tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24814410656827208572024-03-12T21:11:53.605-07:00Christiana SpensWriting, Art & Academics Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-54672287323437793822014-03-06T08:19:00.000-08:002014-03-06T08:21:28.028-08:00Richard Hamilton's Paintings of the Troubles<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<b>Richard Hamilton<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
Tate Modern, London<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US">13 February 2014 – 26 May 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<b>The retrospective of one of the founding artists of Pop Art, Richard Hamilton, inhabits eighteen rooms at Tate Modern, detailing his sixty-year career, and in so doing, a history of post-war pop culture and British public perception of the world. Whether impressed by Hamilton’s exceptional and innovative techniques in painting and collage, or curious to see an original take on modern British history, the exhibition will satisfy and fascinate most who attend. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
From early exhibition designs of the 1950s, epic paintings of Mick Jagger and Tony Blair, and a print of the famous, ‘Just what it is that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? (1956) – to the wide range of subject matter that the artist considered in his work, everything that filtered through to pop culture and awareness has some part to play in the exhibition. I was particularly drawn to Hamilton’s overtly political art, such as <i>Treatment Room </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(1984), an installation that shows a hospital bed wired up to a TV screen flashing images of Margaret Thatcher, and </span><i>Shock and Awe </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(2010), depicting Tony Blair as a grimacing cowboy. The Kent State shootings are used as subject matter in some of Hamilton’s last paintings, and, more subtly, the assassination of President Kennedy is featured on a TV screen in </span><i>Interior II </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(1964), in a space otherwise filled with an Eames chair and a woman fashionably dressed, and contrasting to the rest of the painting in being shown in black and white rather than colour – disorientated as well as focussed upon – with politics and tragedy as something going on in the background of modern life.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lFCvcOn0hZU/UxifrG_6ucI/AAAAAAAACt4/CBUROA4iTC4/s1600/T06775_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lFCvcOn0hZU/UxifrG_6ucI/AAAAAAAACt4/CBUROA4iTC4/s1600/T06775_10.jpg" height="313" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
Hamilton’s paintings that concern the conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, however, are not subtle at all, even if in the scope of the rest of his work, and this exhibition, in a sense they still show politics as something going on in the background. Even the fact that Hamilton’s paintings of the Troubles show individuals (or rather, caricatures) of the conflict, rather than make any effort to communicate the reality of a situation that bordered on civil war, and involved thousands of people across many decades, is to deny the political grounding of the situation, and to focus instead on the surface stereotypes, misconceptions and superficial dramatization, as routinely put across in the media that Hamilton must have been inspired by.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
In so doing, Hamilton’s paintings of the Troubles, especially the triptych, <i>Citizen, State and Subject</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> of the late 1980s and early 1990s, are very simplistic, and shallow in their understanding of the subject matter. In these works, Hamilton presents three stereotypical images of the groups involved, reducing a long and extremely complex armed struggle between the British state, the Republican movement and the Unionist movement in Northern Ireland, to a sort of trailer for an action movie.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gSfHQHsJjA4/Uxifs1g2dAI/AAAAAAAACuI/XfPJcvydM04/s1600/T03980_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gSfHQHsJjA4/Uxifs1g2dAI/AAAAAAAACuI/XfPJcvydM04/s1600/T03980_10.jpg" height="313" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
In <i>The Citizen</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, (1981 – 1983), for example, Hamilton represents the Republican movement with a single figure: a ‘blanket man’ - a bearded prisoner protesting the state giving IRA detainees criminal rather than political status. In that protest, prisoners refused to wear prison clothes, or to wash or cooperate in any way with the prison guards, protesting the humiliation they had been forced to endure by smearing excrement on the prison walls and, eventually, going on hunger strikes also. To reduce that situation, and the whole conflict, to this slightly ridiculous image, (and a few other similar images of IRA prisoners, who all look alike) is extremely misleading. Firstly, no effort whatsoever is taken to put the situation, or this vapid looking individual, into any context, political or otherwise. One would not guess, from this, that not all Republicans were prisoners, or in the Provisional IRA (the paramilitary wing), rather than in the political party Sinn Fein, or one of the other Republican groups. Secondly, it is difficult to think, from this picture that the Republicans were real people at all, given the caricature of the prisoner, with a blurred face, gormless expression, and somehow effeminate character, with the swirling patterns on the wall, the long hair curled neatly at the bottom, and the prison blanket looking like a shawl.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zsuUwfYqcHI/UxifvHwyZDI/AAAAAAAACuQ/QGG_joafLzQ/s1600/P77492_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zsuUwfYqcHI/UxifvHwyZDI/AAAAAAAACuQ/QGG_joafLzQ/s1600/P77492_10.jpg" height="320" style="cursor: move;" width="217" /></a><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
The painting in this series depicting the British state (<i>The state, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">1993) shows another stereotype: a young, fearful soldier, looking rather innocent (the pale, mime artist face paint, perhaps) in spite of the machine gun strapped to him. As with </span><i>The Citizen, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">the subject of the painting looks like a doll, in a puppet show version of The Armed Struggle. Also in this vein, </span><i>The Subject, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(1988 – 1990), presents a Loyalist in the theatrical pomp of his marching outfit, managing to show the Unionist side as King-like and upstanding, despite the fact that this faction, too, was armed, and carried out at least as many bombings and murders as the Provisional IRA (given that it was a conflict fought by two sides – three, if the British state are considered separate to the Loyalists, which is itself ambiguous, given that the Loyalists and the state infiltrated and collaborated with one another; it was not a clear-cut conflict). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
Had Hamilton wanted to give a more balanced view of the situation, he might have also used these images and ideas: the Unionists planting bombs, the Republicans marching, the Civil Rights movement protesting peacefully, the various massacres that went on at the hands of all groups, including the British army. The spies infiltrating domestic lives, the police standing back as Catholics were burnt out of their homes, and the way in which Republicans took refuge in Paris, went to training camps in Libya, and trained FARC in Colombia. There was so much going on, and many more people involved, than these three stereotypes. Furthermore, to represent them as three distinct individuals seems strange: these groups were surely divided, but conflict (and peace processes) are about integration, clashing personalities and ideas, and entanglement as much as they are about distance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lgXOnWxd7kQ/UxifqO8N78I/AAAAAAAACtw/9omQec2NqdY/s1600/T06774_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lgXOnWxd7kQ/UxifqO8N78I/AAAAAAAACtw/9omQec2NqdY/s1600/T06774_10.jpg" height="316" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
Hamilton has depicted the conflict in Northern Ireland, then, in the most simplistic and misleading terms: why? If we understand Hamilton’s paintings and art more generally as a history of how the public saw the world, then these works make more sense. He was depicting what the public saw, how they understood the conflict, and implicitly, how the conflict was communicated and depicted through propaganda. These are the players in a political spectacle and propaganda performance, not the reality. As with his other paintings on pop culture, we see a montage of what people saw through television and magazines, and newspapers, which is obviously artificial by nature.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Hamilton’s work, therefore, is interesting and valuable (aside from his technical brilliance) as a visual history of what the public saw and how political events (and culture more generally) were understood. It is a testament to how domestic and international events, in politics and otherwise, were over-simplified and distorted by the media and public consuming it, to become mere entertainment. Whether Hamilton truly understood this or also went in for the interpretations of events that he witnessed via the media, is unclear, but whether intentionally or not, he has left an artistic legacy that is also a treasure trove of primary historical sources, and a history of how the British public saw the world.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c2q6PUpz5Vs/Uxifr1JJvoI/AAAAAAAACuA/EscYWEHJ0bM/s1600/T05837_10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c2q6PUpz5Vs/Uxifr1JJvoI/AAAAAAAACuA/EscYWEHJ0bM/s1600/T05837_10.jpg" height="318" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-22105399098555080172014-03-04T08:14:00.002-08:002014-03-04T08:14:46.115-08:00Paris notes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u-BepCIbapQ/UxX7zRIcaII/AAAAAAAACtQ/gxTLSQ9sKZ0/s1600/photo-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u-BepCIbapQ/UxX7zRIcaII/AAAAAAAACtQ/gxTLSQ9sKZ0/s1600/photo-1.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WKid-WXQVw4/UxX71Sobl4I/AAAAAAAACtY/0K0GEZmCJWA/s1600/photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WKid-WXQVw4/UxX71Sobl4I/AAAAAAAACtY/0K0GEZmCJWA/s1600/photo.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R_17dS12mDc/UxX73enaBNI/AAAAAAAACtg/s-inLeBT_9Y/s1600/tumblr_n1x5rlSPGI1rm4p1jo4_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R_17dS12mDc/UxX73enaBNI/AAAAAAAACtg/s-inLeBT_9Y/s1600/tumblr_n1x5rlSPGI1rm4p1jo4_1280.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-5286231148896774022014-02-26T12:46:00.000-08:002014-02-26T12:42:43.318-08:00Henri Cartier-Bresson The Centre Pompidou, Paris 12 February – 9 June 2014<div style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<!--StartFragment-->
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Henri Cartier-Bresson <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The Centre Pompidou, Paris<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">12
February – 9 June 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<b>Approaching
the vast exhibition at the Centre Pompidou this Spring, with waiting times of
over an hour and rooms packed with people looking closely and intently at the
many photographs, films and paintings on show, it is clear that Cartier-Bresson
is a much loved figure in the capital of his country. Highly respected by the
people as well as the critics, there is an interestingly serious, even studious
atmosphere to the rooms, one that is as sombrely respectful as it is excited. Capturing
over 500 of Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moments’, the exhibition is almost
overwhelmingly substantial and worthwhile. After only one room, I am certain I
will revisit many times over the next few months that it is on. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
sense of nostalgia exists not only in relation to the images of times now past,
but also in connection to the ideals with which photography, and especially
photojournalism, were tied up. Each phase of Cartier-Bresson’s life and career
(which forms the structure of the exhibition) notes a significant part of his
vision. The first phase (1926 to 1935) is concerned with Surrealism, and is
presumably as good a place as any to start a photographic voyage. As Susan Sontag
wrote in <i>On Photography: </i><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“Surrealism lies at the heart of the
photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a
reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived
by natural vision.” (Sontag, 1979, 52) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By
starting with Surrealism, however, Cartier-Bresson provided a foundation of
ideas and images that make his later photographer seem somehow more ‘real’ for
being implicitly compared to these early photographs of entangled bodies and
limbs, grotesque forms, and confusing effects. Although there are some
interesting consistencies, and some later images retain the complex patterns
and ideas of the earlier, there is nevertheless is clear shift between what
looks like a dream, and what looks like ‘reality’ (a clever trick of
presentation, at the very least). This was in line with the fate of Surrealism
itself, which hardly survived the war. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
second phase, 1936 to 1946, was the beginning of Cartier-Bresson’s political
era, when he worked for the Communist press and traveled widely. From 1947 to
1970, he created the cooperative Magnum Photos. From this brief history, but
more importantly from the exhibition, and the many rooms of very different
styles and phases, it is clear that, “there was not just one but several
Cartier-Bressons”. (Centre Pomidou, 2014) What emerges most dramatically,
however, is the sense of history recorded (perhaps because the exhibition is
after all a retrospective and the photographs presented chronologically). Not
one history, but several.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
The clearest,
perhaps, is the history of France (and its relation to other countries): a
careful, studied, and seemingly impassioned one. It is a subjective one, of
course – a history of what Cartier-Bresson saw, as much as what happened, but
that is important in itself. As Mitchell explains: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
“Every history
is really two histories, the story of what happened and the story of the
perception of what happened, its representation in verbal and visual
narratives, punctuated by iconic moments...” (Mitchell, 2012, 161) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
Cartier-Bresson’s
history is interesting also because it is a dominant narrative, or perception,
of French history and people, partly because of a political and public will for
that to be so. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“A photograph … cannot make a dent
in public opinion unless there is an appropriate context of feeling and
attitude.” Photos of Vietnam had an effect in America, but only because there
was already an anti-war sentiment. Journalists felt supported in their efforts.
But there was little similar feeling around the Korean War, so there weren’t
the same kinds of photos published. (Sontag, 1979, 17-18)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
study the Cartier-Bresson legacy, and the enthusiasm of the people seeing the
exhibition, is to pick up on that public mood, and the revived identification
with the images and history that he depicted many decades ago. At the
exhibition, there are crowds around “Libération de Paris, France” (1944) for
example, which shows a chaos of flags, barricades being taken down, and shaky,
out of focus snapshots of Paris, still damaged with rubble and confused
soldiers. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
There is
laughter around the photos of the Coronation of King George VI in London
(1937), showing the ordinary Londoners in curious states of both interest and
alienation: a child screaming on his father’s shoulders; a drunk or asleep man
passed out in a bed of newspapers, below scaffolding on which rows of people
look out for the King. The camera, at all times, is pointed towards the people
rather than the new King. (Perhaps this is a very French or Socialist
perspective of England – which, according to the laughter, is no past
sentiment.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
There are
startling shots of wartime France, including Nazi rallies and bizarrely forced
cheerfulness of wartime films (with a full audience), are strangely moving and
sad, especially with titles such as, “The Amazing New Film from Spain: Return
to Life” – with a note explaining that the film is an “aid to Spanish
Democracy”. The political context seems oddly familiar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
In the
photographs taken during a year in Africa meanwhile, (shortly after his
military service ended), he shows children playing in the street, fishermen,
rowers, and everyday life along the Ivory Coast – with the contradiction of
‘everyday’ and ‘sublime’ that characterises the best of Cartier-Bresson’s
shots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
These “decisive
moments” affect a real intensity in the exhibition – hundreds of brilliant,
piercing shots, fascinating in so many ways. The experimental, Surrealist
forms, the exploratory series of Africa, the tragic-comic scenes of British
society… Time slips away with each new photo. All that has gone – ideals,
people, politics, and even a mood of innovation and revolution that existed
when the photos were taken. Now, many decades later, they seem like sudden
flashbacks to another time – strangely familiar (partly because some of the
images are familiar, and others refer to familiar events) as well as strange. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #181818; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“All photographs are
memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or
thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this
moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
(Susan Sontag, 1979, 16) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
Perhaps this is
the gentler side of voyeurism. To walk through hundreds of photographs by
Cartier-Bresson is to walk through his life, and that of France. As a visitor,
somewhere between tourist, student and immigrant, it is to stumble into a world
that is within view but will always be someone else’s, which is perhaps the
essence of all photography. It feels particularly so with these photographs.
There is such a sense of life and grounding in them, of discovery and
enlightenment, that it is difficult not to think, at times, that you have lived
in these moments too. And that is what makes Cartier-Bresson such a brilliant
and accomplished photographer: he has opened up a world of people, ideas and
life that are so clear and direct that empathy with them is tangible and
unforgettable. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
Sometimes,
people still consider photography as a secondary art. Even Cartier-Bresson said
that the camera did everything, rather than himself. Perhaps he was exposing
the art of photography by saying something so absurd, since his vision and
attention to other people is present and discernable, even to the most cynical
critic. It would be difficult to see this exhibition, anyway, to witness so
many frames of evidence of that spark that drives people to announce “this is
art!” – That magic, or empathy, or brilliance in a “decisive moment” to use the
photographer’s language. To see so many people intently admiring and engaging
with rooms and rooms of black and white photography is outstanding in itself.
Though there is a nostalgia that comes from seeing old ideals and times now
gone, the exhibition is fresh evidence, nevertheless, that the effects and
power of Cartier-Bresson’s vision is alive and well. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Bibliography: <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 21.3pt; text-indent: -21.3pt;">
Sontag, Susan (1979): <i>On Photography. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Penguin Books. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 21.3pt; text-indent: -21.3pt;">
Mitchell, W. J. T. (2012): <i>Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to
the Present,</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><b> </b></span>Chicago &
London: The University of Chicago Press<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 21.3pt; text-indent: -21.3pt;">
Centre Pompidou (2014): Notes in the exhibition<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;">
</span>Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-12933365836733389412014-02-26T12:42:00.001-08:002014-02-26T12:42:13.453-08:00Rufus Wainwright: Vibrate: the Best of Rufus Wainwright<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><b>[for Line of Best Fit]</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Rufus Wainwright: <i>Vibrate:
the Best of Rufus Wainwright <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Rufus Wainwright recently
turned forty, and as a bookend to his youth, has released a ‘Best Of’ that is
proud, passionate and impressively varied – as well as a fascinating collection
of stories. Perhaps because Wainwright’s songs seem often to be fragments of a
long memoir – and inspired by opera and musical theatre – his music is
particularly well suited to a ‘Best Of’, which joins up the strands of stories
and ideas in his various albums, to present a substantial and interesting
narrative of his life until now, and an expanse of expression and
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The classics are all there:
“Hallelujah”, “Poses”, “Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk”, “Out of the Game” and
“April Fools” – and with them a repertoire of familiar stories of love, charm,
heartfelt jadedness and occasional yearning. The album’s lead single, a playful
and sultry “Me and Liza” teases elements of Liza MInelli’s own sound and
attitude, with a music hall flourish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Going to A Town”, meanwhile, contains the melancholia and regret that
Wainwright sings of so charmingly and uniquely: “I’m so tired of you America /
Making my own way home… I’ve got a life to live, America” - there is both
regret and an underlying sense of unrequited love, or at least a complicated
one. Romantic and political, both the capital ‘R’ and little ‘r’ – he casts an
image of a disgraced and tragic ‘home’ that he returns to and leaves in
circles. The implications of absurd, homophobic moralizing and the idiocy at
its core - “Tell me, do you really think you go to hell for having loved? /
Tell me, enough of thinking everything you’ve done is good” – make a song about
home, belonging and rejection exceptionally moving and pertinent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The deluxe version of
Wainwright’s <i>Vibrate </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">contains two
discs of 34 tracks – combining songs from six studio albums as well as
seventeen rare and unreleased recordings, some live, some studio, and including
“Chic and Pointless” and “WWII” – both produced and the latter co-written by
Guy Chambers. This disc is perhaps the highlight of the album, especially for
fans or anyone who is familiar with the better known tracks of the first side.
A beautiful cover of “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” is also included on the second disc,
having been previously used in the soundtrack to the film “Leonard Cohen: I’m
Your Man”. There are many covers of this song, but Wainwright’s is somehow more
fresh and youthful than the rest. Other soundtrack songs released on <i>Vibrate
</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">include “La Complainte de la Butte”
(from Moulin Rouge) and “The Maker Makes” (from Brokeback Mountain). The latter
is especially charming and sad, and although he is not drunk on the record,
somehow it seems the kind of song a drunk and regretful person would sob at the
end of a wedding, full of whiskey and melodrama (in a good way). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In the best possible way, in
fact, this record is defiantly proud, and defiantly discontent. It is full of
songs of adoring and missing people, of being in love and in rage, and even if
one does not go for the overtly flamboyant and joyful tracks, there is
something quite moving about the album as a whole, and the stories wrapped up
in a familiar but increasingly intriguing, soulful voice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-85780250659000928972014-02-26T12:39:00.003-08:002014-02-26T12:39:42.243-08:00Art Turning Left: How Values Changed Making, 1789 - 2013<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Art Turning Left: How Values
Changed Making, 1789 - 2013<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Tate Liverpool<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">8
November 2013 – 2 February 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>On a single floor of Tate
Liverpool, 200 years of art influenced by the Left is exhibited: a big idea, in
a small space. And rather than take a Marxist or Socialist approach to curating
the show, the organisers seem to have gone with a more Anarchist approach. From
the Guerilla Girls’ posters, to Alan Kane’s touring art show, Folk Archive, and
from Bauhaus democratising pleasure, to David’s stabbed Marat of the French
Revolution, the exhibition is certainly an excellent opportunity for those with
prior knowledge of political art, or rather, some of the individually brilliant
works on show. But for anyone seeking to understand, in any depth or with any
coherence, how values changed making art, as the title suggests we will find
out, the show will likely confuse. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
“Art Turning Left” says little of
substance about art has changed, as there is no wider reference or intellectual
discussion about how left wing values contributed to art practice; rather, it
seems to exhibit token ‘protest art’ alongside aesthetic ideas about giving
artistic pleasure and access to the masses, which although all “Left” in some
respect, are extremely diverse ideas and approaches. There is no engagement
with politics, or the context of the works, which would better explain their
relevance and significance, and perhaps their connection to one another. This
is almost certainly because the subject is too big, and the works, though
exhibited thematically, are too diverse and unrelated to make sense of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Put another way, imagine an
exhibition entitled “Art Turning Conservative”: it would be completely
impossible to even conceive of an exhibition that would cover the Decadents of
the nineteenth century alongside portraits of the Royals and aristocrats, Nazi
propaganda, the whole Renaissance, most Medieval Art, and even the
self-confessed Thatcherite Tracey Emin. “Conservative Art” would likely be a
much bigger sample, but even “Leftist Art” is far too big and diverse to
include in one room. Even the whole of Tate Liverpool, or all of the Tates in
the UK, could not contain it, or explore it with enough breadth and depth. The
problem, in a sense, is assuming that “Leftist Art” is a minority or a niche,
even if many of the works of art in the History of Art have been in some
respect Conservative.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
“Socialist British Art” might be
niche enough to warrant a focussed, in-depth exhibition, but the whole Left
Wing is not. On that note, what of Communist art from the U.S.S.R? What about
modern Chinese art created under Mao? What of Latin American left wing art?
