Plastic Bag Awards 2020

As we spring into a new year it's time to look back at 2020 with the Plastic Bag Awards, the Baggies 2020. It's been a funny old year really with too much time spent at home and not enough time spent out and about but that's how it goes sometimes. To reflect the times there are some new categories for the awards. My lockdown started on 16 March so the year had hardly begun. The jury was socially distanced at all times and didn't have too many problems judging the entries this year so here we go, the Baggies 2020!

Best Theatre

In a slow start to the year I only managed to see two productions:

'Rags' at the Park Theatre
'The Visit, or the Old Lady Comes to Call' at the National Theatre

'Rags' is a musical about immigration to New York in the early 1900s so big themes but a small production in a small theatre. 'The Visit' is a strange play in which the richest woman in the world wants her first boyfriend to be punished for getting her pregnant many years ago and she has the money to make it happen. A total opposite to 'Rags' since this was on the big stage of the Olivier Theatre at the National with a big cast and lots of changes of scenery. In a more normal year I'm not sure either would be nominated but the winner is 'The Visit' because of the excellent performances of Lesley Manville and Hugo Weaving.

Best Exhibition 

I saw ten exhibitions this year so that's a surprisingly good haul. The five nominees were all excellent exhibitions and would have been nominated in a 'normal' year.

'Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution' at the MSK Ghent in Belgium
'Troy' at the British Museum

'Titian: Love, Desire, Death' at the National Gallery
'Artemisia' at the National Gallery
'Turner's Modern World' at Tate Britain

The Van Eyck exhibition was the biggest ever of his works, 'Troy' explored artefacts that tell the story of the Trojan war, the Titan brought together his poesie paintings for the first time, 'Artemisia' was the first exhibition of her works in the UK and the Turner exhibition reflected how he painted and recorded the industrialisation of the country in the first half of the 19th Century. They were quite different in many ways and all were excellent. 

There can only be one winner and that's got to be the Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent. I have fond memories of it, of my little adventure to Belgium, of seeing some of the panels from the Ghent Altarpiece up close to see the detail which is impossible at the Cathedral where it is on display, the incredible detail in even the smallest of the paintings and seeing so many of his works in the same place. Well done MSK Ghent.

Best Building Visited After Two Decades

After seeing a small exhibition near the Barbican I walked down to go to Blackfriars and when I passed St Paul's saw it was open so thought, why not visit? I went online when I got home and booked a ticket. I later got a ticket to visit Westminster Abbey. I've been in both before but not in a couple of decades. The nominees are:

St Paul's Cathedral
Westminster Abbey

It was strange going inside both buildings, everyone masked, following the one-way route and seeing what there was to see. St Paul's was quite empty with few visitors, which was nice, but Westminster Abbey was far more busy, including some tourists. Both have their own history and interesting objects but the award goes to Westminster Abbey for the beauty of the place, the tombs of kings and queens but the Unknown Warrior's is the tomb that's highlighted and, of course, for Poet's Corner. I had planned to visit it again in the run up to Christmas  but that wasn't to be.

Best Face Mask

2020 is the year of the face mask. I started off using a scarf back in March and migrated to using the make-your-own tee shirt sleeve mask since proper masks weren't available anywhere. And then places started making masks and you could buy them so I did. I started to collect them. I got some made up using my own designs from details of paintings and prints. It was a bit of fun, If we need to wear a mask (and we do) then wear a nice one, a colourful one, a mask that says 'this is me'. One of my early favourites was the 'Sunflowers' mask from a detail in Van Gogh's painting from the National Gallery. It was light an airy, fully fitting and my glasses could go on the outside so they didn't steam up. Later on in the summer I got a Rosetta Stone mask from the British Museum, made to a similar design but it feels bigger and more airy and is my mask of choice for gallery visits. This is the mask that wins the award. It's interesting and it works, especially for someone in glasses.

