The latest show at NAC, put on by Mori McCrae, carries the title "On Site: Visual Poetry from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre." I suppose "On Site" is a reference to the actual site in Ireland where Mori McCrae spend a three-week residency, together with a recreation of her experiences there at the site of NAC. When Sir Tyrone Guthrie died he bequeathed his home, just as it was, to the Irish nation as a haven for artistic people to develop their creativity. Mori qualified both as a visual artist and a poet and had the joy of foregathering with other creative types every evening over a delicious dinner.
One of her poems, inscribed on a NAC wall, is about a typical evening when they would go out for a walk, chasing away a neighbour's dog who hung around the kitchen looking for handouts. She has very warm memories of her stay. She says, "The paring down of the basic daily acts of working, eating, exercise and sleeping, under the watchful care of an unobtrusive staff, left me with the impression of being a resident at a 'benign asylum,' in the very best sense of both words. By installing at NAC the poetry written there, she wants to bring this "benign asylum" to St. Catharines.
The words "benign asylum" really resonate with me because in the late seventies I had what used to be known as a nervous breakdown. I received very little sympathy from my colleagues at Brock for the state I was in and was forced to seek refuge in the hospital. It turned out to be a real refuge where I was able to relax and paint as I hadn't done for some time. I expressed my pleasure and gratitude to one of the mental health practitioners by saying, "This really is an asylum!" She was quite shocked and said, "Surely it can't be as bad as that!" "No, " I said, "what I mean is that it's an asylum in the sense of a refuge." Finally I had found a place where I could find peace and quiet and relax with what gave me joy.
It is always a good idea -- in fact it is absolutely essential -- to pay careful and exact attention to the words a poet uses, although Mori demurred when I called her a poet and said she wasn't a poet yet. Maybe she means that she is not the kind of bard who can stand on an eminence and declaim, because her poetry, so far from being declaimed, is inscribed, and not always legibly, in a visual context.
One of her installations represents an open book with apertures cut out to reveal the heart and soul of the person penning the message, conveyed in an illegible scribble. Another, which is quite a favourite of mine, represents a scattering of three-dimensional rocks rising from the ocean with an individual word inscribed on each. You get the message by hopping from rock to rock, at some risk of being swept away by the water of the emotions.
Mori says she works a lot with water. Of course water is one of the four traditional elements -- earth, air, water, and fire -- present in magic alchemy and folklore. Water is important as a medium because it flows over and around and under, wearing away what seems so much harder than itself. The Taoist philosophers of ancient China stressed the importance of this, as Ursula K. Le Guin once pointed out.
The one poem directly about the Tyrone Guthrie Centre is painted directly on the wall, some of it too high up to read without the help of a ladder. The most legible poem is written on a couple of parallel blocks and is, at least initially, about Snow White awakening not to a physical prince but to the idea of one. Mori says that the idea is what is most important for an artist. Other installations vaguely resembling a loosely draped pelvis, do not have anything written on them at all. "Thoughts that do lie too deep for words?"
I came away from this show with a line from Emily Dickinson resonating in my mind: "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant." Not being a bard like Dylan Thomas, Mori is allusive and indirect. Maybe that is why she says she is not a poet. Her least reticent poems are painted on the NAC windows and are deliberately contradictory. She invites and leaves us with a contradiction. She says herself that she finds inspiration in what is unplanned and accidental. As we have already seen, in this she is not alone.
I talked to her about the Quaker idea of a "leading," which is important to me because I am a Quaker. A "leading" is an inner prompting which arises from the depths of one's psyche and which the rational ego is inclined to deny but which can lead one in the right direction if one will only listen to it. She said that was her experience too. So I suppose that Mori, like so many young creative people is on a Vision Quest. It is a pleasure to be invited to share it.
Thursday 3 December 2015
Thursday 19 November 2015
"Suffused" by Judy Graham at NAC
The latest show at NAC, "Suffused" by Judy Graham, is not at all easy to pin down in words, and Judy herself does not make too much of an effort to describe it in words that convey and immediately accessible meaning. In her artist's statement, she says, "These images are most often a projection of memory, a memory that recalls the biological. They have taken up residence where the medical laboratorial self left off, or where research into human anatomy only exists now in the stacks. These drawings are meant to recall organic abstraction and the such-ness of biotic potential."
What really threw me in this oracular statement was the word "such-ness," which I have only come across before in a Buddhist context and is there used in a metaphysical sense to refer to what one can otherwise call "the nature of things as they are" -- the irreducible nature of reality which cannot be changed but only overcome. We live in "Samsara," that is material existence which is characterized by suffering, and the aim of the Buddhist is to rise above it by refusing to let oneself be dominated by it.
How does that apply to lab samples, since what I suppose Judy started out with were slides of cell structures, dyed and magnified for scientific analysis? For an answer, all one can do is look at the ink and pastel drawings on the walls of the Dennis Tourbin Gallery, since the function of the words in an artist's statement is to refer one back to the visual art they attempt to define.
These drawings are all quite large and essentially similar, since cell structures cannot vary dramatically and the colours were originally chosen to throw these cell structures into relief. A less metaphysical term than "such-ness" would be "a given." The given in this case seems to be a bean. Each of these remembered and consequently simplified cell structures, reduced to an abstraction, somewhat resembles a bean. Perhaps when I think of these cell structures as the building blocks of a human being with its potential for physical and emotional expression indicated by such titles as "Seeing Red" and "Repulsion," I might make a childish pun and call that bean "a human bean."
Each human bean or group of human beans is surrounded by a contrasting shadow which conveys in pastel much the same effect as a watercolour wash, throwing it into relief. The word "such-ness" comes back as no more precise word can serve as a technical, scientific definition of what Judy Graham is attempting to convey. It can only be an allusion, bearing the same relation to words as aboriginal smoke signals do the messages they convey.
In the end the words send one back to the pictures, which is what visual art is all about. Its "such-ness" consists of shapes and colours and whatever meaning they convey directly through the eye. In other words, are these drawings worth looking at? And I think I can safely say that they do have that worth to a considerable degree. What is ultimately Buddhist about them is that they can serve as a focal point for meditation. You may ask, for meditation on what? Insofar as meditation implies contemplation of a particular topic and not simply staring into space in order to cultivate detachment, I might say that its object is "the human condition," the state of being a human bean. In other words, I think I have ended up saying exactly the same things as Judy, only at greater length, as I try to explain her few, carefully chosen words to myself.
What really threw me in this oracular statement was the word "such-ness," which I have only come across before in a Buddhist context and is there used in a metaphysical sense to refer to what one can otherwise call "the nature of things as they are" -- the irreducible nature of reality which cannot be changed but only overcome. We live in "Samsara," that is material existence which is characterized by suffering, and the aim of the Buddhist is to rise above it by refusing to let oneself be dominated by it.
How does that apply to lab samples, since what I suppose Judy started out with were slides of cell structures, dyed and magnified for scientific analysis? For an answer, all one can do is look at the ink and pastel drawings on the walls of the Dennis Tourbin Gallery, since the function of the words in an artist's statement is to refer one back to the visual art they attempt to define.
These drawings are all quite large and essentially similar, since cell structures cannot vary dramatically and the colours were originally chosen to throw these cell structures into relief. A less metaphysical term than "such-ness" would be "a given." The given in this case seems to be a bean. Each of these remembered and consequently simplified cell structures, reduced to an abstraction, somewhat resembles a bean. Perhaps when I think of these cell structures as the building blocks of a human being with its potential for physical and emotional expression indicated by such titles as "Seeing Red" and "Repulsion," I might make a childish pun and call that bean "a human bean."
