Chairing Onwards

It's part of mankinds condition to relate to all objects, animate and inanimate, in human terms. Toddlers turn their teddy bears into guests for tea, cartoonists promote a beastiary of the bizarre and many languages demand that objects are given a sex. It's a long known fact, of good design, that objects must be created in human terms. The origin of the Georgian window is a case in point. All it's proportions are based on human ones. It's not for nothing that we stand back on the pavement in Merrion Square and admire the twinkling lights of so many panes catching a shrinking sun. We are admiring ourselves.


Any woman, of a certain age, will tell you that you can judge a man by his shoes. After all, that is how the fairer sex judges itself. YSL, Jimmy's or Louboutin's? A shoe may not have a face but it does have a soul. For me the most anthropomorphic of loves is the chair. I like a good human quadruped. Wherever I go I am on the look out to make new friends of the four legged variety. Not dogs, not cats - but chairs.


The Amstelkring in the Red Light District of Amsterdam hosts some Christian examples. These are not the thrones of the Kremlin, the Victorian sofas of Dublin Castle or the Academic mahogany examples of Trinity. These are chairs worn soft by constant vulgar use. Vulgarity being, in chair terms, the highest order. Of course, the Netherlands has form when it comes to sitting down. The most famous chair in art was depicted by Van Gogh. Sitting there, nursing the artist's pipe, the chair waits to provide relaxation for a man whose mind was a hectic machinegun of ideas and emotions. Cousins of that chair sit in the kitchen of Our Lord in the Attics as the museum is known when translated from Dutch. An example (probably late 19th, early 20th century) with an ancient coffer is given above.


Closer to home, in Glasgow, sits one of the greatest of the museums of the British & Irish Isles, the Burrell. This is the collection of a Scottish magnate which was donated to the city of his success. And what a collection! Wonderful works by Rodin, Chinese porcelain, a Rembrandt and so many other delights - each worthy of a sonnet. And there in the cafeteria, some wonderful hide and wood chairs. I have pictured one below. And they say the 70's was a decade that style forgot? These chairs have it!


Whether wood of oak, mahogany or pine was shaped and hung with hide or straw each of these chairs, for me, tells us a little about the age and a lot about ourselves.


I think I need to sit down now.

Escaping the World

Nowadays every moment of our working life is ruled by the calendar and clock. Every so often a beep indicates another meeting, a ring an incoming call, a buzz a text message and horror of horrors - a tweet. There are now so many electromagnetic ways of demanding your attention that it's hard not to have sympathy for a group of middle aged French Luddites who have retreated to a woody cleft somewhere in the Massif Central to escape the debilitating effects of all these electronic impulses. As they sit there cowering against their alumininium caravans, wrapped in tin foil shawls a certain human impulse empathises.

For the less extreme of us there are holidays. I've just come back from one which I try to do at least once a year. A trip to Holland, the Netherlands, the Low Country. People have all kinds of reasons for travelling East to the Kingdom of the Dutch. For the young and impressionable the narcotics speak loud, for the hippies its the heady scent of marijuana and for the middle aged the chance to sit in a gezellig brown bar drinking jenever and listening to rumpy thumpy Eurovision accordion music. The more discerning travel over to visit the museums and for the nostalgic it's a chance to wander in the steps of long dead comrades who perished in the second world war.

For me there's the opportunity to meet old friends, hopefully make some new ones and practise some apalling Dutch. There is the chance too to study the paintings and architecture of the Golden Age. This is the country of Bartholomeus Van Der Helst, of Carel Fabritus, of Rembrandt and of Johannes Vermeer. Add to that Hoogstraten and Jan Steen. Think too of the landskip experts Van Goyen, Ruisdael, Ruysdael, Hobbema and Cuyp.

Then there is the chance to walk in these artists' shoes in cities that still bear remarkable resemblance to the towns of the 17th century. A wander around Delft reveals Vermeer's hometown, a circuit of Leiden gives scenes of Rembrandt's youth and Harlem echoes memories of Van Der Helst. Even the most mundane of strolls opens up vistas to worlds that hitherto seemed the sphere of oil paints and etchings. Each new view another sigh of relaxation.

Purchasing a museum card allows you to closet yourself with the minds of men and women who passed on centuries ago but still speak to us. Their's is a language immediately apparent to us today. Rembrandt's etchings, carefully displayed in Rembrandthuis, tell stories that highlight the eternal human experience. His are children caught in angry fits and biblical characters contemplating existentialisms. Even a trip to the Van Gogh museum tells us more about what we have in common with a man of enormous willpower who in the end could not hold his sanity together despite the superhuman efforts of his brother Theo. There can be few statements as universal as his canvas of almond flowers. This Chinese inspired oil was Vincent's heartfelt reaction to the news that Theo and his wife had decided to call their newborn son, Vincent. He painted it and presented it to Theo in thanks for this ultimate of gifts. In the museum there is a poignant photograph of two comradely gravestones, one for each brother, and a note that Theo's wife insisted that her husband be buried beside his brother despite the loss she felt at having him interred so far away.

From the good humour of the tram drivers, to the sardonic eye rolls of the waitresses, the narcissism of handsome Dutch men, the friendliness of barflies and earnestness of museum guards the openess of the Lowlanders is a pleasant interchange for visitors. An attempt to speak some Dutch results in even more sincere discussions. There is little danger of beeps, buzzes and electronic whines. There may be advice on a little shop selling advanced furniture, a little known museum somewhere in The Hague or a discussion on post colonialism. The beauty is that as a land, what you put in as a visitor, you get out a dozen times. A visit to this flat and ancient land is a conversation and an escape.

For now I am not thinking of hiding in a French valley. Instead if you wonder where I am as I day dream on my way to work it's probably somewhere in the Veluwe or perhaps sitting quietly in the Amstelkring (pictured at top and above) waiting for the ghosts of tolerance three centuries ago. Escapism can sometimes be the best part of life.

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.

Glasgow

Scotland gets it's name from the ancient Scots. Confusingly in Early Medieval history the Irish were known as Scots. Thus when they decided to colonise South West Scotland they gave the North of Britain a new name. The Scots are great, warm, friendly, positive people with killer senses of humour. Scotland was one of the first places that I visited when I lived in Britain. The acres of resin perfumed pine forests, the craggy oaken slopes, the magnificent peaks moodily surveying mile after mile of landscape always attracted me - as did the medieval cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

For my PhD I studied the ancient woodlands of the West Coast of Scotland and spent time doing research in Edinburgh at the National Library. It was a time that I really enjoyed and when I felt I was doing something important by ensuring that the last remnants of the ancient wildwood were recognised and protected. The people in the Scottish Forestry Authority as well as the Department of the Taoiseach were incredibly supportive. Due to that experience and visiting amazing beautiful landscapes, meeting friendly and helpful people and getting a chance to experience the rhythm of Scottish life has always tied me to the nation closest to Ireland and yet so different.

I went back for the first time in 12 years in May 2009 and had a really good time of it. It was my first trip since getting ill last summer and a great way to start travelling again.

Glasgow reminds me a lot of the Northside of Dublin. Buchanan seems like Henry Street, the Galleries like the Jervas and the ILAC like the St Enoch Centre. The best streets are the ones that fashion and time have forgotten that carry memories of older days - years when Glasgow was a workshop of the World, when she launched ships that patrolled the Empire, when Clydeside fought back against the Nazi's - when the metropolis burned. Here are a couple of images that I took that gave me that feeling.