42 GOMB

No art, only artists. Or something like that. In Gombrich’s The Story of Art (1950, 600 pages) there is one female artist, Käthe Kollwitz. They had shared Nazi-era experiences, the work is full of emotion and confident drawing. Perhaps he means that artists are conduits of their time. His artists all show these drawing skills, which is confusing. I wonder what contemporary artists he would choose? Any? None?

Perhaps there are only art historians. Imagine. An envisioned (by themselves) scale of importance in education might be: architecture > art history > music > art > design > illustration > cartoons. This can be argued, and in fact everyone is expressing everything anyway, dilettante or otherwise, and all in context. Individually.

http://arthistorypart1.blogspot.com/2008/01/there-is-no-such-thing-as-art-there-are.html

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jun/06/the-true-meaning-of-fine-and-not-so-fine-art?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://gombricharchive.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/showdoc68.pdf

A great reinventor, David Hockney, talks of artists being children of time. His life is all mixed up with his art. This is confusing for us to unpick (if we wanted). Similarly with Picasso, Van Gogh, Francis Bacon, Hilma af Klint, Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven… and so it goes. Snakes and ladders.

43 Snap

Photography is history

The subject of James Clerk Maxwell's famous first colour photograph, made in Edinburgh in 1861, was a ribbon. Sort of thing one might see at a dog show, or on a giant cucumber. A curious, quotidian choice. It will have been lying about, colourful, unmoving, probably all the necessaries. I made a copy of it. I thought perhaps a bit of magic thinking might give me insight into the history of photography. Perhaps it did, a bit. Haven't worn it yet though. I have always relished any excuse for making things. What can it be??

A phrase from childhood sticks with me… a grown-up in a gallery (I wasn’t in many) being amazed at a painting saying “...a picture like a real hand-painted photograph”. Even I knew that was crazy mixed-up. Still, there may be something of the fondness of mixed up I have kept. It still interests me. I went through a phase of doing my own real hand-painted photographs. This was brought to a sad end in 1995 when YBA Marcus Harvey had some kids paint a portrait of Myra Hindley. He used a technique similar to my own. After that I didn’t want to have anything much to do with it. It was in any case an interesting exploration of colour for me at that time, so all was not lost.

Photography can be so much. I thought it best to limit my exploration a bit. The quarrel between analogue-digital I like. Things far away and up close. Then there is the moving image. The focus blurs. I used to believe anything moving was intrinsically better art than anything still. In fact there is nothing much still. We change our minds constantly. 

The green man of Cong https://youtu.be/ctgZ2LHI61Y

And there’s more…

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jan/12/bertien-van-manens-beyond-maps-and-atlases-ireland?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/13/masahisa-fukase-photographed-nothing-but-his-wife?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/interactive/2013/may/19/power-photography-time-mortality-memory

44 Portal

We know it is a lame edit decision when we see dictionary entries to explain words in films, but here goes… late Middle English: from Old French, from mediaeval Latin portale, neuter (used as a noun) of portalis ‘like a gate’, from Latin porta ‘door, gate’.

The passageways from one realm to another are the best bits in literature and film. I find most of the rest just packing. Is that only me?

 

We pore over maps in the intros. There are so many from my yout…

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

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_maps

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Foul%27s_Bane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_Station_(novel)

 

Back-of-the-wardrobe fumblings in Narnia

 

Stargate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3ihWxPL5eA

 

The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) https://youtu.be/0JHYAhcdsMk sadly I couldn’t find the subsequent scene that takes Milo through the actual tollbooth, from live-action to animation. Magic.

 

And I have to include a link to a hi-res image of an old map of the Forest of Fontainebleau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Fontainebleau I printed for my wall.

The forest is itself a special portal in art history, especially at the cusp of classical to impressionist landscape painting. It's not like the old days now though.
𝕊𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕨𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕥𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕢𝕦𝕖

 

45 Stalker

The best movie ever made. I could say ‘my favourite film’, but that’s not quite the case. You don’t need to read anything about it, although there is plenty, you know it by watching. And amazingly you can see it for free here…

Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky 1979 https://youtu.be/Q3hBLv-HLEc

 

Mosfilm are currently distancing themselves from the Kremlin by offering their back catalogue free to the world.

 

https://www.salon.com/2017/07/29/why-andrei-tarkovskys-interminably-dull-1979-sci-fi-masterpiece-stalker-is-the-movie-we-need-right-now/

 

It may be that you are either in the club or not. Many aren’t. The effect it had on me when I discovered it as a student was strong and lasting. Finding something on your own, endures. I have bored many people about this film since 1979, and now I’m boring you. 

 

You are most welcome.

 

The history of its production is quite an odyssey of paranoia and conspiracy.

Doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhK7hMBli4s

Book https://geoffdyer.com/books/zona/

 

The sonic landscapes within it are memorable and astounding. Having said that, my wife calls it dentist music. I assume this means it has the timbre of drill on tooth rather than Muzak in the waiting room while you read your Scots Magazine. She doesn’t like Stalker either. 

 

Go on, give it a go! I know you want to shave your head and lie in a puddle.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/feb/06/andrei-tarkovsky-stalker-russia-gulags-chernobyl

 

https://www.openculture.com/2022/04/watch-andrei-tarkovskys-films-free-online-stalker-the-mirror-andrei-rublev.html

46 Beardy

Before the pandemic, around 2015 maybe, a lumber yard across the road from Edinburgh College of Art closed down. A terrible loss, possibly inspired by the constant rediscovery that painting was hard, and making videos on the phone didn’t need wooden stretchers for canvas. A hipster barber shop took its place. A fantastic memory I have from that time is of walking home in the darkening November evening to see illuminated and framed in the window the perfect surreal image of four barbers with beards giving four identical beardies haircuts. Charles Dickens would have stirred. 

