Exit Through The Giftshop - Pictures At An Exhibition #23

More memories from viewings past...

1) BAPTISM OF THE NEOPHYTES (1427) - Masaccio

I bought this when I saw the remarkable frescos in the Brancacci Chapel within the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.  The frescos can only be viewed on short timed visits, you enter through the cloisters next to the church, so the vibrant paintings are not damaged by constant visitors.  Masaccio began his frescos in 1425 but stopped when he had to travel to Rome in 1428 where he died aged only 27.  Filippino Lippi completed them 55 years later.  

St. Peter is seen baptizing believers in a river, a supplicant kneels before him as the holy water runs over his head, the river eddying around his knees.  Again, one is drawn to the remarkable cast of characters - the man who is waiting to be baptized who is obviously already freezing, the acolyte of Peter who is helping the man undress in the queue and, at the back, a man in a green tunic who really looks like he is thinking "What have I let myself in for?" as he looks nervously around him. 

2) LADY WITH CAPE AND HAT (1890) - Gustav Klimt

This was bought at the Royal Academy exhibition of drawings by Klimt and Egon Schiele from the Albertina Museum in Vienna in 2018.  The Albertina has for many years been the main research centre for the artist's life and work.  Klimt drew this haunting composition using black and red chalk aged 28.

Say the name Klimt and one thinks of art nouveau stylized, highly coloured portraits of glamorous women but this earlier drawing of a young woman in a black coat with high collar and a large hat is haunting in it's simplicity; her mournful expression beautifully caught as it is lit from the side.  Klimt was to embark on years of upheaval when in 1892 both his father and brother died and their families were dependant on Gustav for their well-being.

3) VIRGINIA AND LEONARD WOOLF'S WRITING LODGE (1934)

A very happy memory is visiting Monk's House on a sunny day in 2014.  Virginia and Leonard Woolf bought the house in an auction in 1919 for £700 and over the years, as they both became successful, they started making improvements to the rudimentary interior and garden.  They lived increasingly at Monk's House during the 20s and 30s due to Virginia's recurring mental breakdowns which were exacerbated by London life, and became a much-loved part of their life.  After Virginia's suicide in 1941, Leonard lived on at Monk's House until his own death in 1969.

The garden lodge was built in 1934 and, apart from being a place to store apples in the loft, it served as Virginia's writing retreat being only a short walk across the lawn from the main house.  Apart from her articles, she would have written the bulk of THE YEARS and BETWEEN THE ACTS here.  I blogged at the time "We were told that we were lucky that they had a full compliment of volunteers so the lodge was actually open to visitors and it was wonderful to stand there by her writing desk, her glasses and cigarettes still there waiting to be used.  The volunteer said sadly all we could do in there was look and breathe in the air.  That was fine for me."

4) SELF PORTRAIT WITH MONKEY (1938) - Frida Kahlo

Another of the great self-portraits by Frida Kahlo.  This was bought in 2005 at Tate Modern when they had a major retrospective of her work.  It had been a commission painting for the then-president of New York's Museum of Modern Art. Anson Conger Goodyear.  1938 was a pretty good year for Frida: she had made her first notable sale when the actor Edward G Robinson bought four paintings for $800 and she was invited to New York to hold her first US exhibition which, while dismissed by critics, was financially successful. 

She had met the Surrealist André Breton earlier in the year in Mexico who invited her to Paris to exhibit and famously described her art as "a ribbon tied around a bomb".  Frida stares out at us at an angle, coiffed and elegant, defiantly uni-browed and with a mousetache showing, against a background of large tropical leaves.  Her spider-monkey pet Fulang-Chang sits behind her with a protective paw around her neck, as if to guard her against the sudden explosion of interest in her and her art.  

5) PIETÁ (AFTER DELACROIX) (1889) - Vincent van Gogh

I bought this at the wonderful van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam: we wandered over that way one late afternoon and saw a smallish queue outside which we joined more as a dare to see how long we would stand there but to our delight it wasn't that long before we were shifting along and we were in, to discover the nooks and crannys of the modernist interior - and of course revel in the glorious paintings within.

