WAR AND POETRY AT WHITECHAPEL GALLERY

When the Whitechapel Gallery first opened in 1901, in an area of London famous for its immigrant community (Bangladeshi now, Jewish then), Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery and one-time British prime minister, observed: “It must be admitted the building is not of a very imposing or artistic appearance.”

Nestled against Aldgate East tube station, it's certainly easy to overlook the Whitechapel. Whitechapel High Street, though part of London’s fast-gentrifying East End, is still dominated by fast-food outlets, bookies and vendors of pirated DVDs, and the East London Mosque, opposite the gallery, casts a long shadow. For the last two years the Whitechapel was cocooned in scaffolding during a £13m refurbishment. But now the gallery is once again open for business.

Yet its significance belies its discrete appearance. Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, David Hockney, Cy Twombly and Lucien Freud have all shown their work here, sometimes in a British premiere. Picasso’s "Guernica" made its only British stop here on its world tour in 1939 to raise awareness of the Spanish civil war. More than 15,000 people flocked to the show, raising considerable funds for an East London food ship to Spain, according to a 1939 article in the News Chronicle.

"Guernica" makes a re-appearance in the gallery’s opening show, though not in its original form. A sepia-toned tapestry of the black-and-white painting hangs in front of a blue curtain and before a large round glass-topped table, evoking the tapestry’s usual home in the United Nations in New York. The curtain is a reference to the one used in 2003 to conceal the anti-war tapestry during Colin Powell’s presentation of the case for war in Iraq. Goshka Macuga, the London-based Polish artist who designed the installation, has included a cubist portrait of Powell, a carpet that features a map of Iraq, pictures of various weapons and the words “Welcome United Nations”.

Over 100 years ago, when east London was filled with Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms in eastern Europe, a group of artists and poets emerged from this diaspora and made the Whitechapel gallery their home. The poetry of these so-called “Whitechapel Boys” was recited at the gallery's glittery opening night. In a bright and airy new education space, with views out on to the grey and grimy rooftops of the neighbourhood, we listened to the timeless musings of these new Londoners. The evening finished with a poem, first read in English, then sung in Yiddish, about an afternoon in Victoria Park, with mothers walking, children playing, couples canoodling. At the songstress’ behest, we all joined in with her lusty refrain, singing “Victoria Park, Victoria Park”.

~ JOSIE DELAP