Klimt/Schiele

In February 2019, L took me to see the Klimt/Schiele exhibition as a birthday treat (because he is the best). Like all Royal Academy exhibitions, it was well set up and informative.

I enjoyed finding out why Klimt's pictures have always reminded me of sculptures (and that there's a word for that), and I found the preparatory sketches for his work interesting because of how he structured them, and being able to see how his training in applied arts affected his works.

However, there was this feeling that this was a Schiele exhibition with some Klimt pictures added: one almost wondered if the curator had a burning desire to put on a Schiele exhibition, but had been told the only way they'd get their exhibition was if they used Klimt's name to bring in the crowds.

I understand, I too think Schiele > Klimt, but it does mean that one of the headliners feels like an after-thought.

It also has other effects.

This was the first exhibition I'd ever visited that had a content warning. About mid-way through, I did wonder why: fine, there's been a few naked women, but it's an art exhibition, when aren't there naked women? There were even the occasional naked men. They were mostly self-portraits, or as L's ditty went:
If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands,
If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands,
If you're happy and they know it,and you really want to show it;
if your name is Egon Schiele, put it away…

However, nothing that I thought required a warning.

The next room featured pornography by the artists. Even Klimt's lady reclining flicking the bean isn't vulgar. She's rather darling and delicate in fact, in an architectonic sort-of-way (told you I'd learnt a new word), but you know, not requiring a warning.

The pictures did lead to one small child asking her father, "Daddy, what's that?". I think the child was faced with the Schiele that's a naked woman in green skirts minus the top half of her body, so it’s an understandable question. Normally though, they don't give warnings just to prevent fathers from having to splutter explanations.

Then I turned a corner and saw why they'd put up a warning.

Now, I am not easily shocked, I walked up some stairs and came face to ... face with The Origin of the World without warning and didn't blink (I am of the faction that says it's too clinical to be obscene).

The Schiele "behold the child prostitute" picture *does* deserve a warning. Part of that is a testament of Schiele's skill. He makes graphite and gouache come alive, vividly and vulnerably. The other part is the way he makes the viewer look at her the way the artist looked at her, and the artist had nothing like good intentions. It's both spectacular and creepy.

This isn't me assuming something about the artist from what he painted, I know about Schiele. This leads to the other effects of the exhibition’s focus on Schiele. This is not my first Schiele exhibition, but it was the first that ever tried to explain away the Neulengbach incident as 'locals not recognising artistic genius'.

I don't know if it's because there's been a cultural shift since the last time I went to a Schiele exhibition, but every other exhibition has been "horrible man, brilliant artist", and maybe you can't get away with being glib like that anymore, but I don't think trying to hide his horribleness is any better.

It was still an excellent exhibition, and I will be buying the exhibition book, but it was an odd line to take, especially in a post-#MeToo world when we're supposed to have stopped brushing things like this under the carpet.

Sword fighting films - Robin Hood

This is the first in an irregular series of posts about films with sword fights. Although they're all part of a series, the formats will be slightly different, for reasons which will become clear as the posts occur.

Some time ago, in a post about the 1938 Oscars, NWhyte wrote that he'd never seen the Errol Flynn Robin Hood. I was surprised, but looking back on it, I'm not sure why, because former housemate P didn't watch it until his mid-20s, and as a fencer, he'd had more reason for watching it. 

Following on from that post, I wondered which sword-fighting films I would recommend for people to watch. And then I realised I'd watched a lot, and probably needed a way of splitting them up, so I am writing about them by topic, starting with Robin Hood, since it was the Errol Flynn version that kick-started this idea. 

Robin Hood

Must watch: As you may have guessed from that intro, as far as I'm concerned the Errol Flynn version is the best film version. 

Partly it's Flynn himself, in all his charming, insouciant glory, but there's also Olivia de Havilland as a beautiful, charming and courageous Maid Marian, Claude Reins and Basil Rathbone as excellent villains, and comic relief characters who get to be both funny and heroic. 

Of course, the fight scenes are famous for a reason (spoilers for the big end fight). It's amazing what you can do when one of your principals is a fencer. 

Ex-housemate P didn't like it because it wasn't flash enough for him and too slow, but he was more than occasionally wrong about films (he didn't like Casablanca). His favourite version will be mentioned shortly. 

In the same vein: The Richard Todd and Richard Greene versions of Robin Hood stick closely to the Errol Flynn model, and the Richard Greene TV version is one of my family's favourite ways to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

Something different: The Disney Robin Hood is actually my favourite version. However, because it's animated, I have to admit that the sword fights aren't all that. On the other hand, there are some truly excellent villains, an adorable Robin and Maid Marian, one of my favourite Friar Tuck's (seriously, watching him go full "badger don't care" at the Sheriff is glorious), excellent music (A Pox On The Phoney King of England, Not In Nottingham) and Lady Cluck. 

