Aftermath Rag, 6 March 2012
I know it tends to be most ungainly for a visual artist to try and put in words anything about what we see going on in our own work. We should leave that to others once a work is finished. Nevertheless, I’m going to try in this instance because I feel compelled to wonder, as I look over my shoulder, how I managed to take about half a year for one small painting. It’s only 40 by 30 inches. And really it is just a whisper. There is nothing to shout at you. You might easily walk by it.
But that is precisely why I’m so proud of this work. There is a flicker across the surface and a sort of trembling quality. I spent a lot of time just thinking and undoing things to arrive at this state.
The first intimations for the painting began with Gassed by John Singer Sargent. I had an uncomfortable feeling as I stood in front of that massive anti-war painting in the Imperial war museum, south London. It depicts blind-folded soldiers from WW1 standing for ever in a line, each with a hand on the man in front. At their feet lie other soldiers in various positions of blind exhaustion. I still feel this moment in time is going on forever. Paintings do this to us.
I thought to make my own small painting along these lines. I’d lift a portion of Sargent’s composition for background and I’d foreground it with a young woman wearing a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) logo. I wanted her to somehow haunt the work. This was how I started. My canvas became filled with charcoal marks as I thought about the Sargent painting, copying some parts in faithful appreciation.
But of course my own temperament* soon took over. My inside world bustled in and everything changed. It kept changing for months. One of the main elements which lasted through all the changes was a shaman image, his moon head being a point of entry for three of the soldiers. Their heads and shoulders were just about all that remained from the first sketch.
Incidentally the shaman was a borrowing from one of my own paintings. Manger.
And so here we have the painting and I can’t say why it took so long, except that it is part of the mystery of the way things get made. Things happen and you can’t rush the job. On some level the painting says – or at least I intend it to say – that human lives are pulled into nothingness. Whatever, I think we have to keep re-telling the story of the sadness of war because no man is an island; we all feel it. The title is – Aftermath Rag.
*temperament is not quite saying what I mean. Indeed temperament is something we are born with, yet the artist’s temperament gets honed through the years. In my case I have been painting for over 50 years. I think hard about what I do. I get excited and tend to put too much onto the canvas. For instance, in this painting there was a flute player laid in at an angle. I very much enjoyed painting his fedora. It shaded his eyes and that was in accord with the feel of the rest of the painting. But in a stern judgement, did he fit at all? It had become an “all right” painting and had passages of interest, but it didn’t sing. That’s what I have to keep working for, in a painting that is well underway. I have to find ways to make passages that are already there and waiting – I have to make connections so that those elements work in harmony and suddenly at the end, if I do it rightly, the whole thing has taken on a humming note. Nothing in this world is truly “well tempered”, but a painting can express its temperament and mine. That’s when I stop.
Saatchi Gallery, 31 Jan 2012
On the 31st of January Ellen Datlow and I went to see an exhibition called the Gesamtkuntswerk: New Art From Germany at the Saatchi Gallery. It’s in King’s Road and so we started our stroll from Sloane Square. Here’s a pic of Ellen at Sloane Square station. Two more pics en route. A bronze depicting a pupil from the Royal Military Asylum which used to be adjacent to the Duke of York’s Headquarters. Also there’s a statue of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Ellen’s not the only one to display a lovely head of curls. (Sloane introduced drinking chocolate milk to Europe and purchased the manor of Chelsea in 1712. And on his death his library and Cabinet of Curiosities became part of the new British Museum.)
Since 2008 the new Saatchi Gallery has been here, elegantly maintaining it’s outward connection with the original architect, John Sanders. It’s Georgian, verging on Regency, dating from 1801. For much of it’s time, the building had been the Duke of York’s Headquarters. Now the architects AHMM have effected a delightful transformation inside.
Ellen tended to focus on the sculptures. Her new camera is serious. It’s a digital Nikon SLR.
Ellen and Alexandra Bircken
Ellen and Andro Wekua
Ellen and Isa Genshen
Ellen and Kiesewetter
Ellen and Thomas Zipp
I went for the mystery of two dimensions within a frame. A winner for me was by Ida Ekblad: Dusty Dry On The Tongue Swallowed Some. A point worth noting: this Saatchi Gallery gives each work a breathing space. The wall behind this work is painted in exactly the same tone as the frame.
