportions – small bureau rather than double wardrobe, size-wise.
I’m attracted to genius; and that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Anyway: They played “Sinfonietta”, with half the brass section up in the choir stalls to make the fanfares really ring out. I adore Janacek (why can I never find the right diacritical marks for Czech words? Grr…), and in particular I adore “Sinfonietta”. The end, when the fanfares and timps return, everything melding together like a triumphant yet yearning heaven, pulverises me, and this time I just gave up on being a True Brit, and sat and cried. It was wonderful. Then they played a new piece by Magnus Lindberg. I’m not familiar with his work and had come hoping not to be depressed by half an hour of atonal screeching; I was in luck, it was dramatic and lyrical and full of lovely open spaces – I think he was using a lot of very deep and very high sounds layered around the clear place between – I don’t know how to describe it, or indeed exactly what I am trying to describe – but it was one of those pieces of contemporary music that make one want to cheer and stand on the seat. And the text was lovely – Latin graffiti from the streets of Pompeii, everything from crude abuse through cries of “I love so-and-so!” and lists of market days to scribbles of incorrectly-remembered Virgil.
Then the whole of “Firebird”; absolutely gripping, dazzling, revelatory. The genius of Stravinsky, so complex, so subtle, simple and yet showy, brilliantly precise yet full of huge wallopping showstopping moments.
And with this wonderful example of group sang-froid when the lights went out, at one of the stillest and most delicate points in the score, the evening was altogether an absolute joy.
Yep, classical music may be a specialist interest, but I love it. Here’s to a good autumn. Next week I am going to “Wozzeck”; gulp. My Favourite Baritone is singing Wozzeck, and E-P S is conducting, so although I may need to take a few deep breaths, if I can cope with being harrowed halfway to hell and back it should be an impressive evening.
I’m a big fan of the Philharmonia; partly for sentimental reasons – my father and my godmother both sang in the Philharmonia Chorus in their younger days – and partly because I happen to think they are a cracking good orchestra. Last night was a perfect case in point. Apart from being a breathtaking performance of three terrific pieces of music – two huge favourites of mine and something new that knocked my socks off – it was a concert marked by a rather unusual event, namely a power cut.
The band, as they say, played on.
They were only in total darkness for a few seconds, but prior to that the lights had spent about ten minutes flickering on-and-off, then dimming and brightening again, dropping to fifty-per-cent strength, and generally mucking about. Then suddenly boom! – pitch blackness. Right in the middle of “The Firebird”. After a moment, someone somewhere switched to a different lighting circuit, bringing on a very cold harsh light just on the stage and leaving the rest of us in Stygian gloom, instead of the normal soft warm ambience throughout the whole hall, and the concert finished under those conditions.
The orchestra were so unfazed one would have thought they rehearsed in darkness just for the discipline of it. I almost wonder if Esa-Pekka Salonen even noticed. I mean, he must have done; but on the other hand, he always gives the impression of being totally physically immersed in the music to the last fibre of every muscle, all of his energy swept into this one wondrous goal. Watching him on the rostrum is like watching someone dancing in a very confined space.
I’m a big fan of Esa-Pekka Salonen. Everything I’ve ever heard him conduct has come out as if new-minted; revelation after revelation. It’s thrilling. I don’t know enough about music from a technical point of view to know what it is he is doing, but he hits the spot for me. He just has the golden touch; he seems to be able to bring to everything he does that combination of perfect lucidity - so that the whole piece is explicated with absolute clarity and I sit there thinking “Of course, how wonderful; that’s how it’s put together and that’s how it works!” - with an equal and heartfelt measure of passionate feeling. That capacity to explore both structure and emotion, the interlayered play between tensioned forces, is one of my biggest delights. So many great performing artists are either great technicians or great stage animals, but not both at once. Those who are both are my big heroes.
I know, I know - it isn’t just him; there’s a big group of people down there, all of them highly skilled and at the top of their game, working with him. It’s just that the conductor is easiest to single out, for obvious reasons. To work as a united force is a significant part of being an orchestra; the conductor is the unifying factor, the wire through which all their multifarious energies are fused (not a good metaphor, excuse me). The musicians all come on quietly, and take their seats quietly, and quietly they tune up – that lovely stage when one is sitting in blissful anticipation – then suddenly this slender man with beautiful hands and hair the colour of manuka honey springs onto the rostrum, looking like a slightly wild hobbit in a suit, and everything just takes off.
