TRAVEL: Glimpses of Morocco

 

 

PEOPLE I Admire - Christiane Amanpour

I hugely admire Christiane Amanpour (CNN), forthright, a melodious voice, well briefed natch but convincing on screen. Her personality and her looks are outstanding in the world of reportage where jabber jabber predominates - she is a beacon. 

LIVING BY DESIGN: Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid's talent simmered for years and then there was an explosion of buildings thanks be to an architects who is both innovative and a life enhancer. 

COMMENT - Tate Britain, London

Tate Britain at Millbank in London – extensively refurbished, more places to eat!  Very well done EXCEPT for the lights on the stairs and lobbies, the most mundane milk glass balls, surely the budget could have run to have hanging lights designed?  There are enough talented designers in this country. Admittedly on a very grey day, the lighting in the galleries was poor. The pictures, whether of the 1940’s or the 1600’s look FLAT, rather depressing - not so the Turners or a glowing Howard Hodgkins. 

Another exception - Henry Moore’s monumental sculptures, a room dedicated to him has pale lavender/blue walls – they look great.

ART I admire: Jacomo Pontormo [1494-1557]

Deposition from the Cross [1525-1528]

FABRICS: John Stefanidis Archive: MILETUS

LIVING BY DESIGN: Detail of John Stefanidis designed gros point [needepoint) rug with an Indian design

COMMENT / POETRY: Robert Browning

When to divorce was very difficult many a husband [or a wife, to be politically correct] on reading Robert Browning's poem My Last Duchess might wish today's mores were as they have been in centuries past - dispose of your spouse but have a portrait [photograph] painted to indulge your pride.

"There is my last Duchess painted on the wall
Looking as if she were alive!"

Find the rest on Google!

ART I Admire: Piero di Cosimo [1462-1521]

A Satyr mourning over a Nymph [1486-1510]

POETRY: Philip Larkin

'I have started to say'

I have started to say

'A quarter of a century'

Or 'thirty years back'

About my own life.

It makes me breathless.

It's like falling and recovering

In huge gesturing loops

Through an empty sky.

All that's left to happen

Is some deaths [my own included].

Their order, and their manner,

Remain to be learnt.

LIVING BY DESIGN: Abstract & Floral Designs by E. A Seguy

...From the days when the civilised world regarded Paris as the centre of the world of art and looked to that most chic of cities for the lead in fashions, not only in painting and music, but in dress and even, to some degree, in manners and mores....

Stephen Calloway, Assistant Curator, Victoria & Albert Museum 

BOOKS: The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

Prompted by the BBC and the Press we have been amply reminded of 1914.

On the recommendation of Gita Mehta [see blog entry of Jan 13, 2013  ] I am about to embark on reading 1130 pages from the German translation of The Man Without Qualities, a Picador paperback previously published by Knopf in 1995 by Editor-in-Chief Sonny Mehta, a star of the publishing world, amongst whose writers are 10 Nobel Prize winners, is that not a WOW?

COMMENT: The New York Review of Books - the best!

ART I Admire: Oscar Murillo

Oscar Murillo, the new Colombian - a painterly painter - check him out, he is GOOD.

THEATRE: Ghosts

At London's Trafalgar Studios, I finally saw

the Almeida Theatre production of GHOSTS by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Richard Eyre who also directed the play: 'what I have written is a "version" or "adaptation" or "interpretation" of Ibsen's play, but I hope it comes near to squaring the circle of being close to what Ibsen intended while seeming spontaneous to an audience today".  

Impeccable - theatre at its best - an outstanding cast - Lesley Manville's performance as Helene Alving will be hard to forget. 

A searing criticism of nineteenth century values and hypocrisy but sympathetic to the human condition nonetheless. OMG has England not got good actors and talented directors.

FABRICS: John Stefanidis 'Paulina'

John Stefanidis Fabrics available from:

London, UK - Tissus d'Helene

Showroom: Chelsea Harbour, London, SW10 0XF

Phone: +44 (0) 20 7352 9977

Email: sales@tissusdhelene.co.uk 

Website: tissusdhelene.co.uk

Miami, USA - Monica James

Showroom: 40 NE 40th Street, Miami, FL 33137

Phone: + 1 305-576-6222

Email: sales@monicajames.com

Website: monicajames.com

Los Angeles, USA – Harbinger

Showroom: 752 North La Cienega Blvd,West Hollywood, CA 90069

Phone: +1 310 858 6884

Email: Info@HarbingerLA.com

Website: harbingerla.com