Completed Painting: 'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 4'

 

'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 4', Acrylics, Paint Pen, Paper Collage, Ink, Watercolour,
French Polish, Spray Enamel on Panel,  60 cm x 60 cm, 2023

The focus shifts back to my own East Midlands back yard once again. This is the most-recently completed of what I currently regard as my ‘Great Central’ pieces. That’s just a working title really (nominally indicating the small parcel of territory under consideration) - which is perhaps reflective of my current attempts to work in a more fluid, non-committal or less compartmentalised way. 

 

Discretely labelled sub-series have already emerged under this umbrella, but the seepage of themes and motifs between them is considerable. Connections and layered narratives coalesce in a hopefully more rhizomorphic fashion (in the Deluzian sense), and while certain geographical/mental cartographies are both delineated and pinned - I reserve the right to take any unfamiliar diversion, be it through space or time (observed or imagined), as intuition dictates. This naturally renders any attempt at linear or coherent analysis pretty difficult. One plus-point of this change of orientation (in my mind - at least), is a side-stepping of customary attempts to over-explain things to both myself and others, down the years. Stylistic tropes and subject categories may still appear reasonably familiar, but I genuinely believe that the underlying logics in the work are a little more organically cultivated nowadays. It’s no coincidence that this is the first time I’ve showcased one of these pieces alongside anything other than a wilfully obscure fragment of 'experimental' text. I only do so now as I’m a bit between such ‘bits’, and these pics have been waiting around for a little while.

 

Anyway, for what it’s worth - the imagery here may or may not relate to:

 

• A complex of local hotel and office buildings, erected as part of the redevelopment of a significant tract of central Leicester, viewed across the river Soar and an intervening construction site (sometime in 2021).

• The vaguely similar architectural massing of Prague’s Castle complex, viewed across the river Vltava (sometime in the 1990s, whilst on a somewhat intoxicated holiday of my own).

• Kafka’s great, unfinished novel (important – that), ‘The Castle’, with its deeply unsettling account of a stranger profoundly lost in an unfamiliar land. [1.]

• Marcel Proust’s unreliable memories of teenage holidays spent at Le Grand-Hotel in Balbec/Combray, and his (highly subjective – possibly delusional) attempts to become reconciled with a lost personal history. [2.]

• The printed pages and digital frames of mediation/mapping which might allow us to travel through space and time, in order to unlock any of these spaces at will, and in any chosen configuration.

• The nature of mediation, and the (welcome) unexpected resonances which may occur when a narrative or image is misunderstood, misheard, or unsatisfactorily resolved.

• The sheer coincidence of simply reading a certain text (possibly on a whim), at the time a particular photograph or painting is being made.

 

There’s plenty to un-pick there, so hopefully, it’s enough to be going on with…

[1.]:  Franz Kafka, 'The Castle', London, Penguin Modern Classics, 1922/2030/2015

[2.]:  Marcel Proust, 'In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower', ('In Search of Lost Time' Vol 2), London, Penguin Classics, 1919/2003.

Completed Painting: 'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 3'

'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 3', Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2023

[Reconfigured/Translated Composite]:

Overall, from this distance, the castle corresponded to ideas. But then, in many ways, our time is eaten away by the idea of showing objects only with the things that really accompany them, stripping them of their essence - the thought that isolated them from reality in the first place. It’s really just a shitty little town. A horse-drawn tram, a café, passers-by crossing the square, a branch of the Sparkasse, are collapsing syllable by syllable into the void under the irresistible forces of external pressure and the supply of air. If only tourism, the whole trip would be in vain. He’d better go back to his old homeland, where he did not stay so long. This penchant for new places and new people is naturally woven into our forgetfulness of the oldest. Of course, he still expected the road to finally turn towards the castle, and just because he expected it, he kept going - not that the heart doesn't also benefit from the analgesic medicine of habit once such a divorce has been accomplished. Until then he was constantly suffering.

The fear and anxiety I felt as I lay beneath the unfamiliar, overly high ceiling was nothing more than a protest of my surviving attachment to the familiar, lower ceiling. But then again, it was not a roar, it was the singing of voices far, far away - as if from the hum a single high-pitched but powerful voice came out in some impossible way and struck the ear as if trying to penetrate deeper (than a bare ear). These impressions, mingled with those I would have experienced in that other place, in that similar street, and surrounded by all the accompanying feelings which were common to both states and to themselves  (free breathing, curiosity, joy, laziness, good appetite, cheerfulness, increasing volume, consistency of a kind of pleasure, almost a mode of existence that I have rarely had the opportunity to revisit, but in which resurrected memories mix with physically perceived reality with sufficient memories, imagination, intangible reality for these places), which I crossed to give me not only an aesthetic experience, but also an intoxicating desire, although fleeting, to live there forever. It may happen that one department regulates this and another that, without the knowledge of the other - and although the overall control is most accurate, it is naturally too late, so some confusion may still arise.

