Feb 20

It took me two hours to get into work by the bus today because there was a traffic jam.

Feb 21

MTV was doing a casting for twins yesterday and today so there were twins everywhere in Diorama. Also a guy named Steven Berkoff was in today doing casting for "on the waterfront", I guess he is the casting director or something.He is an actor who played in "Octopu$sy" and "A Clockwork Orange". (normally I would not put a dollar sign in for an "s" but this site edits that word)

Feb 23

Today Mark took Phil, Nisa and I to Roche Court. It took about two hours to get there in his car. On the way we went into a couple of these old villages with only mom and pop stores and thatch roofing and cobblestone churches and one main road. They were interesting. Part of the criteria in living there is to keep your home looking like it was built a couple hundred years ago. We drove by Hogarth's home. I will for sure go there sometime. It's a museum now.

Roche Court is Lady Bessborough's house. Her husband was an Earl. She has got all this really great sculpture outside and she lets people come and look at it. She sometimes has special events, like today were she invites guests into her home for an opening or something. She is a nice lady, Mark introduced her to us and we talked for a few minutes. The outside is really nice. Just gardens with sculpture. Mostly modern art, like a big dandelion, two big pares, three pink balls on top of each other, rocks strategically places, three almond shaped pieces of burned wood, etc. There are two Gormleys there. He did a set of 31 human figures and placed them around London and Europe, like on top of buildings, and in parks and by the shore. Apparently these are worth somewhere around a million dollars, or so I've been told.

They've also got this artists house on the property. They built this just for artists and they invite them to come and live there for a while and just do their artwork. They had it open for the day for people to see. It was one of the best architectural designs I've seen in a long time. It was two stories, and it was sort of that minimalist style. The bathroom looked like it was just a sink and tub but then you lift up the bench and it was a toilet underneath. Then in the utility room it was just a four panel blank wood wall. All four of these panels opened to reveal a freezer, refrigerator, washer and dryer. The kitchen looked like a long granite bar, but three flat lids on the countertop opened to sinks and a stove. The panels below opened to all the blenders and mixers and an oven. The ceiling had a large skylight and two opposite walls were solid glass, so you didn't need any artificial lights in the daytime. I think I heard they had some kind of contest as to who could create the best design that would also go with the existing house.

Then we went to Stonehenge afterwards. It's a good place to go. You cant get too close to it, but it was interesting anyway. Apparently the stones are from Whales so its kind of a mystery as to how they got them here, and also how they got them up and in the right positions without modern technology. In the same field there are a bunch of sheep grazing. I don't really know what the deal is with that, but anyway they are there.

Feb 24

Today I went to the British Museum. I stayed for about 4 hours or so. I saw basically all the rest of the museum. I had already been for a couple hours once before. I saw the Egyptian stuff today. It was pretty interesting. They had lots of mummies and burial stuff. They had several skeletons and one guy who died in the sand and it was so dry that it preserved his body really well. All of his skin and hair were still on. It was weird.

I also saw their middle eastern section, and a big Asian section. It had lots of Buddhist art and sculpture and pottery in it. There was one small section in this corner that was drawings. There was a big one by Michelangelo, a cartoon of Mary and Jesus and probably John and three other guys, but no one knows what the picture is of. There are a couple by Picasso as well and several by Albrecht Durer.

Then I walked down the road to this art auction viewing. Mark had got an invitation and he gave it to me. I decided that I might as well go and see what it was about. There were two locations, so I just went to one of them. CR met me before and we went in together. It was in this area where you don't go to just walk around and window shop, they were all private buildings. There was a small sign that said Phillips, but not saying what it was at all, so you could tell they only wanted people who knew about it to come in. Then there were two rooms that you had to go through with security guards. I thought it would be just a few obscure things, but it turned out to be one of the best things that I've been to here. There were probably 10 decent sized rooms full of stuff that I recognized. They had the info next to it and the estimated prices. They were all around $40,000 to $200,000. There were seven by Warhol. Two were signed prints, one was the soup can, and one of a meat advertisement. One was a sketch of leopard skin gloves that had white out on it from where he messed up. There was also a set of four big prints of skulls of different colors. That one would be pretty cool to have in your house.

There was also weird stuff like a plain red shelf that was going for $40,000, or a silver acrylic painted canvas for $50,000. There were two by Fiona Rae, she has two in the Tate. I like her work a lot. There was also a frozen bouquet of sunflowers. You get the freezer when you buy it. I can remember what it was estimated at though. There were a whole bunch of magazine covers on canvas for sale. And most of the pieces were huge wall pieces. It was all modern art.

By far my favorite work was a set of three by Andres Serrano. The three were the same photograph but he had digitally darkened them - normal, darker and very dark. I am not for or against his message, so it wasn't the subject matter that I was agreeing with, it was the idea and how he made the same photograph change its meaning with the appearance. It was just really interesting. I loved how he did that.

There were a few rich people in there actually looking at the pieces to buy. One guy was looking at that silver canvas. He must be pretty rich to buy something like that. After a while they gave us champaign and raspberries. It was a very nice place.

Feb 26

Today I went to the National Portrait Gallery again. I got a ticket for the Vanity Fair portrait exhibition. It was photos from 1913 to 2008 that had been featured in the magazine. I really liked it. There were a lot by Annie Leibovitz, and two by Robert Mapplethorpe. There were musicians and actors mostly and some politicians. Annie took one of the presidential cabinet that was really excellent. She isn't just good at taking a single portrait, because if you take enough one is bound to be great, but she is amazing at taking group photos. It seems like the more people that are in them the better they are. I just do not know how she can get so many people to look good all at the same time. There were several group photos that she took for different reasons. She also took one of Jack Nicholson that was great. He was in his house coat and tall socks playing golf off the roof of his house.

The one I liked the best though was of Run DMC taken by some 20 year old. They were in a mint green 50s convertible that was floating in the New York City bay during sunset. So you could see the statue of Liberty to one side in the background and skyscrapers and the cost on the other side. The colors were really great together and it was just a really perfect picture.