Thinking About Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas, 'Evil Is Banal', Oil On Canvas, 1984

As an artist, what Marlene Dumas does is some distance from my own work, (I should be so lucky or accomplished).  Nonetheless, I’m massively impressed by her achievements as a painter.  Like all the medium's best contemporary practitioners, she combines heartfelt emotion with philosophy and psychological insight; explores the relationship between painting and mass-media reproduction; and still fully exploits the sheer plasticity of paint as material.

Marlene Dumas, 'The Painter', Oil On Canvas, 1994

I have a nice coffee-table book [1.] full of Dumas’ work, to which I often turn when I want a reminder of what grown-up painting can do.  Like most such books, it contains relatively objective commentaries on her output, but also includes many of her own intriguing, often oblique writings.  Here’s an example that jumped out at me while browsing through the other day.

“Forget  Love and art used to be places where all of this [naming and identification] could be forgotten, disappear, break down.  As Paul Valéry says, seeing is when you forget the name of what you are looking at.  This can be a frightening and alienating experience if you’re an anxious existentialist.  But it could also be a wonderful ego-vanishing sensation – a liberation from prejudice and retrospection.  Why do I draw? To remember or to forget?

First Name  You draw before you can write.  The child’s doubt about what it is he’s doing is not there from the start.  The critical moment for the child and his drawing arises when he writes his name for the first time.  The letters still struggle to represent themselves as autonomous shapes instead of referring to something else.  After that moment, drawing and writing go their own ways.  I don’t long for childhood or innocence lost.  Even though some of the most touching drawings have been made by children, mental patients and prisoners.”  [2.]

Marlene Dumas, 'Young Boys', Oil On Canvas, 1993-94

Although my own current work doesn’t necessarily reflect it, I have sometimes thought that the purest, (if impossible), thing an artist could strive for is to see the world as if for the first time, without knowing what anything is.

[1.]:  Dominic Van Den Bloogerd/Barbara Bloom/Mariucca Casidio/Ilararia Bonacossa, ‘Marlene Dumas’, London, Phaidon Press Ltd, 1999.

[2.]:  Marlene Dumas, ‘Name No Names’ (Extract), Centre Pompidou, Paris, August 2001.  In: Dominic Van Den Bloogerd/Barbara Bloom/Mariucca Casidio/Ilararia Bonacossa, ‘Marlene Dumas’, London, Phaidon Press Ltd, 1999.

Ben Wheatley: 'A Field In England'

Seeking both cinematic entertainment and some distraction from the toothache and neuralgia that currently plague me, I wandered along to Leicester’s Phoenix media centre yesterday to watch director Ben Wheatley’s latest film, ‘A Field In England’. [1.].  The film very much reflects the multi-platform media saturation of our current culture, having been released simultaneously on TV, DVD and digital download as well as in cinemas.  However, it also harks back to an era before ‘experimental’, self consciously arty, alternative film degenerated into a series of predictable slacker tropes, (that I sometimes think of as the Sundown effect).  Lacking a TV, and pushing up against my Broadband limit, I opted to view it in a big, dark room.

Director, Ben Wheatley

The film itself is a perplexing period tale, set in the English Civil War, in which four mismatched deserters escape a battle by literally passing through a hedgerow into the parallel reality of a large field beyond, where the remaining action unfolds.  Tricked by one of their number into the clutches of a psychopathic ‘alchemist,’ they are first drugged with  hallucinogenic mushrooms, then forced to dig for treasure, before acting out a graphically violent denouement.

Critical opinion seems divided over the film’s merits and I’ve no idea if it’s really a piece of brilliant filmmaking or a heap of self indulgent tosh but I’ve always been a sucker for this kind of thing and enjoyed it immensely.  Like most of my favourite films it resembled a dream or hallucination, (quite literally in the powerful trippy sequences), full of perplexing events and inexplicable behavior but also layered with multiple potential interpretations.  To criticise it in terms of believability or formal cinematic conventions seems as pointless as applying waking logic to a resonant dream.

