Completed Quartet: 'Sick 1'

Finally, I can post about my own work again.  Since starting this blog last December I’ve worked on a set of paintings that seemed slow to complete.  Last year I produced several larger pieces quite rapidly, so these recent months have been somewhat frustrating.  Getting ill twice didn’t help - ironic, given the title of this set is ‘Sick 1’.

'Sick 1', 2012, Acrylics & Paper Collage on 4 Panels, 
60 cm X 300 cm (Overall), 60 cm X 60 cm (Each Panel)

The four panels are designed to hang together in a quartet, spelling out the title with a single character on each.  It was completing the ‘Safe From Harm 1’ triptych last summer that suggested another multi-panel project and the attendant challenge of composing each element whilst maintaining a balance across the whole.

'Sick 1 (S)', 2012, Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 60cm X 60cm

The genesis of the ‘Sick’ theme was in the news reports of last summer’s riots.  As with ‘Together 1’ and ‘Broken 1’ it became a regular descriptor of our society amongst politicians and media commentators reacting to the disturbing events.  As buildings were burned and looted it seemed Britain was not just ailing but descending into actual psychosis.  Perhaps most disturbing, (in the media’s portrayal of events), were the seeming nihilism of the rioters and how, amongst a tech-savvy generation reputedly lacking core values outside of consumerism, exhortations to riot spread between phones rapidly like a virus.

'Sick 1 (I)', Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 60cm X 60cm

Conflicting explanations for the disorder multiplied in its wake.  Without any coherent ideological framework of my own, I prefer to observe and reflect such societal issues obliquely in my work. There are profound dangers for the artist in over-explaining work or espousing too fixed a viewpoint through it.  However, it’s no secret that a significant part of my current agenda is the exploration of clues to such issues expressed through urban surfaces and text fragments.  The four ‘Sick 1’ elements evolved to each have a different observational reference point whilst contributing to the whole thematically.  I’ll post again soon to discuss each panel in detail.

                               Sick 1 (C)', 2012, Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 60cm X 60cm                            

In the titles and textual content of my paintings I’m most drawn to phrases with an inherent ambiguity and multiple possible meanings.  It’s worth noting then that ‘Sick’ is a slang term used habitually by the school students I work amongst, (and who belong to the age group of some of last year’s rioters).  Like ‘Wicked’ and, significantly, ‘Ill’, it transforms a negative connotation into an expression of approval or enjoyment.  A further level of delightful complexity arrives with the phrase ‘Well Sick’ with its internal conflation of traditionally opposing terms.  I’m toying with the idea of a future quartet spelling ‘Well’ to create an eight-piece ‘Well/Sick’ suite.

Sick 1 (K)', 2012, Acrylics & Paper Collage on Panel, 60cm X 60cm

Belbury Poly: 'The Belbury Tales'

As usual, the arrival of my last monthly pay cheque saw me chasing new music purchases, including the new Belbury Poly release, ‘The Belbury Tales’.  For once, I can comment on something that's right up to date.

 

Belbury Poly is the brainchild of Jim Jupp who, with Julian House (of The Focus Group), also masterminds the Ghost Box label and its roster of closely related artists.  Plenty has been written in recent years about the label and the Hauntology genre into which its artists are often pigeonholed.  I recommend Simon Reynolds’ November 2006 Wire Magazine article, [1.]  Adam Harper’s October 2010 Rouge’s Foam blog post, ‘The Past Inside The Present’ [2.] and Ghost Box’s own website and The Belbury Parish Magazine blog for valuable context.  In addition, the current issue of The Wire features Jupp and House in its regular 'Invisible Jukebox' item. [3.]

Jim Jupp of Belbury Poly

Belbury Poly has always impressively combined concept, music, visuals and text into a multi-dimensional imaginative world and this is no exception.  The usual signifiers of a utopian future imagined sometime between The 1951 Festival of Britain and the end of Post War Consensus in 1979 are present and correct alongside references to the Pagan ‘Old Weird Britain’ of folk tradition and the Occult.  The trick of this stuff is always to simultaneously evoke the future within the past and the past within the future.  Science walks hand in hand with fertility ritual and quasi-mysticism through New Town and English Village.