Of course the knowledge that this was painted the year before his suicide makes one read more iinto the subject matter than one should, for most of the year Vincent was in the asylum in Saint Rémy-de-Provence where his access for inspiration came mostly from prints of other artists' work that he had with him as well as the grounds of the asylum.  He had always admired Delacroix and one day, when his print of his Pietá fell in some oils, Vincent decided to do his own.  Although based on another work, Vincent was working from a b/w print so the swirling and turbulant colour is his own imagination and memories of Delacroix's style.  I really love the colours: the many blues he finds in Mary's garments, offset against the paler tones of Jesus' skin and his sheet.  As usual when looking at his work you just feel sadness for the poor guy.

Exit Through The Giftshop - Pictures At An Exhibition #22

More treasures of pleasures past...

1) STILL LIFE ON CORNER OF A MANTLEPIECE (1914) - Vanessa Bell

  

I bought this at the Dulwich Picture Gallery at their impressive Vanessa Bell exhibition in 2017 which sought to celebrate her as an artist rather than as merely a member of the Bloomsbury Group. 

Painted in her living room in Gordon Square, the composition shows her continued interest in post-impressionism, with a spray of paper flowers from The Omega Workshops providing inspiration for the painting and it's harmony of colours.

2) THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH SAINT JOHN AND ANGELS (circa 1494) - Michelangelo

As this painting is in the National Gallery collection, I presume I bought it there as part of a Renaissance exhibition.  It is understood to be one of the earliest surviving paintings of Michelangelo and, due to it's inclusion in the 1857 Manchester Art Exhibition, it is known widely as 'The Manchester Madonna',

Odd that if it is one of his earliest paintings he could never be bothered to finish it!  But it's the unfinished state that appeals to me, the ghostly angels at the left of the painting and the unpainted sections of the Virgin's cloak give it a solarised look that looks almost surrealist against the fully realised infant Christ and John the Baptist.  I like the small detail of the infant Christ reaching for the book that the Virgin is trying to keep away from him... As usual, Michelangelo's figures have a marble-like solidity.  And on the subject of Michelangelo's marble...

3) THE PIETA BANDINI (Detail) (1547-1555) - Michelangelo

This was bought at the Museo dell' Opera dei Duomo in Florence; it's a strange museum which houses most of the original works once in the Duomo... like, they could just move them back?  Michelangelo struggled with the sculpture for eight years before he damaged it, allegedly, in a fit of wilful destruction stating that the marble was flawed.  It is widely believed that the looming figure of Nicodemus is a self-portrait of the artist, then in his mid-seventies. 

Michelangelo's damage was extensive but was mostly restored by a sculpter named Tiberio Calcagni who had helped the Master with some of his commissions.  It had been allocated to Calcagni by Francesco Bandini, prelate of Siena, who had acquired it when Michelangelo left it with one of his servants.  It was originally to be used as decoration for Michelangelo's tomb but his unhappiness with it put paid to that.  The supporting figures of Mary Magdelene and the Virgin Mary are fairly unremarkable but the figure of Christ has a slippery solidity while the figure of the standing Nicodemus / Michelangelo commands the attention.

4) PORTRAIT OF MARIE ADELAIDE OF FRANCE IN TURKISH COSTUME (1753) - Jean-Etienne Liotard

I bought this at the Uffizi in Florence where the French Princess reads on, unconcerned at the steady stream of visitors to the gallery.  Liotard was fascinated by all things Turkish and he had a penchant for dressing his subjects in exotic clothing.  What I love about this is the thought that Princess Marie-Adelaide got all dressed up to go to a costume party then changed her mind and started reading on her couch!

