'London💜Dick' at Velorose Gallery

'London💜Dick' is the new exhibition by the Loved Collective and is open to view and hear at the Velorose Gallery just along from the Barbican. I saw the last Loved exhibition in Brixton a couple of years ago so it was good to see this updated version, especially when most galleries are still closed. This was my first exhibition since seeing the Titian at the National Gallery on 16 March and it felt good to be seeing real things on real walls again rather than through a computer screen.

It's a small exhibition, with about 15 works on display in the small Velorose gallery but it's good that it's open and showing new works. The publicly displayed images all have the titular genitals covered but if you open the gatefold 'doors' in the exhibition you see the fully naked men. That's a bit odd, particularly given the title of the exhibition, since there are plenty of naked men in art galleriess but it also creates a sense of surprise. What will I see if I open this?

Something I really like is the strapline to the exhibition: 'Heroic stories of passion and acceptance (and dick)'. That creates all sorts of images and possibilities, the struggles some people face to accept who they are and their body shape. These aren't idealised visions of men but men with a bit of weight, hairy, tattoos, in a wheelchair (because some people are), all looking at what 'ordinary' men are like in an honest way. We see the infinite variety of the human (male) body and there's no one size fits all, different shapes and different sizes. And, let's face it, we're all beautiful in our own ways.

The artist is Charlie Hunter and the other half of the collective is Mike Wyeld who creates soundscapes of the stories told by the subjects of the drawings and others who didn't want to be drawn. I really like the simplicity of the drawings, simple but powerful and very distinctive.

If you fancy it, you can send in your own art contributions to be part of the exhibition. Take a look at the website for details - I've sent in two pieces. Details here: http://www.velorose.com

The National Gallery in a Mask

The National Gallery was the last place I visited before lockdown in March 2020 and it was the first place I visited as lockdown starts to ease. Back in March everything was uncertain and no-one knew what to expect, Trafalgar Square was empty and so was the Gallery. It was oddly quiet and I remember walking into normally crowded rooms and finding them empty. There was a nervousness in the air. Yesterday was different in subtle ways. Trafalgar Square was still empty but the nervousness had gone and the Gallery was open, people were happy and smiling, from those welcoming visitors back inside the front doors to the smiling guards in the rooms wearing visors and chatting away. What a difference a pandemic makes.

Outside the National Gallery the big red 'welcome back' banners were fluttering in the breeze as I joined the queue up the side of the Gallery waiting to be let in and put on a mask. The Gallery ask visitors to arrive 15 minutes before entry time and it didn't take long to get inside. The foyer is strangely empty and the bookshop is closed but we were welcome by a very cheerful member of staff directing us to the stairs to get up to the art. Three routes have been introduced, a sort of curated way to see the Gallery safely, and first off for me was Route A to see the early Italian paintings in the Sainsbury Wing.

It was lovely to be back, to say hello to the little Giotto panel, the small Duccio altarpiece, the Sassettas, the Botticellis and Bellinis, the Crivellis and the Raphaels. What to look at first? The floor is marked out with arrows to keep people on the route and make sure people stay safe. I asked one of the guards how I could see the rooms behind the route I was following and he explained I'd need to go round twice before almost conspiratorially telling me that 'that's a Michelangelo over there' as he pointed to a painting. The normally serious guards actually interacting and smiling and welcoming you into their rooms. I loved it.

So I walked round once to get back to the start of the route, then walk round again go into another set of rooms to see the Van Eyck and Campin paintings. I didn't mind. Small rooms were roped off so you can't get close to the Leonardo panels but they're still easy enough to see from the entrance.That means that I visited the Fra Angelico predella twice on the way out of the Sainsbury Wing and it's always a joy to see works by Beato Angelico.

Then I headed off on Route B to see room after room of great paintings. There seems to have been some re-hanging of paintings while the Gallery has been closed and the huge portrait of Charles I has been re-framed into a far more effective frame that really shows off the painting. It was lovely to see some old friends but I couldn't help wondering where Mr Silenus was getting his booze to still be so tipsy even after lockdown. Some people never seem to grow up and none of his mates were wearing a mask either.

It was quite touching walking into the Rembrandt room and seeing the self-portrait of him as an old man, not much older than me. I saw a number of people stopping to gaze at him, perhaps with feelings of their own mortality? There's no exuberance here, this is man who's lived a full life and knows it won't go on forever. Quite sobering really.

It was also lovely to see the self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi hanging on the wall next to a Caravaggio, momentarily sad because she should have been the star of her own exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment and then remembering that the exhibition has been rescheduled for the autumn. I'm looking forward to seeing that exhibition.

