In these unusual times it is, I think, easy to get a bit fed up. So I thought I would share with you a few things that have brightened up my days recently.
What better place to start than with this magnificent bear taking a rest in City Point Square …
The Square is quite a cheerful place nowadays with lots of colourful seating and it’s quite buzzy weekday lunchtimes and evenings now that the Rack & Tenter pub is open again.
I call this picture ‘Sunflower Surprise’ …
Nature makes its presence felt against the Barbican concrete. That’s Shakespeare Tower in the background.
My favourite front door …
I suppose they got fed up with people saying they couldn’t find the bell!
I am very fond of Sir William Staines whose bust is on display in the church of St Giles Cripplegate, the Ward of which he represented as Alderman …
I smile when I see him because he looks like a man who enjoyed his food. Despite starting life as a bricklayer’s labourer, he amassed a vast fortune and, even though he remained illiterate, he was eventually elected Lord Mayor of London …
He built nine houses for aged or infirm workmen and tradesmen who had fallen on hard times. No doubt remembering his own upbringing, he made sure that there was ‘nothing to distinguish them from the other dwelling-houses, and without ostentatious display of stone or other inscription to denote the poverty of the inhabitants’. That’s why I like him.
Fun street art always cheers me up. Here’s a rather grumpy elephant near Whitecross Street …
In the nearby company of a grumpy parrot …
A slightly disconcerting window display at the Jugged Hare Bar and Restaurant …
High spot of last week was a visit to the Henry Moore Studios and Gardens.
What I hadn’t properly appreciated before was the use Moore made of maquettes in order to help him visualise the finished work, which was often vast in scale. He also sometimes took photographs of these little masterpieces having placed them in an exterior setting in order to demonstrate to customers what a finished work would look like in the landscape.
There is a room full of them …
The gardens contain 21 sculptures by Moore and in several cases you can compare the original maquette …
… with the finished work …
It’s a bronze created between 1979 and 1981 entitled Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut and to me looks like a a woman reaching back over her shoulders.
The gardens are a perfect setting for his work …
I like the faces in the less abstract pieces …
They can look quite sinister …
Another thing I didn’t know was that some of his designs had been woven into tapestries …
A great day – so nice to get away from the City and to loose oneself in the company of a genius like Moore.
And finally, a different kind of art …
In a music shop window, Jagger and Richards performing in Köln in 1976. Who would have guessed they would still be touring 44 years later?
They haven’t changed a bit!
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