A Private View

Florence or, as the Italians would say, Firenze has always held a special place in my imagination. Anyone who has read Vasari's Lives of the Artists knows how central this medieval seat of learning and culture is to the history of art. A roll call of the masters who practised there from the 13th to the 17th centuries is very impressive indeed. Giants such as Michelangelo, Donatello, Giotto, Bernini and Botticelli will forever grace this city with their presence. Monuments such as the Baptistery and the Cathedral, not to mention the Cappella dei Principi, pepper the urban landscape and attract millions of tourists from all over the world.

In 2009 I spent some time in December visiting the city and seeing the main sights. I travelled two weeks before Christmas and even though Tuscany was cold, there was no rain and the sun sparkled from time to time. What was fantastic was that I was one of only a small number of tourists enjoying the atmosphere. I visited the main gallery, the Uffizi (above), one bright morning and wandered through the rooms entirely on my own under the laconic gaze of the attendants. Each happily nodding to my acknowledgments. It must be rare indeed for a visitor to have ten minutes alone with Botticelli's Birth of Spring and the Primavera. At the Duomo museum there is Michelangelo's third and final Pieta. Whilst examining this moving depiction, where the artist - a deeply religious man - depicts himself cradling the dead Christ, I was joined on my solitary watch by an elderly English couple. We all agreed that it was very surprising indeed to have one of the world's key masterpieces all to ourselves without having to push through throngs of tourists goggling and guides berating us with whole extracts from Wikipedia! The life size sculpture would have struck it's Renaissance audience by it's spirituality and demonstration of Christ's sacrifice. A 21st century viewer is struck more by the modernism of the Florentine's holding the body himself and by the fact that having decided that the work was not up to his lofty standards he took a chisel to it and sought to destroy it before abandoning the marble. An assistant later tried to complete it. The original passages of Michelangelo's carving stand out in the torso and composition highlighting that even in a failed vision the artist could not be equaled.

Having seen a number of the sculptor's works (such as the famous David, (above) I decided to visit Casa Buonarotti. Here are found a number of his earliest works including the Madonna of the Stairs carved when he was 16 as well as a great unfinished torso. Whilst admiring his work I said hello to one of the room attendants. This guard was a woman of certain years who managed to make her utilitarian uniform appear as a work of haute couture. As her solitary charge she admonished me for arriving in Winter when half the museum was shut and missing it. I agreed it might not have been good from that perspective but that I got to see so many things in comfort and could spend ten minutes in front of each of the master's drawings as a result without being pushed aside by the inexorable swell of tourists hailing from Beijing to Boston. The lady snorted, then let out an exasperated sigh and told me to wait where I was. She then darted off, perilously high heels clicking on the marble, and locked the entrance. Returning to me she ordered me to follow her and then gave me a complete tour of the house through the closed sections and behind the scenes. Amazing and another proof that travelling on your own and taking the time to talk with complete strangers pays off.

Following my once in a lifetime tour I dusted off my guidebook in a swish restaurant on Piazza della Republica and identified all the sculptures by the artist around the city and visited each one (below is his Genius of Victory from the Palazzo Vecchio). There is no place like Firenze!

Canal Reflections

The beauty of Amsterdam is that there are two cities, not one. For every stretch of Golden Age merchant's houses there is another reflected in the placid waters of the canals. The elms that raise watery green leaves against the skyline reflect again waving slowly in the silent depths.

Canals are elemental, a mixture of water and sky, made all the more profound by being angularly framed by man. A perfect picture of what lies above.

Ireland has a mere handful of canals to compare with those of the Netherlands. They stretch like a belt across the central plain and form a necklace around Dublin's girth. Those of Amsterdam ripple outwards from the Palace forming a maze of refracted and reflected worlds. The grachten are present in all the Western cities from Utrecht, to Leiden and the Hague. Each metropolis marked by a thumbprint of waterways. There seem too many to name.

Dublin has the Grand and Royal canals. The Grand ambles along the south of the city viewing Ballsbridge, Ranelagh and Rathmines on the way. Near Baggot Street a seat is set, allowing the observant to sit and watch. Here a statue of the country poet, Patrick Kavanagh, looks on. The bench was a response to his fantastic request, O commemorate me where there is water, Canal water, preferably, so stilly. The poet imagines the canal as a passageway and journey to Arcadia. In quite summer evenings his words come back to life: A swan goes by head low with many apologies... He ends the elegiac text with... ...O commemorate me with no hero-courageous Tomb - just a canal bank seat for the passer-by.

The Northside of the city boasts the Royal Canal. Sitting with his back to Drumcondra Bridge the statue of Brendan Behan sits vigilant eyeing passing ducks and the distant bulk of Mountjoy Gaol. A very different writer to Kavanagh, Behan circled the political, mocked the heroic and settled uncomfortably into his vision of Every (Dublin) Man. His poetry is all about Republicanism, prisons and politics. The anger of the little man in the larger scheme of things.

Both writers, although very different, share a genius for contemplation and it is this quality that inspired them to seek beauty and Arcadia and solace in these man made waterways. My canal pictures, I hope, do the same.