There is a lot of stuff in a beard…

Romance https://www.moma.org/collection/works/46634

Religion https://www.huffpost.com/entry/religious-beards_n_5947438

Music (terrible) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmFnarFSj_U

Sexuality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard_(companion)#:~:text=Beard%20is%20an%20American%20slang,to%20conceal%20one's%20sexual%20orientation

In summer of 1991 I was in Moscow waiting to leave on a series of visits with the Soviet Union of Artists to various parts of the now crumbling CCCP. Suddenly Mikhail Gorbachev went missing, and tanks were rumbling in through the streets towards the White House, where Boris Yeltsin was making a stand (the other White House and the other Boris). Bit scary. The only thing on TV was the Bolshoi Swan Lake. I think the idea was that it would placate the masses. It was interesting that after that particular coup, polls of favourite ballets made the Bolshoi Swan Lake the least popular.

Anyway, to mark the event I shaved my beard off, and made an artwork. I’m not quite sure why I did this, but it had a startling effect on Anne-Marie Creamer who was sharing the trip with Catriona and I, and didn’t recognise the stranger suddenly appearing in the flat at such a worrying moment. 

I still have the beard, and it is still black. Hurrah!

47 Landskip

As you might see in this blog, there is quite a focus on how landscape fits into art and history.

The Barbizon school (see 44 Portal) starring Daub one and Daub two

WG Sebald The Rings of Saturn + Patience (see 11 Lazy)

Simon Schama Landscape and Memory (skip to the second chapter)

The very excellent catalogue for Tate Liverpool Radical Landscapes show, and https://www.bossmorris.com/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/11/life-on-the-edge-land-loss-on-englands-east-coast-a-photo-essay?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Strange horizons  _/﹋\__/﹋\__/﹋\_> > < Peakfinder >

 

And remember, even although one of the attractions of working with landscape (and not actors) is that it will usually let you get on with it and not talk back, things can still get out of hand… https://vimeo.com/134753389

☘

Below are two interpretations of Nephin Mountain in Ireland. My grandmother told me tales of how she and her friends as small children took food up that hill to the men who were hiding out there during the War of Independence.

The Quiet Hill ~ notebook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXxu5Qttr2s

This was (very) loosely based on John Wayne/Maureen O’Hara film The Quiet Man (1952). After being told I was Irish by Ancestry DNA, I visited the old country, the hill, the graves, the set... what a business model! We arrived in Cong, where it was filmed, at the same time as a coachload of American tourists and couldn’t resist the opportunity to appear in a short re-enactment. Me as the vicar and Catriona as the vicar’s wife. Sadly, no Oscars.

48 Small

Instead of finding your audience, why not just make them? Make ‘em look.

The dollhouse has two dominant motifs: wealth and nostalgia. It presents a myriad of perfect objects that are, as signifiers, often af­fordable, whereas the signified is not. Consider the miniature Orkney Island chairs that can be found in the china cupboards of many Island homes. The full-size chairs, handmade of local straw, were once a major furnishing of the peasant house, but because their manufacture is so labour-intensive and because their mode of production has be­come so esoteric, only the very wealthy can now afford them. Hence the descendants of the peasants who once owned such pieces can afford only the miniature, or "toy," version. Use value is transformed into display value here. Even the most basic use of the toy object-to be "played with" is not often found in the world of the dollhouse. The dollhouse is consumed by the eye. On Longing - Susan Stewart

https://teach.alimomeni.net/2012spring2/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/On-longing-Stewart-1984.pdf

But what are they looking at? 

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1316194/place-village-installation-rachel-whiteread/

https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/454396/pavilion-of-turkey-presents-once-upon-a-time-by-fsun-onur-at-the-venice-biennale/

https://www.editions-memo.fr/livre/le-coeur-de-pic/

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/mini-gallery-show-1955434

49 Perfect

After art school, in London, all the artists I knew had a part-time job. It was a relief to see there was no shame in it. I spent quite a few years working for a community arts project Freeform in Hackney, producing and eventually helping design large scale murals around the city and further. My colleagues were highly skilled. Paint on the murals was one layer thick - there was no messing around. My first task was to paint a plant. It could be anything that fitted the space allowed. So I painted the one I knew best, a cheeseplant.

My boss was horrified. I could hear snickers from the back. I thought I had painted it rather well, thinly, and with flourish. But it was pretty much the dead monstera from my student flat. They wanted perfect Disney. Not the cloud of unknowing. That was a lesson.

There are some images here that concern themselves with utopias, inside and out… https://porty.net/blindwells/homes2.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/07/shedloads-of-colour-how-a-move-away-from-grey-buildings-could-help-farmers-mental-health?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-woman-who-invented-forensics-training-with-doll-houses

50 Arcadia

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_(play)

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/sep/14/turf-wars-the-artists-who-want-to-mow-down-the-menace-of-lawns?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

In 10 - Burial I talk about artist John Wolseley digging up half his painting out of the Australian soil and placing it next to the other half from his portfolio a year later. My experiment only lasted 8 months. The dreich East Lothian weather being less of a preservative than the Outback.