Saatchi - New Order

The big exhibition this week - 5th May is the new Saatchi survey of British art - New Order. Why do critics have to leave definitive British visual art taste to the sole remit of Charles Saatchi, who like Nicholas Serota was put in place by Mrs Thatcher in 1988? Isn't it time someone else took over the roles of chief visual UK cultural Czar and promoter? Isn't it time that they were both replaced considering the damage they have done to those good artists who cannot get shown? It is ironic that Charles Saatchi is reported by the press to be trying to search for artists of quality having promoted so much crude  art over the years. Unlike Mr Frank Cohen who hates being called the Saatchi of the north and who recently got his fingers burnt trying to sell off some of his collected artist's works.  Note things are changing a little as Tate Britain will be hosting a show in June of the work of the erstwhile English eccentric L S Lowry, re-habilitating him as a serious artist will be quite difficult as his cultural profile has definitely been dumbed down over the past thirty years.

Waldemar Januszczak gets worked up over the New order show from Saatchi. Seems that the one characteristic of the work on show is it's viciousness and bad taste. As Waldemar points out it is no good Saatchi complaining about art now being the sport of the hedgefundy, the Eurotrashy, the hamptonites, the Oligarchs and Oiligarchs as he is the one person who started it all off.  But Saatchi has always led the way in his pursuit of the interests of advertising, and narrow greedy sordid interests they are too. A long way different to the artists favoured by the Tate. Laura Cumming tackles Fiona Rae and the same show, and she says most of the artists are not British. The show has constant Saatchi theme type repeats, same old, same old, oleaginous oil portraits, impasto flayed and flanged, Richard Billingham type photo portraits of english life, nasty child mannequins etc etc etc. In short the usual, kinds of empty conceptual art that says nothing new, expresses nothing new and sustains no new interest.  Adrian Hamilton in the Independent also gets excited with comparisons between YBA's and the new order. His weak commentary makes remarks about the inability of the young to express their feelings through art, which whilst questionable certainly is the last concern of Saatchi's collecting; as Cummings suggests this is another Saatchi show just like all the rest that went before.

Colin Gleadell at the Telegraph Art Daily and Aesthetica blog both produce simpering fawning commentary. Richard Dorment writes the usual downright brown-nosing fluff at the telegraph. If only it were new or different or exciting or challenging or even mildly worthwhile, but as it is, it's a really sarcastic tribute to the pathetic state of contemporary art education?  As if the only valid criteria for artistic success is fawning to Saatchi; The pouring of the empty into the void.

This article also makes for some interesting reading!

It's that Turner prize time again!

An exhibition of the work of yet another unknown artist at Tate Modern - 97 year old Lebanese artist Raouda Choucair. Both Charles Darwent and Laura Cumming think she is worth a mention. Desperate for new talent to show, this is the first of the Tate's promotion of African, Islamic and Arab exhibitions that were muted in the early part of the year.

Meanwhile the Tate has published it's line up for the 2013 Turner Prize - and a  very soft target this is. State art is bereft of real art So we have two "artists" who are quite literally jokers; Tino Seghal, the walk the walk merchant who produces nothing visual whatsoever but is the chat darling of the art world and the redoubtable cartoonist David Shrigley whose work belongs in a newspaper. Tate curator Penelope Curtis is quoted as saying; "Just because Shrigley's work is funny it doesn't mean it's not good." Definite own goal that one? Ed MCLachlan or Steve Bell produce cartoons that are often art, whilst Shrigley produces "art" that is almost always cartoon. The compulsory (French) film maker is Laure Provost, who makes films about atmospheric installations  and is also - sorry lost the plot! The only serious contender is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye whose skills are balanced by her quirky ideas. She could well develop into something of a serious artist with work.

UK State art as promoted by the Tate is a hieratic cult - According to the dictionary a cult is a closed group bound together in an intense devotion to a thing, person  or ideal, a system of beliefs and rituals that are bogus.  In his book "The New Cults", Walter Martin defines a cult as “a group religious in nature which surrounds a leader, or a group which either denies or misinterprets essential biblical doctrines.” In the case of state art it is the basic visual and aesthetic experience that is denied and misinterpreted despite the artist's intention to demonstrate it’s putative existence in way that the object is regarded. The artists intention is a separate sociological issue to the ontological status of the object. Conceptual art is a belief system based upon procedures which in Duchamp were derived from occult mysticism.  The only factual difference between say Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes and real Brillo boxes is their purported ontological status, no empirical evidence exists as to any other difference.  One  cannot share a naive cultish faith in state art, conceptual art seems to have produced very, very few objects of any lasting cultural value. As Joe Szimhart commenting upon cults has said; “ceramic urinals on pedestals worth millions of dollars have less value to me now than finding an unsigned one in a junkyard.”

Tradition - Ron Mueck, Rachel Whiteread and that Arts Council pecuniary scandal.

Ron Mueck's latest exhibition comes up for comment in Saturdays Independent. Gautier Deblonde has made a documentary about the artists work. It's clear from the photos that Mueck is very traditional in his working procedures, he creates a chicken wire armature, coats it with a thin layer of clay and painstakingly builds up the forms which he then casts in fibre-glass. This way of working could never compete in output with the factory manufacturing procedures of the usual suspect. The show contains three new works that took two years to sculpt. One thing about the work is that although it trades upon its over realistic surfaces and human imperfections, it is always a very personal object. The figures usually have a typical Ron Mueck facial expression that is recognisable as his and no-one else's. Waldemar Januszczak pens his appreciation of the exhibition in 21st April Sunday Times. Also on Utube

Rachel Whiteread has a shed in her exhibition at Gagosian until 25th May, - what is it about YBA's and sheds? Why should sheds be marketable to collectors, perhaps to sentimentally remind them of the values they dumped in pulling the ladder up behind them? One of the best things that she has done is the inverted monument in Trafalgar square which is a quiet reversal of the notion of a plinth. She doesn't compromise in her work which is an admirable trait, but she doesn't take risks either.  As she has climbed the art market tree by digging in the same hole, she has created some very memorable objects that can be re-visited - unlike other state art, such as her "House" and her "Holocaust memorial". She doesn't do emotion though, these are understated and formal works that just get under the skin, and are a rare phenomena in today's art market. Aesthetic forms which are very beautiful. She doesn't always get it right, her Tate Modern effort didn't work. Whilst she has done the same thing over and over again, by attending to meaning she has managed to refine the procedure to produce real art, not kitsch. Adrian Hamilton in the Independent describes her as "detached," - state art code for cool!

