Vallotton

Yesterday I finally visited the Felix Vallotton exhibition at the Royal Academy, something I'd been meaning to do ever since it opened back in May, but you know how it is...
I only knew Vallotton from a few of his better known woodcuts, like the gorgeous La Paresse –

I didn't know his much darker (in every way) woodcuts, like this one (L'Argent) from the series Intimités –

Or Vallotton's lively Parisian street scenes, like this one, Le Coup de Vent –

This exhibition has a fine display of his woodcuts, which make it clear that he was one of the very best woodcut artists of his time.
As for Vallotton's paintings, the only one I was familiar with was this strangely disturbing image of a little girl chasing a ball –

I had much to discover, and this superb exhibition opened my eyes to a remarkable artist, one who never settled long into any of the art-historical pigeonholes available – which is surely one reason he is not better known (this, I think, is the first major exhibition of his work in the UK). He vigorously resisted Impressionism, and, although he was one of the group that called itself Les Nabis (which included Bonnard and – an artist much closer to Vallotton in spirit – Vuillard), he seems always to have stood a little apart, as in this awkward, semi-parodic group portrait (he's standing at the left) –

The Swiss-born Vallotton began in thrall to the sharp naturalistic precision of the painters of the Northern Renaissance, as can be seen in this early, very accomplished self-portrait, painted at the age of twenty –

It shows too in such crisp and forceful paintings as La Malade, an early domestic interior –

Look at the play of reflections in the bottles on the bedside table. This is virtuoso stuff –

But Vallotton had soon developed a much looser style, dependent on flat masses of colour and blurring out of detail, that clearly owed something to Vuillard, especially when he turned his attention to domestic interiors –

Here, as so often with Vallotton, what looks at first sight like a cosy domestic scene becomes something rather unsettling – strangely disturbing indeed – as one absorbs it. This one shows his wife Gabrielle (a wealthy widow, to whom he owed his financial security) and her young daughter, but it is emotionally flat, and those reds (his best colour, along with green) are almost oppressive.
Here is another faintly menacing interior scene, of a woman looking for something (what?) in a cupboard –

  Vallotton's later career was dominated by his adoration of his artistic idol, Ingres, and his growing fascination with the possibilities of the nude. The trouble with Ingres, IMHO, is that he was a phenomenally brilliant painter, but a very bad model for imitation, not least because nobody could paint the kind of things he painted half as well as he did. Vallotton's austere Ingres-influenced nudes seem to me rather to prove the point, and their effect is generally chilling. However, among Vallotton's nudes, is also this extraordinary work, La Blanche et La Noire, clearly painted in response to Manet's Olympia. Whatever is going on here, this is definitely not a portrayal of a white mistress and her attentive black handmaiden. In the original, it's a large, powerful and deeply enigmatic picture  –

Late is his career (he died in 1925), Vallotton also painted stylised, pared-down landscapes, composed more in his head than en plein air. This one, of sandbanks on the Loire, is a good example...

And he painted some glorious, semi-abstract sunsets. This one really has to be seen in the original, and close up. It's a glowing, vivid painting that seems to engulf you as you get closer to it –

This is a terrific exhibition that I found quite fascinating from beginning to end, with no trace of the gallery fatigue that so often overcomes me well before the last room. It was, for once, a real journey of discovery. The exhibition is on until 29 September, so there's still plenty of time to catch it.

A House of Many Mansions

I've just finished reading Willa Cather's The Professor's House, a novel that tends to get overlooked even by her admirers. It has been described as 'fragmentary and inconclusive', 'broken' in structure, psychologically ambivalent and (more pompously) 'morally and psychologically unachieved'. All those supposed faults are, it seems to me, the actual strengths of a book that never spells anything out, never (as it were) makes up its mind, but lays out the elements of what it is made of and invites us to put them together ourselves. And there is a fine abundance of elements for a book so small in scale – Professor St Peter's inability to leave the old house where he has lived the most productive part of his life and move into the smart new one; his daughters and the sons-in-law, representatives of the modern world, who are now the focus of his wife's passion; Tom Outland, the gifted and beloved should-have-been son-in-law who died in the war, leaving behind a fortune that has proved a deeply troubling legacy; Outland's first-person narrative of the discovery of an ancient cave city and a lost culture in the Southwest desert (shades of The Song of the Lark); the Professor's reflections on the course of his life, on science, home (a great Cather theme), civilisation and the modern world...
 It's easy to read, or rather deconstruct, the novel as composed of unresolved oppositions, mostly revolving around the modern world of 1920s America and older civilisations, older values, each element embodied in one or more characters. Which is fine, if that's how you want to read, but personally I'd sooner enjoy (the crucial word) this novel in the way you might enjoy a three-movement sonata, or a painting – or rather a set of paintings, domestic interiors contrasted with the vibrant plein air of Tom Outland's narrative, the central section of the book that some blame for breaking the novel's structure. Which, it seems to me, makes about as much sense as saying the middle movement of a sonata breaks its structure. The Professor's House is a richly rewarding book, replete with far more than appears on the surface (as always with Cather, it's 'the heat under the simple words') – a book to be read, slowly, on its own terms, and enjoyed.

