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Christmas in Painting: Pavel Filonov

 Although the themes of Adoration and the journey of the Magi seem to be more common in the Western tradition in art, they are by no means alien to the Orthodox tradition, and these two works by the Russian painter Pavel Filonov (1883-1941) are good examples. Since painting on this occasion serves to interpret (i.e. to translate) the Bible, it is interesting to observe how Filonov “domesticates” his translation. On the one hand, he obviously does exactly what European painters did before him, i.e. giving the people on his canvas a distinctly Russian look. Yet on the other hand, he introduces to the Russian painting the new methods and techniques. The same is true about The Magi, which is a watercolour painting featuring the black Balthasar in the foreground. If both paintings, but particularly The Magi, offer a good example of application of the recent methods in Western painting (Futurism, Cubism) to the Russian tradition.

Derek Maus in his article explores how Andrei Bely and Pavel Filonov, the writer and the painter respectively, studied the dimensions of space, time and “strangeness” of things in their works. It seems that the “strangest” thing about Peasant Family is that Filonov had chosen to depict the villagers, not proletarians. This is partly explained by the painter’s personal dislike of the city as the epitome of hustle and bustle. In a way, too, Filonov could merely follow the tradition that depicted the holy family in the “bucolic”, and not urban, environment. But one can also agree with Maus that “widespread socio-political sympathy for the plight of the Russian peasantry as, minimally, an image of the rural proletariat, made it possible for Filonov to use this visual allegory to glorify, perhaps even deify, a peasant family“.

Pavel Filonov, The Magi, 1914
(The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia)
Pavel Filonov, Peasant Family (Holy Family), 1914
(The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia).

How to Scrape Skies (Nicolas Bentley Illustrations)

How to Scrape Skies
To scrape the skies in Manchester, you may want to go to Cloud 23 – a chic bar at the Hilton Hotel in the Beetham Tower in Deansgate. The image I took last weekend during the walk around town isn’t original in its idea: arguably, this is the way (or one of the definitive ways) to photograph a skyscraper in all its glory. It was one of those snaps you make to document a fleeting sensation.

The title of the photo isn’t original either: it is the title of the 1948 book by George Mikes. How To Scrape Skies: The United States Explored, Rediscovered, and Explained was published on the back of the astounding success of Mikes’s best-seller, How To Be An Alien (1946). Like How To Be An Alien, and similar to a few other “how-to” books published subsequently, How To Scrape Skies documented the American peculiarities, comparing them to what could be seen in Europe or Britain. But perhaps the reason why How To Be An Alien was so successful was that it dwelt on Mikes’s own life in England as a Hungarian emigrant, whereas in subsequent books Mikes couldn’t rely on such a vast personal experience, and also was evidently trapped by his own success.

But over at GoofButton there is a page with the illustrations to How To Scrape Skies: these were made by Nicolas Bentley, a British author and cartoonist. The site is created by Jeffrey Meyer. As Jeffrey correctly notes, the reason why this Mikes’s book was “not for sale in the U.S.” is that the illustrations were arguably even more inflammatory than the text. Below are a few examples. To see them all, visit GoofButton.

Vasari and Ingres: The Death of Leonardo

The 1818 painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Death of Leonardo, was inspired by an extract from Vasari’s Lives of the Artists.

ingres-death-of-leonardo
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Death of Leonardo, 1818

Recently I’ve been doing some research for my other projects and I came across this painting by the French master Ingres, The Death of Leonardo. I knew that the Renaissance Italian connoisseur Giorgio Vasari would surely have something on the subject, see below:

At last, having become old, he lay ill for many months, and seeing himself near death, he set himself to study the holy Christian religion, and though he could not stand, desired to leave his bed with the help of his friends and servants to receive the Holy Sacrament. Then the king, who used often and lovingly to visit him, came in, and he, raising himself respectfully to sit up in bed, spoke of his sickness, and how he had offended God and man by not working at his art as he ought. Then there came a paroxysm, a forerunner of death, and the king raised him and lifted his head to help him and lessen the pain, whereupon his spirit, knowing it could have no greater honour, passed away in the king’s arms in the seventyfifth year of his age.

The loss of Leonardo was mourned out of measure by all who had known him, for there was none who had done such honour to painting. The splendour of his great beauty could calm the saddest soul, and his words could move the most obdurate mind. His great strength could restrain the most violent fury, and he could bend an iron knocker or a horseshoe as if it were lead. He was liberal to his friends, rich and poor, if they had talent and worth; and indeed as Florence had the greatest of gifts in his birth, so she suffered an infinite loss in his death.