Each human bean or group of human beans is surrounded by a contrasting shadow which conveys in pastel much the same effect as a watercolour wash, throwing it into relief. The word "such-ness" comes back as no more precise word can serve as a technical, scientific definition of what Judy Graham is attempting to convey. It can only be an allusion, bearing the same relation to words as aboriginal smoke signals do the messages they convey.
In the end the words send one back to the pictures, which is what visual art is all about. Its "such-ness" consists of shapes and colours and whatever meaning they convey directly through the eye. In other words, are these drawings worth looking at? And I think I can safely say that they do have that worth to a considerable degree. What is ultimately Buddhist about them is that they can serve as a focal point for meditation. You may ask, for meditation on what? Insofar as meditation implies contemplation of a particular topic and not simply staring into space in order to cultivate detachment, I might say that its object is "the human condition," the state of being a human bean. In other words, I think I have ended up saying exactly the same things as Judy, only at greater length, as I try to explain her few, carefully chosen words to myself.
Wednesday 4 November 2015
Séan Benton and Aaron Thompson at NAC
Barry Joe, who usually posts my blog for me because he is so much more technologically adept than I am, has been laid up recently, which is one reason why I have not posted to my blog for a while.
Another reason is that I did not get an opportunity to speak to Séan Benton, who put on a portrait show in October, or to speak to anybody who could tell me much about him. I was just faced with a row of full face portraits, some of them actors and actresses, some of people he knew and three of himself, with nothing to explain to me why he thought these faces were important to him or how he felt about them. With the exception of the self portraits, which were poetic and humorous, all I could say about them was that they were technically successful without going into a lot of fine detail and probably resembled the sitters. The self portraits were intriguing, especially one with an eye patch which made me think of a pirate, and one with a raven which made me think of Poe's idea of "Nevermore." But when I tried to arrive at the artist's personal intention, which is what really interests me, I drew a blank.
I was lucky enough to get a personal interview with Aaron Thompson, who told me that he had been very much influenced by a series of paintings by a famous German artist, Gerhard Richter, which are visual references to the ideas of John Cage. As soon as he mentioned John Cage, I knew what he was talking about because during my last year at the University of Illinois, I spent a lot of time with John Cage, who was a good friend of a friend of mine in the Music Department. John Cage was there to work on a Happening. For this event he took certain melodies of Mozart and put them through permutations based on the I Ching. The I Ching is an ancient Chinese book of divination. To consult it, you take three coins and cast them six times. According to the way they fall, you get a hexagram which provides a wise and valid answer for the question you were asking.
The rationale behind this is that because everything in the universe is connected, when you do something completely random, you make a profound connection. John Cage, believing this, was interested in what was random for its own sake and was trying to make Mozart random. I did not feel myself that random notes by Mozart were an improvement on notes consciously organized by Mozart, but I found the idea fascinating and have consulted the I Ching ever since.
What Aaron Thompson does, following the example of Gerhard Richter, is apply the search for what is random and thereby meaningful. He takes a large panel with handles on either side, covers it with dollops of paint and draws it over a canvas. He repeats this process, with different layers of paint, until he feels it is time to stop. Knowing when to stop can be quite tricky. The result is not, as you might expect, a uniform series of messes, because the decision when to stop involves the artist's eye and judgement.
In fact, each canvas is different and has a kind of glow to it that I said made me think of sunrise or sunset on a different planet. He agreed. I also said that the light patches on a darker background looked like openings and made me think of the way the older religious literature used the word "opening" to stand for the perception of a certain mystical insight. He agreed with that too. But I would never have understood his work in this way if I hadn't inquired about his personal intention. Revealing each artist's personal intention I take to be the real purpose of this blog.
Another reason is that I did not get an opportunity to speak to Séan Benton, who put on a portrait show in October, or to speak to anybody who could tell me much about him. I was just faced with a row of full face portraits, some of them actors and actresses, some of people he knew and three of himself, with nothing to explain to me why he thought these faces were important to him or how he felt about them. With the exception of the self portraits, which were poetic and humorous, all I could say about them was that they were technically successful without going into a lot of fine detail and probably resembled the sitters. The self portraits were intriguing, especially one with an eye patch which made me think of a pirate, and one with a raven which made me think of Poe's idea of "Nevermore." But when I tried to arrive at the artist's personal intention, which is what really interests me, I drew a blank.
I was lucky enough to get a personal interview with Aaron Thompson, who told me that he had been very much influenced by a series of paintings by a famous German artist, Gerhard Richter, which are visual references to the ideas of John Cage. As soon as he mentioned John Cage, I knew what he was talking about because during my last year at the University of Illinois, I spent a lot of time with John Cage, who was a good friend of a friend of mine in the Music Department. John Cage was there to work on a Happening. For this event he took certain melodies of Mozart and put them through permutations based on the I Ching. The I Ching is an ancient Chinese book of divination. To consult it, you take three coins and cast them six times. According to the way they fall, you get a hexagram which provides a wise and valid answer for the question you were asking.
The rationale behind this is that because everything in the universe is connected, when you do something completely random, you make a profound connection. John Cage, believing this, was interested in what was random for its own sake and was trying to make Mozart random. I did not feel myself that random notes by Mozart were an improvement on notes consciously organized by Mozart, but I found the idea fascinating and have consulted the I Ching ever since.
What Aaron Thompson does, following the example of Gerhard Richter, is apply the search for what is random and thereby meaningful. He takes a large panel with handles on either side, covers it with dollops of paint and draws it over a canvas. He repeats this process, with different layers of paint, until he feels it is time to stop. Knowing when to stop can be quite tricky. The result is not, as you might expect, a uniform series of messes, because the decision when to stop involves the artist's eye and judgement.
In fact, each canvas is different and has a kind of glow to it that I said made me think of sunrise or sunset on a different planet. He agreed. I also said that the light patches on a darker background looked like openings and made me think of the way the older religious literature used the word "opening" to stand for the perception of a certain mystical insight. He agreed with that too. But I would never have understood his work in this way if I hadn't inquired about his personal intention. Revealing each artist's personal intention I take to be the real purpose of this blog.
Wednesday 16 September 2015
I. Excelsior! 1975-2015 A Survey of Forty Years of Artwork by Dave Gordon II. Just like a buggy whip by Kevin Attic Daddy Richardson
There are two shows currently on at NAC and both are very pugnacious and in your face, although I think it highly unlikely that the two artists got together to plan this. They are both reacting to cultural pressures and refusing to fit into a prescribed mold. Neither wants to be popular in terms of what they perceive to be popular nowadays.
Kevin Richardson is a musician who refuses to agree that the sixties are old hat. So much of the music of the 20th century is now looked down on, in his opinion, in the way the maker of the buggy whip was put out of business by the horseless carriage. He has a picture of this, in fact, as well as pictures of other trades that have been rendered obsolete. Obsolescence and his refusal to consider the music of the 20th century obsolete are very much themes of this show. He refuses to make any concessions to present day popular taste, not only in his musical preferences but also in his painterly style, which is as pugnacious as his opinions. When he memorializes the official end of the hippies' era with the tragedy at the Altamont Free Concert, it is with real bitterness. It was an ugly event and he records it, like so much else, in an ugly way.