Best Lockdown TV

In lockdown and after, and then as we entered another lockdown, TV companies have had a captive audience but have they risen to the challenge to be creative and cater to our needs? From my point of view, the answer can only be 'no' but there have been some good programmes that have fed me over the past year. These include 'Bake Off' of course, the joyous discovery of 'The Repair Shop', 'Staged' with Michael Sheen and David Tennant performing online in their own kitchens, Charlie Dimmock's 'Garden Challenge' and the glory that was 'Grayson's Art Club' way back in the spring, one of the first programmes to respond directly to lockdown. It's obvious really but the award goes to Grayson and Philippa Perry for 'Grayson's Art Club'

That's a rather abbreviated version of the Baggies for 2020. Let's hope that a normal service can be resumed safely at some point next year. I'm optimistic.

The British Museum in a Mask

The British Museum is open again and, like many places, requires you to wear a mask, has free ticketed entry and a one-way route to follow, ending with the shop. The way in is the same, over to the big tent for bags to be checked and then into the main entrance, get your ticket scanned in the courtyard and then join the queue to get into the exhibition rooms and start the route. Only the ground floor is open at the moment, and not all the rooms, but it was nice to be back. Luckily for me, there was no queue when I arrived so I went straight in to be faced by the Rosetta Stone. 

And there we are, faced with the giant statues of Amenhotep III, in one of the Ancient Egyptian rooms. As it is with most places and exhibitions, the first few rooms were busiest as people adapt to the space, and then the numbers start noticeably thinning out. I wandered round, gawping at the ancient artifacts, All too soon I was surrounded by Assyrian strangeness with winged angels and lions defending doorways and suddenly I was in Ancient Greece.

Exhibits of statues and jars in glass cases and people carefully examining the designs and trying to follow them round the shape of the jars. And then the Parthenon room with those axing friezes. The last time I was in that room it was so crowded I couldn't wait to get out but my recent visit was far more relaxed with maybe a dozen or so people in the room. It was far more relaxed and I had plenty of time and space to examine the carvings. I've always been fascinated by the intricate drapery of the flowing gowns worn by the women in those friezes and I love the fighting centaurs.

In the next room, set in front or a reconstructed Greek temple is Grayson Perry's 'Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman' dedicated to all those unnamed craftsmen over the millennia that made the exhibits in the Museum. It's a galleon sailing their spirits into immortality. It was one of the highlights of the visit.  

Suddenly I was back in Egypt and there was mighty Rameses II. Rameses always makes me think of Shelley's 'Ozymandias' and the much quoted line, 'Look on my works ye mighty and despair'. Rameses was a great builder so no wonder statues of him have been found all over Egypt.

Then downstairs into the Africa rooms with some great Benin bronzes, before heading back upstairs to wander through the Native American rooms to the Mexico rooms and then a room full of old books that are so tempting to touch, probably reminiscent of the old British Library. Then to the shop where you can buy loads of things to do with the subject matter in the Museum, including their own facemarks - I got one with the Rosetta Stone inscription as decoration. Then out the exit into fresh air, also known as the back door.

I really enjoyed the visit and the Museum has carefully planned the route to take in as much as possible while keeping visitors safe. I was probably there for an hour or so wandering along the route and it would be easy to spend longer if you actually look at everything properly. Entry is timed and ticketed but is still free so, if you've got the time, it's well worth a visit. Remember to bring a mask.

'Troy' at the British Museum

The 'Troy' exhibition at the British Museum is closing soon so I scooted along to catch it while I still can. I've been fascinated by Troy since I was young and read Homer's 'The Iliad' in my teenage years (in translation, obviously). It's strange how that story has wound its way into our culture through art, poetry, storytelling, films and virtually every medium you can think of. A universal tale if ever there was one.

There are so many different aspects to the tale of Troy, so many different stories that there's something in there for everyone. There are love stories, tales of war and mighty warriors, jealousy, greed, power struggles, domesticity, magic and the gods, so many different angles to it that can't possibly be captured in a single exhibition. This exhibition tries to be as broad as possible and, largely succeeds.

