Blackpaint 448 – Theory, Violence, Horror, and Nature

Theory and Non – Theory (cont.)

Since last week’s blog and my (defensively) sarcastic comments about the French and French/Algerian masters of critical theory, I have discovered Paul Strathern and his potted guides, “Derrida in an hour” etc.  Fantastic.  I’ve done Derrida, Foucault, Wittgenstein and have Heidegger lined up; what Strathern needs to do is to get his finger out and do Barthes, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze and one or two others, then I’ll be OK for my book group next time.  Trouble with the group is that if you want to hold your end up, you have to read not only the scheduled book, but every other book in the world that has any bearing on the subject.  I can’t hope to do that but maybe can fake it with Strathern’s help.

Comics Unmasked, British Library

(Not the Jonah on show, but gives you an idea)

The best work on display in my view is a Beano spread from the early 60s, I guess, of Ken Reid’s fantastic ” Jonah”.  This is so busy and full of energy that it practically moves on the page as you peer at it.  Also very striking was “Gwendoline”, and the Rupert Bear and the Gypsy Grandma  from the International Times, or maybe Oz – delicacy prevents me from description.  For some reason, R Crumb was omitted altogether??? and there was only one Posy Simmonds, a page of  “Tamara Drewe”.  Despite the graphic sex, the most shocking cartoon for me (although I have the book in which it was published) was Reg Smythe’s Andy Capp, reproduced below:

This was presumably first published in the Daily Mirror, before inclusion in the collection I own.  Private Eye, I remember, used to run a strip by Bill Tidy, The Cloggies, in which there was a character called  “The Blagdon Amateur Rapist.”  Can’t remember when, but I guess well into the 70s, maybe later.

There are many other treasures and I strongly recommend the exhibition. I got a great compendium of early 50s US horror comics too; “The Horror, the Horror!” by Jim Trombetta, £20 and well worth it.

DH Lawrence, The White Peacock

Lawrence’s first novel, in which the action is beset throughout by great wodges of nature description; we know at all times what the lapwings, clouds, forget-me-nots, brooks and grasses are doing.  This seems a common syndrome with first novels; Almayer’s Folly by Conrad and Orwell’s Burmese Days both have the same characteristic, not necessarily a fault, in my view; I think Orwell brings it off well.

The Lawrence has a more amusing fault; the narrator is one of the characters, yet he is “all-knowing”.  He tells us what his sister Lettie says and does explains that with her suitor George when they are off alone in the woods, for instance.  I wonder how common this error is in literature; I can’t offhand think of any other examples, yet it struck me immediately in “Peacock”.

Clark at Tate Britain

Here are the Seurats in the Clark exhibition:

I think the first one is usually in the National Gallery – but the second is new to me.

Asger Jorn – Restless Rebel

New book on Jorn, essays on various periods.  It’s great of course – below, Jorn in his studio.

 

And here’s my latest effort, which turned into a landscape when I put it on its side.  I hate it and will vandalise it with green and blue paint as soon as I publish this.

 

 Blackpaint

29.05.14

Blackpaint 410 – Surprise at the Size; Sex, Death and Lemons

“Keep Your Timber Limber” at the ICA

When I saw this advertised as an exhibition of drawings, I assumed the timber in the title referred to a pencil.  Wrong; or perhaps metaphorically right. The first thing you see – hard to avoid double entendres here – is a drawing of a huge, hairy penis and balls across an entire wall, resembling a cannon and with “Moral Injury” along the shaft and “Fucked by Numbers” beneath it.  It’s by Judith Bernstein, and conflates the act of fucking and being fucked – ridiculous to use less direct vocabulary –  with the casualties and destruction of the Iraq and Afganistan (sic) wars, as well as Vietnam, to which it originally referred.

As a piece of visual propaganda, it’s pretty much dried out now and fails to carry a frisson beyond the initial surprise at the size; the two activities linked here – killing and having sex – seem to me, and hopefully to most people, to be not the same – mutually exclusive even (despite common parlance and psychoanalysis).

There are a number of small drawings in pretty inks by Margaret Harrison, depicting women in scanty clothing, rather like seaside postcards, one of whom is the filling in a sandwich and another of whom has a lemon between her legs (cf. Urs Fischer’s carrot, last blog).

I found them rather erotic, but I don’t think that was reaction the artist intended.  I was reminded of the exhibition of feminist art since the 70s that I saw at the Pompidou Centre a couple of years ago (see previous Blackpaint); I found most of the works there erotic too.  A piece in the Guardian Review this week on Nora Ephron referred to her remark about her husband’s affairs; “He would have sex with a venetian blind”.  This was quoted as a brilliant put-down – but I can’t imagine many men being insulted.

The male input was rather more direct – Cary Kwok had three drawings showing a Hassidic Jew, a Buddhist monk and a Catholic priest dripping with semen from their own masturbatory efforts; Tom of Finland had his pictures of bikers engaged pleasurably in the act – strange how the genitalia on show were rather undersized; maybe copied from Greek and Renaissance sculpture?  Limber timber everywhere.

