London is charming. Granted I kept a pair of rose-colored tourist glasses on for much of my time there, happy to breathe in a city again. It also helped that for some reason my budget hotel offered me a cozy room with it’s own private garden, where I spent a few mornings basking in the sun over morning tea. I’m not a picky traveler, I don’t intend to spend a lot of time in my room anyway, but being surrounded by beautiful flowers in my backyard managed to melt my hardened traveler’s shell:
A lot of London cracked my shell actually:
St. Paul’s Cathedral:
Huge, old, beautiful. I sat through a half hour express lunch service like a good guilty Catholic, mostly staring at the light hitting the gilded gold on the statues. Then I trudged my way up the 530 or however many stairs to catch the view:
But a definite highlight of the Cathedral were two video works on display inside the chapel by Bill Viola. Which apparently is old news, St. Paul’s had his work on display way back in 2004 (along with Tracy Emin) in a show depicting contemporary images of Christ. Who knew the Brits were so progressive?
Another good way to see the city was the Tate to Tate boat ride, literally shuttling people between Tate Modern and Tate Britian. I had read that Damien Hirst actually designed the decoration of the boat and I was quite excited to see a polka-dot covered boat pull up to the dock. A bright pink “TATE” flag flew on the stern…yet for some reason (bad luck I guess) this boat was not doing the Tate to Tate tour that time. Thanks to Flickr, I found out later the only thing I really missed inside were more polka dots. Way to go Hirst!
But I digress, this is (as my Time Out London guidebook obediently told me) a fantastic way to see a lot of sights in a small amount of time. The Eye of London, Westminster Abbey, London Bridge, Big Ben…in about 30 minutes no less:
I actually took an almost break for a half a day and spent some time in Hyde Park, per the recommendation of a wise friend. I got off the tube at Notting Hill and found my way into the entrance to the park near Kensington Palace. The crowds kept me from paying the entrance fee to the Palace, instead I kept on track of having more of a day breathing in London than seeing the sights.
I sat in the shade for much of the late morning and afternoon, going from one tree to another around the park, mostly near the Princess Diana fountain. A police-escorted horse-drawn carriage passed by carrying Some Very Important Person but I continued to sit lazily under my tree. My one “art goal” for Hyde Park was Serpentine Gallery, co-directed by Hans Ulrich Obrist, an amazing curator and master of the artist interview. The show on display was Richard Prince, a sort of mini-retrospective of car hoods, joke paintings, nurse paintings, record covers, Marlborough men and a few sculptures thrown in for good measure. I like Prince’s work and see the validity in his use of media-soaked imagery…although I did have trouble grasping his newer work, aka the De Kooning series. Maybe I’m conditioned to seeing his work in a certain way and the fact that he’s doing something less immediately satisfying is actually my problem, not his. Most likely that is the case.
Outside of the gallery was a new architectural installation by Frank Ghery:
In honor of my day of lazying about, I took a few minutes to sit under the wood and glass canopy, and thankfully, for once, not thinking about the episode of the Simpsons that Ghery guest-starred on where he crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it on the ground, then picked it up and turned it into a design for a building. The piece at the Serpentine is all angles and no aluminum; lots of cast shadows and wide open steps. I could have gone without the frosting on the glass, but once again I’ll humbly defer to that being my problem, not his.
The bookstore at the Serpentine, by the way, is worth the trip alone. I practiced much self-restraint from blowing my meager savings on buying and shipping a giant box of art books back to the US.
One last art note, the ICA is programming an ambitious exhibition called “Nought to Sixty”, a presentation of sixty projects from emerging British and Irish artists happening over six months that started in May and lasts until November. For many of them this is their first major exhibition – I made it to a Nought to Sixty opening for The Hut Project, a group of three artists based in London. Their exhibition was half “retrospective” and half artist archive detailing pretty much every creative endeavor they’ve undertaken individually and collectively. From stacks of books on Duchamp and a massive installation of brown packing tape to rejection letters from galleries, The Hut Project definitely knows how to highlight the many absurdist sides of the art world.
Finally, I’d like to commend London on the amazingly clear and informative signs on the Tube. Chicago take note: see how easy it can be to show people a big map at each station, one on each side of the platform that shows clearly if they get on this train where it will take them! And electronic signs that give really accurate estimates as to the length of time until the next train arrives! No more staring down the dark hole down the tracks, anxiously craning your neck hoping to see the glimmer of train headlight knowing your wait is soon over! Think how much easier life could be for everyone involved in public transportation. Think how much happier people could be! It’s not that complicated, I swear!
Next stop: Newcastle.
