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selenakThe last two days were thoroughly exhausting, but in a good way. On Friday, I had the chance to visit The Real Van Gogh - The Artist and his Letters, a fabulous new exhibition at the Royal Academy. Now as a veteran of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, and our own Neue Pinakothek in Munich where some of the most famous Van Goghs are on display, I am pretty familiar with the ouevre outside of print and in real painting form. I've also read the letters to Theo. And yet this exhibition, covering Vincent from his early Dutch days till Auvers and his death, with paintings juxtaposed with letter manuscripts (often there are sketches of the paintings in question in the letters), felt fresh and amazing. You can follow the artistic development, you can see the way an idea becomes a painting, and how he tries to recapture this painting in words. That quite neat and small handwriting on paper that looks like the ones for exercise books sold even, and the brown colours of the Netherlands suddenly exploding into French light. So many still lifes which aren't actually the first thing you associate with Van Gogh. Two crabs, even, painted with the same bright yellow, orange, red like the sunflowers. Much later white roses which actually used to be pink, but Van Gogh used an unstable pigment, and now they faded to white. Theo sending him prints in black and white and Vincent doing his own coloured versions of these prints as paintings, guessing/choosing which colours to use. It's fantastic to watch.
I had some business as the British Library as well, so I used the opportunity to have lunch withjesuswasbatman which was enjoyable as always. Then it was work time until the evening where the work included watching Twelfth Night with Richard Wilson as Malvolio, oh, the trial. (Does this stay in London have a Merlin theme?) It was a lovely production. The director depicted Illyria in the early 19th century, which meant everyone was in Greece-under-the Ottomans costumes, Orsino fancied himself and dressed like a Byronic hero, Viola and Sebastian were in Regency outfits as well, and the backround was a Greek ruin; it felt as if we were stranded in one of the travel epics Byron & Co. made fashionable, which worked amazingly well. The cast was in fine form. I've seen Twelfth Night productions which were incredibly depressing, entirely focused on the darker sides of the play, and Twelfth Night productions which played it completely comedic, but this was a good balance. Richard Wilson's Malvolio was pompous enough you could root for a prank against him, but his suffering in the second part was not played for laughs, and in the scenes with the Fool he never lost his dignity, so, like Olivia, one ended up feeling sorry for him and seeing him as abused. Speaking of Olivia, she was played with zest and a lot of energy. I haven't seen an Olivia yet who reacted to the big twins revelation with a lusty glee that had the thought "Threesome!" practically spelled out on her head, and the audience laughed and applauded her for it. (Incidentally, I thought the threesome possibility occured to Orsino as well, albeit a bit later.) I seem to recall there was some Twelfth Night fanfic in Yuletide which I haven't had the chance to read yet; I must do so now. (Someone not available or thinking of threesomes was poor Antonio; during Feste's final song, one saw him depart alone, like that other Antonio the pining outsider to the happy ending, but not the only one, as the whole sequence ended with Malvolio.)
Saturday, i.e. yesterday, the weather had changed and it was sunny throughout, which was great because I spent most of it outdoors. Near Hampton Court, which was one of the reasons why I had been there earlier, on Thursday. This time, it wasn't for fun but work, yet of the enjoyable variety. At the end of which I was pretty exhausted, but I shall leave you with the sight that made up for it:
I had some business as the British Library as well, so I used the opportunity to have lunch with
jesuswasbatman which was enjoyable as always. Then it was work time until the evening where the work included watching Twelfth Night with Richard Wilson as Malvolio, oh, the trial. (Does this stay in London have a Merlin theme?) It was a lovely production. The director depicted Illyria in the early 19th century, which meant everyone was in Greece-under-the Ottomans costumes, Orsino fancied himself and dressed like a Byronic hero, Viola and Sebastian were in Regency outfits as well, and the backround was a Greek ruin; it felt as if we were stranded in one of the travel epics Byron & Co. made fashionable, which worked amazingly well. The cast was in fine form. I've seen Twelfth Night productions which were incredibly depressing, entirely focused on the darker sides of the play, and Twelfth Night productions which played it completely comedic, but this was a good balance. Richard Wilson's Malvolio was pompous enough you could root for a prank against him, but his suffering in the second part was not played for laughs, and in the scenes with the Fool he never lost his dignity, so, like Olivia, one ended up feeling sorry for him and seeing him as abused. Speaking of Olivia, she was played with zest and a lot of energy. I haven't seen an Olivia yet who reacted to the big twins revelation with a lusty glee that had the thought "Threesome!" practically spelled out on her head, and the audience laughed and applauded her for it. (Incidentally, I thought the threesome possibility occured to Orsino as well, albeit a bit later.) I seem to recall there was some Twelfth Night fanfic in Yuletide which I haven't had the chance to read yet; I must do so now. (Someone not available or thinking of threesomes was poor Antonio; during Feste's final song, one saw him depart alone, like that other Antonio the pining outsider to the happy ending, but not the only one, as the whole sequence ended with Malvolio.)Saturday, i.e. yesterday, the weather had changed and it was sunny throughout, which was great because I spent most of it outdoors. Near Hampton Court, which was one of the reasons why I had been there earlier, on Thursday. This time, it wasn't for fun but work, yet of the enjoyable variety. At the end of which I was pretty exhausted, but I shall leave you with the sight that made up for it:
