Day Trip To Liverpool

[poliphilo]

There was a little gap in the rain, rain, rain and we picked it out and went to Liverpool. Ruth came with us. I'm a Mancunian- and Manchester and Liverpool are like rival Italian Renaissance city states- so we don't go there often, but really we should. Liverpool is stunning. At least the waterfront is. We went to the Albert Dock- which in autumnal sunshine is like something out of a painting by Caneletto- and popped in and out of shops and a Tate exhibition entitled The Twentieth Century: how it looked and how it felt. Tate London has recognised Liverpool's year as European City of Culture by lending its regional branch a number of world-class works, including Degas' Little Dancer and Picasso's Weeping Woman- along with things more properly described as interesting by minor artists like Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The nearer we get to modern times the bleaker it gets. I love Sarah Lucas's brutal, anti-erotic assemblage of light bulbs and old tat-  while Mona Hatoum's sleekly perverted everyday objects- the divan bed in steel, the wheelchair with knives for handles and the baby's cot with cheese-wire in place of a mattress- are crueler than anything the classic old-time surrealists ever came up with. Outside the weather stayed gusty and fine. We had a nice lunch at a creperie, then drove north, stopping off briefly at the dock where the QEII is berthed, and on to Crosby to have another look at Anthony Gormley's wonderful metal men.

Comments

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

The Liverpool photos are quite wonderful. Set against the despair of the 80's and 90's , the revitalization of historic old cities fills me with hope. I'm not sure our times - parts of it at least are any less brutal than others. Perhaps it's only now that we've started turning our brutality into 'art' that it seems so. On Crete the Nazi's documented their treatment of the local people. There is an exhibition of some in the Occupation Museum in Hereaklion. The dead pan matter-of-factness of them is horrifying.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Liverpool is making huge efforts to reinvent itself.

I reckon the first major artist to make human brutality his subject was Goya.

God only knows what the nazis thought they were up to documenting their atrocities.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

and then there was Picasso and Guernica.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I adore Picasso.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

They expected to win