I admit that I watched the Royal Wedding on telly. My excuse is that I wanted to see the Goreing Hotel and whether John appeared in any of the shots. He didn't. But I enjoy a good wedding, and trying to work out who was royal and who was merely an ambassador was interesting.
The hats were really the best, I found some of them extraordinary, especially the roccoco brown number sported (it was sporting of her to wear it - she must have done it for a bet) by poor Princess Beatrice - it looked like (credit here to Mark for this fine joke) like an explosion in a Viennetta factory. Pause - while everyone tries to remember what Vienetta is/was. I ROFL'd - well, actually we were still in bed having a lie-in. It made me wonder why that particular branch of the family are so especially un-soignee... they have a reasonable amount of dosh, she's quite pretty, surely they could have some clothing advice? I know I spend most of my time dressing like a particularly impoverished Irish pig farmer's wife, but I can scrub up appropriately, and if I had money and wasn't so fat, I could dress very agreeably indeed. My dear sister Coellie said I was "elegant" the other day - I don't think she meant in general, just that particular day.
I was having a moment's naive wondering about why women my size feel able to wander around in bikini tops and shorts on hot days in Ramsgate. They could make themselves look nicer. I think there must be a tendency for people to buy clothes that are too small for them regardless, because they can't get what they want in their size, and then push as much of themselves into them as they can and let the rest go where it will. I don't want to criticise other people's sartorial choices exactly - I can only assume that they must think they look nice, and maybe it is just another eye of the beholder issue - like the Viennetta headgear.
I fear I may have subtly ranted about the Turner Contemptible already. There is an awful problem, which concerns my role as part of Thanet's leading communications agency.... we are dedicated to "re-branding Thanet" - and the TC is a major flagship (yech) for the regeneration of Thanet... so of course I cannot ever criticise it in my official capacity. I have now been there 3 times. The first occasion I felt I hadn't been entirely fair to it. The second time I felt I might have been in fact, and on Wednesday I felt I had to defend it from the scathing critique of Nick and Marietta.
When I first went I had an enormously negative critique of it, but I thought "this is just me". I am being elitist and super-snotty again, so I felt I must try again. It was still full of apparently delighted people. The boys thought it was rubbish and Coells and Pa said "are there any more rooms?" Nick disliked the building, and the art in it, Marietta was similarly underwhelmed. In the meantime I had an email from Lorna deriding the booooring speeches on the preview night, so overall I felt that it was OK not to like it, since reasonably intelligent people of high culture didn't like it either.
I still wonder whether because I am an autodidact when it comes to art history that I've never bothered to engage with the 20th C (as John Dufton once said)... but I honestly think conceptual art takes up a lot of room - and doesn't have much to detain one once one has grasped the concept (unless, unusually, it is stunningly beautiful). The last art gallery I went to was in Manchester. It was a thrill, two hours was insufficient to do it justice, it was full of things that made one think, that connected one to other bits of art and culture. Some of the work in the TC does that, but not very interestingly. Ellen Hervey's work Arcadia was good, well done, and made connections, the Shawcross made connections between spirals and musical intervals... but it was a bit so-what? And Binet's 8.7cm coloured stripes - well, they were coloured stripes. (Yes, there is more to them, but nothing interesting enough to write about). In short I expect to get a notebook out in an art gallery - and I think it will be a long time before I do in the Turner.
OK - I have now trashed the Turner. It is Emperor's New Clothes all over again, but it makes me wonder something else (warning, I am ascending to the ivory tower now). I've always known that I was lucky in having a Catholic upbringing and a classical education because I got Renaissance art quite quickly and painlessly, and from there gradually eased into Baroque and Romantic art. I am happy enough with Picasso and Braque and Miro and people, but this art became referential to itself or to the contemporary world, rather than to the tradition. Which I suppose is why schools only teach art from Picasso onwards... then they don't have to explain too much. But this art, the revival in conceptual art of the last 20 years or so, seems idiot art to me. No real cultural sense is required, no real cultural hit will be received. It is extremely accessible, but just not very interesting. It needn't detain us very long... we can get down to the cafe and the shop and spend some money. Poor Victoria Pomeroy. Does this represent the summit of her ambitions?
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