Dave Gordon has a great many perceived heroes and enemies, whether cultural or political. Some of his heroies and heroines are also mine, such as Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo, Margaret Atwood and Arthur Rimbaud. I am not sufficiently au fait with politics to recognise all of his villains, although I agree about Stephen Harper. He even mocks the Group of Seven and plays games with Cézanne's renderings of Mont Saint-Victoire, which he reduces to a wood pile, even while he obviously admires Cézanne. He scoffs at the National Inquirer as wholeheartedly as he scoffs at more culturally prestigious phenomena such as conceptual art. No one is exempt. He even scoffs at himself with the James Thurber cartoon of his chosen motto, "Excelsior!" Sarcasm comes naturally to him, whatever the target.
Both artists are determined to be very much their own men. But Dave Gordon has already spoken up for himself at some length in an interview with Steve Remus published by NAC. They make me think of the Siamese in the old song:
Kevin Richardson is a musician who refuses to agree that the sixties are old hat. So much of the music of the 20th century is now looked down on, in his opinion, in the way the maker of the buggy whip was put out of business by the horseless carriage. He has a picture of this, in fact, as well as pictures of other trades that have been rendered obsolete. Obsolescence and his refusal to consider the music of the 20th century obsolete are very much themes of this show. He refuses to make any concessions to present day popular taste, not only in his musical preferences but also in his painterly style, which is as pugnacious as his opinions. When he memorializes the official end of the hippies' era with the tragedy at the Altamont Free Concert, it is with real bitterness. It was an ugly event and he records it, like so much else, in an ugly way.
Dave Gordon has a great many perceived heroes and enemies, whether cultural or political. Some of his heroies and heroines are also mine, such as Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo, Margaret Atwood and Arthur Rimbaud. I am not sufficiently au fait with politics to recognise all of his villains, although I agree about Stephen Harper. He even mocks the Group of Seven and plays games with Cézanne's renderings of Mont Saint-Victoire, which he reduces to a wood pile, even while he obviously admires Cézanne. He scoffs at the National Inquirer as wholeheartedly as he scoffs at more culturally prestigious phenomena such as conceptual art. No one is exempt. He even scoffs at himself with the James Thurber cartoon of his chosen motto, "Excelsior!" Sarcasm comes naturally to him, whatever the target.
Both artists are determined to be very much their own men. But Dave Gordon has already spoken up for himself at some length in an interview with Steve Remus published by NAC. They make me think of the Siamese in the old song:
"We are Siamese
If you please.
We are Siamese
If you don't please."
Tuesday 25 August 2015
On Expanding my Consciousness with Tony Cepukas
Recently I had to put Belinda to sleep. She was a cat I'd had for 20 years and who wouldn't allow any other animals in the house. But she was in rapid decline. Just a few days ago I went to the Court Animal Hospital to replace her and came home with two adult cats who are too fond of each other to be separated. I called a friend and said, "I'm living with two black gentlemen." He said he would have to tell an acquaintance of ours who's an inveterate salacious gossip.
On Saturday, August 22, 2015, I called NAC to ask when their next show would be. I was told it had just started and featured mosaics. I said I would be right over. I was glad to get out of the house in order to give my two black gentlemen a chance to settle in, as they have been hiding under my couch.
I took an indirect route to NAC, once I got off the bus. First I went to the bank, as I am short of cash. Then I went to the Arts and Crafts shop at 7 James Street and arranged for a small showing of some of my latest pictures, which have a connection with Goddess worship. Then I went across to Christopher's, where I got an occult magazine, "Watkins Mind Body Spirit," and a horoscope magaine. Next I got a Senior 10 Ride Card and bought two books at the Write Bookstore. One was on French New Criticism, which by now is at least 50 years old, and the other was on the Druids by a Greek contemporary of theirs.
Altogether I felt that I had a very wide range of interests and was reaching out to the world around me in many directions, without leaving my comfort zone. But when I got to Tony Cepukas' show, "Shine On, You Crazy Mosaic," I found that the artist was living in a completely different world from mine. We have this much in common, that we are both self-taught artists who took up art in retirement, but most of his cultural references are to rock stars and cult cinema -- a world into which I had never ventured and which I was hardly even aware existed. When I spoke to him I felt I almost had to apologise for my ignorance.
On entering the Dennis Tourbin Members' Gallery, I was startled to see a series of mind and body baring portraits in mosaic with names inscribed on them, but the only name I recognised was Obama. I had to ask the artist who the other men were -- mainly rock stars and one cinema actor. With my cult of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Handel, Mozart, and Wagner, I go in for a completely different kind of music, and I had never even heard of cult cinema.
I was impressed by the passion bordering on violence he put into these portraits but felt more at ease with his mandalas and depictions of flowers, which are more like what I do myself. There were two mandalas I particularly liked and wanted to buy. One had a pair of cherubs at the centre and the other a rooster. In contrast to the portraits there were quite serene -- "emotion recollected in tranquillity."
I asked the artist where he got his art materials and how he put them together. He said he'd ordered his boards from an art supplier in Montreal who does free shipping, which as a piece of information I was glad to get. To get his mosaic chips, he buys dishes at such venues as garage sales and breaks them up. My cherubs and rooster must have come from commercially produced plates, as they are quite traditionally realistic, insofar as that can be said of cherubs.
I can't seem to get away from collage, in one form or another. I like its combination of the realistic and the fantastic, however it's put together. Of course his chips were stuck together with grout and white glue. Where Tony Cepukas says "Shine On, You Crazy Mosaic," allegedly with the song "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond" in mind, my message is "Dream On, You Crazy Approach to the Real World, and Take Me Into a Fairy Tale."
On Saturday, August 22, 2015, I called NAC to ask when their next show would be. I was told it had just started and featured mosaics. I said I would be right over. I was glad to get out of the house in order to give my two black gentlemen a chance to settle in, as they have been hiding under my couch.
I took an indirect route to NAC, once I got off the bus. First I went to the bank, as I am short of cash. Then I went to the Arts and Crafts shop at 7 James Street and arranged for a small showing of some of my latest pictures, which have a connection with Goddess worship. Then I went across to Christopher's, where I got an occult magazine, "Watkins Mind Body Spirit," and a horoscope magaine. Next I got a Senior 10 Ride Card and bought two books at the Write Bookstore. One was on French New Criticism, which by now is at least 50 years old, and the other was on the Druids by a Greek contemporary of theirs.
Altogether I felt that I had a very wide range of interests and was reaching out to the world around me in many directions, without leaving my comfort zone. But when I got to Tony Cepukas' show, "Shine On, You Crazy Mosaic," I found that the artist was living in a completely different world from mine. We have this much in common, that we are both self-taught artists who took up art in retirement, but most of his cultural references are to rock stars and cult cinema -- a world into which I had never ventured and which I was hardly even aware existed. When I spoke to him I felt I almost had to apologise for my ignorance.
On entering the Dennis Tourbin Members' Gallery, I was startled to see a series of mind and body baring portraits in mosaic with names inscribed on them, but the only name I recognised was Obama. I had to ask the artist who the other men were -- mainly rock stars and one cinema actor. With my cult of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Handel, Mozart, and Wagner, I go in for a completely different kind of music, and I had never even heard of cult cinema.