Sorry, bad attack of the purple prose there. I have a bit of a crush, you will gather; if the man weren’t a) happily married and b) several inches shorter than me, it would be a huge crush, but these two useful limiting factors keep it to manageable proportions – small bureau rather than double wardrobe, size-wise.
I’m attracted to genius; and that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Anyway: They played “Sinfonietta”, with half the brass section up in the choir stalls to make the fanfares really ring out. I adore Janacek (why can I never find the right diacritical marks for Czech words? Grr…), and in particular I adore “Sinfonietta”. The end, when the fanfares and timps return, everything melding together like a triumphant yet yearning heaven, pulverises me, and this time I just gave up on being a True Brit, and sat and cried. It was wonderful. Then they played a new piece by Magnus Lindberg. I’m not familiar with his work and had come hoping not to be depressed by half an hour of atonal screeching; I was in luck, it was dramatic and lyrical and full of lovely open spaces – I think he was using a lot of very deep and very high sounds layered around the clear place between – I don’t know how to describe it, or indeed exactly what I am trying to describe – but it was one of those pieces of contemporary music that make one want to cheer and stand on the seat. And the text was lovely – Latin graffiti from the streets of Pompeii, everything from crude abuse through cries of “I love so-and-so!” and lists of market days to scribbles of incorrectly-remembered Virgil.
Then the whole of “Firebird”; absolutely gripping, dazzling, revelatory. The genius of Stravinsky, so complex, so subtle, simple and yet showy, brilliantly precise yet full of huge wallopping showstopping moments.
And with this wonderful example of group sang-froid when the lights went out, at one of the stillest and most delicate points in the score, the evening was altogether an absolute joy.
Yep, classical music may be a specialist interest, but I love it. Here’s to a good autumn. Next week I am going to “Wozzeck”; gulp. My Favourite Baritone is singing Wozzeck, and E-P S is conducting, so although I may need to take a few deep breaths, if I can cope with being harrowed halfway to hell and back it should be an impressive evening.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
The date indicator
Today is Thursday
September 31st;
I am living in magic time.
No wonder the sky
Is this soft mystery of blue
No wonder the light
Is balmy with bees, the air
So scented
With the pure musks of autumn,
The sugar of ivy blossom.
On a mythical day
Anything is possible.
Still, I change my watch.
September 31st;
I am living in magic time.
No wonder the sky
Is this soft mystery of blue
No wonder the light
Is balmy with bees, the air
So scented
With the pure musks of autumn,
The sugar of ivy blossom.
On a mythical day
Anything is possible.
Still, I change my watch.
Talk about arrogant!
Have a look at this saga of horror!
An appalling story of plagiarism... Gives me the creeps just to read it, as well as making me very angry.
I do wonder, actually, if the perpetrator is not in fact an art student - the whole thing sounds to me rather like the kind of self-congratulatory bullsh*t that some of my contemporaries from KIAD would have got up to, with the long-term goal of "exposing" the whole story as a "Work Of Art"; winning a First in the process, I expect. But perhaps I shouldn't even mention such things, in case it gives this person ideas!
An appalling story of plagiarism... Gives me the creeps just to read it, as well as making me very angry.
I do wonder, actually, if the perpetrator is not in fact an art student - the whole thing sounds to me rather like the kind of self-congratulatory bullsh*t that some of my contemporaries from KIAD would have got up to, with the long-term goal of "exposing" the whole story as a "Work Of Art"; winning a First in the process, I expect. But perhaps I shouldn't even mention such things, in case it gives this person ideas!
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Creative isolation or arrogant self-absorption?
Overheard yesterday evening on the bus: a young woman and a slightly older man, discussing her dreams and hopes. Hard to tell what their relationship was – he was supportive to an indulgent degree, but not old enough to be her father, yet didn’t act or talk like a lover, either. I would normally want to be supportive too – I know what it is like to have dreams and hopes, after all! - yet I found myself increasingly irritated by her.
She was one of these people who think they are already perfect, and who believe they don’t need to pay any attention to the rest of the world. She wanted to be a singer, but said she didn’t listen to other singers “because I don’t like being influenced by other people’s music”. She also thought she had a book in her, but couldn’t tell her companion what sort of book she would write because she didn’t know what kind of book it would be, owing to the fact that she didn’t ever read anything, because “reading is so boring”. I kept thinking the guy would say something gentle about not living in a vacuum; but all he did was tell her how great she was.
