Swirling and twirling through movie ballrooms

After seeing Heaven's Gate a few weeks ago I started thinking about films that had amazing dance scenes - by this I mean mass traditional ballroom type dancing - not salsa, disco jive etc. They are of course, I have just realised, all historic depictions - maybe this is what makes them so breathtaking. What they all share is amazing movement - so that as you watch you are swept up in the dancing. As someone who really can not dance this is the nearest I come to feeling what it must be like to be floating around the ballroom in a beautiful, big, swirling dress

So here are my favourites..

Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938)
Bette Davis plays headstrong Southern Belle Julie in pre Civil War America. She wants to live life to the full and refuses to play by the rules. At the annual Olympus Ball she decides to wear red rather than the traditional white - this marks her out as an immoral woman in the eyes of her fellow party goers. The ballroom scene is brilliantly filmed in black and white, using Wyler's trademark deep focus to show the whole scene. The crowded dance floor feels claustrophobic and is filmed from a low angle to give us the sickening vertiginous feeling Julie has when she realises that she may have gone too far. When she steps on to the dance floor everyone starts to depart leaving her to dance on her own. Wyler's ballroom influences all the film ballrooms to come.

Madame Bovary (Vincente Minnelli. 1949)
Jennifer Jones plays the beautiful, ambitious and very foolish Madame Bovary. When she receives an invitation to a society ball she swiftly ditches her homely, doctor husband, to become the belle of the ball and dances with an unending supply of society men. When the charming and handsome Boulanger (Louis Jourdan) asks her to dance, her head spins as he swirls her (and us, as the camera takes her point of view) around the dance floor. When she (and the rest of us) start to feel dizzy and eventually faint there is an extraordinary sequence where the host orders that the servants smash the windows to allow her to cool down. This is all done in Minnelli's trademark super stylish way.

Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)
The film begins at Harvard with a new class of graduating students. Their final ball is a huge open air extravaganza befitting of a film that bankrupted a studio. The camera starts by circling the group of dancers before getting right into the middle of them, gliding and drifting around just as they do, getting faster and faster and more claustrophobic as the Blue Danube speeds up. It is spectacular.

Anna Karenina (Joe Wright, 2012)
After only meeting him once Anna (Keira Knightly) encounters Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) for the second time at a ball where he orders her to dance with him. As soon as they face each their eyes lock, in classic romantic encounter style, and nothing else matters. Wright brilliantly depicts this by making the dancers around them freeze and start moving as if they are in another world altogether. Vronsky lifts Anna up and holds her there for just too long before they dance a curiously formal dance where they raise their arms and place them against each other whilst never breaking eye contact with each other. It is intense.

Paul Nash and Dymchurch

Paul Nash first visited Dymchurch, a seaside town on Romney Marsh, Kent in 1919 and he found it to be ‘a delightful place with much inspiring material for work’. He returned numerous times and even rented a cottage to help him recover from a breakdown after his experiences of WWI.

He was particularly impressed by the vast sea wall at Dymchurch, a man-made structure designed to protect the Marsh from flooding from the sea.

In 2011 a new seawall was built at Dymchurch - it is impressively futuristic but still somehow retains the atmosphere that is embodied in Paul Nash's paintings and etchings.

More photos

Wild River

Two of my current fascinations Montgomery Clift and Elia Kazan come together in a film I saw as part of the BFI's Montgomery Clift season last night - Wild River (1960). As with all the films that these two great artists have made it did not disappoint.

It was a really important film for Kazan who wanted to imbibe the lead character Chuck Glover (Montgomery Clift) with all the idealism that he himself had in the 1930s. Chuck works for the TVA and thinks he can make people's lives better by implementing a scheme to dam the Tennessee River which will prevent floods and provide electricity. The only fly in the ointment is that some people don't want to sell the land that needs to be flooded to allow the scheme to go ahead. Glover travels to Tennessee to smooth things over, sees that things are more complex, upsets the status quo by employing a black labour force at equal pay, falls in love with one of the 'enemies', and gets attacked by a mob.

The other stars of the film are Jo Van Fleet who plays the unmoving matriarch Ella Garth and a luminous Lee Remick in one of her first film roles who plays her granddaughter and Glover's love interest Carol.