This passage from Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists inspired Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (J.-A.-D. Ingres (French painter)) to paint his 1818 work, titled The Death of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo is depicted wearing a long beard, as in the Uffizi portrait.

Following Leonardo’s death, Francesco Melzi wrote to the painter’s brothers:

I understand that you have been informed of the death of Master Leonardo, your brother, who was like an excellent father to me. It is impossible to express the grief that I feel at his death, and as long as my bodily parts sustain me I will feel perpetual unhappiness, which is justified by the consuming and passionate love he bore daily towards me. Everyone is grieved by the loss of such a man whose like nature no longer has it in her power to produce…

View the excellent cover of 1568 edition of Vasari’s work; and read extracts at Fordham University’s website.

How Apollo Was Flaying Marsyas

The origins of this post date back to July 2008. I went to London and visited Victoria and Albert Museum. I spent most of my time there admiring sculptures by Rodin, Canova and Lord Leighton, and it was there that I came across the group by Antonio Corradini, Apollo Flaying Marsyas. The group dated back to 1719-1723 and was originally at the royal gardens in Dresden. It was not unusual to see such group in the place where the high and mighty would walk: in the Summer Garden in St. Petersburg one of the sculptures depicted Uranus devouring his child – hardly a pleasant composition to behold during a lazy afternoon promenade. Yet Corradini’s sculpture was disturbing in a very peculiar way. Apollo, armed with this huge garden knife, skins Marsyas’s leg, while watching a poor satyr with the most curious expression: the god is either surprised by the satyr’s reaction, or he is gently reminding Marsyas that such was supposed to be the punishment, so “no sulking now!” I was particularly impressed by the contrast of the scene’s brutality and by Apollo’s gentle musical fingers holding Marsyas’s leg as if it was a cello’s body.

When I looked around for representations of this story by other artists, my surprise grew even bigger to some extent. As you can see in the presentation below, artists were not unanimous on how to depict Marsyas. According to some variants of the legend, he was a satyr; in other cases he was a peasant. This may explain why in some paintings Marsyas appears as a man, and not as half-goat. Neither were they unanimous in showing Apollo’s involvement. Although the majority of painters or sculptors showed the god heavily involved in punishing the satyr, some, like Titian, gave Apollo a Nero-esque look, putting him almost in the background, giving him the lyre and making him the onlooker.

It may be tempting to reflect on the social undertone of the legend. The god of Sun whose power was challenged by a peasant takes to punish the offender most severely… and if the peasant was in fact a satyr, half-goat that is to say, so the “social” component of the story was even more prominent. As much as this social undertone cannot be denied (which may explain why Antonio Corradini’s sculpture had been gracing the royal gardens), what is probably more interesting is the opportunity the story of Apollo and Marsyas was giving to showcase the awareness of human anatomy, emotions, and the developments in medical science. Apollo in the paintings by Jordaens, de Ribera and Carpioni strikes the pose that would normally be seen in the anatomical theatre – that of an experienced surgeon and anatomist. Marsyas wriggling his body in agonising pain, his face distorted, was once again a great opportunity to put to work the knowledge gained in hospitals, battlefields, and prisons. And not once do we see the artist meticulously showing us the process of skinning the poor satyr. It was about bones, meat, and tissues rather than politics – let alone mythology.

Links:

Marsyas “biography” at Wikipedia.
Marsyas: Satyr of Lydia (with quotations from primary sources) at Theoi.
Apollo myths at Yahoo! Geocities.

The Ode to Memory (And Other Thoughts)

The poem A Thank You to the Wonders of Photography is currently one of the Challenge Poems during the National Poetry Month celebrated in the United States throughout the month of April. It could not escape my attention for a number of reasons. It celebrates memory, and it celebrates photography, but above all, the author mentions the “erasable” state of modern incriptions, which is what I found the most valuable. Now, when I write this blog, I usually do so through a platform’s interface. But when I write poetry, it best comes out when I am out there with a pen and paper. This is not to say that I do not organise my writing with the help of a computer program; or that I never edit my writings once they were transmitted to a Word document. But when I said what I said in this post about Petrarch’s lamenting the state of his manuscripts, I meant just that. And what saddens me the most is that with more and more people using word processors to compose works there is little room left for palaeography or in depth literary criticism – precisely because we cannot see and review the editing process.