What of all the activist art from the 1950s, criticised and censored by
McCarthy? What of the protesting activism of 1960s and 1970s America? Where
these artists not influenced by the left? And what of political art from the
same period in South Africa, Ireland, Germany and Australia? Or the Russian
Revolution? What of all the other instances of revolutionary, or made-during-revolution
art work? Of course it would be near-impossible to exhibit a representative and
substantial exhibition that truly taught us about “Art Turning Left”, and that
is the problem: this exhibition sets out to do the impossible. Its ideals are
too great to ever be turned into a reality that makes sense. It is quite
frustrating, really, that the exhibition manages to embody the simplistic
criticisms so often thrown at the “Left” – and that is perhaps because it uses
a term than is so vague and wide-ranging that it ends up referring to nothing
in particular. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Another problem with the show is
the assumption that these artworks are influenced by the Left, rather than by
other factors such as Libertarianism (the Guerilla Girls could be considered
Libertarian, which is far removed from Communism or Socialism, usually),
globalisation, urbanisation, fashion, or reacting to the Right Wing (not
necessarily being Left, but just apolitical, or anarchic). Then there is the
problem of Capitalism: this exhibition is situated in a Capitalist society, and
many of the works created with that context, even as Left ideals may have been
in effect also. These works are bought and sold within that structure, and have
a price tag – they have not left the Capitalist art world, and so it is
doubtful how influential left wing politics have been on art, compared to any
other ideology. An artist may profess to be left wing, but the practice of
making art is naturally quite individualistic. Even the most collective art
groups are working within a structure that values them in terms of monetary
value and public image. Even if art is or wants to be Left, there is a
responsibility to acknowledge the many other layers of influence, ideology and
input. In not defining “Left” properly, the exhibition has inevitably fallen
against the criticism of inconsistency. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
There is no doubt that left wing
ideals have influenced some artists, some of whom are shown in this room. But
in lumping them into a single room with little explanation about how they were
influenced leaves us no more enlightened than before entering the room. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
As in a badly organised (if
extremely good-looking) protest, there is no central aim, no clear, collective
characteristics, no direction, and no serious understanding of politics. This
is unfortunate, because many of the works are valuable and exceptional as
individual artworks, but this brilliance is often obscured or cheapened in
being shown in a crowded room. People may have power simply in congregating in
a square; but artworks require a little more organisation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
One positive aspect of the show,
however, is the great range of talks, events, and educational initiatives that
are organised in parallel to “Art Turning Left”, however. If this show is
anything, it is a starting point in a conversation, and there is certainly
enough inspiring work in there to inspire those who attend. The exhibition
itself does not answer any questions, but it does provoke more questions, and
it has the structured education program to go with it. And that is where the
“Art Turning Left” saves itself: through education, discussion, and at the very
least, a means of attracting like-minded people into one space. It is tempting
to think that such a small space has been chosen so that the visitors may spill
onto the streets. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-22226905527781306732014-02-26T12:25:00.006-08:002014-02-26T12:34:18.424-08:00Cartier: Le Style et l’Histoire<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>Cartier: Le Style et L’Histoire</b></span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Le Grand Palais, Paris<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">04 December 2013 – 16 February
2014</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>At Christmas-time in Paris, the
city sparkles and glimmers on every street. Shop windows are lit up with
extravagant displays, selections of antique rings and costume jewellery shine
from boutiques next to patisseries and cafes displaying equally sumptuous
macarons, cakes and éclairs. Bon-bons are wrapped around gateaux like beads on
haute couture, fairy lights sprinkle over trees, and the Eiffel Tower, as
usual, glimmers on the horizon. The churches are lit with more candles than
usual, and the evening twilight filters through stories in stained glass. The
water of Canal St-Martin reflects crimson, green, blue and white lights from
the restaurants along the edge, and the Seine reflects the stars. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
This brilliant Parisian spectacle
makes the wintertime exhibition of Cartier’s history well-timed and yet
unexceptional. In the City of Lights, a collection of diamonds in a dark room –
however rare the rocks and however magnificent the surroundings – is only one
more corner in such an array of glamour and style that the richest details are
not necessarily the most fascinating. The most extravagant tiaras in the world
cannot compare to the stars or the moon reflected in the Seine. Diamonds may be
forever, but there is something rarer, somehow, in catching the transient
beauty of a Parisian night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
And yet the many reviewers of this
high-profile show have almost consistently sung its praises, especially in the
British media, as if swapping words for diamonds themselves, or as if they had
not experienced the rest of Paris at that time. Or, perhaps, diamonds really
are fascinating to many people. Certainly there were crowds in awe of the
various show-stealers: Elizabeth Taylor’s earrings from her third husband, and
the necklace given to her by Richard Burton; the tiara Catherine Middleton wore
for her wedding to Prince William; jewels made for Princess Grace of Monaco,
and a 23.6 ct Williamson pink diamond, set in a flower brooch for Queen
Elizabeth II. Wallis Simpson, too, had a number of pieces commissioned, when
exiled in Paris, and rejected by the British Royal family: an exquisite
scattering of amethysts, diamonds and sapphires; a brooch the shape of a flamingo,
a panther made of diamonds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It is all quite extravagant, and
yet writing about jewellery – or jewellery written about – is far more
attractive and exciting than the jewels themselves. The stories behind the gems
– the romances, inferiority complexes, the charisma of Elizabeth Taylor playing
to the camera in a gift from Burton – are entertaining and interesting. The
jewels, when displayed on black velvet, behind glass, with security guards, are
less so. They have become rocks again, devoid of glamour, which has never
really been wealth, but rather, spectacle. These are the tools of glamour, the
currency of elitism. It is hard to wander around such an exhibition without
feeling a slight bemusement, or even revulsion, at the crowds of ordinary people
bustling in front of these windows for a chance to glimpse a princess’s brooch,
or an oligarch’s ornament, or a movie star’s status symbol. For as much as
Cartier say and believe that this exhibition is interesting because of the
exquisite craft and design involved, or the natural dazzle of rare diamonds, it
seems far more obvious that it is an attraction because of the people who have
bought them. That is less an art exhibition, and more of a symptom of celebrity
obsession, one with a clear historical precedent. Here we have a history of
colonialism, slave labour, and oligarchy. Here we have monarchs spending money
on pink diamonds during wartime, and rejected socialites making themselves feel
better by buying from those royals’ jewellers. Wandering round, it is as if the
ghost of the Great Gatsby haunts the exhibition: all these jewels, all this
wealth, all this materialist desire, and for what? The designers of these
pieces were no doubt brilliantly talented, but those designs (more beautiful on
paper than realised in rocks, it must be said) have ended up mere mergers and
investments (and a huge PR stunt for Cartier) explained as art. The Grand
Palais is magnificent, with its Salon d’Honneur decorated with projections like
a kaleidoscopic Rorschach test, though in a way that upstages the jewels
themselves. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The most interesting part of the
exhibition, in my opinion, were those displays ignored by the crowds: the Art
Deco drawings and paintings, the costumes designed for the stage, and dresses
studded with jewels for the ballet, including Ida Rubinstein’s headdress in
“Scheherazade” – made of blue feathers, crimson and green stones, and pearls,
and inspired by the designs of the Ballet Russes. Most fascinating of all was
the bird made of jewels the colours of the French tricolour, in a golden cage,
which was Cartier’s protest against the Nazi occupation of Paris during WWII. A
caged bird, of course, where the jewels do not matter so much as the principle,
which on this case is a noble one, and a brave one, and a story that runs
deeper than the many marriages and romantic gestures that Cartier has cast in
diamonds through the ages. This single piece saves the exhibition, reminding us
that some things are worth saving, some things are precious and rare. Freedom
and spirit, whether expressed through diamonds or not, seem all the more
desirable having spent time in “Cartier: Le Style et L’Histoire”. Walking
outside into the Parisian night, the city aglow with its many natural (and not
so natural) lights and all that glitters, we can be in awe once again. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-85917424413593294772014-02-26T12:25:00.002-08:002014-02-26T12:34:50.999-08:00Philippe Parreno: Anywhere, Anywhere Out of the World<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>Philippe Parreno: Anywhere, Anywhere Out of the World</b></span><b> <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Palais de Tokyo, Paris<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">23
October 2013 – 12 January 2014</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>It is an opportunity most artists would dream of – a <i>carte blanche
</i></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>invitation
to transform the magnificent space of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Philippe
Parreno was given that dream job, and has risen to the occasion, with a
stirring and eerie exhibition that asserts his central vision of the exhibition
as an art form. Drawing on a long fascination and dialogue with architecture,
and using work he created recently and years ago, Parreno’s creation is a
successful synthesis of ideas and execution, of vision and style. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The visitors to the exhibition are given great consideration, and the
experience of seeing the exhibition is quite like entering an interactive
theatre or film rather than the static expectations of many contemporary art
exhibitions. While Paris has long been a centre of thoughtful and meticulous
curation, the idea of the exhibition as its own art form is nevertheless rare
outside of the city. Parreno’s exhibition takes the idea further than usual,
even by Parisian standards. His direction was central to the realization of the
exhibition, and the Palais de Toxyo’s faith in him and freedoms given to him,
are quite extraordinary and unusual. It is not inevitable that an
artist-centered direction would lead to a visitor-centred experience, but
Parreno and the Palais de Tokyo have managed to pull it off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“You always have to establish
a relation between the production of form and the exhibition of form. For me,
they are both totally dependent on each other. There is no object of art
without its exhibition.” Philippe Parreno. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The whole structure of the Palais de Tokyo’s building is reimagined and
reinterpreted, so that rooms are given new functions and the experience of the
artworks within those rooms is altered too. This process of reinterpreting the
building used the expertise of set designer Randall Peacock and sound designer
Nicolas Becker, to create a magnificent world within the Palais de Tokyo. Through
a spectacle combining objects, lights, music, and film, visitors to the
exhibition are absorbed into the exhibition’s world, and as in a theatre
production there is less a sense of choice or freedom and more a sort of
submission to the exhibition’s ideas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The power dynamics have therefore changed: it is harder not to be
engaged in the work, and not to be part of it. While many artists and curators
have experimented with these shifting dynamics, and varying degrees of audience
interaction, Parreno has perfected his methods of manipulation. He plays with
words, sounds, and images to distort people’s perceptions of space, and
therefore redefine how they experience parts of the exhibition, even commenting
and suggesting new ways for art to be experienced. One could parallel Parreno’s
ideas with the film industry’s foray into 3D film; perhaps that is even a
technology Parreno will use one day. The vision of all-encompassing experience,
anyway, is central to Parreno’s work, as is the idea of the artist as director
(rather than simply observer). This does seem quite megalomaniac, as an idea,
but because the show is realized so well and the audience is considered so
carefully, that it works. An artist having control and direction, and shifting
the power dynamics of the artist-audience relationship, may therefore be a good
development, if that power is used in such a way as to benefit the audience and
be artistically innovative. And it is in realizing that responsibility that
Parreno’s exhibition does work, and succeeds as an ‘art in itself’ as well as
an experiment with audience perception and crowd control. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 19.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><i>Anywhere, Anywhere Out of the World </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">is a spectacular and
hypnotizing experience: visitors are absorbed by visual and sonic tricks and
effects, including parts of Stravinsky’s <i>Petrushka </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">(performed by
Mikhail Rudy, via a self-playing piano, for added mystique), alongside an
apparent ghost of Marilyn Monroe (his 2012 work, <i>Marylyn</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, intended to be “a
portrait of a ghost”) and an eerie garden in Portugal. The sound of dancers’
footsteps (from the Merce Cunnigham Dance Company) and pointe-work add to this
ghostly, intriguing atmosphere, as does the bizarre encounter with the
character “Annlee” and a seeming street lit with bright marquees. Multiple
screens run clips from Zinedine Zidane, and secret passageways emerge from a
bookshelf. Parreno uses the soundtrack of Stravinsky’s <i>Petrushka </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">to signal these
different ‘scenes’, as well as to create an overriding presence of the puppet
from <i>Petrushka, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">a ghost of ghosts, acting as a sort of Underworld
guide for visitors in this alive but fantastical, magical but melancholic new
world. Although the spirit of the exhibition seems to have power over its
visitors, that power is transient and directed from a director (Parreno) who is
absent – much like the puppet in <i>Petrushka </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">who inspires and haunts the
show as a kind of automaton, in Parreno’s words: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“By definition, an automaton
mimics life, but it essentially does only one thing over and over again. For
me, the exhibition is like an automaton.” Philippe Parreno.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The exhibition, then, feels more like an interactive theatre show, a
ghost tour combined with an eerie circus, in a strange, imaginary town.
Parreno’s playful and imaginative approach to his invitation from the Palais de
Tokyo is a delight – combining excellent technique and collaborations, with a
simple but brilliant style, and a complicated yet involving realisation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To “see” this exhibition is to fall
into a dream – someone else’s – but all the more fascinating for that. This is
an experiment in subconsciousness and relationship: to become a visitor to
someone else’s mind, is truly an exciting idea, and one that has rarely been so
well presented since the Surrealists. Parreno does not alienate with his
dreams, as many performance and conceptual artists tend to, he does not really
frighten or intimidate, or abuse his invented power; instead he invites and
involves, and creates bridges between one mind and many others, which seems a
noble vision to have realized. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 19.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 19.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-62842710918938001812014-02-26T12:24:00.004-08:002014-02-26T12:36:59.255-08:00The Scottish Colourists Series: JD Fergusson<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>The Scottish Colourists Series: JD Fergusson </b></span><b><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art, Edinburgh <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">7
December 2013 – 15 June 2014</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>Though
perhaps not as well known as Ireland for producing swathes of young artists and
rebels intent on leaving the country in search of adventure and success,
Scotland has a similar tradition of inspiring departure. The Scottish
Colourists, a group of painters who left their Scottish homes and families in
the early twentieth century, to find inspiration mainly in France, are some of
the most notable of this sprawling group. The Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art in Edinburgh is hosting a series of retrospectives of the
Colourists, and the work of J. D. Fergusson (1874 – 1961) is exhibited there
until the summer, following retrospectives of Cadell, Hunter and Peploe.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">One
of the most adventurous of his group of émigrés, J. D. Fergusson was born in
Leith, not far from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and probably
more famous for being the setting of <i>Trainspotting </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">than for its artistic community,
past or present. Since Fergusson’s retrospective opens in December, one of the
bleakest months, merely the experience of walking to the exhibition in such
weather helps explain the artist’s attraction to colour and flamboyance that
these paintings are testament to. There is nothing like a childhood and
adolescence of seemingly impenetrable greyness to inspire escape, and a
persistent, life-long desire for something more colourful. Combined with the steely
determination that enduring years of such weather gives rise to, the sustained
dedication of the Scottish Colourists, and Fergusson especially, makes
sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“To go to Paris was the natural thing for the
Scot… It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the modern Scot that the Scottish
Celt when in France was among his own people, the French Celts. French culture
was founded by the Celts and… if Scotland or Celtic Scotland could make a ‘new
alliance’ with France, not a political union like the ‘Auld Alliance’ but
cultural, it would perhaps put Scotland back on to the track of her culture,
and see the Scots do something Scottish instead of imitating the English or
rather second-rate British.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2481441065682720857#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[i]</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Moving
to Paris in 1907, Fergusson absorbed that French culture and innovative styles
of painting there, which revolved around a love of light and its colourful
effects. Perhaps more so than the other Scottish painters in Paris, he
assimilated into life and art there, and came to be known as the more bohemian
of the émigrés, as well as the most vivacious, considered as, “the leader of
the English-speaking artistic community.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2481441065682720857#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ii]</span></span></a>
Rather than simply becoming French, however, Fergusson’s move to Paris was
ultimately a way of being Scottish, and understanding his Scottish identity.
Perhaps one cannot appreciate the subtleties and possibilities of a grey and
blue palette, without immersing into the giddy colours of the ‘other Celts’.
Certainly for Fergusson, living in France not only realized dreams of colour
and light, but led to a fuller understanding of Scotland, and its subtler
palette. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The
exhibition of over 100 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, viewed all
together express a real vitality and sense of victory, that this exploration
and adventure were successful and productive. Though some of the images of
coffee-houses and nocturnal celebrations may now seem overly familiar, given
the popularity of those subjects with their French contemporaries, to see them
in the context of Edinburgh, and Fergusson’s early paintings of Scotland, is to
glimpse the wider narrative and depth of the scenes shown. It is also to see
that the attraction of Paris, and of travel, for Fergusson, was not simply
about colour, or exploring techniques used by French artists; it was about
people. His canvases painted in Paris are full of lively figures – dressmakers,
dancers, artists, and drunks – milling around coffee houses and bars –
reclining on park benches, or kneeled on exotic carpets – amid flowers and a
city enchanting and alive. These paintings express love and enchantment through
colour and light, not simply with it. These glamorous women and beautiful
dancers, these relaxed, sunlit bodies, required some traveling to find. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Compared
to the rugged hills of Scotland and the gloomy Forth, where any people seem to
vanish in the presence of such a domineering nature, or the shipyards of
Glasgow, where ships sink slowly, (<i>Damaged Destroyer, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">1918), Paris gave Fergusson crowds
of new faces, fashions and bodies, which are celebrated in so many of his
works. In <i>Les Eus </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">(1910
– 13), an impressive, well-constructed and vivacious painting, Fergusson
depicts nude couples dancing in a frame of green foliage, probably inspired by
Les Ballet Russes and other dance in Paris at the time, and of course by his
wife, Margaret Morris (1891 – 1980), a dancer and choreographer originally from
London, whose original techniques and ideas about ballet, and the dancers who
attended her summer schools, became inspirational to Fergusson. Paintings such
as <i>Etude de Rhythm, Seated Nude, </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">and <i>Bathers, The Parasol</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, continue to show his fascination
with the female form, as well as the influence of Matisse and Picasso, and his
Parisian contemporaries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The
presence of dance and fashion in his paintings is perhaps what gives Fergusson’s
work an adventurous, daring quality that the other Scottish Colourists do not
exhibit so obviously, and it is these scenes – these dances captured in paint
and light – that linger. Fergusson was a Scot and a Colourist, but he was also
in love with dance, and a dancer, and it was this aspect of his life in Paris
that remains most intriguing and original. The exhibition reveals these
aspects, subtly pointing out moments of success and innovation in Fergusson’s
painting, and downplaying criticisms of repetition or blandness, or even, too
much colour. In showing careful portraits alongside carnal dances, and
reminding us of his landscapes and shipyards, as well as his well-known
Parisian café scenes, the exhibition hints at a more complex painter, and a
more interesting body of work, than is often assumed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2481441065682720857#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[i]</span></span></a> <span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Fergusson, Modern Scottish Painting,
pp. 67—69</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2481441065682720857#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[ii]</span></span></a> <span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Angela Smith ‘Tigers in Paris:
Katherine Mansfield, Emily Carr, John Duncan Fergusson and Fauvism’ in Beale
& Smith, Outsiders in Paris p. 38</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-73511451695349970162014-02-26T12:24:00.001-08:002014-02-26T12:37:19.932-08:00British Sea Power – From The Sea To The Land Beyond<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4b4b4c; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">BRITISH SEA POWER: ‘FROM THE SEA TO THE LAND BEYOND’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">2 December 2013<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Rough Trade Records<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">By Christiana Spens<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">British Sea Power’s latest release is the soundtrack to a mesmerising
film by Penny Woolcock, which captures scenes and dramas by the British
coastline from 1901 until the present day. Bringing us through two world wars,
peacetime, industrialization and social change, with snapshots and snippets of
archival footage, she tells the story of the people living along the coasts of
this island, the film itself seeming to teeter at the edge of story-telling,
film-making and memory. It is a strange way to hear a new album, and yet
entirely fitting for British Sea Power, given their history of recording in
small coastal towns and an existential connection to the sea and its stories.
So much so, that “From the Sea to the Land Beyond” seems more a collaboration
than merely a soundtrack. Given that there is no dialogue in the film, and no
sound from the scenes themselves (as much of the footage pre-dates necessary
advances in technology), the musical soundtrack matters even more than usual. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Made up of re-workings of previous British Sea Power songs, recorded in
Brighton and mixed by Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, Daughter, M83, Cocteau Twins,
Moby), the songs manage to enable and illuminate the film’s story-telling,
rather than distract from it. Including <i>The Islanders, Docklands Renewed,
Heroines of the Cliff –</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> the album is a substantial part of the film, by
connecting past scenes of sailors launching into the ocean, or girls
synchonising their swimming, with modern sounds, subliminal ideas and the sense
of present rather than past emotion. History is brought into the fold of the
tide pictured in the film, ebbing in with each fractured stretch footage or
snapshot of a catastrophe. It has not simply paid attention to the subject; it
has become it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The collaboration between the film and the music is so successful, in
fact, that it is hard to describe the music without noting the scenes: crowds
on a promenade, two people struggling to paddle a boat a few yards from the
beach; women in grand hats looking out to sea; men fighting in the sand, troops
marching nearby, planes dropping bombs into the sea; girls diving from up high,
children building sandcastles, couples waltzing, waves crashing. Seagulls,
German bombers, Navy sailors, émigrés seeing British shore for the first time,
soldiers running onto the shore with rucksacks; synchronized swimmers and
tourists on their weekends in Brighton; oil rigs and shellfish; gales in
Blackpool threatening to send the scantily clad girls into the sea. The music
pulls its audience into this past, as if it is a personal memory reignited by
an unexpected face or an intoxicating scent. Romantic, mystifying, and stirring
a kind of modern mythology, British Sea Power have shown an instinctive and
intuitive integration with their muse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Despite living by the sea nearly all my life, I sometimes forget that it
is there, or that “Britain” is one vague grouping of islands (and parts of
islands), and I doubt I am alone in that forgetting. This album, and the film
it comes with, remember not only a century of history, or common memories, but
also the fact that we are a people surrounded by oceans, tides and depths.
There is a little fear in this, perhaps – the slight feeling that those edges
may collapse in on a little island country like this, any day, and swallow us
into those enticing, terrifying depths. As the album goes on, the music comes
to be the sea, and the images the land, and the people on it – tiptoeing,
diving, or falling into the abyss located a few steps from the promenade, a few
steps from children building sandcastles. Wistful and romantic, the album
recalls not only the history told in the film, but also the memories and
recollections of whoever drifts into it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">On this occasion, for this listener, that is Scottish sea birds, walking
home in the dark after dinner at the Ship Inn with a new love; waking to sea
air, and running across East Sands in the morning. Listening to the gales,
escaping the towns, and reading Fitzgerald books in summer, one last page
especially apt: “… The orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It
eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch
out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——So we beat on,
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-14407215392738298022014-02-26T12:23:00.003-08:002014-02-26T12:23:21.787-08:00Water-Boarding And Romanticism: Tom De Freston Interviewed <br />
<div class="section_header" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<span class="decorative_text small_header" style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Crimson Text', serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1em;">Tome On The Range</span><h2 style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: black; font-size: 30px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 6px; position: relative;">
Water-Boarding And Romanticism: Tom De Freston Interviewed <br style="clear: both;" /><span class="sub" style="color: #777777; display: block; font-weight: bold; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; text-transform: uppercase;"></span><span class="sub_sub" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://thequietus.com/images/dash.jpg); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #666666; display: block; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 2px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Christiana Spens , November 3rd, 2013 03:38</span></h2>
</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="snippet" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 27px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Christiana Spens talks to the literary-inspired artist, delving further into the horror, politics and aesthetics of violence that are the subject matter of his most recent paintings</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Tom de Freston’s body of work is a chaotic-seeming world of the grotesque and the shocking, where the darkest aspects of human nature emerge in frames and tones of comedy and tragedy, animation and rigidity, fusing an adventurous and provocative imagination with insights into a recognisable real world. His canvases have depicted Shakespearean heroes and villains in grotesque, and very modern, environments, where a sense of acute claustrophobia expands and compounds with each new room compacted in canvas. There is a careful combination of brilliant imagination, of testing the very limits of human freedom and desire, along with spaces that are prison-like and oppressive. In each canvas there is a struggle between environment and desire, between ambiguous characters, between beauty and horror.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
In De Freston’s most recent works, these conflicts are brought to a new crescendo, and a fresh relevance brought to modern preoccupations, secrets, and shame. Paintings concerned with water-boarding, public (and private) violence, and ideas of dehumanisation and pain, all follow logically from his previous work, and bring the uncanny connections between Shakespearean themes of human cruelty and dark magic, to situations that reference the contemporary iconography of terrorism and warfare. The spectacles of violence, whether inspired by Shakespeare or Abu Ghraib, are consistently horrifying and fascinating; as viewers we are challenged by these twin sensations of revulsion and interest, of recognition and distance, and by the implications of these reactions for our wider culture that seems to promote a sensationalism of this performed violence. De Freston, rather than exploit that cultural, and perhaps human tendency, allows us to step back and realise how horrifying that behaviour is (rather than simply the acts of torture themselves).</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>'You can make it drink' is clearly inspired by images that have emerged from the War on Terror, and public debate about the use of water-boarding and torture during conflict. Why did you decide to start referencing these subjects, and why in the context of your other theatre-inspired canvases?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Tom de Freston: The nod to water-boarding in my work first came about in 2009 when I was helping to direct a disastrous production of Macbeth in Cambridge. In the production we had the witches water-boarding Macbeth. I then referenced it again in a series of drawings and a couple of canvases for the body of Shakespeare images I made in 2010-11; so it has always been tied to my wider body of theatre-inspired paintings. It is interesting that both themes emerged in my work at the same time. I don’t think this is a coincidence, as the theatrics of conflict and violence are what concern me.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
A broader context is worthwhile here. I started my Fine Art Foundation course on September 11th 2001, and remember walking into my friend’s sitting room at the end of the day to see the events unfold on his TV. In that sense my artistic development has coincided with the complex ramifications of that day and the shift in the global political landscape that has followed. Water-boarding may not be the most horrific or inhumane thing to have arisen during this time, but its use is troubling. President Bush infamously claimed it was not a form of torture, despite the clear psychological and physical suffering that it induces. Even if we accept the euphemistic term - ‘interrogation technique’ - there are still huge problems with the process. Firstly, historical evidence would suggest that in most cases use of force to gain intelligence tends to lead to flawed information. Secondly, the Bush/Blair War on Terror became a broader ideological mission to promote supposedly Western values of democracy and human rights. It seems ironic that it is exactly these values that were forsaken when using techniques such as water-boarding.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
All of this might seem to imply that paintings such as ‘You can make it drink’ are explicitly political. I hope they are not. I don’t think painting can, let alone should, be didactic. Rather than conveying some particular ethical stance on the specifics of water-boarding I wanted to make images which fit into a broader history of depictions of violence. My interest lies in depicting what humans are capable of doing to each other. Water-boarding is interesting in a visual sense, because there is a theatricality in its staging yet the manner in which is damages a victim is beyond sight.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
</div>
<center>
<img alt="" class="normal" height="446" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/13757/You-can-make-it-drink_1383502825_crop_350x446.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: block;" width="350" /></center>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Terrorism and war are often quite spectacular, especially in modern times, where media censorship is (arguably) less effective in the West, and so there is a huge audience for violence, as well as complex propaganda agendas and interests. By turning these images into art, what are you saying about this tendency for the media to sensationalise real-life violence, compared to the dramatisation of (not real-life) violence in theatre?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: In some ways I think media censorship in the West has grown over the last thirty years. Don McCullin was refused press accreditation by the Thatcher government in 1982, presumably due to fears that he would photograph whatever he saw uncensored by political or national bias. In Afghanistan and Iraq photojournalists are embedded within the army, primarily to ensure their safety, but surely resulting in limitations on the breadth and depth of coverage.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Of course, counter to that is the rise of the citizen as journalist, where social media and cameras on phones have allowed for the mass production and dissemination of photographs depicting events from the frontline. (As seen in the Middle East’s Arab Spring, and crucially in Syria. Though these images do not hold as much weight as ‘official’ media images.) I think the relationship between images of real life violence in the media and images of fictional violence in culture is an interesting one. In computer games, film, theatre and art in particular violence has become sensationalised to the point of being pornographic, in that any relationships between cause and effect, moral and ethical values and context are all disregarded for the sake of shock. I have no interest in shock and if I did then something as tame as painting, in comparison to the visceral nature of performance, would be a strange choice of medium.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
