Symbols & Secrets – Page 112 – Walking the City of London

The Barbican Highwalk – dancers, gladiators and more

On 13th December 2018

The Barbican Highwalk is the last significant remnant of the post War City ‘pedway’ dream – the ambitious plan to separate pedestrians from traffic using elevated ‘pavements in the sky’. The Highwalk, at first floor or Podium level, threads its way through the Estate, also embracing entrances to the Arts Centre, library and restaurants. City planners for a long time insisted that new developments had to include potential pedway access, which also explains why the main entrance to the Museum of London is at first floor level. The grand plan was gradually abandoned but exploring the Highwalk will give you a glimpse of the original vision, especially if you seek out the extension over London Wall Place.

Today, however, I am going to concentrate on some of the items that have found a home on the walkways since their construction, starting at the Museum of London.

Outside the Museum entrance is Union – Horse with Two Discs by Christopher Le Brun (2001) …

In a note nearby the artist explains that to him it is important that horses and riders are ‘not seen as real (but) an entrance or key to the place that I want to enter. It’s as if “the horse” enables the journey rather than providing the final subject’.

At the other side of the entrance is The Aldersgate Flame …

Placed here in 1981, it commemorates the approximate location at street level of John Wesley’s conversion on 24 May 1738 and consists of facsimile extracts from his Journal. From that day onward the founder of Methodism set out on a mission covering thousands of miles and delivering over 40,000 sermons -‘The world is my parish’. The monument, which is in bronze, has recently been restored and there is an interesting article about that work and its challenges here.

Crossing the Bastion Highwalk towards the bar and restaurant on Alban Gate you will encounter two naked writhing dancers. Quite often I have seen people pose for photographs whilst trying to mimic the figures’ movements – they have not found it easy …

The work, called Unity, is by the Croatian Sculptor Ivan Klapez. It was commissioned by the building developers MEPC in 1992 and marked a turning point is his career.

Follow the infamous yellow line on the pavement and you will be guided into the Barbican Centre itself where Zoe the Barbican Muse indicates the way in …

A little further ahead on the left is the Osteria restaurant and opposite, in a space that is rather poorly lit, is this figure …

Entitled Gladiator, it was presented by Lady Sarah Cohen in memory of her late husband Sir John Edward Cohen, the founder of Tesco. The work was created in 1973 by Canadian born Israeli sculptor Eli Elan (1928-1982).

I have saved my favourite installation to last – Dorothy Annan’s magnificent murals on the Highwalk between the Centre and Speed House …

Commissioned by the Ministry of Works in 1960, they originally graced the largest telephone exchange in London, the Fleet Building on Farringdon Street. The panels feature stylistic images of telecommunications equipment and are a striking example of 1960s mural art. When the demolition of the building was planned the murals were granted Listed status and moved in 2013 to their present location.

Annan visited the Hathernware pottery in Loughborough and hand-scored her designs onto each wet clay tile. There are nine panels in all and here are three of them with their titles …

Radio Communications and Television.

Cable Chamber with Cables Entering from Street.

Impressions Derived from the Patterns Produced in Cathode Ray Oscilligraphs used in testing.

I love the creamy texture of the ceramic surfaces, their look much enhanced by carefully designed lighting …

Part of Cables and Communication in Buildings.

And here is the lady herself …

The murals’ original location photographed in 2011 …

By the way, as you retrace your steps having looked at Gladiator, take a look at the wall on your left. Here are kept the various locking mechanisms for the Centre and, when I first glimpsed them, I honestly thought they were a Modern Art installation …

Well they could be, couldn’t they!

Some of my favourite City Art

By The City Gent

On 6th December 2018

In Art

If you haven’t yet visited the Guildhall Art Gallery I do strongly recommend it (EC2V 5AE). Established in 1886 it contains works dating from 1670 to the present. A visitor described it as ‘free and fabulous’ and I wholeheartedly agree.

Here is one of my favourite pictures, William Logsdail’s painting entitled The Ninth of November 1888 …

It is, of course, the Lord Mayor’s procession, but in this picture he is nowhere to be seen and the artist has concentrated on the liveried beadles (who he actually painted in his studio)…

… and the people in the crowd …

There is a minstrel in blackface with his banjo and, although I have studied this picture dozens of times, I have only just noticed the little boy next to him nicking an orange from the old lady’s basket. On the right of the picture the man in the brown hat, next to the soldier with the very pale face, is Logsdail’s friend the painter Sir James Whitehead. It’s a sobering thought that, not far away in the East End that afternoon, police were discovering the body of Mary Kelly, believed to be the last of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

Up the stairs at the far end of the gallery, in a space specially designed for it, you look down on the action-packed painting by John Singleton Copley: Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar 1782 …

A Spanish attack on Gibraltar was foiled when the Spanish battering ships, also known as floating batteries, were attacked by the British using shot heated up to red hot temperatures (sailors nicknamed them ‘hot potatoes’). Fire spread among the Spanish vessels and, as the battle turned in Britain’s favour, an officer called Roger Curtis set out with gunboats on a brave rescue mission which saved almost 350 people.