Click on the link to read Ode to Memory — a Challenge Poem for National Poetry Month by Sheri Fresonke Harper.
A poem about the way photographic memories have been and will be stored and praising the technology.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1690448/ode_to_memory_a_challenge_poem_for.html

I reacted to the final stanza:

The future is calling with memory sticks
and all worry erased with many neat tricks,
will I haul on my neck more memory so slick,
that never will I doubt a thought arrived with a flick,

of a switch and all sorrow will diminish in time,

as set into blocks more rigid than lime,

my words and my touches my senses sublime

can compete with the fading marches of time

for memory will never fail and arrive so quick.

It brings to mind many thoughts and references. First, of course, is Barbra Streisand’s Memories: “can it be that it was so simple then, or has time rewritten every lie?” While we undoubtely capture a moment with the help of a camera, one cannot fail to agree with some photography critics that the art of photography is the art of choosing. The choice may not be seemingly affected by any rational effort, but it still manifests itself in the choice of angles, models, lighting, etc. So what gets stored on our memory stick is the history of making choices, and it may be particularly interesting to ask ourselves: how do we choose what to remember, when it comes to capturing a moment on camera?

Which makes this a fitting post to reflect on the recent Capture Manchester competition and exhibition at the Cube Gallery. My personal “problems” with the entries have been, as follows: 1) digital art not being distinguished from photography; and 2) the truly narrow focus of entries. The competition invited the photos of any area in Greater Manchester; on display, there were innumerable captures of Manchester’s Town Hall, the Manchester Eye, and other well-known city centre locations. Among the winning entries, the majority were collages or artwork – quite against the suggested focus on photography. But what this ultimately illustrates is how people understand and respond to their own city. As a cameraman myself, I cannot disagree that the Town Hall is an enviable spot to commemorate on film. So is the Manchester Eye. But what about the University? Or Bridgewater Hall? Or indeed, many smaller and less media-savvy areas of Greater Manchester that are poetic in just the same way as the better-known locations? Is Manchester’s best asset in its Edwardian Gothic edifice in Albert Square?

This may have to do with how we understand Beauty, Art, and Poetry. Apparently, as the Textfestival website tells us, in Britain “art” and “poetry” are often considered two different entities. I can relate to that, having once confused an academic with my all-embracing usage of the word “art” in a talk about an individual’s response to an artistic exercise. But we actually deprive the language and our understanding of things by lumping “art” and “painting” together, or by extending the notion of “fine arts” on Art as a philosophical category. We also miss out on an important link between Beauty, Poetry, and Art, thus ending up asking questions whether a mathematical formula or a programming code can be a specimen of Beauty. The title of the film, A Beautiful Mind, is a good insight into if, and how, something seemingly unpoetic can be beautiful and have the state of the art. I am sure many mathematicians and scientists would agree.

I am hoping to visit Textfestival this Saturday, but just for now it is really striking to see how we select places to remember (=capture on camera) and how we then proceed to explain our choice. And the choice seems to be more often described in such terms, as “dazzling”, “lasting”, than “poetic”. We therefore seem to attribute a quality to an image’s impact – but not to the image itself. Undoubtedly, not all is gold that glistens, so a visually impressive (and maybe digitally processed) image is by no means a good image, let alone a poetic image. The question that rises from the above is: can it be that our choice of what to remember bedazzles us and confuses our actual memory? How much are the angles from which we look at different objects belong to our own vision and how much – to what we have seen before?

Below is a slide show of my photos of Stockport (which is to this day a disputed area for Greater Manchester and Cheshire). For my photos of Manchester, visit this link.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

Amsterdam Bed-In 40 Years On: Memories and Reflections

They say that Twitter helps you find ideas. With regards to this post, Twitter helped me find the most of it… starting with a reminder about the famous Amsterdam bed-in at the Hilton Hotel staged by John Lennon and Yoko Ono between 25 and 31 of March, 1969. Although a seasoned Beatlomaniac myself, I have forgotten about the 40th anniversary. But then someone reminded me of it.

It was Joel Warady from Chicago with whom I share both professional activity (marketing, see Joel Warady Group website) and the passion for the Grand Four from Liverpool. His first tweet was a mere mention of the 40th anniversary, but he also mentioned that at The Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam there was a plaque on the room’s door. I was curious, so I asked if one could actually see the room. Joel’s answer was positive… and next I was asking him if he would be willing to answer a few questions. The Q&A exchange happened at Facebook, so in a nutshell here is an example of harnessing the potential of some Social Networks to do the work.