Peter Nichols

Sorry to hear of the death of that rather wonderful playwright Peter Nichols. He had reached a good age – 92 – and lived long enough to be, finally, recognised for his achievements, with a CBE, awarded last year. Happily, his work lives on – or at least one of his plays, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which is soon to open in a new production at Trafalgar Studios. That play and the very different Privates on Parade will surely endure, and several of the others are worth a revival any time. And, for the theatre averse (like me), there's also Nichols's gloriously named autobiography, Feeling You're Behind.
Here's how the Preface begins...
'At another man's publication party, someone asked me about my writing plans now that I'd left the theatre. I told him, with some pride, that I'd been commissioned to write my life.
 "So has everyone in this room," he said.
 A glance at the assembled drunks and derelicts was enough to show that I would need better reasons than vanity to sustain me through the writing...'
 Happily there were better reasons (not least the money), and Nichols found that his autobiography was 'a pleasure to write. No vainglorious director rewrote it, no manager talked about Bums on Seats or last trains, no numbskull actors told me it wouldn't stretch them or thanked me for what they called "a vehicle".'
 Feeling You're Behind is a joy to read – especially the chapters about his early years with his family in Bristol, in a part of the city still haunted by the recent presence of young Archie Leach, aka Cary Grant, whose mother was committed to the local asylum, from which she was eventually sprung by her now famous son. Nichols's account of touring in Malaya with Combined Services Entertainment, along with the likes of Kenneth Williams and Stanley Baxter (the inspiration for Privates on Parade) is great stuff too, much of it – as with a great deal of this playwright's memoir – written in dialogue. The line between Nichols's private life and his plays is so very fine that these dialogues from life and those from the stage are sometimes almost interchangeable. It's an unusually open and frankly spoken autobiography, and often very, very funny. If you see a copy, snap it up.
 And meanwhile RIP Peter Nichols.

Back

Well, I'm back from my latest Derbyshire trip with a grim, disabling 'cold' (there really should be a more descriptive word for it), but with more happy Mercian memories, including a glorious wealth of early autumn butterflies flying in the (intermittent) sunshine and feasting on Buddleia: more Tortoiseshells than I've seen down South all year – many more – and a wealth of Red Admirals and Painted Ladies, plus Commas and Peacocks, Speckled Woods and the odd Small Copper, Common Blue and Small Heath. And a couple more Wall Browns at the Hoe Grange butterfly reserve. Something to remember on this grey, rainy morning...

Birthday Girl

Time to turn away from the endless political brouhaha and wish a happy birthday to that fine old trouper Mitzi Gaynor, 88 today. Born with the splendid name of Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber, Mitzi was a great all-rounder – singer, dancer, actress – and is best remembered for her award-worthy performance in the film of South Pacific. But here she is taking Cole Porter's Anything Goes and giving it the works. Not a great singer, but she sure can put a song across, and those camp-as-Christmas male dancers are great fun. Enjoy!

Tomorrow I'm off on my Mercian travels again. It's all go...

The Day War Broke Out

A visitor from another planet might be forgiven for concluding that this country stands on the brink of a catastrophe unprecedented in our island history and that a murderous fascist (yes, there's an 's' in it) regime has staged a coup in order to seize the reins of power and drive us all into the abyss. With a little investigation, our extraterrestrial friend might discover the cause of all this jumping up and down is simply that we're pulling out of a moribund would-be superstate, and that a new Prime Minister has, perfectly constitutionally, prorogued Parliament. And he might deduce something rather unflattering about the emotional resilience (and intellectual powers) of us Earthlings.
  Those who are hyperventilating over these supposed catastrophes would do well to think back to this day 80 years ago, when Neville Chamberlain was obliged to broadcast to the nation, informing us that we were, unavoidably, at war with Germany (a country with a five-star, fully accredited, world-class murderous fascist regime). Already the Nazis were sweeping across mainland Europe, and soon France would fall and we would stand alone against the world. That is a catastrophe, that is an existential threat.
 Within minutes of Chamberlain's broadcast, sirens began to sound across Britain – sirens that were then taken as warnings of impending toxic gas attack from the air.  'This was an opportunity for the people of Britain to demonstrate their traditional calm in the face of danger,' a Movietone newsreel reported. 'There was no sign of panic – men and women in the streets made their way to the nearest shelter and queued up in orderly processions at the entrances.'
  I hope that kind of spirit still lives on today – I believe it probably does, if only in pockets – but the evidence to the contrary is all too stridently present, especially in London. 
 Below, as a reminder of bygone times, is Robb Wilton's famous monologue, 'The Day War Broke Out'. The Home Guard (descendants of Shakespeare's Dogberry constabulary) proved such an inexhaustible mine of comedy gold that Dad's Army is never off the air, 42 years after the last new episode aired, and 74 years after the war ended (and there were excellent new productions of three 'lost' episodes just recently)...

A Cambridge Sketch-Book

Here's my latest charity shop find – a pleasingly slim little volume originally published in 1913 and reprinted or reissued several times over the years (my copy dates to 1950). It's a fine specimen of skilful pencil sketching, with expert shading and cross-hatching, the product of a time when most educated people would have learnt to draw competently in the natural course of things.
Here is a familiar view of King's College chapel, with deftly positioned clergyman –

And here is a less familiar view, by way of Clare College gates –

And here is the market, overlooked by Great St Mary. The punters look a deal smarter than they did in the days when we reprobates used to cluster around Andy's record stall...