Walking on and then I found myself in a room of French paintings and there she was, Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun who had an exciting life and died after attending a party in her 80s - that' how to go. Here she is as a young artist showing off her skill as a portraitist and it served her well. I have fond memories of seeing a big exhibition of her portraits at Le Grand Palais in Paris years ago. She deserves an exhibition in London.

Route B (and Route C for that matter) ends withe the Impressionist and post-Impressionist rooms. They are always busy rooms, really busy, but yesterday? Not so busy. I can't remember ever standing in front of the five paintings by Van Gogh and be able to see them all without a crowd of people in front of them.

It was a delight to be able to visit the National Gallery again, a treasure in the soul. Most people followed the advice from the Gallery and wore a mask but some people didn't, or wandered round with a mask pulled under their chins (which is rather pointless). I had to keep re-jigging my mask to avoid my glasses steaming up but it worked out OK. The toilets were suitably socially distanced and there was even a limit to the number of people who were allowed in the shop at the end of the visit. I had to wait a few minutes but I wanted a souvenir of my visit and bought a sim book of paintings by Rubens.

I didn't see the Titians since they're all grouped around the current exhibition about his poesy paintings but I've already booked another ticket to visit and that includes the exhibition (again - I saw it on my last visit in March).

Thank you National Gallery and thank you to all the staff for looking after the paintings during lockdown and now for giving them back to us. I really enjoyed my socially distant visit. I'll be back!

Lockdown 2020 #2

The world was a different place five short months ago. Those months have been the longest ever due to 'lockdown'. I'm conscious that I'm beginning to forget what life was like at the time and want to make a few notes to help me remember.

My front door was the only thing between me and the seemingly dangerous world outside. What can I touch? What can I be close to without worrying? Soap became a close friend with endless hand washing.

The official lockdown started on 23 March. Some people, the most vulnerable, were told to 'shield' and stay isolated. Others were told to stay at home at much as possible, work from home if you can, stay two metres apart. People and businesses had already started doing this before the government pronouncements - they were too slow on virtually everything.

I'm vegetarian so always have packets of pasta, rice and pulses in my larder so my main worry was about having enough fresh food. I was lucky enough to have a groceries delivery slot booked with Tesco so I could get food delivered without venturing out but what about when that runs out? That's when I discovered the new game of food delivery roulette and trying to get a slot for a delivery with the main supermarkets when new slots became available each midnight. Trying and failing most times and every now and again getting a valuable delivery slot, generally three weeks apart. Better than nothing. And rainbows became a thing.

If you needed to go into a shop you had to queue to get in as places inside were limited and everyone queued two meters apart. We're good at queuing. The only shops that were open were 'essential', mainly food shops They started putting up perspex screens at tills and trying to organise how you shopped with signs on the floor showing which way to walk to keep away from others. I got into the habit of visiting the small Sainsbury's round the corner early on a Sunday morning to pick up whatever I needed. I didn't mind running out of milk or bread on a Thursday and waiting until Sunday to get more since that was the new life. How quickly we adapt.

We were advised by the government to only go out for essential shopping and for one hour of exercise each day. I'm lucky enough to live near Tooting Common, a huge expanse of greenery with a lake and my favourite geese, but other people discovered it. Having the Common on their doorstep encouraged the joggers to get out and stay fit or use the opportunity to change their life-style. Good on them but it meant that the paths were full of joggers who stayed on the paths and ignored social distancing (the two metres rule) since they wanted to beat yesterdays' time for their daily run. If you see them coming you can walk off the path but if they come up behind you and almost brush your shoulder you can't really do anything other than shout at them angrily as they run away. That put me off going out.

I started doing lots of little jobs around the flat to fill in the hours. I realised that I had lots of things in frames dotted around so I spent a morning hanging them on my bedroom walls on the basis that if I caught the virus and spent a lot of time in bed then I might as well have things to look at. The walls are crammed with things. I pinned posters to the walls of my kitchen - why not? I started listening to CDs to decide if I wanted to keep them or give them away to a charity shop after lockdown, starting at one end of a shelf and working my way along it. I have a lot of CDs so that job is still going on. I've now got a healthy pile of CDs for the BHF shop stacked in the kitchen.

And then there were masks, or face coverings as they started being referred to. The masks available to buy online all took weeks to arrive so videos started popping up on YouTube on how to make a mask without any sewing. It was a new trend. After initially tying a bandana around my head I moved to the handkerchief and elastic bands method before settling on the no-sew tee shirt sleeve method.