I was impressed by the passion bordering on violence he put into these portraits but felt more at ease with his mandalas and depictions of flowers, which are more like what I do myself. There were two mandalas I particularly liked and wanted to buy. One had a pair of cherubs at the centre and the other a rooster. In contrast to the portraits there were quite serene -- "emotion recollected in tranquillity."
I asked the artist where he got his art materials and how he put them together. He said he'd ordered his boards from an art supplier in Montreal who does free shipping, which as a piece of information I was glad to get. To get his mosaic chips, he buys dishes at such venues as garage sales and breaks them up. My cherubs and rooster must have come from commercially produced plates, as they are quite traditionally realistic, insofar as that can be said of cherubs.
I can't seem to get away from collage, in one form or another. I like its combination of the realistic and the fantastic, however it's put together. Of course his chips were stuck together with grout and white glue. Where Tony Cepukas says "Shine On, You Crazy Mosaic," allegedly with the song "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond" in mind, my message is "Dream On, You Crazy Approach to the Real World, and Take Me Into a Fairy Tale."
Wednesday 19 August 2015
"Far From Ordinary" by Emily Andrews at NAC
The latest show at NAC, August 8 to 21, 2015 has been put on by Emily Andrews. If I may quote from her artist's statement, she wishes it to be known that she is "a Niagara Falls based visual artist, actress and musician who has been involved in various artistic projects in the community over the past six years. A graduate of Brock University with a B.A. in Visual Arts, Andrews was one of the artists in residence chosen by the Ontario Trillium Foundation in 2012 and was last year's recipient of the Allister Young Arts and Culture Endowment Fund."
This show's full title is "Far From Ordinary: A Series of Dreamscapes Made with Very Precise Slices." It is Andrews' second solo exhibition and "includes a collection of Surrealistic scenes in the form of hand-cut photo collages. The intricately crafted pieces explore a whole new level of phantasmagoria that balances on the line of reality and imagination."
At this point, I go on with my own perceptions. The picture by Emily Andrews with which I am most familiar is also called "Far From Ordinary" and first appeared in her earlier solo shows. She makes and sells prints of her collages as well as showing and selling the originals and I bought a fairly large print of this picture and have it hanging in my house. It is based on a couple of the Tenniel illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and I am always a pushover for anything to do with Alice. The Alice books were the first two books I read as a child and they made a deep impression on me. I am sure I must have dreamed and fantasized about them. The picture "Far From Ordinary" presents the viewer with such a dream or fantasy.
In the front to the left, we see a startled Alice growing unexpectedly tall. To the back of the picture we see a quite untroubled Alice, unperturbed by the vagaries of her existence, standing with her back to us and looking into a window fitted with impossibly large stars. Or are they snowflakes? Both interpretations are possible and in a dream you don't have to choose. Various animals lurking around -- a dog, an owl and one and a half llamas -- do not owe their provenance to the Alice books but that need not disturb us. Doubtless they have their own dream reasons for being there. However the Cheshire Cat is also there, grinning from a large mirror to the left of the frontal Alice. Also to her left is a large clock which suggests that Time itself, having stopped, as in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, has entered the dream. The only difference is that it is not teatime but may be one of the early hours of the morning when one is likely to be asleep. The background to all this is a well-appointed Victorian living room waiting for well-heeled residents to relax with a glass of sherry. The title of the picture is spelled out in acrobatic script above the window and all seems quite lucid and matter of fact, with one exception. A cupboard in the background seems to contain a brightly coloured modern abstract painting. Is this an intrusion from the workaday world?
I have described this picture in detail as it is fully representative, but there are twelve pictures in all, quite different and intricately detailed. Perhaps I should mention a few others that caught my eye. One is another Alice picture showing the White Rabbit running up a flight of stars while consulting his watch and exclaiming, "Mary Ann! Fetch me my gloves this moment!" Below him is a rather lackadaisical young woman propped on a couch, again in well-appointed surroundings. She obviously has no intention of fetching his gloves or paying him any attention whatever. The picture reproduced on the invitation and which may therefore by supposed to be a favourite of the artist, shows a marina in the foreground with a series of bathing beauties and a dog all packed into may equally well be canoes or coffins. Since the title of the picture is "Celestial Paradise," either interpretation might fit. But the most striking and even majestic picture is "The Butterflies of Versailles." This shows a gallery in Versailles with lit candelabra, a beautiful black girl in a fancy dress, a flying gull, a dog, the back end of a donkey and a much smaller cat chasing a mouse. Gorgeous large golden butterflies are scattered all over.
Andrews' framed collages are not unduly expensive but she also offers them as much cheaper prints, even on T-shirts. Altogether a very rewarding show with something for everybody and everybody's wallet.
This show's full title is "Far From Ordinary: A Series of Dreamscapes Made with Very Precise Slices." It is Andrews' second solo exhibition and "includes a collection of Surrealistic scenes in the form of hand-cut photo collages. The intricately crafted pieces explore a whole new level of phantasmagoria that balances on the line of reality and imagination."
At this point, I go on with my own perceptions. The picture by Emily Andrews with which I am most familiar is also called "Far From Ordinary" and first appeared in her earlier solo shows. She makes and sells prints of her collages as well as showing and selling the originals and I bought a fairly large print of this picture and have it hanging in my house. It is based on a couple of the Tenniel illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and I am always a pushover for anything to do with Alice. The Alice books were the first two books I read as a child and they made a deep impression on me. I am sure I must have dreamed and fantasized about them. The picture "Far From Ordinary" presents the viewer with such a dream or fantasy.
In the front to the left, we see a startled Alice growing unexpectedly tall. To the back of the picture we see a quite untroubled Alice, unperturbed by the vagaries of her existence, standing with her back to us and looking into a window fitted with impossibly large stars. Or are they snowflakes? Both interpretations are possible and in a dream you don't have to choose. Various animals lurking around -- a dog, an owl and one and a half llamas -- do not owe their provenance to the Alice books but that need not disturb us. Doubtless they have their own dream reasons for being there. However the Cheshire Cat is also there, grinning from a large mirror to the left of the frontal Alice. Also to her left is a large clock which suggests that Time itself, having stopped, as in the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, has entered the dream. The only difference is that it is not teatime but may be one of the early hours of the morning when one is likely to be asleep. The background to all this is a well-appointed Victorian living room waiting for well-heeled residents to relax with a glass of sherry. The title of the picture is spelled out in acrobatic script above the window and all seems quite lucid and matter of fact, with one exception. A cupboard in the background seems to contain a brightly coloured modern abstract painting. Is this an intrusion from the workaday world?
I have described this picture in detail as it is fully representative, but there are twelve pictures in all, quite different and intricately detailed. Perhaps I should mention a few others that caught my eye. One is another Alice picture showing the White Rabbit running up a flight of stars while consulting his watch and exclaiming, "Mary Ann! Fetch me my gloves this moment!" Below him is a rather lackadaisical young woman propped on a couch, again in well-appointed surroundings. She obviously has no intention of fetching his gloves or paying him any attention whatever. The picture reproduced on the invitation and which may therefore by supposed to be a favourite of the artist, shows a marina in the foreground with a series of bathing beauties and a dog all packed into may equally well be canoes or coffins. Since the title of the picture is "Celestial Paradise," either interpretation might fit. But the most striking and even majestic picture is "The Butterflies of Versailles." This shows a gallery in Versailles with lit candelabra, a beautiful black girl in a fancy dress, a flying gull, a dog, the back end of a donkey and a much smaller cat chasing a mouse. Gorgeous large golden butterflies are scattered all over.