I love how these themes are re-imagined through multiple stylistic filters that allow us to apply our own, possibly nostalgic, frames of cultural reference.  The modernism is of the quaintly optimistic ‘Tomorrow’s World’ brand often accompanied by cheesy, ‘Space-Age’ synths as typified by the brief ‘Belbury Poly Logotone B’ that introduces proceedings.  Folk references usually recall the acid sensibilities of ‘The Wicker Man’ or the genteel Edwardian folk revival more than genuine antiquity, as in ‘The Geography’.  In a track like ‘My Hands’ the occultism is equal parts Arthur Machen and spooky 70s kid’s T.V.  I’ll admit I’m a pushover for these reference points, - some of which recall my own formative years.

Whilst instantly recognisable to Belbury connoisseurs, the album augments Jupp’s familiar electronics and samples with live drums and guitar on several tracks.  It’s a masterstroke that allows hints of Prog. Rock to intrude deliciously and entirely appropriately.  It’s heard to great effect in ‘A Pilgrim’s Path’ with its embroidered drum fills and washes of faux Mellotron.  Belbury might be located somewhere near Canterbury here.  Later, in ‘Chapel Perilous’, motorik drum beats recall German Rock of the 70s.  The album concludes with two tracks of electronic sequencing typical of vintage Tangerine Dream or Jean Michel Jarre.

Of the various Ghost Box projects, Belbury has put the biggest smile on my face consistently.  It’s cheering that, when the project could have been getting a little stale, ‘The Belbury Tales’ extends the scope of an established formula and might be Jupp’s strongest album yet.




[1.]:  Simon Reynolds, 'Society of the Spectral', London, The Wire, Issue 273, November 2006.
2006 was the year when Hauntology became widely discussed as a trend within contemporary music.  This article provided an excellent overview of the genre and was the my own introduction to many of the artists discussed within it.


[2.]:  Harper's post is a lengthy and fascinating discussion of Hauntological themes.  It draws links between the work of musicians like Belbury Poly and Boards of Canada and visual artists including Peter Doig, Luc Tuymans and Neo Rauch.


[3.]:  Rob Young (Interviewing Jim Jupp & Julian House), 'Invisible Jukebox'. London, The Wire, Issue 337, March 2012.
This interview includes insights into various influences and enthusiasms of the Ghost Box protagonists whilst trying to identify related recordings chosen by Young.

From A Distance: Gerhard Richter & Johannes Vermeer

This is probably my last post responding to Gerhard Richter’s recent ‘Panorama’ retrospective.  I want to discuss the influence of Johannes Vermeer’s work on Richter’s ‘Reader’, having seen the ‘Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence’ exhibition at the Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum last year.

Gerhard Richter, 'Reader (Lesende)',  1994

‘Reader’ is a beautiful, tender portrait of Richter’s wife and about as personal as his work gets.  Nevertheless, he stays true to form in giving us an image that explores the nature of depiction and conscious influence as much as it expresses emotional sincerity.  Anyone familiar with Vermeer’s oeuvre will recognise the subject and left-facing female profile and downward gaze from ‘Woman in Blue Reading A Letter’ or ‘A Lady Reading At The Window',  Other overt references to the Dutch master include the compositional use of background rectangles and corners, the gorgeous use of light in the describing both head and page surface and the motionless absorption of the model.

Johannes Vermeer, 'A Woman In Blue Reading A Letter'

Johannes Vermeer, 'A Lady Reading At The Window'

As usual in Richter’s representational pictures, photography plays a vital role in ‘Reader’.  There is just enough of his typical unfocussing throughout, along with the burning - out of information in the neck, to show that this image passed through lenses and light-sensitive materials before ever it met paint.  In this respect, a clear connection transcends the intervening centuries between both artists.  Vermeer famously relied on a camera obscura or similar optical device in constructing many images.  The light effects in his paintings often suggest those seen on an optical viewing screen far more than through an unmediated human eye.

