Day 0130

Completely unable to surface before midday. A shame because the weather is glorious. Had lunch on a sunny pavement cafe whilst film crew went about their business, which seemed largely to involve waiting patiently.

Took an unplanned trip to the Caxia Forum and enjoyed looking at the exhibition of Charles le Brun cartoons for Versailles. Huge bits of paper stitched together, showing the stylus marks and pinholes from where the charcoal drawings were transferred to canvas. Great to see the process so clearly explained. Also an interesting video about how the team at the Louvre restored the drawings.

Miro exhibition on the second floor was interesting, now my mind is no longer closed to modern art. If you think back to the time these things were produced, when they were new and not worn out parodies, the 'assassination of painting' would have been a very interesting concept and probably quite radical. The trouble is once you've seen a bit of sandpaper stuck on some canvas or a knotted rope glued over a daubed background or a frame without a canvas or a canvas burned away or an old tin with some bits and pieces stuck on and the whole cast in bronze, well then you get the message and expand your definition of art to include everything and there is nothing left to see except variations on the theme. I can only get excited by it in its original context of novelty and subversion. Without that it's just another collection of easily reproducible objects that have precious more to offer than any other randomly chosen items put in nice cases or framed on white walls and well-lit.

Finished off with sundown in the park; beautiful girls, heat, spring. Reading Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, Youth during breaks of play.

Swifts screaming above the streets, overpowering scent of wisteria on the way home.