Manchester, Art & Architecture

Christine's school friend Betty and her husband John visited for a couple of days this week. We went to Manchester on the Leyland 'Pacer' above. This is a kind of bus on the sacred L&Y permanent way. The unit has a wheel at each corner - no bogie trucks, just a wheel at each corner! It ran well, surprisingly so we spoke to the conductor who discribed it as a 'piece of shit from a preservation railway'! The real train set had failed so this was brought out of storage and, er, started first time.
After the pre-Raphael delights of Manchester Art Gallery we went to the Lowry Centre.
It's rather modern.

I used to almost idolise Lowry as a young teenager. Now I just think he couldn't actually paint: was a poor draughtsman and no colourist. But he did have one big idea:that our conurbation was a dreary, depressing place filled with nameless, ugly, charmless zomboid people. The local public and some in the art world seemed to fall for this particular half-truth. Maybe he was just a very sad geezer. His alleged mentor, Valette, seems to me from studying his work at the Manchester gallery to catch much better the mood of the city scape, something like below.

Also, there was a fabulous exhibition of Goya etchings on show. He was another of my boyhood heros - and still is.
Because the Lowery is a modern gallery it is interactive and inclusive there is paper and there are pencils for the public to draw their comment. I like the one above; captures the weird tedium of the place.