Footnotes: the emerging artist
Francis Alys
1. On Tuesday I went to see the Francis Alys exhibition at the Tate Modern, and it was all I hoped for, and more. Thoughtful, provocative, intelligent, and both funny and moving in places. How often does one spend two hours sitting in the dark, in an art gallery [rather than a cinema] on various leather sofas, laughing-out-loud with people you don’t know and enjoying every moment? For that instant this disparate group of strangers were connected by art. So glad Francis decided to forgo his other love, architecture, and give art a go, and with mad ideas like attempting ‘to move mountains with faith’, or creating a continuous green line for miles and miles from a dripping paint-tin in a contentious middle-eastern hot-spot, Francis Alys really does have the courage of his convictions.
2. I’m off on holiday this week, to France to the seaside town of Etretat in Normandy, where the writer, Maupasant lived and wrote, and Monet and other nineteenth century French artists, came to paint the dramatic arches and needles that make up that part of the French coastline..
3. What will I be reading – all things French, I think:
The Secret Life of France by Lucy Wadham, an anecdotal story of the shock of marrying into the French culture.
On Drawing by John Berger
Mastering The Art of French Cookery by Julia Child
And watching the related film:
Julie & Julia with Maryl Streep, a recent film related to cooking oneself to happiness and starting a Cordon Bleu-type cookery school in Paris in the nineteen-sixties.
Inspiration, I hope, for my own cooking, writing, drawing and, of course, emerging.