The biggest worry is that as a society we have potentially become anaesthetised to violence. Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’ tackles this, looking at the television as a medium that feeds us a constant stream of real and fictional images of violence. Since then, the rise of twenty-four hour news coverage, social media and the internet has exacerbated the problem on an exponential scale. Images of violence now come at us as a constant stream from a vast array of sources, with the impact surely being that the layering of images culminates in a white noise, the mass repetition enacting a form of cancellation and resulting in empathy fatigue. The distressing reality is that even with all the images we are presented with on a daily basis a vast majority of conflicts across the world are given sporadic, or barely any, media attention.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
I am not sure if my paintings are looking to say anything in particular about this whole process, but they are hopefully trying to do something other than present violence for its own sake. I don’t want violence to ever be the central subject of the work, but rather to be a player in a broader human drama. Yet at the same time I want to ensure there is no overt agenda to the work. Avoiding those two opposing problems, which I see as the central problems of violence in the media and depicting violence in culture, is critical to the works’ potential success.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>First you painted canvases inspired by Shakespeare’s scenes of violence, now you take international politics and war as your subject: do you consider your Shakespeare paintings as a kind of apprenticeship with the Bard, which has given you the insight to tackle modern day subjects of violence and human cruelty?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: I think the two subjects have always been linked together in my work. When I was explicitly focusing on Shakespeare as a source I always had modern day subjects of violence and cruelty in my mind, and similarly whilst I have been focusing more explicitly on images of conflict Shakespeare - and more broadly theatre - have continued to be important reference points.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
There is a danger that having made a large body of work directly related to a figure as iconic as Shakespeare that people presume his influence must be all encompassing. That said, Shakespeare’s best Tragedies are a brilliant start point for anyone wanting to engage with the potential for humans to be flawed, cruel animals, particularly when directed by ambition or ideology. The body of Shakespeare paintings also introduced me to Sarah Kane and Akira Kurosawa amongst others, who have had a direct influence on the work.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Prior to Shakespeare I produced a body of paintings for a Leverhulme-funded residency which took Milton’s <i>Paradise Lost</i> as a source, a project which has been equally as important to recent canvases, as more broadly have Ovid, Dante and the bible. Whilst literature and theatre have been central resources for my work, art history has been the most important source of inspiration. In regards to violence; Titian, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Rubens, J. L. David, Gericault, Delacroix, Picasso, Bacon, De Kooning and Daniel Richter are the obvious examples that spring to mind.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
All these references, along with current and historical episodes of violence function like a compost heap, from which fragments can be borrowed and re-contextualised. I always have in the back of my head this pretentious idea of the process being a bit like that of Dr. Frankenstein, in which forms are constructed from fragments of matter.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>The inclusion of a canvas featuring water-boarding in the same series as a distressed-looking creature in a bath (in a claustrophobically domestic space) suggests some connection between domestic and international power struggles and divisions... Do you see similarities between internal divisions and conflicts, and a country’s behaviour in the international arena?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: It is probably worthwhile answering by again giving some wider context. The paintings selected for the two shows has come from a body of paintings I have been working on for the past two years. The actual collection we have chosen from is from the last 12-18 months. There are about 30 large canvases. The horse headed figures keep appearing and as such are the central protagonist. I want the paintings to feel like they are fragments from a single world, as if the viewer has been given a series of windows onto a broken, non-linear narrative, or scenes from an unknown play. The paintings act more like a collection of poems than a novel or a play, in that each painting is independent, but they look to come together as a united whole.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
I am interested in creating a type of mythology, so that all the nods to art history, literature, theatre, historical events and current affairs hopefully become echoes rather than the central subject. With this in mind I am very interested in readings, which build relationships between the works. I have tried to purposefully created repetitive iconography. Horse heads, Golems, chessboards-as-stages and architectural devices, pot plants, light bulbs, Penrose tessellating patterns, weather systems, cyan blue, windows, doors, shadows and masks are amongst the motifs that reoccur. Notions such as the <i>Verfremdungseffekt</i> and the Uncanny are important. I am wary of throwing about fashionable theories as it tends to be what people do to try and justify their work, but I do feel that the literature around both of these notions broadly encapsulates what I am trying to do with aspects of the work. By creating a lexicon of reappearing signs I want to create a situation where scenes feel both simultaneously familiar and strange to a viewer. The original German term for The Uncanny is <i>Das Unheimliche</i>, which can more literally be translated to mean The Unhomely. I feel this term best describes what I want to happen in the images.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
So, yes, I see a clear link between the image of the figure in a bath and the image of a figure being water boarded, and more broadly between domestic/internal struggles vs. international power struggles. This is not to say I think this link is explicit in the two works mentioned, but rather that they tap into that broader connection. It is perhaps worth saying a little more about the bathroom canvas, as a roundabout way of trying to answer the question. That work links back to a few previous (non horse headed) paintings I have done of figures in bathrooms. In all the work the architecture of the internal space is under threat from the arrival of an external organic and corrosive system, which gives nods to weather systems and abstract expressionism.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
The figure in the bath had both J. L. David’s ‘Marat’ in mind and images of the Deposition by Rembrandt and Rubens. The figure on the loo, as with the figure in Mother Wept, gives a nod to the Francis Bacon triptych of George Dyer’s death. The picture, like the water-boarding images, is all about the relationship between the body and water. Here the safety and privacy of a bath is interrupted by the arrival of a weather system from off stage. It is important the collection of canvases have both these domestic scenes, where a type of space and action described is familiar, and to sit these alongside images where the space is less determined and the action less familiar.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
</div>
<center>
<img alt="" class="normal" height="466" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/13757/Bathroom_1383502987_crop_350x466.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: block;" width="350" /></center>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>'A pity' and 'Raft' recollect 'The Raft of the Medusa' by Géricault (1818 – 1819), itself a revolutionary and Romantic work. What impact did it have on your work?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: 1819 feels like a pivotal year. It was the year Goya moved into La Quinta Del Sorda and started his black paintings. It was the year Keats wrote his spring Odes and I think it might have been the year <i>Frankenstein</i> was first published. 'The Raft of the Medusa' is a key staging point in the History of painting. It is often labelled as the last great statement of History Painting as the dominant genre of the medium. I think the labelling of it as Romantic by Historians is unhelpful, but then the labelling of work from the period as either Classical or Romantic is limiting and unhelpful anyway. It is true that much of its spirit fits with what has been called Romantic, but much of its construction is equally close to the Neo Classical model exemplified by J. L. David. Beyond the boldness of subject matter and the socio political context of the work it is hugely impress formally.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Most early 19th century History Paintings from France and more widely Europe had been composed in a manner similar to David’s ‘Oath of the Horati’, staging action across a picture plane neatly divided and organised by architectural forms. Gericault manages to stage the action across, up and through the picture plane, by structuring the action across two diagonals. From bottom left to top right is the diagonal of hope, rising from the Pieta like pose at the foreground eventually through to the climax of the hopefully waving aloft figure beaconing the boat on the horizon. From bottom right to top left is the diagonal of logic, a corpse directs us towards a cluster of talking men below the billowing sail that seems destined to take the raft into the mouth of the stormy waves. It is the tension between these two diagonals, depicting a moment in flux and the dramatic crux of the narrative, that make the image so powerful. It is that compositional structure which I have stolen in two Raft paintings for this series, and in previous canvases, and it is this structure, which is most important to me. The works wider historical significance as a high symbol of French Romanticism and the ideologies and political and revolutionary rumblings of Europe, and particularly France, at that moment in time can’t be ignored, but are of less relevance to my appropriation of the painting. In one of the images I have set this structure inside, in what appears to be a stage setting. In the other the image the structure has been doubled and flipped to create a symmetry, which in turn forms a flat pattern across the surface. I was interested in playing with the boundaries between exterior and interior spaces and in staging a scene in which an entire raft of figures appear to be repetitions of the same character.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Would you say that your own art is in some ways in the (French) Romantic tradition, given its concern with rebellion, injustice, theatre and power dynamics?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: I look at a lot of Romanticism and see pomposity, egotism, pretension and waffle. But then a lot of artists who would be associated with the European Romantic tradition are hugely important to my work. The Kantian notion of the placing of the individual at the centre of their own world, Friedrich through to Rothko and the exploration of the sublime, in particular the individuals relationship to nature, Gericault, Delacroix and Manet (then through to abstract expressionism) and the re-liberation of the expressive ability of paint from the stiffing of the academies, the language and ideas in the Spring Odes of Keats, the vision of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Turner’s landscapes are all things which are ascribed the label of Romantic and which have had a big influence on my thinking. I think I certainly used to be far more of a Romantic idealist, particularly when I was making purely abstract works. I had a tattoo of Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale and was convinced that the sole role of painting was to provide some kind of transcendental experience and escape from tangible reality. I am certainly far more cynical and doubting now and far less convinced of the power of painting, or any art form, to offer up theoretical solutions or spiritual experiences. But I do still believe that works of art can be part of a wider network of experiences and ways of thinking and seeing that can help shift and change the structures of our society. This is quite an idealistic, optimistic and Romantic hope.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>By exaggerating the visual expression of pain, do you think you capture the feeling of it better?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: I think we have become anaesthetised to images of pain, through an exposure to a mass of images of extreme violence and suffering both in reality and fiction. So an exaggeration of pain, or any display of pain does not necessarily equate directly to any effective communication of pain, certainly not in terms of stimulating fear or pity. It is a generalisation, but I think that a lot of the emotional responses to images of suffering are superficial or presentations to fulfil social expectations. This may be a harsh assessment and perhaps is a comment on me as opposed to a broad social truth. I do think, however, that if we want to communicate suffering to a viewer, if we want to achieve Pathos, then we need to find other more indirect routes. I think there are a number of ways of achieving this, most notably repetition, comedy and absurdity.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
In terms of repetition I tend to think of the Warhol prints of car crashes, where he presents a grid of screen prints of the same image repeated, with only subtle shifts in tone and image clarity as a result of the printing process. Confronting the image for the first time it washes over us, as images from newspapers, screen prints and most of Warhol’s work tends to. It is a dead statement, which we can read and comprehend, but which induces no feeling or reaction, it has a dearth of expressive qualities. As we move across the row and down the columns a shift takes place, we become aware that we are feeling nothing, that we are viewing the image superficially, as if a row of soup cans, as a mere statement on commodification. We become aware of the paradox between this reaction and the content of the work, an image of a person lying dead in a car, a real person. I can’t think of a less pretentious phrase, but what take places is akin to a form of emotional algebra, where the relationship between our lack of feeling and the realisation of this lack, results in a guilt that induces horror and pity. I try to use repetition, with single canvases and across multiple canvases, with this, amongst other things, in mind.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Comedy is a useful tool, and the relationship between comedy and tragedy is key. I hope that in some paintings the horses heads are comic. I want people to find them absurd, foolish, ridiculous, to laugh at them. But a similar contradiction takes place to that induced by repetition. The laughter at a situation and context, which however caricatured or comic, is full of suffering, hopefully causes an uncomfortable dialogue between two sets of emotions. I hope that both devices come together across the canvases. Whilst the horse headed character is foolish, unreal, caricatured, childish and crude, I want the viewers, over the course of multiple canvases, to build up a relationship with the characters, to care about them, to believe in them as things with emotions and to be concerned with their plight. Hopefully what happens is that at first the horse headed characters are a type of other, an unreal, inhuman thing which we can’t and don’t feel any desire to relate to. On a simpler level I think something like this happens when we view images of people involved in conflict, we find ways to enact a process of ‘othering’ on them. Yet hopefully after seeing multiple canvases a reversal happens, where rather than seeing all the things that make the characters other we start to see them in relation to ourselves. If this happens then hopefully we understand that the suffering of the character, however much they are horses headed, painted, foolish and crude, is something we should care about.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
I think all of this fits into the connection to theatre in the paintings. Beyond actual collaborations with directors and productions the works are clearly inherently theatrical. Scenes are staged. I often start by staging performances and photographing set scenes, which are then the basis for drawings, which provide the foundations of the paintings. At other points I will build small sets or use collage and digital collage to construct scenes and spaces. It is not a direct observation or analytical shift from observed reality. The process in which the images are put together is synthetic, in that it is constructed in the way a set designer or director devices a scene form a play. The faces are theatrical, false, mask like, puppet like. The action is theatrical, acted out and clearly performed for an audience rather than trying to imitate any actual event. Everything about how the paintings are formed, painted, constructed and viewed is theatrical rather than offering up a pretence of a mirror on the world. It is this unreality that is central to the emotive impact of the works, which tries to create a feeling which is real and to induce empathy by its very lack of reality.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Collingwood once wrote that art is moral, and valuable, through telling the truth about society – its secrets and darkness:</b></div>
<b><div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
“The artist… as spokesman for his community, the secrets he must utter are theirs. The reason why they need him is that no community altogether knows its own heart… For the evils which come from that ignorance, the poet as prophet suggests no remedy, because he has already given one. The remedy is the poem itself. Art is the community’s medicine for the worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciousness.” (Collingwood, 1938, 317)</div>
</b><div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>… Do you agree with Collingwood on this point, and is there a conscious effort, in your own practise, to expose horror and violence? Or, are you fascinated, independent of ideas about value and morality, by the sensationalism and entertainment of violence, and how people interact accordingly?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: I think we need to be very careful about think art can or should offer up any clear moral code. I worry about art that tries to be instrumental or moralistic, I am just not sure it works. I am certainly not sure that painting can offer up the kind of clarity that the notion of the artist as spokesperson of moralist would suggest, it is too inherently ambiguous. I don’t believe in the painter as any kind of authorial voice, and I certainly make images with that thought in mind. By which I mean I think that it is pointless trying to produce paintings that articulate some premeditated notion, it doesn’t work. So what I try to do is take the role of the reader/viewer, making sure that at every stage of making the painting I am engaging with it, trying to work out what it is about and making decisions based on that. I always worry that sounds a bit mystical, but actually it is very pragmatic.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
It is a case of trying to make sure you are open and fluid to what a work can be about, and that you are making decisions based on what is happening in the painting rather than based on what you want it to do. As such the notion of the artist as a guiding force is flawed. But the notion of the artwork as potentially moral value is of interest. It is also worth pointing out that I don’t believe that this openness means that a work is a totally blank canvas, which can be interpreted in any way the viewer sees fit. Any interpretation has to fit with the work, which means that a broad array of readings can work, but not an infinite array, there are right and wrong readings and associations. With this in mind I hope that the canvases deal with violence and cruelty in a way that get people to consider ideas about the morality of images of violence and cruelty, and more broadly the consequences.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
I have some other reservations though. I am making images that draw inspiration directly from contemporary and historical instances of conflict, from episodes which have led to suffering, pain and death. It is all well making intellectual claims about the worthiness of the work, about its ability to contain some moral value. But the reality is that they are likely to be viewed by a narrow, quite elite audience. They are going to be exhibited in a commercial gallery, and the mains aims are likely to focus around interest, sales and critical acclaim. What actual worth this has in terms of moral value or social worth is highly questionable, the audience is too narrow. I find this uncomfortable and feel there is a risk of the whole process being exploitative. I have some things in mind to try and temper these problems, but listing them is likely to just sound like an exercise in easing guilt. I think if art of any kind has the ability to have any true impact or to induce any kind of change then it needs to find a way to appeal to a broader audience. The problem is that a lot of art (which is intended to be moral) is often so esoteric that it has no ability to communicate to a broader audience. If I am honest I am aware that the whole process risks being a selfish game of egotistically believing that something might be having an impact when it might just be white noise or the equivalent of shouting into the abyss.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
On a broad level though art is important. 'Guernica' is a clear example in terms of exposing the horrors of humanity. But it is only one player in a broad network of players, and ultimately it is politics and communities that make changes, not art.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>What are your views about sensationalism, art and violence? Do you see yourself as having a responsibility to paint in a certain way, with a certain moral structure – or do you believe in art for the sake of art, in the more Wildean sense?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
TF: In his preface to <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i> Oscar Wilde states ‘all art is quite useless’. It is the term most frequently used to paraphrase his views on aestheticism, or more specifically art for arts sake. It is a presumption and an ideal that directed much of the production and consumption of 20th Century art. It is the foundations of High Modernism in painting, the belief that painting should focus and celebrate on its unique properties of paint being spread across a flat surface. It is the Kantian belief in the autonomy of the thing in itself. It suggests that painting, and more broadly art, can and should only be self reflexive and considered the mechanics of its own existence. I don’t believe this is necessary or possible. This is not to say that I don’t think that such values should be placed centre stage in any reading or appreciation of art. I believe that the formal content of the work comes first, and that a work can only be as successful as these values, but I just don’t believe the can or do exist in isolation.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
It is worth pointing to a less quoted passage for Wilde’s preface, ‘all art is at once surface and symbol, those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril’. Wilde is acknowledging that art by its nature will always offer up associations beyond its aesthetic content… When I am making or viewing my own paintings I don’t think they can ever be totally closed objects and they will always be offering up connections to the outside world. As discussed before I neither believe in some authorial voice of the artist as godlike figure or gospel, offering up a clear moral message. But I believe in the idea of the artwork as an object, which will open up a dialogue with the viewer, not a dialogue where anything goes, but with a series of signs that can be read in a range of ways. As any reading works its way outwards from the canvas it is important to constantly test it against the work itself, to check it comes from the work and it not just the projected fantasy of the view.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Which brings me to the question of whether I feel a duty to paint in a particular way or to make certain types of images. On a simple level I know I want to paint, and that I want to paint images and that I want those images to tell stories in a way unique to painting. That comes first. With the subject matter of recent work I do feel a responsibility, or at the least feel I understand that there is a danger that the work is drawing from and dealing with (amongst other things) events which of real human suffering. But there is a two-fold danger of trying to be too pious or moral.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Firstly the entire process of making a painting is, and has to be, open to constant shifts and changes and surprises. It is not possible to make work that communicates some preconceived idea. Secondly, art that tries to be didactic, outwardly moral or instrumental tends to be worthy but flawed artistically. As such there is a certain loss of control, which means you have to make the images you make and then put them out into the world and hope that they are part of a network of conversations which is positive in its impact rather than negative. I again point to the fact that at present it would be fairly arrogant and naive to believe that the works involvement in such a network was at all significant.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<img alt="" class="normal" height="447" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/13757/17_Danae__2__1383508528_crop_350x447.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: block;" width="350" /></div>
</div>
</div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-90474094622217693162014-02-26T12:22:00.001-08:002014-02-26T12:38:04.220-08:00Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Art Under Attack: Histories of
British Iconoclasm <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Tate Britain, London <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">2
October 2013 – 5 January 2014</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>These days, we take for granted
the irony of using destruction as part of art, employed by movements such as
the Vorticists, the Futurists and the Surrealists, and modern artists such as
Banksy and Hirst. To make art that deconstructs conventional ideas, or to
attack symbols from the history of art for the purpose of entertainment or
progression, is rather commonplace, in fact – the binary of ‘creation’ and
‘destruction’ often entwined in a statement or spectacle of modern art. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
But this kind of ‘iconoclasm’ is a
relatively new development, and its roots are in that word’s originally
meaning, “to break an image”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rather than referring to harmless thought provocation and interesting
new ideas, ‘iconoclasm’ originally meant an act that threatened not only the
artwork to which it was directed, but generally the state or the Church, also. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
In <i>Art Under Attack </i><span style="font-style: normal;">at Tate Britain, curated by </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Tabitha Barber and Dr Stacy Boldrick,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: ArialMT; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span>we learn
about the long history of the phenomenon of politics and art, and how it paved
the way for modern art that reclaimed the performance of destroying beautiful
creations, to reaffirm the place of art in society, as potentially political
and iconoclastic itself, rather than a target for political violence. Spanning
nine rooms, the exhibition first of all<i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">delves
into the state-sponsored destruction of fine art during the Protestant Reformation,
where paintings were replaced by words from the Bible. When Henry VIII broke
with the Roman Catholic Church (in order to divorce the first of his many
wives), conflict was heightened between the Catholics and Protestants in the
UK, as elsewhere in Europe, that provoked destruction of images connected to
the worship of the Pope and Saint Thomas Becket, as well as monasteries and
Catholic churches. The destruction was also financially motivated: the
transference of wealth from the monasteries to the monarchy explains the focus
on taking stained glass windows, gold and other materials used to create
cathedrals and decorate worship. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Puritan iconoclasm of the sixteenth
century followed, targeting “monuments of superstition and idolatry”, and
therefore sanctioning the “utter demolishing” of representations of crucifixes,
angels, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. Intending to rid the UK of images that
might inspire worship of the material, and the worldly beauty of fine art,
rather than God, the Puritans banned all images, as well as theatre and most
pleasure. In so doing, the Protestant Reformers destroyed thousands of Medieval
artworks and cultural heritage, and rid the world, temporarily, of colour found
in pigment, stones or stained glass. The offensive against fine art and
representations of God continued for some time, becoming state sanctioned,
highly organised and popularly embraced by the Puritan reformers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Extremist Royalists also joined in, and
fought a “war of images” with the popular press, and any politicians they saw
as undermining the divine rights of the Monarchy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By this point in the exhibition, a
little over half way through, the sense of oppression and cultural loss from
the Reformation is huge, and the change of focus to revolutionary rather than
state-sponsored political violence is refreshing, even if the show consists now
of abused and broken statues of European royalty. Fallen princesses now take
the blow of political struggle – noses and arms and heads are missing, which is
about as far as the Revolutionary spirit in Europe at the time washed into
English land. The remaining fragments of statues are victory shots of political
battles publicised, if not won. In the sixth room of the exhibition, iconoclasm
is brought into the twentieth century, and the case of the Suffragettes is
looked into more closely, given their particular attachment to the use of
‘Propaganda of the Deed’ to draw attention to the cause of women’s rights, a
tactic that Neville Bolt explains:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
“Propaganda of
the Deed is akin to political marketing in the way it employs techniques of
resonance and symbolic association with different constituencies; it resembles
state-level strategic communications in the way it speaks to governments and
their populations.” (Neville Bolt, <i>The Violent Image, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">p. 7)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
This brings us up to date, without
making the connection in much depth, with contemporary political violence and
an evolved use of Propaganda of the Deed. One down point in an otherwise
fascinating exhibition, in fact, is that it doesn’t go into the modern
equivalents of iconoclasm in more depth; surely there is much more to be said
about the Troubles, in which symbolic attacks were extremely significant in the
war over legitimacy and power of the British state over those in Ireland
asserting their independence. Modern terrorism, more generally, uses
“iconoclasm” in an ever more sophisticated and intelligent manner, exploiting
the UK and USA’s appetite for media and news, and dramatic imagery. The “War of
Images” is ongoing, and it has moved beyond statues-breaking. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
But instead of going down this
route, the focus turns to Art’s use of iconoclasm – that is, the reclaiming,
one might term it, of political violence and provocation by artists. In the
last room of the exhibition, innovation in art that is ‘iconoclast’ in the
sense of taking images from the History of Art (and elsewhere), and re-using
them – or ‘reframing’ them, as Judith Butler would call it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
“The conditions
are set for astonishment, outrage, revulsion, admiration, and discovery,
depending on how the content is framed by shifting time and place. The movement
of the image or the text outside of confinement is a kind of “breaking out”.”
(Judith Butler: <i>Frames of War,</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> p.11) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Post-Modernism, then, is a kind of
iconoclasm in itself – not only in the flattering sense of being new and fresh
– but also in the sense that post-modernist artists dismantle the original
meanings of famous works of art of the past, to create new meaning. They
destroy, to create. And so iconoclasm has turned inwards; the outer world is no
longer (in the Western world, most of the time) a violent threat to fine art
and symbolic statues. Instead the ‘threat’ comes from artists themselves, who
have re-appropriated the destruction of art in order to renew meanings,
subjects and images. <i>Art Under Attack </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is
not only a history lesson in political violence and religious art deemed
sacrilegious. It is also an education in modern art, and a chance to step back
and consider the meaning of art that destroys as it creates. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-9852625117134788932014-02-26T12:20:00.006-08:002014-02-26T12:38:20.854-08:00Andy Warhol: Pop, Power and Politics<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Andy Warhol: Pop, Power and
Politics<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">5
October - 3 November 2013 </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b>Warhol was one of the first
artists to recognise the truly spectacular side of politics in the democratic,
Western world, as well as the quasi-religious aspect of Totalitarianism. In the
former, various politicians vied to become celebrity enough to win the most
votes; in the latter, the image of the Leader (specifically Mao, who drew
Warhol’s attention and artistic hand) became a symbol of power and unquestioned
superiority. The posters were already out there – the glamour, the games and
the populism reigned supreme even in the sixties – but Warhol was the first to
mimic and implicitly question the bizarre performance of politics across the
ideological spectrum. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It is intriguing, then, that a
series of political portraits and art works are now exhibited in the Scottish
Parliament, in Edinburgh. The main reason for this temporary adoption is that
Parliament (in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Trust, and the Carnegie UK
Trust) is celebrating the Scottish-born Carnegie, as part of the ‘Andrew
Carnegie International Legacy: Shaping the Future’ series of events. Given that
Carnegie’s philanthropy paid for Warhol’s first art lessons in Pittsburg, it is
fitting that the connection should be made between the artist, the
philanthropist, and a new Parliament. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Though Scotland is rarely a place
of radicalism (at least in this century), this period is more interesting and
newsworthy than usual, given an impending referendum on Scottish Independence.
It is about as radical and turbulent as Scottish politics is likely to be, so
the showing of Warhol’s political works is somewhere between provocative and
fitting. Hammers and sickles line the walls, not far from dollar notes and a
portrait of Queen Elisabeth II. Jackie Kennedy charms a new generation of the
public with charisma from afar, close to disturbing canvases depicting the J.
