Joining the dots

 Ways of Seeing

The sky is scored, streams of white trails slash the blue, even distorting the sun above my head. It is highly unusual for the air to be cut like this over Norfolk, as usually the air is thrumming with the play-fighting of American jets, rather than with commercial aeroplanes.

I go for a drink in the Folies Bergère, where, in the 1880s Suzon would serve me in my absinthe, while I reflected on the role of mirrors in art and life....

Édouard Manet - A Bar at the Folies Bergère

Now she draws the crowds to the Courtauld Gallery, her bottles of Bass and warm champagne attracting inspection through lorgnettes....

Meanwhile, all is quiet at the Halcyon Gallery, New Bond Street, where there are spare chairs for Hockney.....

David Hockney - Sparer Chairs

It is winter near Kilham:

David Hockney - Winter Road Near Kilham

But then it is summer as well.....

And then we are in Normandy, half timbered and red-tiled.....

I find myself singing under a blue sky in Trafalgar Square (one too many absinthes, perhaps?)

And then I am on the perplexing staircase in Somerset House, aspiring to the upper floors of the Courtauld:

Under the ribbed eye whose shadow seems to be ticking like a sundial:

We are here to join up the dots of Georges Seurat's Neo-impressionist seascapes, sometimes identified as pointillist pictures.....

I stare at the wall between the frames, wondering if I am going dotty....

Then I look closer at the brushwork and try not to think of the opposing colours,

Though the closer you get the more difficult it is......

Try not to think about the way the image is created:

After all, nothing is real.  What Seurat saw on the coast of Northern France a hundred and fifty years ago is no longer there, and never was in two dimensions anyway.  In fact it wasn't even there when he 'saw' it, as light takes time to travel and then our rods and cones have to crowd down the optic nerves for our brains to interpret what is coming through the lens....

Art is a pleasure.  While some works may provoke thoughts and serve political or social ends, much of what we admire is artistry, the ways somethings are communicated.  I love the shadows in this one, not unlike Lowry, though also entirely different:

I love the transparency in this one - you can see through the boats and sails, and see the sky in the water, all of it a delightful post-impression....

I see the great courtyard outside in a similar way, the light fragmented by fine gauze, the shadows falling across the floor like drops of ink on the paving stones.....

Not far away, in the Serpentine North Gallery, Hockney (again) is looking down on us through his square glasses from his tree house:

He too is dotty. This exhibition is entitled David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, and the blurb informs us that David Hockney invites viewers to slow down and notice the extraordinary within the everyday..... Created specifically for this presentation, Hockney’s new paintings extend his lifelong fascination with the act of looking, affirming his belief that simple beauty is worth celebrating.

Although some critics have begun to hint that you can have too much of a good thing, I disagree, and love this wraparound display of the seasons at Hockney's French home.....

Whichever way you turn it's a colourful and subliminally happy take on nature and domesticity, a picture of gentle life as we all wish we could lead. The fact that it is not possible for everyone to reside in such an idyllic environment does not mean it is wrong.... It is a reminder that there is beauty in this world and that we should celebrate it.

Other images in the exhibition play with perspective and again remind us that what we are viewing is not reality, but a representation of what can be experienced if we use our imagination and look at pictures from different vantage points.....

Outside in Kensington Gardens Henry Moore's six metre high travertine arch frames the Long Water and a distant Palace.  What is it?  Why is it?  Does it matter?  Surely those are the questions that we ask about life, and there are no right, or wrong, answers....

Just as a ring-necked parakeet flying from a tourist's hand is meaningful or meaningless depending on which side of bed you got out of that morning,

Or as a photograph in The Photographers' Gallery may make you smile or shiver,

We should remember that it is magical and glorious to be able to see anything.  We who have sight are blessed and we must be grateful for what we have.  

Back home I get up early to watch the sun come up over the North Sea, amazed by the power of light to banish the dark, thrilled by the bands of grey and gold, by the streaming rays that bring us life....

I am beginning to lose the plot, miss the point.....

Never mind.  It is what it is....

I would like to be a dot in a painting by Miro.

Barely distinguishable from other dots,

it’s true, but quite uniquely placed.

And from my dark centre

I’d survey the beauty of the linescape

and wonder-would it be worthwhile

to roll myself towards the lemon stripe,

centrally poised, and push my curves

against its edge, to get myself

a little extra attention?

