'The Making of Rodin' at Tate Modern

The big exhibition at the newly re-opened Tate Modern is all about Rodin, particularly his work in plaster. The Musee Rodin in Paris has loaned a lot of works to help show Rodin's process of making sculptures. There are sketches (often in watercolour), small models of much larger sculptures, many versions of body parts to practice getting hands, for example, just right, and even nude plaster statues to get the stance of a model just right before adding the clothes. There are some fascinating pieces here. It's not the biggest exhibition but is well worth seeing.

The first exhibit is 'The Age of Bronze' in a room of it's own. A willowy young man cast in bronze. It's a gorgeous statue but it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the exhibition and I suspect it's there to say 'this is what Rodin was capable of doing', with it's smooth, elegant lines and surfaces before moving on to the rougher plaster 'sketches'.

The next room is big and has a load of works on a central display to walk round in the one-way route so you get a chance to see the front and back of the statues. 'The Thinker' is, of course, the first thing you see, but I think my favourites were the 'sketches' of figures Rodin produced to try out his ideas. There's a rather portly 'Balzac' and a few studies for a naked 'St John the Baptist'. There was also a lovely small statue (small? maybe three feet tall?) of one of the figures in 'The Burghers of Calais', naked here even though he wears a full-body robe in the actual finished work. This was Rodin working out what the stance should look like and it's quite clear when you look at both the study and the finished work which character he was working on. It just wouldn't occur to me to do a naked study to work out how a clothed figure should look. I was most impressed.

Moving along and there is 'The Burghers of Calais' standing on the floor rather than raised up so a lot easier to see the details. There's a bronze cast of this statue outside Parliament so I'm familiar with it but it was fascinating to see this original version and walk round it peering at the details. The Burghers were six leaders of Calais in 1346-47 who surrendered to King Edward III to get him to spare the city. They expected to be executed but were spared. It's a great work and I wandered around it several times looking at the details. Look at those legs, the feet and hands, the way the clothes fall ... it suddenly all made sense why he would model the naked bodies before adding the clothes.

There are, of course, many more works to see at the exhibition but these are my highlights. The exhibition only opened a couple of weeks ago so there's plenty of time to see it yet and it's well worth a viewing.

'The Kiss' is also on display but outside the exhibition and it's great to be able to walk all the way round the work. They're definitely into a full-on snog.

St Paul's Cathedral in a mask

It's probably over 30 years since I was last inside St Paul's Cathedral. As lockdown eases then more places are opening. I was in the area a week ago and was surprised by the empty steps up to the entrance that are normally covered in office workers and tourists taking a rest. Of course they're empty, there's so few people around. There was no queue to get in so I thought, 'why not?' and, when I got home, I booked a ticket for a couple of days later. So, at the allotted time, I put on my mask and I went in.

It's a big old barn of a place and looks very empty when you first take a look around and that's (partly) because it is so big. The statues and other memorials dotted around the walls make little impression from a distance due to the scale of the place but a lot of them are big when you get closer. Under the dome and spreading out into the nave were a lot of single chairs spaced out to ensure distancing and a one-way system was placed out for seeing the place. It wasn't really needed when I was there because I'd be surprised if there were more than a dozen or so other visitors. Lockdown and travel restrictions must be playing havoc with its income streams. 

The first 'famous' thing I came across was the painting of 'The Light of the World' by Holman-Hunt (who is buried in the Crypt downstairs. It has a big window above it that means the painting itself looks quite dark and murky and it needs better lighting. There's also a statue by Henry Moore of the 'Mother and Child'. Other than that, it's mainly statues/memorials of the type you've probably seen in lots of other places. There's an interesting effigy of John Donne, poet and former Dean of the Cathedral, near a statue of the painter Turner (who is also buried downstairs in the Crypt). Did you know that Turner was Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy for 30 years? No? Neither did the cathedral it seems. There's a big monument to Nelson celebrating his major battles and he's got a snarling lion at his feet for some reason. As I say, you've probably seen this kind of stuff before but, perhaps, not on such a big scale.

 

The important thing to remember in St Paul's is to look *up*. The ceilings may be far away but they're covered colour, bright pre-Raphaelite-esque paintings

Then you go down into the Crypt and that's where the excitement began (for me at least) when you realise the long list of famous people who are buried there under those flagstones. I apologised out loud when I trod on Turner and then on Frederick Leighton and on Arthur Sullivan. Oops, sorry guys!

There were lots of memorials to people I'd never heard of, of course, loads of random military men and others associated with the Cathedral or simply rich enough to buy a burial there. It was all very strange, in a way, to have so many memorials to military personnel, to random Major-Generals and Field Marshals that I'd never heard of and then finding the rather ugly tombs for Wellington and Nelson. I couldn't help but wonder where all the religious works were given that this cathedral bills itself as 'the nation's church' but it seemed to be more like a military museum or mausoleum, a museum of empire with little referencing it to the present. I found it all very odd.

As you leave the Crypt you can pop into the large and well-stocked shop but what it didn't have is postcards of the place. I saw postcards of the Holman-Hunt painting but that was it. Where are the cards of everything else?

The staff were all very friendly and happy to help but why were so few wearing masks? If visitors are required to wear a mask then why are staff exempt? That made no sense. But I'm pleased I went to see the place after so long and when it was so empty of the normal tourist masses and noise.