Charles Darwent in the Sunday Independent has a review on a Paul Nash exhibition at Pallant House. Well worth a visit as Darwent says; " As often with a small exhibition the glimpses afforded are oddly revealing. It evokes not just Nash but his moment in English Art History, a depressing moment." This is may be, because now we expect to be entertained by art, not informed or enlightened by a serious idea.

The column of steam that cost £500,000 of tax payers money and amounted to nothing, zero, zilch, was an inexcusable total waste of the poor mug taxpayer's money. There was a danger that it could have caused Legionnaires disease! The guilty  parties at the Arts Council should be dismissed for commissioning this State Art con! An inexcusable waste of public money. The Arts Council have rejected the accusation that it was a waste of public money as it provided some jobs for the region. Laura Dyer has said that she was disappointed, but there was always this risk with groundbreaking artwork, that she really tried and worked hard to realise it but it couldn't be done. That admission would have ensured her falling on a sword in more robust times but alas these decadent Panjandrums are totally unaccountable to the taxpayer whose money they waste. The project was attempted by an obscure american artist and it was chosen from a shortlist of 172 others. Presumably they weren't exotic enough for the state art apparatchiks who decided upon this moronic commission. So much for burying the cultural Olympics! 

The 1Billion pound gift and the pickpockets

The downside of being an art lover - The Louvre has been closed by staff because of professional pickpockets.  It's about time this happened, spent a lifetime working in central London and never once had a pocket picked. The only time it did happen was like many thousands of others on a visit to the Louvre. The gendarmes were sympathetic, but they themselves said that they went nowhere without a money belt. The problem is the impotence of French law, which puts the child criminal first. In the UK we have CCTV surveillance everywhere we go, whilst one may gripe at lack of privacy it has its upside, it gets the evidence. It is  well past time the French got a real grip on the situation, it has been getting steadily worse for at least twenty years and it puts tourists off visiting Paris for good.

The New York Metropolitan museum has received a huge £1bn gift of cubist art from Leonard Lauder, the cosmetics heir. According to the Independent this will transform the Met putting it at the forefront of early 20th century art, it is a unsurpassed collection and one any museum director could only dream about receiving. So much good from the US tax laws.  The gift is a major catch for the Met's director Thomas Campbell who is english, he is reported to have said that the Met was thin on this part of 20th century art.

Charging for Museum and Gallery admission!

Little contemporary art news at the moment apart from the publicity for the usual suspect. Recently read Roger Scruton's "Face of God" and what seems clearer is the extent to which the usual suspect has managed to contribute to the commodification of the sacred. As a brutal but childish culture we have no conscience about sex but we are absolutely terrified by death. So this post got highjacked by events, namely the death of a very divisive figure from UK history Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

Laura Cumming in the Observer 7th April tackles a sculpture exhibition at Barbican by two Canadian sculptors: Geoffrey Farmer and Marcel Dzarma - The Surgeon and the Photographer, The Curve Gallery, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS. This just is not sculpture, it is formless 2D collage and basic foundation course stuff, disposable, temporary and very average stuff.  Basically puppetry it is eminently suitable for stage or theatre set but not a serious sculpture. Cumming tells us that what it all adds up to is a portrait of all humanity, -  so no lack of hubris then? A compelling vision, she writes, and inevitably ( it now is the de rigour compulsory cod legitimisation with so many critics) there is the same old throw away line that Dzarma's movies are all referents to the films of his great namesake, Marcel Duchamp? Sure it is, but then what the hell isn't?

One should not to speak ill of the dead, but today 9th April, subject to wall to wall media adulation for Mrs Thatcher's achievements one can only reflect that the Barbican exhibition is a direct result of the philistine damage that her friends and supporters managed to inflict upon the visual arts after she came into power. She has had very few supporters in the art world (except perhaps these two sycophants) who really should go down in history for their unstinting support. She herself was subject to iconoclasm, and some arts folk can now say what they wouldn't have done whilst she was still alive? those who were around in the sixties and seventies can remember what an eminently serious concern the fine arts were, before they were laid waste by business sponsorship and the invasion of advertising ethics and interests. There was in those days little art outside Cork street and what there was, was subject to very rigorous editing for visual quality and sensibility. This was, however, no guarantee of the artworks survival and much of it vanished without trace. Who has heard of Francis Morland or Roland Piche?  Aside from the planet where all lost biro's go, when visiting local antique fairs you can now discover this stuff, unwanted and unloved. The art world of now, despite so-called austerity is hundreds of times larger in scale than it was then but 95% of todays output would have been laughed out of court .

The Sunday Times 7th April; an article about the charging for access to museums and art galleries by Brian Appleyard that raises some politically interesting questions. Appleyard usually writes copy, not criticism so this is a politically motivated piece of guff. The title of the piece asks why should museums and art galleries be free? That this question is being asked yet again ad finitum shows how desperate the government must be to save money. The current bout of bankster created austerity provides the excuse and our erstwhile reporter jumps in support, as well he might, writing in the pecuniary interests of a Murdoch paper. The stats are complex and the real issues more so but the main benefit is for the re-defined middle classes.  He argues that; admissions have risen from 7.2 million when charges were last made to 18.4 million now in these straightened times. Most of these visitors are foreign but the profile of vistors remains unchanged. The poor and excluded still don't visit art galleries. Which begs the question; In who's interest was our culture dumbed down, it was certainly not done for the socially deprived and the excluded? Appleyard complains about hordes of foreign schoolchildren getting in free, cluttering up galleries and making it impossible to see or consider anything. Note, this is not UK schoolchildren, gallery visits are too risky from a health and safety point of view for teachers to bother with, to mention nothing of their parents.

There is no mention of the fact that many of the artefacts on display were given to these institutions on the condition that admission to see them was to remain free for all time. Appleyard says, attacking what he calls the socialist ideology of the anti-chargers that the dirty little secret in all the arts is that free admission doesn't bring in new kinds of visitors. He quotes Colin Tweedy as saying, the increase in visitors is evidence of the middle classes going more often and repeatedly. Maybe that's because the socially excluded have more to pre-occupy them - such as where their local food bank is located? He then takes a pop at Neil MacGregor of the British museum on behalf of those philistines who would like to destroy all our greatest free institutions, ( we know who they are)such as  the British museum, the BBC, the Open University and replace them with ignorant dysfunctional businesses that would only deliver markets interests. Much like the state of the contemporary art world since the Thatcher revolution.  Enough of this, truly the cost of everything and the value of absolutely nothing, except the adolescent's fear of death!

