www.wellcomecollection.org
Visited on Thursday 6 December 2012
No time for fancy-dan
multiple-bus routes today – I was running late for the rendezvous at Euston
station with MinusTheMatt, owing to becoming far too absorbed in other project
work (making Christmas tree decorations – hm is it a stretch to call that
‘project work’?!). Anyway, suffice it to say, the train from Clapton to
Walthamstow and then Victoria line tube to Euston is the quickest route and is
quite boring, but I arrived in time to smash a quick whopper meal at Burger
King (not my classiest start to a culturecake excursion) and soon we were ready
to head over to the Wellcome Collection for the exhibition ‘Death: A
self-portrait’.
One great thing about
this gallery is that it’s free to go to the permanent collections and all
special exhibitions. Another great thing is the facial hair of the founder,
Henry Wellcome (1853 – 1936). He was a pharmacist, entrepreneur and
philanthropist who amassed a collection of over one million medical items
during his lifetime. The Wellcome Building on Euston Road houses the Wellcome
Collection, one of three galleries dedicated to this magnificently moustachioed
man’s original vision, and its rather pleasing strapline reads ‘The free
destination for the incurably curious’. Right up my street then.
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| Very wise words |
‘Death: A self-portrait’ comprises items from the collection of Richard Harris, a former
antique print dealer from Chicago, and is devoted to his fascination with our
complex and contradictory attitudes towards death. The five rooms were dimly
lit, with spotlights strategically positioned to throw eerie shadows on the
walls. Throughout, we could hear the murmurings of an interview on repeat being
shown on the TV in the final room, featuring Mr Harris himself talking about
what inspired him to bring these pieces together. I was very pleased with the free
booklet that provides a guide to the exhibition, designed almost in the manner
of a funeral order of service book.
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| Nice, and informative, free thing |
Through paintings,
sculptures, photographs and drawings from a wide range of artists and ordinary
people, Harris took us on a journey through the big philosophical concepts concerning
death and dying. We began with a
series of vanitas paintings – which I learned is a particular type of symbolic
still life from the 16th and 17th centuries, intended to
remind the viewer of the transient nature of life on earth. They often include
a human skull, juxtaposed with things that we might treasure (money, ornaments,
jewellery) or ephemeral items like cut flowers. The message is clear – pretty
or ‘valuable’ things last a short time, but death lasts forever. This reminded
me of a great verse from the Bible (I once read the whole of the Old Testament)
(yes, I know) – ‘No matter how long you live, remember you will be dead much
longer’ (Ecclesiastes 11:8). Ecclesiastes was apparently written by ‘The Philosopher’,
a man who didn’t really understand the ways of God but gave sensible advice on
working hard and enjoying life as best you can given that there isn’t so much
of it. It was the most interesting book in the Bible I thought, apart from the
ones I knew from the New Testament with the Nativity stories, which are pretty
heart-warming.
Anyway, moving on to
the second room, we found a series of pieces concerned with the inevitability
of death. The notion of the Danse Macabre appeared from the late Medieval
period onwards, when Europe was ravaged by wars, famines and plagues. It was
represented in all sorts of art, including music, painting and sculpture, and
addresses the idea that death is the great leveller – it comes to everyone
whether they are popes or paupers, peasants or kings, women or men – but it’s
also something of a reveller too. Here were paintings showing skeletons and
corpses cavorting with the living, perhaps to remind people that frivolous
dancing and self-indulgent behaviour brings you closer to The End. They also
offered a humorous perspective and reflected on the absurdity of life. One
piece we particularly liked in this room was a little tin and wire sculpture of
a skeleton sitting on a table, looking like he was just taking a breather from
the party. The works here certainly showed death as something that could be our
friend as much as our enemy – whatever the case, it is ever-present and
ineluctable.
The third room
contained some quite difficult drawings by Goya showing death brought about by
war. They are hard to look at not so much because they show dead bodies, but
because they show them in such a way that your imagination can’t help supplying
the narrative immediately prior to the moment that’s been depicted. The bodies
themselves are limp and motionless, but they’ve been brought to that point
through horrible violence. A bit depressing.
The fourth room was
very interesting, containing a variety of pieces focusing on what Freud described
as the ‘eternal conflict at the centre of human civilisation: the instinct
towards life and towards destruction’. Many of the works here were both repellent and compelling at the
same time. One painting showing a skeleton in an unmistakably sensual pose with
a woman was disturbing somehow and yet I couldn’t help looking at it. In the
middle of the room was a realistic sculpture of about half a human body – it
was missing one leg from the thigh downwards, as well as its bottom jaw and one
of its arms. From behind it looked like a man sitting up, but from the front it
was a shocking and rather gruesome representation of a human torn apart. Tough
stuff!
