Bonnard, Van Gogh and Munch in London, May 2019

Bonnard, Van Gogh and Munch, all exhibited in London, April 2019 - at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and British Museum respectively.

These three artists are so well known from books but I still have such an urge to see the actual

works that I am willing to spend considerable time, money and energy to get myself to London from

Cornwall. Even an English breakfast so lukewarm and disappointing that I tell an American in my

hotel lift that I feel I should go round the dining room apologising for it hasn't dampened my joy at

the prospect of firsthand encounters with the pictures.

The Bonnard evokes the south of France so powerfully that I can smell the mimosa, taste the cake

and want to rush down to the sea. 

He's a rare artist whose pictures of his bathing wife seem

suffused with love, not exploiting a woman's body to leering glances. 

There's old black and whitefootage of him holding his little daschund, looking sensitive and slight. However did those colours in those proportions come to his mind, vibrating like ciccadas through the afternoon? I want him to be as wonderful as his art and wish I didn't know he was unfaithful to his wife and his mistress killed herself. After all who knows the circumstances? I share those lingering moments of joy he depicted.

With Van Gogh and Munch I also know quite a lot about their lives.

Vincent shows the heavy solid grief of a woman so strongly,

 then the wild hot landscapes with twisted tree trunks and brush strokes that make a dance all over the surface.

 Everyone wants a moment to be in the centre of the Starry Starry Night,

 to take their own photo of it, a hot glittering

night of passion, of beauty, despite a lonely life, an unsuccessful career, a brother who although he

was an art dealer couldn't sell his work.

Munch is even more tragic, a claustrophobic space, very dark, the pictures and prints on a

scale so much more impressive than on a page. 

I keep seeing people with white tragic faces,

identifying with Munch. When I come out there's a man slumped on a seat looking so sad and full

of grief as if exhausted by it all.

In each case the artist has balanced the subjects, the content, with the form so exactly that I can't

separate them.

The gift shops are a light relief, a bridge back to the everyday life outside. I buy a knitted daschund

to make myself feel more like Bonnard, who my art teacher at school sincerely told me painted like

me. 

I avoid a Vincent key ring, insufficiently like him, or a Munch Scream pendant, too gruesome to

wear.

Yes it as worth the effort. Yes art IS an experience that enriches my life and a sustenance through

sorrow.