David Bowie at the V and A

More Plagiarism

They often say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but sometimes it goes way too far and it can be a criminal activity as a blatant breech of copyright. This well known Somerset artist, Nancy Farmer who is a brilliant and original talent is having her work directly ripped off by a very poor internet copyist. There are some people out there who have no ethics whatsoever and they think that this sort of activity is ok, despite the execrable and appalling quality of their copies......

David Bowie at the V & A

This weeks press brings us news of the David Bowie exhibition at the V & A. Waldemar Januszczak in the Sunday Times tackles this but starts with the caveat that the exhibition has no place in the V & A, - have to agree with this as it's yet another example of questionable design in the wrong place.  It's not as if Bowie hasn't access to all other prestigious venues.   Januszczak argues that the show is an act of colonisation that should have been held at the O2 or National Exhibition centre. The place of the V and A is to preserve the cultural significance of 15th century german woodcarving because that is the museums public remit. Anyway as he argues, it is questionable whether it's the job of the V and A to help sell more recordings of Bowie songs. Waldemar says that the show is painfully pretentious in its portentous presentation. It seems we learn, that Bowie left school at 16 and went to work in an advertising agency. Would that today's youth could be so lucky?   Ending the review, - "it's a giant jukebox thinly disguised as an art exhibition."

We have to go to Peter Conrad in the Observer to get the really pretentious lefty hype. We get the usual state art crap quoting from Roland Barthes, announcing the death of the author and authority etc, etc, setting the critic free to impute whatever meaning they wish to a work of art. If only this were true, it seems curiously outdated and outmoded tripe in the middle of a recession! The show starts with the portentous "all art is unstable? There are only a multiplicity of readings." This just isn't true and it has no cultural validity at the V & A - state art palaces such as the RA or Haywood yes but the V &A, definitely no. The market here is however god and we are given two whole pages of hype which ends with this; "So now we know who David Bowie is  - King Arthur or David Beckham depending upon your taste. " as indeed it does, taste being the operative word. "We get the god, like the government that we deserve." Puts one in mind of a visit to the Tate Britain in 1997 with a student group. Leaving proved problematic as David Bowie and Iman were sitting drinking their coffee in the restaurant  surrounded by silent, reverential and worshipping students who did not wish to depart to the waiting coach. He definitely had a charismatic hold over them despite the relative age differences and then we were late back ....... 

Charles Darwent turns his attention to the George Bellows exhibition at the RA. He makes some interesting  comparisons between the Bellows and the Manet exhibition next door. He writes; "Bolshie french artist paints silk frocks - bloated american capitalist paints slums, something wrong here " He explains that what is wrong, is that beneath the modernity of Bellow's crowds there lurks something to be feared, something feral, i.e. democracy. The painting of the digging of the foundations of Pennsylvania station reminds Darwent of Ground Zero - revisionist criticism that! He asks this, as Bellows died at 42 of a burst appendix in 1925 where would he have gone in his work had he lived? Interesting to speculate.

The New York Times reports something 'new' that art teachers and lecturers have known for aeons. That there is now a growing body of evidence that smart design can reduce aberrant behaviour. "Evidence from myriad studies and design research strongly supports the notion that architectural design can reduce violence." It has been known for over a century that poor environments create and enhance crime and social problems but we never seem to be able to learn the lesson and apply it, do we?

Serpentine and tube stations

Waldemar Januszczak is taking the Serpentine Gallery to task this week. He seems to have sharpened up recently and is asking why some artists are admired beyond their worth in some galleries, whilst others are not?  Could posit the answer but won't for fear of offence. Waldemar doesn't rate Fischli/Weiss who have been given the entire Kensington Gardens to balance two rocks on one another. It is art that displays little amusements, intriguing but lightweight. He says their work has a dry tragicomic edge that substitutes for meaning but isn't anything of the sort.  The review goes as far as to criticise the Serpentine Gallery curator's tripe concerning the two balanced rocks; " That Fischli/Wiess have continuously demonstrated that irony and  sincerity could not exist without each other, and that in fact, there is no sincerity like irony." Which is just inane as there are legions of underemployed poseurs balancing rocks on each other and calling it sculpture - some maybe even in lost world homage to land art.  As Waldemar remarks, the thinking here is so trite, such back of the envelope stuff, that cynically one asks how much did it cost? Why was such an effort expended on so little gain? Moving on, he states that Rosemary Trockel's show inside the Serpentine is so bad that to see how unspeakably ghastly it is, you will just have to visit it.
Continuing in the same vein he writes of Simon Starling's show at Tate Britain; "Michelangelo working on his own, took four years to paint every inch of the Sistine Chapel ceiling whilst Starling working with fifty others at unthinkable TV expense took a few weeks to produce five minutes of mildly diverting film."
 "For a clear view of the collapse of values that has disfigured the contemporary art world hurry along to watch Phantom Ride." -  he says.  This is all good critical stuff and proof that the recession is inevitably going to shake out those "artists" who are continuing to produce work as if the recession never happened, earnestly fiddling whilst Rome burns.

Speaking of which Charles Darwent at the Independent on Sunday is rather too enthusiastic about Mark Wallinger. An ageing  YBA who believes that he is a real heavyweight, Wallinger sprang to public notoriety with his huge painting of Myra Hindley made from children's hand prints at the Sensation show in 1997.  For that one single pursuit of fame one cannot forgive his complete lack of sensibility and sensitivity! Darwent is enthusiastic about his simple maze symbols which he has so far put onto the walls of 10 tube stations. You can buy children's books full of these maze designs and once again there is a nasty issue of plagiarism rearing it's ugly head, anything is fair game. Darwent pens this;" There is something faintly Dan Brown about all this. Conspiracy theorists will recall that red, white and black roundels incorporating a cross were  used to some effect by the Nazis. Reducing things to symbols, as Wallinger is aware, is fraught with danger. His labyrinths remind us of that."

Really? This also brings to mind Donald Kuspit's remark about Andy Warhol; “the protean artist-self with no core”

Peter Conrad at the Observer writes well about the George Bellows exhibition at the RA. Bellows, a great painter died in 1925 at the young age of 42, unfortunately his later works were no improvement upon the earlier ones.

