Review: 'Gauguin - Maker Of Myth' at Tate Modern

Tate Modern 30 September 2010  –  16 January 2011

This is what big institutional galleries like the Tate are for: only they have the resources and the clout to bring together a major artist’s work into a single huge show like this. Of course when a curator is given that much economic and cultural capital to play with, they feel that they need to make a statement, whether they have anything to say or not.

As far as I can tell the subtitle ‘Maker Of Myth’ is pretty much spurious: sure, Gauguin was obsessed with mythology, and was a conscious cultivator of his own myth as an artist, but he was as much a victim of myth as a manipulator of it. This more complex picture is not elided in the exhibition, but neither is there any coherent attempt to argue for the view of the artist expressed by ‘maker of myth’. I can buy that term applied to Picasso, say, but not poor old syphilitic, frustrated, misunderstood and finally penniless Paul Gauguin.

This is all by the by: whatever curatorial agenda there may be does not interfere with the work, which speaks for itself, and is hung in nine galleries, grouped according to themes such as self-portraiture, landscape, still-life, female subjects and so on. The themes are pretty sensible, although of course self-portraits are headed ‘Identity and Self-Mythology’, women ‘The Eternal Feminine’ etc. (yawn). There are also two rooms of ephemera which I didn’t linger in, as time was pressing: I saw enough to get an interesting inkling of the extent to which Gauguin was influenced by commercial art, however, and I’d be interested in how much influence he’s felt to have had on the commercial world in his turn

I know Gauguin from books, by and large: his paintings in the flesh are imposing physical objects, mainly by dint of their chromatic intensity. They are mostly smaller than I’d imagined them. There is also, oddly, a lot less paint on the canvases than I thought there would be: there is a good deal of dark underpainting, which gives the often gaudy colours a depth I had supposed came from a physical depth of paint. In fact, the weave of the canvas is visible over much of the painted surfaces, suggestive of a frugality at odds with the works’ visual opulence.

Seeing such an extensive sampling of an artist’s work has its pros and cons. On the one hand it’s a rich meal: there’s really only so much you can take in at one sitting, and at £15 a visit I’m not too likely to go back repeatedly. I stayed for an hour: on my own I might have stayed for two, but I’d have been boss-eyed by then, and really this show would take about ten or twelve hours to see properly.

On the other hand, seeing so many self-portraits together (for instance) gives you an opportunity to see the development of Gauguin’s practice, to see him probing, abandoning blind alleys, gradually gathering the threads of his mature work. His relationship with Van Gogh (which continues in his work long after the termination of their personal association) is a fascinating thread to follow: I’d love to see a show that puts the two together, like the Picasso/ Matisse show here a few years back.

On a technical level some dubious decisions were taken in hanging this show: the contemporary obsession with shoving the labels to the end of the wall often makes it confusing to find the details of the piece you’re looking at, and really, what harm does it do to have a little piece of text next to each work? And while I appreciate the aesthetic drawbacks of either board labels or clear stickers, the direct transfers they like at the Tate tend to have rubbed off a few weeks into the show. It was very hard to make sense of a few labels.

Clearly it’s hard to review a show like this. Gauguin is Gauguin: an opportunity to view his work en masse should be taken if you can. The way he sets blocks of colour singing against each other so that they seem to fizzle and vibrate on the canvas is for me very rarely matched, perhaps only by Rothko. The curator, despite some minor pretensions, has done the sensible thing and gotten out of the way, while these magnificent paintings blare out across the galleries like foghorns.

Review: Diwana

121 Drummond Street, London, NW1 2HL

The occasion was the London branch of my family’s opportunity to celebrate my 40^th, so it was unlikely the place I wanted to go would earn itself anything other than a good review. I’ve been eating here since I was three years old, and I have to say, each time I have a meal at Diwana it conforms precisely to my accumulated memories of what the food there should be like. Thirty-seven years of total consistency is a pretty splendid achievement in my book.

Diwana is a bhel poori house, of which there are a small number in the vicinity of south Camden’s North Gower Street: what this means is that it serves southern Indian cuisine, entirely vegetarian, and that it specialises in a brand of snack food, involving small fried breads, sev (chickpea noodles) and various interesting, aromatic seasonings. The other mainstay of the menu is the dosas, various weird and wonderful riffs on the theme of pancake. I didn’t have any of that.

When I lived in London during the early 90s I explored that side of the menu, but on this visit I returned to my old mainstay, since I very rarely eat there nowadays: I had the thali ‘Annapurna’. This is a stainless steel tray, full of small stainless steel bowls, each containing a different vegetable curry (except the ones containing some fantastically seasoned yoghurt, some pokhara, some rice, and some creamy, sticky dessert). I had some chapatis with mine as well. It was all very yum.

This is not a very hotly spiced cuisine, which means you can really taste the subtleties of the very complex spice combinations they use in all their dishes, and it’s all quite unlike anything else I associate with the term ‘Indian food’. These interesting aromas extend everywhere, including the desserts.

Despite my thali including a dessert, I was compelled (for reasons of nostalgia) to follow it up with a portion of malai kulfi. Kulfi is Indian ice-cream: it is stirred and reduced, rather than being whipped like western ice-cream, which results in a very dense texture. In the past it was served in a tall cone shape: on this occasion the cone had been cut into four segments which lay flat on my plate. This may have something to do with the traditional shape’s tendency to go flying across the restaurant when you try to force a spoon through it. It was also very delicious, very delicately and engagingly seasoned.

They have no license, but you can bring your own alcohol, which in this case we did, although I’m usually happy with a couple of salt lassis (spiced yoghurt drinks) to wash my meal down.

I used to go running into this place for a plaster if I cut my finger while playing in the nearby streets. It’s not just the first Indian food I can remember having: it’s the first food I can remember having out, of any kind. Its flavours and colours and smells and atmosphere (and decor, it still has the same pine tongue-and-groove lined interior) are as much a part of me as anything else is, and so it is clearly completely impossible for me to give an objective assessment. I just love it, the way you love a family member. It’s my ultimate comfort food. I do maintain, however, that it is some damn’ fine cooking, and I have no reservations about recommending that you eat there.