EXHIBITION REVIEW: FROM MANET TO PICASSO

I was wandering about town inbetween appointments. A limited fountain of cash suggested i was best off using my time for free, so i wandered into the National Gallery....

It was the first time I'd been inside the NG for a good long while and I found myself wondering why..

The thing is, though I love art, I don't quite know what to do with galleries. I'm not a painter, so i can't carefully study the brushstrokes until the inspiration bullseyes me and I run out to grasp a brush. Neither do i find much value in starring at things that aren't moving at all...

Art aside, each time i venture inside a gallery, I always find a host of wonderfully beautiful people wandering about. Indeed i find this to be so consistent, I fear I have some kind of art lovers fetish. This fetish does of course provide an immediate reason to go in, but also a strong reason to avoid all galleries full stop. An infatuation is a fine thing, but abandonning one is like tearing your heart out and spitting on it, and pain of this type can be only tolerated occasionally...

Anyway, this time I went in, and soon found I was in for a very special treat. Not only did i feast my eyes upon a chiselled face of such unprecedented beauty it outshone almost all of the art on show, but there was a small and strangely positioned exhibition in the basement called 'From Manet To Picasso'..

'Oi, Oi,' I thought. Here's something i can deal with...

So, I glided down the stairs as if some kind of regal princess and found a set up of such simplicity and smallness containing such bigness that it confused me immesureably..

I mean, there I was in the very center of central London in one of the biggest and most pompous galleries of them all and stashed away in the basement - as if it were an afterthought - was an exhibtion full of paintings from the archives...

The word 'archives' susually makes you think of the sort of things you keep in the back of the wardrobe/cardboard for a rainy day: Things like old leters or badly fitting trousers and unwanted christmas presents. The National Galleries 'archives' are however really rather large and not at all embarassing..

Yes boss, we're not talking small unknowns here, but the very biggest of big boys. There's one of Van Goghs 'Sunflowers' and a room full of Monets in this exhibition..There's also several beautifully fine Seurats, a single and lonely Picasso, Manet at his best, Gaugin and Rousseau

In short, this exhibtion is a gem and a mystery..I mean, Wow and Great!!!

But why are such big and important works hidden away in the lowest ceilened room of the lot???...The space is barely the size of the cloakroom, there's no bulletproof glass or heavy spies watching you watching the paintings..And best of all you pay nothing..

V
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r
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strange....And worth a look...