And then it was Easter.

Lockdown 2020 #1

The world was a different place four short months ago. Those months have been the longest ever due to 'lockdown'. I'm conscious that I'm beginning to forget what life was like at the time and want to make a few notes to help me remember.

I think I first heard about coronavirus around Christmas 2019, a strange disease happening in a province of far away China. And then it started to spread. The world is so much smaller these days and places are more inter-connected than ever before. I did a print-making course in January, trying out different ways of making prints. Then I went to Belgium in February 2020 to see an art exhibition about Van Eyck without a care in the world. Whatever was happening was far off and far away. It wasn't long till we started seeing stories about the virus creeping across Europe in Italy and in Spain and then the first cases reported in the UK.

Panic buying started in supermarkets in March, with people stockpiling pasta, pulses, rice and toilet rolls, grabbing whatever they could. I remember joking about going out to do some 'stockpiling' by which I meant going to the supermarket. It was an odd time. I think we all knew something was coming, but what?

There was news of cities closing, borders closing across Europe. The seriousness of the situation began to sink in as the reports of death tolls grew across the world. It sounded like things were pretty awful in Italy and in Spain and we saw film of empty streets in Rome and Madrid as tourists stayed away and locals stayed at home. The few people you did see were wearing face masks. At home, people were starting to work from home and people started to prepare for an expected lockdown. Things were changing.

I went to the member's preview of the new Titian exhibition at the National Gallery on 13 March.  It was as crowded as you'd expect so I decided to go back on the Monday to see it again, and I did. Monday 16 March and I'd never seen London looking so empty. I walked into the foyer of the National Gallery and, instantly, you could tell something was different. Where were all the people?  Where was the bustle and the noise? In some of the rooms there was only a guard and no punters. It was very strange. I'd suspected that it would be my last visit into central London and it was. I went to the London Graphics Centre for some art supplies, Fopp for a couple of DVDs and to Foyles for a couple of books then got the tube home, popped into a supermarket for bits and bobs and got home, shut the front door and decided that that was it. I was now in lockdown.

Favourite Paintings: 'Guernica' by Pablo Picasso

'Guernica' is probably one of the most famous paintings in the world. It commemorates the bombing of the town of Guernica in 1937 by the Germans and Italians at the request of Spanish fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso painted it in black, white and grey and the painting became an instant success, went on tour to raise funds for war relief and ended up in the USA since Picasso refused to allow it to go to Spain until the fascists had finally been defeated and a republic was instituted. When I first saw reproductions of it it was held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was only sent to Spain in 1981. I first saw reproductions of it in 1976 when I did art at school and only saw the painting for the first time in 2016.

I saw the painting in Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2016, in a room on its own with no photos allowed and the huge painting was flanked by two security guards to protect it and its image rights. The room was quite crowded and silent, people standing back from the terror in front of them. The dead and dying women and children, the fatally wounded animals, the bull, Picasso's symbolic animal, it's all there to be drunk in by sober eyes and silenced the normally chattering students. I knew it was big but didn't realise it was that big. It was an astonishing sight.

The painting is forever linked to the events it portrays and to the politics surrounding it, and Picasso's republicanism and refusing to allow it to be displayed in fascist Spain. It remains a powerful statement against war and oppression.

Favourite Paintings: 'Revolutionary' by Wadsworth Jarrell

I saw the painting 'Revolutionary (Angela Davis)' by Wadsworth Jarrell at the 'Soul of a Nation' exhibition at Tate Modern in 2017, an exhibition about art by black artists in the civil rights years in the USA. It's a portrait of Angela Davis, the activist and teacher from the '60s onwards. It's a screenprint rather than a painting but I won't let that stop me referring to it as a painting.

Jarrell was a member of the AfriCOBRA group of artists in Chicago (they had the great title of African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). The painting is made up of words and phrases from Angela's speeches and civil rights slogans. She is dressed as a revolutionary and the bandolier across her shoulder is filled with coloured chalks rather than bullets. It's an incredibly powerful image. I wonder what Angela thought of it back in the day and what she thinks of it now.

Angela Davis was on the most wanted list in the USA when she was on the run in the early 70s and became a cause celebre around the world, the Ono-Lennons even wrote a song about her (on 'Some Time in New York City'). I read her autobiography in about 1976. She still lectures and gives talks around the world and is still a social activist. Her life can't be separated from the painting and neither can the times it was created in - Jarrell created it to be popular and attractive to get the word out and in that it succeeded.

