........EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY..................

' Working on mysteries without any clues '.....

......Having spent most of my life developing my skill at visuals , I have occasionally tried watercolours , purely for relaxation . Relaxation ?  it is a lot harder medium to work with than markers , and I never have been too happy with the results , some of which can be seen on my web-site. Last year I thought I might have a go at oils, which then developed into mixed media. But the subject matter............hhmmmm.

    ' Works In Progress - towards buildings as narrative '

Buildings are recorded history , architectural plans and drawings are information data banks , blueprints for the past present and alternative futures , maybe even alternative pasts, all waiting to be decoded. The watercolours are recordings of buildings that have interested me ; the oils and mixed media works are very much exploratory , works in progress as I work towards a method of visually establishing alternative histories for building that may - or may not - have happened.

Reading buildings - mysteries, clues, plans - and visualising them will form the basis  as I take up an

MA course at Manchester Metropolitan University this coming September : investigating and proposing alternative histories and futures for three or four buildings in the city centre - buildings that will have other lives....

........and in the meantime , the works in progress are on show in the Longden gallery in Macclesfield , from February 27th through until March 26th this year . Given that this is the first time that I have actually exhibited since the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in 1967 it should be fun ....and most of the works on show , both watercolours and mixed media , are pictured in the portfolio section in my web-site

" The more enlightened a building becomes , the more its walls ooze ghosts "  

      Italo Calvino

....GIMME A PIG'S FOOT AND A BOTTLE OF BEER...............

Cultural Differences Part Two....................Spending a lot of time in south-west France the different attitudes to food to that in the UK become apparent very quickly. France is still very much an agricultural society ; most of the food is regionally biased and you get the feeling that pretty much most things, particularly the salad and vegetable sections , don't travel far to market...............

.......and there is a much greater acceptance of the odd, the miss-shapen - none of this visual conformity to an arbitrary ' perfect ' standardisation - it just needs to taste good. Even our local fish counter , in Orthez, wouldn't disgrace Harrods and the fish market down at St-Jean-de-Luz, on the coast is a visual delight.

Charcuterie , both in France and Spain , is elevated to a fine art - the Pata Negra , the jambon Iberico - is to die for. Pretty much all of the pig is used , and whilst you won't get every cut you get in the UK, such as belly-pork , the sheer variety makes up for any loss ;  terrines , pates', rillettes, saucisson , brawn all feature regularly on a cold plate at lunchtime. Pigs trotters appear regularly on menus , both at our local restaurant in Bayonne and up in the brasseries in Paris, so being an enthusiastic - if weekend - cook this got me thinking , and in the run up to Christmas I asked our local butcher Rob out at Chelford, who is excellent , if he could get me some pigs trotters and ears...........................

" Oh ", he said, " No problem , we usually throw all those away - do you want a head as well ? "

Vive la Difference.

....THE GUILDED PALACE OF SIN.....

.....Cultural Differences Part One...........Having worked for most of my life within the Leisure Industry and having more than a passing interest in the history of buildings - I initially trained to be an architect - it is no surprise that a lot of my books at home concern themselves with my fascination for buildings . Their construction , their history , their decoration , their setting for works of art ; architectural  plans exist to be read as coded sources of information , unlocking the past and the present and forecasting a future , both possible and alternative .......................

   

                                         

        Imagine my surprise and intrigue , then , when in Paris just after the new year , I came across ' Maisons Closes Parissienes ' by Paul Teyssier in a bookshop;  expensively bound in red suede with a key-hole cut out on the front cover , it tells the history, no less, of a selection of Parisien brothels during the 1930s.

This is a fascinating book - for all the fact that I can only read French very slowly , the language of architectural plans and drawings is universal . The history of individual establishments is illustrated in detail , complete with copies of working drawings, and it hadn't occurred to me that these buildings would require planning and working layouts much as any other type of leisure establishment. The day to day practicality of the businesses - bills for work, permits, advertising cards and promotional literature - are all illustrated , an interesting counterpoint and antidote to the more romantic Hollywood vision of 'Moulin Rouge '. The establishments are fully integrated into the artistic movements of the times - the spread below shows a shop-front very much in the Art Nouveau mode - and a section at the end of the book records in colour those remnants of these premises that can still be seen today . A fascinating record of a part of architectural history that generally goes totally unrecorded.

