Cheers!
I’m in London this week, and it’s a gas. I’ve decided, and I don’t think I’m breaking any news here, that London is always a good idea.
I’ve spent some time here over the years, although most of it was two decades ago (gulp). This means, besides New York, it’s the city I feel most comfortable dropping into and getting right to it.
This week, I’ve been doing my daily run in Hyde Park (delightful), walking all over town and up to Hampstead Heath for my first visit (partially inspired by Taylor Swift, I will admit), doing a spot of shopping at Selfridges and along Marylebone High Street, and took in a show - Spring Awakening, at the Royal Academy of Music where Elton John and Jacob Collier both studied.
But the highlight so far has been something I discovered on one of my walks: the Wallace Collection. This is a small national museum off Manchester Square featuring the personal collection of the first four marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. The collection includes 17th, 18th, and 19th-century art and armory displayed in the family’s former historic home.
I’ll be honest, old European art isn’t my favorite, but the Collection currently has a fantastic little exhibit on display. It consists of only four paintings, but they pack a punch. On the ground floor, the museum has taken two giant 18th-century Francois Boucher paintings off their silk moire wallpapered walls and out of their ornate gilt frames and hung them on crisp white backdrops, displayed like contemporary art. And up the grand main staircase, they’ve installed two equally large abstract floral paintings by 24-year-old British artist, Flora Yukhanovich, in extraordinary classical frames, on those tactile and sumptuous walls.
The Yukhnovich works are gorgeous, no doubt about it, but looking at the Bouchers, all I could think about was how much they reminded me of Instagram. Paintings from the Rococo period feature exuberant, artfully - and artificially - composed scenes, meant to please the rich patrons who commissioned and gazed upon them. But the style fell out of favor quickly, deemed too focused on aesthetics over meaning.
It strikes me as a direct precursor to the visual language of today.
The Stories, Posts, and Reels on social media that get the most likes are often the ones that are the most beautiful to look at. And while they’re presented as “real life,” most are staged or filtered. Or even created using AI. Are we living in a modern Rococo era?
The white-walled room at the front of the house is bright and brilliant. But after you view them, you immediately walk into the Armory, a dark and gloomy room filled with chain mail and weaponry. And it occurred to me why people have always sought escape in art, and artifice. Frivolous, maybe, but necessary, too.
Light versus dark.
Thanks to a case of jet lag, I finally watched Oppenheimer at midnight the night before I visited the Wallace Collection. As I looked at Flora’s exploding florals, and Francois’s idyllic, imagined illustrations of life and love, I thought of how Christopher Nolan filmed the Trinity test. Roiling flames devouring oxygen. Silence and blinding light. Beautiful horror hanging in the balance between saving the world and destroying it.
Not light versus dark. Light and dark. It’s all connected.
Spring Awakening is a pop-rock musical based on a 19th-century German play about growing up. I didn’t know anything about the show before I took my seat, and I quickly realized that the title, which I had interpreted as optimistic, was perhaps not. By the end, I was struck by the universality of what every generation faces on the journey from childhood to adulthood. Tragedy and hope. History repeats itself.
The difference - progress, let’s call it - comes when the adults in the room strive to be good, supportive, open-hearted and open-minded guides. There to light the way.
I think it’s all we can strive for - to try to light the way for the people around us. In whatever ways we can.
Thanks for reading.
x Lindsay