Pulled a Bullingdon, the last one as it happens, from Vauxhall Cross in the usual way, over Lambeth Bridge and onto Parliament Square where there were no less than three policemen from the Metropolitan Police Bicycle Command and I wondered what brand of bicycle they used - but this was not a convenient place or time to find out. On up Whitehall to find the long way to the stand at Sackville Street where I parked up in the very last vacant slot just as it was just starting to spot a bit ominously, ominously given my light clothing. Luckily it stopped again as I wondered about a quick visit to Sotheran's book & print shop but decided against. They are very polite in there but I am rather out of my league and I don't care to shop in places where I am not going to buy; don't have the necessary brass for it.
On to the RA courtyard for tea and cake at the rendez-vous, the cake being a wedge shaped portion of a sort of Bakewell tart, good but dear, only marred by its being served on an oversize paper plate. The end of the courtyard opposite the street entrance where I was sitting had been made into rather an elegant smoking den with a rather elegant awning stretched over two poles, with the whole got up rather like a battleship of old with lots of ropes and knots and it must have cost a great deal. Oddly, the few smokers chose to sit on the stone benches beyond the awning. I wondered about what happened when it rained proper, there not appearing to be any gutters or drains. Did all the flunkies rush out on deck to close reef the main topsail?
We decided to leave the Dennis (Easy Rider & cocaine) Hopper's photographs on this occasion to concentrate on the radical geometry from South America which was the object of the exercise, and which was rather good, nicely set off by the newish gallery up on the second floor, inserted in a gap between the older buildings, a gap which might be marked by what I take to be air conditioning units installed on the roof in the centre of the illustration, with the gap running bottom left to top right or northeast. Which all goes to show, once again, the difficulty of interpreting aerial photographs. But at least the smoking den is loud and clear bottom right. With the smaller square to its immediate left being the tart stand.
Most of the radical geometry pieces had the interesting property that you had to move about slightly to get the best out of them, unlike old master paintings where one generally stands in just to one position to take it all in, perhaps moving a little to avoid some unfortunate trick of the lighting or a badly placed person or to see what different distance does, but essentially stationary. Here most of the essence lay in the effect of movement.
Visited the shop of the exhibition to be amused by a fat book of Euclid's first six books and was enticed by the shop girl's reply to our query about how many she was selling to open it up, to find it was a colour version, with coloured symbols being used to identifiy points, lines and extents, rather than the usual ABC notation, and making for an easier read. Or at least so it was claimed by her Majesty's Surveyor of the Falkland Islands, responsible for this version back in 1847 or so. Printed in the first instance by Pickering (presumably the Pickering of Pickering & Chatto of Pall Mall who are too old fashioned to go in for a web site) and now handsomely reprinted for Taschen by China, the same crew from who I obtained a handsome two volume 'What Great Paintings Say' from a shop in Topsham last year (early March, although I cannot now find any reference to this particular shop). I was sufficiently impressed to buy a copy at the same £25 and have now started the read, although I have not yet found out what sort of colour printing was available back in 1847. One would have thought that it must have involved several blocks to the page and have been rather dear. But I have found out that this version of the book was reproduced photographically from an original picked up from a bookseller in San Francisco.
On the way out, we learned from another shop girl that the chap who paid for a whole lot of rooms at the Academy, John Madejski, was the same John who has had a football stadium named for him in Reading. Clearly a gent. of catholic tastes. It struck me that things have moved on a bit from my days at work, both in that the shop girl had access to the Internet from her front desk terminal and that she found it easier to ask google than to consult the academy.
And so to 'Les Deux Salons' for lunch where we took their lunch time special. Splendid place, spacious, light and quiet, although it seems that it gets much busier in the evenings when the holidays are over. In the meantime, an excellent place for lunch. Amongst other virtues they are generous with their good quality bread and they have a good choice of wine by the glass. I was reminded of our visit to http://www.lecafeducommerce.com/ in Paris back in 2007 (see October 28th 2007 in the other place). But for this place see http://www.lesdeuxsalons.co.uk/.
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