                   

      Given both the specifically French subject matter and the production costs of the book , I would think it unlikely that it will find both a translator and a publisher in the UK . A pity in my opinion , as in a month that has seen the university town of Cambridge , with all its ' learned institutions ' , refuse a license for a ' burlesque ' club on the grounds of moral impropriety , this book serves as a timely reminder that for all the advent of the ' Global Electronic Village ' and the fact that Paris is now only a train ride away , the cultural differences between the English and the French remain as great as ever.

Vive la Difference .

.......NO DIRECTION HOME .........

.......in a couple of threads on more recent postings I have commented on the importance of context , perceived or otherwise , with regard to frescoes . They appeal to me precisely because the technique involved in their production - the application of paint to fresh plaster so that the image is bonded into the wall surface - determines that the fresco remains within its original context , subject of course to wear and tear and possible change of use of the building in which it is housed.

      One of my favorite artists working in fresco is Tiepolo ; I have seen a lot of his work in Venice and the Veneto and his looseness of style coupled with his technical ability - how he sets out his ceilings in particular , with their foreshortened perspective from below , all done off scaffolding with no artificial illumination other than torches - never ceases to impress me. So I was quite intrigued when , in Paris just after New Year, I came across the Jacquemart - Andre Museum , ' famed for its collection of Italian Renaissance Art and its Tiepoloes .......

What's this ?...........................

      I am pretty certain that Tiepolo never visited Paris , so this deserved a closer look. The Museum itself, located up on the Boulevard Houseman is very impressive and sure enough , up there on the wall of the first floor over looking the Winter Garden , is a fresco by Tiepolo.... ' Henry 111 Visiting the Contarnini Villa ' , painted around 1750 and approx 7400mmm wide x 3300mm wide, together with a couple of side panels. The Dining Room of the original house ( for the building was originally a private house ) , now the dining room for the museum , also displays a very impressive ceiling fresco by Tiepolo....................

So what's going on ?..............................

The Museum itself was originally built as the private Parisian residence for Edouard Andre and his wife, both ardent art collectors , and the house , inaugurated in 1876, was by 1892 slowly being transformed into the ' Italian Museum ' of their dreams , housing their beloved collection of Venetian and Florentine art. The Tiepolo frescos , it transpires , were acquired by Andre in 1893 and brought to Paris from the Villa Contarini at Mira , near Venice. Yes, I know that in this day and age frescos are repaired , removed , restored and probably repatriated , but this is with the aid of all the latest techniques and knowledge at the restorer's disposal - after all, Art Restoration is big business. But we are moving these frescos in 1893 and they are BIG.........and Venice is some 700 miles away, across the Alps , Did they come by sea ? Overland, up the Rhone valley ?  The Orient Express rail route through to Istanbul had opened some ten years earlier, so possibly they came up by train - otherwise it would have been by horse-drawn cart. Were the frescos removed complete with part of the original wall fabric still intact ? Were they transposed to canvas , rolled and relocated that way ?

Some of the minor ceiling frescoes have certainly been remounted onto canvas  and one of them has suffered

the ignominy of having a 150mm diameter hole punched in its centre , presumably where a light fitting was once accommodated , but on the whole it is certainly not apparent that they have been relocated from their original  setting .                                                                                                                                                  

The Tiepoloes are now, of course , fully integrated into the Jacqumart Andre Museum , both as an integral part of the fabric of the building and as highlights of the collection of Italian Renaissance art ....it still seems slightly odd to me , however , to see them in this setting in a house in bourgeois Paris.

Displaced persons , no direction home............



THE MAN COMES AROUND

My approach to art is strictly that of a Luddite - pens, pencils, markers, brushes and no technology please, apart from the occasional help of the photocopier. Computer art? Perish the thought.

And then I came across this site, courtesy of the Culture Show on BBC  2 - http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/ - a global collective art project. This might well be quite simple to set up, but I am very impressed......it democratises the art-making process.

