travelswithalice

July 19, 2005

London

LONDON

Stuart and I met up in London but it was a business trip for him so his holiday was not to start until the weekend. I did some exploring on my own.

There were two blustery afternoons spent with Matisse and his fabrics at the Royal Academy; the first consisting mainly of a droning lecture by a visiting art professor in an incongruously opulent lecture room.

The Q&A session was more interesting than the lecture which was so boring it turned me off seeing the exhibition that day.

I decided to walk back to the hotel. Big mistake. I hadn’t gotten halfway when it started to rain. Born and bred in the tropics, I never get caught out in the rain with an umbrella. I had also left my very appropriate cold-weather clothes at home, this being mid-May and Stuart having assured me that everywhere will be warm. (Indeed, the locals thought summer had arrived; they were picnicking in the park!)

I was back next day for the masterful exhibition itself. It showcased the original fabrics Matisse had collected and used not merely as props, but as the subjects of a lot of his paintings. African wall hangings the color of parched earth and pierced cloths that looked like black-and-white stained-glass windows. Swatches of antique French toiles, Turkish robes, Persian tunics, gypsy clothes, and vintage couture dresses. The collection matched the fabrics with paintings where they were featured as backdrops or worn by sitters. I could almost see him at work!

For years, Matisse’s Chapel of the Holy Rosary in Vence had puzzled me. Its beauty moved and seduced me; but I couldn’t reconcile the great artistic genius that created it with the seeming mind-numbing ordinariness of paper cut-outs and primary colors.

Here, finally, was something I could understand. The installation mapped for me the evolution of Matisse’s art. Starting with his so-called love affair with fabrics and ending with his eventual preoccupation with pure color that found expression in the paper cut-outs of his later years.

Next day, I went to a matinee performance of “The Dresser” at The Duke of York. The average age of the audience seemed in the high 70’s; most of the people queued up at the box-office were waiting for concession tickets. I knew this because the lady at the counter kept calling out for those waiting for such tickets and people kept falling out of the line.

That afternoon couldn’t have been very profitable; which makes for a gloomy future for the business of theater. It’s sad really, for what’s to become of the London experience without it?

There is nothing more civilized than a London theater audience queuing for the cloakrooms. I love the understatement of the clothes and jewelry. Waiting in line that afternoon, I watched and listened, as only the vaguest of complaints were elicited by deplorably inadequate facilities. I heard someone surmise, with a patient smile, that Victorian ladies probably didn’t come to the theater much.

An afternoon was reserved for lunch of goat-cheese tart and mesclun at Liberty’s, followed by serious window shopping. Then it was cheap jeans and tops at BHS and H&M.

Evenings found me and my glass of red at the executive lounge waiting for dinners with Stuart. Our first two dinners were with Maria Cristina, our usual first date when in London.

First night was Lebanese, which he wasn’t keen on, him having no sense of hummus (did I really get that from the BBC?) Next was a noisy tapas bar, El Pirata, where service was disinterested at best. It was a shame, because the food was good.

Quaglino’s, a trendy suggestion from our hotel concierge, was a Conran restaurant so I had very high expectations. It was more sedate than the tapas bar and marginally less disinterested.

On our last evening in London, we went to Prezzo, an Italian restaurant, London style, with Stuart’s Uncle John and Auntie Pat who refused to be called that, and their daughter Lindsay and her husband William.

It was Pat’s birthday, so we had champagne.

Labels: London, one long summer

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # July 19, 2005

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