Let me know if it's any good - might go sometime next week. Also want to squeeze Da Vinci in - couldn't believe how quickly the tickets sold out for that!

Thanks also for the Private Eye reminder, Verbal.

Just watched Jane Austen-The Unknown Portrait a documentary on BBC 2.

Basically a woman has come into posession of a portrait of the author that her husband bought for her for two thousand pounds. There's no actual provenance but it's framed right, proven to be authenic in dress style, dated as during the later end of her life style or just after, and stated by family members to bear resemblances to family features etc, after a police images expert made minute comparisons. The view from behind her is proven to be of a church in the area of London she lived in and there are many more pointers that it may be a genuine portrait. All this doesn't prove conclusively it is a genuine portrait but the general consensus is that it might well be, ie the possibility exists.

To everyone, that is, except the stated "leading expert" on the author, a bombastic old trout very full of her own importance who categorically states no, on nothing less than her opinion. She flatly refused to even consider a ton of possible evidence, even going against her own fellow professors of this and that,who were happy to say the possibility existed. Made me wonder just how such an expert can be so certain about someone who died in 1815 or so, and whose opinion can be considered over such contradicting facts . I finished up deciding I'd be quite happy to kick her tweed-covered fat ass.

Imagine a subject on which you went against every grain of evidence, contradictory to every fact based point, basing your entire viewpoint on it being 'your opinion'. Imagine that.

Sorry, it's Christmas.

All very fine Pru, anybody can pass an opinion on anything, except that the said viewpoint is a little different in passing an opinion when you're supposed to be the world's leading expert on a subject, based on knowlege, fact and impartiality. No one asked the woman to authenticate the portrait, merely to accept the considerable evidence as a possibility it might be. Two of her colleages, Professor Kathryn Sutherland from Oxford University and Professor Claudia Johnson from Princeton University both were happy to consider the possibility. Madame Trout was not. That's what irked. I doubt she'll lose any sleep about my opinion of her opinion.

She might, were you to offer it up outside her house via a loud hailer in the middle of the night. You've just not thought this through, have you?!

The idea has considerable merit Mr Bruce, although she probably wears an airline mask and ear muffs and takes sleeping pills out of sheer stubborness. Nevertheless......

Well - I think it's the best single exhibition I've seen this year... This, of course, doesn't mean you will agree...

I like it because of its incredible range of work - this artist is skilled as a figurative painter, an ultra realist, a political artist and an abstract artist (of extraordinary power - I usually don't get abstract art at all, but the majority of his abstract works exhibited here - particularly the two of 'the forest' sequence - were wonderful. I loved their lucidity and liquidity - the colours seemed so assuredly of the forest, with, it seemed to me, a river flowing through it, very beautiful)...

Those were my favourites - after that the political pieces on the Baader/Meinhoff faction I found very powerful, particularly the highly blurred portrait of the funeral of the three that mysteriously died on the same night... And the grey works of the 'Townscapes' room were compelling... One - the 'Paris' one - was stunning... From 15 feet away it was a bombed city... from five feet a grey abstract...

My 20 year old daughter and I had a fab three hours here - she really loved the abstracts, as i did (most of them).

Well - there you go - I can't promise you the kind of profoundly satisfying experience I had. You'd certainly have to have a mind open to modern art and all its experiments. If you haven't, you'll not enjoy a great deal of it.

But anyone who has allowed 'Guernica' to touch the soul is within touching distance of redemption... Richter is a truly great artist imho... Try him, and give yourself enough time to linger... 14 rooms (don't miss the last one, the other side of the coffee bar you are made to pass through - it contains six very good abstracts - take your time over them, allow them to work on you - I had to, it was worth it...)

Well it's the best exhibition I've seen THIS year...

This morning I queued for da Vinci at the National Gallery - I overslept and got there at 8am when ticket sales opened at 10am... I was too late.

So, with William's positive review fresh in the memory, I trudged down the river to the Tate Modern to catch the last day of the Richter exhibition.

Urgh, I was disappointed. The abstract work made no impression on me whatsoever - the use of the squeegee, which featured heavily, was interesting as a technique once, but thoroughly boring by the end.

A lot of it felt like art for artists, to me... conversations with other artists and movements, which I found difficult to engage with as an outsider. As an aside, I often wonder why the curators of this sort of exhibition don't find a way of including other artists' works that are built on or alluded to, to provide some context for the layman.

I enjoyed the idea of his early challenges to the lack of discussion of national socialism in Germany in the 60s, but there wasn't actually that much of that. My favourite painting was probably the one of Paris you mention, but couldn't understand the choice of city. Would it have been too close to the bone for it to be Dresden? Paris itself, of course, came through WWII mostly unscathed...

So yes, not for me this one.

I made it to Da Vinci last weekend... I was there at 5.40am and there were already 100+ people in the queue.

Anyone interested in a review or would I be wasting my time?!

I'd be very interested, fella.

So would I...

Usual suspects line up...

Sorry you didn't enjoy the Richter, mummy. It's almost the first time I really 'got it' with abstract art. I think it was the scale, the vividness of the colour and the use of light. Like a sunny day in Autumn with the leaves turning colour, reflecting on the water... That sort of feeling...

Ok, I've got a bit of an essay brewing in my head (groan!), so I haven't commented so far, so that I can do it justice.

Richter... I enjoyed it, and as I say, that squeegee technique certainly produces an impressive effect. It's just that it's all a bit 'random' for my tastes, and then repetitive after the first couple.

I'd be interested to hear your replies to my other comments - I had wondered about your absence from the boards and of course now realise that you have had plenty weighing you down recently.

A review of a queue ??? My that London is posh.

not as posh as having separate his&hers showers!!

OK... see next post...

I think this is pretty cool..

Why?

Seriously...

Exactly, William! Where's the infantile scribble and the skiddy knickers?

Bruce, ssshhh... Don't tell everyone your fantasies...