Egon Shiele: Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up

One of the multiple benefits of living in our house Clapham for some while ( 3 years) is that we have discovered an artist: Egon Schiele. The portrait of Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up (1917) that apparently is exhibited in the Narodni Galerie ( Prague) was hanging in front of us when sleeping for a roghly 800 nights. Joan says that he likes the portrait because recalls Marta ( may be after getting up and going to the gym)- other might well think different. But see, the life of this Austrian artist is worth it.

The life story if Egon Shiele is an interersting one . Bron nearby Vienna in 1890, his father died before a deteriorating mental condition aged fifty-four. He met a large array of Austrian artists such as Klimt and von Guetersloh and as a result of the latter got into erotic sort of painting. In 1911 Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Wally Neuzil, who was to live with him for a while and serve as the model for some of his best paintings. They had problems in setteling down and were contronted quite often with the disapproval of the inhabitants govern the sort of erotic nature of his drawings. In 1912 Schiele was imprisoned, to await trial for seducing a young girl below the age of consent. When the case came before a judge the charges of abduction and seduction were dropped, but the artist was found guilty of exhibiting an erotic drawing in a place accessible to children. The year 1915 marked a turning-point in Schiele's life. Some time in the previous year he had met two middleclass girls who lived opposite his studio. Edith and Adéle harms were the daughters of a master locksmith. Schiele was attracted to both of them, but eventually fixed his sights on Edith; by April 1915 he was engaged to her. Schiele and Edith were married, despite her family's opposition, in June 1915. Four days after his marriage Schiele was called up for war. Schiele's army service did not halt the growth of his reputation - he was now thought of as the leading Austrian artist of the younger generation, and was asked to take part in a government-sponsored exhibition in Stockholm and Copenhagen intended to improve Austria's image with the neutral Scandinavian powers. In 1918 he was invited to be a major participant in the Sezession's 49th exhibition. For this he produced a poster design strongly reminiscent of the Last Supper, with his own portrait in the place of Christ. Despite the war, the show was a triumph. Prices for Schiele's drawing trebled, and he was offered many portrait commissions. He and Edith moved to a new and grander house and studio. Their pleasure in it was brief. On 19 October 1918 Edith, who was pregnant, fell ill with Spanish influenza, then sweeping Europe. On 28 October she died. Schiele, who seems never to have written her a real love-letter, and who in the midst of her illness wrote his mother a very cool letter to say that she would probably not survive, was devastated by the loss. Almost immediately he came down with the same sickness, and died on 31 October, three days after his wife."

Kentishers at last

We are “kentishers”, at least for a year! This is how we now regard ourselves from last Saturday, at 2pm. New home, new identity. Kentish Town looks like a lively area, full of stuff to shop around, to visit & to get to know. Previous place was good, but may be far away from downtown, this seems the loophole of Clapham, trendy & quiet, but may be too much! Now we seem to find in Clapham the problems we didn’t care of before. Provisional conclusion is: south London is great for middle aged couples with kids, not yet our cup of tea.

While strolling down Kentish main street, we seem to have discovered the for the moment “best pub” off Camden Street (“the abbey”). After the pub, next is figuring out where is Marta’s gym (still undecided) and Joan’s preferred supermarket to fatten as much as possible. The flat looks gorgeous, small but cosy, not as fashion like as we might wish for, but it will become for sure the best place we have ever been in London. The main strength is our garden, perfect for barbecues, sunbathing and may be dinning outdoors in summer time. But don´t get us wrong, not that we plan to get into the world of gardening -may be Marta she reckons. Gardens bring peace, space to relax and may be to become "urbanisation aware". See, a couple of fatty squirrels pop into the garden every other day, wandering for a while to find out whether we were keen enough to hand them etable stuff ( we were not!). Meanwhile, some shameful looking cats from other neighbouring properties elegantly pass by as if the garden fence had never been build up and finally blackbirds constantly are in and out, playing "hide-and-seek" as if it would not be cold outside.