Look at the painstaking detail in the faces of the officers and Governor General Augustus Eliot, who is portrayed riding to the edge of the battlements to direct the rescue …

The officers were dispersed after the Gibraltar action and poor Copley had to travel all over Europe to track them down and paint them – a task that took him seven years at considerable expense. He recouped some of his cash in 1791 by exhibiting the picture in a tent in Green Park and charging people a shilling to see it (about £10 in today’s value).

Here is a facsimile of an admission ticket …

And now some more contemporary pieces of art.

In the entrance hall to the London Mithraeum at 12 Walbrook (EC4N 8AA) your eyes are drawn immediately to this stunning tapestry by Isabel Nolan: Another View from Nowhen …

You can just pop in to look at the tapestry but I hope you will also book a time slot to go downstairs and visit the beautifully restored and exhibited Temple of Mithras. You can read all about it and see some pictures in my blog The Romans in London: Mithras, Walbrook and the Games.

In September 2017 Banksy paid a clandestine visit to the City to coincide with a retrospective of the work of American graffiti artist-turned-painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. The first work, a Ferris wheel with people queuing for tickets, is captioned as follows on Banksy’s website:

Major new Basquiat opens at the Barbican – a place that is normally very keen to clean any graffiti from its walls …

The three-pointed crown is a symbol often used in the artist’s own work.

The painting on the other side of the road references a Basquiat picture showing a New Yorker being searched by the police …

Steps have been taken to protect both paintings and you can see them at the junction of Beech Street and Golden Lane (EC1Y 0QT).

And finally, I often smile as I walk along Whitecross Street and see this jolly illustration of the street’s shops portrayed on street furniture …

… along with this cheerful picture inviting you to nip around the corner and dine at the lovely, friendly Baracca Restaurant, highly recommended …

The Bank of England, the Lothbury Ladies and more doors

By The City Gent

On 29th November 2018

In Architecture, City Symbols, Commerce

I really like the exterior of the bank of England, Soane’s curtain wall speaking as it does of security and confidence.

Before I write about the doors, however, there are the four ladies to admire. Carved by Sir Charles Wheeler between 1932 and 1937, and nicknamed the Lothbury Ladies, they are located against the ends of the upper pavilion blocks.

The eastern pair stand in front of cornucopias and piles of money …

According to the splendid Ornamental Passions website, from which these pictures are taken, Wheeler was slightly queasy about these images of prosperity given that this was a time of financial crisis (Britain having just been forced off the gold standard). He thought sheaves of corn might be more suitable and wrote to the architect Sir Herbert Baker suggesting this. Baker ‘clearly told him not to be silly’.

The ladies on the western side are each hold a standing naked child between their legs, one male …

… and one female …

They ‘represent the hope of the future of the renewed Bank and its ideals’.

I wrote about the main Threadneedle Street doors in an earlier blog but you will encounter more as you walk around the building. These are the Goods Yard Doors in Lothbury which contain symbols of work – in the tympanum between the two lions rampant are a hammer and anvil, a monkey wrench and a rivet.

The roundels in the door are surrounded by rope motifs, the upper ones containing half-length nude male figures also symbolising work. The one on the left is carrying a load on his back …

… the one on the right is bent over a vice

The lower roundels contain curled up lions …

People have obviously been stroking his head.

These are the daunting, even menacing, Lothbury Court or Bullion Doors …

Loops of chains hang from a ring in the lion’s mouth and the doors themselves are decorated with huge double-warded keys, the handle of each containing a caduceus. These are the only sliding doors at the bank and Herbert Baker sent a Wheeler a sketch with the rather rude comment …

We already have too many prancing lions and a bullion door must be a more forbidding thing, simple in expression and to a big scale.

And finally, here are the doors on Princes Street with, yes, more ‘prancing lions’ …

I love their curly tails, and above them a smiling male sun and lady moon.

Incidentally, the main doors are magnificent and this is a link to the blog where I write about them in more detail …