Marie-Adelaide was the fourth daughter of Louis XV and lived at Versailles up until the Royal family were taken to live in Paris at the start of the revolution.  She never married due to a dearth of available Catholic princes but was a favourite of her father and as such, took a dislike to his official mistresses Madame de Pompadour and later Madame du Barry.  She attempted to recruit her niece by marriage Marie Antoinette to have du Barry socially ostracised but failed when the Dauphine spoke to du Barry.  This put Marie Antoinette on the Princess' hate list too.  She and her sisters managed to escape to Italy before the reign of terror and died in exile aged 67.

5) THE SITTING ROOM, MONK'S HOUSE, RODMELL, EAST SUSSEX

A very happy memory is visiting Monk's House on a sunny day in 2014.  Virginia and Leonard Woolf bought the house in an auction in 1919 for £700 and over the years, as they both became successful, they started making improvements to the rudimentary interior and garden.  They lived increasingly at Monk's House during the 20s and 30s due to Virginia's recurring mental breakdowns which were exacerbated by London life, and became a much-loved part of their life.  After Virginia's suicide in 1941, Leonard lived on at Monk's House until his own death in 1969.

Now operated by the National Trust, the sitting room is one of the ground-floor rooms available to view and it is a particular thrill to walk around it's stone-flagged floors and wondering how on earth the long and lanky Lytton Strachey managed to not brain himself on the low ceilings.  The sitting room has light green walls, painted by Virginia, which gives the room a cool, subterrranean feel.  I'd love to visit again.

A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN / THREE GUINEAS at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse - Woolf Works

This year marks the centenary of Nancy Astor being the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons, but she was not the first female MP; that was the Sein Fein member and feminist Countess Constance Markievich who refused to take her seat in the UK Parliament.  A woman who deserves greater acclaim in my eyes than Astor who later was an appeaser and virulent anti-Semite. 

However to celebrate Astor taking her seat and the passing of the first law that banned discrimination based on gender or marriage, the Globe hosted a reading of Virginia Woolf's two most famous essays: A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN on the subject of women and fiction and her more controversial THREE GUINEAS in which she explored the connection between patriarchy and militarism.  It was definitely a game of two halves.

First up was Hattie Morahan with A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN which she interpreted wonderfully.  Both essays were abridged by Globe artistic director Michelle Terry and directed by Blanche McIntyre and it felt like Morahan got the better attention. In A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN, Woolf brilliantly explores the many interpretations of the phrase "Women and fiction": she had been asked to give a talk on the subject in the autumn of 1928 at Newnham and Girton, the two foremost colleges for women in Cambridge, and after these events she enlarged them into a book.

Virginia explores, in a wonderfully 'meta' style, her process of understanding what they wanted to hear: the role of women in fiction or women who have written fiction?  While exploring this quandary, she enlarges it to show us the world around her - being told to stay off the grass by a Cambridge beadle, being refused entry to see a book in the college library by an attendant, musing on the actual financing and building of the college by rich men for their sons' education, the delicious food served at lunch in the men's college compared to the plain and dull dinner served at the women's college.  Back in London and starting her research at the British Library, she discovers many books on the subject of women and their place in society, both here and overseas... all written by men who seem to be very angry about the subject.

It is these unseen influences that leads to Virginia stating that her conclusion is that in the future for a woman to be a successful writer she needs to have an independent income and a room of one's own.  Being allowed to write, unfettered from the distraction of a job or family or visitors, will lead to generations of female writers writing not just fiction but books on many subjects "for books have a way of influencing each other".  On her way to her conclusion she cites such originators as Aphra Behn, the playwright who proved that women could earn a living by writing, the poet Anne Finch, Jane Austen - who Woolf compares to Shakespeare as a writer whose writing shows a clarity of vision with no petty hatreds cluttering that vision - George Elliot, Charlotte Bronte and Emily Bronte. 

She also famously imagines Shakespeare having a sister whom she names Judith, a woman with the same wish to write as her brother and with the same need to express herself but, diametrically opposed to her brother, had no chance of education, no chance of becoming a performer to gain access to the theatre, but meets an actor-manager who promises to help her but instead gets her pregnant and in a fit of despair, Judith killed herself and "lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle".  One of my favourite things to do is to read Virginia Woolf's writing out loud and twice Hattie Morahan paused to simply take a breath, obviously affected by what she was reading.

