"Who are you?"

Grayson Perry's recent TV mini-series "Who are you?" made essential viewing for both of us, so we were happy to be able to catch the art works he made during the filming, on show at the National Portrait Gallery. The Memory Jar attracted much the biggest crowd, unsurprising given today's general concern about Alzheimer's. Christopher, the victim portrayed so poignantly by Perry, both on the small screen and through this pot, had been my contemporary at school, which brought it all home.

Earlier we had spent a couple of unforgettable hours in the company of late Rembrandt next door at the National Gallery.

Portraiture

Our local art gallery is hosting the National Portrait Gallery's photography show entries at present. I went along this morning, and marveled at many of the entries, which make my portraits look feeble in the extreme.

The exhibits are on two floors: when you reach the top one, you find a list of the prizewinners; but why can't the portraits awarded prizes be identified, so you can see which they are when you look round?

Somehow, we managed to miss the Open West show this year, but the above photograph shows part of one of the entries, still left in situ outside the rear of 51 Clarence Street: an untitled viscose yarn installation by Londoner Stella Whalley.

Ravenna

The Severn Forum runs a programme of lectures on theological subjects, so tonight's "The mosaics of Ravenna" may have seemed a bit of a let off. It turned out to be nothing of the sort. Christopher Herbert, now the retired Bishop of St Albans, had the good fortune to visit Ravenna when his diocese was twinned with dioceses local to that city. Making full use of his red carpet reception, he has now put together a splendid talk, explaining what caused Ravenna to become the focus of so many "glittering prizes", and how they illustrate the development of doctrine in the early church.

So, through a sequence of excellent slides, we came to consider the absence of representations of Christ crucified; to observe that Jesus - shown naked in the Jordan in the late 5th Century - was not baptized by total immersion; and why the Good Shepherd was portrayed wearing a toga.

My photograph shows Dr. Herbert in front of a photograph of the figure of Archbishop Maximiamus - "drawn" in mosaic more than 1,500 years ago, he could be at home amongst our National Portrait Gallery's Contemporary Displays.

And the lecturer is clearly himself at home in the world of art - not just church/biblical - history: parallels with David Hockney's swimming pool pictures and an Anish Kapoor sculpture round out his talk, though he wears his learning lightly.

Great stuff, and deserving of a larger audience than the 50 or so who turned out. Surely it wasn't the football? I didn't even notice that it was being sacrificed: anyway, the talk ended early enough to let me watch the final 20 minutes - a satisfactory result!

On Sunday evening, we were in the (virtual) presence of another master of his art, Woody Allen - his Blue Jasmine, brilliantly over ripe, and redolent of the world of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

London

Though I set out (and returned home) in the dark, it was in fact sunny and bright in London today. So on arriving at Paddington I Borised to Marble Arch tube; and then from Holborn tube to my meeting. Later, I again had no problem finding either a bike or a docking station as - following lunch with Edmund at Mon Plaisir - I whizzed round Central London to catch up on photography at the National Portrait Gallery and the Photographers' Gallery, dropping in also to the National Gallery and RA (Burlington Gardens). All very refreshing for the tired Gloucestershire palate.

Photography

This morning, I visited the newly-reopened Photographers' Gallery, and very welcoming I found it. The makeover provides a much airier setting for the displays, in what is a fairly cramped setting for an important gallery.

I much enjoyed the exhibition of contemporary Japanese photobooks - lots of good ideas there. And even more so, the work of the candidates for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, the winner to be announced in a month's time. I favour Pieter Hugo for this: his bleak reportage of life on the industrial wasteland outside Accra succeeds for me on every level.

From Ramillies Street I biked towards the National Portrait Gallery, but might as well have walked: it took me half an hour to find a vacant slot into which I could return the bike - I suppose people use them to commute to work.

Walking eventually down past the Garrick Theatre, my eyes were drawn to a pair of walking advertisements for "Chicago": red-stockinged legs, double yellows and chewing gum residue notating a form of pavement plainsong - or perhaps I spent too long looking at those Japanese photobooks.

To correct the balance, I ended up my time in London visiting Somerset House - not for the drawings on show at Courtauld Gallery as intended, but the Salgado exhibition at King's College, on the East side. I have long been a fan of the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. The extensive Arden Collection, on display in the Inigo Rooms, displays much of Salgado's earlier work, including the gut-wrenching Brazilian mining series.

"...Only a future to hope for"

Crossing Trafalgar Square yesterday afternoon, en route for the Lucien Freuds at the National Portrait Gallery, we admired the latest 4th Plinth offering, recently put in place.

The guff says that a child has been elevated to the status of a historical hero, though there is not yet a history to commemorate – only a future to hope for. Instead of acknowledging the heroism of the powerful, “Powerless Structures, Fig. 101” (for that is its catchy title) - in the words of its creators, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset - “celebrates the heroism of growing up."

Whatever.

Can and contents

Some of what we experienced in London last weekend made me wonder about contemporary culture. Would we really throng to the vast and sumptuous Saatchi Gallery, for instance, to see those enormous American abstract works of art (they seemed utterly baffling and indeed hideous to me), were it not free to enter and a mere stone's throw from Sloane Square station?

Ditto, the Telling Tales show at the V. & A. This again has a sumptuous setting (as the V. & A. is looking splendid these days). The pieces of furniture etc. on display are - we are told - known as Design Art: "they retain their role as functional objects, even if their usability is often subordinated to their symbolic or decorative value," in the words of the handout. So, we see two large blobs of red urethane on the floor with the title "The Lovers' rug," the urethane representing the average quantity of blood in two people. Cosy?

I was pleased to be able to get to the Serpentine Gallery for the first time: what a great space, and how lovely to be able to look out from it over Kensington Gardens! I admired too this Summer's temporary pavilion outside, by Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. But the exhibition? Jeff Koons has been working on a Popeye series over the past seven years: we are therefore treated to an array of huge, lurid cartoons, and brightly-coloured sculpture - something for instance looking like a rubber ring, crushed between a pile of plastic chairs, but which is in fact made of aluminium. Entertaining, and skillful work, but life-enhancing?

Certainly not in the way the BP Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was. As usual, it was fun to criticise the judges' choice of prizewinners, but here there was plenty to admire and be grateful for. Interestingly, very few were self-portraits this year.

In the evening, we went again to the Tête à Tête Opera Festival at the Riverside. Here, the surroundings are none too luxurious for contemporary opera; but was this opera? I enjoyed it last year, for its novelty and nerve; but this year it was just tiresome. Four pieces over the two nights, and none worth repeating, was my view. Even a rather charming piece by Glyndebourne Youth Opera, "Who am I?"