'A country rapidly passed through...'

'Clear vision goes with the quick foot,' says Robert Louis Stevenson, condensing his previous sentence: 'A country rapidly passed through under favourable auspices may leave upon us a unity of impression that would only be disturbed and dissipated if we stayed longer.' So opens the essay An Autumn Effect (1875), collected in Essays of Travel. An account of an excursion from London to walk in the wooded hills of Buckinghamshire, it's a typical Stevensonian mix of pin-sharp observation, charm and deft description, with descents into fustian prose and whimsy - but I think, in his opening generalisations, he has a point. 'Things fall for us,' he continues, 'into a sort of natural perspective when we see them for a moment in going by; we generalise boldly and simply, and are gone' - gone, that is, before, in the natural course of things, the whole picture changes. Stevenson likens this kind of perception to the exposure of a photographic plate, but it is not exactly photographic; there is also, in scenes we see in this way - while walking through them - something of the heightening and foreshortening characteristic of certain strange effects of strong low light. This vividness may be illusory, as Stevenson allows, but it is vivid nonetheless, and we tend to remember more clearly places that we have merely glimpsed while walking through them than others where we have lingered (and certainly those that we have driven through) - they seem more real to us.
Anyway, I shall have the chance to put this to the test over the next few days, when I shall be walking - in France, again. Tomorrow I take the ferry to Le Havre, then on to Honfleur... Au revoir, mes amis! Blogging will resume next week.
Meanwhile, here are wise words - in French, as it happens - taken from the epigraph to Stevenson's essay: 'Nous ne decrivons jamais mieux la nature que lorsque nous nous efforcons d'exprimer sobrement et simplement l'impression que nous en avons recue.' It's from an essay by one Andre Theuriet, called L'Automne dans les Bois. Very seasonal...

Freedom Days

It's been open for ten years, but today was the first time I visited the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London. It's small but full of interest - surely the only art gallery that incorporates the remains of a Roman amphitheatre (though there's not a great deal of it). The core collection is heavy on official portraits, ceremonial pictures, views of London and battle scenes, but it also includes a fine full-size Constable sketch of Salisbury cathedral from the meadows (similar to the one in Tate Britain) and some Victorian gems, including Millais's Lorenzo and Isabella and The Woodman's Daughter (not to mention Her First Sermon and Her Second Sermon). There are also works by Rossetti, Alma-Tadema, Albert Moore, Tissot etc, and some knock-em-dead virtuoso history paintings, among them Poynter's huge Israel In Egypt, and an even huger extravaganza titled A Pythagorean School Invaded by Sybarites, by one Michele Tedesco (that one has to be seen to be believed). But I was in the gallery chiefly to see Transfiguration, a small exhibition (barely 20 works) by two young artists, Dan Llywelyn Hall and Raphael Pepper. The exhibition began life at the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, and in this London incarnation the focus is on pictures inspired by the impact of the impending London Olympics on the chosen site. Dan works in oils, Raphael in coloured pencil, with which he achieves quite extraordinary effects. Dan's landscapes range from the near-apocalyptic - the superb Dreams of Steel and Concrete and Vision of Gold - through the more straightforward but beautifully accomplished Lea Valley Wilderness, to the piognant, roughly painted genre scene, The Last Crop (presumably on an allotment garden now devoured by the Olympic behemoth). These are serious (but never solemn), vivid, engaged, painterly paintings, blurring the line between figurative and abstract, full of the life and energy of pigment. They are authentically modern landscapes, as are those of Raphael Pepper, who is represented not only by pictures from the Olympics site - the glorious green-and gold Canal Life my favourite among them - but a flaming sunset scene of Cardiff Docks, all scumbled and scored with those flying coloured pencils to the point that the paper is blistered and cracked. Other pictures are more relaxed, even ethereal, with shapes suggested by skeins of pencilling - but Pepper's tour de force is a picture quite unlike all the others, called Loss,Time, Love. This is huge - 10ft by 5ft - and divided into two great blocks of colour, both shading gradually (and to different degrees) from dark blues into purple and near-red. Between them glimmers a thin horizon of blank paper, shining like intense light from under clouds. It has the impact and contemplative force of a Rothko - and the entire thing was done painstakingly, stroke by stroke, with coloured pencils. A quite extraordinary work, which on its own is worth the trip (the exhibition closes, by the way, on Sunday). Pepper seems to me underpriced - if I'd had £500 to spare, I would certainly have bought a glorious sunny little blue and gold landscape called Freedom Days... Pepper says: 'I am simply not driven to create by philosophy, reason or ideas. There is no attempt to find any meaning in the use of subject, motif, approach or content. There is a quite deliberate avoidance of any political or historical reference; in fact nothing is put into the work other than drawing.' Here are two young artists who (in refreshing contrast to the rapidly aging YBAs and their imitators) are all about painting and drawing - and who, between them, show a new way of engaging with landscape. New and of course, like all truly new things, deeply embedded in the tradition.