Favourite Paintings: 'The Death of St Francis' by Giotto

One of my favourite paintings isn't really a painting at all, it's a fresco cycle by Giotto in the Bardi Chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. The frescoes are about the life of St Francis and I've chosen the scene showing the death of the friar who soon afterwards became a saint.

I still remember my excitement at seeing a real Giotto chapel for the first time, exclaiming 'He invented art', when I realised what I was looking at and wanted to drink it all in with my eyes. Of course, art has been around for millennia before Giotto but he and a few other masters were pivotal in modernising art in the late middle ages that led to the Renaissance and the great flourishing of art one hundred years later.

Look at the friars gathered around the deathbed of their leader, the man they'd given up everything to follow, just like the Apostles gave up everything to follow their Lord. They were real men who knew the real Francis, not the legendary saint, faults and all. They don't look saintly and ethereal do they? They were real men, you and me, who happened to live in extraordinary times. They react differently, some seeming to be telling Francis to hold on a bit longer, some in tears, some in shock, just as you do when someone dies. This was part of Giotto's genius, his attempts at storytelling in a way that had never been done before, to show real people showing real emotion. It's an astonishing display of the imagination and the skills of the master.

The strange oblong of empty space in the centre of the fresco is the result of some stupid rich person wanting to be tried in that chapel so they hollowed out part of the wall to place his coffin in. Luckily they retained the original fresco so it could be replaced at a later date. Just underneath the fresco is a line that runs round the entire chapel showing the highest point the water reached when the Arno overflowed its banks in 1966 and flooded Florence. I wonder what intervention prevented it reaching these amazing frescoes?

When you've drunk in as much as you can of the chapel, walk back maybe 20-30 yards and look up at the top of the chapel and, on the walls of the church you'll see another fresco by Giotto, this time a very big painting of St Francis receiving the stigmata. The seraph is flying overhead and beams of light transfer the stigmata of Christ to St Francis. You can't get close enough to see the detail since it's so high up on the walls but there's a similar painting on a panel in the Louvre in Paris that you can get close to.

Favourite Paintings: 'The Snail' by Henri Matisse

One of my favourite paintings isn't really a painting, it's a 'cut out' made by painting paper different colours and then tearing it up and carefully placing it to create a new image. There was a great exhibition of Matisse's 'cut outs' at Tate Modern a few years ago and I loved it, such amazing images the old magician created in his old age, using assistants to help place the coloured paper just *so*. 'The Snail' is a huge work and was the centrepiece of the exhibition but I go back a lot further with that particular snail.

I have two distinct memories of visiting the Tate for the first time in the early '80s, walking up those imposing steps into the foyer, not knowing what I'd find but expecting great art. And that's what I saw since the Tate has a really good collection. But my two memories are of seeing a big Mark Rothko for the first time and being mesmerised by it and also seeing 'The Snail', equally large and far more colourful, but where was the snail it was named for? I couldn't see it. I looked at it up close and from a distance but no snail. I saw it many times on subsequent visits and then the Tate split into two and Tate Britain and Tate Modern were born and 'The Snail' moved down river to be a star of the new Tate Modern.

At some point I finally saw a glimpse of a snail and then, suddenly, there he was and all I could see was a snail. So the old man wasn't playing a joke on us after all, he really had created a snail from his bits of colourful paper. He's an old friend now and I delight in seeing him and I always say 'hello'. It was lovely to see him at the exhibition surrounded by so many other cut outs, some much bigger and more colourful but none so special. He has a name, of course, but that's for me to know and for you to guess.

'Nicolaes Maes: Dutch Master of the Golden Age' at the National Gallery

There's a lovely small exhibition of works by Nicolaes Maes at the National Gallery at the moment, apparently the first exhibition of his works in the UK. He was a pupil of Rembrandt before becoming a popular master in his own right.

The exhibition is in three distinct sections over three rooms in the ground floor galleries. The first room displays his early works, some of which have been considered as by Rembrandt in the past, mainly religious works. The second room is made up of small 'genre' paintings which were great fun. The third room is made up of Maes' portraits, including a late self-portrait. Apparently he painted 900 portraits so he must have been well off.

My favourite of his early paintings was his 'Adoration of the Shepherds' which is a copy of an etching by Durer from 150 years earlier. I spent a gleeful few minutes trying to find all the health and safety hazards - those bricks could tumble down any minute and just look at the wooden roof that could easily crash down on Joseph at the slightest breeze and I'm not even mentioning the shepherd's crook sticking out waiting to trip up someone. Then I had to find the donkey and the ox and there they are, at the back in the shadow. It can't be a nativity scene without the donkey and the ox.

