The view inside my eyelids
If you can get to Camden Art Centre in London go!
The current exhibition is by Ben RIvers. I did not know his work until I went to this show. There are videos and a curated room. They are wonderful. Just sit and enjoy. There are so many layers to them and they are a pleasure to watch. They have a resonance with all our lives. They are particular yet universal. Really, really worth seeing. Like an oasis in a desert.
The blockbuster that is the artist Ai Wei Wei is in London at the Royal Academy on Piccadilly. The show opened a while ago, but due to Frieze London being on, there was a chance to see it without the crowds one evening, so I took that chance.
I had liked the ceramic sunflower seeds at Tate Modern a few years back so I was interested to see this show.
Tate Modern Ai WeiWei
Ai Wei Wei’s work is monumental. There are a few small pieces, but I think the scale of each of the pieces in this show is, generally, too big. I am not a monumental art fan. It has connotations I don’t like. Most of these pieces I thought would be better smaller, quieter. Then we could see the art because when work is on the monumental scale it can become documentary, memorial and historical centrepiece.
A lot of it is quite literal.
The carpet of metal representing maps of China I found lovely, but I am not sure that is the intention, to be lovely, as the work is made from the rods retrieved after the earthquake where 20 schools capsized in 2008 and thousands of children died. The names of the children are on the wall in a long placard of remembrance; lives, potentials erased. But the work is quite brutalist. I thought about the studio workers having to collect the metal and straighten it, and wondered how they felt.
The bicycle chandelier was very literal and rather kitsch. The wall papers I thought were a bit childish. I could not find a lot to love. I found the fact that many temples had been destroyed and he had rescued the wood and reused it good. I liked the first room of wooden structures and some of the cubes, but in the end, monumental as it was, political as it was, I found the show quite thin.
Frieze is on, Frieze is on!
I love art fairs where you can see so much in one space. But you need energy!
This year, the opening day (Tuesday 13th Oct) seemed lighter and less crowded. And the place seemed nicer somehow. And the displays seemed airy and spacious.
So much great art (and of course some loud, shouty nonsense) so how to sum up?
Well, there really was an Agnes Martin painting there. I couldn’t believe I could see one so close outside a museum. There was also, like me, part of a family in raptures in front of it (and part of the family not getting it). But more remarkably, on another stand were 17 ‘drawings’ of hers- totally fabulous. Apparently, they are ‘reserved’ for a museum. A bargain.
In the main Frieze, Anthony Reynolds Gallery is showing Paul Graham. Some exquisite and poignant moments captured. Still relevant.
Paul Graham
Ana Lupas– who knew? At P420 Gallery. A Romanian artist, these works are from the 1960s. They are remarkable, beautiful, poignant and political. I am new fan. She is a performance artist. Wonderful works.
Ana Lupas
Fernanda Gomes is being shown at Alison Jaques as well as a South American gallery. Very bare; very minimal (very expensive!). Loved it. Wanted some!
Fernanda Gomes
In fact, South American art seems to be way ahead in general. Some lovely works from the 1970s onwards they are finally getting on the art world map. Of course, not all of it is great, but so much is, and so much of the great art in South America is by women. Now there’s a thing.
The Hauser and Wirth stand is superb in the main Frieze tent.
Sarah Lucas at Sadie Coles.
To coincide there have been other events including Jimmie Durham at the Serpentine. Some other openings too; some of very thin work with no truth to it and some that seem to have plagiarised other people’s work. Really bad.
But the main Frieze tent and the Master’s tent have some beautiful works and some wonderful displays.
All of this great art and human enterprise in one place.
Fabulous. Exhausting. Exhilarating. About the best year of Frieze.
If in town, do go see.
I think Mr Liam Gillick is an incredibly bright artist. But, somehow, he wears his brightness lightly.
His art is also incredibly bright, brilliantly bright stuff. it is so intelligent. But even though I don’t get all the references, I still enjoy it and that is strange, that it is pleasurable without being obvious. It is witty, without being ‘knowing’ (I don’t like knowing) and joyful.
