London, early spring, and "art"

In London, for the very very last REF meeting (I will miss it! though probably not as much, alas, as if we'd had all our meetings in person).  I will not miss drinking coffee and eating toast and marmite at 1.30 a.m. before spending a whole day (or night) on Zoom.  And as a treat, we've been put up in a very comfortable hotel, the NYX, very close to the British Museum - a hotel with a startlingly awful attempt to try and incorporate contemporary art, but at least they're trying ...

Anyone who knows the area will know that the top image is of Bloomsbury Square, and might well guess that I was heading to my favorite art dealers, Abbott and Holder, to pick up an interesting watercolor/gouache that I'd bought on line (obviously by someone, by which I mean someone with a trained painter's eye and technique, but unsigned and undated).  I knew that going in there in person would be a fatal move: I came out with a little Helen Allingham w/c of reapers in Surrey, as well.  Clearly, the hotel art below bears no relation to this.

It's totally wonderful to be in Central London again.

 

transportation

There was just time between my last live NAVSA obligation, and leaving for the airport to go for a walk - I'll be stuck on a plane for hours, so I was very glad of this, even if it was all rather a scurry.  Down near the Griffith Park Zoo, the Safari Shuttle seems to be in a precarious way ... 

 

he's getting longer

Poor Gramsci was quite disappointed that he didn't see any on-screen cats at NAVSA today.  I pointed out to him that this was surely because almost all the papers that I heard had powerpoints accompanying them, and that meant that the possibilities of feline-spotting were, therefore, sadly limited.  I think he wanted to show off his stripes and spots, which surely are strong contenders for the NAVSA Pet of the Year contest (that isn't an official thing, but I'm sure we could run one).  It's been an intellectually exciting few days, even if we've not, alas, been in Vancouver - with the added bonus that very soon, we'll be able to catch up on sessions that we missed, courtesy of recording mechanisms.  But how I wish that, right now, we were taking out Cannon Schmitt, this evening's plenary speaker, for a terrific dinner - he amply deserves it, since his paper was eloquent, and thought provoking, and made me want to go away and read differently - and how often can one say that after a keynote?  

 

Moth, wondering

... (a) whether Gramsci is about to come up the stairs (almost certainly yes, Mothy - if I'm taking a photo of you, remember that young Tony is a cat who doesn't like me to be out of his sight);

(b) why Gramsci is making lots of appearances at #NAVSA2022 (because he doesn't like me to be out of his sight);

(c) why it's so cold?  Can't answer that one.

 

summer indolence

This arrived today!  And proved absolutely impossible to photograph without reflections, until I turned out all the lights and tried a very long exposure.  So the etching is actually sharper than this suggests - indeed, very delicate.  It was a very happy eBay find: a Millais etching from 1861, entitled "Summer Indolence".  Here's a clearer image of it, from the print in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection.

A printed version appeared in Passages from Modern English Poets Illustrated by the Junior Etching Club (1861), and the figure was modeled by Alice Elizabeth Gray, a younger sister of Millais's wife Effie (she's the one on the left in Autumn Leaves).  And you've seen her before in this pose!  Here she is in Apple Blossoms, on the right hand side:

But the etching completely lacks that ominous scythe, suggesting the frailty of grass, flesh, and young ladies who chew grass stems in a provocative way.

This seemed especially apt today, since the USPS delivered it just after I'd finished talking about Millais (admittedly in the context of pheasant and duck shooting and salmon fishing, and rewilding of Scottish moors, not apple orchards) on the first day of the (alas, virtual) NAVSA conference.  Ever so many thanks to those of you who came!

 

waiting to pounce

Coming down the stairs can be a perilous task: one's ankles are vulnerable.  Young Gramsci made an appearance at today's department meeting, and is gearing up for three and a half days of conference participation, I fear.

 

light in darkness

The smell of jasmine is strong in the front of the house: I'm clearly trying to force my pictures of it into some kind of symbolic role, in what - despite some spirited words from Biden in his State of the Union Speech - seems an increasingly dark situation in Ukraine.  But I do like the idea of going after houses, and yachts, and - well, I wonder how much Russian money is in what remains of Trump's businesses?