There are three parts to the exhibition. It starts with ancient views on the Troy story as illustrated in pottery, carvings and paintings, followed by a section on the archaeology of the site in modern Turkey, and finally a view of how the story has influenced more modern culture in the last thousand years or so through books, paintings and sculptures, and, of course, films.

There were some quite astonishing paintings from Pompeii on display that re-told the tales of the old story and showed how the Romans relished the tales. The quality of the paintings is amazing and the sad thing is that we'll never know who painted them two millennia ago. I didn't notice any information about the paintings in the signage - are they frescoes or painted on dried plaster? What sort of pigments were used to create those colours?

While many of the images dealt with the big parts of the story, like the judgement of Paris or the entry of the horse into Troy, some of them picked up on the smaller aspects, like the image of Ajax and Achilles chatting over a campfire on the side of a storage jar. In a way, it's these scenes that are more interesting since they're unusual but remind us that not everything in grand tales is grand or earth-shattering, that there's a lot of waiting around. There are quiet moments amongst all the noise and rush of war and great events.

After considering how the tales of Troy were dealt with in antiquity there was a section that looked at the archeology and the fact behind the legends. There is a lot of evidence for an ancient settlement on the site thought to be Troy - quite a few settlements over the millennia - but is there evidence for a war, mass migration, Greek invasion? This section had a range of artefacts from the different cities or settlements on the site of Troy, mostly small objects that were difficult to get close to given how crowded the exhibition was.

The next section looked at the influence on art and culture of the Troy stories and legends over the last thousand years, with examples of illuminated manuscripts re-telling the story, paintings. sculptures, films and videos.

One of the earliest examples were two gorgeous panel paintings by Biaggio d'Antonio from around 1490, a Florentine artist I've not heard of before but the colours shout out Quattrocento. They're on loan from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge so I'll have to take a trip to Cambridge to see what other treasures it might have. These panels show the 'Death of Hector' and 'The Wooden Horse' so someone had obviously read Homer (or possibly, Virgil) back then to get all the details.

There's a great statue of 'The Wounded Achilles' by Filippo Albacini from 1825 on loan from Chatsworth, which is the poster boy for the exhibition.

Further along is a lovely painting by Lucas Cranach of the 'Judgement of Paris' from around 1530 on loan from the Royal Collection. We see Paris in contemporary armour as a knight as he decides which goddess is the most beautiful and it's interesting that Cranach has chosen Aphrodite as the goddess to look out at the viewer - it could have been any of them really.

There are more modern pieces of art to illustrate the continuing fascination with Troy in all it's aspects. We see William Blake's version of the 'Judgement of Paris' and George Romney's painting 'Lady Hamilton as Clytemnestra' amongst a range of Victorian paintings.

The final exhibit was a bit of a surprise, a large light installation based on light readings at the site of Troy by Spencer Finch, 'The Shield of Achilles'. I loved it!

The exhibition is only on for another week or so but, if you're patient enough to survive the inevitable crowds, it's well worth seeing.

'Edvard Munch: Love and Angst' at the British Museum

The exhibition about Edvard Munch's prints is about to close at the British Museum but I managed to squeeze in a viewing so as not to miss this rare opportunity to see his prints rather than his paintings. Munch is famous for one painting, really, 'The Scream' and he also produced a print of it in black and white which is in the exhibition. That painting sort of says a lot about Munch and his works, rather psychological and depressing, but I also think of his paintings of his garden that I saw at the Royal Academy a few years ago, bright and colourful paintings. That gave me hope that there might be some moments of joy in this exhibition since the title includes the word 'love' as well as the expected 'angst'.

One of the first exhibits was a couple of prints in different colours printed from the same block. What made them really interesting was that the wooden block they were printed from was also on show in a glass case beneath them. It was great to see a concrete example in front of you of how he worked, how he started to create his prints. Apparently, instead of using different blocks for different colours he sometimes used different colours on the same block. It worked, but I wonder why he decided to try it out?

As with turning 'The Scream' into a print, Munch used others of his paintings as the basis for prints. He did several paintings of a couple beside a window, embracing or kissing, and he turned this into a print but decided that the couple should be naked in front of the window, oblivious to the world, lost in their own moment of passion.

