Article: Medicine for Body and Soul
Posted on | December 28, 2009 | No Comments
Art of England has published a short piece of mine. It is some commentary on a conference in London on arts and health. Art of England, issue number 66.
New Work: to December 2009
Posted on | December 15, 2009 | No Comments
These pieces are in a new series called Reflections, and explore inner thoughts and reflective moods.
One piece evokes a walk I had in my local area in rural Kent. The sun was setting and the fields were dotted with a regular pattern of hay bales, some cylinders, some cubes. The sun was hitting them just so. All was really peaceful, and the sky was that blue/red you get just before the sun sets.
The others are ideas I keep coming back to.
Please click here for the new work.
Fool of Saatchi
Posted on | December 8, 2009 | No Comments
How silly is the BBC television show on contemporary art, “School of Saatchi” that is currently running in the UK? Very. And I like contemporary art, too.
This programme, made without apparent irony and with the ‘famously reclusive’ Charles Saatchi as host-in-absentia, borders on the absurd; no, it is absurd. But it is not as absurd as the mysterious excretions passed off as examples of contemporary art.
Saatchi’s absence is pretentious, and just adds fuel to the view that he probably has no idea what art is anymore than his minions who speak for him (how do they know what he is thinking. Ah, so very pharoahesque. And of course, we who write about this are just boosting his Google rating; my how we have been sucked in!
What is also worrying is that there is a small clutch of artistic advisors along for the ride. These folk, who one assumes must know better, mumble suspiciously vacuous arti-babble at the contestants, participants, whatever they are to be called, produce. Their apparent incoherence is testimony enough that this programme must be a joke, and perhaps Saatchi’s obviously staged absence is just further evidence. But they are all in on this, and no-one is going to blow the whistle. I suspect that the programme will be reworked into some video wall installation, an allegorical retake on itself.
I was delighted that one of them (no names please) had a reflective moment. Was one of the participants having it on with us (why not, she knows a postmodern joke when she sees one, even if she hasn’t a clue what came before postmodernism), or was another ever going to be an artist we might recognise (probably not, they appear to take themselves far too seriously)? But hoping that the earth would open up and swallow this or that offending individual was groundless, as the show then moved on to the breathless review of the work itself, as though what they had produced had any merit. This is clearly not be ‘last artist standing’.
One piece had an early depiction as ‘lame’, but the ‘artist’ in true incomprehension, could not image a work of art being lame. I agree, but then you have to agree you have a work of art in the first place, and therein lies the rub. Pity about the waste of food, too. As for using the inability to get a drill to work properly as a cue to asserting a new artistic insight, well, please, we’re not that gullible, yet this was seen as evidence of creativity — ah no, there is serendipity and there is not getting the drill to work properly — the challenge is knowing the difference.
I’m sure much of the academic art community will laud the programme, (pointing out how many of their students are in the programme, for instance), but all this will do is further undermine the evidence that these programmes of study actually produce artists of any merit. This is to be lamented of course, as academic art is about as interesting as a jar of flies (ooops, hasn’t someone done that!). Hmmm. Anyway…
The ‘artists’ seem good with tools, though, and have obviously learned from Hirst about using other people to do your own art work. Pity that they all seem quite clueless.
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Gallery Review: Périphéries
Posted on | December 1, 2009 | No Comments
Brigitte Coulombe is an artist in Northern Ontario, Canada. Her work in this show are semi-abstracted minimalistic interpretations of Lake Nipissing. Floating free on the wall, they are unframed. 
This show was held in the La Galerie Du Nouvel-Ontario in Sudbury during November, and while there I had an opportunity for a look. These pieces are quite stripped back in terms of content, so one is forced to imagine a great deal. They are “semi”-abstract as the artist herself sees the lines across her work as an explicit interpretation of the horizon, but at the same time, the absence of a point of reference, does leave one floating free, like the work hanging on the wall.
I quite like these works, partly because they are large and so have a real presence, but also for her stripped back use of colour, and her effort to achieve this lack of place association, despite the works being of a specific place. People who have experienced snow on a frozen lake, and the impression of the horizon, will grasp these paintings quickly.
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Article: Hinge-point: the social media and technology revolution in the art world
Posted on | December 1, 2009 | No Comments
Art of England has published a short piece of mine looking at the impact on creativity in art from the wider use of (mainly) digital technology and social media. Art of England, issue number 65.
Article: Flowers are not the only late-bloomers
Posted on | November 9, 2009 | No Comments
Art of England has published a short piece of mine on older, and late-blooming artists. Art of England, issue number 64.
Gallery Review: Cases
Posted on | October 31, 2009 | No Comments
Cases is an iPod video installation recently showcased in Toronto, bringing 10 artists together to explore the theme of contemporary society’s obsession with health.
The visitor is confronted with a room with iPods, mounted at head height, streaming a video, and a headset for the sound.
