Old Master And An Old Cynic.......

No I know It's hard to believe but occasionally I have been called a cynic! My latest bad dose has been a trip to Manchester City Art Gallery to see "Ten Drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci From The Royal Collection". This is of course another "bums on Seats" exhibition by our friendly neighborhood art gallery, and so good of her Majesty to send culture to the province's.

I'd not been to this kind of exhibition for a while and I'd forgot what they're like. Crowds of people with hushed reverence slowly (I reckon about 1 min is polite) filing past the small hugely under whelming sketches. So why are they here and why am I doing a good impersonation of a nun on a Vatican mini-break?

Yes of course he is a genius but a small sketch of an ugly bloke is well, just that. I guarantee that up and down the countries art college's there are draughtsmen & women who could knock out a decent doodle of a plug git. So if it's not that what then? Icons, relics curiosities. Now there's nothing wrong with that, I spent my minute in the pictures presence staring at a stain on the paper wondering what Leonardo was up to way back in the mists of time to cause it, but whats the point of clogging up our main ART gallery with what would surly be better off being shown in a museum. You can't even hardly see them because the lighting is so low to preserve them, which I understand but that just makes the whole process even more pointless. If I wanted to study them in detail I would get a closer look from a book. Manchester is shit for venues showing Art so lets not clog up one of our main venues with the Antiques Road Show.

Although on second thoughts if the best they can do is Paul Morrison maybe they should stick with the six hundred year old stuff, sheesh..........