{"id":3083,"date":"2014-05-28T22:04:38","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T21:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aniam.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2014-05-28T22:04:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T21:04:38","slug":"a-word-on-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aniam.co.uk\/blog\/a-word-on-art\/","title":{"rendered":"A Word on Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"413_07072009_943\"I went on a day trip to London with DS yesterday. I turned out to be a very cultured day indeed. I do little girly outings with DD quite often, even if they are only brief\u00a0shopping trips, so I thought it was about time DS and I did something together.<\/p>\n

There\u00a0is\u00a0an exhibition called Comics Unmasked<\/a>\u00a0currently on at the British Library and this was our mission\u00a0(along with DS’\u00a0goal of finding a white deer*). We’re not just talking Beano and Marvel here, but rather\u00a0a wide range of material covering social and political attitudes, sex and violence and even the esoteric. I was somewhat\u00a0surprised to see Mr Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend<\/em> and a print of the Universe card from the Thoth deck among the exhibits, though I’m still not entirely sure why it was there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

*(a totally off-the-wall and fanciful idea\u00a0he came up as we were walking to the station in the morning. He now\u00a0knows that White Hart is also a popular pub name.)<\/p>\n

The art styles on display show an incredible variety style, from the aforementioned Beano, Victorian penny-dreadfuls, the darkly gothic, some extremely artistic and realistic, others less so. It was also gratifying to see Raymond Briggs’ chilling\u00a0When The Wind Blows\u00a0<\/em>among the exhibits. \u00a0Doubly so, because I had mentioned it to DS earlier. I dug out my copy for him to read in its entirety today. I doubt it will have quite the same impact since, unlike me, he is not growing up in\u00a0the shadow of the Cold War and the ubiquitous “Four Minute Warning”, so\u00a0I look forward to\u00a0discussing it with him.<\/p>\n

I’m a little ashamed to admit that this was the first time I had visited the British Library and it seemed rude not to look at some of their other treasures while we were there. Magna Carta, although it doesn’t look like much with its faded, scratchy writing, is such a significant document that it really is a must see. Also on display are a wide range of other historic documents and sacred texts from all over the world, including a Gutenberg bible, music\u00a0scores from\u00a0the hands of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, not to mention some of the most beautiful illuminated Medieval manuscripts you are ever likely to see from Europe, India, Persia, China and Japan among others.<\/p>\n

DS bought a rather lovely book of Haiku (both in English and original Japanese) in the gift shop and thus further inspired, we skipped\u00a0the Midland Hotel<\/a> and the Science Museum, which had been on the original itinerary, and meandered\u00a0instead down to the British Museum for more Japanese\u00a0culture (and a shufty in their bookshop). DS has a\u00a0theory is that cultures which have pictorial writing also have rather excellent art and is keen to learn Kanji. He is already drawing his own Manga-style characters.\u00a0(The comic exhibition is almost all British work with a few American offerings, no Manga).<\/p>\n

Sadly, the British Museum was rather more well-stocked with Japanese tourists than Japanese artwork, (less so than the last time we visited, I’m sure) and was absolutely HEAVING. I do find it peculiar that people travel all the way from Japan and then make a bee line for the Japanese exhibits, which I am sure are\u00a0better represented at home. (That said, many English people abroad make a bee-line for the nearest English pub or purveyor of fish and chips.)<\/p>\n

The Japanese are an odd people, though, to Western eyes at least. They have\u00a0obsequiously good manners, but a language where even “Yes” sounds like a death threat, their idea of a fun game show involves the grossest ritual humiliations and their comics and animations are a gore-fest\u00a0of\u00a0violence and sex depicting\u00a0wide-eyed, girl-child females\u00a0bordering on the paedophilic. That said, both DS and I have a fondness for Anime and, in his case, Manga. So, after a rather disappointing visit to the bookshop, we set off again towards Soho, in pursuit of Japanese food culture in the form of sushi, which we also both love.<\/p>\n

Rain and later opening times than we’d anticipated, found us in the pub looking for alternatives to the restaurant I’d planned to visit. On the plus side, the pub (an old haunt, though not a White Hart) was just behind Foyles bookshop, so we managed to find a book on learning to write Japanese. It seemed fateful that the alternative eatery around the corner was called Taro (and very 9 of Cups it was too, I was even moved to write a positive review) \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

We dropped into a Japanese grocery store on the way and I picked up a few sauce and sushi-making bits and finally arrived back home quite late and utterly pooped,\u00a0but rated\u00a0the day a resounding success. DS even remarked on how quickly the time had passed, so he must have had fun\u00a0\ud83d\ude42 We didn’t manage to attain his goal of finding a white deer (or hart), though we did see a brown stag\u00a0having it’s leg chewed on by a hunting dog on one of the Medieval manuscripts, so\u00a0decided that was close enough.<\/p>\n

What did DH and DD (and the dog) do, while we were out? They went to the pub, of course \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went on a day trip to London with DS yesterday. I turned out to be a very cultured day indeed. I do little girly outings with DD quite often, even if they are only brief\u00a0shopping trips, so I thought it was about time DS and I did something together. There\u00a0is\u00a0an exhibition called Comics Unmasked\u00a0currently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[291,288,289,290],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-news","tag-comics","tag-culture","tag-japanese","tag-sushi"],"yoast_head":"\nA Word on Art - Ania M<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aniam.co.uk\/blog\/a-word-on-art\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Word on Art - Ania M\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I went on a day trip to London with DS yesterday. 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