Monday 25th February 2013

Val was swaying for the Manet Exhibition at the Royal Academy and braying. Many from the Home Counties were first of all stunned, then disintegrated. As so often when Poor Little Rich Gays abound, little heaps of grey ash where once there had been a person needed to be swept up by staff.

‘Oh the Paris Salon!,’ Val bellowed. Apart from anything else the fumes from his various little helpers were enough to scorch a wheat field. ‘Picasso under the dryer. Degas having a marcel wave.’

Not quite right, but never mind. ‘Scarcely more than a caricature,’ Val lurched and boomed into the hush before the Portrait of the Tragedian. I found later that Brian Sewell, the art critic, thought the same. Inconsistent. Something wrong with the perspective in the reduced version of Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, too many trifles in the exhibition. To me it was all charming enough and a vast improvement on Van Gogh. I loved The Luncheon, sent over from Munich. Here a young man, possibly Manet’s son, is standing, not lunching, possibly about to leave. The background figures provide no narrative or explanation. Genevieve Suzy, in her review, admired the portraits made out of nothing but black and patches of light. Even Val liked the portrait of Desboutin, with dog.

The main interest for Poor Little Rich Gays is that Manet was frightfully rich – not from Art but self-monied. Was he too rich to finish? Many of his art works were not finished apparently. Was he too rich to bother? Perspective was left to take care of itself and he didn’t wait for the paint to dry before applying the next layer. This could have been a fabulous genius innovation or idle rich slapdash. Was he freed or crippled by money?

Val Said This Portrait is of Herbert Morrison; in Fact it is Berthe Morisot