The inside of the house is not so good yet though fine. We seem to have already decided the colour we will paint the flat, sort of "grey white" that Marta finds “very modern”. Next question was though : who paints the flat? Marta looked for some people to come and help us painting, but it happened to be a”polish band” that asked for 540 quid to paint two rooms (may be they saw the merc that Hussein drives and though it was ours) , so we asked to a friend of a friend to come, an Argentinean who got the flu precisely the day he was supposed to come in. He seems nice guy according to the references but we already see ourselves painting the flat after Christmas, I know : lets give him a chance.

Besides painting, we have got ourselves ino the business of furnishing the flat last weekend as well. Indeed, all happened when we suddenly decided that moving flats was not torturing enough in itself, so that we should go to IKEA on a Sunday afternoon ( despite the day before we just moved in). Initially we thought we had an acceptabe time to go, may be slightly tight but still (we were still at home at 3pm). Now, it was in fact much worse than expected, instead of shutting at 6 (as we expected), they seem close at 5 on sundays, and rather than being an accesible place to get to, it took us about 20-30 minutes walk to get there. At the end, after running for a while and becoming kind of "anxious" (we really feared the idea of ouselves getting back home with nothing done) we got there. Accidentally, we managed to get in at 4.45 and Joan speeded up to buy all what looked attractive to him while Marta was more focused on the urgent needs. Besides Marta was busy removing from the trolley all what we didn’t need but that Joan emotionally managed to pick up, which happen to be lots at the end. Finally we succeed in buying some right stuff, not all we need though, so we have to go back or go somewhere else but it was good. We made our way back by hiring a cab. IKEA provides cabs to drive you home with the stuff bought; problem was that we were assigned a car who had already an assignment, so there wasn’t enough space inside and we were literally squeezed in somehow. An inexperienced driver managed to find the house thanks to a router and we got home safe. Hopefully from now on, the flat will not be anymore the object to our writings , let's keep hoping.

Christmas Party " LSE group" by Joan

Yesterday, Tuesday December 6th, was the LSE Health and Social Care Christmas Dinner. Unlike previous years, this time the party was in a restuarant in south London, "bankside restaurant". The usuals were there: Ali McGuire , Maria Raikou, Elias Mossialos , Mrigesh Bathia and two visitors (Julio Lopez who came visiting from the Canary Islands see the attached photograph and a guy from an African country that I can't remebers right now, just like Cervantes) . We were a sizeable number of pople in four tables and next table was Julian Le Grand ( back from No 10) with all the female visitors and PhD students.

A dinner like this can be interesting, in fact got to know that for instance Bathia is from a place near Goa called "Damao" ( west coast between Bombay and Surat) and that he even speaks some portugeese. People kept discussing about economics and bitching for a while. Julio did'nt stop asking for " a polish for deseart" every time the polish waiter would pop in and I don't really have much to tell as had to leave early (9.30) to meet some friends that had arrived from Valencia (Ricard Meneu and his wife) and Marta. Apparently, people in the office have just told me that the party lasted up until 4 am and I was not there,....mmmhhh,.... good for them,..at least I can say that last year had enough of this, that I did not had to had aspirin this time, that we are not 18 anymore even if we act like if we would,...all bad excuses,...next year will go partying.

Electricians are great, but just some,…

During a week or so, the fusses at home have been running dodgy, nothing we could do. The alarm went off, the washing machine as well, then it was the turn of the boiler and therefore the heat. As is common practice we called the electricians. Two electricians came, one was no more than 20 and used some crap arguments about moisture,..... too bad! The other one was a Greek immigrant that literally bullsheeted for ten minutes, said the whole system wasn’t save and ended up managing to leave the hoouse without doing any work and asking an awful lot of money,..was sent to hell!. Joan could have stayed for a while just like that (at the end of the day we are moving in two weeks time -he said), but Marta could not ressist and after complaining to the landlord ( who still is in south Africa) we decided to call urgent electricians for next day at 10 am to come over and not to leave until the problem would be sorted. On Tuesday morning, a guy form South Africa that works in a company we found after a random search in the google came over. He definitely did his best in sorting out the problem, was nice guy and realised how bad teh situation was. He managed, thanks to God we are not going to get up freezing every morning, Marta will not complain for not sleeping next to each other and we ended up with two main thoughts. One is that life before electricity was really hard, especially in winter. Second, electricians are great, but just some, those that came on the first place did not felt like doing proper work.