The Tobias brothers mounted coloured woodcuts on large lengths of canvas. The room glows. There is general feeling that we’re looking at Transylvanian versions of our Punch and Judy.
Jutta Koether fascinated me. I very much liked her Leibthahtige Malerei 2007.
But I couldn’t like, or even be fascinated by Mède, the other painting on show by the same artist. I didn’t even feel like photographing it. The dominant colour is viridian green in nervous lines. It’s a sort of a self portrait apparently. Punk undertones. Jutta Keother reminds me of Patti Smith and that’s good. But let’s get down to what bothers me about this work. The nervous twitches seem sometimes unexamined. Lots of stuff is thrown in. And then some more. In the green Mède painting it felt like the artist was like doing various riffs, as in a music. That can be a most effective way to get stuff down on canvas, and can be great. Or not. But in the graphic arts we can edit and change areas that have, for instance, gone dead. She doesn’t seem to do this.
Or is something else going on? Perhaps in this work she is going down a stubborn road of self loathing. That would explain a lot. Whatever, I prefer her Berliner Schlüssel paintings. And, in this exhibition, I delight in all the delicate details of above mentioned Leibthahtige Malerei. (Real Life Painting.)
As we left we had a late lunch in the Mess Café and I snapped a picture of Ellen.
Nest Wars, 12 Jan, 2012
Here’s a set of 12 framed etchings. I started this idea, Nest Wars, in August 2011, using two or three plates in register. I know that according to academy rules for proper printing my plates should be bevelled to a smooth finish, thereby avoiding dark surrounding edges. But I very much like that rough edge because it gives a specific frame to each image.
Plate images first.
Each of the above is below framed: 39cm x 39cm, 15.5″ x 15.5″
and each sells from the artist at GBP 125.
Czech Republic and Austria, 9 July 2011
[These notes are copied from the July update at the end of Biography, long version]
My Great Adventure to the Czech Republic and Austria started early Saturday morning, 9 July 2011, when Molly Radecki met me at the Prague airport and, with Petra, as driver, we three sped south through hours and hours of beautiful Czech countryside.
We finally crossed the border into Austria, now a simple unmanned control point, and within a short time found ourselves in the hidden beauty of Primmersdorf, where Jonathon Roberts and Vesna Elfriede Michi preside over a most special environment. There’s an inner courtyard with a studio for Vesna’s Haut Couture designs and a clock tower and various houses, but the real accent is the Schüttkasten. I’m placing in here a photo taken from a Wiki entry. Consequently it is very small. The snow somehow accentuates its baroque lines. And my summer-time photo shows the entrance. It was built in 1706 and the architect is Jacob Prandtauer. He is famous for the Benedictine – Melk Abbey. And so the Schüttkasten is original baroque.
Inside, the feeling of the building hits straight to the heart, partly design, partly warmth of spirit. The bar lounge area is where I met Jon. He enfolded me in a friendly hug and offered me a drink from the bar. He warned me in his charming way that, as it happened, there weren’t going to be many people at the vernissage that night, but that it was going to be a very good party. And he was absolutely right.
It was a wonderful party. Good wine, good entertainment, good food. And above all fascinating people. At Vesna’s atelier there was one especially striking couple. Erika Ebner, dressed in red with red flower petals attached by honey to her forehead. She is in the Haut Couture business. Her partner, Pekka Janhunen, is an architect and lectures in Vienna at the University. But look at his outfit – green trim on his black jacket and – green shoes. Erika organised this apparently. My photograph shows him writing out his address for me. These two photos also show something of Vesna’s atelier.
When the opening party for this two-person show happened upstairs in the Schüttkasten I didn’t take any pictures because I was, well, focused on the party atmosphere.. But oh yes, a little before, I nabbed a picture of Ida von Szigethy as she was posing for a friend in front of one of her paintings. I like Ida. I hope we will keep in touch.
Here, by the way, is the exhibition information with its title in German:
Kunst der Frauen
Fantastishe Malerei
Ida von Szigethy und Judith Clute
In Partnerschaft mit “Centre for the Future” Slavonice.