The current show at Maureen Paley opened last night.. He said that the show has been touring around some strange and not obvious locations. Now we get to see it in London.
The show has the title LIAM GILLICK: THE THOUGHT STYLE MEETS THE THOUGHT COLLECTIVE
The work consists of three rooms with installations, texts, audios or videos. While I realised it was very intellectual, I also just enjoyed it. I think it is meant to be enjoyed. There is even ‘sparkle’ on the floor.
The sort of wigwam of wood looks like a place to be in, but there is no entrance. He has his meeting places under the perspex fins, a more public space. There is a sense of interaction. I guess there is the interaction of the maker of the art and the person ‘reading’ the art.
I read the press release before I went. It includes this quote:
“A truly isolated investigator is impossible (…). An isolated investigator without bias and tradition, without forces of mental society acting upon him, and without the effect of the evolution of that society, would be blind and thoughtless. Thinking is a collective activity (…). Its product is a certain picture, which is visible only to anybody who takes part in this social activity, or a thought which is also clear to the members of the collective only. What we do think and how we do see depends on the thought-collective to which we belong” – Ludwik Fleck, 1935
The work looks at this and the interaction between Fleck and Mary Douglas, the anthropologist. I love Mary Douglas. I quote her in various scenarios. My favourite phrase of hers is ‘dirt is matter in the wrong place’. Brilliant. Well Liam Gillick was interested in this collaboration and in how we do not really invent alone. To quote from a book I am reading (The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey) she quotes Sir William Bragg, a famous scientist saying ‘The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.’ Perhaps that is what post-modernism is saying too. And perhaps it is partly what Gillick’s work is, looking anew and seeing how these ideas are reached. Or that is what I got from it.
That we do not invent alone.
That we are all connected.
That ideas are relationships.
There is also a new and lovely book out of his:
From Nineteen Ninety A to Nineteen Ninety D, published by JRP|Ringier.
At £25 it is worth it. Really.
If you want a meditative moment to reflect on thoughts, cultures, ideas and how we got here, a trip to Bethnal Green may help.
I’m sort of blown away by it. I might not get it all, but I loved it.
A brilliant shiny (sparkly) joyful art. Sheer delight.
In my blog Dia, I wrote about my new art loves, Agnes Martin and Fred Sandbach/Sandback. But Dia is near New York City, about 40 minutes on the train north, along the Hudson and I am not there!
The show at the Tate features works that were not at Dia. It is a bit of a retrospective, so Martin’s early works are shown. And then, like I said in Piet Mondrian at Margate blog, you suddenly walk into a room that are Martins. The full, realised art.
Each work is in the same square dimension, very unusual as most paintings are landscape or portrait; rectangles of containment rather than squares. They are works of art. Not about art. Not about something. Just the thing itself.
And then the room I could live in. Twelve mainly white paintings, like twelve tribes. Each different, each individual. Barely there yet containing everything.
Sublime.
St Paul de Vence
We are just back from a 5 day trip to the South of France courtesy of some very generous hosts who gave us accommodation, food, company and treats- taking us around. It was an art tour. I am not great at holidays. It takes me a while to work it out, so having a focus: art, gardens, wine or whatever, makes it easier to relax and enjoy. As art is one of our loves we were lucky that it was shared on this trip.
Fondation Maeght in St Paul de Vence is architecturally worth a visit. Coupled to this are some stunning art in the permanent collection including works by Calder and Caro and a beautiful painting by Bonnard and Braque, currently on display. There are also a courtyard full of Giacometti and a courtyard of Miro. The current exhibition is not my thing at all so I won’t mention the name of the artist!
Fondation Maeght
The Matisse Chapel in Vence is so wonderful and we were lucky to time our visit with a brief, clear and excellent talk in English about its history and meaning. The colours that he selected and the work and method of making it were also explained, but really succinctly. This is his last major work before he died and he said ‘I was born irreligious and I am finishing divine’! Beautiful, meaningful and spiritual. What more can you ask from art?