F. K. assassination, by way of copy reports and images from the papers, in
“Flash-November 22”. Portraits of Lenin, Mao, and Andrew Carnegie line the
walls in a democratic and therefore surreal manner, as if smiling through the
most impossible cocktail party or game show ever conceived. A terrifying
picture stands out: “Vote McGovern” – where Richard Nixon grimaces in horrific
blue and nauseous green, with yellowed eyes of a monster. (This was Warhol’s
contribution to the Democratic campaign, or at least a joke at Nixon’s
expense.) What is interesting about the selection is that these figures recall
their modern equivalents, and the little-changed narratives and caricatures
that dominate our TV screens today. Everything and nothing has changed, from
one political era to another. Even the art that comments and enjoys the surrealism
of politics hasn’t moved on very much from the garish prints that Warhol
created, in part due to the artist’s own power and populism. And that is what
is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this show – that the art trivialises
the politics it paints. It reduces the grand theatre of the political stage to
a crazy circus of impossible illusions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
There is a detectable buzz and
frisson about the show, from the crowds of Scots and tourists who filter
through. On the eve of a national decision that could break up the Union, once
a great Empire, through a democratic referendum rather than any rebellion more
radical or violent, the exhibition enjoys and inspires a brilliant anxiety, and
provides a respite from the essential seriousness of the issues that
politicians discuss, even if not the politicians themselves. Warhol, once
again, comments on the bizarre drama of politics, that has changed little in
essential dynamics, rules, or ambiguity since the dates of these artworks. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-43792396632261607312014-02-26T12:20:00.002-08:002014-02-26T12:20:15.843-08:00The Streets Were Free: An Interview With Marie-Jeanne Berger <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"></span><br />
<h2 style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: black; font-size: 30px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 6px; position: relative;">
The Streets Were Free: An Interview With Marie-Jeanne Berger <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 2px;">Christiana Spens , October 13th, 2013 07:59</span></h2>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><div style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="snippet" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 27px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Christiana Spens talks to the artist and writer about recent political upheaval in Cairo, and how she and others have responded with satire, painting, and communal efforts to sustain creativity and spirit in the midst of revolution</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Art and revolution have a fascinating history of parallel development, fusion, and conflict. Art can be a means of activism and propaganda, liberation and dissent. Its emergence in a totalitarian state can be an excuse to crush protest, just as it can be an incitement to revolution. It can also be a medium for people to witness atrocity as well as freedom, and then to remember political events that have lingering, even haunting, cultural significance. In some circumstances, revolution itself can provide a fertile environment from which artistic movements may spring forth; in other situations, the upheaval of a bloody civil war may kill, injure and traumatise the very people who would paint an innovative future.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
In Cairo, in recent months and years, these various triumphs and difficulties have all emerged in a constantly changing political and artistic environment. Art has been a symbol of victorious freedom, as well as a tool to fight for it. It has also been a dream stifled for many, as bloody massacres and raids make living precarious, let alone painting and writing.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
One young artist and writer who has lived through these tumultuous times is Marie-Jeanne Berger, whose paintings and textiles recount figures and events of the past few years with boldness and wit. Reminiscent of German expressionism as well as drawing upon Islamic art history and practises, her work is playful as well as defiant, politically bold and determined.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Your recent paintings have a decidedly political influence. Tell us a little more about the events you have witnessed in Cairo lately, and how those experiences have directly (and indirectly) affected your art practise?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Marie-Jeanne Berger: It’s difficult to encapsulate the kinds of experiences I’ve had in Cairo over the past few years, but briefly—I’ve been living in the heart of the city, near Tahrir Square. Living in such close proximity to many of the events that have rocked the country, and being witness to many of them—clashes, demonstrations and the slow encroachment of public spaces—these things have had an enormous effect on me and the rest of Egypt. Especially witnessing how violence and uncertainty can change a community. My way of expressing my reactions to these events is by making things.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
'Night Terrors,' for example, was made after witnessing the clashes on Mohammed Mahmoud Street, where protestors held street battles with police officers in front of the Ministry of Interior. Yet the real impetus for the painting was more personal: returning home from these battles, when the people in my building would attack me, sometimes physically, assuming I was a spy or an instigator. This is how a climate of fear permeates daily life. For that reason the specificity of the work is really located in its depiction of fear more than anything else. I exhibited the work at a Sudanese gallery, and many of the viewers from Darfur, Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains and Abeii really identified with it, in terms of their own experiences of war.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
As a side note, state security officials approached my mother in the street, and told her that they did not approve of the painting, and that <i>they</i> had not killed anyone. Naturally, when they viewed it, they saw themselves as the perpetrators. I was upset that these officials didn’t comment on the painting as an art object.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>How have other artists and writers in the city responded to recent events? (I read your recent article in <i>Egypt Independent</i> – perhaps you could talk about that?)</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
MJB: The 2011 Uprising, or the Revolution, created a new space for young, politically aware artists: the street. As the political became public, Egyptians congregated in squares and streets across the country. Visual artists bravely utilized the walls that would overlook these spaces as large canvases to express their views. These artists were using graffiti to have a conversation, to critique, to condemn. And these spaces, unlike the traditional galleries and museums of Egypt, also reflected the temporality of events happening in the street. It was a running narrative. At any moment, the walls would be a collage of images of martyrs who had died in different clashes, political caricatures, Qur’anic excerpts, Pharaonic allegorical illustrations of current events, criticisms of sexual harassment. Things that wouldn’t be said anywhere else were publicly broadcasted with the graffiti. And then the wall would be whitewashed, someone would paint over it, and the street would change.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Unlike the cloistered Egyptian art establishment, the streets were free, and young artists could access them. A broad audience would see their work. Performers, musicians and writers followed, capitalizing on these public gatherings to stage happenings. The past years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of small exhibition spaces opening around the city, allowing a platform for a greater population of young artists to show their work.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Unfortunately for the larger art institutions, general instability and the political atmosphere has made it much harder to sustain a schedule of exhibitions and events. Under President Morsi, for example, Cairo Opera House performers and musicians went on strike because he appointed a minister of Culture that fired the head of the Opera House. Politicians also questioned the appropriateness of ballet.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Curfews, roadblocks, violence and traffic also contribute to a dearth of performances, as well as audience members.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<img alt="" class="normal" height="380" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/13590/P4070097_1381664993_crop_554x380.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: block;" width="554" /></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>There is a humorous aspect to your work as well: how do you explain the place of comedy, or political satire, in society when it comes to revolution and conflict?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
MJB: Humour is a deflective response to difficult subject matter. While some might consider the humour of my work to dilute its political impact, I would counter that, suggesting that humour often intensifies a person’s emotional response to an image or an idea, by arousing a complex jumble of reactions that then need to be disentangled and identified.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Egyptians generally make jokes about everything, but for politics, this is still relatively new territory. For example, while President Morsi was constantly being made fun of, it is unlikely commentators will take the same liberties with the army, or General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Political discussion has only really emerged since the ouster of Mubarak and the establishment of meaningful elections. As a foreigner, I also think: who am I to engage in this discussion? Perhaps this is also why I prefer to engage viewers with funny images. Funny reserves judgement, and isn’t proscriptive.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>What about the role of art more generally?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
MJB: In this important political moment in Egypt, art is playing the vital role of mediating and examining a mix of viewpoints and emotions, rendering for us subversively what might be difficult to express directly. Mostly, it’s about creating a response, and causing the viewer to question their way of thinking.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Which artists (or periods in Art History) have influenced your recent work? Who do you admire?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
MJB: I try to locate my work in Egypt’s contemporary history and in a Middle-Eastern, and Egyptian, art-historical past. I have used government-distributed posters, paintings and photographs to influence my portraits, for example, as well as referring to a variety of historical works: ceramic painting from the Levant, Medieval Coptic painting and architecture and 15th and 16th century miniature paintings from the Timurid Empire are all sources that have influenced my work.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>You are also a writer, and are working on a graphic novel at the moment. What makes you pick one over the other?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
MJB: I love graphic novels, and have been greatly influenced by the works of Joe Sacco, Guy Delisle, Marjan Satrapi, Craig Thompson and Magdy el-Shafi’i. But there is something particular to the genre of the graphic novel that I haven’t quite understood yet. I’m still finding it difficult to adequately express my ideas with a sequence of images, certainly not nearly as expertly as these artists. My graphic novel will most likely be an illustrated story, with fewer, larger images. Something like Maira Kalman, hopefully.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Writing is another kind of challenge. Without the physical image, words have to convey a similar imager, or imagery. It can be difficult to alternate between these different modes of expression, but probably enriching or something. I appreciate the challenge of writing, and a wider audience. But it’s a learning process.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>What projects would you like to be involved in in the future?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
MJB: As many large, public, collaborative projects as I can. I think in this period, it’s crucial to foster a supportive community, not only of artists, but viewers engaged and invested in self-expression. Artistic dialogue fosters collective dialogue.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>How do you envision the future of Cairo (and, if relevant, what do you hope for the role of art / artists / culture in response to crisis)?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
MJB: It is impossible to imagine the future of a city presently undergoing such dramatic transformation. For now, people are responding to a rapidly changing environment—politically, socially, economically, emotionally. Culture takes a back seat when there are the more immediate questions of safety and security. Egypt is currently under curfew, former President Mubarak may be released from prison, and death tolls continue to rise across the country.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
What I can only hope is that this period doesn’t undo the growth that Egypt has experienced culturally in the past few years, when art moved away from the academy, and the establishment, and stood with the people. I can only hope that self-expression continues to thrive as it has in the past few years, because I believe in its dramatic impact on the way people view themselves, and their society.</div>
</div>
</div>
</span>Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-70162808971299669432014-02-26T12:19:00.002-08:002014-02-26T12:38:42.697-08:00Ian Hamilton Finlay: Poet, Artist, Revolutionary<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Ian Hamilton Finlay: Poet, Artist, Revolutionary <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">20 June
2013 – 1 March 2014</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By CHRISTIANA SPENS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>The retrospective of Ian Hamilton Finlay at the Glasgow
Gallery of Modern Art is housed in three rooms on the top floor of the
building, up a winding staircase (or elevator, for those in need) and past a
neon work marking out a presumably imaginary “gentleman’s club”. The space is
limited, but that suits Ian Hamilton Finlay’s work, mainly small screen prints,
and in the third room a sculpture. In the first room, his prints of boats and
related imagery remind visitors of the artist’s Scottish, West Coast roots; the
second room is filled with his more political work, earning him the title and
reputation of a revolutionary, politically as well as artistically. <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Part of that innovation was the use of words and concrete
poetry in his artwork, and in his pursuit of a vision combining these media.
Although Hamilton Finlay studied at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1950s, he
became celebrated for his short stories, plays and poetry before his graphic
work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1961 he set up the Wild
Hawthorn Press with Jessie McGuffie and within a few years was well-known as a
brilliant and leading concrete poet, in Britain and then internationally. His
visual poetry, and the graphic work he contributed to the publications of the
Wild Hawthorn Press also served as a way into the artwork he is now so well
known for, and which is exhibited in the Glasgow show. From screen prints
paying homage to Scottish fishing boats and landscapes, to prints and concrete
poetry that championed and criticized elements of Neo-Classicism, the French
Revolution, and modern political debate, to installations and sculptures that
fused these ideas with natural materials and environment, Ian Hamilton Finlay
implicitly presented connections between the natural and human society, and
between lessons from the past, and modern dilemmas. Hamilton Finlay managed to
express these ideas with a combination of sutlely (of colour, line, and
concept) with a bold and recognisable style, that was itself influenced by
Neo-Classicism, and the pop art and graphic styles fashionable in the 1950s and
1960s particularly. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The more political screen prints in the second room are
testament to his love of words and pictures; witty and astute slogans and
phrases complete his graphic work about the French Revolution, and bring a
contemporary slant to his references to Classicism and various historical
moments, along with modern symbols and style. In <i>After Bernini </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(1987), referring to Bernini’s 1625 statue of Daphne
fleeing from the god Apollo, Daphne wears a sash, representing the Republic,
restrained by an Apollo who represents the leadership of the Revolution. And in
</span><i>Now the Names of the Twelve are Three </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(1987), Hamilton Finlay combines the names of some of the twelve
apostles with the surnames of key figures from the French Revolution,
emphasising the legendary martyrdom of the revolutionary leaders, and equating
their apparent self-sacrifice with that of the Disciples. In </span><i>Two
Scythes </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(1990), Hamilton Finlay presents
the symbols of Communism and death with the Nazi ‘SS’ symbol, apparently
equating the potential fascist manifestations and consequences of Communism
with that of Nazism, simply by merging the symbols of each political movement.
This warning is also emphasised with a print of the French tricolour, with the
words (in English) of “Liberty for some / Equality for some / Fraternity with
some” in each block of blue, white and red, suggesting a disillusionment with
revolution that does not fully deliver its ideals, and which even deceives the
many individuals who suffer for the cause. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The French Revolution was obviously a subject of fascination
for Hamilton Finlay, and that manifested in installations as well as screen
prints and concrete poetry, two of which are now displayed on the top balcony
of the Gallery, reaffirming his familiar theme of liberty emerging at great
cost to individuals and society, and not necessarily the true and full realisation
of that idealistic vision. His other sculptural work tends to focus on his
resurrection and modernisation of neo-classicism, or rather his merging of the
two, as one in the same. Using a variety of materials, such as stone,
constructed objects and neon lighting, he explored the natural environment of
his youth, and the way it could accommodate his own ideals about design and
beauty. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His garden, Little Sparta, is the most famous manifestation
of this vision, reviving the concept of the ‘poet’s garden’, designing the
space of the hillside country-side near Edinburgh to include sundials, columns
and garden temples. It is touching to see that the artist who was apparently so
disillusioned with revolution and politics in the mainstream sense, and the way
that reality did not match the ideals – went on to find that he could realise
his own vision of beauty and harmony in a garden of his own design. If we can
learn anything from Ian Hamilton Finlay’s legacy, it is that Art can realise
visions of harmony and peace, where politics perhaps cannot. The persistence
with the social and political as well as the natural ultimately deepens the
impact of his body of work, and the quiet beauty of his style and idealism. The
Glasgow show, though modest, achieves therefore a well-rounded and perceptive
retrospective of Hamilton Finlay’s art, clarifying with careful attention to
his various interests and media, the connections to be made between his
observance and relationship with society and the natural environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though he so often referenced the past,
Hamilon Finlay’s work proves ever more relevant and universal in its ideas and
observations. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-30611142583640180822014-02-26T12:18:00.003-08:002014-02-26T12:18:47.840-08:00Wild Horses, William Burroughs And White Cake With Danny Fox<br />
<div class="section_header" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<span class="decorative_text small_header" style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Crimson Text', serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1em;">Tome On The Range</span><h2 style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: black; font-size: 30px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 6px; position: relative;">
Wild Horses, William Burroughs And White Cake With Danny Fox <br style="clear: both;" /><span class="sub" style="color: #777777; display: block; font-weight: bold; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; text-transform: uppercase;"></span><span class="sub_sub" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://thequietus.com/images/dash.jpg); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #666666; display: block; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 2px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Christiana Spens , September 22nd, 2013 14:01</span></h2>
</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="snippet" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 27px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
The multi-talented Danny Fox speaks to Christiana Spens about his recent painting, poetry and stories explaining how they overlap - and how they don’t</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YQ8Ttl0k9RE/Uw5L3V8HMfI/AAAAAAAACs8/BlfuQjB81k0/s1600/Danny2_1379872710_crop_550x484.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YQ8Ttl0k9RE/Uw5L3V8HMfI/AAAAAAAACs8/BlfuQjB81k0/s1600/Danny2_1379872710_crop_550x484.jpg" height="281" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Danny Fox is a London-based painter, poet and musician, originally from St. Ives, Cornwall. His exhibitions, <i>Song for Someone Else</i>, <i>Young British Alcoholics</i> and this summer’s <i>Bloom</i> have over the years brought him a cult following, with his paintings of wild horses, delirious figures and enshrined beauties in great demand. Large canvases using iconography, Greek mythology and religious symbols recollect the styles of Otto Dix, Egon Schiele and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as complementing and challenging contemporary painters Peter Doig, Lucy Stein and Cecily Brown. Simultaneously vivacious and sensitive, stylish and studied, Danny Fox’s work continues to evolve, taking in ideas from the past as well as present observations and people, and exploring other media with consistent success.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Your book <i>White Cake</i> included various poems and short stories as well as paintings and drawings… tell us about how they came together and what they were about.</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Danny Fox: I wrote most of White Cake in <i>Africa</i>, I was there for a couple of months building a school with my girlfriend at the time. I was away from my paints and I needed a way of getting it all down so I started writing. It’s mostly a journal that jumps into stories here and there. Some of the writing is about Africa and some of it is fiction based in London. It’s more or less about the end of a relationship. I added the horse paintings later once I was back on English soil.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>What did the horses mean then?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: When I got back from Africa me and the girl broke up and I moved into a tiny box room. The only work I could make was on my lap as I perched on the edge of the single bed. So, I started making all these small paintings on paper so I could store them easily. One day I found this little model horse somewhere and began to paint it over and over again making it weirder and more colourful each time. I don't know what they mean, but it makes sense to me now that it felt good to paint wild horses when I was in that little cell like room… At the time I called them "<i>happy to have lived long enough to paint these beautiful horses, master</i>" ... Who knows, it wasn't a happy time. It was around that time I decided to put them with the writing into a book.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>How did the trip to Africa inspire you, particularly?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: I felt I needed to write it because I was having very conflicting feelings about what I was doing there. I had never been involved in charity before and I was questioning the whole thing but I had to finish what I had started so I used the writing as an outlet for that. In a situation that at times felt completely out of control I found great comfort in sitting down and tunnelling through it all by writing. Near the end of my time there I got robbed and actually lost about half of what I had written. Don’t get me wrong though it wasn't all bad; we had some great times out there and I wish I had put more of that in the book.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Maybe that came out in the paintings though? There’s a tenderness to those pictures that offsets the stories and poems… Maybe overall there’s balance?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: Some tenderness, definitely some sadness. Women really like the horses, more so than men. I think of the horses as female mostly, at the time I was going to the White Horse strip bar and wrote some songs about horses/women:</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<i>Little ladder in her tights, <br style="clear: both;" />I'd like to climb up and die in a spiders web, <br style="clear: both;" />outside cigarettes are lighting up, <br style="clear: both;" />I'm tired of everything, <br style="clear: both;" />white horses sleep standing up <br style="clear: both;" />and white girls all sleep standing up.</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Or another song:</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<i>Where there are horses there will be fences,<br style="clear: both;" />This isn't a marriage this is a sentence <br style="clear: both;" />Still have a drawer full of your dresses<br style="clear: both;" />A book of wrong numbers and endless addresses</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Have you done much writing since that trip?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: I recently finished a collection of poems called <i>Dolphins</i> which is just my favourites from the last year or so but mostly I’ve been concentrating on writing lyrics for my band Boss Universe, which is of course infinitely harder and takes a lot longer so it seems like I haven’t written much since.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<img alt="" class="normal" height="365" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/13415/df_1379872737_crop_550x365.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: block;" width="550" /><br style="clear: both;" />© Jamie Burke 2013</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>One of your exhibitions was called <i>A Song for Someone Else</i>, and you’re in a band as well; are these paintings love songs? Do songs inspire art? What is the relationship between music and painting and love for you? How do they influence one another? What makes you do one and not the other?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: That show (<i>A Song for Someone Else</i>) was full of love songs and they were all for one person. Looking back, I think the work suffered because of that. Painting is a solitary act for me; I don’t need anyone around to make paintings. But to make music I rely on other people, which is good – that’s the main difference in painting and music at this stage. They are separate parts of my life really, like having two jobs, one in a bar, one in a lighthouse. Other people’s songs can inspire me, though – I always have music on when I’m painting.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>What music, lately?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: I like to listen to a lot of classical music when I'm painting, the most simplistic stuff I can find. I like simple piano. Those Nick Cave and Warren Ellis soundtracks get played a lot in the studio... The Jesse James one especially. I like Cat Power a lot too. I sometimes use music as way of getting back to a certain time, dredging up stuff from the past and putting it down on canvas. Actually let’s not get into that.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Do you find that literature inspires your painting and vice versa? If so, which authors especially, or which poems or lyrics?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: I have been doing some big paintings inspired by Greek mythology lately so I did a bit of time in Swiss Cottage Library, reading up on those subjects. But generally it’s not as direct as that. I named one painting from my last show, <i>Bloom</i>: “Man on a cane seat throwing bread to swans” which is a line from <i>Naked Lunch</i> by William Burroughs. I don’t really need to be inspired by literature though. At the end of the day it’s colour and imagery moved around until it works.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>There seem to be stories implied in your portraits and cautionary tales in the eyes of sprawling figures. Do you think of painting as a kind of storytelling? How do you explain the connection between narrative and painting (in your own work especially)?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: You can take something simple and make it feel complex and you can take something complicated and make it seem simple. I have no way of knowing what you are going to feel when you look at one of my paintings; I only know what I feel. If you can see a world within a portrait I would be happy with that. I don’t want to tell the story with a painting, though. I’m trying to get away from the story- from the beginning and the ending. I used to use a lot of words in the paintings but stopped because it created a narrative – or an answer to a question.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>So are you going for a sense of immediacy, in being beyond past and future, beginning and endings?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: [Yes but] sometimes what seems like an immediateness might have taken a long time to get to, like the way Burroughs would cut up his pages and stick them back together to create abstract images, he still had to write the story first to get to the point where he could chop it up… The spirit of a painting is very hard to explain and articulate. I can’t say it’s not intentional because that is the mark I’m trying to hit, however I don’t feel I have much control over it. I make work all day long (some days) that doesn’t have it – the spirit, the shit, the holy ghost – then it suddenly appears and that painting might end up being kept. It’s not all magic, but there is a bit. That’s what I was saying about Burroughs: you still have to write the thing before you chop in into a thousand pieces. Yes, painting can be like poetry but as somebody who creates both I feel the necessity for both so they cant be that similar. Sometimes I think it’s as basic as not wanting to get dirty. Sometimes I just want to sit and write at a clean table and not get paint all over my hands. A lot of my words come to me when I’m out and about as well, riding the bus or sat in the pub. I went through a stage of going to a strip bar called the White Horse at lunch times and did a lot of writing in there. I mean, they were fine with that but I don’t know how they would feel about me setting up the easel.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>You mention Burroughs again; do you identify with his process of cutting up pages and sticking them back together, and so on? Because that’s more what poets tend to do, as a process, which makes me think poetry and painting are quite similar as a mental process. And with Burroughs that seemed to be a statement, as well, against much other literature, and a statement about how we (or he) experienced life, memory etc. There’s an inherent rebelliousness about the way he restructured stories to the point of abstraction. Do you think of your own work in that way, or is it more of an instinctive approach perhaps beyond explaining this way?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DF: Its nice to live in that moment of abstraction, he probably did it so he could just be out of his own mind for a while, that explains why he did a lot of other things too and why we all do them, whether it be heroin or <i>Corination Street</i> – its just a way out of our own boring shit. Some of my work is very instinctive, some of my favourite things I’ve ever done are just two minute sketches, nothing is better when you get it like that so quick, then other work takes months. For my last show I worked on a series of still life flowers that were done over a 6 month period where I was taking painkillers for physical pain. For the whole time I felt dried out and strange and had to sit at my desk painting small pictures rather than standing up carving into the big ones like I’d prefer. What I’m trying to say is there are ways to paint a novel and ways to paint a poem. I don’t think of myself as a rebellious artist, a lot of people have said that about me because I came from Cornwall and choose to paint people in what they considered to be an urban style instead of Cornish landscapes. I’ve never agreed with them. It’s bullshit. I guess I can identify with that cut up technique a bit, I’m looking at a painting I’m working on now and you can see all the layers from previous efforts coming through, I’m not thinking about them anymore but they are still part of the painting. If this painting was a cut up poem it would say “Eyes in white jungles sing like bone ashtrays.” That would make perfect nonsense if you could see it.</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 25px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-49719176716888414192014-02-26T12:16:00.004-08:002014-02-26T12:16:45.269-08:00Requiem For Youth: An Interview With Darran Anderson <br />
<div class="section_header" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Crimson Text', serif; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px; line-height: 18px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: small; font-style: normal; line-height: normal;"><div class="section_header" style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<span class="decorative_text small_header" style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Crimson Text', serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1em;">Tome On The Range</span><h2 style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: black; font-size: 30px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 30px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 6px; position: relative;">
Requiem For Youth: An Interview With Darran Anderson <br style="clear: both;" /><span class="sub" style="color: #777777; display: block; font-weight: bold; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; text-transform: uppercase;"></span><span class="sub_sub" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(http://thequietus.com/images/dash.jpg); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #666666; display: block; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 2px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Christiana Spens , September 15th, 2013 11:55</span></h2>
</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="snippet" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 27px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 5px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LG3-mPtnPkw/Uw5LjqKT2rI/AAAAAAAACs0/BXrlR1CyfiM/s1600/photo-3_1379258948_crop_550x412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LG3-mPtnPkw/Uw5LjqKT2rI/AAAAAAAACs0/BXrlR1CyfiM/s1600/photo-3_1379258948_crop_550x412.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Darran Anderson is the author of poetry collection <i>Tesla’s Ghost</i>, a forthcoming biography of Jack Kerouac, and <i>Histoire de Melody Nelson</i>, a book about Serge Gainsbourg and his most provocative album. He speaks to Christiana Spens about music, censorship and <i>Lolita</i>, and the relationship between poetry, pain, and pleasure</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; line-height: 21px;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
