Pig On Tour

Well, not so much a tour as a two venue vacation. The Groupie has taken a richly-deserved week off work and we started by staying with Daughter Number One (and her husband CL) in Wanstead, which as any fule kno is in the north of That London. DN1 and spouse have a house there which can accommodate visiting parents notwithstanding that they also have two cats who, for reasons too complicated to relate, have to be kept apart. Long and short of it - we had a cracking time. Two world-class galleries attended and much dining-out undertaken. First up was Tate Britain. The Pig has to confess that despite being at university in That London he never made it as far as the Tate. Big mistake. It's excellent. Highlights: 1) Hockney's A Bigger Splash; 2) the Turner Bequest - loads of the Pig's favourite artist, most notably Snow Storm, a picture apparently panned by contemporary critics but, to the Pig's untutored eye, an undeniable masterpiece. Picture appended along with photographic evidence of the Pig admiring the Hockney.

Pig and Splash

The other gallery was the National Portrait Gallery - this one being within easier walking distance of KCL and therefore a familiar haunt of the Pig when he couldn't face afternoon lectures. We also took a diversion into Foyles bookshop, another place where I used to loiter when I should really have been studying. Lazy Pig. 

We ate out three times and all venues were more than passable but one stood out as excellent - The Port House on the Strand. A fabulous Iberian atmosphere and delicious tapas. Two bottle of cava and a glass of port each to round things off. I should explain that DN1 and CL were with us so the consumption of two bottles is excusable. The Pig recommends this to all fellow pigs out there - the Port House 

From That London to Ynys Mon for the rest of the week. Two excellent walks, firstly from Amlwch Port towards Point Lynas and, this afternoon, along Traeth llydan to Rhosneigr. Stunning. Putting modesty aside, the Pig should say that the walk was made all the more enjoyable by having been for a run prior to breakfast. Pig Glorioso.

Rhosneigr hoving into view

 

 

Are Brilliant ... Mark XXIX

Hello, Chortley Chuckles here. As the latest arrival into the schizophrenic world of The Overgraduate, I am delighted to curate this the latest contribution to the thread that recognises brilliance. And all of this comes on top of a rather brilliant day I had on Friday. My only regret is that it was a solitary day as I am in Ynys Mon on my own, as is my wont when the Open Championship is to be watched. Many moons ago, before we were fortunate enough to own Plas Piggy, I used to sequester myself away in Bert's (he was my father-in-law) house and watch the whole day of the BBC coverage. These days, commercial imperatives have asserted themselves and the coverage is to be found on Sky. Oh well. And one does have to admit that the Sky coverage is technically adroit even if my old curmudgeonly self finds fault with some of the commentators. Can someone please explain to Nick Dougherty the difference between definite and indefinite articles - his usage is affected and annoying to us pedants. I also find Wayne Riley's sad need to be loved rather pitiful - you find yourself wanting to put an arm around his shoulder and tell him he's doing just fine.

Anyway, are brilliant.

Sir Garfield Sobers, who died this week. It is tempting to amend the designation and say that he was brilliant, but no, that would be wrong. Sobers' all-round brilliance is a thing for the ages. By a distance the greatest all-rounder ever to have graced cricket. This opinion brooks no argument. My first ever visit to Edgbaston was when Dad took us to see him play for Notts against Warwickshire. I later learned that my dear friend ICW was also there that day, taken by his own father for the exact same reason.

David Hockney, another recent death. Also is brilliant. There are quite a few documentaries doing the rounds on streaming services - he comes across as engaging and, most importantly, hugely gifted. In later life he became mildly obsessed by painting large canvases. Chortley Chuckles has a liking for such things - this may be because Chortley is rather vulgar. Hey ho.

The Open Championship, particularly the first two days. Love it.

Related to the above - links golf. There is nothing quite like it, particularly in the parched conditions of a hot summer as we are currently enjoying/enduring. A large part of that brilliant day I had on Friday was spent on the practice ground at Clwb Golff Ynys Mon. So wrapped up in my practice was I that I decided against actually playing the course and instead went into the bar and was gratified to find that I had thirty quid of credit on my membership card. Guinness and scratchings. Brilliant, all of it.