Dutch genre paintings of the 17th Century aren't really my favourites but I thought these were delightful.

My favourites were the 'eavesdropper' paintings in which the figure in the foreground is listening to what's happening in the darkened background, the servant listening to their master's goings on or to what other servants are up to. They're quite simple in a way but you need to spot the details to understand what's going on, and that forces you to look carefully. Often you can see tiny lovers in a dark corner, sometimes flirting and sometimes being discovered, the servants always know.

It was quite fun to notice that the same model was used for two of these paintings, and quite probably many more. I wonder who she was and how much she was paid for her modelling? I wonder what she might think if she knew people were looking at here 350 years later?

There were also some of Maes's drawings on show and I particularly liked these two drawings of old women. They're quite small but are incredibly detailed or slightly smudged to make them look detailed. These were made from red chalk on paper.

The final room is made up of portraits, some more dramatic than others. Some were in their original frames and I really liked these two, a pair of betrothal portraits in individual frames. The lady is Ingena Rotterdam and the gentleman is Jacob Benkes and they were painted in about 1676. As portraits they're nice enough but look at those frames. They were made to personalise the portraits so his has a figure of Mars at the top and she has Venus - he was a soldier so it is particularly apt. Sadly they never married since he was killed fighting the French in the new world. 

There is also a self-portrait in which he shows himself as a prosperous and important man, be-wigged in his curly finery. It's a nice little exhibition in the ground floor galleries and is free to view. Sadly, of course, the National Gallery is currently closed but hopefully it'll still be on when the current shut-down is over.

'Titian: Love, Desire, Death' at the National Gallery

The new exhibition at the National Gallery is 'Titian: Love, Desire, Death' which brings together Titian's 'poesie' series of paintings for the first time in nearly 500 years. The paintings are all of mythological scenes based on the tales of Ovid and others. The exhibition is basically in two rooms in the main gallery, the first does some scene setting explaining the background to the paintings and Titian's relationship with Phillip II of Spain, his patron at the time, and the paintings are all in the next room, seven large paintings in gilded frames.

Seven paintings? you might ask, but the 'poesie' series includes only six paintings. To which the National Gallery replies that it's included its 'Death of Actaeon' in the London exhibition since it was originally conceived as part of the series but was actually painted later. I don't know if it will be part of the exhibition when it moves on to other museums but it fits in nicely with the rest of the series. One of the other paintings is 'Diana and Actaeon' showing the moment when the young hunter Actaeon stumbles across the goddess bathing in the woods. For that sin the goddess turns him into a stag and he's attacked and killed by his own hunting dogs. In the 'Death' painting we can see Actaeon in the middle distance with the head of a stag, caught mid-transformation as Diana shoots him and his dogs attack him.

I prefer the painting in which Actaeon finds the goddess for the brighter colours and all the details, such as the nymph peeking from behind a pillar and the little lapdog growling and baring its teeth at the intruder.

Another scene of transformation is 'The Rape of Europa' and a detail of that painting is on the poster for the exhibition. The story behind the painting isn't the most pleasant but it's a lovely painting. Zeus has turned himself into a bull to capture Europa, his latest lust, who he carries off. Poor Europa looks very unsteady on the bull's back, her scarf whipping in the wind and little cupids doing their best to try to make it a love scene, but it's not. My favourite cupid is the one riding the dolphin in the sea, lower left.

A painting I hadn't seen before was 'Danae' with its dramatic light and dark sections. It shows Danae being visited by Zeus as a golden shower and who then gives birth to Perseus. There's a lovely contrast between the light, luminous Danae and the old, weathered woman looking after her (and not doing a very good job of it with Zeus around - you can't trust him around beautiful young women).

There's a little bit extra Titian in the way the exhibition is laid out in London. You exit through the shop and then into Room 8 of the Gallery which has been re-hung with the other Titian paintings the National Gallery owns. So, if you're looking for any Titian paintings, that's where they are for the moment (and the room is open to the public). To add context, paintings by other leading contemporary artists are also on display, including Michelangelo, Sebastiano (the huge 'Lazarus' painting), Parmigianino and Andrea del Sarto. It was a nice surprise to leave the exhibition only to have yet more Titians to look at.

Once it closes in London, the exhibition is travelling up to Edinburgh (two of the paintings are jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland with the National Gallery in London), then goes to the Prado in Madrid (which owns a painting) and then to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (it owns 'The Rape of Europa').