A Mike Leigh experience

I saw Mr Turner on Friday and enjoyed it very much. As ever, Mike Leigh gives you something to chew on. It's partly an examination of genius and how a fat grunting man could be one of the few world class painters that Britain ever produced and partly a celebration of the beauty and power of the natural world. I particularly enjoyed Turner's amusement at seeing work by the pre-Raphaelites for the first time.

The whole trip felt like an improvisation exercise with a film in the middle. Waiting on the stairs to go into the busy cinema, I got caught in the crossfire of some braying middle class people and their too-loud talk of holidays, retirement and what terrific culture vultures they were.  At the end of the film, one of the womem sitting along from me told everybody how overlong, tedious and pointless she thought the film was. I thought I had let the crowd clear before leaving, but again got stuck on the stairs. And who was behind me but my mouthy friends? I managed to shut out the matter of their discussion.

Impromptu walking

The walking group I go away with got caught out by the first of the snow this year. And it was snow of a level that we don't normally see in late November. What was supposed to be a trip to the Trossachs (I've not done Ben Venue in ages) had to be hastily rearranged. We are equal to this challenge though, and the coach took us to Hillend, from where we walked along the end of the Pentlands. Snow was still falling heavily, and our walk parallel to the Edinburgh bypass felt more like the Cairngorms. Somebody knew a way onto the Water of Leith at Colinton, so we continued into town. I've done most of this before, but it looked totally different in the snow. And I've not been since Anthony Gormley's sculptures were put in.

They look cool in the snow. I'm sure the intention was that the pieces would undergo various alterations. And they have inspired a number of other more jokey tributes.

Genius

Genius was a cartoon that appeared in the Observer from 1978 to 1983. It featured Anode Enzyme, the greatest genius since Leonardo, who had an IQ of 12, 794 (it was higher, but he lost a few points through watching television). Working for Lord Doberman, the world's richest man, gave him a lot of freedom, but he mostly confined his talents to doing whimsically obscure things like firing colour televisions into the sea, or recording the sound of a tape recorder being destroyed by a chain saw. Aged about 11 or 12, I hugely admired this serial work, so much so that I collected the strips for a while, pasting them into an old notebook. It's hard to say whether I prefered the surreal humour, the delightfully messy ink drawings and lettering, or the rather lovely watercolour that formed the main part of each week's installment. They clearly came from a complex, witty, un-bourgeois, and generally splendid intelligence. It always felt faintly subversive, as if nobody at the nice paper quite knew what the chap was up to. They never really gave it enough space. The same point is made in a nice appreciation here. I recently came across my yellowing cuttings, complete with original dates in my own childish hand. The one above was undated, before you ask.

John Glashan, the creator of Genius, seems to have rather sunk without trace. A great pity.

How big is it really?

Check out ActualSizer. It gives you a sense of the scale of an art work: something that is often lost in reproduction. I sense some major time-wasting approaching.

Arty types are not web designers

These days we expect online booking systems to just work. But the one for the official Edinburgh Festival is rubbish, and I can't book anything. They don't seem to answer the phone on Sundays either. Just how hard is it to spend your money, eh?

Unicorn hunt

Today seemed to be Historic Scotland day. I have a friends card and don't use it often enough. So, off to Doune castle, where I confess I was looking for Python locations. However, I did learn about Robert Stewart, who ran Scotland for 20 years, though without being king.

Returning via Stirling, I popped in to the castle, as I've not been for a few years. Odd how this has changed so hugely since I went there as a kid (the past isn't what it used to be). There is currently a long term project to reconstruct the royal apartments. I was rather swept away by the tapestries that are being made for this. They are copies of the Unicorn Tapestries in the Met in New York. Tapestry for me is one of those archetypally dull things. If you see one in a museum it's a case of "Yes, very nice, where are the paintings?" But these are astonishingly beautiful objects in amazing condition. Works of art, in fact. You can watch the weaving too: it looks a pleasant but tricky task, surrounded by bits of wool and photos of the originals. A few of the finished copies are on display and they're not bad either. I enjoyed this article about cleaning, the smell of wet wool, and reclusive mathematicians.

Arty day

I enjoyed the Glasgow Art Fair yesterday. I even bought some art, a linocut, for the first time in several years. And isn't the internet amazing, it can be found here. The work is better in reality, though. The colours nicely capture the oddness of snow in the city, and the use of the different colour blocks is clever.

Some nice extras too in the form of some free talks: by Tom Normand on Scottish photography, and by Calum Colvin on his work.

Even losing my return ticket and having to stand in a queue with my picture to buy a new one didn't dampen my good mood.

Steven Campbell

I'm taking advantage of my half-idleness just now to go to lunchtime talks. Today we looked back on the work of the painter Steven Campbell, who died last year. The talk was significant for me as he was one of a remarkable generation at Glasgow School of Art in the early 80s who were held up as an example when I was at school. He was in the same year as Ken Currie, who won the annual Newberry award. Since Steven was also clearly exceptional, they invented the Bram Stoker award for him. These and other figures meant that when learning about art in the 80s, I had some local examples that gave me a connection to new developments in painting. As a result I never questioned that figurative painting was worthwhile, and am probably still working out of an enthusiasm born at that time. Scotland in the 80s could be a right miserable place, so some genuine heroes (mostly working class too) went down very well.

To be honest, I've never been a completely consistent fan of Campbell's work - it often seemed overblown and a little pretentious. Today's talk did address this somewhat: he was more versatile and thoughtful than I probably gave him credit for. Now what we need is a proper retrospective.

Rudolph knew his pictures

During my visit to Prague in December, I learned about Rudolph II and his famous collection of paintings. I'd only vaguely been aware of this before, but learned a lot during my visit to Prague castle, where they are trying to reunite as many of Rudolph's paintings as they can. This is a big task, as they have been scattered by such forces as: bickering relatives, disgruntled Swedish armies who need to get some looting in before peace breaks out, and objects ending up in different countries when an empire breaks down.

I'm now going to see references to the man everywhere. Last week Melvyn Bragg did a program about Rudolph's court. Yesterday I went to a show in the Queen's Gallery in Holyrood Palace, and what should be there but Breugel's Massacre of the Innocents. It was part of the royal collection in Prague, where R had the dying children painted out and replaced by animals and bundles. Charles II later bought it. Him and his dad were responsible for a lot of the good gear in the royal collection.

Joan Eardley

I expected to like the Eardley show that is currently on at the NGS, and this can be a prelude to disappointment. Luckily, this was not the case, as it is excellent.

I was quite carried away by a roomful of paintings of children from Townhead. It never really occurred to me that they encapsulate an era that was almost over. Townhead was mostly demolished to build the M8. JE's paintings are now a record of a world where children played in the streets and seemed to have a sense of togetherness that you'd be hard pushed to find these days. The children would all be about 60 now.