The Perfect Bookshop?

It's second-hand of course, not new (boringly predictable) or antiquarian (forbiddingly expensive). The premises small-to-middling, with every inch of floor and shelf space put to good use, but still room (just) to move around. The shelves well stocked with all the categories you'd expect - and a few you wouldn't ('Elderly Children's', 'Alcohol') - intelligently but not rigidly classified, allowing for surprises. The stock in good condition, every vintage from early Victorian to near-new, well chosen, with the emphasis on literature but some popular fiction too (scrupulously alphabetical, despite the impression of disorder). No obvious rubbish, and everything reasonably priced (and, when you visit, a half price sale is on). The odd stack of overspill books on the floor and in odd corners, and a small section devoted to miscellaneous bric a brac - a few prints and paintings, masks and fancy headdresses, some china, old-fashioned children's toys and trinkets - not to mention, elsewhere, well chosen greetings cards, and jars of home-made chutney, preserves and honey. Cheerfully friendly, but not twee, messages dotted about the place - and a cheerfully friendly, but not twee, proprietor who's happy to retreat from the secene and leave you alone to browse... Can such a shop exist in these times? Reader, it can - and I was there yesterday. I shan't name it, but will simply say that, if you find yourself in Osterley (the house, Osterley Park, is worth a visit - and the grounds look very well on a sunny autumn day), look out for it. And there's even an equally cheerfully f, but not t, cafe opposite.

Peter de Vries

Peter de Vries died on this day in 1993, with a long and prolific writing (and editing) career behind him. Is he still read, I wonder? I don't suppose he is on this side of the pond, where he never really caught on - but in America?
I remember reading him voraciously, back in the day, finding him an uneven but fascinating, and often very funny, novelist. Daniel Dennett has described him as 'probably the funniest writer on religion ever', and there always seemed to be in his better writings a strong tension between his fascination with religious questions and his easy way with a reductive witticism. He was raised in the Dutch Christian Reformed Church, and yet his wisecracking often sounds distinctly Jewish, in the key of Woody Allen. In the end, it was the wisecracking that won out, as De Vries turned out comedy after comedy with an almost garrulous facility. This array of quotes catches his distinctive flavour, that mix of easy gags and deeper insights. One of his aphorisms that doesn't make the cut is 'I've got a big crush on myself, but it's not reciprocated', which strikes me as a pretty good summing-up of how many of us feel about ourselves - or is that just me? And one that's guaranteed to fall every bit as flat in real life as it does in the book it's taken from - 'For I have premises to keep, and miles to mow before I sleep...' You've got to like it though - just as you've got to like De Vries, surely, if nothing else, one of the most likeable of writers.

The Convivial Ukulele

Further to yesterday's post, I hear that more and more schools are teaching the ukulele as a starter instrument - with, it seems, dramatic results. This seems to me one of the few things going on in English schools that makes perfect sense. The uke is easy to learn and play, portable, convivial, and makes, even when ineptly played, a perfectly tolerable sound, especially if accompanying a singalong. What's more, as all chldren surely appreciate, it sets them on the road to what they really want to play - the 'cool' electric guitar. Compare and contrast the earlier starter instrument of choice - the descant recorder. This is a perfectly pleasant instrument when expertly played as part of a recorder ensemble - but in the hands of a child learner, its ear-bleeding squawks amount to 'cruel and unusual punishment' for audience and player alike. Furthermore, it leads nowhere - or certainly nowhere 'cool'...
The rebirth of the ukulele is, of course, not confined to our schools. Grown adults are learning the pleasures of strumming along, and the success of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain has been such that they have performed at the Proms - here's the Ukes' George Hinchiffe backstage, going from rubbish to genius in 1 min 20sec. And then there's the Wellington ukulele scene - but perhaps I've inflicted enough of that on you (though, if you missed it the last time I linked, do seek out the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra's video of It's A Heartache on You Tube - you won't be sorry). Enough.
This is the Age of the Ukulele!

As It's Saturday...

... and as my daughter is out in Wellington, here's this.
An awfully ragged performance yes, especially the lead vocal, but rather sweet and lovely (like my daughter). And yes, that is Bret of Flight of the Conchordes fame!

A Thankyou

Over on Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp pays me the compliment of referring to a string of my recent posts - a compliment I could return any week of the year. I've never made any secret of the fact that I regard Anecdotal Evidence as the finest thing in the blogosphere, the one I'd save from oblivion in any putative bonfire of the blogs. I think of Patrick as my blogscape better self, and turn to his writings at the end of every working day to restore me to my right mind and to the things that truly matter. Thank you, Patrick - and if anyone reading this has yet to discover Anecdotal Evidence, get over there at once, and keep scrolling.