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. 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

11 Lazy

Juxtaposition (1970s), notion (nah), think outside the box (stay marooned outside), away from my comfort zone (stop it now), automatic writing, cut-ups, structuralism, as form rises art declines, Brion Gysin, give the public what they want, problem with actors is they speak back… are rules in art lazy? Probably.

A line from Grey Area by Will Self: “The images on the wall were tired, static, self-referential, each one a repository of forgotten insights, now incapable of arousing fresh interest” 

So bleak, but we’ve all been there. A few years back I took a group of Chinese postgrad students to the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. There was a large expressive abstract, gestural, painting on the wall. I can’t remember the artist. A student very politely asked me why it was there. All kinds of thoughts went through my head. eg It was just after a recession and they were digging out purchases from a bygone lesser informed committee as an inexpensive solution to filling what was not a temple but a large publicly owned barn. I didn’t say that, but it certainly looked foosty. I was slightly on edge because there was someone there from the gallery education team who may have been able to read my mind. Paintings stay the same, it’s us that change. And even though films look like they are constantly renewing themselves, it is us that change our minds.

https://will-self.com/category/radio/

Kevin Atherton https://vimeo.com/31444775

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

12 Hermits

In the 1760s, the bigger houses might have had an ornamental hermit installed out back in a grotto, used like a proto computer, searching for answers from the cosmos to be presented at dinner parties. Wealthy people are just too busy to do this themselves. There is a hermit's house not far from here in Dalkeith Country Park. You can paste 55.904513,-3.072481 into Google Maps, but he's not there any more. The fashion didn’t last that long, research shows a chequered history, although they did at least seem to have a sense of humour. 

A contemporary equivalent might be The Artists Studio. There is a show soon at the Whitechapel Gallery in London about this. I am looking forward to it. I’ve ordered the book. I imagine Francis Bacon’s studio will figure. This is currently recreated to perfection in the Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin. We have Eduardo Paolozzi’s version of this in the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, but it doesn’t quite have the peep show into the artist's head we want. 

Our extended brains (mobile phones) can be enlarged in a studio. Is our interior decoration a reflection of our minds? Lofts in NYC were coveted for their industrial edge. The fashion continues in the UK with organisations like ACME and WASPS. I have rented from both in the past. Eventually the large mechanical spaces are always sub-let into more human traditions with rugs and chintz.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/500916/short-lived-british-fashion-ornamental-hermits

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/22/the-stranger-in-the-woods-by-michael-finkel-review

13 Sales

Q: Why are artists poor?

A: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/92339cef-c1e9-41fe-ade8-8dc95a67b948/340245.pdf

In the 19 century, before Netflix, the painter John Martin made enormous panoramic landscape paintings that toured the town halls of Britain and charged a penny entrance. They have tiny little people in them, probably (partly) to emphasise how small we are in the cosmos. Another artist in Kirkcaldy Art Gallery, Sir William MacTaggart, painted large expressive seascapes, and put little figures in them. Both these artists will have incorporated humans into these scenes for greater sale potential. They look silly now.

Soviet émigrés Komar & Melamid tried to find out exactly what people want for their walls… https://awp.diaart.org/km/index.html

That was an old project, they stopped working together in 2003. With that done, tastes are now set forever, repeating, cyclical, mirroring into infinity, classic pouts on Instagram, graveyard poets, postmodernism which is modernism, cute, I just really like it, and they’ve got one. 

Free work is not valued by the person who has commissioned it, they should be eternally grateful but never are. Money is a sign of value and respect, even if it is a small amount. By working for free, you perpetuate a culture in which creative work goes unpaid - Oliver Jeffers

There is no must in art because art is free - Wassily Kandinsky 

Same but different, different but same, something for the wall.

https://www.porty.net/windle/2020-in-the-house.pdf

Ghastly Good Taste https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD4ZPANU8DA&t=2s

How about a frame?

14 War

There is a link to ‘Six Men’ by David McKee in 7 Fireworks. Published in 1972 it is a very circular storybook about war. They need to republish it.

"Once upon a time six men search for and finally find a land where they can settle down and grow rich. But they fear thieves, so they hire six strong guards. When no robbers arrive, the men worry that paying the guards is a waste of money. So they put them to work capturing a neighbouring farm. Enjoying the power, they add soldiers and capture more land. Some, who escape their expansion, work and live happily together across the river, but still worry about the six belligerent men. So in case of attack, they take turns being both farmers and soldiers. Unfortunately one day the bored soldiers on both sides of the river shoot at a passing duck. The anxious armies, fearing they are attacked, gather and a mighty battle begins. In the end, only six men on either side are left. And so they set off in opposite directions, beginning again the search for a place to live and work in peace. ..."

I have it in mind to put some of my luminous targets in the old radar installation building beside RAF Macmerry.