So, off to Joel 🙂 And many thanks to him for agreeing to answer the questions.


Joel Warady: This was the room where John asked for peace…

JD: Let’s start with your visit to Amsterdam. Did you deliberately choose to stay at The Hilton?

JW: I tend to go to Amsterdam for work purposes, and in 2007 I decided to stay at The Hilton. I didn’t actually think that it was there that John and Yoko had staged their bed-in. But once I arrived, I recognised it straight away and asked some questions. The front desk person was the one who confirmed it, and told me that if I wanted to see the room, the General Manager would be happy to show it to me.

JD: You mentioned there was a plaque at the room commemorating the bed-in. So, you got to see it – what was the impression?

JW: I did have a chance to see the room. I saw it many times before in the clips, but it was still very inspiring to physically be there. It was very cool, it felt historical, but also a bit sad. I was thinking that this was the room where John asked for peace, but then remembering that he was shot in an act of violence… it really got to me.

JD: Do you remember your reaction to the news on December 8, 1980?

JW: When I first heard that John was killed, I was in my car, driving in the suburbs of Chicago. Ironically, I was selling life insurance at the time, and when I heard he had been killed, I pulled off the road, and cried.

JD: John seems to be an important figure for you… am I right?

JW: John’s humour was always what made me smile the most. While I enjoyed his singing, his personality was what made it for me.

JS: And what about the Beatles, then? I notice on Facebook you list them among your favourite artists.

JW: Beatles did mean a lot for me. I’m old enough to remember their US introduction, but still young enough to introduce their music to younger coworkers. Even today when I hear certain Beatles songs, I tear up thinking of when I first heard the song. It also saddens me to hear John’s and George’s voices on certain songs, knowing that they both are gone.

JS: Do you have a favourite song?

JW: This would be a tough one! Obviously, there are so many… but if I have to choose one, it is ‘If I Fell‘ from A Hard Day’s Night album.

JS: As everyone knows, we the fans love going to our stars’ concerts, visiting the places where they lived or worked, collect memorabilia. What about yourself – have you seen the Beatles perform? Or went to Penny Lane, perhaps?

JW: Well, here is what really sad: although I’ve been to the UK over 70 times, I still didn’t get to visit Liverpool or Abbey Road. I do keep promising myself to do so, of course. At the same time, I have visited the site in Soho where they had their store. The same goes for those sites in London where I know they used to be in their early days, I love going there. I’ve never seen them live, but a few years ago I went to see Paul in concert, and that was awe-inspiring. Seriously, it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended.

The Significance of the Amsterdam Bed-In

The 40th anniversary of the Bed-In (commemorated in The Ballad of John and Yoko) was highlighted in the media, as well as marked by a special exhibition organised by Yoko Ono and The John Lennon Estate. The exhibition at The Hilton this year showcased John’s art work, posthumously fulfilling his dream to achieve recognition as a visual artist. On a personal note, I own what must be one of those collections of coloured prints that Yoko produced to popularise John’s work. To quote John Lennon Arts Projects,

Lennon’s style as an artist has been written about extensively, and consisted of two main techniques: quick sketching and the art of sumi ink drawing, which involves the use of a fine sable brush with very black ink and water. This Oriental art technique leaves very little room for error; the consistency of the water and ink has to be carefully controlled, and the brushstrokes must suit the consistency of the ink. Quick sketching was also well suited to Lennon, as he could draw extremely fast; many of his quick sketches were made in one continuous movement in which he did not lift his pencil from the paper, thereby creating an entire complex image with a single line.

Of course, for all of us who in one way or another were influenced by Lennon’s work, and by The Beatles in general, there will be those who are more or less immune to their charms. Michael Archer of The Guardian, for instance, attempts to explain the significance of the bed-in, but ends up speculating more about the phonetic similarity between Lennon’s “peace” and Ono’s “piece”, as she called her own artwork (now, of course, “piece” as a term has been so much appropriated by artists and art critics alike, it is probably impossible to appreciate the 1969 pun in its own terms). He also puts the bed-in in the context of the Vietnam war and compares it to the Grosvenor Square demonstration of 1968. What he forgets to mention, however, that 1968 was generally the year of protests (May’68 in Paris was fittingly commemorated in Bertolucci’s Dreamers); these happened in many countries, and the Vietnam war wasn’t the only cause. Lennon wasn’t too idealistic, after all, and certainly didn’t expect the world leaders to stop fighting to watch him and Yoko possibly having sex. The bed-in was an attempt to seize the moment, to get the world come to the Amsterdam Hilton and to “give peace a chance”. To quote one of the commentators on Archer’s article:

