Somerset House: The best place to spend an evening?

SPRING HAS OFFICIALLY GRACED US WITH ITS PRESENCE!

Britain is actually experiencing a heat wave at the moment, so today's sartorial decisions were rather drastic. For the first time in 8 months, I had to abandon the 80 deniers in favour of bare legs. It was actually terrifying. Especially as I hadn't even made it to the bus stop before a tiny gust of wind blew my sheer dress up past my hips, thus baring my pale white ass to the entirety of East London. A fantastic way to start the new season, I assure you.

Spring and Autumn are my favourite seasons by far, I quite like having to carry a blazer or some other light cover-up around with me. I like warmth, rather than excessive amounts of heat resulting in having to show more  flesh than should be deemed necessary for someone of my figure.


So in what is the first hot day of the year, it's actually been really great. I visited the Hajj exhibition at The British Museum before it opened to the public that morning, and found it all incredibly interesting and rather informative. There is so much I didn't know, like in 2011; 2, 927 719 Muslims from all over the world took pilgrimage towards Mecca each year, with 23,000 of those hailing from the UK (about half of those that take pilgrimage are from Saudi Arabia) The mixture of films, architectural models of Mecca and clear diagrams made it really easy to engage with the entire exhibition, thus resulted in me staying there for around 2 hours.

Whilst checking my e-mails later that afternoon (admittedly, it was in the local beer garden, rather than office) there was a homage to Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe on the Google homepage, which then made me remember that it was Late Night at the Courtauld Institute to celebrate the success of their Mondrian/Nicholson in Parallel exhibition. I know little about Nicholson's practice, and even less so about his relationship with Mondrian... thus, 2 hours later, I was at Temple underground station.

It was a really interesting exhibition, although a lot smaller than I had originally perceived. There were a few key pieces which really stood out, like Nicholson's 1935 White Relief , which he hand crafted from a mahogany table he picked up at Camden Market. It's really worth having a look around, especially the archival material that they've chosen to include. I know it's not really useful in terms of art history here, but still found it really interesting that Mondrian went out of his way to go to the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves launch during his time in Paris, back in 1938.

The Courtauld's late opening events were totally engaging too, I will undoubtedly be going to another one. On arrival, I was given a voucher which entitled me to a 10% discount at the Café, which admittedly I didn't use- I'm far too much of a sucker for their home baked chocolate brownies! A really great evening though, many people donned their thirties dresses in order to nab free entry! In addition to the usual exhibition talks, I went along to Dr. Livia Carvalho's Another Way of Seeing talk, where she discussed how the eye experiences shape, colour and line. Her words were really captivating, describing in great detail how we actually view colour in art. Basically, humans aren't the best at looking at paintings, as our visual senses are limited in places. There was also a mention of how Alexander Calder was possibly colour blind, as those artists who are naturally drawn to brighter colours and believe that can see them better are likely to be restricted in terms of the whole colour palette.

As exhibitions go, this one's incredibly informative, and I find that I know much more about Mondrian's friendship with Nicholson. The title of slightly pushes the idea of comparing Mondrian with Nicholson, which is quite inevitable anyway; their work shares similar qualities and is clearly influenced by the same artistic movements. On the other hand, I think that what the exhibition is actually evoking is by and large, their friendship. Little information is supplied about the works in the exhibition, and there is much more focus towards Mondrian and Nicholson's life events. Which is no complaint at all- it makes rather compelling reading!

Mondrian || Nicholson runs until 20th May 2012.

www.thebritishmuseum.org
www.courtauld.ac.uk

Labels: Another Way of Seeing Talk, Art Blog, ART DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE, Courtauld Institute, Dr. Livia Carvalho, Hajj British Museum, Mondrian Nicholson in Parallel, Somerset House, Vermeers Victoria Sponge