The Millais Exhibition- A Wordly Event

‘O moses what a precious lot
Of beautiful red hair they’ve got!

How much their upper lips do pout!
How very much their chins stick out!

Du Maurier, Punch Magazine

I went there doe-eyed and batting my lashes. Tate Britain, 11h30 on a Thursday. I thought I was outsmarting the nation: I was avoiding the weekend, the crowd, the Tourists, the Brats, the Moaners, the Enraptured, the Enthusiasts, the Retired and the Inevitables who inevitably dwell on their grandmother’s antiques while gazing at old canvasses.

Well, dear reader, you’ll be happy to know my craftiness was rewarded.

They were ALL there.

Later on, I read in a very respectable publication that liking the Preraphaelites is quintessentially un-cool. It would’ve been nice to be informed beforehand.
BEFORE I was caught between socked-sandals, wheelchairs on the loose and a throng of lewd 50 year-olds.

…

But I’ll tell you one thing: we sure love our Millais, my bunch of misfits and I.

And we’ve got lots of fantastic things to say about him.

Cherry Ripe 1879

Ophelia 1851-2

The Proscribed Royalist 1651, 1853

The Blind Girl 1854-6

After the in-depth study of the first declaration in the Preraphaelite Doctrine (ie To have genuine ideas to express), let us turn to the analysis of the second founding precept of the Brotherhood:

To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express (these ideas).

(aka the Theory of Utter and Irrevocable Stagnation)


Millais’ flora is very minute. I suspect him, that relentless boy, of looking up every single leaf, the tiniest of thorns and the most insignificant stem. And I truly believe that in his mirthful kingdom of shrub lovers, branches and twigs gathered around Ophelia and gave Millais a manly pat on the back saying: that’s some mighty fine looking landscape, Milly. Mighty fine indeed...

There definitely is something fungus-friendly about this swamp. Landscape.

Hearts are Trumps: Portraits of Elizabeth, Diana, and Mary,
Daughters of Walter Armstrong, Esq. 1872

(A decor that looks as natural as an outdoor scene on the Young and the Restless)

I wonder where he got that heaviness, this undying love of the inert.

An overexcited crowd turned towards these still (compact, stuffy, stifling) pictures. The contrast between these two equally dense extremes - the sandaled mass and the dreamy-eyed flowery girls- made me want to throw myself in the Thames.

I eventually opted for a burger. The best burger in town.

Because Art, my dear friends, may feed one’s soul, but it doesn’t do squat for one’s empty stomach.

(And to end this comprehensive overview of the Millais exhibition, I must confess I behaved badly with regard to the third Preraphaelite rule:

To sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art.


Forgive-me Brother for I was really tired.)