It is hot today. We are back to summer.

Yesterday, I caught the tube to the Tate Modern. The approach is stunning. As you walk over the Millennium Bridge spanning the Thames, you have St Paul’s Cathedral behind you, The Shard to the left, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern in front of you. There was a floating box on the Thames with a small Asian man on top.

Tate Modern is, principally, a venue for modern art. It has opened a new tower, the Switch House, so it has increased by sixty percent. It was a power station in a former life. It is young: sixteen years.

I have to admit, I don’t like the place. It is minimalist, of course, but it is windowless in places, and I felt claustrophobic. I was lost at one point. I overheard another visitor say that he couldn’t figure out how to get around. I assented silently.

The Georgia O’Keefe exhibition was interesting. Her stunning flowers are reputed to be erotic, based on part of the female anatomy. But if you paint or draw a flower accurately, there will be reproductive parts! I preferred her paintings from the time she lived in New Mexico. The red earth reminded me of the red earth of Australia, especially the interior desert near Ayers Rock – Uluru.

O’Keefe called this desert world, the Faraway, as it was so removed from the East Coast where she lived for the rest of the time. Again, there are parallels with the Outback in Oz; instead of Faraway, it is called The Never-Never. It is the ‘back of beyond’. Remote and infertile.

A comment she made resonated deeply with me. She stated, “I wish you could see the place here – there is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees – sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces – it seems so perfect.” I have, on occasion, have had the same feeling when confronted with beauty. I want to destroy it. I feel pain instead of joy. What is that?

Is it that one feels inadequate in the face of such blinding perfection? Is that why people deface beautiful buildings with graffiti?

When we rented in Elystan Street near Brompton Cross, South Kensington, in 2004, we didn’t have any outside space.  There was a drive that ran in front of the house to a small office building at the rear of the property, housing a property  business. Hugo and Anna would sometimes throw a ball out there, but it wasn’t easy as a chaffeur often wanted to park there, waiting for his boss.

I often saw the boss pass by the window. He was very dignified and handsome. He would smile and say hello if we bumped into each other. Occasionally, his daughters would hang around. They were all beautiful, but the youngest was perfection. I was not surprised that she turned out, in later life, to be a supermodel: Cara Delevingne.

Today, I will try to keep calm and cool and carry on!

 

 

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