Of the four Vermeers in the Cambridge show these effects are best observed in the stunning little ‘Lacemaker’ from The Louvre.  The diffusion of detail in the coloured threads reduces them to abstract splashes of colour.  Meanwhile, the illumination of the model from top right reveals as much about the flattening effects of bounced light as about coherently modelled form.  Reflected light can often unify and flatten planes in the heads of Vermeer’s models as begins to happen here and it is also beautifully evident in the profile head in ‘Reader’.  Just as Richter’s image contains intensively lit passages that the original photographic film was unable to describe in detail, so the collar of the lace worker reduces to a burnt-out slab of white.  Throughout the picture are scattered Vermeer’s trademark glittering points of highlight.  However effective they may be, they are neither natural or observable by eye alone.

Johannes Vermeer, 'The Lacemaker' 

After seeing the Vermeers at the Fitzwilliam I read Lawrence Gowing’s 1952 Monograph on the artist, [1.] - now surpassed by more recent studies but still pretty insightful on his work and apparent concerns.  An important theme is the perceived tension between Vermeer’s primary subject, - women in domestic surroundings, (either solitary or the central focus of a group), and his seeming reluctance to engage emotionally with them and recourse to consequent visual distancing strategies;

“Painter and subject both require to be free of … irksome material attachment.  And separate at last both find their natural condition, their fullest life.  The feminine subject is intact, entire.  The painter has no part in her immemorial existence.  She remains outside him, essentially and perfectly other than he.  And being so she is to him the most complete enrichment.  The necessary halves of a world have come together: it is a marriage of light.” [2.]

I’ve always loved the immaculate distillation and formality of Vermeer’s pictures but there’s no doubt that his models can seem integrated into the compositions more as mannequins in a prescribed space than as living, breathing personalities.  His strictly contained interiors, geometrically divided walls, light-emitting but viewless windows, clusters of furniture and even theatrical curtains create meticulous illusionistic spaces but also severely constraining ones in which access to the model and their own freedom of movement are repeatedly impeded.  In ‘The Lacemaker’ Vermeer observed his model at unusually close quarters but she remains engrossed in her work with averted gaze and safely barricaded behind her workstation and adjacent covered table, - but for whose safety exactly?  Does she occupy a rampart or a prison?

Johannes Vermeer, 'The Music Lesson' 

The Cambridge show also included ‘The Music Lesson’, which is a text book demonstration of linear perspective creating deep illusory space, (complete with receding tiled floor), but also employs a bizarre lop-sided composition full of barriers between viewer and distant subject [3.].  It’s like Vermeer retreated to the far end of a cluttered furniture depository, to glimpse his female protagonist’s countenance reflected through the dual filters of the distant wall mirror and his optical equipment.  The painting is pure construct; - an illusion of an illusion within an illusion and surely no painter has been more detached from a model.

We can only speculate on the psychological or sociological reasons for Vermeer’s estrangement from the women he painted.  What is more understandable, is how that lack of emotional engagement might fascinate Richter who has consistently sought images full of philosophical depth but devoid of sentiment or subjectivity.  And there is a clear parallel between the Dutchman’s exploration of the effects of contemporary developments in optical science and lens technology on picture-making and the German’s fascination with the scope of painting in a photographic culture.  In their different historical and social contexts each has undertaken a prolonged investigation into our formalised methods of capturing, recording and reconstructing imagery and their inescapable effect on our interpretation of the visual world.

[1.]:  Lawrence Gowing, ‘Vermeer’, London, Giles de la Mare, (Originally Faber & Faber), 1952, 1970 & 1997.

[2.]:  Lawrence Gowing, ‘Vermeer’, London, Giles de la Mare, (Originally Faber & Faber), 1952, 1970 & 1997.

[3.]:  Fred Dubery & John Willats, ‘Perspective & Other Drawing Systems’, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Ltd, 1972 & 1983.

This scholarly text is the most interesting book I’ve read on the subject.  It includes a detailed discussion of Vermeer’s use of formal perspective and optics in constructing ‘The Music Lesson’.

R.I.P. Antoni Tapies

Here’s a very rapid post to mark the passing of the Catalan artist Antoni Tapies.  I don’t have time to do a proper appraisal of his work but can’t help feeling that another of the Greats has left the planet.  In fact we’ve lost several major artists over the last few months, including Richard Hamilton, Lucian Freud and Cy Twombly so perhaps I should salute their achievements too while I’m at it.

