The Tate Modern / Describing Litchenstein – London trip march 2013

Lichtenstein a retrospective

This was a very special event for us as this was the first ever thing we have done with Jimmy where we purely interpreted what we saw – there was no tactile aids (apart from our hands), there was nothing in the exhibition that could be touched
but we know jimmy enough to know that he would like it
he would like the colours, and the size and the subject matter

There was a high risk of us getting in there and he would get the hump
but he continuosly asked questions about the exhibit
and was genuinely interested.

Once upon a time this would never of happened
but he knows us now know enough to trust our judgement

Jimmy loves colour
and he loves fun, different,quirky things

This did feel strange, just signing to him, without putting his hands
on various objects etc to help explain

In theory we could have even missed this out, but
the positioning of our hands helped him to build up the composition
in his mind

The colours amused him as most things are black or white with Jimmy (metaphorically speaking)
so to have an object that it the wrong colour is silly and in jimmys eyes completely hillarious
ie – the blue face below

Recently Jimmy has started to draw

which is great

and the first picture we saw was of a house with windows and a tree and a sun

Jimmy liked this a lot

he said it was beautiful

for him the colours were correct

i tried to explain Litchensteins use of dots

but without props this was hard to get across

but i dare say it is something that will be reverted back to in the future

– maybe making pictures on like a peg board

This worked on 2 levels

1 – she was nude!

2 – she was blue

Jimmy laughed at this because of the boobs being in odd positions

and he also said the face was like an owl

This was interesting as the ladys were half white and half pink

the whole shade thing dosent seem to work with jimmy

This was a favourite!

i think it was the shape
and the subject matter that he liked – if this was 3 dimensional he would have loved it

Lichtenstein. A Retrospective.
Tate Modern, London

The first peice that we touched was
David Smith (1906–1965)
the home of a welder
in bronze

The gloves took some explaining but we got there

This was amazing for jimmy to feel
it was like a treasure hunt
moving from 1 thing to another
and like most art
it is up to the individual to make of it what they will
so although some items we definite
others were quite ellusive, so jimmy would tell us what he thought they may be

after all this was based on dreams

To my amusement, the second piece that we got to feel was
Henri Laurens (1885–1954) –
L’Automne in Bronze

For those of you that know Jimmy they could not have picked a better sculpture!
Jimmy has a grand love for curvy women so this made his day
he loved the different shapes, and despite it being stylised each part was still very reckonisable to him