Special Delivery

The world’s Press have descended on London again to pitch up on very different turf from the sporting spectacle of twelve months ago. In a corner of West London, St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington has been home to international royal correspondents, news anchors and television crews for weeks, all eagerly awaiting the birth of Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child. Now days after media speculation the due date would be Saturday 13th July, newsrooms have surrendered to the waiting game, covering royal baby stories of both the absurd and sublime variety. 

#RoyalBaby - It's Monday and a sunny start to the week. Still no sign of The Duchess let alone a baby pic.twitter.com/6pruWgkJ9O
— Dickie Arbiter (@RoyalDickie) July 15, 2013

From commemorative coins, chocolates and even cheese to a twenty-first century must-have: an app - affirming baby Cambridge as the most anticipated birth since the beginning of Twitter. The Royal Baby app, which intends to document various ‘firsts’ by the new addition to the House of Windsor in the coming months for dedicated royal followers who simply cannot wait for ‘commemorative’ publications to hit newsstands day-after-week-after-month. I myself could not resist getting involved in The Great Kate Wait and I had CNN’s Royal Correspondent Max Foster question Mario Testino whether he would be shooting the first official photograph of the royal trio, after spotting him at a charity function at Prince Charles's London residence, Clarence House last week - could Testino be keeping silencioso? 

@JMVELARDI he said he hasn't been asked
— Max Foster (@MaxFosterCNN) July 9, 2013

While the media scrum have created somewhat of an art installation in their own right out of stepladders and duct tape in a kaleidoscope of colours on the sidewalk opposite the hospital, within its very walls one will discover that even the art world is included in the royal baby furore. The sterilised operating spaces of a hospital are after all akin to the clean, white walls of a white cube and in the private maternity unit of the Lindo Wing - specialising in labour, delivery and postnatal care and where Princess Diana gave birth to Princes William and Harry in 1982 and 1984 respectively - the worlds of medicine and contemporary art come together in a unique installation created by British artist, Julian Opie.  

During its eighteenth-month renovation St Mary’s Hospital commissioned Opie to create forty panels of his trademark graphic portraits rendered with minimal detail, using thick, black lines for both the interior and exterior of the Lindo Wing, where the Duchess of Cambridge is due to give birth to the third in line to the throne.

The permanent installation includes works of various sizes depicting tall, elegant women and crawling infants on transparent surfaces, light boxes and glass set against a neutral palette that feature along the walls of the wards, delivery rooms and building's façade. 

In an interview with The Telegraph, the artist talks of his intention to “enliven” patients with art that has a function to excite and the works certainly provide a special and alternative visual stimulus that is so very different from generic colour-conscious interior design, common on the bureaucratic agendas of public institutions. Given the Duchess is Patron of the capital's National Portrait Gallery she will appreciate the art around the unit and there is no doubt Opie will be amused that his work will be the first art seen by the future King or Queen of England. It would be wonderful if Their Royal Highnesses commissioned Opie to produce their newborn’s first official portrait in his contemporary style and save face amongst the art world with the rather disappointing choice of painter selected for the Duchess’s first official portrait unveiled earlier this year (A Portrait Of A Duchess, January 2013).

Paul, baby - 2001

My very best wishes to Their Royal Highnesses on their special delivery and as it so has been welcomed into this world, may their child be raised to reign supportive of arts, culture and creativity.

Visit Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust for more information about the renovation to the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital. 

Images courtesy of Julian Opie

Toile De Pomp & Pop Culture

The walls of Kensington Palace may have a wealth of stories to tell of its royal occupants since the seventeenth century; William III, the young Queen Victoria and Princess Margaret, however it is unquestionably recognized for its symbolic role adopted by the public as a place of tribute after the tragic death of Diana, The Princess of Wales in 1997. The sea of flowers and sentiments outside the late Princess’s home are some of the most iconic images of the twentieth century and has since shaped public behaviour towards celebrity and Monarchy alike.

Tomorrow the doors of Kensington Palace will reopen after a year-long twelve million pound restoration project in time for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and Olympic Games, launching with the exhibition, Diana: Glimpses Of A Modern Princess. Installed in Apartment 1A where the late Princess resided, and scheduled to be the future home of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge next year, the exhibition will reflect some of the most important and memorable moments in Diana’s public life and will focus on her iconic fashion and style. If the Grace Kelly: Image Of A Movie Star at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London or The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty is anything to go by, fashion sells both on the streets as well as in the galleries and will undoubtedly be a sell out show for Historical Royal Palaces who run the royal residence in West London.

Dresses aside, the curators of the exhibition were intent to avoid a formal institutional display, perhaps conscious of the creative expectations that such showstoppers now command, and have commissioned contemporary illustrator Julie Verhoeven to produce a modern toile based on moments throughout the Princess’s life, incorporated into a wallpaper repeat pattern in a graphic collage in watercolour.

Diana with newborn Prince William

Drawing from photographs of Diana’s engagement announcement to Prince Charles, subsequent wedding, royal tours around the world and the last portraits to be shot by Mario Testino as well as architectural elements that resemble that of the palace or from Althorp, the resting place of the Princess at her ancestral home, Verhoeven employs her trademark technique to introduce a contemporary atmosphere within a loaded historical setting of both pomp and pop culture. While if a little naïve and childlike given the context of a woman in her prime, the style is resolutely Nineties, similar to the bright kitsch children’s wallpaper that I remember from the decade that was to be Diana’s last.

Diana shot by Mario Testino

Printed by hand in England by interiors firm and royal warrant holders Cole and Son who produce traditional period designs, the wallpaper will be installed throughout the exhibition in the palace’s State Rooms and will reflect the lasting influence in style and history of the Mother of the future King of England: whether this is the grande finale of a commercial chapter past in order to allow for chapters anew to evolve in the highs and lows of the dynasty of the Windsors is still to be seen. For now, memories of the past fuel what is a record period of public popularity and a right royal renaissance in the year where the matriarch of the British Monarchy celebrates sixty years on the throne.

Diana: Glimpses Of A Modern Princess

26th April - 31st August 2012

Kensington Palace

Kensington Gardens

London W8 4PX