Oscar Wilde! What a Git!

I finished the Lizzie Siddal biography last night; there were no real revelations though the author Lucinda Hawksley does seem to assert that there was indeed a suicide note based on a 1949 biography by the Granddaughter of one of the main figures in the tale (probably Ford Madox Brown but I can't remember). However, one of the last tales is the gossip regarding Lizzie's death put about by a certain wit and playwright of Irish origin who claimed it was murder on the part of DGR. It is poignant then that in this story, the school aesthete gets named after Wilde. The idea that the PRB "were the spiritual forebears of both the Happy Mondays and the Blackpool Illuminations" is maybe a candidate for Pseuds' Corner but I can see where it comes from. I've just noticed (sparked by the slightly fuzzy notion that Lizzie and DGR were a bit like Ted and Sylvia) that Sylvia died exactly 101 years after Lizzie on February 11th 1963. Slap me someone!

On to The Tent, The Bucket and Me. I feel a sonnet coming on.

Petrichor Wombat and the Temple of Dust

More on that story later.

To the Tate Liverpool on Saturday for the first time in ages. And hasn't it all changed - Dali's Lobster Telephone and Autumnal Cannibalism are back for the first time since the gallery opened as far as I can remember but the real draw is the colour exhibition on the top floor (where you always have to pay for the privilege of walking up the stairs). Lots of coloured squares including 4096 in a 64 x 64 grid all apparently different colours, and lots of dots from Damien Hirst. And each main picture seems to be accompanied by many austere display cabinets of various books purporting to define colour standards. What struck me was the fact that although each book is supposed to define colour exactly, the existence of rivals (even just one would be enough) brings the whole idea to the floor. No one is right! Life's a bit like that isn't it? I did look out for Pantone 294 and Pantone 298 which are the two colours I know from this (now defunct) logo. In fact I couldn't find any mention of Pantone in the exhibition itself though the shop was awash with mugs of single and multiple Pantones. There was an interesting computer programme which allowed the calibration of a computer screen without reference to base colours - it relied instead on people selecting numbers of coloured disks from collections and seems a much cheaper way of calibrating a screen than the various bits of hardware used at the moment.

The sculpture downstairs was also very good (and free) and included a flashing dance floor on which anyone was permitted to dance to a selected headphone soundtrack. Of course this just meant that all the children shouted to each other to the tutting of all the parents. There was also a Carl Andre piece which resembled (was identical to a stone kitchen floor) which was also for walking on. It is a great pity that there is now a blanket ban on photography of any kind where you used to be able to take any flashless picture you liked, though I'm not sure how rigid the attendants are about this- I didn't test them.

Of course, Mr Millais who painted the gorgeous Ophelia up there was as much of an iconoclast as Damien Hirst or any of the New Brits and of course the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood have been sexed up for Desperate Romantics on BBC2, a gratuitously-raunchy view of the PRB for modern tastes. I was a bit snooty about this programme and a minute in I was still not convinced. However, five minutes in and I was hooked - it looks good at least and as a drama it holds attention. Of course it is full of expositions, mostly from the fictional Fred who is the PRB's fixer - I got the impression of a lot of "my mate wants to go out with you" style dialogue, and various concatenations of events to bring together people with dialogue from newspaper reviews but it has a pace which is obviously designed to draw people in. I'm pretty certain that Dante Gabriel Rossetti is played far too "in your face" - although his portraits show him with Byronesque looks, Desperate Romantics has him too large for what I imagine he was like - maybe he was like a cross between a lumberjack and Rob Newman but I doubt it. However Lizzie Siddal is spot on - rarefied in looks and forthright in outlook, though maybe there is something of Christina Rossetti in there too. Nice to see the Armadillo in there as well.

Cultural Quick

Too much! Too Much. Manics on the radio very loud on the way home and then the short ride in a fast machine that is the second part of the Pre-Raphaelite prog on BBC4. Last night I would have said that the programme could have been 3 hour-long episodes but I am beginning to think the speedy overview is much more suited to half-an-hour - but with six of them. This was followed by a geeky hour with James May on the Moon - well 13 miles up in a U2 and talking to Apollo astronauts on the ground. Too much I say!

I read this article about mathematics yesterday and I thought it was by some Guardian hack rather than Marcus du Sautoy. Changes nothing though.

Today is Brought to You by the Number π

Listening to On Air by June Tabor

Now is it TAY bor or TA bor or even T’ bor? Answers on a postcard to the usual address – probably with 8QT in the postcode.

Today feels very Pre-Raphaelite. I can smell basil everywhere – he really should get a shower. No seriously, I love the look of these almost-photos – they seem to capture something you would think is impossible to put down on paper in any form. You may think them kitsch but the technical ability along with the instant-story feel you get from the pictures is always something far more than romanticism. In their time, some of the pictures were extremely controversial – and in a way far exceeding the rumblings about how a small piece of blue-tack can be considered art. Art had always been criticised more because of the subject matter and what it tries to say than for it’s technical execution. It is easy to divide a lot of acts and beliefs into good and evil but most things occupy a grey area either for everybody or where something good for one person is bad for another – and all shades in between. Sorry – this sounds like trying to defend the Pre-Raphaelites. They need no defending in any way as far as I’m concerned. My idea of a great gallery is one with Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Medieval icons. I was going to put “how sad is that?” but I’m not – I’m out and proud to be a fan of the PR Brotherhood.

I’m not sure why today feels very Pre-Raphaelite – must be the light or something. Someone is eating their dinner (thank you Stuart Maconie for making me see the light over dinner being something eaten at dinner time) and it smells like school – some sort of undefined stew – not unappetising but coloured with all sorts of associations about the various places of education I attended. I can just see the varnished herringbone tiling and the scuffed walls. Which reminds me that Rachel North has linked to this page of Molesworth who I’m sure secretly liked Pre-Raphaelite paintings, if only for the nudes.