Matisse Chapel, Vence
The Picasso Museum in Antibes is also a must. If you only see one work, the Ulysses and the Sirens piece is worth the visit. The whole place is full of his brilliance and also lots of photos of him and his wife which are full of life too. The place is set by the sea so the views are wonderful and the building is beautiful. The interiors are over- restored which is a shame, but still what a setting and what wonderful works.
Picasso
There was also an exhibition on of a husband and wife artist. His name was Hans Hartung, but it was his wife’s work Anna-Eva Bergman (originally from Norway) that was wonderful. I had never heard of her before and I am now a great fan.
Anna-Eva Bergman
There was also a fabulous film by Iris Sarah Schiller ‘The Hair of my Mother’ made in 2003, which we sat and watched. Simple and very profound.
We also liked one work by Pierrette Bloch (1975) which looked a bit like tiny dots of code.
In Nice we were taken to Villa Arson. The current exhibition has some good works in and the film by Ben was very worth the trip. We did not have time to visit the student show which was a shame.
We also were taken to a concert of Celtic music played in a monastery in the hills of Nice, performed by the legendary Jordi Savall. Wow!
And a dinner at the Colombe d’Or, where you can skip the food for the art on the walls.
Finally, we also went to La Station in Nice where there is an exhibition on Australian art. Some very good pieces. But the really great part of our visit there was that Le Station also contains artists studios and by sheer chance we met Jean-Baptiste Ganne. What joy to discuss his works and what wonderful works. His Morse code version of Don Quixote, which he has shown in many places, was brilliant. He tried to show us his new work, but there was a temporary electronic problem so we went off to look at other work. I came by just as it was working so I got a solo show. A round curvaceous lamp lights up (lamp is feminine in French) and a man’s voice says ‘Look at me’ and other messages. Wonderful. All art needs to be looked at. The viewer completes the picture. It was funny, poignant, profound and simple. It goes on show in Switzerland with one part of the audio saying ‘huh, I thought I was going to be shown in Basle and I end up here’. Every artist will understand. Lovely. Thank you very much Mr Ganne.
I did not know so much great work and so many great places existed in the Cote d’Azur. Thank you very much to our wonderful hosts; true gems.
Wow-I just heard, on Radio 4 BBC, a whole programme featuring this Canavero person and his ideas for head transplants. It is also all over the newspapers.
They keep talking about the person with a terrible disease of the body wanting their head transplanted to a healthy body.
WHOSE HEALTHY BODY? WHOSE BODY ARE YOU GETTING?
‘First human head transplant now possible’,
‘In 1970 Robert White successfully transplanted the head of a rhesus monkey onto the body of a second rhesus.
Dr Sergio Canavero, a member of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, has proposed using a similar method with humans.
He believes that it a team of 100 could perform the operation in 36 hours — at a cost of £8.5million. Both heads would have to be removed at the same time, and reconnected within an hour’ (The Telegraph Newspaper):
Now let’s have a little think about this, using our own heads.
First- I am going to pretend to take this seriously and do the science:
Transplants are difficult things for two reasons:
1) immunological problems– where the recipient (host) rejects the donor (graft) tissue because they are incompatible.
Transplants require matching donor to recipient as immunologically close as possible, but the recipient (host) needs to take immuno-suppressive drugs (drugs that suppress the immune system) for life. This makes the recipient susceptible to infections.
Stem cell science gets funding because it does fundamental research that has applications that benefit this clinical area. One area is ‘Regenerative Medicine’. This is getting your own stem cells to grow new tissue, the tissues that have degenerated. If you grow your own tissues you avoid the problems of immunological rejection of a donor transplant.
2) surgical problems- connecting the organ correctly so that it functions
Being able to re-connect broken nerve cells (neurons) would be of great benefit and the surgery that this claim invokes would be very useful in doing this for patients with spinal cord injuries.
We are having problems connecting the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The central nervous system (CNS) is even more problematic, probably due to the glial cell support, but we are not sure yet.
So all of this points to Canavero’s claim as CRAP SCIENCE!
Now let’s look at the ethics:
You know those ads for gyms and beauty parlours that tell you that you can ‘get the body you want’?
Well the body I want belongs to someone else (I can’t decide between Brad’s or Angelina’s as I would be happy with either attached to my head!).