Chuck Close

Sunday 10th March press;

Charles Darwent at the Independent is discussing Chuck Close. He mentions the moral anxiety of Roy Lichtenstein's Ben-Day dots in a discussion of 1970's process art, because Close used grids to construct his images from the 1970's onwards in common with Sol Lewitt and others.  Close is reported to have had severe health problems when young.
He was born with prosopagnosia, a condition that prevents him from recognizing faces, Mr. Close explained that the only way he can remember a face is by breaking it down into small “bite-sized” pieces, like the tiny squares or circles of color that make up his paintings and prints. This forms the basis of his artwork.  Making something positive of a difficulty as it were. Darwent writes this cogent summary;
"This isn't the glib nihilism of a Postmodern artist, but the horror of an instinctive traditionalist who has looked and looked and, at last, seen nothing but the reflection of his own glasses. Come to think of it, Self-Portrait (1977) may be like Mona Lisa after all, in that it gives nothing away about its subject. But then, neither image was meant to." Altogether a rewarding exhibition and a figurative one. Waldemar Januszczak is off the contemporary art track writing up American Indians in the Sunday Times and Laura Cummings is on holiday.

Roy Lichtenstein rehash at the Tate Modern

Sunday 24th Feb the art critic press is all Roy Lichtenstein at Tate Modern, this from Richard Dorment, Charles Darwent, Laura Cumming, Adrian Hamilton, Alice Vincent Alistair Sooke to Waldemar Januszczak.

It's often been repeated that Pop art was the most superficial and empty art movement of the past fity years. This points up the problem of meaning in Roy Lichtenstein's painting, the facile content of the image.

Sarah Churchwell's criticism in the Guardian is erroneous in arty word assumptions. She argues that the paintings are conceptual and that Lichtenstein uses conventional representation to explore abstract concepts, such as seeing stars? what's that about? so seeing stars is abstract and not representational of brain damage? Or curving lines that suggest motion because these relate to the futurists. No, just comic books ? - and this is conceptual art?   No, No, No, not even close to being conceptual art, he swiped and copied most standard newspaper cartoonist's representational devices particularly the ubiquitous black outline that a child uses..... The images  were not his, not even close, they were all plagiarized, and stealing is stealing, images or ideas. There is also little formal alteration made as a gesture to the scale of the images. There is also, as Churchwell mentions, the problem of the work being a parody of art which Lichtenstein was often fond of quoting as a justification for his "sophisticated" rip-offs. Churchwell should be able to see that there is no trace of visual parody in the work, it is basically simple minded and sincere in it's worship of the graphic image writ large - it is what it is, no more, and no less and time hasn't improved it one tiny bit, despite it's putative huge popularity......  Roy Lichtenstein should have given some acknowledgement and consideration to the graphic artists who actually did the work for him but then the fine art world often approves of this kind of blatant dishonesty.

Richard Dorment seems to have lost the plot completely, he writes; "I came away with a new respect for the way Lichtenstein used the work of other artists as a means to analyse, explore and sometimes subvert the building blocks of art — illusion, perspective, line and colour." If only this remark contained even a glimmer of truth, he should have taken the trouble to look at some of the internet sites that record where Lichtenstein had pinched his images from!

Charles Darwent is as usual a bit more perceptive and we learn that Lichtenstein was a history painter and indeed he can now be seen as such, he writes;" His art is often funny, intentionally glib; but it is, at heart, tinged with despair." Waldemar Januszczak in the Sunday Times makes much the same point when he writes in conclusion; "It is all rather sad."  Indeed it is all very sad.

Laura Cumming is her usual effusive self, "In one scene, straight out of Picasso, two nudes are running along a beach but one looks comically cross to be left behind while the other is nearly out of the picture." What does this suggest; poor composition or spacial problems, but clearly nothing to do with Picasso..

Sooke gets it wrong on most levels as he so obsessed with feelings, Lichtenstein wasn't the architect of Pop art, Richard Hamilton was. He is right in his conclusion, but he lacks any conviction. The paintings are about art, but it is other peoples art and not Lichtenstein's.

Popping out of the woodwork is Richard Cork the apologist for the dreadful "Sensation" exhibition at the RA in 1997 who doesn't seem to have written much for years. He was  all over god's creation once. Hrtasn't improved much in the absence. He writes this;" 

Studying the comic books also makes us appreciate how cleverly Lichtenstein zeroed in on the essence of a scene. An arresting picture from 1964 concentrates, in powerful close-up, on a young red-haired woman clutching her phone as she mutters: "Ohhh . . . Alright . . ." We are left to wonder why she looks so tense and crestfallen, whereas the original, showing a far less stunning woman, reveals exactly what she is hearing through the receiver: "I'm sorry, Nancy, but I'll have to break our date! I have an important business appointment."  That is not art criticism, merely proof that the artist edited the original image and that the critic looked up the original sources. Says nothing about copying.

Worrying effects of any image upon the brain.

An artist's thing, artists have particular respect for the power of the image. It is not for no reason that the image is forbidden in all Islamic art. Similarly the one time much mocked  Mary Whitehouse had been an art teacher. As such she had an acute sense of the power of images and their effects upon innocent people. For this she was constantly reviled and abused by the media and the establishment who were managing the cultural decline of the west. Those of us who lived through those stupid times knew she was right all along, and the proof that she was right is now emerging from academic papers. Too late alas, as the damage has been done and it has accelerated because of the ubiquitous internet. There is a worrying article in this weeks Observer concerning the blatantly obvious effects of porn upon the susceptible minds of children and and coincidentally another from the New York Times which discusses that old sore, violent video games and children's minds. It seems blindingly obvious that the US military wouldn't spend the vast amounts that they do upon the evolution of military video games if they were not very effective ways of  alienating troops, so they have no compunction at killing at one remove, via the screen.
The porn problem is more worrying, it is obvious that free access to all kinds of vile sponsored evil has been rotting kids minds for some time. The effects are evident in the general decline of youth morality. The article's  conclusion is sufficient to prove that something needs to be done and soon, only our politicians have neither the will nor the interest, perhaps they will attend when it begins to effect them personally. Moral cowardice is no use.

Duchamp - sore comment

Waldemar Janusczcak in this week's Sunday Times takes on the old fraud Duchamp, master chess player, sometime artist, master of dissemblance and provocateur of cynical dissent. It seems that we need a show at the Barbican linking him to John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham for state art to go on proving his huge contemporary significance.

If ever an artist needed a thoroughly rancid re-examination - he is the one.  We are not going to get this anytime soon however, there are way too many conceptual artists in education for that to happen, and state art is trying to back up them up as significant and meaningful. Pinning Duchamp to the wall with a hammer is way long time overdue. 