Google Maps 55.94906772449463, -2.881995063893326

I think it might be interesting… although I wouldn’t want to start anything…

Sortie https://youtu.be/VT1-Q1AEt90

Bunkers https://youtu.be/XjesOah2gCw

15 Time

Things look different up close and far away. Stars, relationships, singing. After my father passed away, lots of accumulated family possessions were lost. Time-based things… holiday super-8s, tape recordings… sad that this stuff so inherent of life and memory were not prized more. Something from this archive was an old vinyl record cut in a carnival record-your-voice booth in the 1930s, of my grandfather singing ‘So Mary Marry Me’ to my grandmother Mary. He was a terrible singer, but the sound was so full of pathos, scratches and fluff, that this powerful evocation of lost time and love was remarkable and self-evident to the teen-age me. It inspired me to make a disc of Catriona telling stories to our son Luke when he was a baby. I wonder if any of the family will be listening to it in 100 years?

We are moved by deja-vus in all media. Music - Charles Ives Central Park in the Dark. Literature - David Mitchell Cloud Atlas (not the movie). Film - William Kentridge thinking about all the other things he has to do that day, and how it affects the work. 

I was born in 1958, and am alert to it when I see it written down. The oldest satellite still circling the earth was launched in 1958. This naturally worries me. 

Fingers crossed for Vanguard 1 https://www.porty.net/st-kilda/mullach.html

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

I have a book, published in 1958 ‘A Dictionary of Abstract Painting’. The poor quality printing and thumbnail images make the work look quaint, like a stamp album, which completely loses any sense of importance and vitality the work originally held. I am drawn to the images still. 

Francis Bacon never saw the Velasquez popes, he painted his versions from magazines.

Here is an image of the dictionary, opened at the page Hilma af Klint should be. The rather beautiful 10 Kensitas cigarette card bookmark came inside when I bought it in the charity shop. Another deja-vu.

Apologies, I seem to have strayed into oblongs. Easily done.

William Kentridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G11wOmxoJ6U

Page one https://porty.net/windle/images/Page-1.jpg

16 Atmos

Back again to the warm fuzzy world of round, vignetted, egg-shaped, ovaloids. I bought my Claude Glass on Alibaba. I wonder where Claude got his?

A long history of yearning for a different perspective. A tutor of mine who was something of an academic life drawing guru Bill Cadenhead, told me at my age, in his experimental days, he poked his eyes and made paintings about it. Stars and colours. He reverted to landscape painting quite quickly. It is interesting to read in the Andy Warhol Diaries how he was trying for abstraction late in life, that he found some kind of solace in camouflage but couldn’t make the full leap. 

Selfie filters are a version of instant perfection. It goes way back of course…

Claude mirrors, Gray’s glasses, Cozens, Gilpin, the Picturesque. Ultraviolet.

A funny history of this is captured in the play Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. Set in front of French windows in a grand house, it switches between now and a time in 1809 when the garden behind was being transformed from a classical to a wild romantic place.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/claude-glass

https://longreads.com/2019/07/11/the-ugly-history-of-beautiful-things-mirrors/

17 Loop

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Groucho Marx (maybe)

It’s all loops. As far as the eye can see. As far as the ear can hear. In time. Loops are the foundation of our experience of time and, so it follows, any time-based art. Which of course is all art, as we perceive nothing without time. (Odd that time is taught as 4D in art schools, when in truth it is primary, viewing a painting is a temporal experience.) Brian Evans Loop Theory

Things that loop, own themselves. They are the most important thing in the room as far as they are concerned. They appear self-actuating, or made by someone else, which is useful for artists because they can be as critical as they want to be. 

I made quite a lot of films a while back using computer programs that could run video clips out of sequence. Making non-linear film with multiple pathways takes a lot of effort because all of those individual journeys need realised somehow. The Garden of Forking Paths + Meaning Making Machines. Why not just get the PC to do it. 

In your Christmas Spotify playlist, the loop takes a year. I let my own loops appear when they wanted after I twigged that all paths through a non-linear landscape are linear unless done twice.

And what’s the point of that?

Digital VD http://www.porty.net/digitalvd/

The Fall Repetition https://youtu.be/mTKCKBu8CLI

18 Filmy

I have visited the Venice Biennale every couple of years for a while now, and am going again in Aug (really excited - in this dismal world situation). I prefer not to engage in the usual culture-vulture activities (maximising stay - reading reviews) and just stroll in the sun by myself and happen on stuff. I like my own take on it. It's nice to have a surprise. In 2011 I was pretty obsessed only with film https://youtu.be/j-Vne_Pvqv0

Tony Conrad stole the show though. He painted a series of film frames on paper in 1973. The idea being that (like photo emulsion) the image would be affected by light. It would just take longer. They appear at the end of the clip at this point https://youtu.be/j-Vne_Pvqv0?t=582. Painting sometimes doesn’t let you down.

Some non-painted films I have seen often. My father was born on Groundhog Day (Feb 2), and after he passed away in 2000 my wife and I watch that film on that day every year as ritual - alternating it with the Italian version (with spaghetti and red) to mitigate boredom. Other regulars are The Time Machine (1961 - not the new one - eek!), The Wizard of Oz and the amazing Turkish ersatz Ayşecik ve Sihirli Cüceler Rüyalar Ülkesinde, The Singing Ringing Tree, Decasia… and so it goes.

Film as film, film as painting, painting as film, film as time, time as film. What have I missed? We’re not there yet.

Stork Day https://mubi.com/films/stork-day

Little Ayşe and the Magic Dwarfs in the Land of Dreams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnApKUztuyo

Decasia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDa-mmSldDg