It has just stopped raining when we settle in a beer garden in Glasgow, some time in the middle of the day, and catching the only sunshine of that whole week. There is a middle-aged crowd at the table near us, half of them ignoring a small, yapping dog, and the other half indulging it’s neurotic attention seeking. We order beers and gin and tonics, and eventually get to talking about Anderson’s latest book, after he has a faux nervous breakdown about the writing of <i>Histoire de Melody Nelson</i>, and Gainsbourg’s ghost, “chipping away at my whole fucking personality”. He is not really falling apart at all, of course – though perhaps some of Gainsbourg’s comedy and melodramatic charm have rubbed off on him during the writing process. Or perhaps that similarity of sensibility drew him to write about Gainsbourg in the first place…</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>What drew you to write about Gainsbourg, and Histoire de Melody Nelson?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Darran Anderson: I think I heard something like <i>Lemon Incest</i> or <i>Sea, Sex and Sun</i> or one of those later tunes he made when he was drink-sodden and casually abusing people on chat-shows and I remember just having this initial revulsion that I thought was kind of interesting. It’s like those people who put their boots through their TV screens in outrage at the Sex Pistols. The reaction says more about you than the thing that provoked it. There’s a thin line between being disgusted and intrigued. There’s a revelation moment when you listen to Gainsbourg’s music, having been led to believe he was just an old soak or a novelty act and you realize, Jesus, this guy has the most mind-blowing body of work, easily the equal of someone like David Axelrod, sustained from the 50s to the early 80s at least. The French knew better of course but for the rest of us he was hiding in clear sight after <i>Je t’aime</i>… and we were too busy smirking at them across the Channel while we bought our Phil Collins albums or whatever.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Then there’s his story; his folks fleeing Russia, narrowly avoiding being murdered during the Holocaust, Gainsbourg becoming an artist then burning his paintings, playing piano in late-night cabarets and working his way up himself, seducing some of the world’s most beautiful women despite looking like his own caricature and winding up the moral majority for several decades, which is an admirable vocation. Plus he made a concept album about a man with a cabbage for a head and one about the Nazis called <i>Rock Around the Bunker</i>, who could resist?</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>You are also a poet and you’re in a band; how do you explain the connections between writing lyrics and poetry? Is the process similar? What makes you wake up one day and write a poem rather than a song?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: I can’t really say I’m a poet. Michael Longley said once that, “Calling yourself a poet is like calling yourself a saint.” I’ve written poetry but I don’t think I’m any good at it and it had diminishing returns. I started off having a chapbook published that a few people kindly bought but not many. I printed the second collection on the backs of ‘Death’ tarot cards and slipped them inside the worst books I could find in bookshops (anything with a Richard & Judy sticker on it). The third I ended up putting as messages in bottles and dumping them in rivers. I’ve never heard anything back so they’re presumably at the bottom of ocean where they belong. Unless I can find a way of firing them into space, I’ll probably not write a fourth one.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
The band is an enjoyable atrocity. I play the guitar and a bit of drums and now bass. Probably the flugelhorn next. It’s really a backing band for my friend Matt’s music and my mate Joe (who was in Kling Klang) as a side-project. I keep trying to sabotage it and turn us into a Krautrock band or Talking Heads without telling the others. Hopefully they don’t read this. We only exist in my friend’s shed and our imaginations but there’s talk of recording something at some stage. The band’s called The Terror of Trent D’Arby. I had nothing to do with the name. I wanted to call it Zardoz. It’s a magnificently stupid venture from start to finish but good fun.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
I suppose lyrics are constrained by the music, unless you’re Richey Edwards, but I don’t think that’s particularly a difference with the poetry I was writing. I always liked having a structure, some strange rhythm or rhyme, to work within. A lot of spoken-word poetry is just abysmal bollocks because the people doing it have thrown everything that came before overboard, all the innovations of the past, and just opted for free verse which is probably the most conservative route these days. And a lot of spoken-word rewards the immediate and the vapid, a sort of unfunny stand-up. Knowing what the rules are makes it much more satisfying when you then break them. A poet like Adelle Stripe, who writes about the modern world in sestinas and pantoums, is worth a thousand spoken word poets to me.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
I think William Blake believed that lyrics and poetry should never have been separated, that they were one and the same once and he died singing so he’d have known. You hear it in Leonard Cohen, Rennie Sparks, Rakim, Nick Cave and Gainsbourg of course, who has wordplay that would put John Donne or César Vallejo to shame, much of it lost in translation. There has to be a music in the poetry and a poetry in the music and if there isn’t, why bother?</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>So is the band a way to move on from the Gainsbourg book?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: It is… To steal my energy back.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>You begin your book talking about fairytales – the dark and frightening versions, rather than consoling Happy Ever Afters – and then go on the explain that the album is a sort of <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> (Gainsbourg’s words)… What did this all have to do with previously writing pop songs for teenage starlets?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: Like Nabokov’s <i>Lolita</i> on which it’s partially based, <i>Melody Nelson</i>’s all about the Beast whilst letting on to be all about the Beauty. It’s a study in male neurosis and delusion. In terms of sound, it’s sublime but it’s a pretty ugly subject lyrically. That’s why I love it. There’s a tension there, an electricity. Gainsbourg was as clever as Nabokov. He implies much more than you think and Melody Nelson is a cipher not just for the narrator’s twisted fantasies and skewed concept of love but also the audience’s. You can be outraged by it or seduced or both. Gainsbourg doesn’t care. He remains elusive. He lets you fill in the blanks.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
In terms of starlets, the traditional view is that Gainsbourg was embittered because he had tried to be a painter and then a serious songwriter, slogging away in transsexual cabarets and nightclubs, and was disgusted when he finally made it as a writer of disposable pop songs. So he took out his bitterness primarily on France Gall, who he’d won the Eurovision with, having her unwittingly sing the phallic ‘Les Succettes’ and she never forgave him. That’s a somewhat rewritten history though; he actually continued writing for her but her star was on the wane. According to the female artists he wrote for (Petula Clark, Juliette Gréco and so on), Gainsbourg was nothing but a gentleman and an endearingly nervous one at that. The cynicism was an act and an armour and it’s there in the songs that he wrote for young male idols too incidentally. Perhaps it was the medium he hated. Or how easily Gall had gotten famous with a pretty face and a well-connected father. But there’s no denying there’s a sneer in some of the tracks he wrote and he pushed it as far as he could and beyond with her. Yet it’s a sneer that gives the songs an edge, otherwise it’s all treacle. Sometimes you need the Beast.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Gainsbourg had no driving license, despite enjoying the possession of beautiful cars, and placing them prominently in his work, often as a symbol of sexuality. I wonder what his analyst would say?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: They’d have had a field day no doubt, though given there were so many masks and projections involved, he’d have made them work for it. You’re never entirely sure if there’s a triple bluff going on with him or no bluff at all. That’s what makes him so intriguing. He was a dedicated family man, a libertine, an artist, a timid romantic, a degenerate, a moralist and none of these things are mutually exclusive, though we’d like them to be.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
The driving theme is fascinating though. There are plenty of early videos where Gainsbourg is driving around country lanes, looking dapper, but Jane Birkin has said he didn’t have a license and would buy a luxury car just to sit in it and smoke, use it as an expensive ash-tray. Maybe he was a dreamer rather than a doer. If you think of the automobile as a symbol of freedom, especially then at the height of the road movie, Gainsbourg’s take on it was sexually suggestive but it also hinted that this freedom could end in damnation, if we think of the narrator of <i>Melody Nelson</i> perpetually driving with no destination. It leads you to think of those bodies of criminals who were buried at crossroads in medieval times so their ghosts would wander around, lost forever. He subverts a symbol of liberty into being a symbol of perdition. The promise it brings is still so tantalizing though. The narrator is damned and his muse dead but there’s little doubt that given the same choice, he’d commit the same sins over again. It’s a ring road around one of the circles of Dante’s <i>Inferno</i>.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
On a side-note, J.G. Ballard once chose Sylvie Simmons’ excellent biography of Gainsbourg <i>A Fistful of Gitanes</i> as his book of the year, calling Gainsbourg an “all-round scallywag.” He could see the trickster element to the singer. The parallels with Ballard’s book <i>Crash</i>, in terms of fetishism, seem obvious and bit too trite to make but it’s interesting to consider that Ballard once said interviewers would come to his house, having read his books, and expect to find some kind of degenerate monster living there in a sex dungeon and what they found, to their horror, instead was a quiet, dignified family man raising his children. Beyond his albums and his talk-show appearances, there’s something of Gainsbourg in that sentiment too. We believe in the image. We insist on idiotic and paralyzing degrees of accountability for everyone but ourselves and especially those in the public eye. I mean we’re all adults with the capability of looking at the world the way a Socrates or Derrida did but instead we have this inane cloying desire for sincerity and authenticity. “He writes that so he must be that.”</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
For me an artist like Gainsbourg or Ballard or Nabokov for that matter is labeled a deviant for having the audacity to articulate and examine the filth we all have in our minds, to voice what we’re all thinking but dare not say. We’re all perverts of some kind in the privacy of our own skulls. If you’re not, you lack imagination. Gainsbourg might have been the one who released <i>Je t’aime</i> and was damned for it by the Vatican amongst others but we were the ones who bought it by the million and started a baby boom with that as the soundtrack (don’t get me started on what the Vatican were up to). In the sense of being a pioneer or even a scapegoat, there was something approaching the heroic about that. These people transgress in their art so that most of us don’t have to. It’s a valuable public service.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Of course, <i>Melody Nelson</i> pushes all this to an extreme by having an underage girl at its centre. Gainsbourg was quite deliberately courting controversy. This is a man whose most successful single was the sounds of a woman having an orgasm, a man who released rockabilly albums about the Nazis, a book about an artist who turns bowel movements into art, who covered the French national anthem as a reggae tune leading to death threats and bomb scares. To use some horrible modern parlance, he was a troll, perhaps the king of them. He raised it to high art. But it’s one thing to write about something and another to advocate it, to say nothing about actually doing it. To casually make that assumption is a pretty lunk-headed way of looking at art or even morality. Yet people do it all the time. If there’s been any irritation in writing this book, which was a joy to write otherwise, it’s been the occasional friend who’s dismissive and says, “Oh but he was sexist or an old creep.” My response is always, “Of course but you’re saying that as if such a person wouldn’t be interesting to write about.” If you throw away a record because the person who made it might’ve been a bellpiece, you’ll be left with a lot of space for your Coldplay albums. Niceness isn’t the primary consideration.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<img alt="" class="normal" height="361" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/13359/serge-gainsbourg-jane-birkin-studio-2_1379259547_crop_550x361.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: block;" width="550" /></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>You write about Melody Nelson symbolising Jane Birkin without a past – so in a way Melody Nelson is a fantasy version of Birkin, where Gainsbourg’s alter ego need not feel intimidated by her first husband. And yet this fantasy is still the dark side of a fairy-tale – if the past does not take a leading role in its presence, perhaps it does in its absence? What do you think explains that haunting quality?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: The past is always with us but it doesn’t exist either. That’s the haunting thing; we remember it happening but it’s completely ephemeral. We only ever exist in the present. As we can’t grasp it or relive it, we start changing it, fabricating it. Memory becomes partly a fiction. John Lennon used to say he envied Yoko Ono for being able to speak Japanese, having a whole language that he couldn’t understand. It was like a world, which she was part of, that was closed off to him. For some obsessive people, I think the past has the same effect. It was bad luck for Serge that his great love Birkin had been previously married to the highly respected composer John Barry, especially when he was feeling vulnerable about being perceived as a song-writing hack. So he started to rewrite history. It’s a control thing but I’m glad he did it given he created great art from his insecurities. What it was like for those involved is a different story.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>“Perversion is in the eye of the beholder.” – What does this mean?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: Dear god, is that my line or his? I suppose what I meant was some kind of relativism (that’s a bad word); the idea that, outside of universal taboos, perversion is not an objective thing. In many cases, it’s a question of taste, opinion, context and how permissive or restrictive the dominant religion or ideology is. We’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that we’re naturally ultra-permissive but that’s more constructed and changeable than we imagine and the progress that we’ve made can be reversed. In fact, it has been reversed in the past. Compare how smutty Chaucer’s writing could be compared to the prevailing Victorian morality centuries later. Compare the sexuality of the jazz age or the Weimar cabarets compared to what was to follow in the 40’s and 50’s. Permissiveness has its constraints, its no-go areas even now. You don’t even need to live under religious fundamentalism. Consider being outwardly gay in hip-hop circles or as a footballer. In certain environments and groups, what we deem acceptable or perverted is exposed as unstable and prejudiced as it really is.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
As well as pushing things forward with <i>Je t’aime</i> and admirably facing down the backlash it provoked, Gainsbourg could see the cracks in the permissive society, its limits and contradictions, and he took great delight in focusing in on them. So having played a part in getting us to the stage where anything goes between consenting adults, Gainsbourg decided consensus wasn’t to his liking and, being a contrarian, began to incite. “Provocation is my oxygen” he was fond of saying. The way he did it was at once blatant and subtle; Melody is made to be a teenage girl but the listener is seduced into accepting the tale as a doomed love affair (or the subversion of one) in the Romeo and Juliet/Tristan and Isolde tradition, a logical consequence of our cult of youth, rather than what it actually is, which is statutory rape. The audience becomes either complicit or outraged, both being compromised positions. In the same way, people read tabloid accounts of sex-crimes proclaiming disgust but lingering over every lurid detail. Gainsbourg knew this trait well, as Nabokov did and someone like Houellebecq continues to; that repulsion and compulsion are two sides of the same coin. It’s a clever trap in a sense. It’s important to remember that it’s also fiction and has purposes other than just provocation or titillation; one way of knowing what morality is, is to study what is taboo. In <i>Lolita</i>, Nabokov puts us inside the mind of a monster, leaving us with some very difficult questions if we should begin to empathise with him. That’s to give Nabokov and Gainsbourg the benefit of the doubt as provocateurs and moralists. They could equally just have been creeps. Or all of the above. The point is the perversion’s there if you want to find it and similarly you can tell yourself it’s just fiction. You bring your own perspective to it. Alternatively, you could just listen to the album because it’s got great tunes, especially if you don’t speak French, but then you miss the fun of getting sucked into some horrendous moral quagmire as I just have.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>“In the first bloom of infatuation with Jane, Serge was blighted with the curse of happiness. The poet needs heartbreak at least as much as he or she needs love.” Is this really true?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: Without a doubt. I don’t think you can appreciate the highest heights without the lowest lows and vice versa. It’s relativity. Gainsbourg admitted as much when he said he wrote desperate heartbroken songs when he was in love and joyous love songs when he was depressed and alone. It wasn’t just wish-fulfillment, it was a sort of depth-sounding or topography. If you listen to ‘Initials B.B.’, it’s the most uplifting song musically with these devastated lyrics after Bardot had left him. It’s melancholic, that mix of sadness and joy. You find that in all the best love songs, it’s in the note of doubt in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘Are You the One that I’ve Been Waiting For?’ and Bowie’s ‘Heroes’. Love will tear us apart as the man said but we do it anyway. We cant help ourselves. The myth of the tortured artist might be a cliché but it’s an attractive one. And there must be an attraction to think, well if I can channel this feeling into inspiration it’s worth it, not just as catharsis but as an engine of production. It’s dangerous going down that route. I imagine there’s sacrifices and thefts involved. James Joyce once tried to get his lover Nora Barnacle to cuckold him so he could write accurately about jealousy. It’s taking the idea of suffering for your art to the point of derangement but you can’t fault their dedication. You need to be sure there’s a masterpiece at the end of it all because your life will likely be a shambles.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>When shooting the cover of the album, Jane Birkin was four months pregnant with Gainsbourg’s child. If “Melody remains a cipher, a projection of his fantasies and hang-ups,” then what were Gainsbourg’s hang-ups? Why do you think Birkin went along with it all?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: I think she loved him, as he loved her but maybe in a different way. You can tell from interviews that he was immensely charming. He was funny, smart, witty. He would say things like “I’m not a misanthrope, I’m a romantic. I only became a misanthrope through contact with others.” He had no problems attracting women, despite being unconventional-looking. I imagine she was flattered. In his defence, Gainsbourg wrote many songs exhibiting many other aspects of her personality, or his interpretation of it. Entire albums. <i>Melody Nelson</i> isn’t really one of them. It’s not her story at all despite what the album suggests. It’s the narrator’s. But that absence becomes a presence. I used to think it was the black hole around which the narrator circled but it’s the opposite; she’s the light being sucked into it.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
The first thing I did writing the book was to contact Jane Birkin to arrange an interview but it was never possible to conduct due to the fact I was living in Cambodia at the time and she was in tour in Europe. The more I thought about it the more it seemed somehow appropriate in an odd way. Melody Nelson was a cipher, an absence, a ghost and she remains so in my book. It forced me to make the book something a million miles away from a typical interview-based book (I’m not a music journalist anyway), so it had to become something different. A storybook of many stories - the Holocaust, Surrealism, Cargo Cults, the ghosts in the Seine…</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Gainsbourg read a lot of Nabakov and the Marquis de Sade; “Obsessed, like him, with what freedom really meant.” When I read them, and hear <i>Histoire de Melody Nelson</i>, they seem to be exploring what it is that people fear about freedom, more than actually being free. Given that all three artists were working under the pressure of censorship and social disapproval, this is fair enough. But do you think it meant that they failed at learning “what freedom really meant”?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: I think they came pretty close, as close as we could hope or dread perhaps. There is fear in there no doubt about it, that’s inherent. If you take individual freedom to its logical conclusion, if you were able to act freely and absolutely on every whim, without being seen or being held to account, you’d end in torture and slavery. That’s why you get those libertarians soiling the concept in America, with their little hard-ons for Ayn Rand bless them. It’s the liberty of the aspiring slave-trader. They’re only the most ludicrous and self-delusional example. None of us are immune. When we talk about freedom what we usually mean is freedom for me and my kind. It seems to be in us as a species or at least the male half of it (in the female half, there’s some hope left). “Every man is a tyrant when he fucks” De Sade wrote. It’s that idea that for someone to dominate someone has to be made to submit. An idea we should have left behind in the caves but haven’t.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
We make the mistake though of shooting the messengers of this, Gainsbourg and the writers I mentioned earlier. As if we’d rather be blissfully unaware of our behaviours and the way the world is in favour of a hologram of the world as it should be. De Sade’s a crucial writer on freedom and slavery precisely because he knew its limits, he knew what would happen when you pushed it over the edge as he had and paid the price (as well as making others, namely women unfortunate enough to cross his path, pay a far worse price). To me personally, he was a vile specimen but he has much more to offer us in terms of postcards from the depths than today’s fortune cookie thinkers.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
For what it’s worth, I think we’re not free enough. And the State and corporations are doing their utmost always to shut down freedoms we’ve fought to achieve. It’s in their nature. De Sade was dealing with a different level of freedom, the point where it is monopolized by one section of society and is raised to such a pitch it becomes something else, something unrecognizable. The point where we can get away with anything, excused by ideology or faith, when there is nothing reining us in. At that point, the suffering of others isn’t just a by-product, it’s almost a necessity. The key to it is evil for evil’s sake, the aestheticism involved. De Sade was proved right not just by the Terror in the French Revolution but by the added unnecessary cruelties that took place then. It wasn’t simply that they cut the head off nobles in guillotines, it was that they cheered an executioner who had sliced off the mons veneris of a beautiful duchess and wore it as a beard. That wasn’t a perversion of freedom as we’d like to think, it was a form of freedom. The executioner knew he was beyond restraint and he delighted in it, theatrically. Nabokov knew from escaping Soviet Russia and then Nazi Germany what horrors took place in those places when all restraints were lifted for those in charge (his own brother died in a concentration camp). Gainsbourg knew this as well as a Russo-French Jew, narrowly escaping the Holocaust with his family (his uncle was murdered in Auschwitz) and having to hide for several years. That’s the terrible unpalatable aspect beyond even Arendt’s banality of evil. These weren’t just brainwashed ideologues or demonic aberrations. These were intelligent cultured men given free rein. You see those trophy pictures of smiling Nazis at the edges of pits in the Ukraine or Japanese soldiers wielding bayonets during the Rape of Nanking, that’s what absolute freedom <i>can</i> look like. And we’ve yet to digest that, if we ever will. So we deny it and attack the people who tell us such things.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Where Gainsbourg fits in is that he saw that the free mind would soon turn to tyranny but also that such a person would be a slave to their desires, they’d be shackled in a way to their victims. The narrator of Melody Nelson is a love-struck poetic romantic like Humbert Humbert in <i>Lolita</i>. He is also, like Humbert Humbert, a fiend. Both of them think they are free men and the disturbing thing for us is the thought that they might well be, damned though they are.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>“‘It’s Humbert Humbert who fascinates me, not Lolita. Lolita is just a silly little girl.’” (46) You quote Gainsbourg as saying that, before writing: “Perhaps he was a misogynist in the sense he hated how much he was infatuated with women, the power they wielded over him, in which case his songs are really all about him, his frustrations, desires, his hatreds, fetishes, all the weaknesses that better men and women would never dare publicly admit.” Could you say a little more about this…?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: “Anything you do say may be used against you…” Haha. Gainsbourg is often called a misogynist and he brought the term on himself. It’s a conversation I’ve had with feminist friends of mine, who’ve taken issue with him. Besides the fact that writing about someone isn’t a blanket endorsement of them, I don’t think he was particularly a misogynist. Certainly writing about the Beats at the same time put things into perspective about how liberal Gainsbourg actually was in comparison; Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, for all their strengths, were atrociously sexist. Serge fixated on women, which is no proof of egalitarianism (all haters are fixated on and defined by the subject of their hate), but it seemed to come from many perspectives and in the work he wrote specifically for women, it took multi-faceted forms. Sometimes cruel, sometimes kind. Like any artist, he used characters as ways of invariably and indirectly describing himself and his relationship to the world. You could see that as a denial of agency for those involved but what else can a man do if he chooses to write about women? For me, he was a classic misanthrope. An imploded romantic. It appeared to be misogyny at times because he didn’t consider men worth writing about. It was also a misanthropy that extended mercilessly to himself, a man who regards himself as having a cabbage for a head doesn’t suffer delusions of grandeur. Even in his unforgivable encounter with Catherine Ringer in which he hypocritically called her a whore (which she handled with class, dignity and a sad regret at facing a fallen hero of hers), you can see, from body language, that much of the loathing is a projection of self-disgust.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
<b>Melody is sacrificed and dies at the end of the album, with the typically French melodrama of great novels such as <i>Madame Bovary</i>. When interviewed about his own tragic heroine, Flaubert famously answered, “Madame Bovary – c’est moi.” Is not Melody, Serge? On the verge of fatherhood, perhaps Gainsbourg was singing a requiem for his own youth?</b></div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
DA: Christ, I wish I had thought of that when I was writing the thing. I think there’s something in that. The lover has to die is the oldest cop-out in literature. It’s the ‘happy ever after’ thing again. No-one believes it, it’s a Disney-fied version of the original much more realistic Brothers Grimm ending “…and they lived happily until their deaths.” There’s pathos in both senses of the word; the tragedy of her premature death and his pathetic longing, always meeting her and losing her in some maddening circular dream as the record spins, ends and starts again.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
The idea that Melody is Serge never occurred to me. Certainly he would have been aware of his age given the difference in years between Birkin and himself. He already had two children and two marriages behind him. People seemed older then. Perhaps he regretted not meeting Birkin when he was young, an impossibility of course. His declining health, through prodigious drinking and smoking, led to a heart attack shortly after <i>Melody Nelson</i>. So mortality was, at least subconsciously, rumbling away in the background. You could make a convincing case then for Melody as a symbol of eternal youth gone astray, wandering around the corals, never to return.</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
</div>
<center>
<img alt="" class="normal" height="384" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/13359/41AqV_0stQL_1379259924_crop_255x384.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: block;" width="255" /></center>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em;">
Histoire de Melody Nelson <i>is released by Bloomsbury in the US on October 24th and in the UK on December 19th 2013</i></div>
</div>
</div>
</span></i></span></span></div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-78823117185963581712014-02-26T12:13:00.004-08:002014-02-26T12:40:59.943-08:00Community, War and the Role of Art: an interview with George Gittoes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>Community, War and the
Role of Art: an Interview with George Gittoes<span style="color: blue;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">by Christiana Spens<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">George Gittoes has worked
in many war zones over the past forty years, including Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia,
South Africa, Southern Lebanon, and most recently Iraq and Afghanistan. His
work depicts a variety of horrors that he has observed or which have been
relayed to him in the war zones he has visited. He has also made films about
artists in various areas of conflict, and is interested in the use of art to
escape one’s situation, especially through comedy and story-telling, while
exposing political violence and the absurdity and insanity of war. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">Gittoes
has used films, notably <i>The Bullets of the Poets </i></span><span style="font-family: Century;">(1987) and (most recently) <i>The Miscreants of
Taliwood </i></span><span style="font-family: Century;">(2011) as well as large
figurative canvases, installations, graphic novels, and journals that include
drawings, cartoons, collage and writing. <i>Rwanda Maconde </i></span><span style="font-family: Century;">(1995) for example, details a massacre at the
Kibeho refugee camp, and includes drawings of a mother and child in a mass
grave, and a boy staring into space, traumatised. His recent series of
paintings, related to a graphic novel of the same title, <i>Night Visions </i></span><span style="font-family: Century;">(2010), depicts United States soldiers, and their
experiences in a ficionalised war zone, based on Gittoes’ own experiences of
Iraq and Afghanistan during the recent ‘War on Terror’. His body of work is
expansive and varied, but the subject of political violence and war persists
throughout. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">Christiana
Spens speaks to him about his relationship with and understanding of the
subject of war and terror, and his insights into the role of art more generally
in the healing of communities affected by violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: What is your
personal drive for accessing and portraying the subjects of war and political
violence? <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: My drive and focused
aim can be summarised in one word – compassion. When His Holiness the Dalai
Lama visited Australia in the late 1990s he requested a meeting with me and
wanted me to do his portrait. I asked him why and he said: “ I have seen a book
of your work and it is all about compassion and that is, also, what I am
about.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">Back
in 1972, when I was 22, I read Malcolm Muggeridge’s book on Mother Theresa, and
I wrote to her. I was concerned I had taken the wrong direction by becoming an
artist and asked her if I could better serve humanity by going back to
university and studying either medicine or social work. She wrote back and
(summarising it) she said: “If you use the talents God has given you and you
use them to help others you will know both fulfilment and happiness.” I am
fulfilled because I have never let doubt get in the way of following the path
my better instincts has dictated, and I am happy that I have used every talent
I possess and stretched my endurance to the limit, both mentally and
physically, throughout all of my adult life and am presently doing some of the
most productive work ever. And I am glad I have never backed away when faced
with danger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: What is hardest
about working on this subject matter? <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: I do not see anything
particularly hard about my work – it is very rewarding and I would not swap my
life for any one else’s. The three things that must be achieved, however, when
working in war zones are: a) access, b) trust , c) community involvement. These
are the three pillars which success depends on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I have access to the front line area of conflict, the
trust of those I want to work with and the local community, I have to do
everything I can to ensure no harm comes to anyone associated with the project.
I have a huge security responsibility, which is certainly the most important
consideration I have and could be seen as my hardest challenge. If I fail in
this and someone is hurt, imprisoned, sacked or killed as a result of my
project, I have to take the blame and the inner heartache that comes from this.
In a long career I am not aware of anyone suffering as a result of my work but
the potential risk has always been very high. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: Which reactions
(from people who have seen your work or been otherwise involved) have been most
interesting or moving for you?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: Whenever my work is
shown in a country which has known long periods of suffering and war, I get my
best and best-informed reactions. I had a show called ‘Lives in the Balance’
which toured the State and National Galleries of South Africa (Johannesburg,
Pretoria and Durban).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spoke to
many groups of school kids and I found they were better informed about the
conflicts my show covered, and more importantly they were able to put
themselves more completely into the situations I was describing , particularly
in the cases of victims of violence. When showing similar work in the wealthy
cities of Europe, Australia and America, I always get questions about how I can
cope with the things I have witnessed. People in wealthy cities seem to need to
hear me confess that I am really a psychological cripple suffering from chronic
PTSD. They seem disappointed and surprised when I tell them that I am happy and
rarely suffer from loss of sleep. My theory is that people living in
comfortable circumstances do not want to be challenged to do work similar to
mine and need to think I am either some kind of lunatic or an adrenaline junkie
in order to get themselves off the hook.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But people from places where there has been long suffering under violent
regimes or war always welcome my work and see me as an advocate. The Kurdish
people who ran the apartments where I lived in Baghdad would always great me
with “ Mr George, we love you being here because you are always creating while
everyone else who comes here is destroying.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: How do the
reactions of viewers inform your further work and sense of purpose as an
artist?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: I am highly influenced
by the reactions of viewers to my work. When I am in the final stages of
editing a film I ask as many groups of viewers as possible to come to
screenings and I take their criticisms very seriously – acting on most of them
to improve the editing or the film or to make the meaning clearer . Even when
the film is finished I spend the whole time during the screening reading the
reactions of the audience. I am always most happy when they get the jokes. Some
people have described my films as a series of well constructed gags and while
this is an extreme simplification there is an element of truth in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see all my art as the work of a
showman. If the audience does not respond I think I have failed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: Do you think (or
hope) that your work has a healing / cathartic effect on people, and how would
you explain this process?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: When I was in Tibet I
visited Nechung Monastry. This is a very unusual monastery as all the murals on
its many painted walls are of horrific monsters and terrible atrocities such as
the skinning of live humans. They were similar to the images of Hell by Bosch.
I have never felt so at peace anywhere else in the world. More so than in the
most beautiful tiles mosques designed by Sinan in Istanbul. I sought out the
head monk – a very wise lama and asked him why I felt so peaceful while
surrounded by such images of horror and he smiled and said: “This is very
simple – when all the demons and all the horror is externalised then the inner
self feels at peace.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: Do you think art’s
value, in a wider sense, is in the cathartic and healing nature of art (in
relation to the wider community)? <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: I have taught art
therapy in a mental institution and have seen the power of art to help the
mentally ill, and I believe this function should not be underestimated as an
alternative to harsh medications. In the wider sense, when art is combined with
love it can do miracles to heal both humanity and the planet. I like the work
of Henry Matisse and as someone who appreciates beautiful design and things I
can relate to his often quoted line about art needing to be like a comfortable
chair. But I prefer Picasso who always sought a balance between beauty and
destruction . There are artists like Matisse, Degas, Renoir and Engre who draw
with a beautiful light line, and then others like Durer, Dix, Goya, Golub,
Bacon and myself who draw with a dark line. I love both types of drawing but I
belong to the dark line team and think it can be as inspiring and uplifting.
