Culture

Alasdair Palmer talks to the French artist who has discovered the secret of the Master’s technique How did he do it? Among the many great unanswered questions about Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’, that has long been one of the most puzzling. Part of the perennial appeal of the ‘Mona Lisa’, and one reason why, today, there is a perpetual crowd in front of it in the gallery in the Louvre where it sits, protected by thick glass, is that it does not seem possible that the ‘Mona Lisa’ was executed by a human hand.

The best-known exchange between artist and royalty must be George VI’s celebrated remark to John Piper, who had been painting the castle and surrounding parkland at Windsor: ‘You seem to have had very bad luck with your weather.’ It was the early 1940s, and Piper had invested his watercolours with a brooding quality he no doubt thought appropriate to the mood of the times, and which also echoed his own essentially Romantic vision. The project was a commission from Queen Elizabeth, and extended to 26 views, a rare feat of modern topography that also turned out to be good art. But even the Queen thought Piper’s lowering skies a little overbearing, and reportedly suggested he might ‘try a spring day’.

That eminent Victorian George Frederick Watts — Strachey thought of including him in his seminal study but was sadly deflected — is at last undergoing something of a revival. In his lifetime one of the most famous of contemporary painters (though his works never sold for quite the vast sums realised by Millais or Burne-Jones), Watts has been neglected. His ambition was to be a history painter, and he spent much of his long life and considerable energies on allegorical pictures, which today find little favour. His portraits, which he often used as a means of subsidising his less popular High Art compositions, are recognised as supreme examples of the art, and were given a comprehensive showing at the National Portrait Gallery in 2004.

If you haven’t been abroad so far this summer, go and see Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver — it will have almost as invigorating an effect as a weekend in Spain. To see it is to be immersed in a strange and likeable culture, populated by agreeably batty characters whose tale is completely absorbing. So absorbing, in fact, that when I emerged from the screening I was surprised to find myself fogged in by the dull mash of London greys, and not among a blaze of Spanish colour. When I opened my mouth to speak I was amazed that a torrent of Spanish didn’t issue forth. I was puzzled (and, yes, it must be said, a little disappointed) to glance at my reflection in a shop window and find that I didn’t resemble Penélope Cruz.

Forgery in painting has enjoyed a long history of scandal and from time to time spills more ink than paint, in part because we all enjoy reading about an art expert or moneyed person getting taken in by a fake. Our pleasure derives from that cocky-smug common-sense feeling that no painting is worth the prices currently being fetched in the marketplace — Picasso’s ‘Boy with a Pipe’ sold for $104 million (£56.3 million) in 2004, and more recently Klimt’s ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1’ was snapped up for a reputed record $137 million — especially when the naked eye can’t tell the difference between the original and a well-executed copy. Forgery in the visual arts raises several interesting questions.

The Grade I listed Queen Anne townhouse in North Pallant in the city of Chichester, for the past 20 years the home of Walter Hussey’s collection of modern British art, has been closed while undergoing a major extension project. I have been following the fortunes of Pallant House since the late-1970s, when I lived locally. Once it opened in 1982, I visited regularly and watched the development of the collection with interest, particularly the addition of the Charles Kearley Bequest in 1989. At that point, the collection was a little gem of 20th-century art — mostly British, with some European additions. Now it has received a further boost. The house has reopened to universal acclaim with an £8.

, Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) was born in Pochlarn, Bohemia, studied in Vienna, enlisted in a smart cavalry regiment at the outbreak of the first world war, got shot in the head and bayoneted, went back into action after a spell in hospital in 1916 and suffered shellshock. He had a stormy affair with Mahler’s widow Alma, a very trying woman whose other husbands or lovers included Schoenberg, Franz Werfel and the conductor Willem Mengelberg. The Mahler affair ended badly, so Kokoschka had a life-size doll with her features built for him which was part model and, for some years, constant companion. But there also emerged from their relationship one of the greatest of Expressionist portraits and a masterpiece which still mesmerises visitors to the Basel Kunstmuseum.

Satire is one of the great British traditions, closely associated with the notions of personal liberty, readiness to express opinion and our much-vaunted freedom of thought. The English appetite for satire has long set standards of democratic licence unequalled in the rest of the world: the lampoon is sacrosanct in our culture, a guarantee of a healthily sceptical attitude to authority and self-importance. It is a great safety valve, as well. Perhaps because the British have been so effusive and inventive as satirists, as a nation we have felt less need to rebel in more active ways. Instead of dragging politicians from their seats of power and stringing them up, we have been content to satirise the swine. Well, it’s this attitude that has made us what we are today.