You are under constant surveillance it seems, and on each of these floors the golden glow on the carpet suggested the sunset was outside the bathroom windows. Don't think of barriers as a definitive dividing line. It is not the desire to be famous, but the habit of hard work that can make us a creative artist - so it is not the joy of the present, but the sober reflection of the past that can strengthen us, preserve the future (except in bad times). You think exactly. I could only see these landscapes as a selection of daily changing images, displayed randomly in the place where I am, but not necessarily related to it. Several paths lead to the castle. Now it will be fashionable for most people to use one, now another, and they will all join. The rules governing the change have yet to be discovered, but we are aware, as if we have entered a new element, that unknown pressures have changed the dimensions of our feeling and we can no longer look at it as before. We know it's still there somewhere, but it's gone, it doesn't bother us anymore, it's content with the feeling that the presence gives it like a sensation that also satisfies us because we don't care… not here.

(With thanks to Franz Kafka & Marcel Proust)

Completed Painting: 'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 2'

'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 2', Acrylics on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2022

"I was amazed that the world contained people sufficiently different from myself for the manager of the hotel to have urged such a stroll upon me as a form of amusement, for there to be some to whom such a torture-chamber of unfamiliar quarters could actually be an ‘abode of delight’, as the hotel styled itself in its leaflet, possibly with some degree of license, although it was undeniably addressing a wide public whose views it shared. So, to attract such people to the Grand-Hotel of Balbec, it expatiated not only on ‘the exquisite cuisine’ and the ‘entrancing view from the gardens of the Casino’ but on ‘the great god Fashion, whose decrees no man of good breeding will care to flout, unless he does not mind being thought a Philistine.’” [1.]

“These impressions, mingling with the ones I would be experiencing in that other place, on that similar road, and surrounded by all the accessory feelings which were common to both states, and only by them – the sensation of breathing freely, curiosity, the enjoyment of being lazy, a good appetite, cheerfulness – would grow in volume, take on the consistency of a particular type of pleasure, almost a way of existence, one which I seldom had occasion to revisit but within which reawakened memories blended a physically perceived reality with enough remembered, fancied, ungraspable reality for these places I was passing through to give me, not just an aesthetic experience, but a heady desire, however fleeting, to live there for ever.” [2.]

Addendum:

My current working practices do not (by intention) follow a wholly linear or pre-determined path. a 'series' of works may come into being through processes of translation or mediation, with relatively little pre-intention. Progress may be slow and meandering, as opposed to methodically pursuing a set agenda. Just as the past may inform the present/future - so, equally, may a reversal of the temporal/mental flow apply. New readings may bring-about revisions. Lines may take flight backwards in order to move forwards (the lateral jump and parallel strand are also of prime importance). The painting previously entitled 'The Castle 1', is now renamed; 'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 1'. Ultimately, the fixity of appellations should be of less relevance than the rhizomatic processes that bring them about.

'The Castle/Le Grand Hotel 1', Paper Collage & Acrylics on Panel,
600mm x 600 mm, 2022

[1.] & [2.]: Marcel Proust, ‘In Search of Lost Time’, ‘Volume 2, In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower’ (Trans. James Grieve), London, Penguin Books, 1919/2002

Completed Painting: 'Das Schloss 1 [vouch.speared.hooked.]

 

'Das Schloss 1 (vouch.speared.hooked)', Acrylics, Paper Collage & Paint Pen on Panel,
600 mm x 600 mm, 2022

Here's the completed version of one of the in-progress pieces teased here back in July. It's fair to say that progress was a little stilted over the summer period for various reasons, but work continues at whatever pace it can. Having several pieces simultaneously in play, and allowing numerous layered narratives to accumulate organically through possibly extended periods of reflection, actually feel like not altogether regrettable parts of the process right now.

I think I am moderately pleased with the way this one seems to tug at several possible threads of an increasingly tangled rhizome, whilst establishing a degree of stratified formal 'coherence' at the same time. Any attempt to provide a simplistic explanation feels harder than ever at this point, but maybe that's no bad thing either.

Perhaps the following quotations can supply some tentative clues instead...

"K. began to take notice. So the castle had appointed him land surveyor. On the one hand this was to his disadvantage, since it showed they knew all they needed to know about him up at the castle, had weighed up the balance of forces, and were entering the fray with a smile. But on the other hand it was also to his advantage, because it showed, he felt, that they underestimated him and that he was going to have more freedom than he might have hoped for at the outset. And if they thought that with his intellectually no doubt superior recognition of his land surveyorship they could keep him in a perfect state of fright, then they were wrong, it sent a little shiver down his spine, that was all." [1.]