I could write whole essays on how Lady Cluck is just the best (which she is), but I shall provide video evidence instead:  

Anyone who has ever seen me do sports may recognise a certain similarity in both shape and attitude.  
The Disney Robin Hood is an hour and a half of sheer sugar candy joy. 

Other options: 

The ITV Robin Hood, Robin of Sherwood, which is housemate P's favourite. I happen to think it's New-Agey, pseudo-realistic nonsense, but several other people I know like it. 

I also blame it for several of the modern Robin Hood cliches. It popularised one of the Merry Men being a Saracen, Will Scarlet being an (angry) working class man rather than Robin's cousin, and Robin going off to the Crusades before the story starts. This annoys me. It's like, 'why are you doing this to the character and the story, not going to the Crusades it what gets him outlawed in the first place?!!!' 

I find it interesting that in 1938 you could get away with a Robin who says "no way, you go fight your own pointless war if you want to but I am staying here to protect my people" whereas nowadays you can't. I don't know how much of that was due to US isolationist policies pre-WW2 and general public opinion, or wanting to stay close to the original legend, but it's an interesting difference.

I like that Robin doesn't go to war, despite the threat of being outlawed if he doesn't. He goes ahead and follows his conscience. It makes him a more impressive hero. It's all well and good to show him fighting against a prince who has usurped power, but for him to disobey someone who he regards as the rightful king, with all the moral and legal force that implies, now that's a different thing. 

If storytellers want to have a story with a Crusader veteran horrified with what they'd seen for the one (and it's only ever one) PTSD-related episode or section, then Will Scarlet, nobleman with fewer reservations than Robin, seems like an excellent choice. He already canonically wanders around a forest wearing red, which I think might well be described as a death-wish. 

Unnecessarily long story short - I don't particularly like this version, although I do recognise that it has its own distinctive feel, and does its own thing its own way, which I admire. 

The Patrick Bergin Robin Hood, which was unlucky enough to have been released at the cinema at the same time as the Kevin Costner version. I prefer it, even if it is a bit heavy-handed. Also, it has Owen Teale's Little John and is about the only modern version that gives Little John anything to do. (Why do modern versions give all/most of Little John's important bits to Nasir/Azeem?) 

Avoid: 
The BBC's 2006 Robin Hood - But, I hear you cry, you spent far too much time watching it. And this is true, any time spent watching it would be too much.
via GIPHY

Basically the BBC Robin Hood was one very good performance, four good performances and Keith Allen eating more than the Recommended Daily Allowance of scenery, being hamstrung by increasingly poor and peculiar authorial choices on the part of the writers. 

The Kevin Costner version (mild spoilers ensue) - I am about to be accused of being mean, and it's not just that they hew very closely to Robin of Sherwood to the point where you think they should have paid licencing fees, but I can explain my objection to the film in four words: Will Scarlet would never. I don't mean this Will Scarlet, I mean any Will Scarlet. In fact, having any Merry Man betray the rest is a good way of ending up in the avoid list. Even Alan Rickman's glorious, vivid and vile Sheriff of Nottingham cannot save this film, nor can Morgan Freeman and Michael McShane. It is un-salvagable. 

If anyone has any other Robin Hood recommendations, please send them my way. It's a legend I never tire of.

A better F1 calendar redux

This is an update of a post from 5th August 2018. At that time, it was the summer break and I thought it would be interesting to see how far the F1 calendar deviated from the most efficient possible order if you were trying to reduce travelling distance.

Since then, very little has changed – Mercedes keep winning everything and the smaller teams continue to complain that the amount of travelling hikes up their costs and makes their lives even more difficult, also, the engineers would like to see their families occasionally.

F1’s response to this is … to add two more races.

Despite the way that sounds, I am looking forward to the two new races (Vietnam and Netherlands) but I wanted to see whether they’d been slotted into the F1 calendar in places that made sense. I used the same app as previously (https://gallery.shinyapps.io/shiny-salesman/). I used Amsterdam as the location for the Dutch Grand Prix because Amsterdam is the city nearest to Zandvoort. (All of this was calculated pre-Coronavirus.)

The most efficient calendar can be seen below: The order is Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Russia, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Monaco, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, Canada, United States, Mexico and Brazil.

17 of the 22 are in a different place to the real calendar. The ones that are the same are Australia, Vietnam, China, Azerbaijan and Austria.

Of the 17 that are different, 8 of them involve crossing to a different continent that the “most efficient” and 9 involve being on a different continent than the race before.

I still think F1 is making life unnecessarily difficult for itself, the teams and for the logistics staff. I suspect Abu Dhabi at the end of the season is unavoidable for contractual reasons, but I really don’t understand why they have the Canadian GP in the middle of the summer which involves two hops across the Atlantic that could be avoided. I think moving the Canadian Grand Prix to later in the year to when everyone is already in that part of the world for the US, Mexican and Brazilian Grand Prix would help enormously.