The film looks great - shot on location in Tennessee the landscape is vast and the skies are always blue (whenever it isn't raining). Jo Van Fleet is also very good as the feisty old lady. But of course it is Monty and more surprisingly Remick that hold the fascination for me. Their faces are so enthralling and their personas so captivating that I wanted them on screen the whole time. Their affair is depicted in a wholly unusual way - nothing explicit is ever shown but the erotic tension between them is palpable. A comment from the IMDb message board explains one such scene...

I like the scene where Clift tells Remick not to walk around in front of him, then she goes to the cupboard at the back of the room and gives herself a splinter, only then does Clift embrace her. I like the way it is staged, it is unusual for the emotional height of a scene to take place so far from the camera, it feels more genuine than if they were just shot in ever tighter close ups.

In fact Clift rushes to Remick when she exclaims in pain and proceeds to vigorously suck her finger before they embrace - wow.

Apparently Kazan originally wanted Brando for the part (because as he says he wanted Brando for everything at the time) and Marilyn was mooted for Remick's part. This would of course have changed everything. Kazan says that he altered the emphasis of the film to fit Monty - he realised that he couldn't convincingly play the dominant partner in the relationship with Remick and so he switched things to make her take the lead. This makes the film very different from standard 1950s fare and very contemporary.

The film didn't get much a release in 1960 as the studio didn't think it would find an audience and it is generally pretty much unseen. If you get the chance I wholly recommend it.

As for Monty I'll leave you with these words from Trevor Johnson's intro to the BFI's Montgomery Clift season. ... 'He lived fast, he died young, and he remained cool enough to have The Clash write their song The Right Profile about him…. "That’s Montgomery Clift, honey!".

A Royal Affair

It didn't make my 2012 top ten because I have only just seen it and I didn't see it at the cinema. But A Royal Affair is definitely one of the best films of 2012 - it is really very, very good. It has been nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar but I suspect that it may lose out to Amour. 

The film is Danish but please don't let that put you off - and if you watch the killing you may even find some of the language familiar - tak anyone. The female lead in the film - Alicia Vikander - played Kitty in Anna Karenina and has a kind of wonderfully blank quality that is also there in Elizabeth Olsen's face. The hero Mads Mikkelson has played baddies in mainstream films such as Casino Royal and also has an extraordinary face with a long straight nose, high cheek bones and wide lips.

The plot is a piece of Danish history that I knew nothing about - but it is compelling. It will remind you in places of other films (Marie Antoinette (2006), The Madness of King George (1994), Barry Lyndon (1975) etc.) but it is perfectly composed and contained and very much its own thing. It is also very beautiful.

Top Films of 2012

Its that time of year - so I thought I would join in and add my top ten films of 2012 to the many other lists. These are films that I saw on their first UK release at the cinema during 2012.

1: The Master
Stylish, intriguing and actually masterful. It might not have a straightforward story but it is always engaging. Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant (surely his character is modelled on the tics and quirks of Montgomery Clift) and I love love love the scene in the department store.

2: Martha Marcy May Marlene
Creepily atmospheric film about getting involved with a cult. The star, Elizabeth Olsen, has the most brilliantly expressive big face, her thoughts ripple across it making it readable without the need for dialogue. The music by Jackson C Frank is also very very good.

3: Shame
Michael Fassbender is a tour de force. I enjoyed his android version of Peter O'Toole in Prometheus but it is Brandon in Shame that is his major achievement of the year. His depiction of this dysfunctional character is deeply real, managing to be repulsive and strangely attractive at the same time. The acting performance of the year.

4: Electrick Children
A first film for director Rebecca Thomas. Charming story which pairs up a naive Mormon heroine (If this film had been made in the 1950s she could have been played by Marilyn Monroe) with a shambolic kind hearted stoner.

5: Amour
Not fun but it is completely engrossing which considering the whole film is set in a small apartment is quite an achievement. Occasionally director Haneke slips into cruelness but for the most part the film has a chilling honesty to it.