Now, I realise I do not suffer fools gladly; it is and always has been one of my big faults in personal relationships. I am also aware that I am intolerant of people who seem to be getting buckets of praise and support for doing absolutely b*gger all; and that is simply pure envy, which is hardly something to be self-congratulatory about either. So I was getting thoroughly irritated - with this lass holding forth and being praised, when it seemed she had very little to offer except a big head and a conviction that so long as you are original that will be enough to make your fortune, and also with myself because I knew my irritation was so characteristically pompous. All in all a rather uncomfortable experience.
But it has made me think. She reminded me of the people I was at Art College with who if taken to an exhibition walked through it as fast as they could so as to get to spend as much time as possible in either Prêt à Manger or the nearest pub. I have no right to be prescriptive, I know, but it shocks me when someone wants to be successful in the creative arts yet has no interest in the continuum within which they are working. I don’t feel that the excuse of protecting one’s originality from contamination will really do; it seems rather a small fig leaf to me, given the scale of what it is being asked to cover. Excuse the mixed metaphor!
How is a would-be writer who doesn’t read ever to learn the first thing about how to write well - how to construct a sentence and a paragraph, how to put across a point or create a believable situation? How is an artist who doesn’t look at anyone else’s art to discover the medium and the technique that most excites them? How is the musician who doesn’t listen to music ever to get beyond singing in the shower? Setting aside the self-indulgence of my irritation for a moment, I simply can’t see how anyone really thinks they will get to be any good at anything if they try to pursue it in a vacuum. Isolation is one thing, and we are all creatively isolated when we start out, trying to find our voice and our way; but this cool refusal to engage with the rest of the world smacks to me of blind arrogance.
She was one of these people who think they are already perfect, and who believe they don’t need to pay any attention to the rest of the world. She wanted to be a singer, but said she didn’t listen to other singers “because I don’t like being influenced by other people’s music”. She also thought she had a book in her, but couldn’t tell her companion what sort of book she would write because she didn’t know what kind of book it would be, owing to the fact that she didn’t ever read anything, because “reading is so boring”. I kept thinking the guy would say something gentle about not living in a vacuum; but all he did was tell her how great she was.
Now, I realise I do not suffer fools gladly; it is and always has been one of my big faults in personal relationships. I am also aware that I am intolerant of people who seem to be getting buckets of praise and support for doing absolutely b*gger all; and that is simply pure envy, which is hardly something to be self-congratulatory about either. So I was getting thoroughly irritated - with this lass holding forth and being praised, when it seemed she had very little to offer except a big head and a conviction that so long as you are original that will be enough to make your fortune, and also with myself because I knew my irritation was so characteristically pompous. All in all a rather uncomfortable experience.
But it has made me think. She reminded me of the people I was at Art College with who if taken to an exhibition walked through it as fast as they could so as to get to spend as much time as possible in either Prêt à Manger or the nearest pub. I have no right to be prescriptive, I know, but it shocks me when someone wants to be successful in the creative arts yet has no interest in the continuum within which they are working. I don’t feel that the excuse of protecting one’s originality from contamination will really do; it seems rather a small fig leaf to me, given the scale of what it is being asked to cover. Excuse the mixed metaphor!
How is a would-be writer who doesn’t read ever to learn the first thing about how to write well - how to construct a sentence and a paragraph, how to put across a point or create a believable situation? How is an artist who doesn’t look at anyone else’s art to discover the medium and the technique that most excites them? How is the musician who doesn’t listen to music ever to get beyond singing in the shower? Setting aside the self-indulgence of my irritation for a moment, I simply can’t see how anyone really thinks they will get to be any good at anything if they try to pursue it in a vacuum. Isolation is one thing, and we are all creatively isolated when we start out, trying to find our voice and our way; but this cool refusal to engage with the rest of the world smacks to me of blind arrogance.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
More on the good weekend...
Firstly – to continue where I left off, with John Ward’s murals in Challock Church.
I nearly modelled for John Ward, not long before he died. I met him and arrangements were made, but then he was unwell and it was postponed; then I moved to London and the postponement became indefinite, and then he passed away. I remember him as a lovely old guy, as deaf as the proverbial post but full of joie de vivre nonetheless. I have to say, too, that a lot of the time I didn’t like his work; cool and academic and a tad whimsical, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, though I could see it was marvellous draughtsmanship technically. I suppose for someone who makes most of their living as a portraitist it must be very easy to slide into playing it safe, to be sure of pleasing the clients – many of whom one may find tiresome in the extreme, but still have to charm.
I didn’t know until this weekend just past that he also painted murals in the church of St Cosmas and St Damian, which stands in a wooded valley on the outskirts of the tiny village of Challock Lees in the Kentish stretch of the North Downs. An old friend of my mother’s decided to take us to see them at the weekend.
