Chillaxing in London
I was in London for the weekend, and had a great time chillaxing with Marty, Liam & Emma. We enjoyed a fair number of bevvies, ate our way through an outdoor market, enjoyed an afternoon at the Tate Modern (including a great new Frida Kahlo exhibit) and even delved into some catacombs.This is a pic of us (Jeff, Liam, Marty & Emma) on the very cool new Millennium Bridge:
I arrived the day after the bombings and I have to say I was astonished by the Stiff Upper Lip attitude of the Brits. In Marty's local pub, the barkeep basically said that "After The Blitz and the IRA and the Nail Bombings, we're used to this. And we're not going to let the bastards get us down."
I doubt I could be so nonchalant if I were directly exposed to something like that. Not that I ever want to find out...
On an unrelated note, I found the Mark Rothko exhibit at the Tate to be unusually captivating in a deeply sad, almost depressive way. His Seagram Murals (in the Rothko Room) are presented in low-light and the shadows play dark tricks on the mind. While I normally dislike abstract expressionism, these murals have stuck with me. Remembering the emotional experience of seeing and feeling them makes me sad.
As for the Frida Kahlo exhibit, I thought that was wonderful. It was possibly the largest collection of her work that has ever been collected for a showing, and the curator did a great job organizing it and providing context between her life's phases and the artwork that was born in each of them.
Kahlo's life story is very interesting, as is her art. I'm not sure I would have appreciated it as much without the background information, and I know from Marty & Liam that this is something that is often debated in the artistic world. Without it, I probably would have just thought of her as a self-obsessed, narcissistic, bi-sexual auteur who had all the subtlety of a chainsaw. With it, however, I thought she was all that, as well as a great artist, and I had some empathy for her life.
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