Watery Waterford

The Irish climate is not for amateurs. No matter what time of year it is, no matter what the weathermen predict, even what you expect - you can't expect to know what the heavens will provide.

When you look at the photograph, above, you might think that I stumbled upon a tropical beach, that the sun was beating down and that off to the wings tropical forest festooned with orchids and alive with monkeys and parrots waits. In fact off camera was the seaside town of Tramore in County Waterford.

Traditionally this is where working class Dubliners went on holidays and it is a hive of grisly hotels, loud pubs and run down amusement arcades. Wandering through it twenty minutes before taking this image I was struck by the grey light, the ugly shopfronts and the garish funfair pumping out exhausted music and teenagers lurking outside off-licenses. Walking down to the shore past the public toilets and over anonymous waterpipes you reach the broad expanse of Tramore Beach.

Tramore, in Irish, means the Great Strand and in the cold light of a passing shower its shimmers cold and silver. Vast puddles reflect stormy skies and grey leaden clouds and then, suddenly, in the middle of a rainy day the clouds open and the sun debuts. The light clasps the air in pale blues and light pinks, the sand reflects upwards and puddles turn into fallen sky.

And then just five seconds after the image is taken the sky turns, the clouds close over and the rain begins again.

Irish weather.

Spitting Fire

Kelvingrove Art Gallery is one of the highlights of a trip to Glasgow. The collection is a good one - star pictures include Salvador Dali's masterpiece Christ of Saint John of the Cross. An image that is both memorable and astonishing and the crowning achievement of the Spaniard's career. Another stunning image is that of Sandro Botticelli's Annunciation. There are also a raft of French Impressionists and a good showing of Dutch Golden Age panels. The latter includes a dramatic essay in chiaroscuro in Rembrandt's A Man in Armour.

One enters the massive Victorian building through a grand and elaborately decorated hall. The grey stone walls rise up massively around you and lead the eye upwards to the balconies that overlook this ceremonial space. Taking the main gallery on the right you enter a display area for sculpture. A bust of Queen Victoria eyes you with barely concealed disdain, whilst around her a cast of disembodied bronze heads look on. To these sightless eyes are joined a host more - this time laughing, sneering charaters who hang from the rafters in silent mirth. These hanging jokers have become the leitmotif of the institution. You can see what they look like in my picture above.

Beyond the giggling heads is a room devoted to the Glasgow School. These Art Nouveau designers put the city firmly on the design map. Charles Rennie Mackintosh is, of course, world famous - his School of Art is a lodestone for those interested in this international movement. Here is the western entrance.

The gallery devoted to Mackintosh's work includes other work by his contemporaries which are well worth examining. When a comet flies through sometimes stars are unfairly dimmed. Being a big Victorian museum the atmosphere is dusty and there is a feeling of things being a little worn down. As one enters the Scottish picture galleries this feeling of a grey and dusty space grows stronger. Unfortunately this takes away from the paintings. Oddly your eye is, as a result, drawn to the texture of the canvases, the joints of the frames and the way that the light can sometimes hit a canvas obscuring the image. It must be some sort of psychological effect - in the same way that if someone tells you they think they have been bitten by fleas you immediately and subconsciously reach to scratch your calf! To see one blemish is to see all.

Upstairs one has a chance to view the French impressionist and expressionist paintings. Here the heavy hand of central government is strongly visible. The British Labour party government is all about access. They now target anything that moves with accessibility numbers. As a result poor old Kelvingrove has 'signage' helping visitors interpret the art. One victimised image has a plastic frame complete with arrows and interpretative text to 'allow' children to understand the picture! This completely negates the point that art has it's own language and what is important is not to dumb it down but to raise the understanding of the viewer to it's level. This is not an easy task but that, in it's own way, makes it a much more valuable one. No child will visit an art gallery on their own - they will do so with an adult who has a moral obligation to explain and inspire the student in a lifetime's passion. The kind of guidance that I was lucky enough to get from my parents.

The way to introduce young minds to art is amply demonstrated in another first floor room - one where the gallery's Botticelli is displayed in a custom built space with the feeling of a quatrocento side chapel in an Italian church. No child could fail to understand the spirituality of the image and the way it is presented - one hopes that proud Glaswegians will advise the gallery on the right path to take regarding access. Letting the imagination soar rather than allowing dull text to plod heavy footed makes all the difference.

Passing to the other side of the museum you wander past a statue of an indomitable Churchill to overlook the western atrium. You look over and your heart figuratively leaps when you espy a Spitfire, forever airborne. Here in this city where so many fought and died in the Second World War - it is a mighty talisman. You find yourself circling the balcony watching the machine, which hangs in space, from all angles and marvelling that the history of the world turned on such a simple craft. The inner workings of an iPod a million times more complex. The small bakelite rearview mirror perched on the windscreen bringing home the vulnerability of this airplane.

The greatness of this museum is in it's eclectic collection, the quality of some of the masterworks and that wartime legend. A 1940s fighter enshrined in this stone edifice is like the angry proud heart of this great city.