Andrews' framed collages are not unduly expensive but she also offers them as much cheaper prints, even on T-shirts. Altogether a very rewarding show with something for everybody and everybody's wallet.
Wednesday 22 July 2015
"Downbeat Downtown" by Dan Brown at NAC
The current show "Downbeat Downtown" at NAC consists of a series of photographs, mainly in black and white and quite straight forwardly representational, illustrating performances presented by the Twilight Jazz series and the newly founded TD Niagara Jazz Festival. Dan Brown, who took the photographs, says he “aims to capture moments of transcendence when the performers have lost themselves in the music.”
I am not a big jazz fan because I came to music through a mixture of folksong and opera and my tastes simply weren’t wide enough to take in jazz as well. I have heard it said that in the field of light reading people can take in fantasy and science fiction but not mysteries as well. Operating on the same principle, my capacity for musical enjoyment just can’t vast enough. “Had we but world enough and time”, as Andrew Marvell said to his coy mistress.
But there is no doubt in my mind that the jazz performers in these photographs are enjoying themselves, especially in two coloured photographs, one of singers singing their hearts out, and one of wind players taking over a vineyard. Among the black and white photographs I was particularly struck by one where his trumpet has completely covered the face of the player so that the player and trumpet form one entity. From what i have heard jazz this is actually what happens. There is so much improvisation, with players and singers abandoning themselves to melody, that it is as if the music were playing itself. This must be what Dan Brown means by “transcendence”.
I’m sorry I won’t be around for the reception and the screening of Jazz on a Summer’s Day, but I can’t stay awake between 6 p.m. and midnight. There’s a lot I miss that way but I can’t help it.
I am not a big jazz fan because I came to music through a mixture of folksong and opera and my tastes simply weren’t wide enough to take in jazz as well. I have heard it said that in the field of light reading people can take in fantasy and science fiction but not mysteries as well. Operating on the same principle, my capacity for musical enjoyment just can’t vast enough. “Had we but world enough and time”, as Andrew Marvell said to his coy mistress.
But there is no doubt in my mind that the jazz performers in these photographs are enjoying themselves, especially in two coloured photographs, one of singers singing their hearts out, and one of wind players taking over a vineyard. Among the black and white photographs I was particularly struck by one where his trumpet has completely covered the face of the player so that the player and trumpet form one entity. From what i have heard jazz this is actually what happens. There is so much improvisation, with players and singers abandoning themselves to melody, that it is as if the music were playing itself. This must be what Dan Brown means by “transcendence”.
I’m sorry I won’t be around for the reception and the screening of Jazz on a Summer’s Day, but I can’t stay awake between 6 p.m. and midnight. There’s a lot I miss that way but I can’t help it.
Friday 12 June 2015
"We've Forgotten Where Our Hearts Have Been" by Carrie Perreault at NAC
When I went to see Carrie Perreault’s show at NAC I was struck first of all by the emptiness of the room. It became quite clear very rapidly that this artist is not interested in producing beautiful objects to decorate private or even public rooms.
As Carrie states in a couple of barely visible statements isolated in the middle of large framed sheets of white paper, absence is itself a form of presence or presence is a form of absence or maybe one might say that the best way of being present is to be absent or to be absent is to be present. I failed to make a note of which way round this was put, but all the interpretations would be equally valid.
Next to these two framed statements were a pair of fringed flat cushions in a rather dull colour embroidered with the message that the artist did not expect to make much money by her art but if she did she would purchase more feathers to compensate the people who purchased the cushions. The precise nature of this message apparently escaped the artist as she was recording it, for she embroidered the word “life”, put a slash through it and substituted the word “live”. As Alice’s White Knight would put it, meaning trickles through her and our brains like water through a sieve.
Next in line came a series of small, unassuming photographs which, while in colour, did not seem to be recording anything in particular in at all a striking kind of way. This series was interrupted by two things and continued on the opposite wall. The first interruption consisted of the legend ‘We’ve Forgotten Where Our Hearts Have Been’ painted in large black letters on the wall. This seems to present the basic meaning of the show, but where in fact our hearts have actually been may or may not be indicated by a procession of marching modelled white feet that fills up the rest of the wall, or else by the photographs.
Natasha had told me that Carrie was also a performance artist. I asked her about this and understood her to say that at the reception Carrie had performed a one person show called “Impossible Conversations”, moving about to different parts of the gallery. I was sorry I hadn’t been able to be there. As I was cogitating over all this, a light dawned: Carrie was trying to produce the same effects as Samuel Beckett by naming the things it is almost impossible to express.
I was unable to speak to her face to face but was able to leave a message on her answering machine asking if she really did have an affinity with Beckett as I thought she had. She called back very interested in Samuel Beckett for a long time.
We went on to have a pleasant chat about him. I reminisced about my first encounter with him. At the end of my last year at the University of Illinois, before coming to Brock, I had to teach “Waiting for Godot” as part of a course in French literature in English translation. When it came to the point, I was unable to think of anything to say about it so I just read out a critical essay to someone else had written. When I finished one of the students remarked that he had come across “Waiting for Godot” in another course, where the professor had not attempted to say anything about it. Instead he had instructed the students to spend the hour meditating in silence.Carrie remarked that one of the reasons why Beckett is difficult to talk about is that he is often funny but in such a grim context that to laugh would be like laughing at a funeral. I said that that reminded me of a Freudian slip I had once made. While on a trip I turned up at a Catholic funeral and the priest asked me if I would be staying long. “No”, I said, “I’m just passing on”. Carrie asked if the priest had laughed and I said “No, he just didn’t know what to make of it”.
In a Beckettion context that is the usual reaction, which is why Carrie Perreault’s show had me think of Beckett. For a while I had been reduced to silence by her show, just as we two professors had been by Beckett.
Not that Carrie would claim for one minute to have attained his stature. As she said to me as soon as the subject came up, “Those would be very big shoes to fill.” When she talks about herself she says she’s “an advocate for human witnessing” which takes the form of “meditative gestural acts”, perhaps this is a little too serious and when she makes and artist’s statement she might do well to be more like Beckett and lighten up a bit. I understand that although Beckett’s critics were initially stricken dumb, he has now been analyzed more than anyone but shakespeare, but on the subjects of his own work Beckett was always very modest and unpretentious.
As Carrie states in a couple of barely visible statements isolated in the middle of large framed sheets of white paper, absence is itself a form of presence or presence is a form of absence or maybe one might say that the best way of being present is to be absent or to be absent is to be present. I failed to make a note of which way round this was put, but all the interpretations would be equally valid.
Next to these two framed statements were a pair of fringed flat cushions in a rather dull colour embroidered with the message that the artist did not expect to make much money by her art but if she did she would purchase more feathers to compensate the people who purchased the cushions. The precise nature of this message apparently escaped the artist as she was recording it, for she embroidered the word “life”, put a slash through it and substituted the word “live”. As Alice’s White Knight would put it, meaning trickles through her and our brains like water through a sieve.
