Art that makes me proud to be Welsh

After breakfast this morning, I prepared my Sunday sermon, then cooked lunch, On impulse after lunch, I walked over to the National Museum of Wales and was delighted to discover that repair work on its dome is now complete, and several of the upstairs galleries renovated. The rotunda room is housing a display of Welsh landscape paintings at the moment. 

It's wonderful to walk through galleries, arranged in historical order from the Renaissance to this century. The Davies Sisters' collection of French Impressionists has a room of its own. Most of these works are familiar. I've seen them here over the past sixty years. Renoir's Lady in Blue moved me to tears. I must have been eight or nine when I was first brought to the Museum. In those days, the Lady in Blue reigned over the east end of the main hall, at the top of the first flight of stairs. Now you can stand in front of her at close quarters and gaze. 

Rodin's sculpture 'The Kiss' is on display in an adjacent room. It's amazingly powerful. It was the first piece of erotic art I recall seeing as an adolescent. L S Lowry's landscape painting of Abertillery in the age when coal was king caught my attention, also a huge vivid triptych by Stanley Spencer, depicting a village festival in Saas Fee.

There's an exhibition on currently called 'The Rules of Art', posing questions about the representation of people in different forms of visual art, and illustrating this with exhibits. Two video installations really caught my attention and made me think. One by Bedwyr Williams has a story-telling soundtrack about a dystopian future in which Mid-Wales has become completely urbanised. The video is an animated 24/7 portrait of Cader Idris and its surroundings covered with giant skyscrapers and floodlit sports pitches.  In a way it pokes fun at the fantasies of architects and developers who seem not to know where to stop in transforming our environment. It has a prophetic ring to it, in my opinion.

The other video work, 'Vertigo Sea' by John Akomfrah was displayed on three huge HD screens inside a darkened room, with ambient music and sound. It used footage of the natural beauties of the environment, juxtaposed against each other by colour form and movement as much as by theme. It was an absorbing, thought provoking, immersive experience, almost intoxicating. I watched only the last few minutes of the 48 minute work. I didn't have the energy to cope with the amount of sensory input, and watch it from the beginning.

When I left to walk home, I realised I was feeling a physical heaviness and my head ached slightly. I'd forgotten last night's vaccination altogether. The symptoms reflected those I had when fighting the battle with covid, but milder. I stopped and sat down on a park bench twice on the walk home. That is quite unusual for me. It'll pass eventually.

After supper, I watched Channel 4 news hour, then the final episode of the current series of French crimmie 'The Crimson Rivers'. Not impressed. Too implausible a storyline.