I’m always trying to find fun ‘cultural’ things to do, be it an
exhibition, a gig or concert, some literary event etc. I do enjoy them and deep
down somewhere I probably think that they are a necessary part of my
self-improvement. They’re also great small-talk fillers. Problem is, that when
summer hits, the requirements of small-talk often goes up as everyone becomes
more sociable when the sun comes out, but the number of cultural conversation
pieces goes down because I stop looking for cool things to do. The one drawback
of actually having a British summer this year is that I’ve done almost nothing
but sit outside, eat a lot and do a hell of a lot of people watching. So this
weekend I decided to try to fill the void at least a little and headed off to
see Boyhood (incidentally people watching for the cinema-goer) and went to the
Virginia Woolf exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery (hoorah, I finally
got to the subject of this post).
Love a bit of Virginia Woolf and I know that there is a Woody Allen
sequel to Midnight in Paris (which
will be aptly named Midnight in London)
waiting for me to snatch the lead role from Owen Wilson so that I can hang out
with the Bloomsbury set for 90 minutes. I mean seriously, these are the people
that started up their own publishers and printed TS Eliot’s The Wasteland. The Woolfs got to hang
out with Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, Vanessa
Bell, EM Forster and Lady Ottoline Morrell. Can you imagine having so many and
such an eclectic group of intellectual minds – writers, artists, economists,
psychologists, poets.
Such life envy, with the exception of the whole going mad and killing yourself
bit… not so great.
The exhibition is a must for anyone vaguely interested in this time period. It
included photos of the Woolf’s home in Tavistock Square before and after the bombing
that destroyed all but its end wall the mural Virginia’s sister, Vanessa Bell,
designed for the couple.
Vanessa’s artwork was dotted about the exhibition and the front covers of early
editions of Woolf’s work were on display, each designed by Vanessa Bell.
There were handwritten love letters (including one from Leonard Woolf
to Virginia which did nothing for my futile belief that he would make a great
husband… for me… I told you it was futile), personal photographs, extracts from
Virginia’s family newsletter that she wrote with her brothers.
It is perhaps unsurprising that Virginia Woolf became, like so many,
very interested in the Spanish Civil War but I didn’t know that she had been so
heavily involved in an event at London’s Royal Albert Hall that
was started to raise money for the Basque children. She was also a patron for
the campaign to bring Picasso’s epic anti-war painting Guernica (1937)
to Britain (the exhibition leaflet was included in the exhibition) and her
nephew, Quentin Bell, apparently tried to get Picasso to come along himself.
While he didn’t turn up, the exhibition included one of his drawings ‘The
Weeping Woman’ which Picasso was said to have donated to the cause in lieu of
his own attendance.
Anyway, I’ve written a ridiculously long post but there’s
so much to see and learn. Even if you don’t really care about Viriginia Woolf,
it’s a wonderfully detailed snapshot into a very interesting group of people at
a pivotal moment in modern history. It’s only £7… You can even drop in at the BP
Portrait Award for free at the same time.
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