London Part 3

It appears I never set a publish date for the last part of my vacation update, how silly. So here it is:

My last two days were filled primarily gathering a few suvenieers and trying to keep the imminent and enormous tiredness I was going to be feeling after days of walking and excitement. After having seen so many monuments and pieces of Art and history, it was sad to feel my time wrapping up in Europe, I had felt a great resonance with the area and the fact that so much information was at my fingertips, as opposed to finding it through the web.

My favorite stop was definitely the National Gallery, have I mentioned this? I saw images by John Singer Sargent and Rubens. It was the only gallery I spent nearly the entire day in, the others were about two museums or monuments per day. I was not allowed to take pictures in the gallery, so here are some photos from the web of the art pieces.

 

They were all lovely... I hope to save up for some artist books of Rubens and Sargent, of course they will not have the same aura as the originals, but hey, 3000 miles from the National Gallery it will due! I also got to see Degas ballerinas and lady in the bathtub. In that room I met a lovely old man named Peter Bell who was recreating Degas Ballerinas with four colours of pencil and gave me some great tips about art and books to check out. He also strongly recommended the Camberwell Master program to attend once I was graduated after I showed him my sketchbook. He also could tell that I think too much when I am drawing, its funny how artists can get to know one another through only their lines or paint application. I also saw Trafalgar square and the Olympics countdown sign, thing..? Got out right in time before the enormous influx of people came to the city for the Olympics, go Team America! :)

After the national gallery I only had a few more stops, and finally got caught in the rain for real in London. I had expected my entire trip to be rainy, but only the last day was dreary and that was in patches. That day I got to see the Tower Bridge up close, as well as the Tower of London, I did not go in due to price and a very long wait, but next time I get to London there will be a visit to the Tower of London and to see a play, as well as more live music, hopefully.

The Tower of London was pretty neat, I have a small thing for castles, and its interesting to think about how this once dominated the London skyline, but today seems so small compared to the Shard building located just across the Thames.

After all of the novels I have read over the years, the idealized London in my mind as opposed to that I experienced was refreshing and wonderful. British art, culture and humour have been a large part of my earlier years than I anticipated, from watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail almost every weekend, to the British Authors who not only taught me how to read, but how to LOVE to read, to its historical importance in the Art world... I feel that as an Artist it is necessary to visit sites like this, almost like and Artists Pilgrimage or mecca (no pun intended mecca/MECA). The stark reality of it all is that up here in Portland, we are segregated from a wealth of knowledge that young artists really need to have around in order to grow, so I feel a trip, my first trip actually, to New York City coming before the year is out.

Thank you for reading my rambles about this adventure!  Hopefully I will remember to save the auto publish date for entries to come.

London part 1

After my four weeks of rural Ireland I decided to give myself extreme culture shock by going from the Burren, a place of ecological balance and preservation, to London, a place of posh fashion and preservation of Art.

I primarily kept to the museums and the shows held there, seeing the sights and walking, walking, walking. I refused to take public transport primarily out of fear of missing something interesting! Because of this outlook I stumbled upon more things than I can possibly list. From accidentally walking to Saint Paul's Cathedral in time to hear the noon bell, to accidentally making it to Bucking ham palace to see the changing of the guards and accidentally making it to parliament in time to hear Big Ben chime the noon bell as well!

London has an amazing collection of architecture, from the modern skyscrapers, to Saint Paul's Cathedral that took thirty-five years to complete, to the Romanesque sculptures on buildings and of course the multiple palaces in London.

To even begin describing my single week in London feels almost like a verbal impossibility to me. It was wonderful, it was busy, it was expensive, exhilarating and educating. After having seen such a clean city, where you can see the sky consistently, with large parks and green spaces everywhere has replaced my usual abhorrence for cities with the idea that I may be able to survive and operate in a city. A complete flip flop from my usual attitude of getting stressed out by large cities.

During my time there I visited more museums in a week that I usually do in an entire year, be it the same museum repeatedly or different museums.

Anyway, I started out by making my way towards Saint Paul's Cathedral, primarily because I had no plan, no map, and it dominated the skyline pretty well.

There were a bunch of creepy Cherub Heads all over the cathedral.

 

 

Which happened to be across the Thames from the Tate modern, so I scurried over the millenium bridge to go see Daimen Hirsts exhibition and to to try to understand modern art like minimalism. Suffice to say, even after looking at minimalism and such... I still don't quite grasp why people do it, Damien Hirst's exhibition was good for a creepy laugh, with animals in formaldehyde, butterfly wing collages, and a cow head being eaten by flies. He's dark, but he's also dancing the line of cutting edge and satire I think.

The Tate Modern

I saw that ridiculous diamond encrusted skull. Photos were not allowed.

Bruce Nauman Violent Incident 1986

Guiseppe Penone Tree of 12 Metres 1980-2

Cy Twombly untitled (Bacchus)

Georges Braque Mandora 1909-10

From the Tate I wandered along the embankment coming across Shakespeares Globe Theatre, some lovely views of Saint Paul's, Tower Bridge, and Southwark Cathedral.

 

The next Day I found myself at the British Museum, which was literally two blocks from the hostel I was staying at, Smart Russell Square. A decent hostel, but the wifi was not free and you had to pay for storage lockers, there's some false adverting! But it was located in a nice part of the city away from the night-scene and traffic and had a lovely little square near it.The British Museum was enourmous, part of me feels like I missed a wing, but I saw so many things that I cannot be sure. I saw Viking weapons, stuffed exotic birds, Roman and Grecian sculptures, Grecian red and black figure vases, mummies, Chinese relics, Mexican and Aztec art, Chinese paintings and line drawings by Picasso. Overwhelming.

 

 

Turtle pot!

 London is also filled with little architectural nuances that caught my eye everywhere. It seemed like everything was made of marble, the buildings had a very stately, proper, historical feel to them. and the streets were easily walkable, if you don't mind crowds and lemming mentality!

 

Black Friars Bridge

 That is the end of part one of my trip to London, I decided to split it into sections because of how many photo files are associated with each place. I filled just short of 12 GB worth of memory sticks while I was away, so it is difficult to sift through the photo-wreckage and dust off the gems, especially when I am definitely not a photographer. Check back in two or three days for part two of the London saga.