"If I had not been so determined to set seriously to work, I might have made an effort to start at once. But given that my resolve was unbreakable, given that within twenty-four hours, inside the empty frame of tomorrow where everything fitted so perfectly because it was not today, my best intentions would easily take material shape, it was really preferable not to think of beginning things on an evening when I was not quite ready - and of course the following days were to be no better suited to beginning things.

Unfortunately, tomorrow turned out not to be that broad, bright, outward-looking day that I had feverishly looked forward to. When it ended, my idleness and hard struggle against my inner obstacles had just lasted for another twenty-four hours. After a few days, when my projects had still not come to anything, when some of my hope that they would come to something had faded, and with some of it some of the courage I required in order to subordinate everything to my coming achievement, I went back to staying up late, as I now lacked my incentive (the certain knowledge that the great work would be begun by the following morning) to go to bed early on any given evening." [2.]

"There are natures purely contemplative, completely unsuited for action, who nevertheless, under mysterious unknown impulses, act sometimes with a rapidity of which they would suppose themselves incapable.

"Those for instance who, afraid their concierge may have bad news for them, pace an hour timorously before daring to go in; those who hold letters for two weeks before opening them, or wait six months to take some step that has been immediately necessary for a year already - but sometimes abruptly feel precipitated into action by an irresistible force, like an arrow leaving the bow. Moralists and doctors, who claim to know everything, fail to explain from whence so sudden a mad energy comes to these lazy, voluptuous souls and why, incapable of the simplest and most necessary things, they find at certain moments a spurt of first class courage to execute the most absurd and even most dangerous actions." [3.]

[1.]: Franz Kafka, 'The Castle' (Trans. J. Underwood), London, Penguin, 1997/1926

[2.]: Marcel Proust, 'In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2: In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower' (Trans. James Grieve), London, Penguin, 2002/1919

[3.]: Charles Baudelaire, 'The Bad Glazier' (Trans. Keith Waldrop), From 'Paris Spleen', Middletown, CT, Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2009/1869.

Proustian Diversion 2.1 (Travel Guide: Painting Remix)

 

All Photo-Manipulations: April 2022

"...the specific pleasure of travelling is not that it enables one to stop when tired or stay somewhere along the way; it is that it can make the difference between departure and arrival not as unnoticeable as possible, but as profound as possible; it is that one can experience that difference in its entirety, as intact as it was in our mind when imagination transported us immediately from where we were living to where we yearned to be, in a leap which seemed miraculous less because it made us cover such a distance than because it linked two distinct personalities of place, taking us from one name to another name, a leap which epitomized (more acutely than by a run in a motor-car, which allows you to get out where you like and thereby all but abolishes arrival) by that mysterious performance that used to be enacted in those special places, railway stations, which, though they are almost separate from the city, contain the essence of its individuality, as they bear its name on a signboard." [1.]

Claude Monet, 'The Gare Saint-Lazare, Arrival of a Train', Oil on Canvas, 
1877, Harvard Art Museums

Claude Monet, 'The Gare Saint-Lazare (Interior View of the Gare Saint-Lazare, The Auteuil Line)',
Oil on Canvas, 1877, Musee d'Orsay, Paris

"Sad to say, those wonderful places, railway stations, our starting-point for a distant destination, are also tragic places, for though they are the setting for the miracle which will turn a land hitherto non-existent except in the mind of into one we are  going to live in, for that very reason, as soon as we venture outside the waiting-room, we must abandon all hope of returning to the familiar bedroom which we left only a moment before. We have to give up all prospect of sleeping at home tonight, as soon as we have decided to venture into the reeking cavern which is the necessary anteroom to mystery, one of those huge glass-roofed machine-shops, such as the Gare Saint-Lazare, which was where I had to seek out the train for Balbec and which, above the great chasm slitting the city, had spread out one of those vast bleak skies, dense with portents of pent-up tragedy, resembling certain skies of Mantegna's and Veronese's fraught with their quasi-Parisian modernity, an apt backdrop to the most awesome or hideous of acts, such as the Crucifixion or a departure by train." [2.]

Walter Richard Sickert, 'St. Mark's, Venice (Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus)',
Oil on Canvas, 1896 (Tate Gallery Collection)

[1. & 2.]: Marcel Proust, 'In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2, In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower', Part II: 'Place-names: the Place' (Trans. James Grieve), London, Penguin Books, 2002/1919.

