Finding myself with an afternoon to spare today I decided to go and see the exhibition at the Laing which has just opened.  It's called Love and is touring from the National Gallery in London featuring works from Vermeer, Goya and Tracey Emin.

I have to admit, the Vermeer was a little disappointing, it was a very good painting but it seemed to lack soul, I couldn't believe the girl as a real person.  The Goya I found more aesthetically pleasing but still somewhat prosaic, like something you'd have on the wall of the parlour.  Progressing onwards I was given literal shivers by reading a small notice about the provenance of one work - they're basically looking to find which poor, most likely doomed Jew it was stolen from, it came to them via Adolf Hitler's personal collection.  The thought that he had appreciated the same work of beauty that we now look at in the gallery is somehow grotesque - that that evil man possessed the canvas as his own, it kind of bore down the weight of his crimes and robbed the work of it's artistic significance by vesting it with another more alarming one.  Then there was a Turner that proved me wrong in some of my past criticism's by demonstrating the scale and the amazing ethereal quality of figures he could make with light.

The-Madonna-of-the-Pinks

The real moment of the afternoon, however, was when I was ambling along the back wall of the exhibition.  I came to the info card before I came to the painting.  It read Raphael - The Madonna of the Pinks.  I have no idea why a painting as famous and valuable (the national paid £22 million for it) as this wasn't billed, but I'm glad it wasn't.  Up until that point it was an interesting exhibition, then you suddenly stumble on a genuine masterpiece as if by accident.  It's like going to open mic night at the pub and mid way through seeing Dylan step up, or turning up to a small town theatre and seeing Michael Caine step up to the stage. 

The-Banquet-of-Cleopatra

In a show with Vermeer, Goya, Turner and more the two artists that stood out most were the Raphael and the Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's The Banquet of Cleopatra.  Add to that the fact that on passing the new sculpture in the lobby my first thought was "No one has really been able to sculpt since Bernini..." I have came to the conclusion that Italians just do it better.

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As promised to Bold as Love following her post of the Vanessa Paradis track.  Admittedly, neither is even remotely similar musically, but they're both rather French.

La Marsellaise

Admittedly it's brash, arrogant and distinctly emphatic, but then, isn't that what makes it so enjoyable?  Plus Tchaikovsky used parts of the theme in the 1812 which I may have mentioned, once or twice, is a particular favourite of mine.

Actually, the other track isn't what I thought it was - I'm sure I had a quite mellow, but funky sounding French track in there somewhere, but it's not the stereolab one after all. 

I think this discovery has kind of killed the point of this post.  Oh well.

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The Olympic torch was lit in Beijing, China on Monday and will be taken on 130-day journey throughout the world. What is your reaction to the Tibet activist groups who plan to demonstrate in large cities as the torch passes through because of China's plans to take the torch through Tibet?

Forgive me for being a pedant but I think the protests might be to do with slightly more than the fact the torch will pass through Tibet.  I think we should seriously consider boycotting the Olympics, so frankly the more people that protest the torch passing the better.

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