3 Circles

After WWII Francis Bacon was told that artists can’t paint portraits any more. So he decided he was going to paint portraits.

I feel the same way about circles. They are difficult to work with. There are a couple of artists who work with circles. Sonia Delaunay was one, and Hilma Af Klint another. Hilma is famous for inventing abstract painting decades before Wassily Kandinsky (a bloke) did. Some argue that they aren't abstract, but are diagrams 😑 I got a book about her recently, a facsimile of a sketchbook showing her process. She and her pals were interested in the invisible stuff that had just been invented, like The Id, UV light, magnets. The book is about a scientific way to make art, more interested in electric current than fashion. It might be pareidolia, but it looks very contemporary. Perhaps the shapes remind us of the non-organic visual manifestations delivered to us digitally now.  

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

https://www.hilmaafklint.se/en/2018/10/20/publikation-hilma-af-klint-notes-and-methods/

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-sonia-delaunay/delaunay-introduction

4 Flags

I have a minimal maritime connection - my father and brother were in the Royal Navy. Sandy Guy was keen to big-up this aspect in a project we did together 

I have a small collection (3) of ships flags, bought as cheaply as I could from Ebay. Prices have skyrocketed recently. They are so beautiful on the wall… large, simple, complicated, hidden meanings. They remind me of my favourite paintings (pareidolia again?) by Ellsworth Kelly et al. They can be rolled into a tiny ball or opened out large - they look massive inside my house. Years ago in the Lisson Gallery London I saw an exhibit of a piece of masking tape on the floor which was the width of an international football goal mouth. The sense of scale indoors was impressive. I have Googled this piece but can’t find it. I hope it wasn’t just a bit of tape on the floor. One thing can mean another, and of course flags can be problematic.

International Marine Signal Flags are signals used by ships at sea. They can be used to spell out short messages, or more commonly, used individually.

Flags in order… 

W (Whisky) (Scots spelling) also means ‘the boat has a medical emergency and needs help’

Nautical 9 (means nine, possibly)

Nato D (Delta) means ‘keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty’

I suppose this handy sequence might interpret as ‘Emergency - drank nine whiskies and maneuvering with difficulty’. 

I was interested to discover Ellsworth Kelly’s plant drawings quite recently. Too recently. I should have known about these already. Less flaggish. Rekindles a debate we have often had in Edinburgh College of Art… What is illustration?

https://matthewmarks.com/exhibitions/ellsworth-kelly-plant-drawings-05-2017

5 Meml

(We once got very lost in the Outer Hebrides, thinking Meml was a place on the map, when it is of course short for Memorial, of which there are many).

I lost the hearing in my right ear a few years ago at a Tim Hecker concert (thanks Timmy), and now Specsavers are saying I have cataracts. Getting on a bit eh? Slightly concerned my experiments with UV light might be contributing to this, as some research into the situation has revealed.

What happens to this free Blogger blog when I’m gone? Mac Tonnies updated his blog one night in 2009, went to bed, and died of cardiac arrhythmia. He was 34. His blog, Posthuman Blues, is still as he left it.

https://www.digitaldeath.eu/

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/afterlives-of-famous-artists-estates/index.html

6 Transfiguration

There is a new town being built from scratch in East Lothian called Blindwells. When it was just a muddy field I asked the site manager if there was a map of what the town will look like. He told me there wasn’t one, and have I looked at the website. It seems they are bulldozing large portions of the area into ‘compression hills’ to see what will take the weight of a house, then they will make the map.

Truth to materials. I hadn’t thought they might do it that way round. It is quite interesting to give agency to art materials too… let water levels, gravity and the composition of paper decide on drawing and space, not unfettered but in a limited way to allow change to be observed. 

I’ve tried to transform the paintings in other ways too. A painting is also an object. Put it in a frame and that also becomes part of the object. Drawing the circles off-centre became too cute, adding an extra level of decision-making I’m trying to avoid. Is something moving in or out of position? Lighting, natural and ultra-violet. Reflection or emitter? The intensity and balance of light creates alternatives. Is it 2D or 3D? Or like this one... An argument between a painting and a frame.