But it’s fine where I am.

I’ll never make out what’s going on

around me, and that’s the joy of it.

Moniza Alvi

I Would Like to be a Dot in a Painting by Miro

from The Country at my Shoulder (OUP, 1993)

*****

For my companion in art

*****

Down in Albion

October 8th, 2025

It's a monochrome day. A memorable day, in monochrome. London is quiet. London is grey.  I walk from Islington to Trafalgar. From Trafalgar to Norfolk. All things connect. But nothing connects..... The Albion is closed. Apparently it is a wonderful building. But it is run by idiots - or so I am told.  Is that a metaphor?

There are solid, beautiful houses here. And there are houses that were once shops:

And streets where Dick van Dyke would practise his terrible cockney accent:

I pass a 45 seater theatre where a recent hit was Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse For England. A blistering solo show, written and performed by Alex Hill and directed by Sean Turner. ‘Flare’ asks what it means to be a "die-hard" football fan and explores themes of belonging, tribalism, and toxic masculinity.

Meanwhile at nearby Sadler's Wells Carlos Acosta is responsible for Black Sabbath - The Ballet.....

You could get married in the art deco 225 seater upstairs venue at Finsbury Town Hall (though it is currently unavailable....)

So instead I take myself to the National Gallery to try and make sense of Neo-impressionism (popularly known as Pointillism):

Just to be contrary, I try and see these works in black and white, to focus on the design, to let light and dark play with my retinas....

One picture in particular arrests me. Maximilien Luce's The Iron Foundry (1899) takes me back to Sheffield in 1973, where I worked for Brown Bayley Steels forging axles in what I always think of as being as near Dante's Inferno as you could get without being dead....

Another picture that fascinates me is Georges Seurat's Chahut (1889-90), completed just before his death at the age of 31.  It is an extraordinarily ambivalent painting.  Where are the legs of the man behind the first dancer?  Are they in tights and high heels, despite his elegantly masculine jacket and moustache?

I am also interested in his Poseuses, where he portrays the same model in three different poses, against a backdrop of his A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.  The multiple portrayal of the same girl flew in the face of the convention that a painting should convey a single moment in time.

But B & W doesn't do these pics justice and I have to wander into the pastel-shaded orchard (where the separate dots of opposing colours cause the canvas to shimmer) to enjoy this one, Théo van Rysselberghe's In July, Before Noon (1890) where the figures (including the one behind the tree) express silence and introspection, a lack of interaction, which nowadays is emphasised by the obsessive use of the mobile phone:

Théo van Rysselberghe also painted this Coastal Scene (about 1892) which was obviously inspired by my picture of the Lago di Massaciuccoli, where Puccini used to live, in Tuscany this September (see below)..... 

As the National Gallery will have it the elements of this view are reduced to their barest minimum.... with posts within a glowing patch of water the only signs of a human presence in an otherwise deserted landscape.....

Of course, nothing is straightforward, and here we find Vincent (van the man) muscling in on the pointillists with a blaze of glory. The Sower (1888) shows how the artist had sympathy with the Neo-impressionists but also how Helene Kröller-Müller (from whose collection many of these pictures come) identified the contrast between van Gogh's dramatic and heavy effects with the light and delicate, spiritual qualities of Seurat, Signac et al.....

So....  Back into monochrome, and the outside world, to practise what I may have picked up.....

First off, a series of individuals who may or may not be lost in their own world, or in introspection, or in some dream-like contact with another....

And then, to relate back to Théo van Rysselberghe's In July, Before Noon, here are some images of pairs of people who still demonstrate some detachment:

Though in some cases there are outside forces at work:

And in others it is hard to know exactly what is going on.....

And so, dear reader, as the kissing couple in the phone booth ignore the ringtone of reversed charges, I notice it is the end of the show, and I must make my way back to find myself in the arms of Norfolk, another aspect of my love for Albion, if ever there was one....

Good day!  Good night!  I shall see you when the turkey's done.....

If you're looking for a cheap sort

Set in false anticipation

I'll be waiting in the Photo Booth

At the underground station

So come away, won't you come away?

We could go to

Deptford, Catford, Watford, Digberth, Mansfield, [Snettisham?]

Anywhere in Albion

Anywhere in Albion

Anywhere in Albion

Pete Doherty

Albion

[For transAtlantic relations]