| Monday, February 21, 2005 |
 | The weekend, briefly.
Friday, dinner at Sagar to celebrate Matt's birthday. He remains awfully young, and hideously accomplished. London lovelies attended, including Tom, Gavin and Kim. I made two severe failures of etiquette, at least. Think I got away with both. I am now compiling a list of people to take to Sagar in my head. It's South Indian, which as a cuisine I don't know very well at all - some would say that I don't know any food at all well apart from the native cuisine of Openheatstiria - but utterly delicious and surprisingly affordable; the bill came to £20 each, although as usual teetotallers could feel hard done by through that allocation, and with good reason.
Saturday, A new record for library fines - £12 - organic pizza and late into town. Pondered checking out the Lee Miller exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, but remembered that I had found Dracula 2001 pretty uninspiring, so headed down to see Madame Yevonde instead. Despite sounding like a fortune teller, Madame Yevonde took some interesting pictures, in particular the "Goddesses" series, in which society beauties of the time were photographed dressed as great 18th Century religious and political thinkers. Aileen Leatherman as Minerva is fantastic. Seeing interbellum faces in colour is a little odd, although nowhere near as odd as the combined impact of that and of a clearly modern profile or three-quarters smiling out at you from the 1930s. From there to the ICA. Sissu Tarka's tranforming, horrible portrait of Richard Branson is not something I would recommend to diners. Tino Sehgal's downstairs work was pretty sophomoric - a slo-mo tribute to early Nauman - but upstairs was far more fun. Five speakers, keeping their faces turned away from the audience, comment on comments they overheard from the audience as the audience commented on... you see the point. The conversation is pretty banal, but the process is interesting - they seek to involve the viewer, discussing the need for repetitions or clarifications, but at the same time ignore them - because they are facing away, the comments may often be from those who have already left the room, and how exactly do you join in a conversation with a piece of art? It's a complex challenge, and not one anyone took up for the cycle I observed. Maybe others are more forward.
A little shopping followed.
Sunday - saw the Throne of Weapons, and a collection of Mathias Kauage paintings. It struck me that I had more conceptual tools to consider as art five people talking to each other in a gallery as an artwork than these bright, figurative paintings, which suggests terrible pretension. Maybe I should throw MOMA from the train.
Also, I must seek and destroy Jamie Oliver. This is not new, but the urgency has increased. They are using Deceptacon to push his new series, in which the flappy-faced mockney bastard brings cookery to the children, since no group, no matter how innocent, can be spared the attentions of the tonguemonster. He must be ended before he ruins Le Tigre for me forever. When I am commissioning editor, Oliver will be forced, if he wants the oxygen of publicity, to cook and eat himself as an audience of salivating lost boys pelt him with noodle doodles. No excuses.
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