Next in line came a series of small, unassuming photographs which, while in colour, did not seem to be recording anything in particular in at all a striking kind of way. This series was interrupted by two things and continued on the opposite wall. The first interruption consisted of the legend ‘We’ve Forgotten Where Our Hearts Have Been’ painted in large black letters on the wall. This seems to present the basic meaning of the show, but where in fact our hearts have actually been may or may not be indicated by a procession of marching modelled white feet that fills up the rest of the wall, or else by the photographs.
Natasha had told me that Carrie was also a performance artist. I asked her about this and understood her to say that at the reception Carrie had performed a one person show called “Impossible Conversations”, moving about to different parts of the gallery. I was sorry I hadn’t been able to be there. As I was cogitating over all this, a light dawned: Carrie was trying to produce the same effects as Samuel Beckett by naming the things it is almost impossible to express.
I was unable to speak to her face to face but was able to leave a message on her answering machine asking if she really did have an affinity with Beckett as I thought she had. She called back very interested in Samuel Beckett for a long time.
We went on to have a pleasant chat about him. I reminisced about my first encounter with him. At the end of my last year at the University of Illinois, before coming to Brock, I had to teach “Waiting for Godot” as part of a course in French literature in English translation. When it came to the point, I was unable to think of anything to say about it so I just read out a critical essay to someone else had written. When I finished one of the students remarked that he had come across “Waiting for Godot” in another course, where the professor had not attempted to say anything about it. Instead he had instructed the students to spend the hour meditating in silence.Carrie remarked that one of the reasons why Beckett is difficult to talk about is that he is often funny but in such a grim context that to laugh would be like laughing at a funeral. I said that that reminded me of a Freudian slip I had once made. While on a trip I turned up at a Catholic funeral and the priest asked me if I would be staying long. “No”, I said, “I’m just passing on”. Carrie asked if the priest had laughed and I said “No, he just didn’t know what to make of it”.
In a Beckettion context that is the usual reaction, which is why Carrie Perreault’s show had me think of Beckett. For a while I had been reduced to silence by her show, just as we two professors had been by Beckett.
Not that Carrie would claim for one minute to have attained his stature. As she said to me as soon as the subject came up, “Those would be very big shoes to fill.” When she talks about herself she says she’s “an advocate for human witnessing” which takes the form of “meditative gestural acts”, perhaps this is a little too serious and when she makes and artist’s statement she might do well to be more like Beckett and lighten up a bit. I understand that although Beckett’s critics were initially stricken dumb, he has now been analyzed more than anyone but shakespeare, but on the subjects of his own work Beckett was always very modest and unpretentious.
Thursday 28 May 2015
"Rooted" by Sandy Middleton at NAC
When I went to the reception for Sandy Middleton's show "Rooted" I did not know very much about her. I had just heard that she is a very interesting photographer, but I know very little about photography. The only other photographer I know is Derek Richards, who does a lot with very bright colour and with people moving around in exotic locations. He is nothing like her.
As I sat down and rested from my walk to NAC, my eyes rested on photographs of trees that were greenish-brownish and quite hazy. They were dreamy, poetic, not quite distinct, thoughtful, and very treeish. No human or animal figures appeared -- just expanses of fields or water with a few trees. The trees seemed to have been singled out for special, loving attention, and some of them you could see through, like the ghosts of trees. However the scene did not look like a graveyard but rather like a well loved place that the tree had come back to haunt because it was so fond of it.
When I asked the artist about this, she said that she had not intended anything psychological. She was simply interested in the effect of double exposure. These tree scenes had all been taken in Port Dalhousie and the one gnarled old tree taken with double exposure had been superimposed on a scene with a younger, less individual looking tree because it was so representative. It summed up the whole history of the trees in that neighbourhood.
This is what first caught my eye when I glanced around. But when I stood up and started looking more closely, I was quite overwhelmed by a photograph of tangled tree roots with only a few leaves and branches sprouting from them which led off the exhibition, and which Sandy Middleton connected in a note to her own roots. It immediately made me think of Ents, Tolkien's treelike shepherds of the trees and of my first excited discovery of The Lord of the Rings in my last year as a student at Oxford.
I have never read a book which excited me so much. It all seemed so beautiful and fresh and new, such a change from the dreary, nerve-wracking work of trying to meet the impossibly high academic standards of Oxford. And it had been written by an Oxford professor! So there was hope and joy and magic and life after all! I had just sat down and reread the chapter "Treebeard" in The Two Towers and it is just as I remembered it. Yes, that tangle of tree roots conjures up the image of the toes of Treebeard, guardian of the Forest of Fangorn, which he always put down first when he went walking.
I asked Sandy Middleton about it and she said yes, she had been thinking of Ents. She told me about a huge Ent costume she had devised and that had towered over the onlookers for the NAC Festival of Wearable Art a couple of years ago. She said there is bound to be a photograph of it in the archives.
As I went through the show, I found a series of little circular segments of wood with photographs of leafless branches printed on them upside down so that they looked like roots instead of branches. On an adjoining wall were sheets of paper treated with beeswax showing the same thing. Sandy said she intended the shock of surprise created by showing the branches upside down but the people who bought them would probably want to show them right side up. Not everyone likes novelty and invention.
At the very end of the show there was an autumnal scene -- the one definite touch of colour, but even so rather muted. The avoidance of definite colour made the whole show seem like a stroll through a dream -- or rather like a poem about a dream.
As I sat down and rested from my walk to NAC, my eyes rested on photographs of trees that were greenish-brownish and quite hazy. They were dreamy, poetic, not quite distinct, thoughtful, and very treeish. No human or animal figures appeared -- just expanses of fields or water with a few trees. The trees seemed to have been singled out for special, loving attention, and some of them you could see through, like the ghosts of trees. However the scene did not look like a graveyard but rather like a well loved place that the tree had come back to haunt because it was so fond of it.
When I asked the artist about this, she said that she had not intended anything psychological. She was simply interested in the effect of double exposure. These tree scenes had all been taken in Port Dalhousie and the one gnarled old tree taken with double exposure had been superimposed on a scene with a younger, less individual looking tree because it was so representative. It summed up the whole history of the trees in that neighbourhood.
This is what first caught my eye when I glanced around. But when I stood up and started looking more closely, I was quite overwhelmed by a photograph of tangled tree roots with only a few leaves and branches sprouting from them which led off the exhibition, and which Sandy Middleton connected in a note to her own roots. It immediately made me think of Ents, Tolkien's treelike shepherds of the trees and of my first excited discovery of The Lord of the Rings in my last year as a student at Oxford.
I have never read a book which excited me so much. It all seemed so beautiful and fresh and new, such a change from the dreary, nerve-wracking work of trying to meet the impossibly high academic standards of Oxford. And it had been written by an Oxford professor! So there was hope and joy and magic and life after all! I had just sat down and reread the chapter "Treebeard" in The Two Towers and it is just as I remembered it. Yes, that tangle of tree roots conjures up the image of the toes of Treebeard, guardian of the Forest of Fangorn, which he always put down first when he went walking.
I asked Sandy Middleton about it and she said yes, she had been thinking of Ents. She told me about a huge Ent costume she had devised and that had towered over the onlookers for the NAC Festival of Wearable Art a couple of years ago. She said there is bound to be a photograph of it in the archives.
As I went through the show, I found a series of little circular segments of wood with photographs of leafless branches printed on them upside down so that they looked like roots instead of branches. On an adjoining wall were sheets of paper treated with beeswax showing the same thing. Sandy said she intended the shock of surprise created by showing the branches upside down but the people who bought them would probably want to show them right side up. Not everyone likes novelty and invention.