6: Silver Linings Playbook
Really enjoyable non-cheesy rom com (although there is not that much com). I also liked Take This Waltz and Liberal Arts which kind of have a similar feel to them but Silver Linings Playbook comes out on top for its originality and dancing.

7: The Descendants
I like director / writer Alexander Payne's downbeatness which makes things seem real. This is a story of a quiet guy played by George Clooney and how he copes with the circumstances that he finds himself in. Its also great to see Hawaii on screen post Elvis's Paradise Hawaiian Style.

8: Anna Karenina
Beautiful. Full of little Brechtian bits and pieces - most of the film is set in an old theatre. As with Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis (see below) Aaron Johnson is perfectly cast as a shallow, handsome young man.

9: Cosmopolis
Worth the admission price just to look at the beautiful Pattinson face which is on screen in close-up for just about the entire film. Pattinson stars as a spoilt New Yorker who lives life purely on the surface. For most of the film he is in the back of a limousine which is stuck in traffic at various points around NYC. I think that director Cronenberg is having a little bit of a laugh at Pattinson and his stardom (in the same way that he has with Kiera Knightly in A Dangerous Method by making her gurn her way throughout the film). But Rob somehow runs with this and gives a really strong performance.

10: Goodbye First Love
There is something very French about the heroine and the story both of which have their roots in the director's own life. The heroine is self obsessed and a little amoral and the plot is unexpected, untidy and rambling but this gives the film a ring of truth that a neat beginning, middle and end could never provide.

Other honourable mentions (in no particular order) go to...
Take This Waltz
Liberal Arts
Starlet
On the Road
Skyfall
Breaking Dawn Part 2
Young Adult
She Monkeys

Disappointments were...
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Holy Motors
Avengers Assemble
Berberian Sound Studio
A Dangerous Method
Killing Them Softly

And my rock bottom film is...
Rock of Ages (truly, truly terrible, I am ashamed that I went to a cinema to see it)

It Always Rains on Sunday

I went to see It Always Rains on Sunday a couple of days ago at the BFI. It is a British film made by Robert Hamer in 1947 and is part of the BFIs Dark Ealing series. I have now become slightly obsessed with it because it is so good - it is going to be released around the country and on DVD so if you get the chance check it out.

It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)

The film is set in Bethnal Green, stars Googie Withers (who is brilliant) and centres on the claustrophobic interior of a small terraced house. The plot has a bit of everything - melodrama, thriller, action, romance but what I liked the most were the everyday details. The record shop on Petticoat Lane, the bits of Yiddish dialogue and talk of Jewish families moving to Stamford Hill,  the Anderson Shelter in the backyard, the bread and marg etc etc. These details are a seamless part of the whole. The film is sometimes called a British film noir and also cited as the first kitchen sink film. It does have both of those genres represented in it but like another British film that is really worth seeing,  Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), it is not easily categorised.

Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957)

Why 'is Kristen Stewart's Bella a Good Role Model?' is an irrelevant question.

Kristen Stewart as Bella in Twilight

Kristen Stewart was interviewed in The Guardian yesterday, mostly about her new film Snow White and the Huntsman but also about the thorny subject of Twilight and its suitability as an important text/film for young girls. For those who don't know Kristen Stewart was one of the stars of the Twilight series of films. The first film was a low budget affair directed by Catherine Hardwicke which escalated into a huge money spinner for all concerned. The following films are slicker and less interesting but have nonetheless been massive blockbusters the world over. Interviewer Kira Cochrane says about the character Stewart plays in Twilight:

'Bella Swan might be devoid of any obvious interests beyond her lust for vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black, but her very blankness has allowed a generation of young women who are in love or would like to be to live out their longings for dangerous, unattainable men.'


and goes on to say:


'She (Stewart) plays a character who is a terrible role model in Twilight, but in person is a blessed relief.'


