With Turner, dying in his Chelsea house, being absorbed in the rush of light
On the occasion of Tate Britain's "Turner Whistler Monet" show, the great, clotted prose master Iain Sinclair goes to the waters: "The Thames is the great London referent: metaphor and fact. Without the khaki, sediment-heavy river, our city would have no soul. Much of the original London, the riverside settlement, has been overbuilt, stacked, crammed, warped, twisted—until light is corkscrewed, bounced off dirty windows: a rare epiphany, a dole of pleasure. The memory is still present, of streets as sewers, floating sluggishly after rain; or, shocked by sunshine, baked into fissured mud. The surface of JMW Turner's massive oils, when you get close to them in their Tate Britain bunker, are a bouillabaisse of steaming reds and yellows, stewed light, linseed and gristle. They duplicate the condition of a dried riverbed: a network of hairline cracks—like a vision, from the edge of the troposphere, of the Thames Estuary fracturing into a mantilla of tributaries... Here begins the work of poets and painters, their argument and co-dependence; treacherous depths, imported narratives, shows of light. Here begins the difficulty with representing a force that resists representation. Here begins the substance out of which London's dreaming is made. The Thames floods, ebbs: a seductive surface, active, dirty, copywritten by Eliot, Pope, Spenser, Conrad, Céline... Art plunder, sanctified by public display, confers virtue on its keepers. A notable show diverts attention from the grubby realpolitik of the river. Tactfully hung apartments are what we require, walls with radiant windows. We file through, nudged by prompt cards, in money-laid-out reverence. While outside, en plein air, the Embankment is deserted. Sharky cruisers, defaced by a rash of expectorated Damien Hirst Smarties, shuttle between the ex-power station (Tate Modern) and the former prison (Tate Britain). The true exhibition, I decided, would involve knocking down that wall, letting the river in. Go with the flow. With Turner, dying in his Chelsea house, being absorbed in the rush of light; calling on his god, the sun."