The final room
featured a wide range of pieces focusing on commemoration. It is clear that
whatever culture we belong to, we like to feel connected to those who have
already died while we ourselves are still alive. There were Tibetan ceremonial
bowls from the 1600s made out of human skulls, and photos of modern-day
Mexicans posing with wreaths made out of marigolds as part of their Day of the
Dead rituals. The items I liked the most were a series of photos taken by
anonymous ordinary people, showing groups of the living posing with macabre
props such as skeletons or skulls. One of these showed a bunch of what could
have been anatomy students with a skeleton, in whose mouth they’d placed a
cigar, which was being lit by a leery-looking young man. The photo was dated
1918 – which means that probably all the people in the shot are now as dead as
the prop…
After all this, we
came to the kind of exit room, on the wall of which there was a huge
infographic, specially commissioned from David McCandless. He’s the author and
designer of an excellent book called Information is Beautiful, which Brother B
Man the Mystic bought me for Christmas a couple of years ago, and which
contains graphic representations of all sorts of interesting stats. This one
showed the approximate number of people to have died from all the various
causes since records began. Cancer and disease were the main culprits – war,
jellyfish, Chlamydia and philosophy less so. Interesting. Though perhaps not as
interesting as the google search I just did to check ‘is cancer a disease’, as
I was unsure as to its medical classification. Hilarious what google thought I
might have been looking for, based on me entering the word ‘is’ into the search
bar!
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| The X Factor PR team are all over this issue I'm sure |
OK enough of all the
death and dying and onto the very live subject of CAKES. I had been advised
that the café here is ‘amazing’, but I am afraid to say that we did not find
this to be the case (sorry Brother Neil). In its defence, it has a wonderful
set of lights above the seating area, which contains nice tables and
retro-styled chairs. It’s situated in the entrance hall area of the building
and is united in open-plan fashion with the shop, so you can scope out your
goods while sipping your tea. Good.
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| Good lights |
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| Cake with your cellophane? |
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| Not home made |
MinusTheMatt opted for
a slightly off-programme food selection of pie and beer, while I went for the
traditional latte and tart. At £13, this was the cheapest refreshment run of
the project so far, but as MTM axiomatically observed: you get what you pay for
in this life…
Pork pie with
piccalilli and a bottle of Budvar (MinusTheMatt)
“The pastry-to-filling
ratio is a bit off. The meat part is not spicy at all, in fact this is the
blandest pork pie I’ve ever had in my life. Well below average. I’m going to
say this is a 4.5 out of 10. The beer? Well, it’s beer, so yeah fine.”
Treacle tart with
latte
“The mug is quite a
nice shape, but the coffee tastes a bit machiney. In fact this whole thing has
the air of production-line rather than homemade. I am suspicious of the fact
that many of the cakes are individually wrapped in cellophane and that the
people serving are a bit obsessive about the use of latex gloves. The texture
of the tart is a bit claggy, and the whole thing tastes more of lemon than
treacle. It’s poor, but I’m hungry so I’ll eat it anyway. Still, 4.5 is the
most I can give this.”
The fact that there
were no napkins and no forks, added to the above, meant that we were a bit
disappointed with the whole café experience. The shop, however, which is in
fact a branch of Blackwell’s, was pretty good. I bought the card pictured above
showing Henry Wellcome, plus two books – one called ‘Death’ by Geoffrey Scarre,
which is about the philosophical questions raised by death, and one called
‘Immortality’ by one of my favourite novelists, Milan Kundera. Good goods.
Apologies for the
small number of photos in this post – there were several very clear signs up in
the exhibition saying that photography was not allowed. I did get Sure out of
my pocket once or twice to look at things, but he didn’t have too much to say.
All in all ‘Death: A
self-portrait’ was quite good, but I’m not sure I would really recommend it as
a brilliant exhibition to go to. It was certainly thought-provoking, but you
could probably just look up ‘images of death’ online if you’re interested and that
would get you thinking just as much. I do rate the gallery as a whole though,
and there is a lot more to see than the one thing we went too. The fact that
it’s totally free is excellent, and I was very pleased with my rather nice booklet.