It's doubtful that Duchamp would have amounted to anything if he had not gone to america in 1917 to flee the accusations that he was a draft dodger, having been invalided out of the army in 1909 with poor lungs. Waldemar asks two significant questions which beg answers.

1 He asks why did Duchamp arrive at a radical re-definition of art?

2 He asks why is it unclear that most of his changes proved so popular that most of the art of today owes it's origon to him?

Some suggestions;

With respect to 1, Duchamp was kicking over the past, he didn't have the technical skills and facility of his brother Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and as a weak draughtsman he felt keenly his own visual limitations. He arrived at a new radical re-definition of art by default, and gulled all his ideas from an obsession with the occult that was everywhere at the time. The joke is key to understanding the duplicitous and emptiness of Duchamp's work.  Once you get it nothing remains, it's all over, no emotional engagement, unlike a Poussin or a Picasso. Wittgenstein was investigating language theory at the time, and he drew attention to the role of language in the joke. Duchamp invented the art equivalent. Jokes are meaningless once they have been laughed at, you move on, and this is the problem with all Duchamp's art and consequently with all conceptual art, there is no core.

With respect to 2, the reasons the changes he made have proved so popular is rooted in his visual poverty. He legitimizes a situation where talentless hacks could assert that any idea is art, free from the formal visual and aesthetic constraints that have come down from the 15th century. His chief acolytes are all americans, Craig-Martin, Sol Lewitt, Kosuth, or Lawrence Weiner. Using Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg to prop him up is perfidious, they relate to him only very superficially, because they are actually visual artists. The damned urinal was always a joke, he himself complained about it being taken seriously in the 1960's. He permitted the situation where the instant solution is legitimate, as standards of connoisseurship, sensibility and authority decayed ( a decay that he instituted) he filled the vacuum by making everything art. Picasso said he was wrong and he undoubtedly was. If everything is art, then logically nothing is also art. Yet for any object to be art it has to communicate and embody a meaning, and not just any old meaning that seems to be convenient. The large glass exemplifies the problem, there is no visual correspondance between the images and what Duchamp tells us that they mean, in other words the image tells you a lie. The coffee grinder, the bride, the malic moulds, the bachelors all have to be explained verbally because they fail to communicate anything of significance as visual objects. Visual art is preo-pedeutic,  i.e. it is instantly understood by the brain through the eye by seeing it.  Dada smashed the link between the eye and the  meaning of the object.

All this misbegotten stuff reached an apogee in 2002 when stunt artist Santiago Sierra exhibited  the closed and boarded up Lisson gallery as an artwork. As if this actually mattered to anyone except acolytes of duchamp. As AA Gill writes on the same page as Waldemar "Duchamp's heirs are entirely self referential, - whether their arguments have been made to the point of sterility is the biggest question now facing the contemporary art world." The answer to this is obvious, all of the people cannot be fooled all of the time. 

Roberta Smith has loudly proclaimed that language and ideas are the true essence of art, that visual experience and sensory delectation were secondary and inessential, if not downright mindless and immoral.
This is downright stupid. It is the substitution of abstracted symbols in words and verbal explanations for the visual image in art that is immoral and mindless. It is also unfortunately, very, very, easy to do unlike image creation, it just requires more mouth and front than Sainsbury's. A bride and bachelors are nowhere to be seen in the large glass until you have taken the huge trouble to find out where and what they are, by reading the wordy explanatory notes in the green box - Duchamp's boring explanation. Life is too short for this tiresome stupidity. Occult lies and mystification is all you get from this kind of verbal and arcane mystification, and the investigation itself really isn't worth the candle. Taxpayers money ought to be spent on the truth, not on very old, very tired lies and deception. It's noticeable despite all the rhetoric and self promotion, conceptual art has produced few artefacts of lasting cultural value,

Ron Kitaj and vitriol

An article in this week's Observer about Kitaj and some of the usual art critics from a Tate retrospective of 1994.  Altogether a wholly shameful episode from that doyen of ethics and decency above the art market, the critical media. The critics took to outdoing one another in their condemnation of Kitaj's work, Brian Sewell reportedly wrote: "Kitaj is a vain painter puffed up with amour propre not worthy of a footnote in the history of art." Richard Morpeth who curated the 1994 Tate show states that the critics damned Kitaj as a pseudo-intellectual bullshitter. Andrew Graham Dixon was particularly bilious in his assault on the work, whilst Richard Dorment aroused Kitaj's ire to such an extent he considered sending Kitaj's angry letters to the police. Dorment is often wrong about everything. The criticism wasn't anywhere near as vitriolic as is now common parlance in the blogosphere and Kitaj was a particularly difficult artist to explain though the public liked his work. His early work is undoubtedly his best, and it now seems very sad that his forays into literary theory were seen as pseudo and pretentious after nearly two decades of the verbal and conceptual stuff that is now posturing as visual art. There is something about all Kitaj's imagery that is both, trying too hard and high minded, the arcane referents within the art are assumed to be self justifying when they often fail to convince or even communicate. His use of black line and other easy graphic devices  verged upon the kitsch, but do not give offense which cannot be said for the work of the usual suspects. No-one comes out of this sad saga with any grace.  The critics agenda of the time was the promotion of dumbing down and it depressing how many of them are still around.

When Kitaj fell foul of the UK critical establishment in 1994 he blamed the critics for the stress that caused the death of his wife from an aneurism two weeks after the opening of his major Tate retrospective exhibition. One doesn't usually hear that much of artists suffering at the hands of critics but many have done so, most simply get on with life and ignore the brickbats. Being ignored is often worse than bad publicity. Kitaj was an artist who simply couldn't do this, he invested so much of himself emotionally and intellectually in his art, when his major retrospective was universally panned he reacted very, very badly. There was however, little sense in investing that much faith in art, it was only art after all. No-one ever knows what the verdict of posterity will be - as the sainted Marcel Duchamp was so fond of repeating, least of all critics and it matters little.

Be that as it may Kitaj's art is the subject of two revisionist exhibitions next month at Pallant house gallery Chichester and the Jewish museum London, the first exhibitions of his work since his sad suicide in 2007. It will be interesting to see if the work will be perceived more benignly.

Charles Darwent at the Independent on sunday waxes lyrically about the light show at te Hayward, says it's marvellous and well worth a visit. In a category confusion he suggests James Turrell's Wedgework V verges upon  a religious experience. Waldemar Janusczcak at the sunday Times enthuses about the Man ray exhibition at the National Portrait gallery and the Schwitters at Tate Britain.

