25 Masque

In the spring of 2020 an avalanche of very funny videos came our way, as an outpouring of collective and febrile gifts to each other in uncertain times. Some we got many times. I have my favourites. 

Slouching vicariously on Zoom and Teams our meetings were humanised with these… and Snapchat filters… pig noses, bunny ears, weird glitterati eyebrows and unicorns softened embarrassment at our arrival in a future sooner than we thought was possible. That is if we were brave enough to switch our cameras on. It seems to have calmed down a bit now. 

 

I’ve gathered together a few more powerful and visceral masks I have visited over the years here

Apart from Center Pompidou (best museum in the world) there are a few amazing ethnographic spaces in Paris, the small almost invisible https://www.chassenature.org/en, and a large almost equally invisible https://www.quaibranly.fr/en/ hard to find because of the glare from its neighbour, La Tour Eiffel.

Our faces are masks in any case. They are eagerly altered and to great effect, look at how many beauticians and hairdressers we have lining the high street. Skin itself has its own idea too, giving us away with blush, twitch and pallor. And don’t get me started on selfies https://bit.ly/36pc4r2

 

https://www.gq.com/story/blue-steel-zoolander-selfie-culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_Without_a_Face

of course, not forgetting the old pareidolia

https://porty.net/st-kilda/levenish.html

26 Industrial

In 1985 I was an ‘Artist in Industry’ in a chocolate factory, Rowntree Mackintosh in Halifax, where Quality Street were made. Very Willy Wonka. The women on the conveyor belts were allowed to eat anything from them. I never saw it happen. The factory floor had a large in-house (and free) dental surgery.

I think the residency may have been a last hurrah of an idea that APG from the 1960s had, and Yorkshire Arts Council were running. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/artist-placement-group

Ted Hughes writes in Remains of Elmet about Halifax… For centuries it was considered a more or less uninhabitable wilderness… then in the early 1800s it became the cradle for the Industrial Revolution… Throughout my lifetime, since 1930, I have watched the mills and their attendant chapels die.

Lots of industrial art there then. LS Lowry of course

then there is a Snicket in Halifax

I think I’ve found where Bill’s photo was taken… https://goo.gl/maps/2PfbszNe3pvzQdpX8

And probably so has someone else

But if it’s cobbles you want… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mq59ykPnAE

I also have a vivid memory of a gig there by Nico, not in Reims Cathedral, but San Miguel's in Broad Street, supported by a dazzling Angie Bowie singing razzamatazz with a backing tape. True.

The series of works I made for the resultant show in Leeds City Art Gallery was constructed from very industrial but unecological shattered Perspex.

27 USSR

In 1990 and again in 1991 (before and after USSR) and long before the current nightmare, I visited with the Soviet Union of Artists across Russia. I paid for it - but because I could pay in roubles in that first year, it was my one and only taste of how an oligarch might feel. 

First trip was with my Delfina Studios colleagues to make work for an ice sculpture festival in Gorky Park Moscow. We bought hats. We also went overnight on the Red Arrow to Leningrad, swapped our clothes with the guards, we all pretty much looked like staff when we arrived in the morning. Slightly hairy moment when the police stopped a flotilla of vendors following our bus into town. I automatically reached for my little point and shoot camera. It was an overcast sky which made it flash… all guns swung towards me.

Going again six months later (Leningrad had become Petersburg) and all points east and south. Met artists underground (literally) in Moscow, wild evenings in Tashkent, a beautiful couple in Novgorod who were committed artists (ра̀бота, ра̀бота, ра̀бота) and very much in love… ‘in the evenings when the light is poor we paint abstracts’. Eventually making it to the House of the Artists in Gurzuf (home of the Ninth Wave), and losing my mind one night to the home-made wine crafted by a local engineer, who scoured the vineyards in the dead of night for the muscat grape. Vineyards had been closed and guarded by Mikhail Gorbachev to tackle alcoholism. 

In the Soviet era, you had to have a job. If you were an artist you had to be an artist. You were allocated the tools of your trade, paint, canvas, brushes. Towards the end, and I noticed this travelling, things were so tight that even road signs were being made by artists, because they had the materials. I remember seeing a roundabout sign in Bukhara which was very like the one in Sankt Petersburg, but on canvas, and in sunnier colours. Nice.

In Moscow we became part of history one evening, happening on a huge crowd in the process of toppling the massive statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky outside KGB headquarters. People were so happy, normally the square was the emptiest in Russia. We were there until the wee small hours, until finally the crane that was holding it by the neck, lifted Dzerzhinsky into the sky like an avenging angel. It wasn’t the effect the crowd had expected. There were a few anxious moments before the cheer finally erupted.

28 Heat

Folk can make art, and they do everywhere  

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jun/24/monkey-christ-worst-art-repairs-of-all-time

Anybody that avoids bland commercialisation gets my vote. Monkey Christs, tattoos, garden gnomes, Aphrodite at the water hole… all are created with love, and can be considered in many ways contextually. At Edinburgh College of Art there is a valuable collection of classical Greek casts, traditionally used for drawing instruction. Over the years things have fallen off (not only toes and fingers). There was someone over time, perhaps janitorial staff, repairing them with Das clay. These were not always anatomically correct, but considerate and full of care. We liked them. We don’t have to be logical. That is for Vulcans.

My friend Erfan Khalifa is a musician and visual artist in Damascus. He studied photography in Vienna. He has the strong idea that contemporary art from the West is cold, and art from the Middle East warm and full of emotion. He has a point, when we compare Bauhaus with Dervish. But both are fantastic, no? 

A work of art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t art at all - Paul Cézanne

The Moon and the Sledgehammer 

Home Made Europe

 

Maudie