The artists and their works:
- Janet Bellotto, A Collection of See and See
- Paula Braswell, Pills
- Jean Bridge, Disposible Membrane
- Laura Cunningham and Elaine Whittaker, Teratoma
- Lynne Heller, Pillflower World
- Joan Kaufman, Paraplegia
- Margie Kelk, Zen Calligraphy
- Ram Smocha, Hairy Up
- Jane Martin, Museum Mexico: cakes and over-the-counter body parts in various shades of pink.
Without singling out any one, they were thoughtful and provocative, particularly because of my own interest in health.
I look forward to viewing them again, perhaps on the web, somewhere. Cases is very good and needs a congenial home.
Cases was on show at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto, during October 2009.
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Physics Envy: or why art theory isn’t
Posted on | September 3, 2009 | No Comments
The September issue of Frieze art magazine is all about ‘theory’ or what appears to pass for theory in the art world. The whole issue reads like some undergraduate magazine or papers prepared by graduate students with too much time on their hands; political polemic blends with obscure language, which even core Frankfurt-school-istas would find hard to follow. All this is to be regretted, as underlying this enterprise is an important problem, namely what are the theoretical, as opposed to philosophical, underpinnings of art itself. Unfortunately, what might have been an informative examination of the problems of theory and art is really just another barrage of intemperate criticism. But is anyone listening or is this just so much solipsism? What’s an intellectual to do?
Physics envy is the desire to have the theoretical rigour that characterises physics. Many will reject this in the art world, but why else would they confuse theory with philosophy if they didn’t see theory as bestowing rigour, logic, structure, and deep meaning? The whole issue of Frieze waffled back and forth between the two terms, citing as theorists people who wouldn’t recognise the word, and citing theorists whose theories lack any basis for verification or falsification. The leap from philosophy to theory is a big one, taken by science years ago when it ceased to be called ‘natural philosophy’. Politics got rebranded ‘political science’, and economics has always had ‘physics envy’. What now for art?
The other distressing theme running through the issue is the Western-centric mind-set; they are still fighting the tiresome battle between Continental philosophy and Anglo (sic) analytical philosophy. In this myopic battle they miss wider philosophical progress. Readers may enjoy the challenges ranging from Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature to VS Ramachandran & William Hirstein, The Science of Art: a neurological theory of aesthetic experience, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6(6-7, 1999):15-51.
What we have instead is writing on the “theory of artists’ minds”, and less about culture, and even less about art itself. But perhaps cultural studies sounds more scientific, (physics envy?) and less, well, less philosophical, and its practitioners more legitimate (in the sense Habermas would use it).
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Tu m’: me pense que…
Posted on | August 10, 2009 | No Comments
- Image via Wikipedia
“Tu m’” by Marcel Duchamp is a good example of how this artist played with our sensibilities. Karl Gerstner, in his Puzzle Upon Puzzle, which examines Tu m’ in exquisite detail is an example of an analytical critique that may just miss the point.
I read this book through with great interest, as the author constructs page by page, the Tu m’ layer by layer.
However, from an artist who disdained art itself, we find a game being played with the viewer. My guess is that this painting is, partly as Gerstner suggests, about perception. But the real analysis must be done in 3D — we actually should think of this like a blueprint for an object. The clue I think actually lies in the bolt in the middle. If you get this misoriented in space, all is wrong. It is not flat to the painting plan as G. suggests. Indeed, if the painting is perspective-neutral, then no one fixed point of reference is available to the viewer. Excitingly, of course, this is the point that relativity makes about the relativity of frames of reference.
The painting was designed for a specific location on a wall, hence its size, and that suggests it may have been intended to be a projection into the room space itself. That there are shadows from outside the frame of the painting hint that they are ‘in’ the room. A projecting 3D object would naturally interact with objects in the room in this way.
Or perhaps it is an anamorph of sorts (Craig Adcock has commented on this)? Keeping in mind the period of the painting (1918) and the scientific zeitgeist of the period, this may be seen as a play on the same scientific roots of cubism, that is, of course, relativity theory.
Whether the title itself is solipsistic, or self-referential, usually adding a verb so the title to become “you bore me” or something else, is another matter, unless the ‘you’ is art, and the painting is the anti-painting made form. But there are many ways of forming a sentence in French in ways that use this partial construction. Perhaps the verb is more about the passing of a form of perception than an attitude itself. For the period, too, the personal use of ‘tu’ suggests intimacy with the perceptions involved, so they must be ‘mine’ in some form. It could also be “tu m’appelles”, avoiding the cynicism and embracing the possibility that this is less a rejection than a hinge-point for Duchamp. The ultimate label. Or perhaps ‘tu’ is the patron of the work, and Duchamp is saying that she “gets it”.
As Fermat might say, the rest is left for the reader to work out.
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New Work: to July 2009
Posted on | July 10, 2009 | No Comments
New Work.
Themes explored:
- some supremacist-inspired work, working toward a visualisation of a superstring;
- three pieces that are more experimental works, with two colours only;
- three pieces inspired by a photo trip to a steel mill, the images evoke the sense of heat, the functional colouring of the buildings, the flames;
- a simple yellow ground abstract landscape.
Please click here for the new work.
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