Blackpaint 401 – Manhugging at the Fair; Annoying in Chechnya

Lowry at Tate Britain

I think he’s more important as a social historian than as a painter; the old Mitchell and Kenyon films which play in this exhibition show that his particular vision was spot on.  No-one else was covering this sort of industrial, municipal vista so consistently.

As I said in last blog, I think there’s something of Brueghel in there and not just the small figures and the white background.  B documented the lives of his peasants and Lowry  is doing the same for the people of his northern towns, to an extent; the Fever Van, the Funeral, Going to and Coming From Work, the Fair at Daisy Nook (twice, at least).  His figures are less solid than B’s, caricatures really, but he does give them individual details, even if they come out looking the same.

Several characters recur; a pair of drunks (?) “man-hugging”, kids, and those two dogs – probably more that I didn’t notice.  None of the figures seem to cast a shadow – indeed, they look somehow separate, even when they overlap, as if collaged.

No dogs in this one.

When you see the paintings surrounding you, their filmic quality is obvious; you can easily imagine the figures coming to life and swarming through the factory gates towards the smoking chimneys.  I thought of that film of snow-covered Nevsky Prospect and the people  scattering under fire during the 1905 revolution.  It’s on the cover of the paperback of Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution”.

My favourite painting is uncharacteristic and one of the first in the exhibition – it’s the little brick terraced house with the flowers in the window.  Look closely at it- it’s beautifully painted, especially the brickwork.

Another interesting and uncharacteristic painting was a Welsh scene, I think called “Bargoed”; somehow, the perspectives are more conventional (his townscapes often look like two or three different photographs cut up and collaged together and the diminishing size of the figures as they recede is often “wrong”) and the whole picture has a more “muscular” feel – not better than the townscapes, but much more conventional.

Quick visit to our favourite room, the one with Bigger Splash and the red Caro – I looked closely at the Bacon triptych and was interested to notice how thin the paint was – the weave of the canvas fabric was clearly visible.  His own remarks about the role of accident and chance in a painting and the common (mis)conception that he painted with a sort of vigorous abandon had led me to believe that the paint would be applied more thickly.

The Tony Cragg “Stack” – how did they install it without its falling to pieces?  It’s surely not stuck together and yet there is no way it could be raised – unless it was on a palette that was somehow slipped out from under it when it was in place…

Aleksandra, Sokurov

How irritating Sokurov’s characters can be.  This is the film about the grandmother who visits her army officer grandson when he is on active service in Chechnya.  She goes around being provocative, as if the presence of a matriarchal figure, overweight and with  bad legs, should be treated as completely normal by the gormless boy soldiers.  They have to help her out and keep her safe.  She meets some Chechnyan counterparts and treats them, and a young Chechnyan assigned as her guide, to a string of platitudes that, I’m sure, would have gone down really well with the population during Russia’s war on the Chechen “rebels”.

I was reminded of the diplomat in Russian Ark; he is also an irritating figure, pushy, inquisitive and  annoying to everyone in the film.  Unlike Alexandra, of course, he (the character, that is) is not Russian, but French or Swiss.  And then there is the Mephistopheles character in Faust – but its right for him to be annoying, I suppose.

Salter, “Light Years”

There’s a great scene in this, where Viri, the central male character, is at a party, getting drunk – except that you don’t know he’s plastered, until he insists on doing a costumed imitation of Maurice Chevalier, unbidden, before the guests, forgets and repeats lines, then passes out in the maid’s bedroom as the others go in to dinner.  It’s a trick that Richard Yates also uses, I think in “Easter Parade”, where the male lead instigates a punching contest with a younger character who is annoying him by being younger and having opinions…

Imagine, Vivian Meier

BBC programme on the staggering work of “amateur” photographer and professional nanny Meier, who printed only a tiny proportion of her 100, 000+ negatives and kept the rest in storage, to be sold off after her death.  She seemed to have taken pictures in just about any style, all good, many stunning.  Joel Meyerowitz made a good point about her portraits, which were often of street people; he said that using a Rolleiflex, which you looked down at while you pointed it at the subject from your midriff, meant that you didn’t have to confront people by raising the camera to your face and looking at them directly.  Maybe that helped – whatever the reason, great pictures were the result.

Poor Tom – an old one, but I like it…

Blackpaint

4.07.13

Blackpaint 298

Open House

Last two weekends spent at home, waiting for the public to come and buy.  They came and were polite, even enthusiastic – but there’s not much money about, so I must content myself with compliments and expressions of surprise at how many paintings there are (quantity, not necessarily quality).  Not much abstraction aversion this year, though; “Where do you get your ideas?” rather than “What is this supposed to be?”  Comment in the visitors book from someone’s child; “These pictures are very nice.  I like scribles”.

