Wild Cornwall

Scenes from a wild and wet out-of-season Cornwall last month ...

Minack, the open air theatre carved into the rocks and perched spectacularly on the cliff tops overlooking Porthcurno Bay is just a short drive from Lands End.

Despite or maybe because of the thick mist this place and bit of coastline was astonishing, though I may have become a tad obsessed with Cornwall's history of smuggling and pirates from watching BBC One's Poldark.

There was a detour to the quaintly named Mousehole (quaintly pronounced Mowzel) to track down Dolly Pentreath's tombstone.

This fish wife of Mousehole was the last monolingual native speaker of Cornish, and when she died in 1777 the language essentially died with her, "the peculiar language of this county from the earliest records till it expired in the eighteenth century in this parish of Saint Paul". (Actually her status as last speaker is disputed, and the language is undergoing attempts at revival, but I'm not inclined to quibble - I'm all in favour of tombstones to dying languages).

Also on the south Cornish coast, Trelissick gardens near Truro are set on a peninsula with fabulous sea and estuary views on each side.

Cornwall's closeness to the Gulf Stream makes it Britain's only sub-tropical region with its own micro-climate, and Trelissick is only one of a number of botanical gardens including the wonderfully named Lost Gardens of Heligan.

Rhododendrons are the big thing at Trelissick, many of them grown to massive heights.

From Trelissick the King Harry ferry was definitely the most unusual and scenic way to travel across the estuary that divides Truro from St Mawes ...

to reach St Just in Roseland where there is possibly the prettiest cemetery I've ever seen, around a 13C church on the edge of the estuary

Cornwall south coast April 2015

Down by the sea

Planning a weekend in Cornwall in springtime is a gamble with the weather. 
The start of day one was bright enough to appreciate the rugged prettiness of the north coast and its fishing villages.

Port Isaac was all rocky cliffs, colourful fishing boats and wheeling gulls. But it seems that not much fishing is done any more, outside of the tourist season. This quaint little harbour on the beach looks more like a static film set - which it is in fact, for the TV series Doc Martin. (I confess I'm a fan and always charmed by the scenes of this place in the series).

Out of season in early spring the streets were empty here, as in most of the other Cornwall towns I saw. Thoroughly gentrified and second-homed, the crowds descend in summer, clogging the narrow lanes winding down to coastal villages and depart abruptly in the autumn. Making this a perfect time of year to visit ...

Just a little further along the coast, nestled on an estuary, is Padstow, famous for chef Rick Stein's collection of restaurants, hotels and foodie shops.

Padstow was another dying Cornish fishing village before Stein arrived and pretty much single-handedly convinced the British that the fish in their own waters was worth eating, and in so doing revived the fishing industry here. 

This is an actual working harbour now, and the seafood at Stein's restaurant is truly fabulous, as I discovered.

St Ives is a lot further down the north coast, towards the end of the pointy finger of western Cornwall. And by this time it was turning pretty wet and grey and I had to use my imagination to picture the 'brilliant' light that has attracted artists to St Ives since Turner and Whistler.

By the standards of where I come from the beach front is no great shakes, but it's easy to see how lovely it could be here on a summer's day

and the Tate St Ives is right here, its striking architecture making full use of the view over Porthmeor beach. 

From the Tate it was a short wander through wet streets and empty holiday cottages to the Barbara Hepworth museum

for a wet walk around her sculpture garden and the studio where she worked, looking exactly as if she'd just finished working for the day.

Port Isaac, Padstow & St Ives, Cornwall, April 2015

Sailing in the clouds: Louis Vuitton, Paris

Curiosity took me recently to the suburbs of Paris to see Frank Gehry's extravagant construction for France's richest man, Louis Vuitton owner Bernard Arnault. 
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is designed as a cultural centre to house Arnault's collection of modern and contemporary art, borrowed works for exhibitions, and a concert hall.

On the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement, it's designed as a vast sailing ship, intended to appear as if floating, suspended, above the ground.

To create the ship effect, beneath it is a sort of sunken, artificial lake, with water cascading towards it. 

Above, twelve enormous glass 'sails' are draped in curving, billowing shapes. 
It's impossible to get the whole building in camera view from the ground, but a side view gives some idea of the scale.

The effect is spectacular, certainly, and gets more so the higher you ascend to the roof top.

But the sails, and the crazy amount of timber and steel columns, beams, struts and props needed to support the illusion of weightless sails from afar, actually do rather block the views and potential connections with the surroundings.

Inside there's a ground floor restaurant with giant suspended sculpted fish, another of Gehry's favourite forms 

and impressive gallery spaces.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the place though. Critics have called it a 'crazed indulgence of over-engineering' in which the overwhelming effect is of a building with lots and lots of empty, functionless space. 

And local residents protested vigorously against its construction, on the grounds that it broke multiple laws intended to preserve the character of the Bois. But, proof that money talks, their objections were overruled when a special law was passed in the Assemblée Nationale declaring that it must go ahead as a 'major work of art for the whole world'. 

Whatever you think of it, it's worth a visit for the building alone, and now to see a major exhibition of Modernists - Les Clefs d'une Passion (here).

Antwerp and Dries van Noten

I posted about lovely Antwerp last summer (here). Going back there on an utterly miserable, rainy winter's day a couple of weeks ago I wondered if I could sustain my enthusiasm for the city.

This square in the shopping and restaurant area of Graanmarkt that was filled with outdoor diners under leafy trees in the summer was deserted in the rain, but still elegant.

Cafés and bookshops offered warm, friendly interior spaces to dry out

and at Bourla restaurant behind the Toneelhuis lunch fully lived up to Belgium's dizzying reputation for good food.

And then there was fashion: at Momu (Museum of Fashion) the Dries van Noten exhibition has recently relocated from its run in Paris, back to van Noten's hometown.

Leading into the exhibition is a passage way filled with posters - references to music, films and fashion of the 70s and 80s when van Noten emerged as one of the Antwerp Six young designers ...

... a hint that the exhibition beyond is not so much a retrospective as an glimpse into his rich and prolific creative process.

Damien Hirst's butterfly collage, Proust, Cecil Beaton, Rothko, Francis Bacon, Jimi Hendrix, military uniforms, Rajasthan and Bollywood, Cindy Wright's skull art are just some of the elements that inspired his creativity. 

Antwerp March 2015. Yes, still one of my favourite European cities.