After the interval Joan Iyiola read THREE GUINEAS, Woolf's controversial reaction to the encroaching shadow of Fascism.  In 1932 Virginia Woolf started writing a new book which would intersperse the fictional story of the well-to-do Pargiter family and their changing fortunes from 1880 to the 1930s with essays relating to aspects within the fictional chapters.  She found it ultimately not to be working so she concentrated on the fictional chapters which later turned into her novel THE YEARS. published in 1937 to huge success.  But the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe led her back to her 1932 essays and she expanded on them, concentrating on the links between the patriarchal society and the rise of militarism and the rush to war.

Like in A ROOM OF OWN'S OWN, Virginia uses repetition to enforce her central thesis, forever circling back to certain thoughts or phrases, but while Morahan made these distinct from each other, Iyiola offered no variation to her tone and sure enough, people started leaving while she was only mid-way through.  I mentally wandered quite a few times and started to feel the agony of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouses's purgatorial seats.  It felt like the first half had been worked on more and poor Joan was left to just read out the text without being able to illuminate it. But any excuse to hear my favourite writer celebrated and spoken aloud is to be grasped at.

WOOLF WORKS Works On Stage, Screen And CD... Living the past again

Nearly two years ago, we took the plunge - in the year of trying new things artistically - and went to Covent Garden to see WOOLF WORKS, a new Royal Ballet production choreographed by Wayne McGregor.  I remember feeling some trepidation... Virginia Woolf is one of my favourite authors for whom language is the key so how can you silence that but still make it relevant?  Two words... Wayne McGregor.

As you can see from my blog it had a profound effect on us both and it did indeed start a continuing exploration of ballet which has been very rewarding.  But how would the first revival of WOOLF WORKS compare - and would it have the same impact?

I am happy to be able to say that it led to a deeper, richer understanding of the work but also there was the added bonus this year of seeing it on the big screen at the Curzon Mayfair and also being able to appreciate the depth of Max Richter's music with it's release on cd.

Onstage we were blessed with practically the same cast as in 2015, the only major replacement being Calvin Richardson and his breathtaking pirouettes dancing the role of 'Evans' for the unwell Tristan Dyer in the MRS. DALLOWAY-inspired 'I Now, I Then'.  The impact of seeing the company onstage was made even more exciting by seeing the same dancers a few days later on the live cinema screening, giving an opportunity to experience their talent closer than possible at the Opera House although there was some loss too, in particular the glorious digital stage image of the garden of Clarissa's imagined youth flooding the set.

McGregor has choreographed three ballets in distinct styles: 'I Now, I Then' is the most narrative; based on MRS DALLOWAY - and introduced with the only known recording of Virginia Woolf musing on the difficulty of using old English words in new ways - we see Clarissa Dalloway (sublime Alessandra Ferri) meeting old flame Peter Walsh (Gary Aves) and relives the glorious summer she spent as a teenager with Peter and her best friend, the free spirited Sally Seton, and how life seemed full of possibility and choice.  The younger selves were danced wonderfully by Francesca Hayward, Federico Bonelli and Beatriz Stix-Brunell.

As Clarissa is lost in memories of what could have been we also see Septimus Smith (the astonishing Edward Watson) who is tortured with the lasting trauma of shell-shock from his experience in the WWI trenches.  His wife Rezia (Akana Takada) tries to keep him engaged in life but he is lost in memories of his friend Evans (Richardson) who was killed before him.  It is a perfect fusion of performance, choreography, design by Cigué, lighting by Lucy Carter - the moment the stage was suffused with glowing red when Septimus danced with Evans was glorious - and, almost a character of it's own, Max Richter's heartbreaking, longing music.