He painted a rather over-tidy sequence in the Chancel in the 1950s, but then came back in 2000 to produce, with his friend Gordon Davies, a huge painting depicting Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, set in the local Kent landscape, along the whole north wall – with the Challock Lees’ annual Summer Goose Fair standing in for Jerusalem at Passover, and local people in contemporary clothes crowding the scene. It sounds twee, but it isn’t. It works. The figure work is fairly conventional, but what makes the whole vast spread of the painting sing is the mass of details – the magnificent tree overarching the whole composition, and the animals, birds and insects amidst the foliage; the giant angel releasing little winged leaf-spirits into the air from abreast of the west wall; the classic Victoria sponge on the cake stall at the fête, the cat lurking under the table, the child clutching a teddy bear, the key to the church lying on the table in front of the current vicar, the girl caught just lowering her camera from taking a snapshot of Jesus passing by. The whole thing is packed with all the richness of life and painted with all the love of a long life richly lived. There is nothing chilly or academic here, the painting is very free, and full of delight, with the flowers of every season scattered over the whole. And, too, this is a world with no hierarchy. The vicar is as worthy of grace as the lapwing. And quite right too.
Mind you, if you want really great twentieth century art in a Kent church, then head for Tudeley, near Tonbridge. John Ward’s murals are lovely, but Marc Chagall’s stained glass windows in All Saints, Tudeley are simply astonishing. The first time I went there I wandered around the church crying with delight. Admittedly I cry easily, but usually that is at the theatre or over a book (or at funerals – I’m one of those people who always cry at funerals), or in some other situation when tears are being intentionally provoked. Not simply from being immersed in the pure perfection of colour and the miracle of light. Not from the seven days of creation in Chagall-esque imagery, complete with flying donkey…
In fact, if you only ever go to one Kent church, make it Tudeley; you will be blown away.
I nearly modelled for John Ward, not long before he died. I met him and arrangements were made, but then he was unwell and it was postponed; then I moved to London and the postponement became indefinite, and then he passed away. I remember him as a lovely old guy, as deaf as the proverbial post but full of joie de vivre nonetheless. I have to say, too, that a lot of the time I didn’t like his work; cool and academic and a tad whimsical, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, though I could see it was marvellous draughtsmanship technically. I suppose for someone who makes most of their living as a portraitist it must be very easy to slide into playing it safe, to be sure of pleasing the clients – many of whom one may find tiresome in the extreme, but still have to charm.
I didn’t know until this weekend just past that he also painted murals in the church of St Cosmas and St Damian, which stands in a wooded valley on the outskirts of the tiny village of Challock Lees in the Kentish stretch of the North Downs. An old friend of my mother’s decided to take us to see them at the weekend.
He painted a rather over-tidy sequence in the Chancel in the 1950s, but then came back in 2000 to produce, with his friend Gordon Davies, a huge painting depicting Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, set in the local Kent landscape, along the whole north wall – with the Challock Lees’ annual Summer Goose Fair standing in for Jerusalem at Passover, and local people in contemporary clothes crowding the scene. It sounds twee, but it isn’t. It works. The figure work is fairly conventional, but what makes the whole vast spread of the painting sing is the mass of details – the magnificent tree overarching the whole composition, and the animals, birds and insects amidst the foliage; the giant angel releasing little winged leaf-spirits into the air from abreast of the west wall; the classic Victoria sponge on the cake stall at the fête, the cat lurking under the table, the child clutching a teddy bear, the key to the church lying on the table in front of the current vicar, the girl caught just lowering her camera from taking a snapshot of Jesus passing by. The whole thing is packed with all the richness of life and painted with all the love of a long life richly lived. There is nothing chilly or academic here, the painting is very free, and full of delight, with the flowers of every season scattered over the whole. And, too, this is a world with no hierarchy. The vicar is as worthy of grace as the lapwing. And quite right too.
Mind you, if you want really great twentieth century art in a Kent church, then head for Tudeley, near Tonbridge. John Ward’s murals are lovely, but Marc Chagall’s stained glass windows in All Saints, Tudeley are simply astonishing. The first time I went there I wandered around the church crying with delight. Admittedly I cry easily, but usually that is at the theatre or over a book (or at funerals – I’m one of those people who always cry at funerals), or in some other situation when tears are being intentionally provoked. Not simply from being immersed in the pure perfection of colour and the miracle of light. Not from the seven days of creation in Chagall-esque imagery, complete with flying donkey…
In fact, if you only ever go to one Kent church, make it Tudeley; you will be blown away.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)