Jimmy, Mrs Fisher and Me by Bishop-Potter Eric

Author:Bishop-Potter, Eric [Bishop-Potter, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fiction, rent boy, Eric Bishop-Potter, Matador
ISBN: 9781780889580
Publisher: Matador
Published: 2011-09-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Our first port of call, so to speak, is the National Gallery, recently extended, as you may’ve read, at a cost to the taxpayer of six million pounds. I’m not complaining: more National Gallery means more art – and we can all do with more art, right? Art is important I think – it helps keep us sane. More art, fewer missiles, is my motto.

On the subject of art: I don’t know about you, but personally – and this’ll sound weird coming from someone who’s only once been inside a church (for the funeral service of a good neighbour of ours: Mrs Cutts, who died of cervical cancer) – I go for religious pictures. And in my opinion there was no finer painter of religious pictures than Caravaggio. I once saw his The Death of the Virgin Mary – no shit – and I tell you, it stopped my mind – like, it just took me over; I was up there with the guys in the robes (there are all these guys in robes in the picture). I was transported, as they say.

I’m also big on landscapes and my main man for landscapes is Canaletto. In my book, Canaletto is the best. I mean, some of those views of Venice he painted … You can almost breathe the air. You look at a Canaletto and you want to take a deep breath. In my opinion – I’m wearing that phrase out – the painters of today, as compared with Caravaggio and Canaletto, are amateurs. Take Hockney, for example. As far as I’m concerned, Hockney’s pictures are about as interesting as a satellite dish. The only modern-day painter I’ve got time for is Bacon. OK, his stuff may look a little Hannibal the Cannibal but at least it says something. To me it does. It tells me there’s a lot of grief in the world. Bacon is one person I would like to’ve met, had a conversation with; I imagine he had plenty of interesting things to say about Life, and about Art. From what I’ve heard about his sex life, he probably would’ve liked to’ve met me!

How I know about paintings: at the school I went to, kids reckoned by our art teacher – a guy called Blakely – to be good at drawing were taken on trips to galleries. I was one of Blakely’s star pupils, so I always got to go on these trips. Kids reckoned by Blakely to be lousy at drawing were out of it, which, in my opinion, wasn’t right. I mean, just because you’re not good at something doesn’t mean you don’t have an interest in it, or can’t appreciate it, does it?

Try telling that to Blakely

Sudden thought: Did Bacon’s pals call him Streaky?

We cruise the gallery for two hours, and then, after we’ve refreshed ourselves with a nice cup of tea in the gallery’s cafeteria, discussed some of the paintings we’ve seen (some of those paintings … They make you feel – I dunno – humble), we take the Underground to Westminster.

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