Saturday 25 February 2017

Mary Magdalen repentant and Just Kids

Cagnacci's Mary Magdalen repentant currently on show at the National Gallery (on loan from California).
Love the jewels and fabulous blue dress cast aside. Also the clear weight of her hip against the floor.















A few rooms away, Veronese's painting of the same subject has an Easter pastel colour palette (as noted before....)
Robert Mapplethorpe bought Patti Smith a white dress for Easter (Just Kids) after Martin Luther King was gunned down.
'Robert had bought me a white dress for Easter, but he gave it to  me on Palm Sunday to assuage my sadness. It was a tattered Victorian tea dress of handkerchief linen. I adored it and wore it in our apartment, a fragile armour against the ominous portents of 1968.'


Reading and watching

  • Foot by Foot to Santiago de Compostela/Judy Foot
  • The Testament of Mary with Fiona Shaw at the Barbican
  • The Testament of Mary/Colm Toibin
  • Schwanengesang/Schubert - Tony Spence
  • Journals/Robert Falcon Scott
  • Fugitive Pieces/Ann Michaels
  • Unless/Carol Shields
  • Faust/Royal Opera House
  • The Art of Travel/Alain de Botton
  • Mad Men Series 6
  • A Week at The Airport/Alain de Botton
  • The Railway Man/Eric Lomax
  • Bright Lights, Big City/Jay McInerney
  • Stones of Venice/John Ruskin
  • The Sea, the Sea/Iris Murdoch
  • Childe Harold/Lord Byron
  • All The Pretty Horses/Cormac McCarthy
  • Extreme Rambling/Mark Thomas
  • Story of my Life/Jay McInerney
  • Venice Observed/Mary McCarthy