At the very end of the show there was an autumnal scene -- the one definite touch of colour, but even so rather muted. The avoidance of definite colour made the whole show seem like a stroll through a dream -- or rather like a poem about a dream.
Tuesday 19 May 2015
"Remnants" by Kristi McDonald at NAC
I am puzzled to know what to say about "Remnants." Judging by her Artist's Statement, Kristi McDonald has really thought about her show and worked on it, and yet it does not speak to me. Furthermore, there must be other people to whom it speaks, or her work would not be hanging in NAC and she would not have won awards, but even so, I still don't see it.
In an earlier era of art criticism, I would have set myself up as an arbiter of taste and listed my reasons for condemning it, like Ruskin accursing Whistler of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." But as things are, I feel all I can do is try to state the limitations of my own mind which prevent me from responding to it.
There there is a h ierarchy of the arts is a long since exploded theory. Years ago a former colleague of mine invited me to his home and pointed to a reproduction hanging on his wall of "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer." I forget which Great Master painted it. It could have been Rubens in a quite unusually sentimental mood. As he pointed to it, my colleague said, "This is the greatest painting in the world." I said nothing, but I was dumbfounded by the idea that this academic should think a) that there is such a thing as the greatest painting in the world, and b) that it is possible to identify it. Of course from there, it is only a step to thinking you can identify the worst painting, on a sliding scale of values.
André Malraux famously claimed that the 20th century was the first era in which every possible kind of art of every time and place could be appreciated as being of equal value. Even so, although Malraux did not say so, some artists such as Pablo Picasso can be seen as outranking everyone else as demonstrated by the prices people are willing to pay for their paintings.
I have discussed art with my brother, Malcolm Bucknall, more than anytone else and he was outraged to hear me say that I can paint as well as Picasso. He got me to admit that I could never have pained "Guernica" but that doesn't mean I want to live with it. To take another famous painting by Picasso as an example, I would not like to have "Les Demoiselles d"Avignon" hanging on my wall. But I do love and admire Picasso's drawings, particularly those of his old age.
Even though my brother does have a scale of art values, he repudiates what he calls Dogma and disliked being given art lessons. He is all in favour of risking sailing off the edge of the world, like Christopher Columbus. I am much more academically inclined than he is, and although I can be quite eccentric in my judgments I do bring a certain amount of cultural bagage to my appreciation of an art work.
I looked at Kristi McDonald's show and thought, "Ink blots! They must be Rorschach ink blots! But what are they doing combined with what look like fashion magazine illustrations? They don't go together at all." As a result, I was out of sympathy with her work. But that was a case of being limited by my own cultural preconceptions, which I am sure do not apply to her.
She may not even that that Rorschach ink blots exist as a means of psychological testing, since they were popular before she was born and she probably has no reason to consider fashion magazine illustration inferior. Consequently, she must have approached her ink blots and her graphite drawings with a degree of unprejudiced innocence, which I cannot hope to emulate. I am simply not the right person to be looking at her show. I throw the field open to those who are.
In an earlier era of art criticism, I would have set myself up as an arbiter of taste and listed my reasons for condemning it, like Ruskin accursing Whistler of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." But as things are, I feel all I can do is try to state the limitations of my own mind which prevent me from responding to it.
There there is a h ierarchy of the arts is a long since exploded theory. Years ago a former colleague of mine invited me to his home and pointed to a reproduction hanging on his wall of "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer." I forget which Great Master painted it. It could have been Rubens in a quite unusually sentimental mood. As he pointed to it, my colleague said, "This is the greatest painting in the world." I said nothing, but I was dumbfounded by the idea that this academic should think a) that there is such a thing as the greatest painting in the world, and b) that it is possible to identify it. Of course from there, it is only a step to thinking you can identify the worst painting, on a sliding scale of values.
André Malraux famously claimed that the 20th century was the first era in which every possible kind of art of every time and place could be appreciated as being of equal value. Even so, although Malraux did not say so, some artists such as Pablo Picasso can be seen as outranking everyone else as demonstrated by the prices people are willing to pay for their paintings.
I have discussed art with my brother, Malcolm Bucknall, more than anytone else and he was outraged to hear me say that I can paint as well as Picasso. He got me to admit that I could never have pained "Guernica" but that doesn't mean I want to live with it. To take another famous painting by Picasso as an example, I would not like to have "Les Demoiselles d"Avignon" hanging on my wall. But I do love and admire Picasso's drawings, particularly those of his old age.
Even though my brother does have a scale of art values, he repudiates what he calls Dogma and disliked being given art lessons. He is all in favour of risking sailing off the edge of the world, like Christopher Columbus. I am much more academically inclined than he is, and although I can be quite eccentric in my judgments I do bring a certain amount of cultural bagage to my appreciation of an art work.
I looked at Kristi McDonald's show and thought, "Ink blots! They must be Rorschach ink blots! But what are they doing combined with what look like fashion magazine illustrations? They don't go together at all." As a result, I was out of sympathy with her work. But that was a case of being limited by my own cultural preconceptions, which I am sure do not apply to her.
She may not even that that Rorschach ink blots exist as a means of psychological testing, since they were popular before she was born and she probably has no reason to consider fashion magazine illustration inferior. Consequently, she must have approached her ink blots and her graphite drawings with a degree of unprejudiced innocence, which I cannot hope to emulate. I am simply not the right person to be looking at her show. I throw the field open to those who are.
Friday 24 April 2015
Randy and Friends at NAC
Four artists, Christine Cosby, Rob Elliott, Ernest Harris Jr. and Melanie MacDonald, have collected together items that might just possibly have been found in any Canadian home and set out to play games with them. These consist of two egg cups from East Germany in the shape of hens, a set of fishing lures, an empty plastic squeeze honey bottle in the shape of a bear, an otter statuette stamped with the name Randy, and a rabbit puppet head.
The artists say they feel affectionate towards these objects, so it seems that the games they play with them, on which Rob Nunn commented to me, are such as imaginative children might play with their favourite toys. The artists’ handout says that “Melanie MacDonald made breakfast, served soft-boiled eggs in the egg cups, then photographed and painted the scene as a monumental landscape Ernest Harris Jr. has painted formal watercolour studies of each of the objects. Christine Cosby and Rob Elliott have invented a 40-year history of the rabbit puppet head and have designed a parody of big museum retrospectives, complete with costumes and timeline. A pair of over-sized textile fishing lures will also hang in the gallery.”
In my late twenties I was in graduate school at Northwestern University surrounded by a very lively group of young French people. One of the things we got together to do was to record a reading of Eugene Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano." TO give you an idea of this play, there are two English couples, the Smiths and the Martins, who converse entirely in clichés and platitudes. These destroy any attempt the audience might make to make sense of their conversation. They are the incarnation of the absurd, to the point where it would be impossible to treat the play as anything as serious as a parody. Absurdity is engaged in for its own sake and follows its own laws, as in the case of the Smiths' clock, which strikes any hour it is not (I took the part of the clock). We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and made no attempt to interpret the play in any serious way.
Critics were of course lurking in the wings, determined to say something that would sound profound. I have read some critical essays that were written at the time linking Ionesco's absurdity to the existential anguish of Sartre and Camus, who talked about absurdity in a tragic kind of way. Two other plays by Ionesco can be used to bear this out. One is "The Lesson," in which an elderly professor is in the habit of raping and murdering his students. The other is "Rhinoceros," which is a parody of the rise of the Nazi movement. But it would be quite impossible to interpret "Randy and Friends" in such a serious way.
