Modern One's main attraction currently is The Sculpture Show: 1900 to 2012, a truly wonderful survey of key trends in (mainly European but not wholly British) sculpture, starting with collage (Picasso, Kurt Schwitters, Anthony Hill) and assemblage (Ceri Richards) and into relief (Ben Nicholson, Victor Passmore) and then on to a whole range of well-known and impressive sculpture, including Barbara Hepworth's 'Wave, 1943',
and pieces by Jacob Epstein, Elisabeth Frink, Eduardo Paolozzi amongst many. And right through to some very contemporary works, including the enormous and rather terrifying 'Baby' by Ron Mueck,
or a strange thing called 'Nud 25' by Sarah Lucas which looked to me more like a large white turd, all stuffed tights curled up in a messy knot.
There were some works I really didn't get - including Joseph Beuys 'Sled'
and his even odder 'Three pots to the Poorhouse' which is a blackboard marked to record the passing of three dark metal bowls around in an 'event' in 197?. I scribbled in my note book "Why?" and i am still unconvinced - about both pieces.
I was similarly unmoved, and unenlightened, by a piece which had a (small) room to itself, 'Untitled (after Rietveld) 2000' by Martin Boyce, which consisted of three fluorescent light tubes hung at precarious angels. What was this about? I have no idea.
One of the pieces I rather liked, for it's humour as much as anything, was Jim Lambie's 'Bed-Head, 2002', which consisted of a 3' mattress absolutely covered in odd buttons, representing all the dreams which had been dreamt o by people sleeping on it. Lambie has apparently lived much of his adult life in rented rooms and shred houses.
Overall I thought this was terrific show, because of the careful selection of works and the gradual progression from collages to some of the most recent and startling work. And of course outside there are a number of pieces in the grounds of modern One, including a Henry Moore, one of Anthony Gormley's bronze men (well, the top half of his torso, anyway), and a Charles Henckes land art form, complete with small lakes. It was an engrossing morning, and I came away feeling full up with, and well tutored in, a panorama of modern sculpture. Of course there was a lot which was not here: Antony Caro, for instance, but you can't have everything. It was certainly impressive and memorable.
Not sculture, but Modern One also had a Sol le Witt wall drawing, painting actually, on three sides of a room about 20' by 30', in 7 colours, painted in situ.
One of the attendants told me it had taken them about 6 weeks to do it, seven layers of paint, each one sanded back and of course each painted separately so no colours bled into another. Massive and domineering - but I'm not sure I liked it much. In terms of drawing, I'd have preferred his earlier, smaller, drawings exploring lines and colours. But I was glad to see one of his huge pieces up close, and the impact is compelling.
After that I had a severe case of museum feet and needed lunch. I then looked into Modern Two where there is an absolutely enormous Paolozzi figure of Vulcan, a giant, made of all kinds of bits and pieces of ironwork, bolted together like a meccano model. The sculpture towers over the rather old-fashioned and formal dining room, slightly alarming accompaniment to your soup, I suspect.
Also in Two was Richard Wright's Stairwell Project, a carefully planned an painted installation on one of the two-storey, well lit stairs in the old orphanage building which houses Modern two. The overall effect is rather like a swarm of butterflies, or insects, sweeping up to the light; or possibly a bit like iron filings flowing round the opposing poles of a magnetic field. I thought how much the orphans might have liked the image, had it been there in their days.
Another delightful installation was the recreation of Eduardo Paolozzi's studio/workshop - totally crammed with boxes of bits and pieces and half-built sculptures of all kinds, together with his library of books, and his bed on a high-up sleeping platform.
This reminded me of the Camden studio which my aged aunt, Peggy Angus, had in London, and where she lived in the middle of the organised chaos of her hand-printed wall-paper business, with new lino blocks being designed and cut alongside the ordinariness of her daily life.
And after all that, I wandered back into the city and went to find the National Gallery proper, where I enjoyed the small exhibition of George Bain's drawings of Celtic illuminated manuscript designs.
I learned to draw some of these many years ago, influenced again by Peggy Angus, who had used some of these and some from celtic standing stones) on painted pebbles from the beach on Barra, in the Outer Hebrides, where she had a cottage. Anyway, George Bain's drawings and instructions on creating highly complex swirls and circle patterns, all interlaced and absolutely balanced, have stayed with me and influenced, i think, my sense of pattern and design.
Back in about 1972 I designed and cut a lino block and used it to print yards of calico for covering a daybed, loosely based on the design on the Sutton Hoo mirror, which was rather like this. I have only the teeniest scrap left, which I made into a useful needle cases. Oh, those were the days!. And then in about 1982 I designed and made an embroidered panel for my parents, using 7 different celtic knot patterns to represent their seven children. Alas, I don't know hat happened to that when their house was finally cleared, and I have no photo to record it by. Seeing Bain's careful pencil drawings and some of his hand-coloured pieces was interesting and evocative, and I enjoyed them very much.
Finally back to the hostel for a short rest, and then we were off on a Ghost Tour, terribly touristy and overly-hyped, around the dark and "scary" churchyard in which the little faithful dog, Greyfriar's Bobby, is buried. Lots of tales of ghouls and ghosts and poltergeists. Good fun. And at least it was neither too cold nor raining, and there was an almost full moon. After that, a stiff drink was in order before bed. What a long day, lots of walking, very weary feet...
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