Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Shakespeare, Vagina Flowers, and a Gay Man

The British Library and the Tate Modern:

Shakespeare, Vagina Flowers, and a Gay Man

These two institutions are worthy to be on the shortlist of any visitor’s London destinations.

The British Library has six miles of shelves filled with more items than any other library in the world. I remember only too well all the kerfuffle when the library was separated out from the British Museum (and various venues around the city) and pulled together under a new roof in 1997, after taking longer and costing more than intended. The British do not like their institutions messed about with, but in fact, this high-tech, temperature-controlled new location has been a very successful move.

The free exhibitions that the British Library mounts for the public are often tantalizing. I made it to “Shakespeare in Ten Acts,” a multi-media tracing of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare – over and over again through the years. He has undergone a rainbow of reinventions and reinterpretations – and it’s not over yet.

Most fascinating to me were the rooms on racism and sexism – looking at the reluctant inclusion of people of color and women on Shakespearean stages. Using their own vast resources, the exhibition offers a peek at such rare items as the last surviving manuscript hand-written by the man himself. (Check out the video intro to the exhibition at the bottom of this piece if you're interested.)

Speaking of precious papers, no visit should skip the displays of British Library treasures. It’s truly sobering to read Michelangelo’s handwriting from letters he sent in 1550 or to view the pages of Da Vinci’s 1508 notebook. The Magna Carta (1215), written in Latin on sheepskin parchment, is right there behind glass, with its teeny-tiny left-leaning font. I loved the dual letter – half by Anne Boleyn and half by Henry VIII – pressuring Cardinal Wolsey in 1528 to expedite the papal annulment. Wasn’t Boleyn holding out on Hank until they were married?

A bit more modern, but personally arousing to me, was the original binding of 15-year-old Jane Austen’s “The History of England” – a parody illustrated by her older sister Cassandra, who, if I remember correctly, burned many of Jane Austen’s letter in an act of family reputation management, thereby robbing the rest of us of the inside story.

Tate Modern: Georgia O’Keeffe and Bhupen Khakhas

The best way to approach the magnificent Tate Modern museum is by walking over the Thames from the glorious St. Paul’s Cathedral via the Millennium Bridge – opened for pedestrians as a kind of Tony Blair vanity project in June 2000 only to be immediately closed for two years to deal with a disconcerting wobble. It’s beautiful and affords exceptional views.

The Tate Modern is part of a series of Tate museums in Britain. It opened in 2000 in the building that housed from 1947-81 a giant power station. They’ve done an impressive transformation and re-purposing. Recently they added another wing, making the navigation inside a bit complex.

This summer a retrospective of Georgia O’Keeffe was mounted including rooms with the range of her works. We know her best by her painted vagina-flowers, but she did many other kinds of work. I was impressed by her New York cityscapes, where she mostly lived from 1918-29 with her partner, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whose work is generously included throughout this exhibition. I was disconcerted, during my visit, by a number of quotes from O’Keeffe and comments by the curators on the explanatory plaques rejecting any sexual interpretation of any of her work. She seemed to fully repudiate feminist admiration and it all smacked of a kind of repression that diminished rather than defended her art.

I was much more excited by “Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All.”  Khakhar (1934-2003) was a gay Indian man whose figurative work uses vibrant color and multiple images to tell profound stories. In this first international retrospective, we see his kind of public coming-out period – after a stint in the West and contact with open gay society. He paints men fondling each other’s penises. His early portraits of workers and tradespeople on Indian streets were affectionate and energetic. His late work, when he was dying of cancer, was brutal and honest – in that same way that Frida Kahlo depicted her spinal problems without flinching.

Khakhar’s painting and his commentaries are sometimes hilarious. About winter in the UK, he said, “You are not allowed to smile during this season which lasts for ten months of the year. If you are sensible then try to look as grumpy as possible. English people appreciate grump.”

Despite the throbbing in my feet, I took a quick run through the Media Networks exhibit, where there were copious varied treasures. First I ran into one of my favorite painters, Fernand Leger, a peacenik at the height of the Cold War whose work often commented on industrialization. Here I saw the 1948 “The Acrobat and His Partner,” a huge colorful thrill.