I was in NYC the night John Lennon was shot. Driving by the Dakota the next day on the way out of town was one of the saddest experiences in my life. In some ways, it has seemed to me that that day was a turning point in our civilisation and that everything went downhill since then… I still miss John Lennon for his music also, of course, but the world today could certainly use more of his wit, wisdom, and sarcasm. A special thanks to Yoko for keeping John’s memory alive…

P.S. I was hoping to add more “value” to Joel’s interview, as I found a video on YouTube (a Social Media channel, by the way) of Hans Schiffers, a Dutch journalist, interviewing Hans Boskamp at The Hilton Hotel. The video went online in February 2009. I tried to connect with Hans via YouTube mail, but was far less successful. My attempts at securing help of other Dutch speakers I knew, sadly, failed, but the readers of this post who know Dutch are very welcome to participate. You can leave comments or email me with the transcript. Either way, it will be quoted, and a full credit will be given to you.

You can also view a series of bed-in clips at Mojo4Music.

A Sonnet (Edna St Vincent Millay)

We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such we are, but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
That flourish through neglect and soon must send
Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
Our steady senses, how such matters grow
We are aware, and how such matters end.
Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
With lovers such as we forevermore
Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere
Receives the table’s ruin through her door,
Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,
Lets fall the coloured book upon the floor.

Edna St Vincent Millay.

The poem tells about the nascence of passion and its possible perils. We know the forlorn stories of Tristan and Isolde and of Lancelot and Guinevere. Yet in fact, this sonnet has more to do with Dante’s Divine Comedy, than with the mentioned medieval romances.

At the end of Canto V, Dante is talking to Francesca da Rimini, who in about 1280 was married to Gian Ciotto (‘Lame’) Malatesta, signor of Rimini. Francesca gradually fell in love with Gian Ciotto’s younger brother, Paolo. Dante might even have known Paolo personally, which in turn may explain the inclusion of this tragic story in his opus. When Gian Ciotto found outabout the adultery, he had killed both lovers. This happened probably in 1286, and Dante’s seems to be the only contemporary mention of this episode.

This is the text:

115 Then I turned to them again to speak
116 and I began: ‘Francesca, your torments
117 make me weep for grief and pity,
118 ‘but tell me, in that season of sweet sighs,
119 how and by what signs did Love
120 acquaint you with your hesitant desires?’
121 And she to me: ‘There is no greater sorrow
122 than to recall our time of joy
123 in wretchedness – and this your teacher knows.
124 ‘But if you feel such longing
125 To know the first root of our love,
126 I shall tell as one who weeps in telling.
127 ‘One day, to pass the time in pleasure,
128 we read of Lancelot, how love enthralled him.
129 We were alone, without the least misgiving.
130 ‘More than once that reading made our eyes meet
131 and drained the colour from our faces.
132 Still, it was a single instant overcame us:
133 ‘When we read how the longed-for smile
134 was kissed by so renowned a lover, this man,
135 who never shall be parted from me,
136 ‘all trembling, kissed me on my mouth.
137 A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.
138 That day we read in it no further’ (Canto V)

What is obviously different, is the angle at which Dante and Millay looked at Francesca’s story. In The Divine Comedy, Francesca and Paolo had been put into the Second Circle of Inferno:

37 I understood that to such torment
38 the carnal sinners are condemned,
39 they who make reason subject to desire (Canto V)

Nevertheless, as Francesca later explains,

103 ‘Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving,
104 seized me so strongly with his charm that,
105 as you see, it has not left me yet’ (Ibid.)

It is this 103rd line that Millay seems to be taking as a starting point for her poem. Faithful to Love, the author actually invites ‘Francesca’ to ‘fall the coloured book upon the floor‘. Millay’s sonnet is almost a celebration of sudden passions, and the reference to a coloured book may be construed both in medieval and contemporary sense. The reference to Francesca da Rimini links a ‘coloured book‘ to an illuminated manuscript, which is exactly what Francesca and Paolo would have been reading at the end of the 13th c. But Millay’s poem was written in the 20th c., and, whether in 1280s or in 1920s, the lovers are to be brought together by a book that narrated a love story. Surely, there were a lot of coloured books of such kind in Millay’s days?