The second act 'Becomings' takes ORLANDO as it's inspiration and is the most abstract of the pieces although during one of the intervals for the screened event Wayne McGregor was interviewed by hosts Darcey Bussell and Clemency Burton-Hill and said he believed that no dance can be truly abstract as the human element will always lend a dance a narrative sense.  Again Lucy Carter's lighting is thrilling: an overhead beam roams the dark stage picking out 12 dancers in varying degrees of glittering gold Elizabethan costumes before a cold laser beam illuminates two of them and we launch into McGregor's take on Woolf's exploration of gender fluidity.

As Richter's music roams from bone-crunching electro beats to minimal keyboard runs so McGregor's choreography changes from solos to duets to triple routines for his remarkable dancers - pushing their limbs into even more challenging shapes and attitudes; the exhilaration is in seeing male and female dancers fusing into just pure dance.  With each segment, they slowly lose their Elizabethan costumes until they are in shades of grey, all dancing in and out of four overhead spotlights, all individual but all unified, until the lights cut out and the auditorium is criss-crossed with shafts of laserlight.  Again the live screening was wonderful to showcase in detail the astonishing work of, among others, Sarah Lamb, Natalia Osipova, Steven McRae and Watson.

The final act is TUESDAY and takes it inspiration from THE WAVES but also references Woolf's suicide note written on Tuesday 25th March 1941, three days before she actually drowned in the River Ouse.  McGregor has the inspired choice of Gillian Anderson reading the wrenching suicide note while a slow-motion film of crashing waves shows on a stage-wide screen all but dwarfing the stationary figure of Ferri beneath.  Anderson's measured, hypnotic delivery leads you in to McGregor's slow meditation on love and loss, beautifully danced by Ferri and Federico Bonelli who are later joined by Sarah Lamb and an ensemble which also includes young students from the Royal Ballet School.

Ferri is astonishing in her poetry and control as she becomes the embodiment of Richter's dreamlike, ethereal music, solitary notes slowly coming together with Anush Hovhannisyan's soprano to wash over you with waves of strings and brass.  There was one moment that haunts me: Alessandra Ferri starts a solo movement against the ensemble's choreography who slowly, three or four at a time, echo her until they are all bending and stretching as one, it's breathtakingly beautiful.  Slowly the ensemble ebb away into the darkness at the back of the stage, as Bonelli lowers a prone Ferri onto the stage as the music slowly vanishes note by note...

As I have said, the live screening was a wonderful opportunity to see the dancers closer than possible in the theatre and there were the added extras of interviews with Wayne McGregor and Max Richter as well as Maggie Smith reading passages from THE WAVES as well as Virginia's memoir MOMENTS OF BEING.

As I have written this I have been able to relive the experience by playing the cd THREE WORLDS of Richter's score; I wondered if it would work separately from the experience of seeing it with the dancers but it works beautifully.  It has been great to be able to explore this work in depth for the past two weeks - I would love the opportunity to see it again.

Exit Through The Giftshop - Postcards at an exhibition....

I am going to do this as an occasional blog...

Usually for me it kicks in about halfway round an exhibition... that's when I start thinking "I wonder if they have this picture as a postcard in the shop?"  Indeed I remember going to the Royal Academy's 1991 Pop Art exhibition with a friend, Jacqui Tomlinson, who *raced* around the gallery barely looking at the Warhols, Lichtensteins and Johns'.  When I caught up with her I asked did she really dislike it that much and she said "No, I just want to get to the shop quicker".  I thought Andy Warhol would have found that particularly funny.

Of course once I get to the shop, I usually start my usual rant: "Why don't they have a postcard of THAT picture??  Why are there only 4 postcards for such a big exhibition - and why are they all the SHITE ones?"  I have yet to get a proper answer to that one...

But we buy the postcards they have - and in a very special case, the catalogue - but what do you do with yours?  Mine tend to sit in various boxes, waiting to be looked at again... so let's get them on here!  I shall put up a few at a time and give my memories of when and where I saw them.

1) CARNATION, LILY, LILY, ROSE (1885-6) - John Singer Sargent

I bought this after seeing the glorious 2015 Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which included the luminous painting of an artist friend's two daughters lighting Chinese lanterns in a twilight garden.  The postcard doesn't exactly do Sargent's colours justice but it's a lovely painting, giving a nod to impressionism but with Sargent's careful staging.

2) EL FINAL DEL NUMERO (1900-1) - Pablo Picasso

I think I bought this at the Courtauld's exhibition BECOMING PICASSO in 2013 which focused on 1901, one of the key years in the artists life. I love his use of pastels in this vivid moment of a singer taking the applause of her audience.

3) MRS HERBERT DUCKWORTH (1867) - Julia Margaret Cameron

 I bought this at the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of Cameron in 2003.  Cameron's niece Julia Jackson posed for this photograph aged 21 and her austere beauty could almost be a personification of Victorian femininity.  Later that year she married the barrister Herbert Duckworth and was left widowed 3 years later with 3 children.  Eight years on she married the writer Sir Leslie Stephen who already had a daughter from his first marriage.  The Stephens would go on to have four more children together before Julia's death at the age of 49.  Her daughters would later rebel against their mother Julia's Victorian values through art (Vanessa Bell) and literature (Virginia Woolf).

4) DAWN, TOMB OF LORENZO DI MEDICI, DUKE OF URBANO (1520-34) - Michelangelo

I bought this in the Medici Chapel in Florence where Michelangelo's monumental tomb for Lorenzo, Duke of Urbano is. The Duke of Urbano was one of the lesser Medici, dying at the age of 26 but his daughter Catherine de Medici would go on to fame as the controlling Queen of France at the time of the Huguenot massacres.  Michelangelo's nude allegorical figure of Dawn however is a glorious statue of weary majesty.

5) SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST (1320) - Giotto

I bought this at the Musée Jacquemart-André, a favourite museum in Paris which usually has interesting exhibitions and an even more interesting restaurant, perfect for déjuner avec un grand patisserie.  This was part of their 2015 exhibition FROM GIOTTO TO CARAVAGGIO and is a fine example of Giotto's skill in humanising his figures, his John The Evangelist is an old man whose kind and wise face is suggested by the lines around his eyes and forehead.  I like the gold trimming on his blue gown and pink shawl... John obviously liked his colours.  I have been told by Owen that "Giotto invented art" and I'm glad he did.

More soon...

WOOLF WORKS: Moments of Being...

I was lost for words when Owen told me he had booked tickets for the Royal Ballet's WOOLF WORKS at Covent Garden.  I just couldn't grasp it... three short ballets based on MRS DALLOWAY, ORLANDO and THE WAVES?  How could this be?  What can there be of Woolf without her writing, it's rhythms and the power to connect moments of her life with ours.  How could this succeed robbed of her words?  It was with this air of quiet bafflement that I took my very good seat in that most sumptuously decadent of London auditoriums and the light lowered as the curtain raised...

Within seconds my central question was resolutely answered.  Virginia's voice sounded out, steady and strong in her only recorded piece for the BBC in 1937, talking about the difficulty with trying to find new forms of writing when English words are so over-familiar through being used again and again.  As we listened, her writing appeared on a screen, meshing and re-forming into a likeness of Virginia then coming apart again.  It was as if choreographer Wayne McGregor was saying that if words have lost their imaginative use then their must be other ways.

The first in the triptych was I NOW, I THEN based on the main characters in MRS DALLOWAY and the atmosphere and mood of the story.  Again after a few minutes not only did the penny drop but I found myself deeply involved.  This was helped by Lucy Carter's sombre lighting, the hazy video projections of London as seen through a dream and the striking set design of Cigué, 3 wooden oblongs that rotated slowly to open up new vistas and configurations, occasionally revealing a new dancer as if from nowhere. 

