I feel slightly spoiled, after a week away I took this Friday off as well since my friend was visiting from Amsterdam, on top of it Monday is a bank holiday meaning 4 day weekend and two 4 day work weeks.
The weather was nice and on Friday my friends and I walked to Brixton Market and had a quick bite at Rosie’s and a massive catchup.
Saturday was not bad either and we had a picnic by my friend’s pool (yes, an outdoor pool in London!). I made an apricot cake, same recipe as tea cakes but in one piece and baked for about an hour, apricots and ground almonds on top. I love this recipe, it is so adaptable and the cake is not too sweet.
Sunday came and so did the autumn, tricked by the sunshine outside I put on a summer dress and was off for a day in town. Oh my Lord, I was so cold and felt totally silly with my summer attire, luckily I was not the only one. I didn’t give up though and off we went to Tate Modern to see a couple of exhibitions.
Natalia Goncharova ‘The Cyclist’
The first one was Futurism, this starts with Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto and has a great representation of artists including Boccioni, Carrà, the Cubist movement, Russian avant-garde and the Duchamp brothers to name very very few. The show explains the relationship with Cubism as well as movements directly created from it like Orphism and Vorticism with great examples of all of them. There is Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Duchamp-Villon’s The Large Horse, Robert Delaunay’s The Cardiff Team, Natalia Goncharova’s The Cyclist (one of my favorite painting in the exhibition), Severini’s vibrant The Dance of the Pan-Pan at the “Monico” and Nevinson’s La Mitraillause.
C.R.W. Nevinson ‘La Mitraillause’
The Futurists loved speed, movement, modern machinery, streets, telegraphs, cars, planes, war. Morinetti was massively opposed pretty much the whole past, especially English decorative arts, romanticism, Pre-Raphaelits, revival trends and so on. He was also a misogynist and called for women to become more masculine so both sexes are the same, this strongly emerged in Russia where male and female artists became equal, one of the best being Liubov Popova, something that did not happen in Europe till much later.
Futurism died with the WWI, it was revived after the war but very soon it was overtaken by the … future, and other trends that evolved from it like Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism and Dada.
Robert Delaunay ‘The Cardiff Team’
I came out of the exhibition feeling very well informed, I finally fully understood the movement and wanted to find out more. The exhibition ends on the 20th of September.
We also had a look at Per Kirkeby’s show, I must admit, I am not a fun.
Then we headed to town to grab a bite at Pollo Bar in Old Compton Street where we indulged on pizza and good Chianti.
We finished the day by popping to few shops to check out the winter collections, high on my list is a winter coat and the first contender is this A.P.C. beauty but single breasted.
Now I am sitting wrapped in a woolly cardigan, drinking a cup of tea and planning tomorrow. I also must find the time to go to The Hayward, The Serpentine and The Whitechapel galleries before the exhibitions change.
I finally got my last disc of Mad Men, it was a very painful realisation that it will be a while before season three comes out in UK but the clever people at AMC made the 1st episode available online, fingers crossed they will do it every week!
