STYLE, CULTURE, TIME & TRADITION

They say that if you do something the same way twice, it's probably a habit. Three times makes it a tradition. Five times then?

Today is my birthday (thank you) and as 'tradition' now dictates, I spend the day ambling around a museum. First it was The Natural History Museum (2011). They had a wildlife photography exhibition on and I just wanted to see it. Then, enamoured with success, the following year, I went to The Science Museum (2012) and loved it just as much as I did when I was a kid. 2013 was an educational trip around The British Museum... which I can't remember much about, other than some massive Babylonian gates... and then in 2014 of course, I ended up (in March though) going to the National Gallery which was great.

Today, I climbed the metal steps that lead from the tunnel. I pushed open the glass doors, left the breezy sounds of a busker and a gaggle of schoolchildren behind me... and stepped into a world of wonder.

The Victoria & Albert Museum makes a stylish impression from the very beginning. Marble pillars hold up colonnades, under an enormous Victorian arched roof. Elegantly sculpted figures glisten like gladiators in the modern lighting and there are glimpses of ancient tapestries, ornate treasures and delicate artworks along the cavernous halls. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I was overawed from the start, and it would be a feeling that lasted the day.

I quickly found the cloakroom, deposited my coat and scarf... and grabbed a map. Museum maps can be quite confusing, I think. I worked out a rough plan of what I wanted to see and set off on my adventure.

I got lost pretty quickly. I found myself in a room that seemed to be dedicated to lots of dead people. There were tombs everywhere - stone and marble effigies of medieval knights, King John and his Plantagenet wife lying side-by-side, clutching swords and rosaries, great men of old, sculpted in white with flowing hair and piety.

Even the Romans loved an ice cream.

I realised a couple of things about statues today. First of all, sculpting must be really difficult - everything has to be physically balanced as well as aesthetically pleasing. It's like composition, not just in two dimensions with light and shade and colours doing all the work... but in every single direction. If the sculptor gets the proportions incorrect, not only will it look wrong - but it might fall over, or bits might start cracking off with the strain.

Maybe that's what happened to the Venus De Milo? Perhaps the sculptor just got the arms wrong and they dropped off?

"Oi come back!
It's only a flesh wound!"

The V&A has a lot of finely crafted statues, sculptures and busts. I stood close to one, whose ghostly face was flecked with frown lines and smallpox scars. His head was so realistic, there in the glory of three dimensions, that it wouldn't have been too surprising if he had turned to me for a conversation. Though I'm not sure I'd have had much to say to a two-hundred year old Italian physician.

There's small stuff too. I saw an exquisite golden saltcellar in the shape of a ship - glistening as though its billowing sails were puffed out by the wind. There are reliquaries, columns, paintings (the Raphael gallery is a must), casts, architraves, fountains, religious artefacts, galleries of art from all over the world and throughout the ages.

The place has style. Even the Twentieth Century gallery reminded me that design never stops. Standing in front of a cabinet containing a David Bowie album, a Dylan poster and the cover of a Sex Pistols record, it occurred to me that we just can't help expressing ourselves. No matter whether we're anti-establishment, pushing the boundaries of acceptability, or we are the establishment itself (in the Nineteenth Century, you could order church furnishings from a catalogue), style and design sort of oozes from our culture.

Jason takes a selfie #goldenfleece

And at the V&A, there's a lot of culture oozing from the ages - the gilded gold music room, the Corinthian capitals and exquisite stonework, the religious art of medieval England, the carvings, the tracery, the architecture, the jewellery, the stained-glass windows, the sumptuous treasures of Japan, Korea, China and India - and a whole lot more. I felt like I really only saw half of it, and I was overwhelmed by that. It was enough to raise questions in my mind. Does style progress as generations disappear, does design evolve from an inner longing for something new and different? Do we have an inert need to reflect our beliefs, to teach, to prophesy and react with our style and our imagery? What will be next? 

At one point, I was standing in front of James II's wedding outfit with another question. Do you think old things looked kind of old and tired when they were new?

See? 37 year-olds rock! 

Hmm. This is going to be complicated to explain. Obviously, new things don't look old, but that isn't quite...  I mean things deteriorate with use, don't they? The more you use them, the grubbier and more faded they become. James II's wedding outfit looked smart, but it wasn't glistening with the life of garments that were worn once and then locked in a cupboard. The tunic was lined with an ornate gold pattern which should have sparkled in the light.

You know, you're right. It's 300 years old - of course it's going to look tired. But then, even stuff from the 1950s (a model ship and a couple of boxes of Bayko) looked similarly colourless. Do we make things shinier and newer these days? Or do things just fade, go rusty, become threadbare and thin... because they're exposed only to time?

I thought about that on the train home. My reflection stared back at me, looking tired and grey as the world flashed past the window. 37. Time really does have a remarkable effect.