Schad

A day that started with a dream of me waking up and putting on a T-shirt I don't possess; it had the periodic table drawn on it. Then I woke up and got dressed, went straight to the Doctor who gave me test tubes for samples and told me that I probably had another 3 weeks of boiled rice and grated apple. Then she changed her mind and told me I should eat the same as usual, only in tiny portions, and nothing at all rich, spicy or fatty. With this golden nugget of bugger all sense I left, and feeling annoyed with my week of illness, decided I need some art. I chose to go and see this:https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/dorothea-tanning

I'm often undecided on surrealism, but I'll come back to Dorothea and Surrealism in another post. Today I got to the Tate, only to find the exhibition was at the Tate Modern. Now, normally in this situation, I would accept the adventure put in front of me rather than the adventure I sought, but the immediate alternative was the Van Gogh and Britain exhibition, and though I love VG, I am sick of everything being seen through the lens of how it relates to Britain. It tickled me that the main piece of art inspired merchandise was based on his painting of a starry night over the Loire, nothing to do with Blighty. I just couldn't bear the Midsomer magnifying glass, not today.

I walked the two miles between the Tate and Tate Modern, just to see if I could, because I am stupid that way. Saw the Exhibition, and then saw a piece by Christian Schad that held me. It was his self portrait.



Once I could get past why his squeeze had a narcissus growing out of her shoulder, I found myself captivated by the whole thing, their uncompromising plainness for all their citification, his strange uncertain gaze, the veil that barely separates them from the city, his bizarre gauzy shirt. I like chest hair on a man, but he looked remarkably unsensual, like her armpit hair, that crime against beauty that all artists traditionally remove from their Venus-alikes. Her scar was described as a kind that used to be found in Southern Italy, a mutilation of women by their jealous lovers. The women would wear these with pride, as a testament to the passion they could kindle in their men, an old unpleasant custom that seems odd next to that thoroughly modern 1920s haircut. I couldn't feel any passion emanating from the painting at all, and was fascinated by the detail of her well manicured but very slightly dirty fingernails.

Schad and the Woman just looked like two strangers in the city who met for sex and then... And then what? Nothing? Yes, nothing but so intense I could almost smell the sex in the room. Schad looked out at me, and I couldn't decipher his expression at all. The woman seemed almost absent.

This then was my afternoon's adventure, this strange meeting. I wonder how strange, how hard and lonely and accurate the artist seemed. There was so much missing but no lack of power, no lack of whatever makes an artist. He is the real thing, just slightly horrible and aware of it. I couldn't stay in that room with them for long. Despite the city so near it was hopelessly claustrophobic. I just know that ten minutes later she was putting her stockings back on, and he was fully dressed ready for the streets again. When I walked out into London I was relieved to be back in the air.