Art Therapy

I was meant to be in Wales this weekend, attending a reunion, but circumstances conspired against me. It was frustrating - I'd be been looking forward to going for months - so I decided to make up for it with a day out in the local area.

Instead of driving 275 miles west, I drove 20 miles east:

Beachy Head is usually a little bracing, as the almost horizontal trees bear witness, but yesterday it was more like the Costa de la Luz, with warm winds gently buffeting the coast.

The suicide chaplin half-heartedly did his rounds, looking for solitary figures at the cliff edge, but I think he knew that it was going to be a quiet day.

Before going to Beachy Head, I stopped off at Birling Gap, to see what damage the winter storms had done. The small pile of debris at the bottom of the cliff was a bit of a disappointment, but I knew that the tearoom I took my mother to last summer had fallen into the sea.

The newly-rendered side of this terrace suggests that the storms had also claimed a house:

I don't know how much these houses are worth, but I suspect that a 25-year mortgage isn't on the cards.

After viewing scenes of carnage and destruction, I ambled along the coast to Eastbourne's Towner Gallery, to see an exhibition of works by Peggy Angus:

Rather than give you a potted history here, I would recommend visiting the website of James Russell, who is an expert on mid-20th century British artists in the Ravillious/Nash/Bawden milieu. He has written some excellent books on Ravillious, Paul Nash and Edward Seago and has just published a new title on the life and art of Peggy Angus.

 

I think it would be fair to say that the sum of Peggy Angus's art was greater than its parts. Her paintings don't compare well to those of her friend Eric Ravillious, but her greatness lay in her determination to bring art into everyday life, energising everyone around her.

Not content to remain in the rarified world of fine art, she also designed tiles for public buildings, wallpapers for homes and clothes to wear. She passionately believed that we should resist mass-production and uniformity, creating our own art.

Mrs Steerforth was as impressed as I was and we both agreed that we should put some of Peggy Angus's ideas into practice in our own lives.

The Towner Gallery is one of the best in the south-east. The building is well-designed and, unlike some of its counterparts, has an impressive amount of content. Entrance is free, but after a visit to a chi chi cafe with 'artisan' bread rolls, I must have funded the purchase of at least one new painting for their collection.

In addition to the Peggy Angus exhibition, there is also an excellent collection called Designing the Everyday:

I particularly like this rather insouciant depiction of the male theatre-goers as porcine, purse-lipped fops.

And this plate by Ravillious is one of many that I coveted.

Bouyed-up by our day at the Towner, we decided to take our youngest son to Charleston Farmhouse, where the Bloomsbury Group covered almost every square inch of the interior in murals, tiles and paintings:

My son is eight and has an interest in art and architecture (his favourite programme is Grand Designs) that has come entirely from within him. We are trying to foster this enthusiasm with visits to galleries and 'make and do' sessions at home, but don't want to be too heavy-handed.

It mustn't feel like schoolwork.

Charleston usually has guided tours, which are very interesting but would have bored my son rigid, so I picked the one day in the week where there are no tours. I wanted him to be able to wander around freely, looking at whatever took his fancy.

Sadly, from the moment we arrived, a posse of eager women pounced on us. Would our son like to fill in a quiz? No. Had we been here before? Yes, so bugger off and leave us alone.

There was one volunteer guide per room and most of them seemed determined to tell us everything they knew about each room, whether we wanted to hear it or not. When one particularly keen woman asked my son what the table legs reminded him of, I wanted to say "Leave the boy alone! Let him look in peace."

Luckily, my wife was only too happy to respond to the guides and started asking them increasingly obscure questions. She pointed at a violin and asked "Who played that?" The guide looked crestfallen. "Oh...I don't know." Then, like an admonished child, added "But I know all of the main things."

I shouldn't be rude about the guides. They are genuinely passionate about Charleston and the guided tours are some of the most interesting I've ever had, but they need to realise that some visitors just want to look at the art without any distractions.

I used to have similar problems with my older son, who has Asperger's. During one visit to Kipling's house, a well-intentioned volunteer started asking him questions about school. She was trying to be friendly, but within seconds he went from being relatively relaxed to feeling as if he was going to be sick.

Perhaps these places could introduce a scheme where people who wanted to be left alone could wear a simple badge. If it was successful, it could extended to taxis, hairdressers and barbers.

The visit ended in the beautiful gardens. I asked my son what he thought. "It was great. I really liked it, but not those guides."

The Nine Ages of Duncan Grant

(NB - I've now been informed that this is not Duncan Grant, so please regard this post as 'The Eight Ages...')

Duncan Grant's career as an artist has been rather overshadowed by his relationship with the Bloomsbury Group, but the Tate Gallery website has a selection of his works here.