Russian Ark

Have probably said this before, but the single tracking shot that comprises this film, somehow wields enormous emotional clout at the end.  The doomed officers and aristos come together slowly, like two sides of a zip, on the staircase and the balconies, as the camera passes between them.  The movement and the closeness of the faces, looking quizzical, amused, maybe faintly annoyed as the camera passes, induces a sort of vertigo or unsteadiness in the viewer (me anyway).  Its echoed by one of the characters, when she says, “I feel as if I’m floating..”; and so on, down the staircase, to where the open doors look out onto a frozen sea, smoking with cold, and awaiting the soon- to- be- swallowed-up gentry – although Sokurov pictures them sailing its waters for ever.

Cezanne

I was surprised to read in the Taschen by Ulrike Becks-Malorney that Cezanne spent months, even years, on his paintings.  They don’t look as if they took months to do, in the sense that time is not represented by wealth of detail – I’m thinking of Ingres, for example.  It may be  interesting to find out and compare the average time spent on a painting by various artists, so I think I’ll make a little occasional project of this, until I get bored.

Offhand, I can think of  a couple of slowhands; Ingres I’ve mentioned, Auerbach of course – but not sure about him; does it count as slow if you do someone for a year and scrape it off every night, then knock out the actual picture in a few hours?  As for speedies, there’s Vincent of course, with virtually a painting a day in the month leading up to his suicide and Michelangelo, who knocked out the Sistine ceiling in three, or was it four years.  Staggering, but then he had to get it done before the plaster dried…

Just for argument’s sake, these are my favourite Cezannes:

1.  Madame Cezanne in the Red Armchair (Striped Skirt) 1877 – the marbling effect of the blue and red on her face and hands, the almost vertical striping on the skirt, like a picket fence.

2.  The Blue Vase, 1855 – 7 (!)

3.  Vessels, basket, fruit (the Kitchen Table) 1888-90 – the one with the most pronounced disparities of angle and size, to demonstrate a heightened “reality”; to show you the inside of the vessel as well as the outside.

4.  The Lac d’Annecy, in the Courtauld.

5,  Mountain in Provence, 1886 – how solid!

6.  Mont Saint-Victoire, 1904 – 1906.  Shimmering, or rather bristling in the heat, an effect achieved by little vertical brushstrokes, like VG, with the light blue iceberg of the mountain against the scooped-out, echoing blue of the sky.

 

Blackpaint

10.10.11

Blackpaint 253

Susan Hiller

At the Tate Britain.  Three or four things stuck in my mind, but I’m going again because I’m sure there’s more to it.  Trouble is, you have to read the artspeak explanations to fully understand – and life is too short.  Anyway, this is what I saw (and heard):

A large collection of sepia to Eastman colour postcards of huge waves crashing over British promenades – some of these may have been altered by artist; not sure.

Recordings of one line phrases in dying languages, by the last living speakers.  Several First Nation tribes of the Americas – Welsh Romany caught my eye and ear.

A collection of Victorian memorial plaques to people who had died trying to save others; lots of fires, drownings, falls through ice, traffic accidents (horse-drawn).  Lots of children trying to save siblings.

A dark room full of a forest of hanging ear phones; voices telling stories in a number of languages, the one in English I listened to was about UFOs.

A series of vivid red and yellow photos under glass, of faces blurred and faded – all female I think (?)

So, dying, fading, becoming extinct, blurring, failing to communicate, haunting …..  Now to read the booklet and find out what it was really all about.

Fellini’s Eight and a Half (How do you do fractions in figures on a keyboard?)

Fantastic film, of course; Mastroianni as a preening, but harrassed, film director, pursued by adoring and demanding lovers, scorned by an inexplicably bitter wife, tortured by the idea that he may just be superficial and have nothing to say.  He wears his overcoat over his shoulders and has a floppy, wide brimmed fedora as he saunters through the film, greeting, blowing kisses, politely stonewalling..  It ends with a startlingly affecting sequence in which the entire cast parade down an open staircase into an arena, led by  marching troupe of musical clowns.  Reminiscent of the closing sequence of Russian Ark (see Blackpaint 232).

Franz Marc and August Macke

German Expressionists, both killed in WWI, I’d tended to conflate their work – but they are actually quite distinct.  Marc’s colours are darker and glow more intensely; Macke’s are fresh, bright and lighter.  Think I prefer Macke, at the moment; I love those women with the ankle length skirts and no feet, like bowling pins.

Turner

Andrew Graham -Dixon made an interesting observation on the Culture Show, that maybe Turner needed the medium of watercolour, its propensity to spread and run of its own accord, to achieve the sort of freedom he showed in “Ship on Fire”.  Maybe, but when you see what he could do in oils, the Petworth paintings, Sea Monsters, the storm at the harbour mouth with the long title – you know the one …

The Taschen is good on Turner’s perspective “problems” in “House of Commons on Fire” – check the far end of the bridge in relation to the fire – and in the one of Raphael in Rome – the balcony.  Does it matter? Of course not, but interesting.  Also, there is the recurring woman, rear view, leaning forward, in the Petworth and “bivalve” paintings.

