Arteries

I was in London on Wednesday, went to the National Gallery and then to see a play, Fram, by the poet Tony Harrison — an intelligent, irreverent, often very funny look at the role of poetry in society – does it have the power to change the way we think, particularly about big issues…well if the audience was anything to go by then the answer is a loud, seatsqueaking no. It was composed of the sort of theatre patrons who go because it’s theeearrrr-t, not for any love of poetry, that was apparent by their restlessness and failure to recognise the humour and cleverness in the writing. Oh well, at least they go.
But back to the National, I spent about two hours walking the gallery’s timeline, 1200 to 1900, and it was a strange experience, religious art and patron’s portraits, many of which seem to me to have a place based on having survived rather than any intrinsic value, brushstroked away by the impressionists, okay that’s a little simplistic in terms of art history, but as you walk through this monumental space, marble floors, vaulted ceilings, hallowed lighting, you suddenly find yourself in front of Monet’s Irises and the fluorescent light goes on: you’re staring at a canvas that for me perfectly embodies that shift, is almost a matrix of the genre, for though I’ve always loved impressionist art, I’ve tended to dismiss them as a little too pretty pretty, not enough fire, but seeing them in context I realised how revolutionary they were, major movers and shakers.
I left and walked out into a crazy rainstorm and was glad for once to be swallowed by the underground at rush hour, strange though it was to be back in the pushshove of tired, aggressive people breathing into your face, noses millimetres from early evening armpits hanging from ceiling straps, nobody making eye contact, the opposite of intimate which ironically is distant. From Waterloo we walked along the South Bank in the rain, the sky lightening, wet paving stones silvered, like the river was seeping through the city’s defences. London’s an amazing city, the architecture, the arts and running through it, a beautiful artery.

Tags: theatre, London, Fram, Tony Harrison, The National Gallery, the Thames, Impressionism