I think that this misses the point that she was interestingly edging towards in the first quote. Bella is a teenage girl who has led a pretty ordinary, unhappy life; she is socially awkward and does not fit in anywhere. She is intelligent and good at her school work but her real love (before meeting Edward) is the escapist world of fiction and she is a voracious reader. She is blank in the way that any teenager is blank, the experiences that form their character are still to come. In Twilight she meets a man (who yes does happen to be a vampire which has all sorts of metaphorical meanings) who she falls passionately in love with. This happens in life (although admittedly it tends not to involve a vampire) and critics who disapprove just need to try and remember back to how it was. Bella does not act stupidly - she is very sensible mostly, and like anyone would be, is excited by the new opportunities that this first love opens up. So why is she a bad role model? And why does Cochrane think that Stewart, the woman and actress, should be anything like the made-up character she plays in a film?


Interestingly in the print version of the newspaper there is an ad for a recently released French film whose English title is Goodbye First Love. Presumably this placement is not accidental. The film covers very similar ground to Twilight with the exception that fifteen year old Camille is sleeping with her older boyfriend and he is not into her as much as Edward is into Bella. Camille's feelings are intense and she relishes the misery of being in love. The director, Mia Hanson-Love, has said that the story is autobiographical - so these things do actual happen. 

Lola Créton as Camille in Goodbye First Love

Twilight has been such a huge success because it taps into feelings that are really felt and elevates them to a situation of heightened romanticism (maybe like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre etc etc). Rationally the conclusion can only be that Bella is a much better teenage role model that the mooning, un-criticised by the press Camille because she is much, much stronger willed. But ultimately why does she have to be seen as a role model at all. She is, as Cochrane pointed out, a blank canvas and as such we can project our desires onto her. Every James Bond style action hero is not pushed as some kind of role model for young men. So please leave Bella alone and let Kristen Stewart get on with her career.

This Week's Film Top Ten

I have watched ten films in the last week and some of them have been really very bad. So I thought I would give my top ten count down... Oh and Avengers Assemble and Damsels in Distress deserve their place below a very annoying Barbra Streisand film at the very bottom of the list.

1: Buffalo 66
2: An American in Paris
3: Sideways
4: Goodbye First Love
5: Jane Eyre
6: The Young Girls of Rochefort
7: Bridesmaids
8: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
9: Damsels in Distress
10: Marvel Avengers Assemble

Buffalo 66 takes the number one spot. I haven't seen it for years and I hadn't remembered how much bits of it look like a David Lynch film. Yes it is pretentious but Christina Ricci is just stunning - she looks like a sulky little piglet in her baby blue dress and eyeshadow and super glossy lips. If you haven't seen it you should.

In Defence of Madonna's W.E. (kind of)

I can't help feeling that Madonna's main problem is that she doesn't know how to rein it in (see her performance at the 2012 Superbowl final). W.E. is her second film as a director and has everything in it and by this I mean ever idea and whim that she has ever had. It is autobiographical and historic, stylistically all over the place, a thriller and a revisionist drama. But despite what the critics say it is definitely not one of the worst films ever made (as was suggested by Mark Kermonde on Radio 5 on 20.01.12), it is quite revealing and actually pretty entertaining. AN Wilson on Radio 4's Front Row had it about right - W.E. is about fairy tales and how they don't happen.

Abbie Cornish as Wally Winthrop in W.E.

Lots of reviews of W.E. are very scathing about the complex structure of the film which combines a modern day tale of a young woman with the unfortunate name Wally (named by a family who were for some unexplained reason Wallis lovers) with the historic story of the Duchess of Windsor. Maybe Madonna should have kept it simple a la The Kings Speech but personally I found the modern tale quite captivating and the history a little dull. Abbie Cornish who I loved in Jane Campion's Bright Star plays Wally. She has the most extraordinary big face which I find visually fascinating - it's gauche and sophisticated all at once. She is trapped in an unhappy relationship and this is where a flurry of what I suspect are autobiographical references come in. It appears that her British husband is unfaithful, she wants children, he doesn't and he leaves her alone much of the time. When she spends money at an auction buying some of Wallis Simpson's gloves he goes crazy. She gave up her career as an auction house assistant - which he thought was a silly job - to live her fantasy life of the much loved wife, now he controls her - he has the money and the power. There are some really pertinent points here which male critics fail to grasp - it doesn't matter how rich or poor you are this kind of scenario is being played out in the lives of women the world over. To escape from her life Wally daydreams and even talks to Wallis Simpson. This is pure Kilimnik - a woman escaping an abusive relationship by thinking herself into another life. Of course fairy tales do not come true and just as Wallis Simpson's dream life became a kind of gilded prison so does Wally's marriage. Mark Kermode has a problem with rich people moaning about their lives - but surely you can suffer emotionally whether you are rich or poor. 

Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson in W.E.

Aside from the emotional heart of the film there are some great stylistic touches and as shallow as it may be I have to admit that the clothes are beautiful. On the downside too much of the film looks like fashion shoots or pop videos, a little more truth and a little less style would have helped the audience engage a little more. A scene of Wallis and Edward on the beach is self consciously lifted from Hoyningen-Huene's famous 1930 fashion image, another scene with numerous umbrellas is taken from Madonna's video for Rain directed by Mark Romanek. Oh and making the Queen Mum a major baddie was never going to go down well in the UK, however badly history has misrepresented poor Wallis. 

Hoyningen-Huene

In a feature about this year's Oscar nominations in The Observer Bidisha noted that women have generally been overlooked with a general lack of award nominations for the likes of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Wuthering Heights and Bridesmaids and she goes on to say 'guess what, Madonna's W.E. is a thousand times better than royal borefest The King's Snooze, in which a man spends two hours overcoming a speech impediment while Helena Bonham Carter looks on. W.E. actually has proper roles for women in it – and, sorry haters, Madonna can direct.'

Mrs Simpson and Edward as depicted in W.E.

Arty is 30

Arty was first published in 2001 with an A5 photocopied and stapled issue featuring rioters wearing Mark Jacobs shoes on the cover. Friday 13 January 2012 saw the launch of Arty 30 alongside Hayley Lock's show (Now that would be) Telling: Caddington Hall at Transition Gallery. The zine is a little bigger than issue 1 and has been litho printed but it is still black and white. The theme of the new issue is The Cult of KK - KK being the American artist Karen Kilimnik. Kilminik's work is all about escapism  - Versailles with a touch of heroin chic, the hammer and sickle flying above the Tzarina - you get the picture. So really not far removed from the glamourous rioters of issue 1.

I have been thinking a lot about now and then. When I watch an old film I am struck just as much by its relevance as by its obsolescence. Things change less and more than we think - all at the same time. I think we get hung up on the look of things - outmoded materials, technologies, techniques, language, styles - the surface that makes films, photos, objects, books etc seem different and old. But the essence, the story, the way that people act is usually completely relevant and consistent. The look of things however does change alarmingly fast, making an image or object from 5 years ago look strange and of its time.

Back to the 10 year old Arty 30 - everything has changed and yet it has stayed pretty much the same. This is all quite fitting in an issue about Kilimnik. Her playful mixing up of everything that appeals to her could be equally applied to Arty. The issue features a number of texts about her work by long time admirers and new devotees as well as fiction, images and even a letter from the lady herself. Kilimnik does of corse repel as well as attract and there are many people who can not stand her whimsy. I am sorry if you are one of these people because you are missing out - there is no other artist quite like KK.

Independent publishing is not a money making exercise and if you admire, respect or enjoy Arty can I please encourage you to buy or subscribe. Its available online or in lots of shops and only costs £3. Without this support Arty will become a museum piece. If you want to know a bit more about Arty there is an interview with me by Teal Triggs in a feature called Smells Like Zine Spirit in the new B Magazine (Issue 5).

Phew Christmas is over and now it is time to go naked.

Christmas has dragged on but this week it is all systems go as the art world gives itself a shake and drags itself off the sofa. Tonight there is a mighty coming together of 100 painters at The Perfect Nude show at Wimbledon College of Art. Curated (not organised?) by Phillip Allen and Dan Coombs it is meant to be an un-ironic gathering of contemporary figure painting. This is a hard ask for an artist today - irony is one of our major tools. From the images I have seen there is thankfully still quite a lot of irony in evidence.