Schwitters and Lights.

This week's press is a mixed bag of criticism concerned with the light show at the Hayward Gallery. This has been tackled by Waldemar at the Sunday Times and Laura Cumming at the Observer.

Waldemar calls it a glowing affair of art works dating from the 60's onwards. Carlos Cruz-Diaz who is ninety years old this year presents three rooms as happy making as christmas lights. Waldemar agrues that the light experiences are both mindless and banal, deep and profound so it's best to suspend belief at all this entertainment. He says modern technology (sic) enable artists to sculpt light in effusive vein he writes; "where a sunset by Turner is a messy invasion by grand troops a Turrell installation is a precise drome strike." This is not to say that he likes it all, Jenny Holzers a wordy artist whose monument has the sensitivity of a bulldozer whilst Leo Villareals column of spangels is only suitable for the disco.

Laura Cumming on the other hand is thrilled by the light entertainment and says Anthony Mc Call sets the standard for the show along with James Turrell and Dan Falvin  - as one would expect. In truth the show is an inventory of light art, including Ivan Navarro's Tardis which she says puts optics to moral effect. In summary she suggests that the show is overwhelming in its artificial beauty. Seems like the curates egg, good in parts.

Charles Darwent tackles the Schwitters show at Tate Britain. It seems, he says altogether a sad tale of arts establishment neglect. Schwitters history, his flight from Herr Hitler, his merzbild, his barn extensions in the Lake district are all well documented. What isn't so well understood is his neglect by the English art establishment, but then they have always been very good at ignoring refugee geniuses such as Bomberg. Schwitters we are told owes his reputation to those two geniuses who exploited his innovations fully, Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi  a decade after his mal-nourished death. His adopted country found him a bit of an embarrassment but then there were quite a few artists who had fled from Hitler teaching in UK art schools in the 1950's and 60's. It seems a shame he wasn't helped  out with a suitable teaching post. Brain Sewell's review at the evening standard is his usual combative self.

The FT review of the Schwitters show is here

Two other notes from todays press. There is now a tendency for critics to complain about the language of art criticism as reporter Christina Paterson does in the Independent. She discusses art language, the language of pretence, subversion, notion, narrative, interrogation, deconstruction, hierarchies, etc, etc,. She argues that the language employed by art galleries is an attempt to hide something, perhaps the fact that the Hedge fund inspired art isn't actually very good. All of which is quite obvious and also true, but it is the result of a university education that uses continental hermeneutics and phenomenology speak to excuse and conflate the conceptually weak, the terminally inadequate and the sadly pathetic.  Jargon is often often used  to disguise inadequate intellect, hence this sort of junk: "Ashley Bickerton was showing at the same time. We learn that a woman featured in one painting, though not one of the “hallooed cultic figures”, is “taught and emotional”, while the description of the same work concludes with the sentence: “Bickerton’s exotic is necessarily impure and psychotropic.”

Two obituary's to note; The death of the inventor of very worst drawing tool ever devised which nevertheless sold in the millions, the Etch a Sketch , one Andre Cassagnes. The computer literate generation must be bemused by this device which only taught one how to tolerate drawing frustration, and not how to draw. Secondly the death of artist Peggy Ryan who was said to be the best Slade student since Augustus John and became famous as a picture restorer. 

Manet and more Manet

All the critics are this week forced to confront the blockbuster RA exhibition but missing from it are key works such as Olympia and Dejeuner sur L'Herbe  because the Musee D'Orsay won't let them out of Paris. Most critics argue that whole show is marred by this.

Manet will always seem the enigma - the putative father of contemporary painting. His admiration of and his pure academic understanding of Velasquez is the source of his greatness. As an objective study of how modern art cannibalised other historical art, understanding the personal alienation conveyed in his work is a real visual challenge. Insofar as he was a superb draughtsman, he is difficult for any contemporary sensibility to fully appreciate..... except in terms of the distancing he made all his own.

Charles Darwent at the Independent complains about the hanging, saying he has reservations about the quality of many of the works as failed visual experiments - which have sneaked in. This whining on about failed images is a little unfair, Manet's technique, relied upon accident, spontaneity and gesture and he didn't and couldn't always get it right. When he did, he advanced the cause of academic figurative art well into the 20th century. He writes;"Hanging Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzalès on the same wall makes you wonder if truthfulness can be taken too far." Every great artist has high notes and also low ones, but neither of these paintings are bad, contrived maybe, but not bad.

Laura Cumming at the Observer is more thoughtful. She makes the point that the images look extraordinarily modern, but then again over familiarity with them and downright copying has made a large contribution to contemporary visual sensibility. Thousands of artists paint portraits that are poorly disguised self-portraits, they repeat the same self image over and over in different guises. It's a measure of Manet's greatness that he was never guilty of this. He invented the psycho-drama construct where the viewer himself/herself is the key to unlocking the image within the picture plane itself..
Cumming writes:"The woman and the child are locked in their famous triangle, one looking into the station as the train departs, leaving white steam in the air, the other looking up from her book with an inquiring eye, noticing that she's been seen. A parade of railings spans the whole picture, coming between the portraits and the pure whiteness beyond – an abstract dimension, the very signal of modernity." I.e. Manet draws attention to the picture plane.

Waldemar Januszczak at the Sunday Times gets carried away with his total enthusiasm, which is understandable, much as usual. He makes the final comment that his quick and sure brushwork which quivers and skips to the rhythms of modernity is easier to appreciate in the absence of the great masterpieces that will never leave Paris. He could also have said that Manet's genius lies in the very precise but absolutely appropriate mark, which sums up an eyelid, cheek shadow or a lip.

Richard Dorment is very negative at the at the Sunday Telegraph and Waldemar goes as far as to take him to task for this on twitter. Dorment is often wrong about everything, he takes pains to see what others miss and in the process misses everything of significance. This is what's wrong with his piece, when he writes:"Surely this is what the novelist Huysmans was driving at when he identified Manet’s talent for enveloping his characters “in the atmosphere of the world in which they belong”. That’s very different from saying that he explored character or got under his sitters’ skin." This doesn't explain or indeed see the Manet that most of us see.

Brian Sewell in the London Evening Standard takes this pop at state art; "The absolute power of a Salon jury in Manet’s day may seem extraordinary and outrageous but it is matched today by the similarly arbitrary power of the Arts Council and of Serota and his Tates." This is of course absolutely true, as most struggling artists will attest. The rest of the review is very perceptive, from a critic who always excels himself when dealing with this period of art history. He finishes with a comment that those who know their Manet will be upset by an exhibition that will traduce his genius. A complaint about what is missing.