Their faces appear to be joined, melted together in their passion and love, so close that nothing can come between them. It's a lovely print with some simple lines used in showing the contours of the body. It's simple, it's small and it's in black and white and it's very effective, catching the eye from across the room. If nothing else, this shows that Munch can really draw.

Another print that caught the eye was 'Madonna', but this isn't the kind of picture of a Madonna that you might expect. This is a sensuous woman, naked and exposed. In the border of the print is a stream of swimming sperm in a blood red background and a crouching foetus. What's that about? One of my initial reactions was surprise that people knew what sperm looked like way back then.

It's a very arresting image with the woman almost appearing to be swaying, mesmerising the viewer, while the border seems to suggest that procreation and pregnancy (wanted or unwanted) isn't just the job of the woman, but the man has an essential role as well. Apparently, around this time Munch was questioning his previous championing of free love and, perhaps, considering the implications of free love.

One of the most striking prints was descriptively called 'Woman with Red Hair and Green Eyes: Sin' from 1902. An impossible mass of red hair tumbling over her shoulders and breasts with those strange staring eyes - what's she looking at?

As a famous painter in his day, I didn't realise that Munch was also invited to design sets for plays and even design theatre programmes. Of course he would be, lots of artists have done that before and after him, but I suppose I get caught up in the whole 'Scream' thing where something so psychologically charged couldn't possibly be linked to popular theatre. There were a few examples of his designs and I quite liked this set design for Ibsen's 'Ghosts', a production in Berlin to commemorate Ibsen's death.

I like Munch's experimentation with the form of the print and also the British Museum's attempts to explain these sometimes complicated processes. A favourite print was 'The Girls on the Bridge' from 1918 which was, again, based on an earlier painting of the subject. This print is, apparently, made from a wood block as the base coloured blue printed with a 'zincograph' on top, i.e. three plates in yellow, red and green. I haven't seen the painting but I like the print.

About this far into the exhibition I gave up on my hopes for moments of joy in the prints. Impressive as they may be, Munch is not an artist for joy unless he's painting his garden. His view of love seems to be that it's doomed from the start so don't get hung up on it. I don't know that much about Mr Munch but he doesn't seem to have had a terribly happy life. He lived through two world wars which must have coloured his view of humanity, but he does seem to be an archetypal artist of pain and depression. This exhibition does nothing to dispel this impression. It did, however, make me wonder what he'd be doing now if he was alive. Would he have found any hope in the modern world?

One thing is clear, though, in that he would have continued to experiment with his art forms and this is demonstrated by a series of three large prints in the final room of the exhibition. The three prints of 'Towards the Forest' were completed between 1897-1915 and show lovers in front of a forest. He seems to have cut up the print blocks to get different effects in the prints. There may not be 'joyous' prints but maybe this is the joy of Munch prints, the perpetual experimentation and striving to create something new? Maybe the joy is that he never gave up despite everything the world threw at him?

Rodin at the British Museum

Sometimes it must be really odd to be the British Museum. You've been around for so long and so many people have visited you that some must have gone on to become famous. So it is with Rodin who visited the Museum in 1881 and fell in love with the Parthenon sculptures and friezes and they went on to influence so much of his subsequent work. Fast forward 130-odd years and the British Museum puts on an exhibition of Rodin's work alongside some of the marvels from the Parthenon. I wonder, would he have been proud or embarrassed?

The first sculpture you see is 'The Age of Bronze', a statue of a naked young man that I first saw a version of in Berlin. This is the statue that caused Rodin to be accused of making the cast from a living body rather that a sculpture, because it's so realistic. The play of light over the muscles and toned body is really quite astonishing and it's a perfect start to the exhibition.

The sign in front of the sculpture shows a photo of the actual model and two statues that probably influenced Rodin at the time. The model was a Belgian called Auguste Neyt and I wonder what he felt about the statue and what his family thinks today. I hope they're proud of it and him since it really is a beautiful work to see. If that was my great-grandfather I'd be proud! Look at the beauty he bequeathed to the world long after he grew old and died.