Cildo Meireles’ “Babel” (2001) is a massive tower of radios playing all at once. Instead of achieving communication, we get only info overload and incomprehension. It stands by itself in a tall room and is a sobering reminder of how we live today.

My final mention goes to the posters of the Guerrilla Girls, a collective from 1985-90 that pointed out the wretched gender bias in the art world. One, showing a sliced dollar bill, said, “Women in American make 2/3 of what men do. Women artists earn only 1/3 of what men artists do.” I cannot imagine that too much has changed.

Video intro to the Shakespeare exhibition:

 

I Went to Buckingham Palace and All I Got was Annoyed

In the 10 years I lived in London, the only time I was near Buckingham Palace was when we had a Lesbian Avengers demonstration around the big statue installation of Queen Victoria.

In 1992 there was a fire at Windsor Castle (owned by the same family, of course), so in 1993 for the first time they opened the Buckingham State Rooms to mere mortals for a handsome fee (today it is £37.00 / $50.00) to help with the Windsor repairs. (Irrelevant postscript: A half dozen years later I spoke at a European Conference on volunteerism at Windsor Castle. Yes, you may kiss my hand. If you buy me a ring, you can kiss my ring.)

Now they open it to the masses for about two summer months and, as far as I can tell, put the takings towards their significant, inherited art collection. Of course the Queen and those who share her aristocratic DNA are staying at one of their other domiciles during the onslaught, probably Balmoral, Scotland.

There is a great deal of walking involved with this visit, which each year consists of two sections: first there is a special exhibition of some sort, and second is the tour of the State Rooms, that is to say, the rooms people are allowed in anyway, not the family bathroom or kitchen or tv room. The State Rooms are where the Queen meets diplomats and ambassadors and other worthies.

This summer’s special exhibition, Fashioning a Reign, starts off with a four panel Andy Warhol portrait of Queen Elizabeth that is sprinkled with diamond dust. Even though he comes from my hometown, Pittsburgh, I’m not a fan of Warhol, but frankly this portrait is a high point. We are led through endless displays of Elizabeth’s couture, from her christening gown, used by 62 royals before it fell apart and was reproduced for subsequent generations, to all the clothes she wore at this and that coronation, anniversary, national celebration, and bar mitzvah. It is a boxy collection, all monochrome (so that she can be easily found in the crowd), leaving at least one journalist wondering why, with infinite (unearned) wealth, she chose the dowdiest items on the rack. There is also a very extensive line of hats, which, when hung as they were without a head, make for a strangely post-modern tableau.

I rushed past the mesmerized millions of visitors to escape this exhibition. What I really wanted to see were the State rooms. The original building was enlarged by John Nash when King George III bought it. The two of them were Masons, so there are secret man-symbols interwoven in the designs. These rooms are full of the expected domed roofs and gilded everything; the newer wings seem a bit less ornate. Somehow the overall impression is pale, restrained, at least when compared to many of the ornate European palaces.

I did love the chandeliers, in particular the four in the Blue Drawing Room with the doubly high ceiling. But then when you realize that George IV kept 30 people employed just to keep the candles in good order (on, off, changed, etc.), you understand why Queen Victoria converted them to electricity. I hated the Table of the Great Commanders (1806-12), a spindle shaped round-topped thing made entirely of gilded porcelain. Napoleon commissioned it to be decorated with the profile head of Alexander the Great circled by heads of the less worthy commanders and philosophers from ancient days. To name a few of these minor figures: Pericles, Pompey, Augustus, Caesar, and Hannibal.

Here’s what the Royal Collection website has to say about this tribute to testosterone: “The table was the most prestigious and conspicuous present given to George IV by a grateful Louis XVIII, two years after the defeat of Napoleon. So highly did George IV regard this gift, and such was its status in his eyes, that it became part of the ceremonial backdrop for all his state portraits.”

Then we get to the royal gallery – a long expanse made from knocking down the walls of four rooms in a row. These people (I’m trying to be generous to the Royals) own the biggest intact art collection of any of the world’s royals. I could run down the copious invaluable paintings, but one will serve: the exquisite, inviting 1638 portrait of Agatha Bas by Rembrandt (my favorite painter). Why, I ask myself, should this family inherit such a treasure when it should be in a museum that does not cost a soul $50 to see two months of the year? If I weren’t an anarcho-socialist already, I would have been converted quicker than Victoria switched to electric.