Souran Meilikian at the New York Times complains of Manet's stylistic inconsistency and argues that skill bears no relation to quality. He insists that the show is evidence of Manet's lack of aesthetic conviction, presumably because he did as he wished having like Cezanne the sin of a private income. He writes this total dribble: "Some may be 
tempted to think, about this master’s own disconcerting lack of consistency and, perhaps, of any deeply held aesthetic convictions."


The FT review by Jackie Wullschlager is as would be expected plain and balanced.

View a web Slideshow of the RA Manet exhibition images here.

Lynn Painter Stainers prize 2013

Interesting list of selected artists for the 2013 Lynn Painter Stainers prize, the standard this year seems to be set high.  We still seem to have many good figurative artists in the UK who can make real art from small things. People will always buy this sort of art because they like it.
Worth considering are these artists:
Rachel Ross
Hayley Harrison
Jeanette Barnes
Julia Comenares
George Rowlett
Tony Noble
David Carpanini
Peter Brown
Annamarie Dzendrowskij
Mellissa Scott Miller
Charlotte Sorapure

Gerard Byrne and Fred Sandback - 20th January

Laura Cummings in the Observer praises an Irish conceptual artist from the deathly Lisson stable whom we have only recently heard of, Gerard Byrne viewing at the Whitechapel. The art works consist of video in which actors re-enact the past, supposedly highly charged and significant conversations between noteworthy's, such as a group of science fiction novelists discussing the future. Celebrity video archeology, "Homme à Femmes (Michel Debrane)" is a re-enactment of the interview that took place between the young feminist journalist Catherine Chaine and the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The interviewee, never visible, asks questions to the actor Michel Debrane (who plays Sartre) about his relationships with women and what it feels like to be an old-fashioned sexist.
Why the original interview is no longer available on film isn't discussed -presumably it was suppressed as too controversial, but there is something profoundly unsettling going on here which says more about the ignorant present than the past. Sartre was the original poodle faker, he wrote little of value except for adolescents, he lied about his own lies, no one except left bank pseuds took him seriously; One would just as soon interview Martin Heidegger, only one wouldn't want to stick ones head in a hornet's nest!
Questionable is:
The faux naif assumption that the conversations of long dead celebrities have any significance or relevance to today.
The faux naif assumption that these actors re-enactments contain any significant truth
The faux naif assumption that a shift in historical perspective has anything of artistic value to teach us about the present.
Besides all that theory, the Sartre video isn't resplendent with intellect, all this is film and video, it just isn't visual art. It is film making and yet again it is luvvies, posing as visual artists, so why, oh why can't it be called that, instead of being shown in an art gallery and not where it actually belongs in the cinema.

Fred Sandback is a deceased artist few of us have ever heard of but according to David Zwirner we should have done! Marcus Field does the write up in the Independent on Sunday as Charles Darwent is on holiday. Seriously beg to differ with this art market ploy. Sandback we are told made his breakthrough work, an outline in string of a 20ft plank in 1968 at the age of 22 years. Can name at least 10 UK artists who were doing precisely the same thing back in 1968, e.g. Richard Long who was making string sculpture on his first year Dip AD course. The rest of the piece addresses James Lee Byars yet another deceased artist's estate show at Michael Werner. Little good can be said about this except that "the Angel" is poor Hierarchical pseudo-religious floor sculpture with no formal human values whatsoever, (Michael Sandle does it far far better and he is still alive) despite the articles written assertion that it is "the essence of human life brilliantly distilled." Some tautology, if only it were true! The issue is the Tracey Emin tantrum problem - namely how can anyone know what a deceased artist actually intended when the reconstituted object is distributed bits and pieces such as that infamous bed reconstruction?

Tracey Emin crops up again by entering the debate concerning the exclusion of the arts from Gove's Ebacc, according to yesterday's Independent.
"She has worked with troubled teenagers and said challenging them with the arts had a very positive effect, adding: “Michael Gove has to rethink the policy.” “If art isn’t considered as important as other subjects it will just fall by the wayside,” Emin said, before adding: “It can’t become a secondary subject.” "
A little confusion here!

This is all true, the case for the arts inclusion is an economic one. At a time when China is opening 2200 new art schools, our UK oxbridge political culture is taking state education back to pre-1820. This ideology will do incalculable more harm to future generations of 21st century Britons than saddling them with the  banksters debts, not everyone is born to be an academic or an artist for that matter, what counts is the choice. Truly depressing is the quality of the debate, only there isn't one, only dictat.

Paul Emsley - 2

As to be expected Paul Emsley has come in for a drubbing from the media and critics over his portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge.  His explanation of the method of making his artwork is on video. Anyone who has any in-depth knowledge and understanding of assessing and evaluating visual art in any context will know that when interpreting an image, the verbal commentary tends to reveal much more about the mind of the critic than it does about the values in the image itself. We have a whole range of inane stupidities on the web and in the media concerning this portrait which tell us much about the quality of the art criticism in the tabloids. Before linking to that, it is fruitful to compare this hitandrun forecast interpretation of the image with the actual painting. Look at both of them and note the sheer visual quality of the painting.

The Independent on Sunday 13.1.2013 did an exposition of contrasting viewpoints in an article entitled "Painting the Peoples Princess" (not available online)  and it is an sad demonstration of the decline of drawing skills in UK visual culture. A number of people were asked to do a portrait drawing of the Duchess from the photo, - why isn't mentioned....... The results are shown in the article. The shameful fact is, the art students among them are not just terribly weak, they are RCA students! How they could have done this without affecting their careers is incomprehensible.  This all serves to show the actual portrait in a very good light, as it is the work of an artist who can draw beautifully.

Have  a good look - if you can get a hold of a copy..

To return to the so called art critics, sometimes it would appear that they care little about painting, some are blind. There are those who cannot get the vampire out of their heads and those who would trash any effort whatever. The whole media fest isn't about the painted image itself so much as the media protecting it's own right to control the way in which the Duchess is perceived by the public. Some of the commentary is downright stupid and even blissfully ignorant. Waldemar Janusczcak says he was disappointed, Brian Sewell is reported as saying the portrait is sickening and even David Lee  wrote:

"THE best you can say is at least it’s not by Rolf Harris.
This is the National Portrait Gallery where you expect to see wonderful royal portraits. But it’s a straight-on head shot which wouldn’t be out of place in a high street photographer’s window. It’s neither one thing nor another and it’s the same image of Kate we see in every paper, every day. We could have expected something much more taxing and a lot more profound". 