Proustian Diversion 2 (The Travel Guide)

 

All Images: West Leicester, March 2022

"But if these names absorbed for ever the image I had of these towns, it was only by transforming that image, by subjecting its reappearance in me to their own laws; in consequence of this they made it more beautiful, but also more different from what the towns of Normandy or Tuscany could be in reality, and, by increasing the arbitrary joys of my imagination, aggravated the future disappointment of my travels. They exalted the idea I was forming of certain places on earth, by making them more particular, consequently more real. I did not at the time represent to myself cities, landscapes, monuments as more or less pleasant pictures, cut out here and there from the same material, but each of them as an unknown thing, different in essence from the others, a thing for which my soul thirsted and which it would profit from knowing." [1.] 

"And, even though the motive for my exiharation was a desire for artistic delights, the guidebooks sustained it even more than the books about aesthetics, and still more than the guidebooks, the railway timetable." [2.]

[1. & 2.]: Marcel Proust, 'In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1, The Way By Swann's'  Part III: 'Place Names: The Name', (Trans. Lydia Davis), London, Penguin Books, 1913/2002

Music Re-View 13 [Proustian in_sert]

 

All Images: North Leicester, March 2022

I am glad I gave this a listen/ the fundamental lack of certainty that's colouring everyone's thoughts now has got me doubling down on my usual worries/ I was skeptical of listening at first due to/ associations of Genesis/ as well as/ an almost impossible high wire act/ in which case, it's possible I've completely missed the point [in entering into contact with a world for which we are not made, which seems formless to us because our eyes do not perceive it, meaningless because it evades our understanding, which we can attain only through a single sense] I should make plans to revisit this project later in the year with a different mindset. And if it's not/ some kind of escape/ well, then that's OK too/ we can definitely recommend this album for those who want/ cheeses of concentrated revival/ and let's be clear - many of us "electro introverts" are envious of the extroverts who enjoy/ the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

This is music not made by marketing teams or in boardrooms searching for a demographic to fleece, it is music made by/ birds - birds and sirens/ no boxes being ticked, no second guessing trends, just a welcome flashback to a/ certain Goldilocks zone of wishful reverie - not too heavy, not too light, neither forlorn nor jubilant/ we hear the bubbles swell into life and burst almost immediately, their existence necessarily fleeting/ it's hard to think of another electronic musician whose work feels so tactile/ melodies are woven together as if their respective elements were [multiform, undivided, smooth and colliding like the purple tumult of the waves when the moonlight charms them and lowers their pitch by half a tone] you get a real impression of time's palpable dilation with errant voice messages and recordings of life's activity/ largely lost in the translation of his current temper/ but this first impression should not be considered definitive [the only one which is purely musical, immaterial, entirely original, irreducible to any other order of impression] as we will see/ a cultural-leaning deliverance was just what was exuded at/ 3 a.m.

The first sound,  low, humming drone, hovers around the ears as if sitting on a primeval airplane, disappearing into clouds [an impression of this kind, is for an instant, so to speak, sine materia. No doubt the notes we hear then tend already, depending on their loudness, and their quantity, to spread out before our eyes over surfaces of various dimensions, to trace arabesques, to give us sensations of breadth, tenuousness, stability, whimsy. But the notes vanish before these sensations are sufficiently formed in us not to be submerged by those already excited by the succeeding or even simultaneous notes] melodies are woven together as if their respective elements were concocted only to be synthesized by way of his imagination/ yet it takes a very long time to develop, and risks verging on dull/ is the album supposed to be this reflective and introspective? Possibly/ the energy here isn't exactly new, nor all that energetic, but it is aglow with/ the tock of snare and bass drum, a vocal loop that just slips beyond comprehension/ harpsichord, harp/ dainty blips and pops/ wistful timbres and delectable breaks/ from our concrete prisons and tie-wearing shackles.

Even if you're a vinyl purist make sure you get the download of this album and take it walking with you. It will help [to envelop with its liquidity and its 'mellowness' the motifs that at times emerge from it, barely discernible, immediately to dive under and disappear, known only by the particular pleasure they give, impossible to describe, recall, name, ineffable - if memory, like a labourer, working to put down lasting foundations in the midst of the waves, by fabricating for us facsimiles of these fleeting phrases, did not allow us to compare them to those that follow them, and to] elevate ourselves from our bone and flesh/ that little bit more/ electronic musicians have always tapped into a higher plane and we as listeners were happy to [differentiate them] we're the sort of folks who would rather crack open a track to examine what's inside at a respectable time of night/ I think it is definitely a better record for the daytime though. Probably dawn would be ideal. Listen to it outside, if you can/ the sun rises over the water. The endorphins flow.

Includes excerpts from: Marcel Proust, 'In search of Lost Time, Volume 1, The Way by Swann's' (Trans. Lydia Davis), London, Penguin Books, 1913/2002