Postcards To Chris

My partner went on a stag-do last weekend. I told him this was what I imagined it looked like at the end of the night, but he said there was no nudity and no Minotaur, and the Bacchic Scenes consisted of the best man vomiting on the pavement outside Travelodge.

Caption:
Bacchic Scene with Minotaur, from the Vollard Suite
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
18 May 1933, Paris
Etching
295 x 365 mm
Presented by the Hamish Parker Charitable Trust in memory of Major Horace Parker
The British Museum, PD 2011, 7096.85

Some of these sculptures look as though they were inspired by parsnips. Or maybe I’ve already got Christmas dinner on the brain.

Caption:
David Nash
The Great Barn
Projects Environment ‘Art Barns’ 1999
Gawsthorpe Hall Padiham Lancs
by courtesy of the National Trust

I completed Nanowrimo last week so I wanted a postcard related to writing, although this one suggests I’ve been drinking absinthe and hallucinating lizards which isn’t entirely accurate.

Caption: M.C. Escher ® (1898-1972) / Reptiles, 1943 / Lithograph / © 1943 M.C. Escher Foundation-Baarn-Holland / All rights reserved

This image is currently on display in the exhibition Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire at the British Library. I love the liveliness of the squirrels and the autumnal colours in this painting. The emperor Jahangir gave the artist Abu’l Hasan the title “the Wonder of the Age”, an epithet I think we should all aspire to.

Caption:
Squirrels in a plane tree
Ascribed to the artist Abu’l Hasan, 1605-08
Johnson Album 1, 30

We went to the exhibition Seduced by Art: Photography Past & Present at the National Gallery.

Ori Gersht reinvents the traditional floral still life by freezing his flower arrangements with liquid nitrogen and then exploding them. It’s tempting to have a go at home with the miniature rose from Tesco or a bunch of bananas.

There are more images from the Blow Up series on the Mummery + Schnelle website.

Caption:
Blow Up; Untitled 5, 2007
Ori Gersht
LightJet print mounted on aluminium
248 x 188 x 6 cm (framed)
© Courtesy of the artist and Mummery + Schnelle, London

This brilliant image expresses the circadian confusion of my jet lag.

Caption:
M.C. Escher ® (1898-1972) / Day and Night, 1938 / Woodcut / © 1938 M.C. Escher Foundation-Baarn-Holland / All rights reserved

Last week we celebrated the festive season at the Dovetail Belgian bar in Clerkenwell with heaps of roast potatoes washed down with lashings of Chimay.

Caption:
Alfons Mucha: Bières de la Meuse, c. 1897
Peissenberg, Artothek

It’s been a damp and dreary week. I love this photo - never has damp and dreary looked so good. It reminds me of a poem in an anthology I had when I was little:
I like the town on rainy nights
When everything is wet -
When all the town has magic lights
And streets of shining jet!

Caption:
Exposition: New York et l’Art moderne, Alfred Stieglitz et son cercle, 1905-1930
Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Octobre 2004-Janvier 2005.

EDWARD J. STEICHEN (1879-1973)
The Flat Iron, 1904
Épreuve à la gomme bichromatée bleu-vert sur papier préparé au palladium / 25,2 x 32,1 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
© Photo The Metropolitan Museum of Art
© Permission of Joanna T. Steichen / Carousel, 2004
© R.M.N., Paris 2004

Happy Halloween! I don’t really like Halloween, but I have nonetheless made a jack o’lantern out of an orange and am wearing an unsightly pair of novelty socks with a spider-web motif.

Caption:
03-B11106 / Edvard Munch, 1863-1944
Geschrei (The Scream) (1895)
lithograph, .483 x .388 m (19 x 15 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.9038
© NGA

We held a housewarming this weekend, and showed off notre chambres.

Caption:
Van Gogh Vincent
1853 - 1890
La chambre de Van Gogh à Arles, 1889
Huile sur toile
0,575 x 0,740
Musée d’Orsay, Paris