Die Ausstellung ist vom 9. Juli bis zum 31. August 2011
And the contact details:
Schüttkasten Primmersdorf
2095 Drosendorf
tel: 02846 464
Mobile: 0650 8713727
www.schuettkastenprimmersdorf.at
Vesna had asked me to say some words. I thought about it beforehand. Although some of the people speak English very well, it of course was a German-speaking audience, so I made my speech very simple and short.
The photos here of our exhibition space were taken the following day with natural light. The salient feature is the beauty of the venue. Just look at its depth. And the thickness of the wall as shown by the window niches.
Then Alexander Stipsits – “Dearest Sascha” – will make a video of the hanging when he returns from Colorado, and it will go onto my site under Real Media. There is plenty of time, because the exhibition will last until the end of September.
Entertainment downstairs in the bar lounge area was quite extraordinary. I’ve included here two pictures of Taurinta, the Lithuanian jazz singer. One at rehearsal in the afternoon: the other performing in her bright green dress. Note that she holds a handset from a gaming module. This is her gizmo to click in certain electronic procedures. The keyboard player of the band, Gert Kapo, from Albania, is an avant garde composer. He combines various 21st century elements and, along with David Rival’s computerized remixing, transforms traditional Lithuanian folk music into something surprising and wonderful – a striking new jazz form, fresh and immediate. Completing the combo is Palestinian bassist Ahmed Eid, in the background of the green dress picture. More information on this band at Taurinta.info.
And so the festivities stretched beautifully into the deep night and then we were presented with a delicious buffet dinner. I wish we could live this way back home in London.
But the Schüttkasten ambience has its own special story. Several decades ago Jon and Vesna were able to buy this complex set of properties very cheaply. How? The answer has to do with iron curtain politics: all along the border were aggressive gun installations. Whatever inherent beauty there was in these historic buildings was negated by the bad atmosphere. Jon and Vesna had the foresight, however, to know that the buildings had great potential and that soon the politics of the time might change, and they could be transformed into something beautiful.
And here we are in 2011, and the world created by Jon and Vesna and their friends enfolds all newcomers. Theirs is a place I would want to return to. Certainly most of the guests, many of whom stayed over, are “Friends” of the Schüttkasten. They do return again and again.
British Library, 19 May 2011
The British Library opening of OUT OF THIS WORLD: Science Fiction but Not As You Know It, Thursday, 19 May 2011.
John Clute and I went to the launch party, and entering at the same time were Penny and Charles Chilton. I know them because they are the parents of Mary Tucker our boss at London Walks, and I had been to visit the Chiltons a few years earlier. Charles signed our three first edition books (Journey into Space, The Red Planet, The World in Peril).
Here in 2011 it was a heartwarming sight to see them at the British Library launch party, both looking so well and beautifully turned out in outfits of black and white. Penny is 90 and Charles almost 94.
I don’t think many people in the field had ever met Charles Chilton, and very soon a buzz started to circulate throughout the crowd: “Remember listening to A JOURNEY INTO SPACE when you were a child? Well, there’s Charles Chilton, the author.” And Penny and Charles were soon meeting and talking with all sorts of fans.
One of the first was Chris Fowler. He spoke about being a small lad and listening with wonder to the first broadcasts in 1953, so I snapped a photo of this moment (with available light) and in the background is John Clute pointing. He is standing with Brian Aldiss and Alison Soskice, who had both listened to the broadcasts when they first came out.
Janet Benoy, a member of the British Library team responsible for creating this excellent exhibition, took Penny and Charles in hand and helped with special lifts to get them downstairs to the exhibition. Here she is photographed first with Penny and Charles Chilton, and then with John Clute. That last photograph is out of focus for which apologies, but the small figure between Clute and Janet Benoy is Mike Ashley, who did the excellent book to accompany the exhibition: Out of This World.
Only the official photographer was allowed to take photographs in the actual exhibition downstairs and he hadn’t been told about Charles Chilton, so I suggested that he should photograph Penny and Charles at the display of Charles’s work. The books that John had lent were handsomely set out there, along with, most importantly, the manuscript Charles Chilton himself had given for the radio production open at the first page. I’m glad this moment was not lost to posterity.
Just before they left, Roger Robinson, publisher of Beccon Press, said to Charles Chilton that a lot of people in the sf community had had their lives changed by listening to his A JOURNEY INTO SPACE. Judging from various other comments throughout the evening this seems to be the held view.