Mona Hatoum, “Over my Dead Body” at Tate Modern
Annoyingly, the labels on the wall by each installation tell you not only the title, year made and materials used but also what Hatoum is “saying” in the piece – I’d avoid reading them. Having said that, I can’t really do anything but list some of the works. But I can’t resist mentioning the odd perceived similarity to other artists here and there…
- A black cube made of iron filings, clinging to each other in rope-like coils – I thought of the Kaaba. My favourite piece;
- Paper “drawings” with hair, fingernails and other personal bits attached (all those feminist artists who put things in cabinets);
- Maps, lots of them, in neon, globes or graven into dozens of blocks of soap (Boetti);
- A cabinet of glass hand grenades and lots of toy soldiers;
- Batteries of wire rabbit hutches (but no rabbits);
- Five-tier sets of metal bunks (Beuys);
- A room with a table and chair, the back of which protrudes through the table top; on the wall, a small cage containing a ball of black hair, a dormitory bed and a musty smell (Magritte);
- Giant cheese-grater furniture (above);
- A roomful of domestic torture instruments, egg whisks for example, all wired up with lights and buzzers;
- A round pit filled with fine sand, combed into ridges and smoothed out incessantly (Kapoor);
- Wire barbs on metal rods suspended from the ceiling;
- Hair sculpture and a fence of plaited hair;
- A film projected on the floor of an internal medical probe- heart, throat, gut maybe.
Baselitz at White Cube, Bermondsey
A huge, white galleryful of Baselitz’ upside-down figures, men and women, singly and in couples, white on black and blue backgrounds, or suffused with a rose wash. Backgrounds spattery and ringed (cups or paint tins?) and blotched as if by an old pen nib – remember those? By way of contrast, a number of male figures, heads cropped, NOT upside-down but on their sides, as if whizzing round the walls of the gallery in pursuit of each other, garlanded by chains of white drips round the feet and elsewhere. For some reason, I was reminded of that light bulb figure dancing to the harmonica at the start of the Old Grey Whistle Test. The figures, although rough and raggedly drawn, are strangely appealing; my partner especially liked the feet.
Also a couple of rooms containing ink and wash poster-sized pictures of… naked, upside-down men and women, rather similar to the large paintings. No-one could accuse Baselitz of failing to explore the theme thoroughly.
Eurovision Song Contest
Graham Norton’s coverage relentlessly positive tonight – all songs “catchy” or “lovely” or “really sincere”; only the very mildest, harmless irony here and there. Rise up, Wogan. I think someone has had a word with Graham on behalf of the government.
Ran, Kurosawa (1985)
Breathtaking spectacle, unrelenting bloody slaughter in battle, murder, suicide – completely devoid of emotional engagement, except in regard to the androgynous Clown, who I quite liked. Oddly, “Ran” popped up in a Luisa Berlin story I read the morning after I watched the film on TV; a character recounted the plot to her sister. Berlin’s short story collection “A Manual for Cleaning Women” is a brilliant book; she’s been compared to Raymond Carver, I think reasonably.
Still Life with Tulips – work in progress; spot the Baselitz influence.
Blackpaint
14.05.16
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