Anyway, Tapies was an artist whose work has influenced me a lot in recent years - most obviously through his interest in walls, surfaces, graffiti, textual content and the sheer matter of painting.  I was fascinated by the fantastic physical textures of Barcelona, (including extant Civil War bullet scars), and how heavily ‘written-on’ it is too, when I was there a few years ago.  It made a lot of sense to see Tapies work in the context of the Catalan capital and triggered many of the concerns that are still current in my own work.

It seems there was a complex philosophical, even alchemical basis behind his work which is something I should read into further when I get time.  By all accounts he was also a man of strong beliefs and integrity who prevailed despite the years of oppression suffered by Spain and his native Catalonia under the Franco Regime.

So, hat’s-off to the guy and let’s take a moment to enjoy a few pieces selected at random from his long career. 

Antoni Tapies, 'A.T.', Aquatint, 1985

Antoni Tapies, 'Creu I.R.', Mixed Media on Wood, 1975

Antoni Tapies, 'I Am Earth', Mixed Media on Canvas, 2004

Antoni Tapies, 'A+M', Mixed Media on Wood, 2007

Antoni Tapies, Mixed Media, 'Large Matter With Lateral Papers', 1963

Winterlude: Climatic Remix

Well, it seems I spoke to soon in my recent ‘Winterlude’ post.  It’s a flippin’ Winter Wonderland out there today.  Also, looking at the last one, it seems this blog’s all about the white stuff at the moment.  Anyway, for once there was a conjunction of fresh snow, good light and some free time today so I took the camera out for a walk.  Even tatty old LE3 looks pretty good in the snow.

Judging by my car’s windscreen, not everyone’s too pleased with things.  The local East Europeans were all out enjoying themselves with their kids though - meat and drink to them I suppose.  Let’s hope the English Defence League got thoroughly frost bitten on their pathetic little march through Leicester yesterday.

Here are a few of the photos I took…

There's Leicester's Famous Positive Attitude Again

  

It Seems Everyone's a Philosopher

And these are some of the visual things I like about snow…

1:  The total change in illumination and the way light bounces back up off the ground, roofs, etc.

2:  Bright blue shadows.

3:  The erasure of so much inconsequential detail and simplification of the world into simple blocks of tone and colour.

4:  The relationship between the white of the snow and the winter sky, upsetting our assumption that the sky’s the brightest area of any scene.

5:  The way it affects perceived tonal contrasts and saturation of colours.

6:  The complex textural record of all the tyres and feet that pass through it.

7:  The transformation of Britain from a land of grey, green and brown.  Even the East

Midlands seem a little more exotic.

8:  The brief sense that everything just got cleaner.

Gerhard Richter: White Paintings

Gerhard Richter, 'Abstract Painting (Abstraktes Bild)', 2009

The white abstract painting is apparently a recognised sub-genre and a challenge that several noted painters have taken on for different reasons.  It's something I've thought about recently after the 'Panorama' exhibition where I discovered that Gerhard Richter has also engaged with it.

Kazimir Malevich, 'Suprematist Composition: White on White', 1918

The tradition began with Kazimir Malevich’s ‘Supremacist Composition, White on White’,  in 1918, - essentially a depiction of the space a square form might occupy. As Modernism spawned the abstract logic of pure form over narrative so, understandably, the all-white abstract represented one conclusion in that search for the perfectly distilled art object. 

Robert Rauschenberg, 'White Painting (Three Panels)', 1951 

Robert Rauschenberg, 'White Painting,  (Seven Panels)', 1951 

John Cage, Score to '4'33"', Composed 1952

In mid-century Robert Rauschenberg’s pure, white monochromes provided a visual analogue to composer John Cage’s famously silent ‘4’:33”‘.  Rauschenberg removed all visual content from groups of white panels on whose surfaces shadows and transient light effects may or may not occur, just as Cage’s piece is wholly the sum of any sounds heard during its ‘performance’.  Both create an open arena for pure ambience and chance occurrences in different media.

