Family Affairs

“THE REAL VAN GOGH” EXHIBITION AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

You have to go and see this exhibition – it’s on until 18th April 2010. It is a fascinating insight into the life of Van Gogh. You get to see many of his early sketches and drawings and letters – I was amazed to see how technically correct and powerful these were. It made me realise that when he suddenly leapt into a blaze of colour a few years later he wasn’t the impressionist I thought he was, he was just using the brush strokes that he saw as clearly rooted in nature.

He died at 37 after starting his career as an artist only 10 years before. He was clever, lucid and passionate. He read Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. He spoke and wrote in three different languages. “Books and reality and art are the same kind of thing for me” he wrote. It was hardly surprising he suffered from severe bouts of mental illness. Imagine trying to get everything he wanted to say and feel down on paper in so many different mediums in so short a period of time.

The exhibition takes you through the various stages of his development, from the sketches, to some paintings of the Dutch landscape and the focus on the peasants working in the fields moving from the rather bleak landscape to Paris where he suddenly became a daring colourist. Then there are the portraits which were the most important part of his work where he tried to capture the “je ne sais quoi of the eternal”.

There are many of the paintings we know already, but the story it tells is completely different when you see all of his artwork together like this.

He shot himself in a field, through the chest and then took two days to die. How hideous. He died in Auvers on 29 July 1890.

Paul Gauguin, with whom he lived for a while clearly unhinged him even more. They clashed really badly apparently. It was during this time he chopped off part of his left ear lobe. He sums up the difference between them by painting portraits of them each represented by chairs:-

“Portrait of the Artist as a Chair”:-

Van Gogh’s chair is all rustic and basic, sitting on a tiled floor. Simple with a pipe and a bit of old tissue on the chair itself and painted in the yellow light of day. Whereas Gauguin’s chair is depicted in night light, all dark red and green and lush with a candle on the chair. Completely the opposite in fact:-

JUSTIN BIEBER COMES TO THE UK

Within a matter of days, it seems to me, my daughter and all her friends have a new heart-throb to swoon over. Until last week, I hadn’t even heard of him. Justin Bieber. It just doesn’t sound very rock and roll does it? He’s Canadian and looks about 5. Very [...]

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BUDDHA BAR – LONDON

I had a meeting last night with my very gorgeous, incredibly talented fashion designer friend and my equally gorgeous and incredibly talented travel PR friend. We had dinner together at the Buddha Bar under Waterloo bridge. What an oh so cool place that is. You only have to click on the link to get the vibe….very laid back music, great food and even better – it’s very dark. It would have been the perfect place for me to have lunch after my Sunday afternoon swim because my goggle eyes and wet hair wouldn’t have been seen.

Really, you need to go there with somebody you want to snog. There were lots of people snogging in corners. We on the other hand sat in the middle of the restaurant which was relatively quiet – (well it was Monday night) staring at all the snoggers and spending the entire time looking very uncool. Firstly, I couldn’t even find the menu on the table, let alone read it. So we had to ask for a torch. Then, even though it was light enough, I still couldn’t read the words so I had to borrow my friends glasses. Then we had to huddle together to talk over the music.

It’s a bit like going into Abercrombie and Fitch and pretending that you are not too old to see in the dark, not too old to cope with incredibly loud music and not too old to look as if you really shouldn’t be there at all because frankly you could almost be a grandmother to all the beautifully toned young things that dance about.

Anyway, we made some progress. We discussed plans for the upcoming charity fashion show I’m helping out with and it’s all very exciting.

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“NINE” FILM REVIEW

I went to see Rob Marshall’s film adaption of the Broadway stage musical “Nine” over the weekend. I wasn’t expecting great things. The reviews haven’t been fantastic and several friends were disappointed. I, however was not. I thought it was brilliant. Generally speaking I am not a fan of musicals, but there were more complex layers than usual and consequently for me, it worked.

