We’re on our way to England tonight for three weeks.
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Then there’s this painting by an unknown artist from France or the Low Countries from the early 1500s.
Could there possibly be a weirder Madonna and Child? I doubt it. There’s a saint on either side of the holy duo, but at the bottom of the painting there’s A MONSTER WITH WIDE OPEN JAWS WITH SPIKY TEETH!
In fact, if you look closely you see the saint on the right is emerging from the monster. That saint would be St. Margaret, who is said to have been swallowed by a dragon who couldn’t keep her down.
(Hi Margaret!)
Today’s weather was blustery and drizzly, so we decided to go back to the National Gallery. I am sure you could spend the best part of a week there.
There’s hardly any nationalist nonsense there, if you ignore the coronation portraits of Chuck III and Camilla. But at the top of a staircase you can walk on a mosaic of Winston Churchill in his wartime siren suit
confronting a monster that, if you squint hard enough, seems to be shaped like a swastika.
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Today’s weather was blustery and drizzly, so we decided to go back to the National Gallery. I am sure you could spend the best part of a week there.
There’s hardly any nationalist nonsense there, if you ignore the coronation portraits of Chuck III and Camilla. But at the top of a staircase you can walk on a mosaic of Winston Churchill in his wartime siren suit
confronting a monster that, if you squint hard enough, seems to be shaped like a swastika.
Thé National Gallery is insanely deep in Italian Renaissance art, and today we saw a lot of art by painters with surnames ending in vowels. I was really surprised by how much I liked works by artists I’d never heard of.
Because of his charismatic painting of St. Francis in the Frick Collection, I’ve certainly heard of Giovanni Bellini. But this painting credited to his workshop belongs to a *genre* I’d never heard of: the circumcision of Jesus.
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Thé National Gallery is insanely deep in Italian Renaissance art, and today we saw a lot of art by painters with surnames ending in vowels. I was really surprised by how much I liked works by artists I’d never heard of.
Because of his charismatic painting of St. Francis in the Frick Collection, I’ve certainly heard of Giovanni Bellini. But this painting credited to his workshop belongs to a *genre* I’d never heard of: the circumcision of Jesus.
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We walked back to our hotel through Hyde Park, and we were lucky enough to encounter a linden tree that still had fragrant flowers this late in June.
Today’s weather was to be rainless, so we set out for Hampstead Heath and Highgate Cemetery.
Now that we’re familiar with the Central London transport options (Tube and bus) we were ready for the added degree of difficulty of transferring from the Tube at West Hampstead to the Overground for two stops to the Heath.
The Overground is pretty much a suburban railroad system that doesn’t exactly share stations with the Tube but comes pretty close at a number of places. It’s a little startling to see big freight trains on the Overground tracks blowing past the platform you’re waiting on. I suppose this limits how often the actual Overground trains run.
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Today’s weather was to be rainless, so we set out for Hampstead Heath and Highgate Cemetery.
Now that we’re familiar with the Central London transport options (Tube and bus) we were ready for the added degree of difficulty of transferring from the Tube at West Hampstead to the Overground for two stops to the Heath.
The Overground is pretty much a suburban railroad system that doesn’t exactly share stations with the Tube but comes pretty close at a number of places. It’s a little startling to see big freight trains on the Overground tracks blowing past the platform you’re waiting on. I suppose this limits how often the actual Overground trains run.
I’m developing more affection for the Tube with time. At least some of the lines seem to run more frequently than any in the NYC subway. One of those lines, the Central, is the one closest to our hotel.
And the narrow coaches with domed tops and curved sides and even curved doors dictated by the dimensions of the tunnels on some (older?) lines? In my current mood I find them kind of charming.
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I’m developing more affection for the Tube with time. At least some of the lines seem to run more frequently than any in the NYC subway. One of those lines, the Central, is the one closest to our hotel.
And the narrow coaches with domed tops and curved sides and even curved doors dictated by the dimensions of the tunnels on some (older?) lines? In my current mood I find them kind of charming.
Hampstead Heath is vast. We only covered maybe a third of it walking across it toward Highgate and later walking back across it at another angle from below Highgate Cemetery. It also gives something much closer to solitude than the parks closer to the center of London.
This allee reminded me of some German parks we’ve been to.
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Hampstead Heath is vast. We only covered maybe a third of it walking across it toward Highgate and later walking back across it at another angle from below Highgate Cemetery. It also gives something much closer to solitude than the parks closer to the center of London.
This allee reminded me of some German parks we’ve been to.
In Hampstead Heath, Spouse noticed a guy in a Heath t-shirt doing something mysterious at the base of a poplar tree surrounded by poplar fluff and asked him what he was doing.
Answer: counting the shells left behind by the hornet moth larvae infesting balsam poplar trees with fatal results these days.