A Slightly Spooky Bloomsbury Moment

Last week I wrote this post about a trip to Virginia Woolf's home in Rodmell and almost included this photo of Woolf with her niece, Angelica Bell:

I'd seen a copy of it in Virginia Woolf's writing room and was immediately struck by the image. Apart from being beautifully composed, Angelica is very striking, with a pretty but rather solemn, adolescent face. Apparently she found life in the Bloomsbury Group a bit of a bore when she was young, as there were no other children to play with.

During the visit, I wondered if Angelica was still alive, but after looking at the date of the photo it seemed rather unlikely. The next day, I wrote the blog post and in the end, decided not to use the photo, as there were already more than enough images. Then I forgot all about Angelica Bell.

But today, during a quiet moment this afternoon, I looked up Angelica Bell on Wikipedia and discovered that when I was looking at her photo in the garden she knew so well, she was still alive. Horray! The link with the Bloomsburys, TS Eliot, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and Keynes wasn't comletely severed.

But then I read on and discovered that sadly, Bell died the following day at the age of 93, just as I was deciding not to include a photo of her in my post. As Dame Edna would say, that's spooky.

Angelica, left, in Charleston

It's too late in the evening for a potted biography of Angelica Bell's bizarre life, but if you don't know how she discovered that her father wasn't her father and ended up marrying his lover, becoming Mrs Anglica Garnett, click here for the Wikipedia entry or here or here for an obituary.

You won't regret it.

An Afternoon With Virginia Woolf

Although I only live five miles away from Virginia Woolf's rural retreat of Monk's House, it has taken me ten years to get there. I tried to go on several occasions, but the house never seemed to be open, limiting its admission times to the odd afternoon. Fortunately, the National Trust have now extended the opening hours.

As yesterday was a particularly dull, dank, overcast day, with a muted light that felt as if the sun was failing, I decided that this was a good opportunity to enjoy Monk's House without being jostled by any Virginia Woolf fans - they're famed for their brutality.

It took ten minutes to reach the idyllic village of Rodmell, but the incredibly noisy birdsong made me feel as if I'd travelled to a remote, temperate rainforest. I was also slightly unnerved by the fact that although I occasionally heard voices, the village seemed to be completely deserted. Perhaps I've watched too many episodes of the Avengers.

Unlike many historic properties, the entrance fee was very reasonably priced at under a fiver, but that's probably because most of the house was off limits, with only four rooms on view. However, the gardens alone make Monk's House worth a visit:


The building in the background is the early Norman church of St Peter's. It is believed that the font predates the church and may be over a thousand years old. The view from the graveyard reminds me of an Eric Ravilious painting:


This is Woolf's writing room. It's an inauspicious-looking building, but played host to some of the most important figures of the early 20th century. For example, the man on the right is John Maynard Keynes:

Keynes is also in this photo taken in the garden, with Lytton Strachey on the left:

Here are some photos taken from inside the writing room:



Even on such a gloomy day, the garden still provided some colour:



This is the downstairs bedroom:

Compared to Charleston, it seems quite austere, but there are several nice touches by Vanessa Bell. The original books were sold after Leonard Woolf died in 1969, but they have been replaced with volumes from the same period.

Apparently, Woolf decorated the spines of these books as a displacement activity when she was feeling at a particularly low ebb.

The sitting room looks very cosy, with many appealing touches by various members of the Bloomsbury Group.



The large object to the left of the chair is a radiogram, with one of those wonderful dials that lists places around Europe: Luxembourg, Athlone, Paris, Budapest. Woolf was no stranger to the radio and made this recording for the BBC in 1937.

The photograph below is of the dining room, which is rather small for the social milieu of the Woolfs. These chairs have supported many famous bottoms, including TS Eliot's, EM Forster's, the Bells' and Roger Fry's:

The painting on the right is by Virginia Woolf. It's competently executed, but she clearly didn't possess her sister's artistic talents.

To coin Doctor Johnson's quote about the Giant's Causeway, on its own merits, Monk's House is worth seeing, but not worth going to see unless you're a Virginia Woolf fan or live within a 30-mile radius. If the whole house was open, it would be a different matter.

Fortunately, the creative powerhouse of the Bloomsbury Group - Charleston - is only a few miles away (Virginia regularly walked across the Downs to visit her sister Vanessa there), so it's possible to combine the two in half a day. Ideally, if you're fit and weather's good, you can walk from Monk's House to Charlestone via Southease and Firle Beacon.

I've been to Charleston several times and would strongly recommend it to anyone. The rooms are stunning and the guided tours are the most interesting I've been on. There's also a rather nice teashop that serves homemade cakes - a definite plus point.

For more information about opening times, this link takes you to the National Trust page for Monk's House whilst this one is for Charleston.

N.B - Since publishing this post, I've realised that I failed to mention the beautiful parish church in Berwick - only a mile east of Charleston - which was decorated by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. No visit to Monk's House and Charleston would be complete without a brief detour to Berwick.

For fans of the moving image (and middle-aged men wearing floral, metrosexual shirts), this video contains a beautifully-shot five-minute film of Monk's House, complete with marimba music.