[The English text of The Divine Comedy is taken from Princeton Dante Project].

Update:

One of the greatest Pre-Rafaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was well-known for his adoration for Dante’s masterpiece. In his lifetime Rossetti illustrated The Divine Comedy many times, and certainly did not get past the Paolo and Francesca extract. His drawing (below) is an interesting reworking of a typically medieval combination of several temporal aspects of the story. On the left we see the lovers embracing each other at the moment when the book became their Galeotto; on the right we see their souls, entwined in the eternal embrace; and in the middle Dante and Virgil watch the souls’ flight. It is interesting to note Rossetti’s faithful following of Dante’s text (which manifests itself particularly in the figures of Dante and Virgil), but perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the faces of Paolo and Francesca potently remind one of Rossetti (left) and his beloved and model, Elizabeth Siddal (right).

Simon Cunningham: “Looking Is an Activity”

The opportunity to attend Beck’s Canvas 2008 and to see the work by four RCA graduates instantly prompted me to inquire about an interview with one of them. I was offered to choose. I studied the winners’ profiles and, bearing in mind my own interest in photography, requested a talk with Simon Cunningham.

You can now listen to Simon’s interview below. In 18 minutes we find out about Simon’s work, artistic practice, inspirations, his views as an artist on using the WWW space… There is some laughter (as well as tinkling of the bottles in the background, with the gallery space then being prepared for the event), and a mad wizardy question at the very end of the talk. Once again, thanks to Simon, and to James Fell from OnlineFire for organising the interview.

Originally from the Midlands, Simon has now been living and working in London for a number of years. We are told that he sold more work than he has been able to exhibit, mainly through group shows and to private collectors . His shows in 2008 included exhibitions at Galleria Civica di Modena (Italy), Bloomberg SPACE (UK), and Espai Ubu (Barcelona, Spain). The list needs now to be updated with the show of his work at the RCA in Kensington Gore in London at the launch of Beck’s Canvas. In a way, Beck’s Canvas and Cunningham’s work were practically made for one another. In his work, Simon often explores the other “side” or “angle” of an image – and this is exactly what Beck’s Canvas is: it is a beer bottle label that can become an artist’s canvas.

The cornerstone of Cunningham’s artistic practice is the act of looking. As he aptly observes in his interview, he takes “looking” in the broadest sense of the word: “it’s about looking, and seeing, and searching…” – and I think we all too often forget about these “other sides” of any activity we undertake. “Mollymuddle” (left) is exemplary in this sense because in this video Simon attempted to record, in the proper sense of the word, all the stages of looking at an object. True, at the first glance it does look like a guy is merely holding his leg and staring at it. But try and look at it closer, or a bit longer, or from a different angle, and you will realise suddenly that there is more to this image. There is attention and tenderness in the image akin to mother-and-child relationship, and “Mollymuddle” may instantly become the newest reverberation of a mother-and-child theme in art. Think about multiple Our Lady and Christ representations where the baby Jesus is placed on his mother’s knee or in her arms, and looking at Simon’s face I think Leonardo’s “Madonna Litta” (right) may be a good reference; or we can recall pietà images. At the same time, the presence of a male figure, even recorded in this position, from this angle, may bring to mind the depth of Rodin’s work and Rodin’s preoccupation with human emotions and reactions. Or it may remind one of Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” (right). “Mollymuddle” and our own looking at it prove Simon’s faithful adherence to Wittgenstein‘s idea of perception: “the expression of a change of aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of the perception’s being unchanged“. We can find many more references in “Mollymuddle”, while only looking at Cunningham’s solitary figure.

If it is possible to draw a quick conclusion from the above, it will be that Simon Cunningham is teaching us that there is a direct connection between looking, thinking, and envisaging. The actual physical activity becomes possible after all those stages, even if they are not strictly discernible. Not that this sounds totally new, but perhaps we expect – and are expected – to always be active, and hence “having a look” is dismissed as insufficient, one is urged to produce, to exert some effect upon the world. Simon’s work, quirky and poetic at once, proves that with looking there is more going on than meets the eye – to which his “Duckrabbit” is a perfect illustration. It suffices to say that after this work ducks and rabbits will never be as we knew them before.

Links for Simon Cunningham:

In Our World exhibition profile
.
RCA profile.
Personal website.