An exhibition of Rodin's work wouldn't be complete without a version of 'The Kiss' and 'The Thinker', his two mega-hits. I've never been up close to 'The Thinker' before - in the garden of the Musee Rodin in Paris the statue is up high on a plinth amid the hedges - he looks good but you can't really examine him. On a close inspection at the British Museum the thing I really noticed was the size of his feet. They're big and solid and gnarled and don't look like the feet of a thinker to me. This thinker's been out and about and trod in some marble quaries over the years. It looks like a really uncomfortable pose but he's been holding it for over 100 years so I suppose it's not too uncomfortable.

The big feet seem to be a theme across his work, with out-size, muscular feet being a trademark across the works on show. Time again there are big feet. My favourite was the legs and feet of 'The Walker', one of the last works in the exhibition. Big, muscular legs balanced above big feet and, while most impressive, clearly aren't the legs and feet of a walker. Walkers tend to be skinny - muscular but skinny - and that's definitely not the form of this statue. Those legs and feet are so solid, you can feel them pressing into the earth, moving forward and dragging you along.  I wish I could draw legs like that.

It's good that we also get to see some of the works that helped to inspire Rodin. Normally the Parthenon statues and friezes are exhibited quite high up to reflect how you'd see them at the Parthenon but the exhibition shows them much lower, at eye height. I particularly liked this frieze of horsemen with the man in the middle clearly checking his messages on his mobile phone. Those ancient Greeks were way ahead of their time, obviously. It really makes you wonder how humanity was so stupid to have lost that technology for over 2,000 years - just think what we'd have by now if technology had continued to develop?

I went to the exhibition late in the afternoon when it wasn't too busy but I can well imagine that it's not good for seeing the works around a busy lunchtime. The exhibits are nicely spaced out (apart from around the Thinker for some odd  reason) and the British Museum is encouraging people to go along and draw some of the works, with folding stools available if you want them. After I'd been round the exhibition I went back to the start again and did a quick sketch of 'The Age of Bronze' and here it is. This is a really good exhibition and well worth the cost of a ticket. Thanks British Museum.

'Sunken Cities' at the British Museum

The latest big exhibition at the British Museum is all about two cities that sunk into the Mediterranean and vanished until they were re-discovered by accident in the last century, the cities of Thanis-Heracleion and Canopus. The underwater excavations began in 1996 and they've found some fascinating stuff so far.

A lot of the exhibits aren't necessarily Egyptian but are Greco-Egyptian from the period of the Ptolemies, the dynasty appointed by Alexander to rule that part of his empire.The Ptolemies adopted many Egyptian customs to bolster their right to rule - using the title pharaoh rather than anything else, marrying within the family, becoming objects of godhood, building temples to Egyptian gods and associating themselves with the local deities - but their Greek heritage also came with them.

One of the more obvious examples of this mixing of the cultures is this lovely life-sized statue of Queen Arsinoe II with its typical Egyptian striding forward movement of royal statuary but the delicacy of the drapery around her is typically Greek, making the cloth almost invisible. You can walk round this statue and it's just as good from behind with the delicacy and movement of the buttocks and thighs.

A big 'wow' moment was the first glimpse of a giant bull, Apis in all his glory. So solid, so there and the detail of his face is wonderful. He is a startling and imposing sight and gathered many visitors to examine him in detail, just like I had to. He wears a solar disc crown (which you can't really see in this photo) to signal his divinity. Bulls were worshipped in many parts of Mediterranean cultures over the eons and it's easy to see why in this marvellous sculpture.

Some of the exhibits have video screens beside them so you can see clips of the archeologists in their diving suits finding the exhibit and excavating it. That's quite a novel approach and works really well when you can see the artefact all cleaned up and there in front of you. Some of the colossal statues were in several pieces when they lay in the sea but have been put back together again such as this statue. It's all terribly impressive.