The first artist I fell in love with because of line was Aubrey Beardsley: his
dark line was beautifully perverse and totally seductive to me as a twelve year
old, because it matched what I could already see in my own developing style.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: Do you believe in
any notion of ‘poetic justice’ – that is, art as a kind of protest and
expression of otherwise unresolved issues and criminal actions? (In art’s
function as exposing the otherwise unexpressed realities of personal and
communal experience?)<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: The great thing about
art is that regardless of how the state may try to control its distribution,
the artists themselves have unlimited freedom to explore what it is to be
human. I look at the photographs of Joel Witkin and although, even for me, they
are too creepy and I can not contemplate them for very long, I have to
acknowledge he has delved into strange areas of the human psyche in an original
way. I would never deny the value of his work. It is the same with some of the
work of Robert Mapplethorpe, who included the most beautiful studies of flowers
in vases with images of horrendous self mutilation from the freak show world of
leather bars and S&M parlours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have books of both Witkin’s work and Mapplethorpe’s in my library
alongside Redon and Monet. Artists should remain like explorers of old in their
sailing ships or modern day astronauts – pushing the limits of humanity’s
understanding of itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: Do you yourself
feel a moral responsibility to use your artistic talent to explore the reality
of war and political violence in your work, and if so, could you explain that
further?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: When I hear news
reports of the ongoing conflict in Mali and Syria and see the new atrocities
every night on the news I want to be there as I feel I can contribute my
lifetime of experience to assisting the people there, and to bring a different
kind of message about what is happening to the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">In
the past I have felt this about Nicaragua, Bosnia, Cambodia, Philippines,
Somalia, Rwanda, Tibet, Western Sahara, Bougainville, East Timor, South Africa,
Northern Ireland, Palestine, Southern Lebanon, the Tribal Belt of Pakistan,
Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result I have gone there and risked my life to try
to contribute in some way. I am presently organising to make films and do art
in both Mali and Syria because I find it impossible to ignore the plight of the
people there when I know I can make some kind of difference.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">Over
most of my career I have focused on creativity in war. It is simple for people
to misunderstand my work because the image of the ‘Giants Fighting in the
Field’ dwarfs everything else, but when you think about it I am always looking
at the artists. In my Nicaraguan film called ‘Blood of the Poets’ it was about
the women poets who were also revolutionary fighters (and that was in 1986).
‘Soundtrack to War’ was about musicians and the role of music in the Iraq war.
‘Rampage’ was about rappers in the hood creating word sculptures amongst the
poverty and drug violence. ‘Miscreants of Taliwood’ was about Pakistani
filmmakers who wanted to create entertainment and joy and were prepared to risk
the death threats and bombing of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Taliban. ‘Love City,’ my new Afghan film, is about a bunch of Afghan
artists creating art from out of the Yellow House in Jalalahad, which is where
there is a huge American Air Base and where Bin Laden lived when he planned and
executed the 9/11 attacks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">The
thing I am proudest of is my Cinema Circus where together with my monkey, Dali,
and a brave band of Jalalabad artists, we are taking art and film to the most
remote areas of Afghanistan. I walk ahead of our blue circus truck in to one of
the villages of Tora Bora, an old showman with a grey beard who stands and
smiles as Dali entertains the children with his tricks, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>while the tent rises from the dust and
stones of war. These raggedy children have never been to school or known modern
medicine or warm clothing against the cold so imagine the delight I feel to
bring them<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>film, art acting<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the show most of the kids tell us they want to
discover how to be artists rather than soldiers for the Taliban.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: Do you think that
sensationalism is a danger in the portrayal of war and other political
violence, and if so, how do you minimize that potential problem?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>Do you think that art
that uses violent subject matter or imagery has a social responsibility? How
does art avoid being gratuitous? <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: In art I find much of
Damien Hirst’s work designed to shock and I suspect this is for nothing more
than sensationalism in a formula that has worked to make him internationally
rich and famous. I recently saw a piece of his where two bodies are lying on
hospital style metal stretchers. Their entire bodies are covered except for
their genital area. A dark skinned man has his penis and testicles revealed
through a jagged hole in the blue sheet – same with the white skinned woman. I
see this as pure sensationalism: a crude shock, a horror gimmick. I think
Damien Hirst does make us all think about death and our physical mortality but
this idea becomes that of a ‘Johnny One Note’ – the same idea is repeated over
an again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">The
vast majority of artists do art to sell, so it usually has to be pleasant and
decorative or to make their names in the art world. Neither of these aims
interests me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">War
is barbaric and I describe my life work as a “war on war”. I want to see humans
evolve socially beyond the need for violent physical aggression. My art has
developed through trial and error. Humour has become a bigger and bigger
factor. When serious subjects have humour inserted into their structure it is a
huge relief and assists people to absorb the impact of the more shocking aspects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">I
cannot think of any example in my art where I have used violence gratuitously.
It has only ever been depicted as a means to either alert the world to
atrocities or to make an important point as with the decapitation in
‘Miscreants’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Century;">I
have always been involved with the people and communities where I have worked
and witnessed war. In Kibeho, I helped to collect babies from the killing field
and organised to get them trucked to a Mother Theresa Orphanage in Kigali. When
the horror of the events were over I was able to live with the memories not
because of the art I had created but because the memory of those I had helped
and the sense that if I had not been there these people would have died or not
been treated by doctors. I spent many years assisting the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines and travelled to most countries in the world where
there were active minefields and collected the stories and pictures of the
victims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b>CS: Your current
exhibition, ‘Nothing is Enough’, draws on your experiences of Rwanda in 2005.
Could you tell us a little more about your time there, and the processes you
went through to create the ‘synthages’ on show at Light Box?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;">GG: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Being a witness to the
massacre at Kibeho in Rwanda, where thousands of people were killed before my
eyes, left me feeling nothing was enough to convey the experience .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At
Kibeho,my first priority was to try to save as many lives as possible and my
second was to get the story and images out with the hope the world outrage
might stop the killing. When it was appropriate I did drawings and in rare
moments of rest I wrote in my diaries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Before
and since Kibeho I have seen a lot of war – Cambodia, Nicaragua, Philippines,
Somalia , Palestine, Mozambique , South Africa, Western Sahara, Southern
Lebanon, Bosnia,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tibet,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Northern Ireland, East Timor,
Bougainville, Iraq, Tribal Belt of Pakistan and Afghanistan – but Rwanda was by
far the worst. Rwanda is a theme I never stop struggling with and when I look
over my life work in painting and drawing one third of the images produced are
about Rwanda. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
early 2013, I had the opportunity to collaborate, for one month, at Light Work
in Syracuse, NY with the master printer, John Wesley Mannion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My challenge was to find a way, with
John’s help, to express the inexpressible finiteness of the lives I had seen
blinking out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While caught up in
the massacre I did photographs and drawings but neither were adequate to show
what it was like to be an artist amidst hundreds of people who were dying.
Intimately spending time with people as they passed from this world to the
next.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>John
and I started with the key image, ‘Eyewitness’. I had dodged a lot of bullets
to get a young woman, Immaculee, to the only UN doctor, Carol Vaun Evans who
had improvised an outdoor treatment centre. Immaculee had a deep machete slash
across her face and another deep wound across her scull and into her brain. A
girlfriend had stitched up the skull wound but this had only sealed the
infection. Carol told me there was nothing she could do and Immaculee,
probably, only had another 20 minutes to live. I suggested I give her some
morphine but Carol said, “Why don’t you just sit down and draw her? What she
needs is company.” When I took out my drawing paper and began to sketch,
Immaculee asked me what the drawing was for. I said, “The world needs to know
what has been allowed to happen to you.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From
that moment we worked together to make this ‘witness’ drawing something that
would move whoever saw it. As my pencil inscribed the paper, Imaculee was flickering
between life and death like a faulty neon light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I showed it to her, Immaculee nodded, satisfied to have
achieved something with the last moments of her life. I kept my word to
Immaculee and made<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Eyewitness’
into many large paintings that have been exhibited around the world but non of
these captured what I had experienced as I sat with Immaculee while her soul
seemed to be leaving and then returning to allow me to finish. The hope with
the synthages is that by allowing the drawing to show through the photographs
and combining the two mediums, this sense of the transience of the subject’s
life has been captured.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
is up to those who view the synthages to decide whether we have come closer to
expressing something so disturbing and profound, [that] nothing can ever seem
enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Century;"><b><i>George Gittoes’ work
will be exhibited at ‘Nothing is Enough’, at Light Work in Syracuse, August 19
– October 25 2013, where his films will be shown at the Syracuse Film Festival. <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-18565754567249725562014-02-26T12:12:00.007-08:002014-02-26T12:40:10.122-08:00Witches and Wicked Bodies<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span>
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Witches and Wicked Bodies<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Century; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">27 July - 3 November 2013<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
by CHRISTIANA SPENS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>“The witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!” – From the
evil witch in <i>The Wizard of Oz, </i></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>whose
famous chant was re-appropriated by some celebrating the recent death of
Margaret Thatcher, to the costumes worn by children (and adults) on Halloween,
the witch is still very much alive as a figure of nightmares, rebellion and
curiosity in the modern world. </b></span><b><i>Witches and Wicked Bodies, </i></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>the current exhibition at the Scottish National
Gallery in Edinburgh, focuses on the modern history of that spectre, charting
its artistic representation in the visual arts over the past six centuries. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From Dürer and Goya, to Sherman and Rego, the development of
an archetype is shown in the context of the mainly European artistic movements
and cultural sensibilities that shaped it, not to mention the religious
persecutions and casual sexism and ageism that also contributed to the
construction of the ‘witch’. There are many ways to select pictures of witches
for a show such as this, but given the gothic atmosphere and religious history
of the city, as well as its setting for Macbeth (both in the play itself and
the performance of it countless times each year in the Fringe), it fittingly
focuses on the witch as originally portrayed in Romantic and Gothic drawings
and paintings, often inspired by Shakespeare and other literature. Paintings by
Lucas Cranach the Elder show dark fables and mythologised fear of sexuality and
wild femininity, while William Blake’s “The Whore of Babylon” shows a
monstrosity of Greek mythological proportions. The famous “The Weird Sisters
from Shakespeare’s Macbeth” star witches who look rather more like men than
women, and Agostino Veneziano’s “The Witches’ Rout (The Carcass)” embraces the
morbid and horrific side of the witch narrative, in a gruesome Underworld where
a witch is pulled by a chariot made from a huge carcass. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In most of these representations, the witch represents the
spectre not only of evil, but<i> female</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
evil – compounding and encouraging a view of rebellious women as wicked and
criminal, and using that myth to explain the otherwise incomprehensible crimes
and unfortunate happenings that were as regular in centuries past as today.
Even in paintings of witches who look masculine, that masculinity is used to
show women without enough femininity, who are therefore supposedly flawed and
‘weird’. It is interesting, when viewing these works, and this behaviour, to
consider the way that socially constructed stereotypes have been used
throughout history to make sense of such ordinary phenomena as illness,
economic problems, death and heartbreak. While the idea of the ‘witch’ tends to
be confined to fairytales and Hollywood movies these days, the tendency to use
a myth or a stereotype to exclude some people from society, and to provide an
easy explanation for ‘bad things happening’, is familiar as ever. Seeing the
way in which artists have contributed to this social behaviour (although some
have also used art to comment on it or criticise it, including Sherman) is
especially fascinating and inspires many questions about the role of art in
social cohesion and division, and the interplay between social assumptions and
artistic portrayal. “Witches and Wicked Bodies” is a fascinating and
provocative exhibition, in its exposition of that relationship between social
stereotype and fine art. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-63733364398598139902014-02-26T12:12:00.003-08:002014-02-26T12:12:21.009-08:00Interview with Lana Locke<a href="http://artwednesday.com/2013/08/26/an-interview-with-lana-locke/" target="_blank">For AW [here]</a><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Gill Sans W01 Book', Tahoma, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<a href="http://www.lanalocke.com/Lana_Locke_Sculpture/Home.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Lana Locke</a> is a London-based sculptor, whose work is currently on show at ‘ex-cavate-site-one’ at Schwartz Gallery in Hackney Wick, and in the next few months will be part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries (opening in at Spike Island, Bristol, and the ICA in London). We talked to her about her favourite muses, cities, and artists, as well as her fascination with the human body, decaying objects, and the relationships between people and their environments.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">Art Wednesday: You grew up in London and are based there now, do you think that environment has informed and influenced your work (and how)? Would you be interested in living elsewhere, at any point in your career?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
Lana Locke: I was fiercely proud of being from London from a very young age, but my parents then moved twice – first to Somerset and then to Australia, so I think that separation from the city I loved influenced me to be even more attached to it and more determined to be here. On the one hand it is about the cultural influence of other artists and the need to be in London to see everything that is going on in contemporary art and be part of it. Then on a more physical level, what you can see in my work is the grubbiness and trashiness of the environment, and the mix of natural and man made materials, raw finishes and occasional flashes of bright colour. The bravado of my work must come partly from being in London. The only other place I really think about living is New York, although the art scene in LA has got more interesting in recent years and I know you can get bigger studio space there!</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">AW: The human body, both inner organs and outer physique, has inspired some beautiful sculptures. When did this fascination with the body begin?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
LL: In my late teens when I was making my earliest sculptures it was particularly birth that interested me, drilled down to a very biological level with sculptures of foetuses and brightly coloured cell structures. I’m not sure where it came from – I would hesitate to say it comes from being a woman but that may be part of it. Having 7 siblings (5 of them younger) may have played a part in this fascination too! Then I suppose for the next 10 years I was more interested in the outer body – first in a naturalistic way and then in how I could make that abstract – and now I feel like I have come full circle to use objects to express more of the biological, decaying, mortal nature of the body. Occasionally there is a cross-over, for example in some of the self-portraits in the photobook I made last year Untitled 2011-12, where I am using the image of my own body, but then referencing monstrous, decaying female organs using pumpkins, melons and trash.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">AW: One of those artworks is the well-known Two Figures (2008), in the outdoor terrace in The Ivy. (And where we first met.) Can you explain the meaning of this piece, as you have, we’re sure, on many occasions on that very terrace?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
LL: It very much came from the “couples” series that I was working on at that time. As with all those couples, it was based on actual people (the lines of form came from a polaroid of myself and another person), but making them abstract I have censored everything about them. On a simple level, it is about two people being in contact, but the unison is not complete. The geometric splicing of the forms means they will never be fully joined up. Then there’s this gaping hole between them – emphasised by the use of the sculpture to house a cigarette bin – so there is a darkness that they share and keep hidden between them too. I like the fact that the Evening Standard put the sculpture and terrace on their list of London’s sexiest places… for illicit liaisons, because the origin of the figures had something of that about them.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">AW: Your bronze sculptures, including The Ram (2007), Angel (2006 – 8) and Flamenco Dancer (2007 – 8) remind us of Degas’ ballerinas, and of course Rodin – did these artists influence your work at all (intentionally)? Who else do you count as having inspired you?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
LL: Yes, I loved both artists! The energy, movement and vitality… I went through a very romantic period in my early twenties when I wasn’t ready to think about contemporary art and was very wrapped up in just studying the human figure and learning to grapple with that before allowing things to get weirder again. Starting from that basis I came to new sources of inspiration as I was ready to – from Rodin, Giacometti and Degas, it then went on to Brancusi and Picasso and to an extent the Surrealists, then fairly logically to Louise Bourgeois, before coming back to the contemporary world and Sarah Lucas, who had influenced me before as a teenager. Then it widened to other artists working with objects, from Joseph Beuys to Paul McCarthy, Urs Fischer, Alexandra Bircken, as well as photographers like Francesca Woodman and Nan Goldin.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">AW: Aside from artists, who else has influenced you as an artist?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
LL: So many writers, film-makers and musicians! To name one, the filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, who I met and became friends with in 1999 through the photographer Michael Woods. I made some sculptures of foetuses for his film Puffball in 2006, which referenced a dark, monstrous female, biologically driven world that my work inhabits too. I would count Nic’s film <em>Bad Timing</em> as my favourite ever film and have a strong affinity with that sense of rawness, sexuality and horror in the everyday. It was such an enormous honour when Nic unveiled my sculpture at Harefield Hospital in 2010.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">AW: Do you believe in having a muse (or several?)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
LL: I’m not sure right now! I certainly used to. All of my series of reclining figures and couples from a few years ago were based on people in my own life, often romantic. When my new work references my current relationship (with the filmmaker Toby Paton) it is less direct, as my work is based so much around objects at the moment. I certainly believe that being with someone new can influence you to work in a new way, and that can be hugely important. It has been said with Picasso that a new woman would herald a new style of work, and meeting Toby two years ago definitely heralded a new way of working for me.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">AW: Which project (or sculpture) have you enjoyed working on the most so far?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
LL: My MA final show at Chelsea College of Art was a riot! I had almost a whole room to myself and really let loose in it. The encouragement to create a clean space and paint the walls white and the floors grey had filled me with great resistance. Instead I used red paint to circle and highlight all the blemishes in the walls, on the windows and on the floor – like architectural wounds – pouring it from the tin into craters in the floor and then cycling through it and round the room. I relished in the decaying objects and grimy images I brought in, and being as excessive as I wished to be. I loved being in the environment I had created.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<span style="background-color: #ffff99;">AW: Tell us about your current projects, and what you have in mind for the near future?</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
LL: I am in a group exhibition at the moment called ex-ca-vate-site-one at Schwartz Gallery in Hackney Wick (open until 8 September) that explores the relationship between finished works and those found in the artists’ studios. I am starting a practice-based PhD at Chelsea College of Art and Design in October, sponsored by Chelsea Arts Club Trust on Antagonistic space and the creative and destructive mobilisation of objects. I am looking at how an installed object or set of objects can transgress the political and commercial terms of engagement of its environment and assert its own antagonistic agenda in the space. I am thinking in terms of work outside the exhibition space too – for example my project earlier in the year using text and objects to protest a local London pub being turned into a Tesco supermarket and posting them on my Tumblr photo-blog, or more recently a similar protest I am making to the artists’ studios I work in being closed to be demolished and replaced by an Academy school. I am also looking forward to Bloomberg New Contemporaries opening in at Spike Island, Bristol in September and the ICA, London in November.</div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-25581095907545067782014-02-26T12:11:00.001-08:002014-02-26T12:11:15.556-08:00Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands[For <a href="http://artwednesday.com/2013/08/09/peter-doig-no-foreign-lands/" target="_blank">Art Wednesda</a>y]<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Gill Sans W01 Book', Tahoma, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
Edinburgh at the beginning of the festival is a brilliant spectacle of excitement, creativity and exultant crowds, and especially so when the weather is at the relaxed end of a heat wave, when the crisp August breeze sweeps up the new revellers in town for a month of celebration. Saturday night, we walk through the centre with a charming man called Thatcher, on our way to meet with mutual friends for the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Peter-Doig/15980473094" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Peter Doig</a> opening at the <a href="http://www.nationalgalleries.org/" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Scottish National Gallery</a>. As we make our way there, we see outdoor stages and bars in the final stages of construction, and a music hall area singing out its first show tunes and waltzes. We have never been quite so charmed by the Edinburgh festival, and we have been coming here for years. With this idyllic arrival, swept into the opening just in time to hear Doig himself welcome everybody to his show, we are nothing less than dazzled by the event, even at this early stage.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
Although there are maybe too many people for even this huge room, somehow it adds to the excitement: something extraordinary is about to happen. Something brilliant is about to be seen. And it is: after stepping up the spiral staircase to the show itself, we are nothing less than thrilled by the expansive and wonderful paintings in No Foreign Lands. Huge canvases line the walls, and the crowds spill in, their eyes lighting up with some kind of love. It is hard to talk to anyone properly, so distractingly beautiful are the paintings. Lone figures in canoes, and showering in what seem like waterfalls. ‘Man Dressed As Bat’ (which looks like a giant, magical butterfly, from a distance) – continues to entrance a glamorous and bustling crowd. We continue to wander through the various rooms – through scenes of Trinidad, and illustrative posters for a film night – through singular figures and vast landscapes – through turbulent seas and secretive groups. We feel as if we are explorers, simply by walking from one room to another. And this sense of adventure gives brief encounters a surreal quality: we see a man we’ve have never met before (but both of us think we have met before) – it turns out we once reviewed a show he and his wife curated. We see an old family friend who kisses us on both cheeks, before running off into the night; we see someone with all the looks, charm and distance of a contemporary Gatsby, and at another glance, a beautiful girl whose Westwood dress almost matches ‘Music of the Future’.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
In the middle of this dazzling, lively show, the art world – the guests, sponsors, gate-crashers, and socialites – are at their very best. The room sparks and laughs and wanders in a slow, happy waltz. This is the best case scenario – what every opening hopes it can be. The buzz and thrill that something truly brilliant is happening, and so a night carved into our minds for some years to come. Art that explores, that creates new worlds, as it remembers them – art that makes people happy to be alive – is surely the most valuable of all. There is a real sense in the room that these paintings are what we have been waiting for – waiting, for a very few, to buy, waiting to celebrate, and waiting to praise. The Edinburgh Arts Festival has started with fireworks.</div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-11701016669401342072014-02-26T12:10:00.001-08:002014-02-26T12:10:06.591-08:00EDINBURGH FESTIVAL X MOVING BEYOND: CHINESE MODERN ABSTRACT ART<a href="http://artwednesday.com/2013/08/07/edinburgh-festival-moving-beyond/" target="_blank">For Art Wednesday: </a><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Gill Sans W01 Book', Tahoma, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
Sometimes, revolution happens subtly – without explosions, brashness and flashing lights, without excess and drama. Although most of us are familiar with the Pop Art versions of Mao, and the ‘Cultural Revolution Pop’ of the 1980s, where Chinese Communism was branded in such a way as to rival American Capitalism in its attractive, shiny modernity, there is another side to contemporary Chinese art that is less well-known, but in many ways more revolutionary. The exquisite paintings on show in <a href="http://festival.summerhall.co.uk/exhibition/moving-beyond/" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Moving Beyond</a> celebrate centuries of Chinese traditions and mythology, as well as the natural beauty of the country as it is today. They show another side of Chinese identity and society to the commercial propaganda usually celebrated by fans of Warhol and apparent dissent. The glamorising of revolution has become a kind of repression in itself – at the expense of appreciating truly beautiful painting in China today.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
So as we enter the Private View on a Tuesday night, our previous ideas about China and its art world are immediately challenged, as we are taken aback by the quiet elegance of the paintings exhibited. All six of the artists are present, and we play a game of matching the art to the artist with photographer Nick Howard, who took portraits of the artists during a trip to China last year (and which are also on show in the exhibition). His memory is pretty good, even with a little champagne and distractions to phase him, and he introduces us to some of them, framed by their brilliant abstracts on the walls behind.</div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 27px; text-align: left !important;">
In some ways, this sort of painting is like poetry to pulp fiction in the art world today, and especially regarding the contemporary Chinese scene. So it is fitting that during the evening we are also read poems by the Nobel Prize nominated poet Yang Lian, and a younger poet, Zhao Ye, in between speeches (translated with a Lost in Translation surrealism and subtle humour) from the legendary art director Ricky Demarco and curator Janet McKenzie, about the political and cultural implications of showing modern Chinese art at the Edinburgh festival. And there is a quiet sense of change, as the beauty of the paintings sinks in, and the elegant majesty of the portraits and poetry resonates: there is a depth in this exhibition that is rare, not only modern Chinese art, but also in modern art in general. As we follow the artists into the twilit Edinburgh night, for dinner at the Dome, we feel very privileged to be tagging along.</div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-79968232688955320302014-02-26T12:09:00.001-08:002014-02-26T12:09:05.438-08:00Chagall: Modern Master<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span><br />
<div class="studio-title" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bolder; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
<a href="http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/chagall-modern-master" target="_blank">Chagall: Modern Master</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
Tate Liverpool<br />8 June–6 October 2013</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
<strong>Chagall Between War and Peace</strong><br />Musée du Luxembourg, Paris<br />21 February–21 July 2013</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
by CHRISTIANA SPENS</div>
<div class="contents" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
Two exhibitions of Chagall’s paintings overlap this summer, though surprisingly they have quite little in common other than in timing.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
While the French, in <em>Chagall Between War and Peace </em>at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, give credit to the artist’s long life and brilliant resistance – painting through two world wars and a Revolution, not to mention the early death of his wife Bella, and a lot of wandering through Europe – the British take on Chagall concentrates on his very early career, and therefore misses much of his brilliance.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
That is not to say that Chagall’s early life was not fascinating. His move to Paris as a young man, and the explosion of creativity he experienced there, produced much of his best work – the obscure as well as the very famous. <em>Jew in Red </em>(1915), <em>David </em>(1914), <em>The Promenade </em>(1917), and <em>Introduction to the Jewish Theatre </em>(1920), are just a few of the 70 paintings on show at Tate Liverpool that cover this intense and productive period. They mark his romantic imagination, and the way in which the move to Paris from his native Russia brought with it a wonderful freedom of thought and experimentation that led to paintings combining Jewish mysticism and folklore with the bright lights of the avant-garde scene.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
And yet to focus almost entirely on the exciting, youthful phase of Chagall’s life, and work, is to deprive new visitors to his work. The Paris exhibition, <em>Chagall Between War and Peace, </em>contains a better wisdom of his work, in showing it with appropriate focus on the wider historical and political context of wars, revolution, exile and death. In so doing, we do not fall into the trap of thinking Chagall too fantastical and whimsical and romantic. His paintings do express all of those flights of thought, but that tendency can only be fully appreciated when we understand the bloodshed and despair – not only of Chagall, but also of most in Europe at that time – that made this fantastical and colour-filled world a necessity.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
Although the Liverpool show contains some of the darkness also in his work, as a way to expose the depth of his work often overlooked, the Paris exhibition does a better job still, in showing the darkness in the world around him as well – and in allowing the audience to see his ageing and moments of decline, as well as the fairytale moments and rich imagination that were, perhaps, the “peace” to the war around him.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
Chagall was 97 years old when he died in 1985; he witnessed much of the brilliance and darkness of the 20th century. His work is a kind of history of it; a history not only of the literal, but also of an individual’s response to it – a history of how painting came to be an exit from the turbulence of the time, as well as a reimagining of it. In his dreams – in the upside-down goats and lovers and iconography – Chagall encapsulated a sincere humanity, in the midst of so much dehumanisation and change. He painted of folklore and love and religion, as revolution, war and anti-Semitism threatened those things.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
While some of these qualities can be seen in the early work celebrated at Tate Liverpool, a trip across the sea to Paris gives a better context – a more serious appreciation of the darker aspects of Chagall’s work, and the long century he worked in. </div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-16291354888602541352014-02-26T12:08:00.000-08:002014-02-26T12:08:18.152-08:00Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 30px;"></span><br />
<div class="studio-title" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bolder; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
<a href="http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/club-to-catwalk-london-fashion-in-the-1980s" target="_blank">Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
V&A, London<br />10 July 2013–16 February 2014</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
by CHRISTIANA SPENS</div>
<div class="contents" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
With the explosive emergence of the London club scene in the 1980s came a new generation of fashion designers – notably John Galliano, Katharine Hamnett, Betty Jackson and Wendy Dagworthy – whose work brought the energy of their nighttimes and early mornings to an international audience. Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s follows on from the museum’s Bowie exhibition (David Bowie Is, which runs until 11 August 2013), showing how music, pop culture and fashion all came together to create something spectacular and enduring.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
