Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

But is it Art? 

We're so far behind that this is somewhat out of date, but we wanted to fill the gap.

Our afore mentioned visitor was an old (re-discovered) university friend of Alice's, who brought us these super goodies, including some lovely blooming iris. We got through the chocolates pretty fast, but the whiskey lasted just a bit longer.

We met her at the station, and went for a refreshing cup of tea in the Fruitmarket Gallery Cafe, round the corner.

We had a quick look at this exhibition. Louise Bourgeois is (or was, she died in 2010) a prolific, unusual and apparently very influential artist.

We saw some gigantic works on paper, made towards the end of her life: a mixture of writing, drawing and printmaking. The leaflet called them "both haunted and haunting". They were full of bizarre biological images, and statements like I distance my self from myself.

Personally I found them lurid and nightmarish, and not a lot of fun at all. Alice didn't say much, but did mutter she preferred Tracey Emin for that sort of personal stuff - at least she has a sense of humour.

Oh well, it certainly takes all sorts, especially in Art.  Of which there was more the next day.

We took a walk along part of the Water of Leith.

[Click on the images to see larger.]

Pretty berries aren't they?

Then we climbed the back steps up to Gallery of Modern Art. And there were snowdrops out here too! I do love being in Nature.

In the garden was our old friend Henry Moore's Reclining Figure,Two Piece. 

It used to live in the Botanic Gardens, and Alice is often reminiscing how her sons used to climb around it and in it when they were small.

We went to see, wait for it - yes, more of Louise Bourgeois.



But as you can tell from the poster, this was very different indeed. There were lots of intriguing objects made from varying materials. I particulary liked her Couple 1 featured here, despite them having no heads. But I wasn't allowed to climb and swing on it. Boo, hoo.

Check out the Gallery's website on the exhibition, and look at the links to the video and so on.

After a delicious salad in the cafe, we managed to get seats on the little Gallery bus into town, and were treated to an unofficial, but most entertaining guide by the driver.

Alice's friend wanted us to go up Arthur's Seat, but  it was too far for the time of day (not to mention our legs) and is actually a much higher peak than it looks.

We made do with Calton Hill instead.

There are great views of the city, as well as over the Forth on the other side.

Up there a surprise awaited us.

Collective, a contemporary art organisation, is due to open in the old City Observatory on the hill later this year, but meanwhile is putting on events in a portacabin.

The three of us got to be the total audience for a strange theatre piece called Anti-VWAP. There was a pallet of bottles of water, with an actor doing physical exercises, inviting us to join in, and talking about some strange financial scheme I didn't understand at all.

If you want to be further puzzled, there's a review in this is tomorrow.

Sometime after our visitor departed, Alice and I went back to the Fruitmarket Gallery to examine Louise Borgeois' 220 Insomnia Drawings, created during an eight month period of insomnia over the winter of 1994-95, when she was struggling with deep anxieties.

Well, need I say any more? She certainly has our sympathy, but some things are not meant for public display.

The book I'm sitting on, however, had a good image of one of her many giant spider sculptures, an example of  which I really loved in the other exhibition - you could walk right under it. She identified the positive aspects of spiders with her mother, a weaver.

I will embarrass Alice by insisting that we note she had her birthday during our break from blogging.

She didn't really celebrate, as she was rather "in the doldrums" at the time. You look it up, this once.

I won't go so far as to mention the exact date, or her venerable age, but I will reveal that she is an Aquarian and seems to fit the bill.