(L to R): Richard Glover (Friend), Reece Shearsmith  (Whitehead), Michael
Smiley (O'Neill), Ryan Pope (Cutler), Peter Ferdinando (Jacob)

Reece Shearsmith Makes A Point As Whitehead

My only real objection on such pedantic grounds would be that the fungi ingested resemble field mushrooms rather than the ‘magic’ variety.  However, as they may also represent an immense ‘fairy ring’ into which the protagonists have blundered, it’s possible that the field represents a supernatural realm as much as a psychedelic arena.  As such, it may stand for an ancient, occult Britishness, far removed from the Christian factionalisation and worldly concerns of the skirmish they abandon.  Judged on these grounds, ‘A Field In England’ may certainly join other landmarks of ‘Dark Britannia’ (‘The Wicker Man’, ‘Children Of The Stones’, etc.) as a cult favourite.

Whitehead Is Driven Around The Field In Search Of Treasure...

...Then Takes A Completely Different Kind Of Trip

As usual these days, the film evokes numerous clear influences and I was reminded, amongst other things, of both Tarkovski’s ‘Stalker’ and the now, oft-derided films of Peter Greenaway, (particularly in the scenes where the actors are frozen in static, formally posed tableaux).  I was also reminded of a time, in the mid to late eighties, when I regularly visited Bristol’s Watershed Cinema to watch similarly self-indulgent, yet thought provoking, films.  For a time I happily went at least once a week, both in company and alone.

Michael Smiley As O'Neill Gets Back To The Land

As I waited in the dark for the film to start yesterday, I realised I was amongst only a handful of other viewers, several other of whom were also solitary male ‘enthusiasts’ of a certain age.  I appear to have unwittingly joined a group for whom I’ve devised the acronym ‘MALEs’, (‘Middle Aged Lone Eccentrics’), i.e. The kind of guys who when not watching art films, you also see obsessively photographing torn posters, derelict buildings and road junctions.

Richard Glover Digs In As Friend

Anyway, 'A Field In England' is one of the more memorable new films I've seen in a while, (during a period when many others have seriously disappointed).  It seems I can't see the dentist for another week so need to go now to find another painkiller...



[1.]:  'A Field In England, Dir: Ben Wheatley, Rook Films/Film4 Productions, 2013

Iain Sinclair: 'London Orbital'

I’ve just finished reading ‘London Orbital’ [1.] by Iain Sinclair, something that is rather overdue.  Sinclair is a leading contemporary light of literary Psychogeography and indeed, the first writer who encapsulated properly, a range of attitudes to the urban environment I had previously felt but never really identified formally.  I’ve read and enjoyed much of Sinclair’s work over the years so it really is quite shameful that it’s taken me this long to get round to reading this one.

Iain Sinclair

Sinclair is primarily, (although not exclusively), regarded as a chronicler of London.  First published in 2002, ‘London Orbital’ represents his attempt to investigate the capital, from the outside in as it were, by walking around its perimeter, as delineated by the course of the M25 orbital motorway.  It is therefore, not only a high point of recent Pychogeographical writing, but also an exemplar of the ‘Edgelands’ theme that emerged a few years ago [2.], and to which I have alluded here several times.

Sinclair shared his series of contiguous walks with a number of companions, including artist Renchi Bicknell, fellow writer Kevin Jackson, photographer Marc Atkins, multi-disciplinary conceptualist Bill Drummond and noted Psychogeographical filmmakers Chris Petit and Patrick Keiller.  The project also included a number of interviews, most notably with that other genre Godfather J.G. Ballard.  Interestingly, Sinclair’s orbit can be seen as joining the dots between Ballard’s beloved Heathrow hinterlands and motor-erotic road fixations [3.]; Petit’s road movie sensibilities [4.]; Keiller’s cinematic portraits of London, Suburbia and the hidden countryside beyond [5.]; and indeed, Karl Hyde/Kieran Evans’ more recent Essex-based music and film collaboration [6.].  All concerned bring their own particular outlook on the territory traversed and to the general themes that emerge through Sinclair’s account.

Amongst these themes are: the huxterish residential redevelopment of London’s old chain of peripheral mental asylums; the secrecy of various military-industrial and government institutions; the relationship of suburban and dormitory living with the enduring English myth of rural idyll; the role of the motorway in suburbanising East End crime; the blank consumerism of Thatcher-Blair’s Britain epitomised in the Bluewater and Lakeside shopping complexes; and the empty spectacle of London’s celebration of the Millennium.  The much derided Millennium Dome becomes a notional centre point for the circular march, which thus becomes, not only an examination of London’s fringe, but of the state of the capital/Capital, (and by extension, the nation), at the turn of the century.