Through more than 85 outfits, from club wear and fetish outfits to high fashion and internationally renowned – and infamous – pieces (such as Hamnett’s oversized T-shirt with the slogan “58% DON’T WANT PERSHING” that she wore to Downing Street to meet Margaret Thatcher in 1984), the exhibition does a great job of accounting for the beginnings of the 80s fashion scene as well as its most famous moments and figures. With a great combination of people, as well as clothes, we see the way that movements develop in fashion – through friendships and relationships, as well as fashion shows and catwalks – and how those dynamics related to wider world developments and national grievances. The recession of the early 80s and hostility towards Thatcherism gave rise to a culture of escapism and entrepreneurship. As designer Georgina Godley recalls: “Young London was all about taking risks and creating something out of nothing through passion and ambition.”</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
Fashion, then, is shown to be deeply rooted in the cultural and political world of its era, as well as the intimate club scene in London at that time, where counterculture gradually became the mainstream, such that many of these ideas and designs are still worn, or at least imitated, today. Magazines that started during this time – <em>i-D</em> and <em>The Face</em>, for example – also began a style and approach to fashion that persisted through the 90s and into the 21st century. This sense of community and purpose was brought about by a spirit that had its genesis – as the exhibition entertainingly shows (with a mini club area, as well as the Fetish, Goth, High Camp and New Romantics clubbing attire that were worn there) – in a specific group of friends. As fashion designer Stevie Stewart of Body Map explains: “Each group of people, whether they were fashion designers, musicians or dancers, film-makers or whatever, living together, going out together and at the same clubs ... had a passion then for creating something new ... that was almost infectious.”</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 480px;">
One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibition is the realisation that small groups of friends, who care about their work, and have big ideas, can change the way a whole generation of young people dress, dance and live; and these ideas conceived in the 80s are still very much in circulation today. Fashion, and especially the 80s, are often dismissed as hedonistic and vacuous – but this show highlights the wider cultural significance and effect that a group of people and their subversive ideas can have, even if expressed with fetish outfits and melodrama. </div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-47246492350890567262014-02-26T12:06:00.003-08:002014-02-26T12:06:40.676-08:00Journal of Terrorism Research (Vol 4 Issue 1 2013)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; line-height: 19px;"></span><br />
<h3 id="contemporaryartandpoliticalviolence:theroleofartintherehabilitationofcommunitiesaffectedbypoliticalviolence" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
CONTEMPORARY ART AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE: THE ROLE OF ART IN THE REHABILITATION OF COMMUNITIES AFFECTED BY POLITICAL VIOLENCE</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong>Christiana Spens</strong></div>
<h3 id="abstract" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
ABSTRACT</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<em>This paper will investigate how contemporary artists who use political violence as a subject matter in their work explain the relationship between art and that form of violence. Referring to interviews with Anita Glesta and George Gittoes, the potential of art as a means of healing communities and individuals affected by terrorism will be explored, alongside related issues of voyeurism, sensationalism and commercialism in art. The study will refer to the ideas of Collingwood and Tolstoy, chosen so as to represent two main schools of thought regarding artistic responsibility & morality and the appropriate intentions of artists. I will explain that both theories can be applied harmoniously to contemporary practise, to the understanding of the role and responsibility of contemporary artists, and discourse around the wider social value of contemporary art</em></div>
<h3 id="introduction" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
INTRODUCTION</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Contemporary art is used as a means for rehabilitating and healing communities affected by political violence in various ways, from the use of art therapy in the rehabilitation of prisoners and victims, to the wider use of art as a communal experience that enables shared memory and compassion in particular groups of people. The idea of art as useful for this rehabilitation and healing of communities has its roots in the notion of ‘moral art’ (Tolstoy, 1996: 223 - 224), or art that is socially responsible. In aesthetics and the philosophy of art, there are two broad schools of thought regarding how art can be socially valuable. The first, represented in this paper by Tolstoy, takes the position that art can only be moral if it is based on an existing morality, and that art practise therefore should be aligned with personal ethics. This idea has roots in Platonism <a class="footnote" href="http://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/jtr/article/view/621/539#fn:1" id="fnref:1" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; font-size: 1.4ex; height: 0px; line-height: 1; position: relative; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;" title="see footnote">[1]</a> (Murdoch, 1977: 2), and the idea that art should reinforce morality rather than distract from it.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The contrasting view is that art can be valuable whether or not it is aligned to a moral structure, regardless of whether it is intended to be moral. Nietzsche, in <em>The Birth of Tragedy,</em> even argues that rather than expect art to be justified by life and its moral structures, art itself justifies life: “Only as an aesthetic phenomenon are existence and the world justified”. (Nietzsche, 1999: 33; Nussbaum, 2002: 59) Art can be decadent, but is no less important for being so, according to philosophers of art at this extreme of the spectrum. Oscar Wilde, in perhaps a slightly provocative tone, stated that “all art is quite useless” (Wilde, 1908: 1) and espoused the decadent ideas of the time - that art could be escapist, indulgent, and have nothing to do with the society it came from - but that it could not be called ‘immoral’ on that count. Art, he wrote, could only be judged by aesthetic standards, not moral standards. (Wilde, 1908: 1) Though Collingwood was no decadent, his view that art can be valuable to society without being specifically engaged with a particular moral structure (outside of the art itself) goes some way to defend this broad school of thought in the sense that he defends art as intrinsically valuable rather than dependent on an existing moral structure (or the morality of the artist).</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Given the long history of this debate (which I have only skimmed over) in aesthetics, the philosophy of art, and to a lesser degree, the social sciences, why focus on Tolstoy and Collingwood in particular? Though Tolstoy is predominantly famous as a novelist, his views on art and morality, and essays on those thoughts, are significant even if less well known than his fiction. His ideas on the social value of art are well articulated and insightful, and though original in many respects, also represent an essentially Platonic view of art’s value lying in truth and life itself, rather than escape from it:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Tolstoy’s view of art is discussed in most courses in aesthetics, particularly his main text What is Art? He believed that the importance of art lies not in its purely aesthetic qualities but in its connection with life, and that art becomes decadent where this connection is lost. This view has often been misconceived and its strength overlooked.” (Mounce, 2001:vii)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
That Tolstoy was a writer as well as a theorist is particularly interesting, granting him insight into the creative process and connection of art to community, having been in the centre of this process himself. His views are valuable on both counts: as a writer explaining the responsibilities and role of the artist in society, and as a theorist, able to detach from his own situation to consider the wider implications of his own thoughts. Collingwood, while not an artist himself, had strong connections with T.S. Eliot’s work which is uniquely grounded in creative practice and connection to community. (Eliot, 2012: 505) Collingwood’s views represent the established idea of art as intrinsically socially valuable, even if not intentionally so. An artist need not go out of his or her way to remedy a community’s problems, for it is fundamentally social, and valuable on that count:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Collingwood is anxious to show this does not entail aesthetic solipsism, as if the artist need not ever concern himself with others. Quite the opposite: necessarily the artistic achievement is collaborative, involving the audience and other artists.” (Kemp, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Art is not new, and neither is political violence. There is much to learn from Tolstoy and Collingwood’s thoughts on the matter, with potential applications to the relationship between contemporary art practice and political issues for a new perspective on the role and responsibilities of art in these settings. This should establish some foundation for a wider study, looking at additional arts forms not considered here as well as related research into the reception of these artistic efforts by the communities in question. If art can heal communities affected by political violence then it is worth investigating in-depth how this works (particularly what is required of the artist) and why. Another aim of the study is to look at the distinction between socially valuable art, compared to other art, and forms of media (including television and mainstream commercial films) that seem to sensationalize political violence, or be used as propaganda for one political viewpoint or another. That is not to say that no mainstream films are capable of rehabilitating communities, nor are valuable in some way, only that many films tend to sensationalise violence when it is the subject, rather than seriously deal with those themes. (Montgomery, 1942: 423 - 427) Although I would agree that art does not have to be intentional or sincere to have a positive affect on its audience - pure escapism can also heal and help people - I am more concerned with art that confronts social problems directly, and how it justifies this role. The hypothesis of this study then is that contemporary art can be a means of rehabilitating and healing communities affected by political violence and does so distinctly from other forms of media whose purpose is sensationalistic and propagandistic.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
By looking at how the theoretical ideas about the moral responsibility of art offered by Tolstoy and Collingwood apply to the modern art practice of Anita Glesta and George Gittoes who explore themes of political violence in their work, it is possible to test this hypothesis. In particular, this study will illuminate (a) distinctions between their art practice and other forms of mass media, and (b) how they explain their work being healing and rehabilitative to communities engaged with it. The testing of the hypotheses offered here is limited to two case studies, so will serve as an initial illustrative study of the potential role of art in rehabilitating communities affected by political violence. I hope that further research can be built on this initial investigation, particularly regarding the use of more case studies, and a focus on the reception of these ideas and art practise on communities themselves, as well as the perceptions of the artists and theorists. This paper is the first step in that wider investigation.</div>
<h3 id="literature" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
LITERATURE</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
In considering the potential for art to be used to heal communities affected by political violence, the ideas of Tolstoy and Collingwood are particularly interesting, as they both believe that art can be healing, though in two quite different ways. Tolstoy, in <em>What is Art?</em> encourages the idea that the artist must be intentionally socially responsible and resist all work that could be decadent. Collingwood, in <em>The Principles of Art</em> believes that even art that is not overtly socially responsible can nevertheless be of great value to a community. I will briefly outline these two perspectives, before discussing further literature relating to these thinkers and to the wider subject of art and political violence. Before giving an overview of both key texts, I will mention relevant secondary literature.</div>
<h3 id="leotolstoyswhatisart" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
LEO TOLSTOY’S <em>WHAT IS ART?</em></h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The main theme that emerges from the essays of Tolstoy, according to Vincent Tomas, is that his opposition to indulgent or decadent art, and its “dehumanization… the divorce of art from life”. (Tomas, 1996: vii) He argues that art is essentially the communication of feeling, and that that should be used to bring people together rather than simply for uses such as enjoyment or entertainment. The point and use of art is to communicate thought and emotion to others:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced or is producing the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.” (Tolstoy, 1996: 120)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The social value of art, according to Tolstoy, lies in its ability to communicate in a way that brings people together and encourages a true sense of community, a reiteration his previous point that well-being is rooted in relationships between people, and empathy therein:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“The consciousness that our well-being, both material and spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the growth of brotherhood among all men - in their loving harmony with one another.” (Tolstoy, 1996: 33)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Art that Tolstoy considers valuable, then, is that which communicates feelings, and in turn ‘unites mankind in brotherhood’. Art is valuable when it fulfils its potential to bring people together in harmony. (Tolstoy, 1996: 33, 120)</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Is it really possible, to tell someone else what one feels?” (Tolstoy, 1995: 760)</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“As every man… may know all that has been done for him in the realms of though by all humanity before his day, and can in the present, thanks to his capacity to understand the thought of others, become a sharer in their activity and also himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others as well as those that have arisen in himself; so, thanks to man’s capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others. If people lacked the capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts… And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage still, and above all more separated from, and more hostile to, one another. And therefore the activity of art is an important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.” (Tolstoy, 1996: 223 - 224)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Tolstoy considers art to be essential to communities and key in encouraging the kind of empathy and understanding between people that is intrinsically healing and valuable for a community. As we will discuss in more depth later, with reference to the art practise of George Gittoes and Anita Glesta, when applied specifically to issues of political violence and experience of shared trauma, the role of the artist is especially valuable and necessary in developing a community’s sense of camaraderie and support. Art that Tolstoy does not approve of, meanwhile, is that which fails to do these things, including “art for the sake of art”, or decadent art, (Tolstoy, 1996, 14), which is not “justified by its social utility”. (Mounce, 2001: 16)</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” (Tolstoy, 1997: 100)</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“[Art] flourishes when it has its roots in beliefs that are fundamental to the life of a people, these being religious in the sense that they give expression to what for that people is the meaning of life. It becomes decadent when it is cut off from those roots… Decadent art appeals only to a small section of society, such as the wealthy or leisured… It has a narrow range of themes, the chief being flattery of the wealthy or powerful, sexual attraction and that boredom or discontent with life which is characteristic of the leisured class… It cultivates obscurity and complexity of style.” (Mounce, 2001: 40)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Tolstoy associated, to some extent, the status of the audience and intended audience of an artist with that artist’s own moral basis, and the moral value of the art work. There is some underlying political assumption here that art which only appeals to the elite is not socially useful, because it is not relevant to most people in society.</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that is very good but that most people can’t eat it.” (Tolstoy, 1996, 95)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
As Tolstoy was writing from nineteenth century Russia, and working from essentially socialist principles, it is interesting to consider how that perspective could be applied to the modern world, and specifically art practise in the West. Though there are many people who are not wealthy, and who work often, there is nevertheless a culture of hedonism and capitalism that makes the decadence he speaks of the norm, rather than elitist exception. Either we can speculate that if most people are ‘decadent’ and find some social benefit in sharing experience of that kind of life, and its problems, then perhaps even work that depicts decadence can nevertheless be valuable to those people. Another option is that capitalism and decadence have a negative effect on art practise as well as society at large, which is an idea we will discuss later, in Anita Glesta’s discussion of the commercialism of contemporary art as well as George Gittoes’ condemnation of work by Damien Hirst, for example, whom he sees as representative of a decadent, overly commercial art practice.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
So there are many interesting discussion points that Tolstoy’s ideas provoke, especially in regard to the role and responsibilities of art (and artists) working contemporarily. Though Tolstoy’s ideas about art, community and morality have been discussed by Vincent Tomas (1996), H. O. Mounce (2001) and John Dewey (1934), there has been no comprehensive work that looks at the beneficial aspects of the application of Tolstoy’s ideas to issues of political violence and communal trauma, the particular benefit that art may have in those situations or the problems with such applications.</div>
<h3 id="rgcollingwoodstheprinciplesofart" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
R G COLLINGWOOD’S <em>THE PRINCIPLES OF ART</em></h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Collingwood argues, in the chapter <em>Art and the Community</em> in <em>The Principles of Art</em> that, “the artistic achievement is collaborative, involving the audience and other artists.” (Kemp, 2012) Art (including poetry as well as the visual arts) is language, and its value lies in the way it can communicate feelings between the artist and his / her community. He argues that the artist is inevitably collaborative, in the sense that he / she learns from other artists, and is inspired by his / her community. The audience (or community)’s experience of art practise is also collaborative, because they hold the same kind of feelings and experiences as the artist and rest of the audience, and it is that shared experience of art that brings people together. As Collingwood puts it:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“The artist… as spokesman for his community, the secrets he must utter are theirs. The reason why they need him is that no community altogether knows its own heart… For the evils which come from that ignorance, the poet as prophet suggests no remedy, because he has already given one. The remedy is the poem itself. Art is the community’s medicine for the worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciousness.” (Collingwood, 1938, 317)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
As art is naturally collaborative, it provides the ideal means to share experience and to bring people together. It is precisely that collaborative nature of art that makes is ‘good’, according to Collingwood, and ‘community’s medicine’ for a lack of unity or communal understanding. (Kemp, 2012)</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The work of Collingwood has been explored by various authors in relation to the meaning and point of art, notable examples including Kemp’s <em>The Croce-Collingwood Theory as Theory</em>(2003) and Davies’ introduction to Collingwood’s <em>Performance Theory of Ar</em>(2008). These recent studies explore theoretical inconsistencies and relationships to other art theory, but there is little analysis on the relation of Collingwood’s ideas to actual works of art and literature or any social application of his theory. This problem is true of the secondary literature relating to Tolstoy’s work as well. There is no substantial study of these ideas, which are fundamental to the understanding of artistic responsibility and morality, to any contemporary instances of socially responsible art. (Mounce, 2001) There is also no study that links these ideas specifically to the use of art to understand and recover from political violence. This is despite Collingwood’s admiration of T. S. Elliot’s <em>The Waste Land,</em> (Collingwood, 1938: 333) written in reaction to the devastation of the First World War and related crisis in London at the time. The poem is concerned with the resultant communal trauma:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“The decay of our civilisation, as depicted in <em>The Waste Land,</em> is not an affair of violence or wrong-doing. It is not exhibited in the persecution of the virtuous and in the flourishing of the wicked like a green bay tree. It is not even a triumph of the meaner sins, avarice and lust. The drowned Phoenician sailor has forgotten the profit and loss; the rape of Philomel by the barbarous king is only a carved picture, a withered stump of time. These things are for remembrance… There is no question here of expressing private emotions; the picture to be painted is not the picture of any individual shadow… It is the picture of a whole world of men.” (Collingwood, 1938: 334)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Collingwood was particularly interested in the way in which <em>The Waste Land</em> was borne out of the artist’s own experience and feelings, and how the connection between artist experience and audience empathy/relief were intrinsic:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“The whole poem may be seen as arising out of the speaker’s experience of suffering and despair, related to the moment of illumination resulting from ‘What the Thunder Said.’ … The main voice in <em>The Waste Land</em> has had an overwhelming spiritual experience of a mystical kind, the result of a nightmarish vision of the society to which he belongs. His approach is that of the visionary who speaks in riddles and uses images and allegory rather than the language of reason. He speaks as one who has been initiated into the mysteries which he has been allowed to see in his vision. At the same time he, the poet/speaker, is prophetic in Collingwood’s sense of the word: ”The artist must prophesy not in the sense that he foretells things to come, but in the sense that he tells his audience, at the risk of their displeasure, the secrets of their own hearts.“ Again the role of the main voice as spokesman is clear. It expresses the general waste land condition as well as the universal need for redemption.” (Hartveit, 1975: 11)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Tolstoy was also influenced by social problems when he wrote <em>What is Art?</em> (Mounce, 2001: 5) and it is interesting to relate those essays to contemporary instances of political violence and social problems similar to those they were initially written in an attempt to resolve. In art theory there is a general lack of research about how these significant and potentially useful ideas relate to contemporary problems and art. There is a need to update discourse around the quite abstract ideas of theorists such as Collingwood & Tolstoy and their application to contemporary art practice to better understand the connection between art and communities and how the former can be of value to the latter.</div>
<h3 id="otherliterature" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
OTHER LITERATURE</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
That is not to say that the use of contemporary art to affect social change and healing of communities has not been written about, just that it is often discussed without reference to these specific ideas. Various authors have discussed the connection between art and violence, as well as the ways in which contemporary art can be used to help communities. (Bishop, 2012; Cleveland, 2008; Kalmanowitz & Lloyd, 2005; Thompson, 2012) Of the recent literature focussing on the use of art to effect social change regarding the rehabilitation and healing of communities affected by political violence, Cleveland’s <em>Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines</em>, which investigates art practise in the context of social upheaval, provided interesting case studies of art being used to heal and rehabilitate communities affected by political violence, as well as other social problems. Also<em>Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991–2011</em>, edited by N Thompson collects a series of case studies relevant to the topic of art and political violence, but as with Cleveland’s study, it is merely descriptive and lacks any substantial theoretical engagement. Another relevant study is Bishop’s <em>Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship,</em> which draws upon historical and theoretical background of socially engaged art. This tends to focus explicitly on group-focused participatory art practice, leaving out individual artists who are socially-engaged and art that is not intentionally communal or participatory, but which is nevertheless socially aware and responsible.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Considering Tolstoy and Collingwood’s ideas again, this is problematic, because both agree that an individual artist can bring about social collaboration and ‘brotherhood’ without necessarily inviting his or her community to be overtly involved in art creation. So, although there is material describing various patterns and instances of artists and communities working together to bring about social change, there is little work on the philosophical origin of this tendency, twinned with a testing of these original ideas using contemporary examples. With that in mind, this study is an initial explanation of the reasons behind art being used as a means of healing communities, and an exploration of the contemporary application of these ideas.</div>
<h3 id="methodology" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
METHODOLOGY</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
To provide evidence for the hypothesis that contemporary art can be a means of rehabilitating and healing communities affected by political violence, this study will draw upon interviews with two important contemporary artists who approach the subject of political violence in very different ways.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Participant 1: Anita Glesta</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Anita Glesta is a New York City-based artist who witnessed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers precipitating her questioning of the role of the artist in the twenty-first century. She chose to explore Picasso’s iconic work, <em>Guernica</em> (1937), and having already worked with 9/11 survivors, consulted survivors of the Guernica massacre to find a parallel experience between those two events and the effects on the communities involved. (Koziol, 2007: 3) Glesta chose to use Guernica as a parallel subject, partly due to personal circumstance - her family had lived in the Basque Country in the 1970s, exposing her to its history, and she had returned frequently after the 9/11 attacks, leading her to compare the two instances of traumatic political violence and its effect on people living in those communities. (Koziol, 2007: 8) The detachment, according to Basque locals from actual community life at the time (citing images of a horse and bull in the painting, which was out of place in a painting of a Basque town, where donkeys would have been more appropriate) also fuelled Glesta’s interest in <em>Guernica</em>. Glesta’s reaction to this experience, not to mention her own experience of 9/11, can be seen in her desire to represent the community’s experience as truthfully as possible, using oral testimonies rather than images. (Koziol, 2007: 10)</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Glesta’s other recent work includes <em>The Census Project</em>(2010), which was commissioned by the United States General Services Administration’s Art & Architecture Program for instillation at the United States Census Bureau Headquarters in Suitland. The installation was, “an exploration of the diverse population of the United States,” (Petty, 2010) - not only an artistic representation of the American population, but also a physical space for the 10,000 Census employees working there. (Petty, 2010) Meanwhile, <em>Echo of Faraday Wood</em> (1997) was situated in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney and examined ideas of growth and decay, and the convergence of urban and natural life. (McGillick, 1999) The overriding theme in all of her work is, “the dynamic of how people interact with their environment. This often manifests in works that require the physical participation and interaction with the viewers. Her interest is twofold - firstly, re-examining the role of the artist and the artist’s contribution to development of critical thought, and secondly of the contribution that artists can make in developing awareness of this landscape. This makes their role a political one, by breaking down the walls of the gallery and freeing artists to integrate ideas with actual situations.” (MacGowan, 1999) Glesta’s work on 9/11 and Guernica develops these interests and themes, and shows how this approach to making art can be intrinsically political and provocative without using especially political/violent imagery or explicit political declarations. Instead the politics of her work reside in encouraging people to think for themselves. Rather than prescribing particular ideas, her work encourages a liberation of individual thought and experience, existing as a free-flowing process of communal communication and shared memory.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Participant 2: George Gittoes</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
George Gittoes is an artist who has worked in many war zones over the past forty years, including Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia, South Africa, Southern Lebanon, and most recently Iraq and Afghanistan. His paintings are usually large canvases depicting a variety of horrors he has observed or which have been relayed to him in the war zones he has visited. (McKenzie, 2010) He has also made films about artists in various areas of conflict, (Bendel, 2011) and is interested in the use of art to escape one’s situation (notably through comedy and story-telling). His work looks to expose political violence and “the futility and madness of war”. (McKenzie, 2010) Gittoes’ work is particularly important and successful for its re-appropriation of journalistic activities (going to the front line himself, filming combatants and victims) while retaining his artistic freedom, independent interpretation and access to a unique platform for the communication of his work to a different audience. He is able to cover wars and stories that mainstream media would tend to ignore, “for issues of political and economic expenditure” (Dillon, 2011)</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Gittoes has used films, notably <em>The Bullets of the Poets</em> (1987) and (most recently) <em>The Miscreants of Taliwood</em> (2011) as well as large figurative canvases, installations, graphic novels, and journals that include drawings, cartoons, collage and writing. <em>Rwanda Maconde</em> (1995) for example, details a massacre at the Kibeho refugee camp, and includes drawings of a mother and child in a mass grave, and a boy staring into space, traumatised. His recent series of paintings, related to a graphic novel of the same title, <em>Night Visions</em> (2010), depicts United States soldiers, and their experiences in a ficionalised war zone, based on Gittoes’ own experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan during the recent ‘War on Terror’. (Dillon, 2011) His body of work is expansive and varied, but the subject of political violence and war, and its human effects persists throughout.</div>
<h3 id="rationale" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
RATIONALE</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The reason these two artists were chosen for interview is that although they are both interested in political violence as a subject matter, they approach it in quite different ways. Where there are similarities, they are in the subject matter approached, rather than in approach taken: both artists have responded to aspects of the War on Terror - Glesta by dealing with the attack on the Twin Towers and the issues of communal trauma due to political violence in her work, Gittoes by covering various war zones and acts of political violence, including the effects of the War on Terror on civillians & soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. But while Glesta uses installations and writing in her artworks, distancing herself from the use of visual depictions of violence (as explored later in the study), George Gittoes seeks out violent imagery, seeing this as a necessary part of his exposition of the atrocities of war. By interviewing them both about their views on violence and art I hoped to elicit an explanation of the difference between socially responsible contemporary art, and sensationalistic art/media.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
By interviewing artists that are, in these ways, so different, I hope to uncover the common reasons that make much contemporary art socially responsible, and in doing so come to some conclusions about what characteristics point to art being socially responsible, across the board of contemporary practice. I conducted these interviews by email, which was a beneficial approach. Both artists were given the same questions, so that I could compare their answers more succinctly. Participants were able to answer at a time most suitable to them for thinking about the issues in a relaxed, free environment. The respondents were also given open-ended questions, meaning that they could provide as much detail as they liked, allowing previously unconsidered insights and ideas about the subject to come through. Using these email interviews also built in the possibility for follow-up questions and clarification if necessary. (Meho, 2006)</div>
<h3 id="theoreticalframework" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
I will consider the insights of Collingwood and Tolstoy, and the interviews with Anita Glesta and George Gittoes, from a post-positivist constructivist theoretical point of view. The paper will focus on the way in which social interaction and shared ideas, particularly through art practice, are significant in communities’ understanding of political violence, (as influenced by depiction of them through art) and therefore their effects and ‘reality’ to those people (Nicholson 2002: 122 - 123; Wendt, 1999). Considering how art has been used with intent for healing and rehabilitating communities, the ideas purported by constructivism can be said to go some way to explain how we might understand contemporary art as a means of social change with relevance in broader community and international relations. It is how political violence is interpreted which potentially makes the difference between a community being chronically traumatised and problematic, and a community able to find meaning in this political violence in order to move forward. Since locating meaning of “things and events” (Nicholson 2002:123) in social interaction is central to constructivism, it is appropriate to apply that theoretical perspective to a study of art and community. In terms of methodology, this theoretical background is consistent with using the qualitative method of interviewing two artists about their subjective experience of art practice and its relation to community. The questions therefore focussed on their experience of the link between artistic expression and audience as well as the wider nature of art (the articulation of subjective emotion and experience) as a means of changing social reality.</div>
<h3 id="results" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
RESULTS</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
By thematically analysing these interviews, the study aimed to highlight particular insights, challenges and possible problems in the intention and use of art to rehabilitate and heal communities, as well as gain insight into the difference between contemporary art’s use of subject matter of political violence (from the perception of these artists), compared to mass media coverage. It explored the specific ways that contemporary art can be healing and rehabilitative, by referring to the participants’ art practice. The key insights that emerged were in the areas of (a) artists’ work and social responsibility, (b) community, and (c) depiction of violence, which are discussed first with reference to the interview with Anita Glesta, and secondly with that of George Gittoes.</div>