A few extracts from Simon’s interview:

About his work:

I am trying to make these images that are in a state of flux, that are kind of wrestling with each other, and I always try and force myself to see what I saw when I looked at the images as a whole, where I was trying not to see a duck, or a rabbit, but trying to see both at the same time…

About his art:

It’s about maybe trying and find my own practice and name it, and I’ve always had a problem with naming it. The work has become in a way outside of language, it’s what I can’t name, or meshing words together, like Duckrabbit. They’re all pushing things together to make new meanings.


About photography
:

Photography is fascinating! It’s a way of bringing you closer to something but always keeps you at distance, it’s quite like this frustrated things, it’s looking at the world, and my work in general is about looking in the broadest sense of the world. It’s about looking, and seeing, and searching… Photography was the most accessible way of pointing and not naming but saying “this has got something to do with that, but I’m not quite sure what it is”…

About the Royal College of Art:

That’s an experience. I came here very much aware of how precious it would be to have two years where you could just experiment. And maybe a lot of people get hung up on the show, but luckily what made it for me was getting a Paris studio residency for three months.., and it kind of liberated me. And it also made me understand that I never had a studio… The studio became a sort of architecture of the space, and that space swept everything together.

About Paris:

Paris is amazing, it’s just a dream space, and because I am not very good with languages, I could go down the street, and there was no noise. Not that I go around listening to other people’s conversations, but when I was there I would switch off and find my own space…

Beck’s Canvas 2008 at the RCA in London

Last year Los Cuadernos de Julia collaborated with Stella Artois, – and this year I was invited to Beck’s Canvas 2008 event in London. Like Illycaffe and Chateau Mouton Rothschild, so Beck’s have been supportng young artists for over 20 years by letting them use the Beck’s label as the canvas for their artwork. This year, however, is unique in that it saw Beck’s partnering with the Royal College of Arts to exhibit the work of the four RCA graduates.

As we are told,

2008 sees a landmark for the Beck’s art programme, with the launch of Canvas. For this very special project, we needed a very special partner. The Royal College of Art is a particular kind of ideas factory unlike any other. As the world’s only wholly postgraduate university institution of art and design, the college boasts a global reputation for artistic excellence and an unrivalled creative environment. College alumni and internationally admired artists Tracey Emin, Tim Noble and the Chapman Brothers all created Beck’s labels during the 1990s. Then, as now, Beck’s was striving to support those determined to express themselves creatively. A partnership with the College presents a great opportunity to achieve this goal.

I attended the event on 16 July at the Royal College of Art in Kensington, next to the Royal Albert Hall (see the image at the top of the post). The preparation, however, started already in June when I was contacted by OnlineFire PR who found me via Technorati.

Below is a short video I put together using promotional images supplied by OnlineFire, as well as the examples of art work by the winning artists. You can also check Beck’s Canvas 2008 photoset on Flickr. An interview with Simon Cunningham will be coming up shortly, that will include some transcribed excerpts.

I would like to thank OnlineFire for the invitation, and particularly James Fell, who has been a great help in providing information about the event and artists, setting up an interview with Simon, and supplying me with images.

Last but not least, congratulations to the artists!

Links and further information on the artists:

Riitta Ikonen

Originally from Finland, Riitta believes the Beck’s Canvas project resonates with her own belief of taking art out of the gallery for people to see in a wider context. In her mind individualism is a little space inside your head reserved just for you, like a private restaurant table that serves you anything you think to want.

Riitta takes inspiration from ‘the performance of images, through photography and costume design. Certain things, usually small and insignificant, excite me to the point that I have to wear them and then document that process.’

Key achievements for Ritta include featuring on the cover of a ‘mail art’ book published by Lawrence King Publishing and compiled by Flat 33 (RCA Alumni). She has also been interviewed by WWF for her ‘Snowflake’ project, which was funded by the RCA and addressed climate change in the Baltic. In November 2007, Riitta was commissioned by the Tate to produce an interactive costume experience and has most recently been shortlisted for the Adobe Creative Futures 2008.

Riitta is currently still working on producing a herring costume for a dive in the Baltic Sea – another attempt at raising the awareness of climate change in the area. She is also contributing to a campaign to encourage commuters in London to interact on the underground, as well as working with the Tate’s events programme. Plans for the future include travelling around the world to create artwork that highlights local issues for charitable use, “I’d love to take my work to Japan; go to Mongolia to work hard; go to Cuba for the amazing colours and people; learn new skills and share ideas with unique people.”