M23 Arial View

Bluewater Shopping Centre, West Thurrock, Essex

As ever, what I value most in Sinclair’s work, (and the Psychogeog. approach generally), are the connections made between territory travelled and observed; the historical/artistic/cultural associations discovered in specific locations; the socio-political, (often satirical), reading of landscapes; more or less believable and consciously acknowledged conspiracy theories; and highly personal responses, resulting in the overall construction of a multi-facetted, often highly subjective, reaction to Geography.  This all divides between new revelations and the author’s existing pre-occupations, and the way they feed into the other.

Queen Elizabeth Bridge, M25 Crossing Of The River Thames, Dartford, Kent

Proctor & Gamble Soap & Detergent Factory, West Thurrock, Essex

The skill that Sinclair brings to bear on this process is beautifully encapsulated in the passages that conflate Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ [7.] with the contemporary oil tanks and storage facilities of Purfleet and West Thurrock; the intersection of motorway and river at Dartford; and the vampirical predations of developers and property brokers.

“Vampires, according to Stoker’s mythology, have problems crossing water… The Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, scarlet lights at dawn and dusk, is a ladder for vampires.  A ladder on which blood is turned into oil.  And back again.  A motorcycle outrider with BLOOD on his vest.” [8.]

“Storage is the major downriver industry: human, industrial, retail landfill.  Petrol stations all over the south-east are supplied from Purfleet, night-tankers roll in convoy from the gate.  Dracula laid down the paradigm; fifty heavy coffins of Transylvanian earth to be distributed across London.” [9.]

“The Count recognizes that property speculation, an adequate portfolio, begins in the badlands: Purfleet, Mile End New Town, Bermondsey.  Dracula anticipates the boys in braces, Thatcher’s blue-nosed sharks, Blair’s private/public arrangements.  Buy toxic.  Buy cheap: Madhouses, old chapels, decaying abbeys.  Then make your play: storage and distribution.” [10.]

Esso Oil Storage Facility, Purfleet,  Essex

I polished off ‘London Orbital’ in only a few, (admittedly, leisure-filled), days and would heartily recommend it, as both a portal to Sinclair’s other writing, and an enjoyable, highly readable example of all the Psychogeographic palaver in general.  Now I really need to watch the filmed companion piece Sinclair made with Chris Petit and J.G. Ballard, as soon as possible [11.].

[1.]:  Iain Sinclair, ‘London Orbital, A Walk Around The M25’, London, Penguin Books Ltd., 2003, (First Published: Granta, 2002).

[2.]:  Most clearly identified in: Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts, ‘Edgelands, Journeys Into England’s True Wilderness’, London, Jonathan Cape, 2011.

[3.]:  J G Ballard, ‘Crash’, London, Jonathan Cape, 1973, and: ‘Concrete Island’, London, Jonathan Cape, 1974.

[4.]:  Most fully realised in: Christopher Petit (Dir.), ‘Radio On’, UK/Germany, Road Movies Filmproduktion/BFI, 1979.

[5.]:  Patrick Keiller (Dir.), ‘London’, UK, Konink/BFI/Channel 4, 1994; ‘Robinson In Space’, UK, Konink/BFI/BBC Films, 1997; ‘Robinson In Ruins’, UK, Arts & Humanities Research Council/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation/Royal College of Art/BFI, 2010.

[6.]:  Karl Hyde, ‘Edgeland’, and: Karl Hyde & Kieran Evans (Dir.), ‘The Outer Edges, (Edgeland Version)’, Universal Music Operations Ltd., 2013

[7.]:  Bram Stoker, ‘Dracula’, London, Archibald Constable & Co., 1897

[8.], [9.], [10.]:  Iain Sinclair, ‘London Orbital, A Walk Around The M25’, London, Penguin Books Ltd., 2003, (First Published: Granta, 2002).

[11.]:  Iain Sinclair & Chris Petit (Dirs.), ‘London Orbital’, UK, Illuminations, 2004

In The Zone

In a hazardous world, our guardians delineate zones of greater safety and exclusion.

Employing erasures and amendments, they remain vigilant to shifting situations.

Beware though; not even they can shield us from the power of an unrelenting sun.