It's been a full weekend, and as a result at gone 10 on Sunday I still have preparation for a telephone con for tomorrow morning. But soddit, I need a break from preparing claims against crashingly negligent solicitors.
In my usual lacksadaisical fashion, I left it until the last possible days to see two exhibitions I really wanted to catch: Brancusi: the essence of things at Tate Modern and El Greco at the National. Which meant enduring hordes of people as foolish as me at both but that can't be helped.
Brancusi died in 1957 and is one of the major figures in modern abstract sculpture. Stunningly beautiful stuff, though at points I did begin to think "yes Constantin, I get it, smooth egg shapes with vestigial human features. That's five now plus another few with the added twist of uncarved marble on one side of the egg, something different would be good now yes."
But there are other things, most particularly the various Birds: a pair of this theme in coloured marble, one blue-grey, the other flame-yellow. In the last room the final development of this theme, where the flame-like abstraction has become further elongated, to become Birds in Space. The version here was cast in bronze, as was the version that forced the US courts to decide that they were not competent to decide on what was art in the late 1920s (the federal tax authorities had decided the sculpture was so much metal and taxed it accordingly, Brancusi, encouraged by Duchamps, sued, in Brancusi v. US to recover the money on the basis of an exemption for art, and won, a decision which ranks with Whistler v. Ruskin as a seminal art law case).
The El Greco, which I went to this morning, was more in my line though. Just looking at his stuff, particularly paintings like The Opening of the Fifth Seal (1608-14) you could be forgiven for ascribing it to Picasso, appositely enough, for Picasso was one of the major rediscovers of El Greco. Other things seem to prefigure the Impressionists... The Agony in the Garden is probably my favourite.., but then that requires discounting The Resurrection.. decisions, decisions.
When I'd had enough of the crowds I wandered up to the British Museum, Actually, the main reason I went there was because I was caught short when I was nearby and their loos are clean...
Anyway, while I was there, I wandered through the Great Court and was struck by, yes, the Troy Costumes exhibition there, and the proud proclamation that the BM advised on the film. I don't yet know who it was who wrote the claim that the film "for the most part follows Homer closely" but I shall set those who should be able to find out to their investigations.
What was interesting was Achilles' shield. While watching the film last night, in Achilles' first fight, I'd noticed a shot of the shield and thought... no, surely they haven't bothered. And since it wasn't referred to again, I assumed that they had indeed, not bothered. Why would they? Christ, Illiad 18:478-608, entirely devoted to a description of the shield, is fascinating stuff on which oceans of ink has been spilt (several books and theses), but it's hardly the stuff of epic film.
The thing is though, someone did. The shield carried by Brad Pitt in the film is a serious attempt to realise those lines... and it gets one half-second frame early on in the film... Given the rest of the film this seems utterly perverse.
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