The hypnotic Alessandra Ferri, returned from retirement, danced the role of Clarissa Dalloway and as the title suggests, she was joined onstage by Francesca Hayward as the younger Clarissa who danced with Beatriz Stix-Brunell as the quicksilver Sally Seton and Gary Avis as the younger Peter Walsh, the older Peter was danced by Federico Bonelli.  Max Richter's intriguing score kept returning to the chiming of Big Ben, ticking clocks and watches, all suggesting Woolf's subject of time, the past and memory.

Edward Watson enthralled as he interpreted McGregor's disjointed choreography as the shell-shocked Septimus Smith partnered by Akane Takada as his despairing wife Rezia.  In a marvellous visual cue, the stage was bathed in a warm reddish light when he danced with Tristan Dyer as Evans, his dead friend from the trenches.

What was good about WOOLF WORKS was that each of the three sections felt totally different, the only connection being the source novelist.  Totally different in tone was BECOMINGS, the second of the three and based on ORLANDO.  Twelve dancers appeared on a darkened stage as an overhead spotlight searched them, their golden costumes gleaming as it swept around them as if trying to find a single person.  It finally alighted on one and the dancers soon started dancing in pairs, male and female, again suggesting Woolf's theme of gender confusion.

This was the longest of the three and it's abstract form did rather outstay it's welcome but what made it all the more thrilling was Richter's crunching music which at one point got so loud I actually thought the circle might give way!  The lighting was all very 80s with laser beams illuminating the dancers, suggesting the other-world space of Orlando's changing gender. The lasers swept into the auditorium too, lighting up each of the circles with beads of light and in a dramatic, sudden finale end with countless lasers firing all over the auditorium, just like the last Pet Shop Boys concert!  It was all very thrilling - and again not what I had expected.

After a second interval - each about the same length as the actual dance pieces themselves - oh and after a second wild strawberry champagne cocktail (I LIKE Covent Garden), it was time for the last of the three, TUESDAY (based on THE WAVES) as the curtain rose on a bare stage apart from a long screen on which a slow film of crashing waves played.  

Gillian Anderson was then heard reading Virginia's heartbreaking suicide letter to Leonard and, as usual when confronted with it, I soon had tears running down my face.  Beautifully read by Anderson and with nothing on stage to distract from the words it was incredibly powerful.  It affects for many reasons: the private nature of a suicide letter to a husband by a writer who always strove to find new ways of describing life, the sheer beauty of the writing even though the content is so tragic, that in describing all she knew she shared with Leonard was not enough to stop Virginia from doing what she did to end her losing battle with her insanity.

Alessandra Ferri was magnificent as the spirit of Woolf, painfully moving through her duet with Federico Bonelli, his attempts to hold her and keep her aloft ending with her escaping away, her sheer force of personality filling the auditorium.  They were joined on stage by children dancing with Sarah Lamb, again Ferri interacting with a dancer playing her younger self, for the children to vanish into an ensemble of dancers who filled the stage with slow, sinuous movement which culminated in Ferri joining them, at first moving on her own but slowly becoming one with their repeated moves, as if subsumed by the rhythm of the waves.

Slowly the ensemble pulled away, moving forward and back, forward and back as Richter's moving composition for strings reached it's climax as Bonelli carried Ferri for the last time to slowly lower her on to the stage to retreat away with the others.  It was powerful, emotional, impossibly moving.  She deserved every minute of her extended ovation, as indeed did her fellow dancers.

At the start of this year, Owen suggested that this should be a year of discovering new cultural things to see and on the back of this visit, Owen has indeed booked to see two more non-Matthew Bourne ballets.  I suspect however that nothing will come close to the emotional tour-de-force of Wayne McGregor's WOOLF WORKS.

"That will be our address forever and ever"

After my emotional visit to the National Portrait Gallery for their exhibition  VIRGINIA WOOLF: ART, LIFE, VISION, the next day was given over to something I had been planning for a long time - going to Virginia Woolf's country home Monk's House in the small Sussex village of Rodmell.

