Love and stuff

I went to the National Gallery and wandered nonchalantly past paintings by Caravaggio, Velasquez and Canaletto whilst dazed tourists meandered around, too stunned to look at the pictures. No doubt they were simply trying to figure out how the hell they had managed to walk into one of the finest art collections on Earth without (a) queuing, (b) military security checks and (c) paying. I looked around the exhibition entitled Love which was lovely. Vermeer, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Claude and Turner rubbing shoulders with Hockney, Spencer, Emin and Perry - just the way they should. Another exhibition, Radical Light: The Italian Divisionist Painters was also superb, with paintings made up of painstakingly-applied brushstrokes of colour in tiny dots and dashes giving the surface of the pictures a woven effect. The application of scientific colour principles to the artists' palettes resulted in paintings which appeared to be magically lit from behind. At the National Portrait Gallery I learned that I thought I knew more than I did in fact know about the life and times and paintings of Wyndham Lewis. Brew Wharf then beckoned.

I took this photo in Trafalgar Square. By inverting the colours the figures have taken on a phosphoric glow against the grey, stone background. Well, I like it.