l'art

In continuation of my summer of free entertainment, I have sought to become more cultured by going to all the free art exhibitions I can find. I love it because there is no educational motive or benefit as I don't study art or plan to study anything very art-related. I seem to be experiencing a mental block about doing any actual constructive work right now, so the lack of benefit is very helpful.

I apologise in advance for the pretentiousness of this post. As I have written, I do know very little about art at all, apart from whether I like something, and how it's making me feel.

Anyway, enough ponderings, back to the exhibitions. Every single exhibition I list in this post was free and I only have superlatives to describe them. They are also all still currently showing in London!

• Jim Hodges at the Camden Arts Centre

A very small exhibition but wowow I was just blown away by the beauty of it. You know how much I love beauty, and the way it has the power to make you feel extraordinarily happy and then extraordinarily sad.

• Picasso at the Gagosian

It's, well, Picasso. Being surprisingly lively and happy. I left this one feeling joyful.

• The permanent collection at the Courtauld. Can I just ask: how have I not been here before?? I have lived in London my whole life, in a half an hour proximity to the stuff of kids' art books, like this:

and for God's sake, this:


And I was completely oblivious. There is also a lot of gothic and early renaissance stuff which I spent a few minutes peering out and trying to identify the saints, but you can skip over that! And a couple of temporary contemporary exhibitions too.

This sort of stuff makes me feel so fortunate to live in a city like London. It also leaves me confused as to how I could ever have been feeling bored here, or at a loss for what to do for free.*

*apart from any purchases I may have made from the shop or food I may have consumed in the café