The whole issue of painting a nude is fraught with anxiety - painting a female is pandering to the male centric ways of art history, while painting a male nude is just pretty unappealing. I compromised by painting a bit of a nude Anne Heche from Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho (Anne Heche is showering, soon she will be murdered). It seemed kinder to hide her nudity a bit and the idea of remaking a remake of an iconic nude scene was I thought quite fitting. For some strange reason I am quite drawn to shower scenes at the moment. I have just painted David Hockney in the shower as seen in his 70s film A Bigger Splash. The painting is to go with a text I have written for the new 'Paint' issue of Garageland which is currently in production. I will tell more in a future post.

Art Fairs v Artist Led

Yesterday at Sluice Art Fair I took part in a panel discussion alongside Jasper Joffe and Alistair Gentry. Its was ‘Looking at the nature of art fairs within the contemporary art world as a whole - are they necessary? What's their relationship or even impact on art production? What's the effect on the way art is digested and understood by the wider public beyond the art world in-crowd?’ Some thoughts occurred to me that I didn’t manage to vocalise during the event – so here they are – please feel free to respond…

Transition Gallery is a not-for-profit, artist run space. When we curate / schedule shows we tend not to think about whether the work will sell but rather if we think it is interesting. Purely commercial operations do not have this luxury.

Art Fairs have become the place to buy work. More work is sold at fairs than in the gallery. A commercial gallery can not survive without doing art fairs especially a UK based gallery because there are not enough collectors in the UK to sustain the business. 

I am always surprised by the lists of British galleries showing in art fairs – many of them are pretty much ‘virtual’ – either having no or a truly tiny space or a very sporadically scheduled programmes. Sometimes they have a name which has connections to the people that matter (ie Carl Freedman) so they get the Frieze spot before other galleries who have much more interesting artists and ideas. It is all political. Incidentally even to apply to an art fair costs a considerable amount of money – this is not returned if you do not get selected.

'Strip', Transition Gallery's presentation at Sluice 

Art fairs tend to be – as far as I am concerned - terrible places to see work. Work by gallery artists is bundled together without thematic concerns. I like to see a show with work made by one artist or a group of artists assembled with an interesting curatorial idea. (At Sluice Transition are showing ‘Strip’, artists grouped together with the binding idea of work made in series, often with a filmic theme). At Frieze this year one of my favourite spaces was The Modern Institute – the work was interesting and well curated.

Artists make work in lots of different ways. For some really interesting artists the high-pressure (often production line attitude) world of commercial galleries does not suit them or their practice. These artists would be invisible if it were not for small not-for-profit and artist led spaces. There are also some artists whose work has a strong political ideology – I always feel that this sits uncomfortably in the commercial art world of oligarchs and art fairs.

There are some very successful artists who like to get involved with the artist-led scene. They have contemporaries who may not have had their success and want their work to be seen as they think it is good. These interesting shows happen in the artist-led gallery world.

There are good and bad commercial galleries. The good ones nurture their artists the bad ones try and sell, sell, sell.

Artists whether ‘commercial’ or not tend to want their work to be seen and responded to – this is why most of us make it. Independent spaces and art fairs such as Sluice are brilliant for this – they get more people in and get the work seen.

And finally artists can either wait for their careers to be controlled (or rejected) by the art elite (which in the UK is made up of what one artist I know calls ‘gentlemen gallerists’) or stop moaning and take control of how their work is shown and presented by setting up their own organisations.

There is lots more of course but these are my immediate thoughts.

Venice and brightly coloured blocks

Karla Black

I've just returned from my second Venice Biennale (my last visit was in 2003). It was a really sunny weekend and the city was heaving with tourists. The art bits were however pretty quiet which was a welcome relief from the cruise ship travelling / gondela riding masses.

My favourite thing by far was Karla Black's exhibition for the off-site Scottish pavilion. I love seeing contemporary work in ancient buildings and Venice's palazzos make brilliant gallerys. As you go up the stairs directed by hand painted Karla Black posters you are hit by a wall of smell - soapy perfume and sugary talc. The first room has Black's trade mark polythene sheets covered in various candy coloured powders. Subsequent rooms have large translucent blocks of soap cut into chunky shapes and standing on thin layers of compost and wafer thin paintings strung from fishing line.