An evening in London: Pissing in the Train

It is a lazy day, although my evening is over-booked. Despite days in a car during my road trip to Ireland, my feet have still not recovered from the day that I went overboard, touring everywhere with Tomer early in my visit to London. This osteoarthritis bothers me more here in London than back in Boston where I have a car. Just striding a few blocks to the bus stop provokes my feet at the start of each outing.

Today I have cut things close. I’m racing to a West End theatre to meet the author Elizabeth Woodcraft, who is accompanying me to see the comedian Daphna Baram. I met Daphna on Facebook. She’s an Israeli who’s been living in London for 14 years and openly calls herself an anti-Zionist, leftist atheist – all descriptors that warm my heart. Her show is fearless and funny.

It lasts an hour and then I part from Liz at Leicester Square tube and head to Hammersmith for a group West Coast Swing lesson and social dancing with Catriona Wiles. Three of my favorite teachers back in Boston are very fond of her. It’s a long ride on the tube and from there I ask a transportation worker where to get the bus and he sends me upstairs, but they tell me up there that, no, the bus I want is downstairs at the end of the station. It’s a shitload of walking for foot bones that hate contact with hard surfaces only slightly less than they hate stairs.

I arrive for the second lesson, which is fun and well-taught (whip variations, no less). People are welcoming; no one makes much of an issue out of my leading; I dance happily for two hours. The teacher arranges for a young man who has just graduated from college to walk me to the station, which she assures me is quicker by foot via the shortcut than via bus.

Unfortunately, it turns out that said lad doesn’t know the shortcut. We’re walking the very long time. We arrive at the mall where the station is and he guides me to its far side where the station entrance is to be, but there we encounter metal gates. The entrance to the Tube is closed. “I guess it closes earlier than I thought,” says Recent Graduate.

I see a worker and yell through the fence: “How can we get on the Tube?” I am picturing myself stranded alone so far from my bed that it takes 95 minutes on public transportation. “The front entrance,” he yells back, waving vaguely. We hike back the full length of the mall and find the entrance. The main entrance. The one we apparently passed on our long way to the far entrance. I’m limping visibly by now. We get on the same train. He’s going three stops. I’m going triple that. We have the lower end of our car to ourselves and we sit opposite each other.

At the next stop about eight or nine very drunk, very large, ruffians stumble into our car. They sprawl on the seats all around us, legs claiming all the public space. Recent Graduate and I lock eyes. These men all have cans or bottles of beer in their hands and they are loud and loutish, tussling with each other. I tuck my feet as far under my body as possible as no toe I own could withstand their trampling. I remember back to the first time in about 1989 that I was on the subway at pub closing time and the vomit that plastered men splashed all over my shoes.

Then one particularly loathsome loud-mouth struggles out of his seat, stumbles to the corner closest to me, pulls out his dick, and pisses.

When we pull into my Recent Graduate’s stop, I get up too. We stand at the glass doors, very anxious to get the hell out of there, but the doors don’t open. We can see the other people leaving their cars further up the train but our doors don’t open for some reason. The legless wonders are hollering “Where you going? What’s up?” Finally the doors open and I run out on the platform and up the full length of the car to the next car and, despite the tooting sound warning of closing doors, I throw myself through the door, but not fast enough. The doors close on my backpack. I’m inside; it’s outside. My back is pulled tight against the concave glass door.

“Shit!” I scream, fighting against my sturdy backpack, knowing my bones will give before these tried and tested straps will, and trying without success to wedge my foot against the body of the car. I believe I will be killed or maimed if I fail to keep the door open.

A handsome young man with bright eyes – his name is Mark; I asked him later – leaps over the large suitcase he is holding between his knees where he is seated opposite the doors. He manages to stop the door from closing all the way and then wrenches it back far enough for me to fall into the car. Another man – who himself turns out to be drunk and will lean intimately on me mumbling something – pats the only empty seat – it’s next to him and across from Mark – and I fall into it. In the struggle I’ve done something to my ass muscle and something worse to one ankle. My feet are throbbing. I’m grateful, so very grateful, to Mark.

Then I realize that in fact he was the only one who jumped up to help me. Sobering.