This is all unfair criticism with subtext. On the whole none of the critics come out of it saying anything meaningful, just freely giving vent to their own  prejudice against figurative painting.

In the Observer Laura Cumming writes an interesting piece about Morandi at the Estorick collection, the great artist of small achievements. Much can be learned about drawing from close examination of Morandi's etchings and graphic work. He was an artist who made the everyday and commonplace significant and didn't need to carry out big publicity stunts. His work will be around in several hundred years time when the usual suspects will be long forgotten.

The big blockbuster exhibition for early 2013 is the Manet at the RA, which Claudia Pritchard reviews here.

The three mile mist vortex

A Justification.

This blog is now a year old, hopefully it will continue to record the cracks that are now beginning to appear in the facade of the state art zeitgeist. Contemporary art is a very poor visual art diet, and there are media signs that it is beginning to be perceived as such by other critics, not just the usual dissenters. 

State art intolerance extends to the fact that many real visual artists, those who do not conform to the limited values of this conceptual art biassed educational and market world are deliberately marginalised and hidden from view particularly when their work is figurative or representational.  They cannot get exhibitions in institutions where exposure counts, yet the usual suspects are continually over hyped and over presented despite the paucity of their kitsch work and it's content.  This situation serves no-one well particularly when it is funded by the public purse through ACE or state museums.  One example recently mentioned by the Jackdaw is the artist Evelyn Williams who sadly died in November and whose real stature as an artist is far greater than any of the currently fashionable branded artists.

Considering ACE funding, the Cultural Olympics have left a sour and bad taste in the form of a so far scandalous wastage of £500.000 for the three mile mist vortex - a so far failed sculpture by american conceptual artist Anthony McCall.  This project - the technology of which was unproven when it was taken up, has yet to be completed and now seems set to cost more than the budgeted £500.000. In these straightened times when many people are genuinely suffering from job and financial deprivation, when welfare is being cut, it is absolutely outrageous that this money, that could have been far better spent ensuring that the visual arts had a place in Mr Goves, Ebacc, is going to waste on a stunt that so far shows no sign of success.  This is exactly the kind of publicly funded crap art that gets contemporary art such a bad name and creates resentment in the real world.  Morality decrees that it is one thing for hedge fund supported artists to do this sort of thing and it is quite another to do it on the public or the taxpayers purse.

Art of the year 2012 - 2

Paul Emsley is an artist one has to admire, largely because he  goes his own very unfashionable skilful and precisely figurative way. His business is looking and observing closely, he is extremely acute, achieving great things from the most seemingly ordinary visual content. This is after all what art actually is about. He has been selected to paint the Duchess of Cambridge's official portrait. It's apparent that the hitandrun media mock up accompanying this article will be absolutely nothing like the artwork he is likely to produce but we do have to have our idiotic  instant visual solution, don't we? Why did the Times bother paying for such visual tripe?

Art of the Year 2012 - 2

Apologies for the Christmas holiday and no postings - been busy. Returning to examine our erstwhile critics a second post about the best art of 2012 seems required.

Jonathon Jones Takes a big pop at the usual suspect in his review of the very worst art of 2012. This scabrous piece says much more about Jones than it does about the usual suspect whose lack of visual judgement is lamentable. Unlike say, RA Michael Landy he cannot do the very basic.  Charles Darwent in the Independent does a similar hatchet job in his review of the year mentioning the worst show of 2012. In the same article his comment on William Turnbull is both apposite and surprisingly accurate. Have to affirm his comments on David Hockney's recent painting also, particularly the assessment that his work is extremely inconsistent in quality, - this may be because he is so familiar with theatre design and he frequently slips into set design mode without considering that the imagery, drawing and colour consequently become loose and OTT. Particularly good is his assessment of Barbara Hepworth's hospital drawings, which display some of the finest draughtsmanship in late 20th century UK art. He is one critic who actually looks with his eyes, - not just empty talk.

Richard Dorment at the Telegraph also gives us his view of the years best art.  Nothing original there as one would expect, vague musings about why other critics drubbed Hockney in the summer..... Doesn't look or observe, unlike Darwent. Why he mentions Robin Ironside though is puzzling, he is not knee high to the painter Keith Vaughan. He also approves of the Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price.

Andrew Graham Dixon gives his summary of the year and writes this of the usual suspect; "the terror of death – played out in a bizarre, morbid endgame of ever more kitsch self-repetition." Damned with very faint praise, and the most cogent remark in the article being his assessment of Bronze as the most significant UK sculpture exhibition in years - quite so!

Guardian  Robert Clarke and Skye Sherwin give us their notions of the best of 2012 in the Guardian and very art of the Tate state this is, too. Very predictable  and none of it serious - Tino Sehgal, Philip Guston, Jermey Deller -  yawn, etc.

Laura Cummings Observer list contains Tino Sehgal and Mark Wallinger and the  fact that she was quite taken by that risible historical effort "between the clock and the bed" by Edvard Munch

AA Gill in the Sunday Times writes an concerned article about the death of life drawing in British Art School. He says it is going out of fashion - in actuality it has been dead and gone for over twenty years, which is of course a great sadness as he argues.  The article is a concept mish-mash from Gill, a former Central school trained artist demonstrating that few artists can draw accurately from life with feeling. Gill himself starts drawing from the ear, and why not measuring up and laying out on the A2 with plumb lines? Despite St Martin's, he seems to have little retained interest in his formal training although the exercise created nostalgia. Still like Landy his heart's in the right place - he gathered together a nefarious group of talents, including cartoonists, to work on the issues but the discussion doesn't get us very far. There is a discussion about Duchamp and Picasso as if they polarities which they are not. He says Duchamp is the art of ideas, Picasso the art of emotion. This is like the curates egg, full of half truths, Picasso generated more ideas in his lifetime than Duchamp was capable of inventing, as he was essentially a one size fits all reductionist with little visual talent. He quotes Klee as saying that life drawing is the art of omission, a test of visual editing but it's also a demonstration of the artists knowledge of anatomy, emotional intelligence, spatial ability, form and light. Good life drawing is a complete synthesis and a true demonstration of mortality. It is also empirically based in use of the senses and in skills, which may be precisely why it has been dumped from fake art education courses.
The worthy text is accompanied with excellent drawings by Emma Sergeant, Charlotte mann and Jon Paul McCarthy.