<h3 id="anitaglesta" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
ANITA GLESTA</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Artists’ Work & Social Responsibility</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The key insights to emerge were that Glesta is “mistrustful of the violent / political image and its inherent propagandistic aspect”… She believes that there are, “more interesting ways of being subversive or activist as an artist without an overt political narrative.” On the question of whether or not art should be intentionally political or rehabilitative, Glesta answers that she has: “No belief that art should or should not function in any prescribed way.” She believes in art for art’s sake, but sees that art can have healing capacities and sees this as a positive effect. She believes that art can be moral, and that as an artist she has a, “moral responsibility to give back to the world” through art, which she considers a gift she’s grateful to have.</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“I am deeply grateful and fortunate to be able to do what I love. I feel that I must share this and rise to the occasion of using it as much for myself as to benefit others if I can. It does not preclude doing the work I love to satisfy myself but more often than not, that intersects with this broader interest of being able to consider humanity into the work either through including people into interactive participation as a public artist or through the concepts I am engaging with my work in the studio.” (Glesta, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Her personal drive, in the Guernica work especially, is: “to demonstrate the universality of human survival in the face of needless violence and destruction.” (Glesta, 2012) So Glesta believes that art is valuable in its intrinsic artistic beauty and goodness, as well as an ability to show the universality of human experience (particularly survival when relating to political violence).</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Community</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Glesta is open to working with the community, but does not mind if people like or dislike her work, hoping rather to “get people thinking” and communicating. She bears in mind when making installations that affect community the practical concerns and desires of the community to some extent, however:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“How people respond to my work, my viewers or audience, is never a driving force for me at all. In a personal way, individual’s response never informs my work. However, on a larger level both in terms of the circumstance for or in which I am creating a work for a site, I am always considering who is there living now and who might have been there at another time. Those are always my concerns.” (Glesta, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
In terms of whether or not it matters that her art is healing or rehabilitative, Glesta says that while, “it’s nice if it happens,” it is not her intention:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“I consider my relationship with my viewers to be much more akin or analogous to the relationship of the author with his reader rather than the visual artist with the object that is just a visual experience.” (Glesta, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Art is a dialogue, and Glesta considers that worthwhile in itself, rather than an intentional remedy for societal problems. However, the two effects are often interrelated, and she considers that a positive outcome of her art practice.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Depiction of Violence</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Glesta is suspicious of violent imagery because of the way “it is more likely to end up over the sofa of a wealthy person… than in a place where the violent activity may have occurred”. So the violence, whether intended or not, ends up glamorized or sensationalized because of the commercial nature of the art world. If it is accessible to a wider audience or community, however, then there is more potential for the art to be useful and to have integrity, she says:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“If violent subject matter is not necessarily limited to visual imagery or is sited in a more accessible way for those who might really benefit from the awareness that it is trying to evoke, than I believe it can be socially responsible. That being said, those who are experiencing the violence of the book’s content might not read a book that is about violence. Will the reader benefit and become active from what he or she may have read? Then the answer would be yes.” (Glesta, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Glesta herself prefers to use “oral narratives, symbols or text rather than overt imagery,” (Glesta, 2012) partly because she thinks our society has been “bombarded” with violent imagery and that people are “numb” to it, so it has less effect in terms of making people think or be compassionate.</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“We saw this beginning to happen in the sixties with the Vietnam War on TV and much more with the Gulf War… I have used the words of survivors of the bombing of Gernika and Holocaust survivors in my ten-year project of interviews with the survivors. I believe that the spoken words from these people had more power and depth than any imagery that I could make.” (Glesta, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Another interesting point she made, in terms of the attempt to communicate horror and trauma in art, was that she didn’t feel that visual art could work as well as written and oral communication. In her experience:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Having been in the middle of the bombing and as a witness to this violent destruction I knew that no image I could make could possibly match the tragedy of this indescribable event. However, the spoken words of those who have had some time and distance from a like experience might be able to offer a sense of continuity and humanity with how we all survive this unspeakable violence.” (Glesta, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="georgegittoes" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
GEORGE GITTOES</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Artists’ Work & Social Responsibility</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Compassion is a central drive in making art, and Gittoes is, “highly influenced by the reactions of viewers to my work”. Gittoes believes that by being compassionate in this way, art can be morally and socially responsible and useful, despite the art world often being commercially driven:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“The vast majority of artists do art to either sell, so it usually has to be pleasant and decorative, or to make their names in the art world. Neither of these aims interest me. War is barbaric and I describe my life work as a ”war on war“. I want to see humans evolve socially beyond the need for violent physical aggression. My art has developed through trial and error.” (Gittoes, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Being comic, he says, is a way of relieving people from shocking aspects of war, and central to his role as an artist. He has managed to combine this humour with a generally sincere attitude to his work, believing it necessary for there to be some respite, and to include the efforts of some individuals in war zones to rise above their situations.</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Humour has become a bigger and bigger factor. When serious subjects have humour inserted into their structure it is a huge relief and assists people to absorb the impact of the more shocking aspects.” (Beldel, 2011)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
His perceived role as an artist is deeply political, too. He believes that:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“Art and film which propagates the myth of the Patriotic Killer Hero ultimately propagates war… I want my art to be like Perseus mirror- shield to reflect the worlds horror back on itself. Perhaps if more artists thought this way we would have a better chance of disempowering the Medusa.” (Gittoes, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Community</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Gittoes emphasises that he has always been involved practically as well as artistically in the communities he has used as subject matter. Helping (practically) is key: “When the horror of the events were over I was able to live with the memories not because of the art I had created but because the memory of those I had helped.” (Gittoes, 2012) Having worked as an art therapist in a mental institution, he believes art is very useful in rehabilitating individuals as well as the wider community:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“I believe this function should not be underestimated as an alternative to harsh medications. In the wider sense, when art is combined with love it can do miracles to heal both humanity and the planet.” (Gittoes, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Other examples of Gittoes using art to benefit community are his film about “artists in Jalalabad using their skills to effect social change and work to a better and more equal Afghanistan by artistic means,” and the “cinema circus” which he took around remote areas of Afghanistan to encourage children to be creative:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“These raggedy children have never been to school or known modern medicine or warm clothing against the cold - so imagine the delight I feel to bring them film, art, acting and music. After the show most of the kids tell us they want to discover how to be artists rather than soldiers for the Taliban.” (Gittoes, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>Depiction of Violence</em></strong></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Gittoes himself uses violent images in his work, but doesn’t consider it gratuitous. He considers it important to expose the true horror of war and violence. For example, in a film about the Taliban’s execution of a child and the use of films to desensitise and ‘shut down’ other film industry in Afghanistan, he depicts violence. But he does so with the intention of exposing these violent films [of the Taliban] and the political structure behind them. Likewise he uses violent imagery in paintings to expose the pain people are put through during war. Gittoes disapproves of and dislikes Hollywood blockbusters that are gratuitously violent, as well as contemporary artists such as Damian Hirst, who use depictions of violence simply for shock value and to sell paintings.</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“In art I find much of Damien Hirst’s work designed to shock and I suspect this is for nothing more than sensationalism in a formula that has worked to make him internationally rich and famous. I recently saw a piece of his where two bodies are lying on hospital style metal stretchers. Their entire bodies are covered except for their genital area. A dark skinned man has his penis and testicals revealed through a jagged hole in the blue sheet - same with the white skinned woman. I see this as pure sensationalism - a crude shock, [and] horror gimmick.” (Gittoes, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Gittoes is very clear that his own work resists such sensationalism and is distinct from not only other artists who use violence irresponsibly, but also the wider media:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“I can not think of any example in my art where I have used violence gratuitously. It has only ever been depicted as a means to either alert the world to atrocities or to make an important point as with the decapitation. This is not like the commercial film industry where gratuitous violence is used as a form of entertainment and movies like SAW and Texas Chainsaw massacre exploit the outer limits of what is shocking. Personally, I can not watch this type of film and do not believe that just because they are made within the fiction film genre they are justifiable.” (Gittoes, 2012)</div>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="discussion" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
DISCUSSION</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The implications of thematic analysis of the interviews will now be discussed, referring to the two initial areas of investigation: (a) The distinctions between socially responsible, moral art practise, and other forms of mass media and (b) examples of [the artists‘] work healing and rehabilitative communities engaged with it. Firstly, while both artists think that there is a clear distinction between socially responsible, moral art practise, and other forms of mass media, they disagree on the ways in which this distinction can be drawn. While Glesta thinks that it is better to steer away from the visual depiction of violence in contemporary art, because other media is full of these images and that ‘bombardment’ has desensitized the public, Gittoes disagrees, and has used violently imagery in his own painting and film work. Gittoes explains that his work is violent because it is a way of exposing the horror of war and violence, and says that this kind of work is distinct from other media use of violent imagery because of its intention and context. Gittoes says that his violent imagery is never gratuitous, because he ensures that these images are explained by text and photographs that show his personal connection to the subject, as well as the real-life context and severity of the work. Thus this cannot be compared to the use of sensationalistic violence in Hollywood blockbusters, or even Damien Hirst’s work, Gittoes argues. He says that his work is sincere and political, and in that context is justified and socially responsible, whilst these other uses of violence are clearly without sincerity or social context. When justified thus, Gittoes’ experience and opinion about the use of violent imagery in his work harmonise with Tolstoy’s own explanation of such art:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“To take the simplest example: a boy having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter, and in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, he describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the wood, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf’s appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, and so forth. All this, if only the boy when telling the story again experiences the feelings he had lived through, and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what he had experienced - is art.” (Tolstoy, 1996: 122)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Gittoes’ use of emotionally provocative images and narratives, in painting and film, is an instance of the communication of feeling and experience that Tolstoy promotes in his distinction between socially justified and decadent art. It is clearly a fine line, in some cases people may feel the same emotion watching a gratuitously violent horror film as they do experiencing one of Gittoes’ paintings. Tolstoy, however, argues that there is a distinction in the sincerity of the communication, the truth of the experience shared, and the worth of the intention of the art practise itself. (Tolstoy, 1996: 223 - 224) So in noting the genuine experience drawn upon by Gittoes, it becomes easier to understand the art practice that Tolstoy encourages in <em>What is Art?</em> - and to see the subtle distinction between socially justified art and that which is decadent. (Mounce, 2001: 40)</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
A deeper point suggested by both artists is that there is a real challenge in making art that deals with issues such as political violence, in the sense that both artists admit to having trouble doing justice to the real-life pain and severity of their subjects. Both said that it was difficult to express how bad or wrong certain situations were (9/11 and Guernica for Glesta, and various wars and instances, including a woman being facially wounded and a child being decapitated by the Taliban, for Gittoes). This seems particularly interesting in the context of Collingwood’s discussion about art being the remedy of community, just by communicating its problems and feelings. (Collingwood, 1938) Another important point that emerged from the interviews with Glesta and Gittoes is that there are different ways and levels of collaboration between artist and community, and this very much depends on the artist’s particular sense of purpose and possibly his / her personality. While Glesta is interested in how the community reacts to her work, to a point, it is not her driving force. Rather it is a sort of welcome side effect of her work. She is more interested in the inherent value of art as art, which she thinks is her duty as an artist to produce. She does not think that art needs to have a social responsibility <em>per se</em>. This is clearly in conflict with Tolstoy’s objection to ‘art for art’s sake’, or art without clear social engagement. Glesta’s perception is more in line with Collingwood’s idea that art just needs to be in tune with society’s problems, rather than actively engaged with them to be socially helpful.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Gittoes, meanwhile, thinks that art should be actively socially responsible and political, and is very open about his work being a means of protest against war and violence. He points to his own history of practical aid and anti-war activism, concurrent with his artistic practice, and suggests that art should be a part of political activism in a wider sense, when it is engaged with those issues. This suggests that he thinks that although art is valuable to society, it is not enough to ‘just’ be an artist. This is the main point on which Glesta and Gittoes diverge: Glesta thinks that being an artist is enough to contribute positively to society even when it is not actively socially engaged. Gittoes, meanwhile, thinks that art not only should be socially engaged and active in the community, but also combined with other community work:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“When the horror of the events were over I was able to live with the memories not because of the art I had created but because the memory of those I had helped and the sense that if I had not been there these people would have died or not been treated by doctors.” (Gittoes, 2012.)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Gittoes and Glesta have different intentions when it comes to their art practise’s relation to social responsibility, despite similar interests regarding subject matter, and compassion regarding those subjects. This is itself relevant: art being healing and rehabilitative is not necessarily determined by artistic intentions or philosophy. As we have seen with Glesta, an artist does not have to be particularly socially active or overtly political to make art that heals and rehabilitates, and provokes people to be political. This is in line with Collingwood’s insights into the role of art as a ‘remedy’ for society, simply in being accurate and sincere. Gittoes, meanwhile, sees his activism and art as combined, which influences the effects his work has on his audience, while Glesta sees it as a welcome side-effect, rather than an intended one:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“People from places where there has been long suffering under violent regimes or war always welcome my work and see me as an advocate. The Kurdish people who ran the apartments where I lived in Baghdad would always great me with: ‘… We love you being here because you are always creating while everyone else who comes here is destroying.’ ” (Gittoes, 2012)</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
“The employees really took ownership of the work. I think everyone was surprised about that. It was not my intention to make the employees happy about that though I did think about giving them more places to ‘be’ throughout the seven-acre landscape by creating oversized number benches. They were happy with that and I was thinking of their physical comfort and how they navigated this space in my design for that… I have been really pleasantly surprised that I have rock star moments there because of the content of the work, not just the sculptural or more formal design aspect of this work” (Glesta, 2012.)</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
The main insights that have emerged from these interviews and consequential analysis are: (a) Whether an artist uses visual depictions of violence or not, there are convincing ways to distinguish socially valuable from other forms of media; (b) There is a real challenge in accurately and sensitively dealing with the subject of political violence in art, in doing it justice, and both artists emphasised that challenge; (c) There are different ways and levels of collaboration between artist and community, and (d) This very much depends on the artist’s particular sense of purpose and possibly personality. The important point here is that no matter the particular artist’s intentions or philosophy regarding how socially engaged art should be, art can be healing and rehabilitative. Intention does not determine effect.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
So the results and analysis of the interviews with Glesta and Gittoes have confirmed the hypothesis in the sense that both artists agreed that socially valuable contemporary art can be distinct from other forms of media that is sensationalistic or exploitative, though again, they had slightly different ideas about how that distinction can be made. The results also supported the idea that contemporary art can be a means of healing and rehabilitating communities. There were examples of both artists’ work having healing and rehabilitative effects on the communities they were concerned with despite very different ideas about depiction of violence, and actual interaction with communities. This reinforces the idea that art can be healing and useful even if it is not intentionally so, which is more in line with Collingwood than Tolstoy’s theory.</div>
<h3 id="conclusion" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
CONCLUSION</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
That art is distinct from other forms of mass media in being helpful and healing to communities was established in this study. The ideas of Tolstoy and Collingwood have been explored using contemporary examples. Different levels of social engagement were also discussed, pointing ultimately to the conclusion that intention of the artist, and actual social engagement, does not necessarily determine social value and effect on community, supporting Collingwood’s theory of art and social responsibility more than that of Tolstoy. The interviews with George Gittoes and Anita Glesta illuminated contemporary art practice engaged with social problems and political violence in particular, and how those artists explain their motives, intentions and ideas about the relationship between artists and the wider community. Through those discussions, insights about the various ways that contemporary art can be socially valuable, whether intentionally or not, and whether alongside other political activism or not, illustrated the possibilities open to contemporary artists engaged with issues of political violence, and concerned about the value of art in that context.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Further research that would deepen and expand this study might be best focussed on investigating how members of communities affected by political violence view the importance and healing possibilities (and realities) of art, as well as a more quantitative measure of how well contemporary art heals and rehabilitates communities affected by political violence. It would also be useful to interview a wider selection of contemporary artists, possibly including writers and musicians as well as visual artists, in order to expand the understanding of the relationship between art and the community, and the potential rehabilitative and healing qualities therein.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<strong><em>About the author:</em></strong> <strong>Christiana Spens</strong> <em>is a student in the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorismand Political Violence’s MLItt prgoramme in Terrorism Studies at the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews. Before coming to St Andrews, she read Philosophy at Cambridge University and has previously written on modern art for Studio International, Architectural Design and Art Wednesday.</em></div>
<h3 id="bibliography" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 0em; padding-top: 0.75em; text-transform: uppercase;">
BIBLIOGRAPHY</h3>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Bishop, Claire. <em>Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship</em>. London: Verso, 2012.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Cleveland, William. <em>Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines.</em> Oakland, CA: New Village Press, 2008.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Cleveland, William and Patricia Allen Shifferd. <em>Between Grace and Fear: The Role of the Arts in a Time of Change</em>. Australia: Common Ground Publishing, 2010.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Collingwood, R G. <em>The Principles of Art.</em> London Oxford University Press, 1938.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Davies, David. “Collingwood’s ‘Performance’ Theory Of Art,” <em>The British Journal of Aesthetics</em> 48 no, 2 (2008): 162–174.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Dewey, John. <em>Art as Experience.</em> Crow’s Nest: Allen and Unwin Publishers, 1934.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<a href="http://brooklynrail.org/2011/07/artseen/george-gittoes-witness-to-a-war" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; text-decoration: none;">Dillon, Noah. “George Gittoes: Witness to a War” <em>The Brooklyn Rail.</em> 2011.</a>Accessed13/04/13</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Eliot, T S. <em>The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 3: 1926–1927.</em> Edited by Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Hartveit, Lars. “The Voices of ‘The Waste Land’.” <em>American Studies in Scandinavia</em> 8. no 1 (1975): 1–15.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Kalmanowitz, Debra and Bobby Lloyd, eds. <em>Art Therapy and Political Violence: With Art,Without Illusion.</em> New York: Routledge, 2005.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/collingwood-aesthetics/" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; text-decoration: none;">Kemp, Gary. “Collingwood’s Aesthetics.” In <em>The Stamford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012)</em>, edited by Edward N Zalta.</a></div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Kemp, Gary. “The Croce-Collingwood Theory as Theory.” <em>The Journal of Aesthetics and</em> <em>Art Criticism</em> 61, no 2 (2003): 171–193</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Koziol, Monika. <em>Anita Glesta: Guernica: Marks of Memory.</em> Krakov: MOKAK Museum of Contemporary Art Krako, 2007.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<a href="http:/studiointernational.com/index.php/george-gittoes-descendence-stories-from-night-vision-the-diaries" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; text-decoration: none;">McKenzie, Janet. “George Gittoes: Descendence stories, from Night Vision, The Diaries.” <em>studio international.</em>2010.</a> Accessed 13/04/13.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<a href="http://media.icompendium.com/anitagle_PublicPlacesPrivateVision.pdf" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; text-decoration: none;">MacGowan, Tempe. “Public Places, Private Vision.”<em>Monument Magazine</em>, Issue 21.1999.</a> Accessed on 12/04/13.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<a href="http://media.icompendium.com/anitagle_ArtReviewMonumentMagazine.pdf" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; text-decoration: none;">McGillick, Paul. “Art Review.”<em>Monument Magazine</em>, Issue 28. 1999.</a> Accessed on 12/04/13</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Meho, Lokman. “Email Interviewing in Qualitative Research: A Methodological Discussion,” <em>Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</em> 57, no 10 (2006): 1284 - 1295.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Montgomery, James. “The Menace of Hollywood.” <em>Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review</em> 31, no 124 (1942): 420–428.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Mounce, H O. <em>Tolstoy on Aesthetics</em>. Burlington, VA: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2001.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Murdoch, Iris. <em>The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Poets</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Nicholson, Michael. <em>International Relations: A Concise Introduction, 2ed.</em> New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Nietzsche, Friedrich. <em>The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings,</em> edited by Rayond Geuss and Ronald Spiers. Translated by Ronald Spiers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Nussbaum, Martha C. “The Transfiguration of Intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Dionysus,” In <em>Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts,</em> edited by Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell and Daniel W Conway, 36–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
<a href="http://washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/general/2010/05/27/anita-glesta-creates-census-themed-public-art-project/" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; text-decoration: none;">Petty, Erin. “Anita Glesta Creates Census-Themed Public Art Project.”<em>Washington City Paper.</em> 2010.</a> Accessed on 12/04/13.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Plato. <em>The Republic.</em> Translated by Desmond Lee. London: Penguin, 2003.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Thompson, N, Ed. <em>Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991 - 2011.</em> Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Tolstoy, Leo. <em>What is Art?</em> Translated by Aylmer Maude. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Tolstoy, Leo. <em>Anna Karenina.</em> London: Wordsworth Editions , 1995.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Tolstoy, Leo. <em>The Kreutzer Sonata.</em> Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Tomas, Vincent. “Introduction,” In <em>What is Art?</em> by Leo Tolstoy Translated by Aylmer Maude. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996.</div>
<div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1429em; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 1.3125em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.3125em; word-wrap: break-word;">
Wendt, Alexander. <em>Social Theory of International Politics.</em> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.</div>
<div class="footnotes" style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: left; word-wrap: break-word;">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" style="font-size: 10px;"><div style="color: #111111; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 1.3125em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Though Plato mistrusted the visual arts and poetry, there was some allowance for approved, moral literature, or that which could: “honour the gods and their parents” and encourage people to love one another (Plato, 2003: 76) He approved of work that was: “severe rather than amusing” and which “portrays the style of the good man.” (Plato, 2003: 92 <a class="reversefootnote" href="http://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/jtr/article/view/621/539#fnref:1" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.2s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: ease-in-out; color: #004400; text-decoration: none;" title="return to article"> </a></div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2481441065682720857.post-78515430236842618472014-02-26T12:05:00.003-08:002014-02-26T12:05:27.336-08:00Three poems published in Menacing Hedge<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px;"></span><br />
<h2 style="font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 28px;">
Read the journal <a href="http://menacinghedge.com/fall2012/entry-spens.php" target="_blank">here... </a></h2>
<h2 style="font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 16px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 28px;">
Father / Godfather / Friend</h2>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
I.<br />[Father.]</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
We watched him die for sixteen years<br />And still he will laugh back<br />The doctors got it wrong again<br />Our grief is now bankrupt.<br />Feel that relief, they say, of debts removed<br />(or kidney). Of illness tempered for<br />A little while, by drugs and luck and cheating.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
And yet there'll be another fall,<br />A new prognosis and another<br />Knock — a debt collector or a doctor<br />And I wonder if I'll forget our address again<br />As I did when I was ten,<br />On the phone to the paramedics<br />Or whoever they were.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
I wonder if I'll forget the necessary numbers —<br />A phone or a postcode<br />As if I don't want them to find us, really.<br />Trained from an early age for avoidance,<br />For running away, for delaying death<br />And bankruptcy for a little more time<br />together.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
I think of what it buys, this expensive delay:<br />a game to play, and some evenings in. A little<br />Whiskey, but not too much, "You know my liver<br />Isn't what it was."<br />In spite of it all — those forgotten numbers, dramatic<br />Near-ends, falls and sickness, I can't help but find<br />My father's smile just charming.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
For a moment, an evening, we have evaded them again,<br />We have lost the debt collectors and the doctors<br />And one drink is almost enough,<br />One evening is everything.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
II.<br />[Godfather]</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
He was the first man to buy me jewellery:<br />Some pearls, and a crucifix<br />A doll, too, when I was ten, called Georgiana,<br />With strawberry blonde hair and vacant<br />Calmness, hazel eyes transfixed in an imaginary<br />Consciousness.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
We ate lunch by the beach — sparkling water, blue sunshine,<br />The Pacific too bright to look at.<br />I was very conscious of being a little girl with him.<br />I wanted my hair to look right.<br />I wanted to be a good lunch date.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
I knew that there were things on his mind and another<br />Life apart from being sweet to his goddaughter,<br />Even then, but he was so good at telling me<br />Everything was fine.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
The last email was a congratulations<br />For something or other.<br />And the last phone call was a surprise.<br />I was living in West Brompton, using Bella's pink<br />Pin-up phone, and he talked to me as if I was ten years<br />Old again, and for twenty minutes I did not have to pretend to be<br />A grown-up anymore.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
I never spoke to him again, or felt quite so young. It is strange<br />To read about family in the papers.<br />It's strange to read, "Murdered" —<br />"Killer son — still on the run."<br />Events abstracted to sensation,<br />Real things discarded to imagination.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
III. Friend.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
I don't know how he put up with me so long. But whenever<br />Something goes wrong, (or, sometimes, right), there was lunch<br />With Nick. There was bright giddy light and people<br />Flickering around, clean surfaces and pale pink wine.<br />There were dismissals, rolled eyes, mischievous <em>No's</em><br />About unsuitable boys. There was advice laced with provocation:<br />"Maybe he's gay? Oh he's definitely gay." —<br />"Don't get married just because it seems funny."<br />"You know you have absolutely the worst taste in men?<br />[But something tells me<br />you rather enjoy it.]"</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
There were charming expletives<br />And too much choice on the menu, and<br />"Try pigeon, why not?" We would chat and chat and<br />chat and drink and chat – an armagnac.<br />We'd flick through some photos of Patti Smith and<br />Robert Mapplethorpe, we'd talk about other people at the<br />Other table, not even <em>speaking</em> to each other.<br />We wondered if those people, the obnoxious ones,<br />Were bankers or estate agents. [Estate agents, probably.]<br />Expletives sparkled. Afternoon gone.<br />Espressos doubled. Twilight ignored.</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
Five years punctuated by quiet rebellion,<br />and help choosing:<br />"I've gone off men in the way one can't eat oysters<br />having been poisoned by them." I complained one day.<br />"Fish and chips make a good alternative." He replied.<br />"And what shall we have to drink?"</div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 18px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 18px;">
When the lunches become less regular,<br />When things don't go wrong,<br />I realise I have started taking out the younger ones, myself:<br />Adopted younger brothers, who do the talking now,<br />Over steaks and gin and tonics, and the same old problems.<br />In far away restaurants, I find myself sharing<br />The same advice I heard four years ago,<br />And help choose from the menu,<br />For a scattered age.</div>
Christiana Spenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07218087692183956691noreply@blogger.com0