I get off at King’s Cross and it is a very long hike along corridors and platforms out to my busstop. As I am walking across the concrete plaza, my bus pulls up, so I do a doleful version of a sprint. It’s now well past midnight.

On the way home I stop at the 24/7 grocery store, on the suspicion that despite allocating tomorrow for shopping for household needs, I will not in fact want to walk another step on concrete, and will stay home.

Inside the house, I check Facebook. A friend of mine who is an accomplished Black professional writes of being on a crowded subway train in DC (about the same time as I was surrounded by sloshed white men on mine), when a cop entered his car with his gun out! How vulnerable both Black people and women of all colors are on public transportation.

LONDON: The Portrait Gallery and the Thames

LONDON August 4, 2016

Tomer and I started the day (the photo is in front of a wall tree in my neighborhood) with a meal called “English Breakfast.” I tell you this as a warning. A stomach of my age, even with its generous girth, is hard put to deal with bacon, sausage, kelp potato pancake, grilled tomato, giant grilled mushroom, two poached eggs on brown bread, all on a bed of baked beans, and a cup of coffee. When we finished we waddled off to the bus-stop to Kings X to catch the Tube, with a detour to the old lefty bookstore Housman’s which is not only surviving but thriving and expanding. I bought a button: Brexshit. Stuart Hall, a beloved lefty intellect, donated his entire library to them when he died, after having signed each one to increase the value for sale. What a great idea for all of us to do.

We met Jaya and Madeleine at the Portrait Gallery where my favorite annual exhibition – the Portrait Award – is on display free of charge. None of us agreed with the decisions of the judges and so chose our own winners. Mine is on the left. We also caught a rather astonishing exhibition called Black Chronicles (photo below)with recently discovered photos of Blacks in Britain before 1948. I ducked into the Bronte room as well.

We all had a cold drink at a café, talking, acting up, and then Jaya and Madeleine had to leave to catch a plane back to Zurich. Tomer and I walked down to the river and over the footbridge near the London Eye and along the river to the South Bank. London is exquisite, it really is. The river is at the heart of that beauty. We eventually returned over the bridge and walked up to Leicester Square. He went off shopping on Oxford St and I came home and took a pill to deal with these throbbing feet.

Osteo-arthritis of the feet is an improper affliction for a traveler like me. Even my 840 old-folks shoes from New Balance don’t allow me to walk more than an hour or two, and today we tootled for many hours. I will remain seated for the rest of the night and through the morning tomorrow. But what’s a bit of an ache in light of the chance to be with very dear friends from hither and yon?

Assumptions on the Runway

There was an unavoidable delay on my flight from Boston to London. Virgin Atlantic handled it with their usual aplomb and good communication. We were on the runway about to take off. The Captain spoke: “I’m sorry but we must return to the gate due to the sudden illness of a passenger.” Flight personnel moved to the rear of the plane as we slowly headed to the gate. Very slowly. Once there we were boarded by a hoard of emergency and rescue people (that’s what their uniforms said on the back). They flooded down the aisles to the end and attended to the person who had become ill.

After quite a bit of time, during which it was very quiet, they came up my aisle accompanying that person, who walked on her own. She was in her 20s, long straight light hair, followed up the aisle by a similar young person wearing one backpack and hauling another. It was not what I had pictured.

I had pictured an elder. I had imagined a stretcher. I had assumed unconsciousness or terrible pain. It turned out to be some sort of extreme reaction to a new medication. There was mention of sudden blindness.

The flight attendants were nearly jubilant that this had occurred while we were still on the ground. They told me stories over the long flight of emergencies in the air, where peoples’ lives were in their untrained, reluctant hands.

The rescue people de-planed with their patient and the Captain announced that due to the delays we needed to get in line to refuel. It took a long time. Once that was done, we had to get in line to be slotted in for departure. Eventually we took off. I wasn’t bothered by the two-hour delay at any point for two reasons:

One: I wasn’t in a hurry. No one was awaiting me at a specific moment on the other side. I didn’t have a meeting to make. And cheers to that!

Two: We were kept well-informed and not in platitudes. We were simply told what was going on and what was going to go on.

The only thing that bothered me was my own assumptions, not the least that it must be an older person in a medical crisis. Was it ageism on my part, or fear that next it might be me?