Robert Ryman, 'Series No. 13 (White)',  2004

Robert Ryman, 'Untitled',  c.1965

Robert Ryman, 'Untitled' 1958

Robert Ryman, 'Untitled', 2003

Surely, the king of white painting is Robert Ryman.  His entire career is essentially a project to explore how many ways white paint might be applied to, and thus appear, on various surfaces.  By reducing painting to its basic physical and visual components he has repeatedly investigated the medium’s intrinsic properties, - without getting boring.

Gerhard Richter, 'Cage 2', 2006

Richter’s recent whites belong to the category of his work exploring obliteration through smearing or scraping.  Typically of his abstracts, their final appearance is the result of dragging successive layers of paint over underlying statements.  Richter’s white pigment seems the perfect signifier for cancelling, suggesting a return to an original state or even opaque correction fluid.  In the larger examples, like 'Abstract Painting (Abstraktes Bild)', there are hints of underlying landscape allusions and also some kinship with the 'Cage' cycle of abstracts acquired by the Tate, (that's Cage as in John Cage...).

Gerhard Richter 'White (Weiss)', 2006

Gerhard Richter, 'White (Weiss)', 2006

Gerhard Richter, 'Grey (Grau),' 2006

'White, (Weiss)', 'White, (Weiss)' and 'Grey, (Grau)' are small works on a metallic substrate called Aludibond and may connect with Ryman’s agenda somewhat.  They are actually as much about black as white but with white literally coming out on top.  As Ryman has sometimes done, he allows a wealth of tonal and optical colour nuance to occur by simple manipulation of the two tonal extremes.  Mostly, I interpret them as saying ‘This painting is what happens if I apply this action to those materials in a certain way’.  They represent an aspect of Richter’s work like charming calling cards and I fell in love instantly when I saw them at ‘Panorama’. 

'Content 1', Acrylics & Household Gloss on Panel, 2004

Finally, this talk of white paintings reminds me of one of my own.  ‘Content 1’ was amongst the first group of paintings I made using words in 2004.  They employed terms relating to various properties of painting and the all- white model seemed ideal for a painting filled with described content without really having any.

Lost At Sea: Gerhard Richter's Seascape

I’ve been quite prolix in some of my recent posts so here’s an attempt to be more concise.  I want to discuss some more of the pictures from Gerhard Richter’s recent ‘Panorama’ Exhibition at Tate Modern but will attempt that in a series of shorter posts rather than one long piece.  Here’s the first.

Gerhard Richter, 'Seascape [Cloudy]', 1969

‘Seascape [Cloudy]’ is one of a series of seascapes that Richter has painted since the late 1960s.  Many share the same square format and generous dimensions, (this one being 200cm X 200cm), and most employ a similar photorealist style with little of the blurring or unfocussing techniques sometimes applied to his photo-derived images.  This picture had an immediate effect on me in the ‘Panorama’ show.  It was not so much for intellectual or technical reasons but rather an emotional response to the hostile, profundity of Richter’s depiction of choppy sea and squally sky.  The thickly clotted cloud, chill, greyed palette and racing waves evoke a bleakly Northern European vision.  For me, this is unmistakably the North Sea.

Caspar David Friedrich, 'Moonrise by the Sea', 1821

Richter has declared a connection with the work of the German Romantic painter - Caspar David Friedrich and there are clear links here with his seascapes and lonely figures overwhelmed by that aesthetic quality of nature known as The Sublime.  Closer examination reveals a strangely precise division at the horizon of Richter's image.  In fact, his seascapes all comprise mismatched sea and sky combinations and this is just the subtlest, most unified instance of that strategy.  Whilst espousing a deeply Romantic mode of Germanic painting, Richter also questions its spiritual credentials by demonstrating how artificially and arbitrarily The Sublime can be constructed in the studio.

Karl Weschke, 'Body in the Atlantic Sea', 1982-1984

Another notable quality of ‘Seascape [Cloudy]’ is that of existential isolation.  The empty sea running to its bottom edge gives no possibility of anything solid beneath our feet, leaving us seemingly lost at sea.  It reminds me of my visit as a student to the exposed West Cornwall studio of another German artist - Karl Weschke and of seeing his painting of a figure floating in an expanse of empty ocean.  Weschke – a volunteer coastguard radio operator, described with passion the experience of calling a Rescue Helicopter home after a futile search for a lost sailor.  It made a powerful impression on me then and still does today.