We got the train from Victoria, changing at Lewes for the one-an-hour train to the unmanned station of Southease.  It is a mile walk from there to Rodmell and, for a city mouse like myself, it was an oddly disconcerting feeling for us to be the only ones on the road for as far as you could see!

We walked for a while until we saw a signpost saying 'Rodmell 1/2 Mile' which led us to a country path that wandered up a hill, down a hill, down some roughly constructed stairs and along a field's edge, all the time being fluttered around by butterflies and at one point a rather large Dragonfly that sat quite happily on a flower as I stroked it's wing but flew away sharpish when I opened my Pepsi Max bottle.  Maybe it preferred Diet Coke?

 

Then just as I was beginning to tire of walking, there we were in the village and turning down the quiet road which eventually leads to Monk's House.  The garage was been converted to a shop/visitor centre and, very excited, I opened the gate and walked up the side of the house to the entrance at it's back.  Virginia and Leonard bought the house in 1919 and were able to make much-needed renovations and additions as Virginia's books became more and more successful during the 1920s and 1930s. 

At once I felt happy to be there.  There are very friendly volunteers in each of the four public-access rooms, very happy to tell you about the history of the items on display and the Woolf's life in their home.  The living room is the first you enter and what strikes you first is the low ceiling and the cool, green colour-scheme that makes it a wonderfully calm area.  The colour was one of Virginia's favourites and it adds to the ambiance of the room, the easy chairs facing each other by the fire giving the impression of the Woolf's companionship, Leonard's writing desk open and waiting for him to tear off another letter railing at the injustices of the world...

On all the walls are paintings by those close to the couple, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant are of course represented highly, but there are also paintings contributed by Trekkie Parsons, who shared the house with Leonard after Virginia's death, up until Leonard's own death in 1969.  I was very taken with the low tables in the living room and bedroom, covered with gleaming tiles painted by Grant.

The dining room and kitchen are also on display as is Virginia's small, neat bedroom which was built onto the side of the house in 1929, originally as a writing room but she found it to be an ideal bedroom, it's windows letting in lots of sunlight and surrounded by the garden.

It was humbling to be there and see her personally hand-covered collection of Shakespeare plays and Vanessa's delightful tiled fireplace, painted by her for Virginia to mark the success of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE.

There is also Virginia's writing lodge in the gardens, a short walk away from the house across the lawn, it's doors opening up onto an unspoiled view of the Downs.  We were told that we were lucky that they had a full compliment of volunteers so the lodge was actually open to visitors and it was wonderful to stand there by her writing desk, her glasses and cigarettes still there waiting to be used.  The volunteer said sadly all we could do in there was look and breathe in the air.  That was fine for me.

There is also the very large garden to explore which, like the house, was made bigger as the Woolf's fortunes grew, allowing them to buy up adjacent plots of land.  We were blessed with sunny, warm weather which made it a delight to wander around it's terraces, hidden nooks and allotments.

For a Friday lunchtime it was nicely busy but not excessively so it was easy to wander around at your own pace, doubling back on yourself and exploring all the turnings.  On our wander we discovered the shell of Leonard's greenhouse which they are hoping to renovate and nearby was the side-gate out onto the adjacent lane.  It slowly dawned on me that this was the gate that Virginia used to slip away on that March day in 1941, physically and metaphorically turning her back on her life and writing to walk to the River Ouse.

Sadly the two elm trees - which the couple named 'Virginia' and 'Leonard' - that their ashes were buried under are no longer there.  One died through Dutch Elm disease while the other was blown down in a gale and one of the volunteers told me they would love to replant them if they could find an elm resistant to the disease.

After the necessary purchases from the garage shop, it was time to reflect and have lunch in the nearby village pub then to do the walk back though the fields to the station and return to London.  Virginia loved London life with it's teeming vibrancy and cultural whirl but when it all got too much for her, there was Monk's House to regain her equilibrium and to sink into the quiet she so desperately needed.

I am already looking forward to visiting again...