1 Hello

https://linktr.ee/mikewindle

https://padlet.com/mwindle/4zfctroitbfto1ze

2 Narratives

At art school I had a number of passions. Two of them were 1 The David Sylvester interviews with Francis Bacon book, and 2 The American minimalists… all of them: Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Steve Reich, Terry Riley… 

One of my problems was that no-one else I knew in Dundee agreed with me, and once news of the Berlin ‘Zeitgeist’ exhibition had filtered north in 1982, I felt even more out on a limb. Scotland had turned narrative overnight! Steven Campbell’s famous successes in NYC had local dealers thrilled that they might be able to sell some paintings at long last. After the Clement Greenberg years, regular folks could understand pictures again. This was encouraged by fierce advocates in the press such as Waldemar Januszczak who must have been delighted to find the hobby horse he was looking for. It was interesting to me on moving to London five years later, that no-one had heard anything of this particular Scottish renaissance. 

I eventually became more aware of the separation of life and art. Bumping into Francis Bacon in 1992 at the old Saatchi Gallery in Boundary Road just weeks before he died, I didn’t know what to say to him. Even though I was still in awe, nothing could come out. I feel somewhat ashamed of this. I remember my wife behind me pushing me, whispering go on, go on.

Although I am aware of the old axiom that a painting is worth what you can get for it, it is of course worth more than that. Finding out what you are prepared to do for art can take a long time.

https://thamesandhudson.com/interviews-with-francis-bacon-9780500292532

https://flash---art.com/article/zeitgeist/

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.

7 Fireworks

Why do people like fireworks? Is it the smell of sulphur? Loud bangs and dopamine? Danger? My wife likes fireworks. She likes all twinkly things. I sort of get it, but not really. Only if I’m the one with the lighter.

East Lothian Council have put on a big show over the past few years. Probably in competition with Portobello fireworks just across the bay. We have bigger rockets than you. There is an amazing David McKee picture book about this called ‘Six Men’. It has strong relevance still.

The big shows are expensive, can go higher and give you a bigger sensation in your gut. They made an obvious mistake in the first year by hiring the Musselburgh Mobile Disco DJ to shout moronic nonsense over the whole thing. I guess the council think more is more. It has got better since… although the last one before Covid hit reached a crescendo after 10 minutes then we had to stand in the November chill waiting another 30 minutes until it ended. Tricky.

I came across a great newspaper article about prints in an old box of Japanese fireworks. They were trade illustrations showing how each firework looked in the air. The distance in the mind between the rather primitive image making and the actual display is amazing and explosive in itself. Top marks.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/dec/29/back-with-a-bang-japanese-fireworks-from-the-1800s-in-pictures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://picturebooksinelt.blogspot.com/2012/11/six-men-story-about-war.html

8 Temenos

This is about another luminous rectangle this time in Arcadia, Greece in 2016. The Temenos is a film festival screening films by one filmmaker, Gregory Markopoulos, which (normally) happens every four years. 

An unexpectedly powerful event. An experiment in sensual and expanded cinema. 200 international pilgrims sat in a field over 4 nights, watched the sun go down, listened to an increasing symphony of crickets, aware of the starfield erupting overhead, watching projected films until 2am.

http://www.thetemenos.org/

Peloponnese https://youtu.be/k4_msbd0T8U

9 Undoing

I currently have a role in Edinburgh College of Art, with Postgraduate Illustration. It is a large course with highly skilled students from all over the world. Perhaps because it has the word illustration in it, many students feel they have to make a certain kind of art. I spend much of my time discussing this with them. One of the skills they show is by putting a considerable amount of effort into making digital images look hand-made. I ask them about this too. The main problem I see with this is they can undo everything, allowing them never having to make a decision.

Last year because of Covid it was very difficult for everyone at college. They were however able to make some amazing work. One of the MA students, Shuyu Ke, only saw me once in real life. She very generously made a drawing of the occasion to send to me. I was quite moved by this. To relax the situation I said thank you so much for the lovely drawing, it’s a shame I can’t show my mother, because my shirt-tail is hanging out. She said, no problem, I fix!

10 Burial

There was a TV show broadcast in 1980 called ‘The Shock of the New’ which was a personal survey of 20th century art by Australian Robert Hughes. It came with a tremendous catalogue which I (and probably everyone else) still have. There was a scene in it which I have not been able to find online which went something like this…

English/Australian artist John Wolseley sitting on a folding chair in the outback painting the landscape in watercolour. Wolseley tears the painting in half and buries it in the dry soil beside his chair. Puts other half in his portfolio. Camera follows him over the next hill. Sets up his chair and brings out of his folio half of another painting done the year before. He digs around the earth at his feet and finds its neighbour. Brings them together in an unexpected and astonishing collision of time and colour and weather. As I say I have not seen it since. I hope I have not imagined it. 

I have torn one of mine in half and stuck it in the garden. We’ll see what it’s like in 2023. East Lothian v Woolloomooloo. Ha!

John Wolseley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcFx5TX49e8

... makes a book https://youtu.be/j-kqhqaoTLA