Big Guns Back in Town

Blockbuster art exhibitions storm London.

A queue of patiently waiting people snakes out across Trafalgar Square on a dreary March weekday morning. The length of the queue and the adamant look of determination on the faces of the mob suggests they may be waiting for tickets to a World Cup football final. In fact, they’re all jostling their way into ‘Caravaggio: the Final Years’ showing at the National Gallery, just one of the blockbuster exhibitions to smash the art world’s box office records this year.

I was just one of 2,500 fortunate enough to be admitted that day alone. I can’t say I was too drunk on the haunting poetry of Caravaggio’s masterpieces not to notice the other sixteen faces behind me staring at the same single piece of canvas. Big crowds destroy the atmosphere of contemplative isolation best suited to appreciating these masterpieces. It’s like reading a book with someone peering over your shoulder. I know, faced with the work of a genius, they’re not interested in what my hair looks like from the back yet I still can’t help attempting to restrain the odd strand that has strayed out of place.

Down the Thames at the Tate Britain, a similar wave of art buffs have got in line to appreciate the works of Turner, Whistler and Monet. With romantic views of London, Paris and the waterways of Venice, the exhibition appears a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. This is already the second-most popular exhibition ever at the Tate Britain and is just six weeks into its run. If you don’t pre-book be prepared to embark on an epic adventure of queues. There’s more waiting to catch a glimpse of this canvas than to get treated at your local NHS hospital. Should these numbers persist the gallery has a contingency plan to welcome visitors 24 hours a day – the ideal jaunt when the pubs shut.

Nevertheless, this season really is the triumph of painting and comes at a time when Brit-art boy Damien Hirst has admitted that some of his trite conceptual claptrap is a bit ‘silly and embarrassing’. Caravaggio simply seizes his onlookers, compelling them to gawp at the raw subject of his paintings. There are no chintzy, rose-lipped cherubs as seen peppered in the work of Raphael. This is seductive, brutal realism painted by a murderer on the run and I loved it.

Likewise, Turner, Whistler and Monet have united to deliver a show that is ravishing. I applaud the family of JMW Turner for giving the Tate a ticking off for planning to spend millions of pounds generated by Turner’s work on what they aptly termed “modern rubbish”. This exhibition is spacious, intelligent and sensual in every way. Even if you have to view them under the armpit of the tall bloke in front, it’s worth it.

Get you to these exhibitions. Many of these paintings will not come to London again. My advice when beating the crowds is to be polite but ruthless. The odd elbow in the ribs does no end of good when battling to the front. Caravaggio himself would have expected nothing less.

Holy Orders

Father Cornelius Horan, the mad Catholic priest who jumped onto the track during both the Athens Olympics and the last Silverstone Grand Prix, has been banned from taking part in the London Marathon. Not only that, but when police realised he was taking an interest in the event, they banned him from the entire route.

Downwardly Mobile

Transport for London have announced plans to provide a network of coverage for mobile phones throughout the underground sections of the Tube. Described by Transport For London Director Richard Parry as ‘convenient’, mobile coverage underground will achieve a remarkable feat: making Tube travel less fun than it already is.

Bus Stop Bust-Up

Ladygate Lane in Ruislip was the lucky recipient of the first ever new-style bus-stop markings last week. These new, larger bus lanes will be rolled out all over London by 2007 but locals are already up in arms about the size of the stop. Apparently it covers both sides of the road and some of the pavement.

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