So who is about to donate their body so you can have your ugly mug on it?
We can’t even get enough kidneys for transplants and each of us has two kidneys and can survive on one.
Heart transplants rely on someone dying as you cannot survive without your one heart and most of us are a bit reticent about being a donor.
Getting an entire (healthy) body is even more unlikely. If it is a healthy body why are they dying?
This is all so stupid that I wonder if Canavero doesn’t, in fact, need a brain transplant. Any donors?
At this moment in time I am avoiding turning on the news. To hear of more murders and destruction takes the joy out of life.
This morning I sat and looked out at the part of the planet I am on.
I could see the works of humans. Magnificent buildings and structures.
I am awe-struck that we humans produce such things and I do not use the word ‘awe’ in my conversation lightly (as in: that coffee is awesome, maybe because it is often awful). Awe is something I reserve for God-like actions.
I am also struck by the magnificence of the planet. I am not sure if you can have an objective measure of its magnificence or if humans are so adapted to it that we find home magnificent, but its beauty never ceases to amaze me.
That there are humans that make magnificent structures and have made them for millennium on this wonderful planet, that there are humans that celebrate its beauty, that add to it, these creations make those humans God-.like.
If you believe in God surely God would be very pleased with them.
So I find it hard to listen to the news with so much destruction and murder. Especially when it is done in the name of a God.
Especially when there is a claim that this is the right thing to do, as if some great intellectual feat had been accomplished by it.
As if this was a clever idea done by clever or sensible people with just cause. Especially when they say it was a hard decision!
You see killing people is easy.
I know there are all those stupid films where they talk about a ‘hard kill’, but it is ridiculously easy to kill people.
We have been killing people for millennia in the same manner that we can kill any living thing.
It does not take brains or brawn to kill.
In fact, the more stupid and weedy you are the easier as there are so many weapons out there for the incompetent.
A child can kill by picking up a gun and shooting it.
How hard it that?
How intelligent is that?
How magnificent is that?
You can even kill people by accident, in a car crash for example. Without planning. Without intent.
You can kill people perversely or by torture, with much pain and suffering. We all know that this is not justice; it is not on the side of right. It is psychotic. You are not a judge or a righteous person. You are a psychopath.
You can kill people by neglect and abandonment, by lack of care.
Oh it is so easy to kill people, any fool can do it.
Why would I want to watch such childish stupid on the news or on a film? Why would you want to do that? What sort of a pervert are you that you play killing games? Grow up. Leave the base animal behind.
Killing people is easy, it is for the stupid, the dull, the base.
What is really, really hard to do is to help people to live,
It is especially hard to help them to live well.
That takes effort, care, love, intelligence, righteousness.
That is God-like.
That is human.
That is magnificent.
The Torah is a remarkable book. It outlines a creation story, how the universe came to be, and that it all starts with nothing. There is no universe, it is null and void. And then God says ‘Let there be light’. Sounds a bit like the Big Bang; this sudden creation of something.
It took Copernicus another 2500 years to find out that the Earth goes round the Sun, not the other way round. In other words, the whole planet Earth on which we live is not in the centre of this solar system, let alone the universe. This means that humans are not the centre of the universe. They are not the founders of it and they are not the centre of it.
As we humans are not the centre of the universe, we might get to thinking that we are so insignificant that each one of us does not matter, we are disposable.
The Torah says all the living things on this planet are created from this planet Earth and that humans are created also from Earth. The name Adam means red, the red earth. All things, including living things, are therefore material (matter) which means we are all chemical beings.
But all things also have what the Kabbalists (the mystics) would say, a spark of the divine. So all material things are chemical, but also have the sparks of creation (the Big Bang) in them.
When humans are created, we emanate from God, according to the Torah, so we too have those sparks in, the sparks of the Divine or the energy of the Big Bang, if you prefer.
However it says in the Torah, we humans are also created after ‘the likeness and in the shadow of God’.
Humans, have a lot of sparks of the divine, but not only the sparks, they are in a similar spirit to God, in the shadow and likeness. This makes humans very special, very dear to God.