Tom Price

Tom Price, 26 is an alumni of Sculpture (2006). Subsequent to this, he received a First Class BA (Hons) Sculpture from Chelsea College of Art in 2004 and currently works from his South London studio, in Brixton.

In April 2008, Price exhibited a solo presentation of his art at the NEXT Art Fair, Chicago and will also be showing work at the ‘Personal Freedom Centre’ in October during Freeze Week at the Hales Gallery. Other awards include receiving the Sir John’s Cass Bursary, which allowed him to study at the Royal College of Arts.

Price is now working on new sculptures and continues to explore different materials and formats.

Simon Cunningham (his profile at RCA)

Simon Cunningham is an alumni of the MA Fine Art, photography course (2007) Cunningham lives and works in London.

Cunningham has sold more work than he has been able to exhibit mainly through his group shows and to private collectors. Cunningham is currently exhibiting film and photography work in Fragile at Espai Uba in Barcelona and also in Italy as part of ‘In our world’ at Galleria Civica de Modena.

Charlotte Bracegirdle

Charlotte Bracegirdle, 34, is an alumni of the Masters degree in painting (2006). Originally from Broardhembury, Devon, Charlotte spent seven years applying to art schools across the UK before accepting a place at the RCA.

Charlotte has previously been awarded the Davis Langdon award (2006) and was shortlisted for 2007’s New Contemporaries.

Plans for Charlotte’s future are to continue painting and exhibiting her work, she is currently working towards an exhibition for the Madame Lillies Gallery, Stoke Newington, running from 10 September 2008. Bracegirdle dreams to be an artist in residence at the National Gallery, she loves all the history in there and dreams to spend all her days painting.

Male Self-Portraits (Philip Scott Johnson)

A year ago I wrote about Women in Art, an artwork by the American digital artist Philip Scott Johnson (aka Eggman913). The artwork has taken the Internet by storm, producing a string of posts, analyses, and – alas – a few pirate versions, as well. Undoubtedly, though, this was one of the most creative works we’ve all seen, and, for one, it showed that all that social media stuff is not just for kids. It is a huge artistic and creative medium and milieu.

In the post in which I observed some obvious peculiarities of the way the Western art has portrayed women I also said:

“unless EggMan is already in the process of doing this, may we kindly ask him to make a film about men in Western art. This subject is no less beautiful, and the controversy that often surrounds it will only expand our perception of Beauty”.

I wrote this in May 2007. There was no communication between Philip and me, so you can imagine my surprise when I have just discovered that he actually produced a video on the subject. But – and this is what makes an artist what he/she is – he didn’t just make a morph of diverse and sundry male faces the Western artists painted over 500 years. This new video is about “500 Years of Male Self-Portraits in Western Art“.
Accompanied by Bach’s Bouree 1 and 2 from Suite for Solo Cello No. 3, this is a breathtaking study of Western vision of the artistic self throughout half a millennium. Opened and closed by the portraits of Leonardo and Picasso, respectively (the two men whose genius no-one seems to doubt), the sequence is visually stunning. Most importantly, however, the visual work penetrates deep into our thinking. It is by itself amazing to see how easily Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) diffuses into Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), or how deftly Jan van Eyck (1395-1441) blends into Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). But when you see Rembrandt’s (1606-1669) grey locks becoming Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) famous white crop of hair, the story takes a completely different turn.

And the story isn’t just about troubled geniuses, the great eccentrics, the talents that continue to inspire virtually everyone up until now. The story is once again about their vision of themselves, and in this respect this video by Philip is an even greater achievement than Women in Art. I wrote about the latter that it was possible to make it partly because the artists were looking at their females from the more or less same angle. Now to see that the artists painted themselves in the more or less same manner makes the difference.

And I can’t help but speak about the merge of Rembrandt and Andy Warhol once again. Even taken on its own, it manifests the continuity in artistic expression, on the one hand, and the impossibility to pin an individual (let alone an artist) down to a certain image, on the other. If we can diffuse a smiling Rembrandt into an intense Warhol, the whole process can be inverted, and we can see Warhol becoming Rembrandt. This means – as far as I am concerned, at least – that there is little difference between a troubled genius and a happy genius. Each of them is an ocean of experience, thoughts and emotions, and thankfully, we have artists like Philip Scott Johnson to let us observe this.

For the list of artists and to leave a comment for Philip, please visit the YouTube page for the video.

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