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In Hampstead Heath, Spouse noticed a guy in a Heath t-shirt doing something mysterious at the base of a poplar tree surrounded by poplar fluff and asked him what he was doing.
Answer: counting the shells left behind by the hornet moth larvae infesting balsam poplar trees with fatal results these days.
The East section of Highgate Cemetery is the more recent section (19th century till now, making it roughly contemporaneous with Green-Wood in Brooklyn.) It’s also the part that’s cheaper to visit and lets you wander without a tour guide, so that’s where we went.
When you enter, there’s no doubt whatsoever what—who—is the main attraction.
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The East section of Highgate Cemetery is the more recent section (19th century till now, making it roughly contemporaneous with Green-Wood in Brooklyn.) It’s also the part that’s cheaper to visit and lets you wander without a tour guide, so that’s where we went.
When you enter, there’s no doubt whatsoever what—who—is the main attraction.
On the way to Karl Marx’s grave we stopped at Shura Cherkassky’s. He was a classical pianist with a gorgeous sound who was all about the music, egoless, a little old guy who could hold an audience spellbound with a minimum of movement onstage. His repertoire ranged from Rameau to Stockhausen.
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On the way to Karl Marx’s grave we stopped at Shura Cherkassky’s. He was a classical pianist with a gorgeous sound who was all about the music, egoless, a little old guy who could hold an audience spellbound with a minimum of movement onstage. His repertoire ranged from Rameau to Stockhausen.
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(Sorry, my photo of George Eliot’s Stone is illegible due, I assume, air pollution eroding the inscription.)
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The great man gets a lot of tribute to this day. While we were there today a South Asian woman laid a bouquet in front of the Marx monument.
In front of the monument were a lot of things left by Chinese people; to the right a rainbow beaded bracelet.
At the Marx monument we had a conversation with a cemetery employee of a few decades’ standing.
He said marble monuments aren’t allowed anymore because they erode into illegibility too fast. And granite mustn’t be polished to a gaudy shine!
And…the cemetery is full. This doesn’t mean nobody can be buried there anymore, but only on top of an existing grave. And to do that you need permission from the relatives of the deceased below. And if they can’t be found, well, it’s difficult and time-consuming.
The guy also told me he used to bowl regularly with someone for thirty years before learning that he too was a gravedigger.
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At the Marx monument we had a conversation with a cemetery employee of a few decades’ standing.
He said marble monuments aren’t allowed anymore because they erode into illegibility too fast. And granite mustn’t be polished to a gaudy shine!
And…the cemetery is full. This doesn’t mean nobody can be buried there anymore, but only on top of an existing grave. And to do that you need permission from the relatives of the deceased below. And if they can’t be found, well, it’s difficult and time-consuming.
The guy also told me he used to bowl regularly with someone for thirty years before learning that he too was a gravedigger.
Today was museum weather again, so we headed for the British Museum.
The British Museum used to be as much a library as a museum. It’s where Karl Marx did most of his research for _Capital_, and Orwell, Woolf, Garvey among others worked on their books in the Reading Room.
But now the Reading Room, beautiful as it is, has nobody sitting at those concentric arcs of desks: the institution has decided that the public can’t be trusted to not harm the facilities. So now visitors can just stand at the perimeter and gaze at the awesome interior.
A guard told me with sadness in her voice that the institution is currently trying to figure out what the room might be used for in the future.
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Today was museum weather again, so we headed for the British Museum.
The British Museum used to be as much a library as a museum. It’s where Karl Marx did most of his research for _Capital_, and Orwell, Woolf, Garvey among others worked on their books in the Reading Room.
But now the Reading Room, beautiful as it is, has nobody sitting at those concentric arcs of desks: the institution has decided that the public can’t be trusted to not harm the facilities. So now visitors can just stand at the perimeter and gaze at the awesome interior.
A guard told me with sadness in her voice that the institution is currently trying to figure out what the room might be used for in the future.
To my mind the British Museum isn’t mainly for aesthetic experiences, rather it’s for learning how people lived in many parts of the world over ~5 milliennia by glimpsing their material culture.
The Museum was able to acquire (or loot) some amazing objects like the immensely long relief from the palace of Nineveh near modern-day Basra.
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To my mind the British Museum isn’t mainly for aesthetic experiences, rather it’s for learning how people lived in many parts of the world over ~5 milliennia by glimpsing their material culture.
The Museum was able to acquire (or loot) some amazing objects like the immensely long relief from the palace of Nineveh near modern-day Basra.
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F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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The British Museum has Yixing teapots!
It also has an insanely impractical (look at the spout!) teapot designed by some artiste in the 1980s.
That 18th century pot is super interesting. The Brits had just started with tea so the early teaware was Chinese in style. But that changes over time, but also because the tea exported to Europe and the US tasted better with milk and sugar or else sugar and lemon since it just wasn't as subtile as high quality tea sold inside of China.
So the brew-ware adds sugar and milk bowls and so on.
