London, Friday, November 14, 2025
Lazy start to the day! We both overslept and barely made it to breakfast.
Bus 88 took us from Haymarket to the back side of Tate Britain, where we spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon. I had wanted to see an exhibition of Lee Miller’s photography, but it was sold out.
The featured contemporary artist was a Nigerian, Onyeka Igwe. The Tate was showing her film on the University of Ibadan, which we found fascinating. It was as notable for the accompanying soundscape, with the artist’s “closed caption” commentary on it, as for the visuals.
We then spent a good bit of time in the postwar galleries, with rich collections of Bacon, Freund, Kitaj, and Moore.
In a side room was a spectacular exhibition of Richard Hamilton’s collaboration with Marcel Duchamp.
Hamilton had made an exact copy of Duchamp’s best-known work, The Large Glass, in 1966, guided by Duchamp; Duchamp then signed the copy as a “faithful replica.”
The full title is The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even. That’s the bride up above, and the bachelors down below. The theme is generally understood to be the mechanization of desire under conditions of modernity. Hamilton was deeply influenced by Duchamp, one could even say obsessed. Here’s a painting by Hamilton, “The Passage of the Bride,” a meditation on The Large Glass.
We then passed on to the rooms devoted to Turner. The Turner bequest to the nation is enormous, comprising more than 300 oil paintings, more than 30,ooo sketches and watercolors, and 300 sketchbooks. This allows the Tate to rotate the paintings, making for new viewing experiences every time you visit.
The Regulus, one of my favorite paintings anywhere, is usually on view, and it was there today. Regulus was a Roman official captured by the Carthiginians and tortured by cutting off his eyelids, blinding him as he looked into the sun. Turner brilliantly captures this effect; it is very hard to look into the “sun.” I understand the painting as an allegory of the viewing of art, what Paul DeMan would have called the alternation of blindness and insight.
There was a small but splendid exhibition of the work of Tony Ray-Jones, a British photographer who chronicled the death of British daily life at the hands of Americanism in the 1960’s.
The 88 took us back along the same route: Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, Whitehall with the Banqueting House and Horse Guards, and Trafalgar Square. Here is my bid to become a contemporary artist, the “Bus by Rain” series.
We got off the bus on Regent Street and popped into Snow Peak, a purveyor of amazing Japanese camping and expedition equipment. I’ve long lusted after one of these portable fire pits with a surrounding table.
After a civilized cup of tea in the Resident’s Lounge, we dove back into the National Galley. We had somehow missed the museum’s extraordinary Titian collection, so we made up for lost time.
Here are just a couple of our favorites.
The Aldobrandini Madonna
The Vendramin Family
I could go on and on. The holdings in Italian Renaissance are staggering. I’ll just skip to one more painting, for me one of the greatest in Western art, Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus.
It was getting late, and we had a fun-packed evening planned. We retreated to the extraordinary confines of the Criterion Restaurant right on Piccadilly Circus. The restaurant opened in 1874, and was thus one of the oldest in London.
The interior is an extraordinary Neo-Byzantine fantasy, aglow with mosaics and overseen by a painted tin ceiling.
Did I mention that the building now houses a branch of Masala Z0ne, a chain of Indian restaurants? The food was actually very good, and the environment made it even better.
And then on to the Noel Coward Theater for a celebrated production of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Nothing could prepare the viewer for this extraordinary production. Taking the modernity of Wilde’s play and pushing it further–way further–, the play is a campy, over the top gay vision. All four leads, two men and two women, are played as, at the least, bisexual. And two of the smaller roles, in cross dress, steal the show: Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell and Hayley Carmichael as the servants Merriman and Lane.
It also has what must be one of the greatest curtain calls in theatrical history. You can watch it on YouTube by searching “Importance of Being Earnest Curtain Call.” NB: the play itself uses period dress from the 1890’s, i.e. curtain call costumes are only there to accentuate the mode of the production.
This is what theater is all about; no film could capture the hilarity and joy of this live performance.
