My art week

Although I did not visit any exhibitions or museums this week it was a full art week.

In our art course we covered Jasper Johns and his partner Robert Rauschenberg and across the Atlantic pop art.

Consumerism was still the key driver.

I had one of those serendipity moments on switching on Sky Arts when I caught wholly by chance a wonderful Roald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected featuring the art world

Dahl presented the programme with an account of buying a painting  for £25 in Brighton which, after removal of the initial picture, proved to be a Renoir.

This was his inspiration for a tale about a rich eligible collector beautifully played by Joseph Cotten.

A woman who fancied him reveals that a society portraitist painted her naked and then added her clothes.

The collector sets up a meeting between a Russian girl and the portraitist to paint her.

The collector peels way the paint to reveal a woman in hot lingerie brandishing a whip. He holds a soirée and unveils the picture in its original form. The subject, who is humiliated, gives the collector a jar of poisoned caviar which kills him – and his butler who helps himself – too.

Still on Sky Arts, there was a fascinating programme on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

These are a series.

The first is still in private hands, the second was in Japan but destroyed by an American bomb in WW2.

We were shown Sunflowers exhibited in museums in Amsterdam, Paris, Munich , Philadelphia and the National Gallery with input from their various curators.

Almost all spoke of the rich uplifting colours both of the flowers and back drop but few remarked that there is sadness in the images due to the droopiness of some of the flowers.