Tag: Pre-Raphaelite

Synchronicity at the V & A

We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events.

On our last day in London, we decide that what we want more than anything is a dose of city life. We realize with a shock that we haven’t been to the Victoria & Albert Museum since our first trip to London in 1976. We’ve changed a lot since then, and so has the V & A.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (photo from website)

The V & A is a learning museum, originally dedicated to improving British industry by educating designers, manufacturers and consumers in art and science. That’s an ethos that still runs through the museum’s collection of over 2 million artifacts. One of the 10 largest museums in the world, the V & A is a constant source of inspiration. It’s a museum that you can spend a lifetime revisiting. This is the first of what I hope will be many revisits.

We don’t have a lot of time, so we decide not to plan. We’ll allow the fates to decide what we see, to allow our experiences to be a series of synchronous events. (I’ve just looked up the word synchronous and found that one of its meanings has to do with Astronomy: “making or denoting an orbit around the earth or another celestial body in which one revolution is completed in the period taken for the body to rotate about its axis.” This is a perfect metaphor. It takes time for an experience to turn and manifest itself within my thoughts. In the orbit, I can see the experience from all sides. But I digress…)

In the vast and somewhat overwhelming V & A, it seemed that with each corner I turned, with each new room I entered, I saw an object or a piece of art that felt like it was put there just for me. Something that reminded me of what I care about, about what matters to me. Something that showed me facets of myself and helped me remember and recognize the “person I take myself to be.”

Original Music and the Mirror score

We started our V & A ramble at the show “Re:Imagining Musicals.” Among the trove of records, playbills, sets, costumes, and curios, I saw an original handwritten score for “The Music and the Mirror,” from A Chorus Line, a musical that I saw in its first Broadway production. As with all aspiring actors, that song, in particular, was the anthem I sang as I headed off to theatre school. The manuscript was complete with changes made by both the composer and lyricist (Yes, the changed line “Let me wake up…” is better than “Let me awake…”) I was off on my journey.

Musicals segued into the museum’s theatre and performance collection. Sir Laurence Olivier’s iconic costume for Henry V is here, beside Vivien Leigh’s Cleopatra. Fred Astaire’s tails for Top Hat keep company with Charlie Chaplin’s tramp hat and cane.

Costumes worn by Sir Laurence Olivier in Henry V and Vivien Leigh in Cleopatra
Costume worn by Fred Astaire in Top Hat

Full of emotion, with songs in my heart, I do a soft shoe out of the exhibit into the next room ––a collection of paintings donated by Constantine Alexander Ionides –– and come face to face with “The Day Dream,” a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When I was in my twenties, I went through a huge Pre-Raphaelite phase, and this was a favourite.

The Day Dream, by Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, at the V & A

Rossetti was also a poet and often calligraphed a verse on the frame of his paintings. The poem on The Day Dream ends with:

She dreams; till now on her forgotten book

Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.

Dante Gabrielle Rossetti

A young woman is quietly sketching the painting. My heart aches with love for her youth, and for her devotion to art. I am that dreamer again.

I meander. There is so much to see but I don’t want to choose. On this, our last day in London, I want to be surprised. And so I am. When I stumble upon the Cast Court, I almost collapse. There is a full-size plaster cast of the Trajan column, commissioned by Napoleon. I’m knocked sideways by memory.

Cast reproduction of the Trajan Column (in two parts)

In 1990, I travelled to Rome to study Roman lettering. The lettering on the Trajan column is the pinnacle for anyone’s study of the form. Completed in 114 CE, these letters are considered the perfection of letter design and creation. When I was in Rome, we climbed scaffolding to get up close. The column was being restored, and we washed the inscription lovingly before making rubbings to take home. It was an act of devotion.

Lettering on the Trajan Column, originally carved 114 CE (reproduction)

Seeing it again brought back all of the passion I felt at the time. It was as though the person who I used to be walked into the room to hold me, remind me. My heart aches with love for that young woman, and her devotion to art, too.

And so somehow, the afternoon at the V & A has become a metaphor for everything I had hoped the trip would be. It’s been a time to be with friends and family, and a time to discover new places. But importantly, it’s been a time to reflect on where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going. It’s been a liminal space, a transitional moment, where I have been turning in my own revolution, while revolving around the themes in my life.

I don’t know what is coming next. But I am ready to find out.

We say goodbye to the city, head back to the Southbank and home.

Tate à Tate

Last Wednesday, we decided to have a Tate à Tate – an exploration of the Tate Britain in the morning and the Tate Modern in the afternoon. The Tate Britain was listing a show on “The Romantics”, which ended up as mostly a show on Turner. It was wonderful to see so many Turners, and to see the evolution of his style, but it was a bit disappointing not to see some of the others of the period. After a little pub lunch down the road we decided to go back to the gallery in hunt of Pre-Raphaelites. We were rewarded with a few of our most favourite pieces (some with a definite flair for the “Elegant Gothic Lolita” — see Camden Town!) – Millais’ Mariana and his Ophelia, Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott, Brune-Jones’ The Golden Stairs (looking for all the world like the angels out for a union break), and the magnificent Singer Sargent portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, which is enormous and vigourous. It is larger than life and full of passion, as she was.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

After we had feasted on those paintings, we hopped onto a river ferry to take us to the Tate Modern. The Tate runs a ferry between the two galleries and it really is the most wonderful way to journey down the river, past the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the Globe. The city was built on the Thames, and being on the river connects you to centuries of commerce and trade.

Tim on the Thames with the Houses of Parliament

When Tim & I go to galleries, we split up and agree to meet later. We both have different things we are interested in, and this way we have things to share when we meet up  — “Did you see the … ?!” is usually how it starts.

“Did you see the Sunflower Seeds?” said Tim. “Did you see the Staircase?” I countered.

“Sunflower Seeds” by Al Weiwei is a huge pile of what seem to be millions of sunflower seeds on the floor of the gallery. However, each seed is hand-made of porcelain, combining the idea of mass production (so deeply associated with China) and individual craftsmanship. Sunflower seeds are a common snack in China, but carry associations with the Cultural Revolution, when propaganda posters depicted Chairman Mao as the sun and the masses of people as sunflowers turning towards him. Weiwei also remembers sharing sunflower seeds as a gesture of compassion in a time of extreme poverty. “Your own acts and behaviour tell the world who you are and at the same time what kind of society you think it should be” Ai Weiwei

“Staircase – III”, by Do Ho Suh, is a polyester and wire installation that takes over a whole room. A perfectly made fabric staircase hangs in the centre of the room, complete with balustrade, electrical sockets and light fixtures. It hangs from a transparent fabric “floor” above, through which the balustrade can be seen. The staircase hovers tantalizingly above your head, opening out to a door in the middle of the air.

Staircase III by Do Ho Suh

Great discoveries.

We left as the gallery closed at 6:00. It was a lovely afternoon and we walked from the Southbank to Trafalgar Square, heading to the Crypt at St. Martin’s in the Fields. The Crypt has a cafeteria-style restaurant, with good wine, delicious tapas, a great vegetarian mushroom ragout, and Jazz every Wednesday night. This really is an 18th century crypt – the floor is made of gravestones and the beautiful brick arches make for fabulous acoustics for the band. Shanti Paul Jayasinha is a mellow trumpeter, playing original music in an Afro-Cuban and Brazilian style,

and his band suited this intimate venue perfectly. It was one of those nights when I could hear all of the layers in the music. Simple, clean and elegant. A perfect ending to a day of visual feasting.