There was a pair of matching statues of Isis and Osiris at the start of the part of the exhibition that focused on the Osiris mysteries and ceremonies. They are gorgeous and in seemingly perfect condition. Those ancient Egyptian sculptors knew how to work their stones to perfection and there are some tremendous examples of the wonderfully smooth textures in the lovely museum at Luxor which I visited years ago. This pair of statues are really marvellous in their detail and craftsmanship, stylised of course, but that's part of their joy. I went back several times to take another look.

I think this is the British Museum's best exhibition for a while and well worth visiting. There's so much more to the exhibition than I mention and some wonderful - and very informative - artefacts. I loved the statue of Horus protecting Nectanebo II, the last truly Egyptian pharaoh, and the statue of Taweret near the exit - now she's a goddess worth worshipping! My advice? Go and see this exhibition if you can, it's definitely worth a wander round and something to marvel at. Well done British Museum!

'Sicily: Culture and Conquest' at the British Museum

One of the new exhibitions at the British Museum is all about the island of Sicily, the people that have lived there over the millennia and their cultures. Most interesting is how those cultures have meshed to become unique until relatively recent times. It's one of those exhibitions where it feels like there's more to read on the walls than look at in display cases but that may be because I know so little about the island so felt the need to read the display captions and larger signs to understand what I was looking at.

I found the exhibition oddly fascinating, a description of the cross-roads in the Mediterranean for so many wayfarers over the years and so many cultures. The poster for the exhibition suggests we'll be looking at ancient stuff and that's what I expected. There was loads of old stuff - amphorae, statues, chipped busts and all sorts - and that was all very welcome (particularly the Medusa heads) but the part of the exhibition that sparked my imagination were the exhibits from the last thousand years. For some obscure reason Sicily was invaded by the Normans after they invaded Britain and that changed the society there forever. What is it with those Normans? Didn't they like France at all?

So, after the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Germanic tribes, the Muslims and even the Vikings (I kid you not) we have the Norman dynasties and what do Normans do? They build. The exhibition includes pieces from the castles and churches, some quite delicate Byzantine mosaics and, in one part, a reproduction of the ceiling of the cathedral in Palermo. It's really odd wandering through separate segments of the exhibition dedicated to the various invaders and rulers to end up back with Byzantine glories leading to early Renaissance paintings. It all comes round.

The beauty of Sicily is that for centuries it managed to create it's own culture, it's mix of religions and peoples that created tolerance, understanding and learning. A real melting pot that proved a melting pot could work. We clearly have so much to learn from these ancient peoples. With the current arguments of whether to stay in Europe or not, it seems incredibly timely for this exhibition to so clearly demonstrate that countries can survive and prosper with a multicultural population. If they want to.

'Krishna in the Gardens of Assam' at the British Museum

There's a nice little exhibition at the British Museum called 'Krishna in the Gardens of Assam' and is all about an Assamese devotional textile called the 'Vrindavani Vastra'. The main exhibit is a 9 metre silk textile made up of 12 inticately woven strips that were sewn together in Tibet and a border was added so the textile could be hung up to be admired. It was given to the British Museum in 1905 by a journalist with The Times but it's not known how he acquired it from a Buddhist monastry in Tibet. It's also not known how it moved from northern India to Tibet in the first place but it's likely that it was used to wrap books or other objects sacred to Krishna and these would have been welcomed in Tibet since Lord Buddha was Indian.

Each of the strips of silk weave depict different tales about Krishna, many reflect his early life asa  cowherd. For those of who can't read the symbols (ie me) there's a series of explanations as you walk along the immesne textile so you can recognise what's going on. Whether he is banishing the king of the serpents or defeating demons he's always got time for enjoyment and the scenes I liked most are of him hiding the clothes of the local girls while they bathe so he can enjoy the sight.

My favourite piece, however, was a most wonderful coat with a silk brocade outside and this amazing cloth used as a lining. It looks to be padded so will be lovely and warm to survive the snows of Tibet. I'm in a definite state of 'want' with this coat.

The exhibition is up on the fourth floor of the Museum and the signage isn't great to find it, but I'm sure you'll enjoy looking for it! There's so much to see in that museum...