Kandinsky

Gorgeous day in London town today - sunny, blue skies, the whole nine yards. Lovely day for a tube ride to St Pauls followed by a walk across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern. St. Pauls I have seen already, but I was interested this time by the scaffolding on the river-facing facade. Scaffolding, whilst obviously necessary, is the bane of the historical-building-seeking tourist, and it's everywhere. What they have done at St. Pauls is cover this scaffolding with a huge canvas, on which is a drawing of the facade - very clever! Up close it looks a bit silly, but it has quite a trompe l'oeil effect when viewed from afar - photo to follow at some stage.
Anyway, enough on scaffolding. The Kandinsky exhibit, as many of you know, has been eagerly anticipated by moi and it was lovely. It was basically themed around showing the evolution in his style from representative to abstract, then moving from more lyrical compositions to a more sparse and angular style. Thankfully it didn't go as far as his later works, such as 'Squares with Concentric Circles' which seem to be beloved by many, but which don't do it for me at all. It even had 'Lyrical' (aka 'Lyrisches') which is one of the two big framed prints which used to hang proudly in the lounge of the Onehunga house and now are consigned to ignominy downstairs at my parents'. Love that painting. Love Kandinsky in general.
I then had a very quick whip around the rest of Tate Modern - not my most favouritist of galleries, I prefer the Pompidou (ah, pretentiousness, thy name is Gwan) but still a decent selection. It had some covers of 'USSR under construction' a Soviet-propaganda rag published in various languages and graced by the likes of Rodchenko. Curiously, one of the covers featured a moustachioed man passionately kissing a Red Army soldier. What the? I doubt the Soviet Union was noted for its homo-friendliness, so who knows what that was meant to symbolize! Very cool it was though, I must say. Soviet propaganda art is a wee penchant of mine, as my erstwhile library colleagues will know - actually the Pompidou has a great selection...
Anyway, this arvo I'm off to Woking to meet up with my very good friend Mike and see his lovely parents, so until we meet again kiddies, farewell!