The story takes us inside a man’s head, depicting the man as moulded by the women in his life. Guido, the troubled maestro, a well known Italian film director is played powerfully and brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis. The film is set in 1960’s Italy. You should see it if only for the very, very cool film footage; all vespas and sexy cars and black and white shots of Rome and the Amalfi Coast and beautiful clothes.

The cast of women is phenomenal – his mother, played by a scarily beautiful Sophia Loren appears from time to time when he is lost and needs advice. Penelope Cruz plays a brilliantly fragile and beautiful mistress – oozing pure sex appeal in his fantasy image of her, whilst living the nightmare that is “the other woman” in reality. His Audrey-Hepburnesque wife is pure genius as the empty, hollow, neglected, angry, disappointed wife – especially when she virtually spits out the song “My Husband Makes Movies”. Nicole Kidman was his gorgeous muse, Fergie the lead singer in The Black Eyed Peas played a very sexy raw early childhood fantasy, Kate Hudson was a gorgeous American Vogue journalist and Dame Judi Dench, his closest ally and costume designer was brilliant singing her Folie Bergere song.

I highly recommend it.

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CIRQUE DU SOLEIL – VAREKAI REVIEW

A six week run of the Cirque Du Soleil’s new show “Varekai” has just started at The Royal Albert Hall in honour of the Canadian Circus troops 25th Anniversary.

I saw it tonight with my three children. It was one of their Christmas presents and they loved it. The theme appeared to be a loose version of the story of Icarus – starting off with a forest scene full of weird and wonderful animals – very “Avatar” in style actually.

The tickets are expensive and some of the story is frankly a bit waffly and unnecessary for me – I would probably prefer to pay less and watch the good bits for half an hour, HOWEVER at the core of the show are a handful of acts that are amongst the most stunning displays you will ever hope to see and what better place to see them than at The Royal Albert Hall.

Aerial sequences with various artists suspended from ropes or nets or hoops, brilliant jugglers, a teeny weeny Chinese troup and an unbelievably bendy girl – “rubber woman” are but a few of the sensational acts you will see:-

The audience was a lovely mixture of ages and types. Anyone and everyone will like this show. Beg, borrow or steal a ticket if you can.

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AVATAR REVIEW

I’m not going to do a proper review. There are already plenty of those. All I’m going to say is that the new James Cameron film “Avatar” is quite clearly going to be as successful, if not more so than his last film “Titanic”.

This prediction is based on my recent survey of four. Not a very thorough survey I accept, but given that in my household we represent many different demographics I believe it is realistic. It is very rare that in my house we are in agreement about a film or a play or a book or a TV programme or an item of clothing or a meal or a hairstyle or a pair of shoes or anything really.

We all liked the play “Warhorse” and now the rights have been bought by Stephen Spielberg and so the fact that all of us liked “Avatar” for different reasons means that Cameron has succeeded in producing a film that has marketing appeal to all.

There is romance, battle, exquisite visionary detail – the sublime beauty of a fairytale alien planet complete with extraordinary flora and fauna including dragons. Being in 3D the landscape immerses the viewers to the point where we are actually walking in the magical rainforest with huge blue creatures. I thought the disabled ex-marine hero was beautiful (Sam Worthington) and putting the human mind into an alien body provided no better way of merging two very different worlds together and making it seem believable.

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JAMIE OLIVER’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT REVIEW: OXFORD

My nine year old wanted to do the review of the Jamie Oliver restaurant given that he’s such a huge fan. As I mentioned in my previous post, our entire journey consisted of him saying “IMAGINE how great it would be if Jamie is at the restaurant and his brother saying “well he won’t be”, “yes but IMAGINE if he was…” and so on for hours:-

“hi i’m going to tell you how nice jamie oliver’s food was firstley i had a starter wich was crispy squid with a little lemon on it and that was very nice secondley i had a burger with cheese in it and my brother had a steak my sister had the same thing as me and my mum had seabass in a bag which she said was lovely. They had a very cool kids menu and for pudding me my sister and mum had a sorbet wich was lovely.

Here’s a picture of me using the children’s menu which just has pictures and no words:-

and here’s a picture of one of the burgers:-

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