Maybe it's the way an infinity of static images merge into a living organism, maybe its the way the black / white discipline echoes the stripped down austerity of the Rick Rubin produced 'American Recordings' series... maybe I think too much about it.

Enjoy... and then discover the music.

...PAINT IT BLACK .....

.............The subject of the last post was the question of context - can an artifact exist outside of its context, can it be reduced purely to its own reality , its own component parts, no external references and still have meaning ? Its pretty obvious that the zebra crossing - the object in the last post - has no inherent meaning or value other than its significance as a pedestrian crossing ; it only achieves a reality as a cultural icon when placed in a secondary context , a stage setting for four iconic individuals on an album cover - so the album and the location becomes the reality for the significance of this particular crossing.

.............so lets consider an artifact , a painting that purports to exist entirely within its own frame of reference.

' Black Square ' was painted by Kazimir Malevich in 1915 , representing a complete break from anything that he previously attempted., establishing in his own words the concept of the ' zero of form '...
" ........a blissfull state of liberating non-objectivity drew me forth into the ' desert' where nothing is real except feeling."
Black square on white field, carrying abstraction to its ultimate geometric simplification, this square to Malevich symbolised a 'full void ', in that it showed how painting could fulfill itself unaided by any reference to a specific external reality. Malevich removes specific subject matter by shifting away from representation and mimesis towards the purity of mathematical geometry. And so it is viewed as such, independent of any external references in a gallery space that attempts an anonymous setting. The reduction of form to pure geometry - ' the void ' - what could be more abstract.

But have a look at the second photograph here......................

.........................the original exhibition of the canvass at the Last Futurist Exhibition in Petrograd in December 1915 - and notice where Malevich has actually placed the canvas - high up against the cornice, across the corners of the room.  Odd ? A whim ? Another comment on the rigidity of the gallery concept ?.....except that the reason , the meaning of the hanging,  is none of these. The corner of a room, high up , is the place in a Russian house traditionally reserved for the family icon , the equivalent within the Russian orthodox church to a picture of the Blessed Virgin , the Holy of Hollies.
                        Malevich here isn't just reducing painting to pure abstract form ; by placing the canvas in this specific location he is also arguing for the return to the purest form of spirituality, 'the void ', going beyond the accepted dogma of conformity , of organised religion to seek enlightenment  ......." I search for God, I search within myself for myself . God is all-seeing , all-knowing, a future perfection of intuition as the oenumical world of supra-reason " The meaning of the placement of the canvas would not have been lost on its audience.

                        The original location of the canvas here , lost in any subsequent gallery hanging , implies in its reference back to the icon it is both replacing and displacing that even in its most abstract form context cannot be ignored , and must be understood for a fuller appreciation of the artifact.

.........I'M ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE.......................

......And over the Christmas period it was announced quite seriously that a couple of Belisha beacons , some white paint and a strip of tarmac had been formally granted a schedule Grade Two listed status , joining the growing list of protected buildings and monuments that form part of this country's heritage. Devoid of any particular architectural or artistic content - devoid in fact of pretty much any content at all , this raises the interesting question that at what point does an artifact of no intrinsic merit whatsoever become of cultural significance ? .

..........It's all in the context - the zebra crossing in question is the one recorded for posterity on the cover on the Beatles last album, the eponymously titled ' Abbey Road ' ...............and even here the value of its significance is questionable , as the zebra crossing granted heritage status is not even the original crossing ,  having being relocated by the local council slightly to the south-east in the 70s in the interests of traffic management. Every generation has its icons , but it is arguable here that the iconic status rests not with the ' physical installation ' on Abbey Road but with the album cover itself as artifact. Do buildings become of more intrinsic merit by virtue of having a circular blue heritage plaque bestowed on them, and does the plaque therefore assume a value in its own right ? Do artifacts, buildings, installations only assume a cultural significance when defined by their context ?

.........and with regards to the question of ' original ' , let's return to the philosopher's favorite knife - with a lot of use the handle is worn and is replaced ; after more use the blade too is replaced.......so where does 'original ' lie ? 

HHHmmmmmm ..........................................................