Blog: Saints Alive

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Myself and The Pictures In My Gallery had ANOTHER arty weekend of Normal Couple Stuff this weekend, as we went to not on but TWO galleries in central London. We are DEAD CULTURED!

The first was The National Gallery, where we went to see Saints Alive, a BRILLIANT (REVIEW) thing where he'd built a bunch of moving sculptures of SAINTS, based on picture elsewhere in the gallery. Each sculpture had an allied BUTTON or PEDAL which you pressed, making it BANG into life, usually THUMPING itself. It was all very exciting, jolly and LOUD. The one about Doubting Thomas had WHACKED LUMPS out of itself, and TWO of them had done so much self-damage that they were BROKE. There was also a Wheel Of Fortune based on a Catherine Wheel, which gave sort of FORTUNES based on the fates of Saints. It was FUN, but also THORT provoking INSOMUCH as it brought home the physicality of what is supposed to have actually happened to these people, which has then been CELEBRATED for centuries. MOstly though it was like somebody had BUILT and bunch of Terry Gilliam cartoons and made them THUMP themselves. It was good!

We DRAGGED ourselves outside - it's always hard getting through somewhere like the National Gallery as every few steps one or the other of you catches sight of something REALLY FAMOUS and has to be pulled away - and went round the corner to have a quick look at TWO exhibitions, both of which seemed to be based on OTHER things the painters had done. The first was by Jonathan Yeo, which was massively ALL RIGHT. It was a load of pictures of FAMOUS PEOPLE that would have been Quite Nice if you'd seen them at a Graduate Show (of which i have been to SEVERAL due to my baby brother doing that sort of thing) but were nothing special at all. The more I looked at them the more ANNOYED i got - he'd had his big break drawing small pictures of party leaders during the 2001 General Election (they were the best thing in the whole exhibition by a long way), having got access to them by... being the son of Tim Yeo, former Tory Cabinet Minister - and it was clear that this was yet another case of The Children Of The Powerful being lauded FAR beyond their abilities.

The staff came and TURFED people out, so we dashed round the corner to look at an exhibition of paintings by Bob Dylan. They were RUBBISH, but I didn't mind so much this time - when Bob Dylan wrote some of The Best Songs Of The Twentieth Century he did it HIMSELF, so if he wants to tit about with a paint brush now it's fine, and nobody's wielding Executive Power to help him do so.

It was a day of ART and POLITICS - a standard weekend for us!

posted 7/10/2013 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

'the song of Tim Yeo'?
posted 7/10/2013 by Tim

Corrected, cheers dear!
posted 7/10/2013 by MJ Hibbett

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