There were some great fashion plates by Antonio Lopez and a George Grosz cartoon – I have to say I agree with Adrian Searle, that none of the various elements seem to go with each other. They’re all drawings, arguably – but beyond that?

R Crumb

Actually, the Harrison pictures, and the Toms and Kwoks, reminded me faintly of Robert Crumb – but probably only because of the “transgressive” material and the drawing skill displayed.  Seeing Crumb’s work at the Guggenheim recently caused me to think of some literature I’d like to see illustrated by him; a collected works of Jane Austen, perhaps…

Sweet Tooth

Writing about this Ian McEwan novel in last blog, I was wondering how many other examples, there were, apart from Joyce’s Penelope in Ulysses, of male authors writing in the 1st person from a woman’s point of view.  I came up with Defoe’s Moll Flanders and on the net, found references to Richardson’s Clarissa and Allan Gurganus’ “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All”.   Maybe also bits of Dracula.  Not many then; and I hadn’t finished “Sweet Tooth” when I last wrote – there’s a twist at the end which gives McEwan a safety net.

Visions of Light

Fantastic film about the history of cinematography, with one beautiful example after another, interspersed with interviews that actually give you some insight, rather than just slowing up the excerpts.  Fascinating to see Nestor Almendros (Malick’s “Days of Heaven”); he’s the image of Romolo Valli, the fussy hotelier in “Death in Venice”.

My current favourite cinematographer, or director of photography as they now appear to be called, is Ed Rutherford of “Archipelago” (director, Joanna Hogg); apparently, it was his first film.  Much more on this great film next blog – I’ve done it before (see Blackpaint 359) , but just bought and watched the DVD through twice.

Blackpaint

Atlantic Bar

5.09.13

Blackpaint 393 – Skewed Nipples and Zambian Spacemen

Souzou – Japanese Outsider Art at the Wellcome

This is a great exhibition.  Lots of surface covering, obsessive repetition, writhing fleshiness (shades of Kusama and even R. Crumb, in the skewed nipples); hairy embroidery, ceramic figurines of dragons and heroes that turned out, on close inspection, to be made of paper and cellotape; sinister, fleshy, soft dolls in family groups – why sinister?  By association, I suppose, all those horror films – and enormous, imaginary cityscapes, taking up several walls.  But it’s good to look at, not just therapy; go and see if possible.

Rebecca Ward at the Ronchini Gallery in Dering Street

Linens with warp or weft cut away in diagonals, or at margins, or halves, leaving “ghosts” on the remaining threads.  Some were like finer versions of the Trockel textiles at the Serpentine Gallery.

Patterning is done with dyes or acrylics, varying from monochrome “cloud” marks to colourful – the best one is called “The Heretic” and reminds me of a miniature Sam Francis.  Also chevron patterns, and some distressed with holes and rips, and rumpled, creased surfaces.  Some boxes, like filing boxes, painted with bright devices – not so keen on them.  They are mostly quite small works, 40 * 30 in, that sort of size.

The Heretic

Deutsche Borse Prize at the Photographers Gallery

Good double to do with the Ward, since it’s just down from Oxford Circus, in Ramillies Street.  I thought there was something sneery about Cristina de Middel’s set of works, the Afronauts, based on the Zambian Space Programme of the early 60s – apparently they were working on a catapult launch.  OK, I’m going to stop right now and check to see if any of this is true.

Back now, and yes, there was really a Zambian space prog.  The trouble is that de Middel mixes up fact with fiction in her presentation, which makes for some good and funny images, but seems a bit like taking the piss to me.  Fair enough, no reason to spare them just because it’s an African country and I’m sure her intentions are good…

Also Misha Henner’s pictures of prostitutes by the side of the road, in Italy, I think; mostly standing by lush green fields under concrete bridges, or in lay-bys.

And Chris Killip’s black and white pictures of fishermen and street life in the North East in the 80s; great photo of the huge ship bordering the terraced houses at Swan Hunter on Tyneside.  Also the one of the lad in his big boots, sitting cradling his head, on the brick wall.

Madame Bovary

The Chabrol version, with Isabelle Huppert.  Much more conventional than the Sukorov version “Protect and Save”, Chabrol’s film nevertheless spares none of the gruesome details, especially when it comes to Hippolyte’s “operation” and subsequent gangrene.  Sukorov’s film has the merchant as a much more demonic character, however, dressing up in his Chinese outfits, and of course, Sukorov’s Bovary is fiercely intense.  There’s a lot more explicit sex in fields and trains in the Russian one as well, all absolutely necessary to the story and not at all gratuitous (not that that would be a problem, particularly).

Blackpaint

Figure Drawing

Figure Drawing 2

Blackpaint

12.05.13