hockney, ebury wine bar, mercedes taxi

Went to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy earlier.

Huge and overwhelming but well worth the visit. Particularly liked the fourth gallery which contains Yorkshire landscapes 'painted directly from observation' in 2004-2005. Several of these reminded me of John Nash's work (see my 'spring!, long winter, ageing, john nash, tyres-some' post of 26th February).

My favourite image, though, was in the next gallery, Tunnels, and was entitled Winter Tunnel with Snow (it was also reminiscent of Nash). The painting evoked scenes I've seen over the years in other contexts (see this post, for example) and was remarkably vivid both close up and from a distance. In fact you noticed different things depending on the distance--the shadows on the snow were especially striking from the other side of the gallery.

Also loved the videos that Hockney made (using a curious rig of nine HD cameras fixed to a Jeep)--both the ones of hedgerows and woods and the lovely ones of dancers--and the sketchpads and iPads (for more on Hockney and iPad drawings, follow these BBC and Louisiana Museum links).

After the exhibition I was treated to a delicious lunch at the Ebury Wine Bar, an old favourite that was as good as ever.

Travelled in a Mercedes taxi too. I'm sufficiently non-London savvy to have wondered if you could actually hail one of these cabs (there weren't such things the last time I flagged down a London taxi). Indeed, sitting in the back of the cab I was trying to remember the last time I did travel in a London taxi...

Oh dear!