 |
| Melton Road, Leicester, May 2014 |
As I noted in my recent post,
David Batchelor’s book, ‘The Luminous And
The Grey’ [1.], makes reference to Walter Benjamin’s own writing
in its discussion of luminous colour.
That sent me back to my own copy of the latter’s ‘One-Way Street And Other Writings’ [2.], having put down and
bookmarked it some months earlier.
Spookily, I found the passage that Batchelor quotes from lay on the
very next page. Here then, is a longer excerpt
from the piece in question,
‘Fools, who bewail the decline of criticism. The fact is, its time expired long ago. Criticism is a question of correct
distance. Criticism is at home in a
world where perspectives and prospects matter, where it was still possible to
adopt a stance. Things have now begun to
chivvy human society much too urgently.
‘Impartiality’ and the ‘open outlook’ have become lies if not the wholly
naïve expression of straight non-competence.
The name of the most intrinsic quality today, the mercantile look
penetrating to the heart of things, is advertising…
‘What is it, ultimately, that makes advertising so
superior to criticism? Not what the red
electric text up on the moving screen says – the pool of fire that mirrors it
on the asphalt.’ [3.].
 |
| Melton Road, Leicester, May 2014 |
In another example of things
connecting up, I found myself driving back into Leicester late the other night
on wet roads. Certain brightly
illuminated businesses on the city’s Melton Road, (and the resulting
reflections on wet pavements), immediately chimed with Benjamin’s text - causing
me to park up and grab the camera. Whilst
not necessarily advertising in the classic sense, these illuminated texts do
represent the way we’re all urgently, (and routinely), chivvied by our environment. In fact, so immersed are we in the whole
spectacle, that it’s useful to note just how much of a new phenomenon, and
worthy of comment, it all once was to him.
 |
| Melton Road, Leicester, May, 2014 |
The general aesthetic espoused
here, both stylistic and culinary, has little to do with critical discernment,
leaving us to just drink in (and munch on) the gorgeous kitsch beauty of it
all. More simplistically, it’s also a
great illustration of Batchelor’s comments on the reliance of coloured illumination on darkness, (or ‘not-colour’), as necessary context.
None of this was planned, but
I suspect it was far from mere coincidence, and that reading those two books
had subconsciously inclined me toward finding these images…
[1.]: David Batchelor, ‘The Luminous And The Grey’, London, Reaktion Books, 2014
[2.]: Walter Benjamin, ‘One-Way Street And Other Writings’, London, Penguin Modern
Classics, 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment