Migration is not only a Greek story, or an Italian one. It belongs to everyone, everywhere, and it always has: the leaving, the packing of a whole life into one suitcase, and …
London
Travel is not only palaces and pastries. Part of why I travel is to understand places, and understanding a place means meeting its history, including the parts that are hard to look …
- London
From Europe to the Americas: Geometric Abstraction at Tate Modern
by Bubblyby Bubbly 7 min readOn my first visit to Tate Modern in London, I came for a giant spider and stayed for the paintings, which I did not see coming. One set of rooms held me …
- London
The Snail, the Marilyns and a Mondrian: My Visit to Tate Modern
by Bubblyby Bubbly 8 min readI went to Tate Modern for one thing, and it was not a painting. It was a spider. Louise Bourgeois’s giant Maman is one of my favourite sculptures anywhere, and Tate owns …
I went to Tate Modern in London to see a spider, and the spider was gone. That is the short version. The longer one is that Louise Bourgeois’s Maman is one of …
For two visits running, I walked straight past these helmets on my way to see the Lewis Chessmen. I would slow down for a minute, take a photo through the glass, and …
Here is the thing nobody puts in the caption. Almost nobody really sees the Rosetta Stone. I have stood in front of it twice at the British Museum in London, six years …
Everything else at the National Gallery was, if I am honest, a warm-up. I had come for one painter. Van Gogh has pulled at me for years, and with a trip to …
- London
The Lewis Chessmen: A Grumpy Medieval Court at the British Museum
by Bubblyby Bubbly 8 min readI have stood in front of the Lewis Chessmen more than once, and not one of them has ever looked pleased to see me. They are small, carved from walrus ivory, more …
- London
The Post-Impressionists at the National Gallery: A Word Invented in London
by Bubblyby Bubbly 8 min readThe word post-Impressionism was invented in London, by an Englishman, about a group of French painters who never once used it themselves. In November 1910 the critic Roger Fry took an open …
I have stood at the edge of Monet‘s pond in Giverny, watched the water lilies wrap around me in the Orangerie in Paris, and then, not expecting it at all, found the …
- London
Manet, Not Monet: A Cut Canvas Reunited at the National Gallery
by Bubblyby Bubbly 6 min readA small public service before we start: this is Manet, with an ‘a’, Édouard Manet, and not Claude Monet, with an ‘o’. The two are forever muddled, and I will come back …