The Road Goes Ever On

Monday, August 9, 2021

Southwark Cathedral

Another unplanned but excellent visit. Construction of the present building began in 1220. Southwark was initially a priory church, then a parish church after the Dissolution, a cathedral only since 1905. But there is much history and architecture within.

Shard and tower of Southwark Cathedral

Nave view; beautiful 13th century gothic

Shakespeare window and memorial

My favorite character, Falstaff, of course

Love the Tudor/Stuart memorials

Helpful model

Harvard Chapel; John Harvard was born and

baptized here in 1607, before sailing off to

Cambridge, Mass.

Monument to Dr. Lionel Lockyer, physician, whose pills were
said, laughingly, to be cure-alls

Another beautiful tomb, this of John Gower,
poet laureate to Richard II and Henry IV

The Chaucer Window

Choir rehearsal had begun, so we sat and listened, admiring the
beautiful sculpture in the quire

Among the archaeological exhibits

Peering down into some of the earlier bits; note stone coffin with

separate compartment for head (in case it was detached?)

Excellent signage showing dates of various levels of excavation,
right down to the Roman road

Bonus: one of the most important depictions of 17th century (pre-Great Fire) London
is Wenceslas Hollar's Long View of London from Bankside, 1647; drawn from Southwark
Cathedral's central tower

Along The Southwark

Our visit to the Tate Modern was redeemed by the ensuing walk along the Southwark, the "other" side of the river, Shakespeare country, and home to many other notables and notable sights. The highest point was Southwark Cathedral, which I'll treat in the next post, but there were many high points.

The Globe Theater; as I noted in an earlier post, we were groundlings
there for a performance of Merchant of Venice, although neither
of us can remember when exactly nor whether Rachel and Rebecca
were with us...but then we were also in the audience, seated, for
other performances, other years

A poet set up outside the the theater, taking an order from a
young customer

Skyline past Southwark Bridge

Mural of the Bard beneath the bridge

Heading toward the Clink

Now just a museum, of course

All that remains of the bishops' Winchester Palace,
one of the great buildings of Medieval London

Replica of Drake's Golden Hinde, in which he
and his crew circumnavigated the earth, 1577-1580;
also stopping along the way to raid assorted Spanish
cities, etc., in the New World

Spare parts

Tower of Southwark Cathedral; and the Shard; see next post

Dickens country too

Hayes Galleria; formerly Hayes Wharf, one of the big ones on

the river in Victorian times; where we stopped for drinks and

a rest; in time, everything becomes a restaurant; or a shopping

mall

Tower Bridge, which we then walked across

Approaching, of course, The Tower (dark, forbidding music...)

Looking past the Tower complex to the City

Tower Bridge from Tower moat

Contrasts...

At the Roman wall, a consul welcomes us back
to Londinium

Tate Modern

We are not big fans of "modern" art, but we'd not visited the Tate Modern before, and we thought we'd give it a go. Besides, if the art didn't excite, then the building might: it is the former Bankside Power Station, which provided London with electricity for much of the 20th century. The architects who undertook its transformation are the same who did the Bird's Nest in Tokyo for the 2008 Olympics, so we had high hopes.

From the other bank

Approaching from the Millennium Bridge

In the great old Turbine Hall, definitely some space available if
you have some really large format works to offer

You have to wonder what she was thinking

We headed straight for the permanent collection;

here, Modigliani's Little Peasant, 1918

Braque's Mandora, 1909; it's a musical instrument

Picasso's Head of a Woman, 1909; they later
broke up

Dali's Autumnal Cannibalism, 1936; so far so good, modern-wise

But in the next room, things began to go
downhill; this is Barnett Newman's Moment,
1936; quite similar to the painting I was
doing in the late 1980s (seriously); in my
Artistic Statement, I described my work as
"unfettered by either talent or training"; I
liked to just mix up a bunch of earth-tones,
slather them on, and see what they suggested;
if anything; Moment reminds me also of some
scenes we saw recently in Iceland, as the lava
cooled

Vicki was never particularly appreciative of my artistic endeavors,
which took place mostly in the kitchen (not carpeted; though I
worked mostly in acrylics: easy clean-up); in an unrelated incident,
she left one of my works looking pretty much like this

The one that had the same tones as this item from Gerhard Richter's
John Cage series; I still have the battered painting rolled up in a box
in Missoula, waiting for some wise curator/conservator to restore it

Yves Klein's Paint on Canvas on Plywood, 1959; the paint
color is International Klein Blue, which he claimed to have
invented and trademarked; why didn't I think of that?

Obligatory Warhol

One of three walls of books redecorated with the names of
immigrants who have achieved some degree of renown in
Britain; The British Library, by Yinka Shonabare CBE; we
actually liked this