July 7th - July 9th, 2016

STRANGE SHORE: Manchester and London, England

SUNDRY LAND: United Kingdom

WANDERING WAY: L.S. Lowry exhibitions at “The Lowry” and “The Manchester Gallery of Art”; London Arrival!!!

Might this Sunday’s and Monday’s two-day bout of lackadaisical sleepiness have had something to do with my tireless sightseeing for the last three weeks? Surely not! Whatever the reason, rest assured dear reader, the happy authoress of “Strange and Sundry” undertook a rejuvenating regimen of naps interspersed with high-protein meals accompanied by champagne, and now she’s perked up and propped up in front of her pink computer to write another day. (Note: Since my current workspace, V&A’s National Art Library – http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/n/national-art-library/, closes on Sundays and Mondays, a break was very nearly requisite in any case.) With renewed resolve never to feel sleepy again, herein follows a wrap-up of Manchester and a celebration of my London arrival.

Grimmest Mancunian Artist – L.S. Lowry

Even before landing in Manchester with the peculiar, self-imposed mission to shuck out its cultural pearls (if any were to be found), I had encountered the artist L.S. Lowry. Another Brit in possession of imposing initials, J.K. Rowling, refers to Lowry in her latest and least successful Cormoran Strike novel, “Career of Evil,” writing,

“A Victorian technical college embellished with classical figures bore the legend Labor Omnia Vincit. A little further and they came across rows and rows of terraced housing, the kind of cityscape Lowry painted, the hive where workers lived” (185).

Upon reading this allusive description a year ago, I wondered, “Who the hell is Lowry? Is this some weirdo British thing?” As it turns out, the life’s work of one Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) is indeed some weirdo British thing – he was the one-man Ashcan School of the Industrialized North, who documented Manchester’s grime by portraying its droves of working poor as “so dehumanised by the big black factories that they walk around like automatons”(quoth Jonathan Jones: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2000/may/02/artsfeatures). 

I’d say if you’ve seen one Lowry, you’ve seen them all (despite the curators’ fleeting attempts to prove otherwise). It must be said, however, that Lowry foisted a striking number of these modernistic proto-pop pieces upon the world, playing around with his basic formula of “white background with brick and crowd” to increasingly impressive and depressive effect. For more variations, see here: (http://www.thelowry.com/ls-lowry/microsite/art/industrial-scenes/) & (http://www.thelowry.com/ls-lowry/microsite/art/people/). 

Apparently, blood-leeched overproduction springs from Manchester’s very lifeblood. As a miserable loner who never got out of the Manchester/Salford industrial-hellscape that he hated, L.S. Lowry is so celebrated by appreciative Mancunians that they named their spanking-new hotel, outlet mall, and art complex “The Lowry” after him (http://www.thelowry.com/about-the-lowry/).

Good for him, I guess.

As one bright point in the otherwise “grim” (his word, not mine) existence of L.S. Lowry, he eventually sold enough paintings to retire from his terrible job as a “rent collector and clerk at the Pall Mall Property Company” (damn), assemble an impressive art collection, and encourage painters of the next generation (including Lucian Freud).

In spite of (or possibly to escape from) the gritty crowds in his own oeuvre, Lowry favored the idealized portraiture of the Pre-Raphaelites, and his collection included a charcoal by Ford Madox Brown as well as a drawing (“Annie Miller” 1860) and a gorgeous oil (“Proserpine” 1873/77) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his favorite artist.

Lowry said, “There’s no one like Rossetti. …I don’t care much for his subject pictures but his women are very wonderful. I can’t find anything quite like them…[they are]…unreal pictures.” In a move that Lucian Freud’s grandfather might’ve deemed significant, the “asexual” Lowry hung his portraits of Rossetti’s “unreal” women all over his bedroom walls, where they remained until his death.

Most Beautiful London Sunset & Most Ingenious Cocktails

With a sigh of relief, I escaped the post-industrial pavements of Manchester and rode the train into a perfect summer sunset, London-style. Gotta love the Southbank.

Still kvelling over this gorgeous summer weather after all that time in the wet and blustery North, I met up with my friend Beth for swanky cocktails at “a hidden slice of old-school glamour” called Nightjar (https://www.barnightjar.com). We were indeed quite glamorous, as only chic PhD Specialists in Medieval Literature can be.

Hooray for savvy Londoners in the know! There’s no doubt that without Beth’s know-how, there’s no way, no how I would’ve noticed Nightjar’s hidden doorway or made my way past its meticulous maître d’. In high style, Nightjar delivers owls fuming with smoke and alcohol, like some steampunk Hedwig ready for trouble. I’m not kidding:

I’m more of a chicken than an owl however – I opted for a traditionally-administered beverage, this Charlie Chaplin.

Being only an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to cocktails, I wouldn’t dare to comment on the official cocktailian (http://www.cocktailians.com) merits of the offerings, but nothing was too sweet even if it was all a bit precious…in both senses of the word.

Despite an onslaught of peepy-eyed somnolence the next morning, which (reflecting back) may have had something to do with the cocktails, I still managed to see three plays and one movie in four days...all of which are to be reviewed quite shortly on the next "Strange and Sundry." But now! Lunch! Tea! Tea sandwiches, and tea cake, too. Three cheers for the café at the V&A.