Mornington Crescent, a bright and breezy Tuesday morning in the last week of March.
What brings me here today is curiosity to see the north London locales painted by Frank Auerbach and displayed at his recent Tate Britain retrospective.
One work in particular resonated with me when I saw it at the Tate exhibition, the strikingly coloured ‘Mornington Crescent – Early Morning’ (1991).
So I hopped on the Northern Line underground train and exited at Mornington Crescent station.
Straightaway there is the breathtaking sight of the old Carreras building, a magnificent and huge art deco edifice whose entrance is guarded by a pair of giant black cats on plinths.
It’s a truly amazing building, lovingly restored in the 1990s to its 1920s Egyptian Revival splendour.
Apparently when the building was opened in 1928 the company that owned it celebrated by importing vast amounts of sand to recreate an Egyptian desert feel in front of the building. There was also a chariot race along the Hampstead Road, which must have been a sight to behold.
After admiring the Carreras building I came to the elongated trough, now home to a well tended flowerbed, at one end of Mornington Crescent. ‘METROPOLITAN DRINKING FOUNTAIN & CATTLE TROUGH ASSOCIATION’ is inscribed along the side of the trough.
I was glad to find that I could sense a connection between Auerbach’s painting of Mornington Crescent and the place itself.
Of course Auerbach’s palette in that painting is more exuberant than the relatively muted tones of the locale, but the spirit of the place is as vibrant and characterful as Auerbach depicted it.
On the other hand, there were a couple of other works on display at the Tate retrospective which showed scenes from this part of Camden but for which I struggled to see or feel a connection between the pictures and the places.
One was ‘Albert Street III’ (2010). Albert Street is a beautiful, quiet, elegant street and I like the ‘Albert Street III’ (2010) painting, but I couldn’t discern any connection between the picture and the street.
The other one was ‘Hampstead Road, High Summer’ (2010). I really like this semi-abstract picture’s warmth and vibrancy, but it seems at odds with the unappealing and drab busy road that Hampstead Road is.
I kept on walking towards Primrose Hill to complete this foray into Auerbach territory.
Several of Auerbach’s pictures are of Primrose Hill. I particularly like ‘Winter Evening, Primrose Hill Study’ (1974-5).
By the time I got to Primrose Hill the weather had turned chillier and clouds had temporarily obscured the sun.
The edges of Primrose Hill were muddy and waterlogged from the previous day’s rain.
These circumstances conspired to bring the feel of Primrose Hill pretty close to the mood evoked by the dark greens and reds of Auerbach’s picture.
Further along Regent’s Park Road I came across Bottle Apostle, a shop with a dazzling array of craft beers, many of them from London breweries I had never come across before.
This is great, I thought, and was about to enter the shop and buy some of these treasures before I noticed that the shop was closed. The bottles in the shop window taunted me with their inaccessibility.
I would have been happy to spend longer wandering around the Primrose Hill area.
But today’s film was on at 1pm so I headed back to Mornington Crescent station and took the underground to Charing Cross.
From there I walked to Curzon Victoria cinema on Victoria Street.
It’s a good cosy cinema. Screen 5 where my film was showing is small and compact but with loads of leg room and very comfy seats.
I was here to see the British film High-Rise, directed by Ben Wheatley and starring Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons and Luke Evans.
I’d seen the trailer for ‘High-Rise’ a couple of weeks before and thought that this film could either be very good or just a couple of hours of claptrap.
It turned out to be brilliant – funny, grotesque, energised with a sense of social critique, and superbly acted by a cast that really throw themselves into the film’s surreal vision of dysfunctional communal living.
Tom Hiddleston glides through the film in some style as Robert Laing, a doctor who confronts the apartment block’s depraved goings-on with a blend of wry detachment and enthusiastic participation.
Sienna Miller is also terrific as Charlotte Melville, revelling – at least for a while – in the hedonism of life in the strange unsettling universe of the apartment block.
The soundtrack for ‘High-Rise’ plays a huge role in setting and sustaining the mood of this jarring film. Dreamy music envelops the viewer in a cocoon of subdued weirdness.
The only flaw with this otherwise brilliant film is that the final third putters out somewhat. The energy level drops and a slow meander ensues.
But it’s still good stuff, and ‘High-Rise’ is well worth a look if you want something edgy and out of the mainstream.
Related Post: ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’, BFI Southbank, London