William Eggleston

The chunky soap against its dark compost background reminds me of a William Eggleston photograph of brightly coloured plastic animals on a dark table. This is relevant because I saw the Eggleston image in a book of animal photography which I was looking at as research for the forthcoming Zoo show at Meter Room in Coventry.

Sutton House and Mock Tudor

I'm into all things Tudor at the moment, in no small part inspired by the TV series The Tudors (which I know is a tad trashy but I love it). I visited Hampton Court a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it - it is just the right side of the line of unacceptability which so many museums have crossed when it comes to making history more interactive and enjoyable. I am also reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall which focusses on Thomas Cromwell (not to be confused with Oliver) who was very much part of the Henry VIII story and was eventually executed by him. Today I visited Sutton House which is Hackney's only link with The National Trust and apparently the oldest surviving house in East London. I have been before but not for ages and had forgotten how nice it is - really quiet and intimate. What I hadn't realised was that the house was actually built by Ralph Sadleir who was a kind of apprentice to Thomas Cromwell and I have just been reading about him. Weird synchronicity.

The result of all this Tudor stuff is of course an exhibition which is called Mock Tudor and is a Transition Gallery offsite project, opening at 60 Ravenscourt Road in west London on 17 June. I'm making a series of Tudor inspired portraits. Mock Tudor is of course a derogatory term for the kind of suburban houses that have black wooden beams added as a decorative feature. Our interpretation is definitely more of a tribute than a critical annihilation. There is also going to be a FAKE themed issue of Garageland to further examine the themes of pastiche, copy, mock, original, authenticity etc etc.

Ralph Sadleir

Haydee

Haydee 1922-1975 from The Count of Monte Cristo. Appearing soon at the Phoenix Gallery in Exeter.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo was completed by Alexander Dumas in 1844. It is the ultimate adventure novel with all the plot twists that you could ever wish for. There have also been lots and lots of films and TV adaptations of the story - all of them very different. Because it is such a huge story there are numerous plots to pick and choose from and each film goes its own way - different romances, endings and deaths.

I have an interest in all things Monte Cristo at the moment because I am taking part in a couple of 'Monte' themed shows at Phoenix Art Centre, Exeter & Rogue Project Space, Manchester in April / May. My contribution is a series of paintings looking at how moments in the plot and characters have been depicted over the years. This painting is of the sometime Arabian, sometime Turkish, Princess Haydeé as seen in 1961's Le Comte de Monte Cristo.

Florence

I was in Florence last week (and it was freezing). I know the names of all those great Italian Renaissance painters but to be honest I couldn't have told a Giotto from a Pierro della Francesca. But since seeing it all in situ I am hooked and today I had to pay a visit to the National Gallery (in London) to check out the beautiful paintings in the Sainsbury Wing (which is the best bit of the gallery and the least crowded).

My Florence highlight was the San Marco Museum. This is the monastery where Fra Angelica frescoed all of the monks cells. We went along early in the morning, it was pretty much empty and it was absolutely beautiful. Fra Angelica's paintings are almost minimalist - he eradicates all that showy off perspective and just cuts to the chase. When I went upstairs to where the cells are situated the first painting that greeted me (Annunciation - pictured below) was completely familiar. This is something that often happens when I visit the great art galleries of the world and it is because the painting is featured in a book called History of Painting which was published in 1961. This book belonged to my mum and when I was growing up I spent hours looking at it and subsequently I know all of the paintings in it (but don't necessarily know who they are by). I now have 'the book' in my possession - it is falling to pieces and really not that remarkable - but looking at it is an amazingly evocative experience.

Giselle

I went to see Giselle at the Royal Opera House last week - Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo were dancing the leads. I am no ballet expert but I really like going to see the classic ballets, although this was my first time seeing Giselle. Lots of the reviews say that Acosta is past his best but he looked pretty amazing to me - he is nonchalant and effortless. The star though for me was the staging which was completely beautiful, especially the second act which is set in the forest at night and features the Wilis - a troop of ghostly girls all of whom died after being jilted at the altar. The Wilis costumes for this performance included little stubby wings which I thought at first looked a little strange but were very beautiful on mass. The whole thing was very Karen Kilimnik.