Lightboard at Picadilly Circus

A store display I liked... I mean, who's going to argue with a giant nude golden male ... lower body???? This was on Conduit street, heading towards the Sketch gallery, my last stop on foot.

"If looks could kill" window display also on Conduit Street.

The "back room" at Sketch, this was with the flash.

This was without the flash. They invite artists to exhibit video pieces in this gallery/nightclub space.

It is annexed to this groovy bar (dig the guy sitting at the counter).

Details of the devices used to "modulate" the envionment with flashing lights and reflections. Right after I took this picture the restaurant manager (who is French, btw) asked me why the hell I was taking photos. I mean, isn't it obvious???

This is a moving vitrine/light sculpture that sits in between the bar and the entryway.

O.K. this is beyond bizarre. Sketch has two fiine dining areas, the bar, the video/nightclub space AND a pastry case. Shut up!

I walk back to Picadilly Circus and hop the tube... I'm really pushing it and I'm almost late...

For the screening of Robert Morris' 21/3, a 1963 performance in which he lip-synched to Erwin Panofsky's famous Iconology lecture. I paid $16.00 to see this and Morris' lecture afterwards. I was late getting there, but it was late starting, so it all worked out.

Here is what Morris looks like now (kind of like Foucault or Lacan, I think). After the lecture (which was good, and lasted a full 45 minutes), he said he would take 10 questions. I bucked up my nerve and asked a question (those of you who know about the famous Red Beaver incident know how hard it is for me to speak to ANYONE I think is REMOTELY famous). I thought it was a damn good question about what role he believes today's art historians play in the issues he was describing.

So, he reaches over into a hat (what he's doing here) and pulls out a slip of paper and reads it. It's a Wittgenstein quote. Well, a couple of other "serious" questions were asked, and then the audience gave up and started asking him things like what he had for breakfast, just to see if the quote could possibly seem to relate.

I'm going to use this strategy the next time I give a paper at a conference..

So I high-tail it out of the Whitechapel Gallery because I've decided to shell out the money to eat at Damien Hirst's restaurant The Pharmacy (which is outfitted to look like a real pharmacy and the waiters wear surgical gear). I run, because it's getting really late, and take the Tube all the way across London. Alas, the Pharmacy no longer exists (but it must be pretty newly dead.. if you click on the detail you can see where the name used to be in neon lights).

And here is a stack of mail addressed to "The Pharmacy" that was piled inside the door.

The take-out counter was called Outpatients, which displayed a "we're out of business but thanks for being our patrons" sign taped to the door.

So I wound up having cheap chardonnay cooler, plums and raw hazelnuts for dinner. (Those of you who know how cheap I can be when I travel will both appreciate why it was such a big deal that I was willing to pay to eat at the Pharmacy and understand ... more or less.. why I wound up eating what I did).

ALL OF THE PICTURES UP TO HERE WERE TAKEN IN ONE LONG SEQUENCE STARTING AT 10:00 A.M. AND ENDING AT MIDNIGHT IN ONE DAY (my only "full" day in London).

Thursday afternoon I had to take the Tube to Heathrow to move on to Scotland. In the morning I decided to hit a couple of other shows... this one is in a gallery called Diorama and it focused on Mental Health, which I thought was pretty appropriate given my voyage yesterday. Oh, today I'm pretty much taking the Tube because I cannot walk at all.

Head Case.

Transcendental Medication.

I also went to the Tate Britain (to see the top four finalists for the Turner Prize), the Victoria and Albert (for a zoomorphic architecture show) and way the hell out into the boonies for what was supposed to be a video show but turned out to be some stupid watercolors of folding chairs (I kid you not) in a gallery upstairs in a Pub. So I'm off to Glasgow, and my camera is full.

I delete a couple of pictures that are more or less duplicates so I can get this picture of a defaced monument in front of the Modern Art Museum in Glasgow. That's a traffic cone on his head. What a great idea!

The only painting I really liked in the Modern's permanent collection (although they had some great works in an exhibition that they wouldn't let me photograph and a nice video/sound piece that was too dark to shoot).

This is John Bellany's Journey into the End of the Night, 1972.

Which also serves as a fitting end to my tale, as it was time for me to make an appearance at the State of the Real conference at the Glasgow School of Art.