Ynys Mon itself. I thought this for the umpteenth time as I drove back from the golf club, taking a circuitous route around the top of the island. We are blessed.

Advent 17

Volume 17 (P to Plant): Painting.

Last year's advent calendar was the grand tour of Big Fat Pig's dubious taste in art. Well what do you know, the magic of page 63 brings right back round to painting. But older readers will have had quite enough of my tastes so instead today, in what I think is a first in the history of these calendars, I am bowing to the superior and less affected opinion of the Groupie. Her favourite artist is Hans Holbein the Younger and so here is his right regal portrait of that old villain Henry VIII.

 

Advent 8

Volume 8 (Edwa to Extract): Egypt.

History, bloody hell - it's just one bloody thing after another. And today's page 63 pitches us into the middle of Egypt, all sixty-eight Britannica pages of it.

My predictable instinct was to drone on about Shakespeare's Egypt, Antony and Cleopatra being one of the candidates for my favourite play and, if I say so myself, the subject of one of the better chapters in my thesis. But no, by a piece of serendipity I shall regale you with a reference to a favourite artwork. A large print of this used to adorn my office wall back when I was a legal services mogul in Walsall. Stop laughing at the back! It is The Sphinx and the Great Pyramids of Giza, by none other than David Roberts. And yes, there were some clients kind/daft enough to ask if I had painted it myself.

Cleopatra, the Suez Crisis, Nasser, Sadat. There's plenty to get your teeth into with a total area of 386,100 square miles of which only about 3.6% is normally habitable. Now, not many people know that. Mind you those are 1959 figures. 

 

Advent 24

'BDR, Loule, 1990' is the simple legend on this picture that hangs in our front room. It was painted by my father, a self-portrait of the great man sitting, signature pipe in his mouth, in the sunshine in the Algarve on the Aston Old Edwardians centenary rugby tour. The picture used to hang in Holly Lane but Mum gave it to me last Christmas.

I cannot tell you how much I loved and admired the man. His dying years were blighted by the evil that is dementia, but he had packed in a mountain of living before that cruelty.

So that is it. Happy Christmas and may your god go with you. 

Advent 23

Tomorrow we will have a picture that touches my soul for very personal reasons but today we have the painting that would be my answer if you were daft enough to ask me, 'What is the most important picture of the twentieth century?' As I say, the question would be daft and only a man as impertinent as the Overgraduate would offer an answer from quite such a position of ignorance. Oh well.

Guernica (1937) is Pablo Picasso's gutteral response to the bombing of Guernica by the Nazis at the behest of Franco. It is executed on a massive scale (close to 24 square metres). I'm sticking with my answer.

Advent 22

Another National Trust exhibit today. Plas Newydd on Anglesey is the seat of the Marquess of Anglesey. In the dining room you will find Rex Whistler's extravagant Italianate-styled mural, almost ten metres in length. As a guest at the Marquess's table you would either be facing the mural or, your back to it, the Menai Strait and Snowdonia. No losers there - perhaps they used to swap round after each course.

Whistler (born 1905) died on active service in Normandy in 1944. The flanking panel of the mural (not shown here) includes a modest self-portrait of Whistler sweeping the floor.

Advent 21

Georges Braque (1882 - 1963) seems to have been the quiet man of cubism, his more staid life standing in stark contrast to that of his colleague Picasso.

Of all the pictures so far highlighted in this exercise, I think Braque's 1911 painting, Bottle and Fishes, is the one I would most like to have on my wall. It is a brilliant exercise in simultaneous perspectives and I find the geometric technicalities it deploys endlessly beguiling.

Advent 20

As proof of just how middle-class (and middle-minded) I am, I have to confess that The Groupie and the Pig are members of the National Trust. Enough said.

Rembrandt (1606 - 1669) painted a vast number of self-portraits and this one (1635) hangs at the Trust property, Buckland Abbey. I offer it as an unbeatable example of technical excellence in verisimilitude. I also put it up as a useful point of departure towards the very different painting I want to highlight tomorrow.

Advent 19

Whilst the urgent noise in American art was abstraction, Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967) offered an atmospheric antidote. His pictures shout of a realism that understands the peculiar loneliness of company. Here is his most famous painting - Nighthawks (1942) - a picture that launched a million posters.  