The Rabbis say that to kill a human is to kill a universe. You are killing what they are, their life; and you are killing what they could become; their potential. You are cutting off the sparks and the spirit.
I say this as we have just commemorated the 7/7 bombings in London, which occurred on the 7th of July 2005, ten years ago.
Fifty two (+4) human lives were obliterated.
Fifty two (+4) universes wiped off the planet.
All things are precious.
All living things are very precious.
Humans are in the shadow and likeness of God.
Killing humans is killing the likeness of God.
That is blasphemy.
Adam and Eve did not belong to a religion or tribe or cult. That is the beauty of these passages in the Torah. They were not Jewish, Christian or Muslim or anything. They were ‘every-human’.
Adam and Eve are the first humans. However they arose, by Creation or by Evolution, they are the parents of us all. That is what the Torah is saying. All human life descends from them, either because God created them or Evolution evolved them.
If you believe in Evolution, then each one of us is descended from our same ancestors. We are all related, one species. Killing any one of us is obscene. You are murdering your family members. Each and every one of us is related, regardless of tribe or belief. The Torah is saying the same thing.
If you believe that God created humans then killing their descendants, any one of us, is blasphemy. How dare you? How dare you say you believe in God and then try to kill God; to kill God’s spirit; to kill us humans? We are all in the shadow and likeness of God.
To kill a human is to kill a universe; a created or evolved universe, an emanation of the Divine or of Evolution, a descendant of God or of our common ancestors. A spark of the Divine or of the Big Bang, whichever you prefer.
Each and every one of us came from the same place.
Each and every one of us is precious.
It is not for you, or for any one of us to think or to act otherwise.
The Turner Prize, named after the wonderful artist, is an annual award given to a British Artist, or an artist who works in Britain. It is usually a very big deal to get one and just as big a deal to be nominated for one.
This year, however, it all changed. I don’t know if the committee for this year’s prize are so inexperienced they needed our help or if they think that inclusivity is the same as amateur, but they opened the nominations up to the public. This sounds like a great idea, we get to say who we think is great, but of course an expert panel decides.
I am not against expertise. In fact, I am really in favour of it. I want any operation I need done by an expert in the field rather than a member of the general public. I don’t even mind elitism. I would not watch a 100 metre final with my neighbour running in it, but I would watch it with an elite athlete. I don’t know why you are not allowed to be an expert or among the elite in other areas such as art or science. I have no problem with it. I am not talking about exclusivity, where you are excluded from participating. I am talking about the best winning the prize.
Now, I think if you ask the public to nominate we should see the list that we nominated and the votes, otherwise why bother asking us? I don’t mind an expert panel making the final short-list otherwise what is the point of excellence? But I do mind being asked to participate and then not knowing what happened. The Tate has no ‘long’ list. I think that some of us public may have nominated artists, rather than amateurs. I want to see.
What they do have is the usual short list of four contestants. I say the usual short list as it is not the usual short list at all. Most of the list does not comprise artists. There are community groups and gardening designers. Now we have just had the Chelsea Flower Show in London and there are many other such shows for gardeners. I do not think that designers need another forum when there are so few art forums.
There is one obscure art work which perhaps nobody saw that has been nominated, but the rest are not by artists. They are pretending to be inclusive, but that is not what I want. I want excellence, innovation, ideas, creativity, spiritual uplift, art, something. I don’t want a community project or a mural by some school children nor do I want a designer.
At least this year it is being held in Scotland and as so many of us are furious with the Scots for bringing in this government and having 56 seats for a nationalistic group many of us, I hope, won’t bother to take any notice of it.
But please Tate, next year, get a panel of experts in art and get an artists only list. Art is something done by artists, just like science is done by scientists. If you don’t know that, get someone that does and stop wasting this moment to promote artists, a sorely needed moment for most artists in Britain given the punitive funding cuts to the arts. This should have been their moment. The designers and community workers have lots of places to go, just like the amateur actors, I’m sure their friends and family love them, but please can we bring back art to the Turner prize, an exclusively art prize?
If the committee don’t know what that is then sack the committee.
dr cedar 