“Fig Leaf” – Obscured Objects of Desire

A couple of things popped up on this survey of sculptural censorship on TV last night that were new to me.  First, the Greeks used to paint their statues.  Apparently, this is common knowledge to the decently educated, but was news to me.  Does that mean the Romans did too?  I would guess it does – which implies a break with tradition, on the part of the Renaissance sculptors.

Second, an explanation for the diminutive genitals on Greek statues; a small penis was a sign of “control and restraint – of good citizenship”, according to Stephen Smith, author and presenter of the programme.  This explains the small penis displayed by David – Michelangelo was following the tradition.  I’m glad to have an answer to this question, which I have touched on in earlier blogs.

The Risen Christ

Smith featured the above sculpture, in which Michelangelo presented Christ naked, with one arm around a cross.  It was attacked with a hammer by a monk in the 17th century and now wears a bronze loincloth affair.

Laura Cumming on Watercolour

Excellent review in Observer, except that she seems to share Searle’s inexplicable dislike of Blow’s “Vivace”.  Cumming describes it as “hugely inflated” – so it is, but in a totally good way.  Sometimes it’s right to blast away the understated, quietly magical, wonderfully executed, minutely observed, immensely subtle….  Chuck a great big bucket of red over it.

Blackpaint

22.02.11

Blackpaint 232

Paul Morley

“Novelists are having a hard time, because reality is writing its own fiction”, said Paul Morley on Newsnight Review.  In the usual melee, no-one commented or asked him what he meant (presumably something like truth is stranger than fiction).

Tate Britain, again

It seems to be in a state of flux at the moment; a couple of totally empty rooms and I’m not sure if that Vaughan/Bacon/Auerbach room is even still there.  Some interesting stuff up, though:

• Gary Hume – a grasshopper thing in enamel paint on a panel, turquoise and chocolate.

• Bill Woodrow – an assemblage entitled “Car door, Ironing Board and Twin Tub, with North American Indian Head Dress”.  Which is exactly what it is.

• Peter Kennard – cartoons and Pluto Press book covers.   Bunches of US and Russian missiles clenched together; The Haywain with mounted missiles, Cruise I think;  a miner with an X ray image of his chest superimposed on real chest;  Thatcher as Queen Victoria.
• Conrad Atkinson – photos of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s, wall paintings, posters, street scenes.
• Stuart Brisley – 70s photographs of Brisley, seated in a squalid, derelict room in semi-darkness, a record of a 17 hour installation concerned with the stripping of identity.
• Keith Piper, “Go West Young Man” – slavery, lynching, racial phobia, fear and loathing in heavy black posters.
• Linder – female images with paper being peeled like skin from the face of model.
• Judy Clarke – photographic close up images of skin on feet and hands.

Interesting to see some overtly political stuff up on the walls again.

Russian Ark

Sokurov, 2002.  A film set in the St. Petersburg Hermitage, in which time is fluid (more than usual, I mean).  A French diplomat, flamboyant and rather irritating, progresses from room to room, observing and sometimes partaking in the scenes he encounters, conversing occasionally with an unseen observer.  He doesn’t know what’s happening, but takes it all in his stride.  He passes through 17th century, Napoleonic and 20th century periods, balls, soldiers, courtiers, Tsars (Peter and Catherine)..

The unique aspect of the film is that the whole thing was shot in one take.  Single takes seem to be an obsession with film makers, a bit like “modern” painters’ obsession with flatness of surface; I’m thinking of Welles’ “Touch of Evil”, for example.  Whenever it’s on, there is always an admiring reference to the long, single-take opening sequence.  I found the single take rather oppressive at first, as if you were being pulled along by the nose – became hypnotic after a while.

Interesting to me that idea of collapsing time or passing freely back and forth through centuries;  I’ve come across it several times lately; in Bunuel’s “The Milky Way”, where a couple of dodgy “pilgrims” follow the route to Santiago de Compostella and in “The Canterbury Tale” (1941) by Powell and Pressburger.  It starts with a medieval hunting party; the knight flies his falcon, which turns into a Hurricane in the sky.  The pilot turns out to be the knight, of course.

Going back to “Russian Ark”, certain styles of acting are perhaps acceptable in France and Russia, where mime and circus are still popular – in Britain, the social realism of the kitchen sink era purged  more flamboyant theatricality.

Frank Auerbach

Watched a DVD on him, made in 2001.  I’d always thought of him as a dirty brown plasterer, like Kossoff out of Sickert – in fact, a lot of his paintings are done in blazing yellows, blues and greens, with great crimson worms crawling across them in thick oils – the Phaidon Art Book says “like peanut butter”.  Fantastic, jagged stuff, both the portraits and cityscapes; he does the best building sites.

Blackpaint

20.12.10