Advent 18

David Hockney (1937 -) is a national treasure - witness the recent and joyous documentaries with Melvyn Bragg on Sky Arts. His art is as happy as the artist and and narratives are suggested by his profuse revisiting of themes. Here I have selected 1967's A Bigger Splash. Technically pure with an attention-grabbing command of colour and Californian light.

Advent 17

It seems to me that almost every stately home has a Canaletto. His pictures of Venice are glowingly identifiable - often brought back to England as souvenirs of the Grand Tour. Better than postcards I think you'd have to agree. However my chosen Canaletto is his own souvenir of his trip to London - Westminster Bridge (1750).

Advent 16

After yesterday's diversion into the troubled imagination of Jackson Pollock, today we have something more figurative. We have several signed prints by William Selwyn (1933 -) dotted around Casa Piggy. His pictures of Welsh farmers are fabulous but I choose a ravaged landscape, Pont-Y-Gromlech. For me, Selwyn best captures the atmosphere of my beloved North Wales.

Advent 15

After yesterday's lapse into the naive, today we venture into the murky waters of abstract expressionism. Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956) died young at the wheel of his car and with alcohol at the wheel of his senses. A mess. And there are plenty who think his later paintings nothing more than meaningless messes. They don't look like anything we can relate to and a frequent criticism is that 'I could have done that'. But could you really? Pollock's best stuff reaches into the intestines of human imagination and gives expression to the bloody mess. Here we have Untitled from 1949. 

Advent 14

I doubt that I had ever beguiled you into thinking otherwise but today I betray the Overgraduate as nothing more than a sentimental vulgarian.

Charles Wysocki (1928-2002) was an unashamedly commercial artist, his rather twee primitive (decried as faux naive) pictures launching record-breaking jigsaw sales. He celebrates an America which no longer exists, indeed may never have existed at all. I detect an optimism that confirms the America I love and admire - as far from the vile post-Trump world as can be conceived. This is Hickory Haven Canal. Corny I know. Tomorrow, something altogether more challenging.

Advent 13

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was, towards the end of his life, hampered in painting due to the after-effects of an operation for abdominal cancer. In response to his infirmity he returned to a medium he had occasionally used in his early life -collage or cut-out. He would sculpt pre-painted sheets of paper and lay them out to stunning effect. He started with small compositions in this medium but graduated to much larger pieces.

Blue Nude III is from 1952's production of four studies in the cut-out method. By my count this picture is made from just six cuts of painted paper. It is what we art critics call bloody clever.  

Advent 12

Tintoretto was by all accounts something of an opereator in Venice - undercutting other artists to obtain important commissions and generally making himself unpopular with his peers. He claimed to have been apprenticed to Titian but that master seems to have denied the connection. Whatever, Tintoretto could paint. In this Last Supper he defies classical perspective and looks upon the scene on the diagonal, giving prominence to servient underlings instead of Christ and the apostles. He was playing the same manner of tricks that Orson Welles would bring to bear in cinema four and a half centuries later.

Advent 11

After two offerings from sculptor/artists which play tricks with form, today's picture is straight out of the top drawer of classicism - indeed some might argue that Titian has the top drawer to himself.

Where Hepworth and, to an even greater degree, Boccione, respond to light and structure, Titian lets his full representational talent loose on a biblical theme, The Assumption of the Virgin (1516-18). The colours are stunning and the technique brilliant. As I have assembled this list, I have had to confront my own prejudices and I have been struck by my taste for the relatively modern. This sort of devotional art is, though, quite thrilling.

Tomorrow another Venetian. 

Advent 10

Umberto Boccioni was, like Barbara Hepworth (see Advent 9), both painter and sculptor. He was also one of the founders of the Italian Futurist movement. Out of Head+Light+Surroundings (which at first glance seems an abstract blur of colours) a human face and other represenatations emerge. The whole effect of this 1912 picture is provocative and satisfying, demanding some effort of attention from the viewer.  

Advent 9

The Hepworth Sculpture Garden in St. Ives is small and a charming space in which to take in the smooth atmospheres induced by Barbara Hepworth's sculpture. Hepworth's pictures are much less well known but they capture the same sense of civilised structure. This is Winter Solstice (1971), a print of which adorns our bedroon wall. Less is more.