There is a kind of fake seriousness about it, like a group of girls acting men in a psychodrama and drawing mustaches on themselves with eyebrow pencil. This fake seriousness is apparent in Melanie MacDonald's breakfast scene, which is presented as monumentally as a Chardin still life, and in the straight-faced series of watercolours depicting the various objects. This kind of seriousness is of course an integral part of any children's game. As Michel de Monteigne put it, way back in the sixteenth century, games are children's most serious occupation. For a moment, when I looked at the account of Rabbit Head's progress as a celebrity, I thought the artists really were making a serious political statement about the former East Germany -- as serious as anything in "Rhinoceros." But I quickly realised that since East Germany no longer exists as a political entity, this was not to be taken as anything but a lighthearted spoof on the whole notion of political importance and celebrity.
The only serious message these four artists have for us is "Enjoy!" And it is a serious message because it is something we all too often forget to do, caught up as we are in the things we imagine are serious.
On the outskirts of this show is a window decoration, lit up at night with lights, representing the Columbian rain forest. We should all of course get serious about the rain forest, and yet the way it is presented does not contradict the show's integral atmosphere of play indulged in for its own sake in a spirit of creative freedom. It was set up by Gustavo, an artist acting independently of the four.
Thursday 9 April 2015
SMALL FEATS 2015
I was privileged to be allowed into NAC for a preview of its current Small Feats show. The show will actually take place on Saturday, April 11, 2015, starting at 8 p.m. with a VIP preview at 7:40 p.m. Over 200 works of original art, each one foot square, will be on sale at $200 each. These works are all donated by the artists as a fundraiser. They are traditionally of such excellence and variety that people come from far and wide to purchase them. I myself was struck by the excellence and variety in this show, for which far more works were submitted than could be accepted.
When I arrived at NAC in the afternoon of Tuesday, April 7, only two thirds of the show had been hung. Hanging is important to bring out the way pictures complement and contrast with each other, but even so I was impressed. Beauty and originality one can expect in a NAC show but what really struck me was the variety. First of all, there is variety in theme, subject matter, and approach. Secondly, there is variety in media and physical format, even bearing in mind the stipulated dimensions.
What first caught my eye were some geometrical abstracts in acrylic and gouache that were rich in colour but so sparse in shape that they made me think of Muslim sacred non-representational art. But I had got hold of the wrong religion, because one I liked particularly, by Dylan Bond, was called “Flower of Life-Mandala” and mandalas tend to be Buddhist.
Looking around among other abstracts, I found much thicker, heavier pieces in a variety of media. Some were actually modelled in relief in one basic colour, owing their depth and variety to the inventiveness of their texture.
I start with the abstracts because surprisingly little of the show is representational. And what is representational tends to be both detailed and minimal. My eye was caught by a giclée print, modified with pastel and chalk, of a silvery fish with nothing around it. Rather than a glimpse of reality including incidental details from the background, it seemed that we were being offered the Idea of a fish as a subject for meditation in an uncluttered, Zen-like way. This picture, called “Compense,” was by Brian Yungblut.
Some of the more surprising pictures were semi-representational in that they looked like children’s book illustrations. But they too were largely devoid of irrelevant details in the background. I was so struck by “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Paul Gosen that I wanted it for myself. It just shows the Owl and the Pussycat in their beautiful pea-green boat but with no attempt to depict the sea.
I said to Steve, who was showing me round, that there was something about this show that made me think of the Religion of Art as I had tried to define it in my doctoral thesis on Marcel Proust. Proust wrote a very long novel, which has often been translated under the title Remembrance of Things Past, and in which a not very likeable narrator is shown wandering round a varied social and sexual scene making lots of mistakes. However he is saved from his rather dreary, unenlightened state, which seems both depressing and comic, by moments of grace in which he leaves mundane time and enters eternity. These often come to him through the arts, whether church architecture, music, literature, painting, drama, or even cooking, but sometimes seem to come out of nowhere like a gift from God (whose existence is not actually asserted) and give meaning and value to his life. They even show that he too can be a creative genius, as the writer of the book you are reading.
The artists in this show reminded me of Proust in that they are so obviously focused on beauty, value, and meaning without reference to any kind of creed. We often hear that with the Death of God, meaning and value have gone out of life, but this does not seem to be the case here. I said to Steve that I thought that they had a religious attitude to life that I would empathize with as a Quaker. He replied that they were secular humanists with a sense of the transcendental. Perhaps we were saying the same thing, since Quakerism doesn’t actually have a creed.
When I arrived at NAC in the afternoon of Tuesday, April 7, only two thirds of the show had been hung. Hanging is important to bring out the way pictures complement and contrast with each other, but even so I was impressed. Beauty and originality one can expect in a NAC show but what really struck me was the variety. First of all, there is variety in theme, subject matter, and approach. Secondly, there is variety in media and physical format, even bearing in mind the stipulated dimensions.
What first caught my eye were some geometrical abstracts in acrylic and gouache that were rich in colour but so sparse in shape that they made me think of Muslim sacred non-representational art. But I had got hold of the wrong religion, because one I liked particularly, by Dylan Bond, was called “Flower of Life-Mandala” and mandalas tend to be Buddhist.
Looking around among other abstracts, I found much thicker, heavier pieces in a variety of media. Some were actually modelled in relief in one basic colour, owing their depth and variety to the inventiveness of their texture.
I start with the abstracts because surprisingly little of the show is representational. And what is representational tends to be both detailed and minimal. My eye was caught by a giclée print, modified with pastel and chalk, of a silvery fish with nothing around it. Rather than a glimpse of reality including incidental details from the background, it seemed that we were being offered the Idea of a fish as a subject for meditation in an uncluttered, Zen-like way. This picture, called “Compense,” was by Brian Yungblut.
Some of the more surprising pictures were semi-representational in that they looked like children’s book illustrations. But they too were largely devoid of irrelevant details in the background. I was so struck by “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Paul Gosen that I wanted it for myself. It just shows the Owl and the Pussycat in their beautiful pea-green boat but with no attempt to depict the sea.
I said to Steve, who was showing me round, that there was something about this show that made me think of the Religion of Art as I had tried to define it in my doctoral thesis on Marcel Proust. Proust wrote a very long novel, which has often been translated under the title Remembrance of Things Past, and in which a not very likeable narrator is shown wandering round a varied social and sexual scene making lots of mistakes. However he is saved from his rather dreary, unenlightened state, which seems both depressing and comic, by moments of grace in which he leaves mundane time and enters eternity. These often come to him through the arts, whether church architecture, music, literature, painting, drama, or even cooking, but sometimes seem to come out of nowhere like a gift from God (whose existence is not actually asserted) and give meaning and value to his life. They even show that he too can be a creative genius, as the writer of the book you are reading.
The artists in this show reminded me of Proust in that they are so obviously focused on beauty, value, and meaning without reference to any kind of creed. We often hear that with the Death of God, meaning and value have gone out of life, but this does not seem to be the case here. I said to Steve that I thought that they had a religious attitude to life that I would empathize with as a Quaker. He replied that they were secular humanists with a sense of the transcendental. Perhaps we were saying the same thing, since Quakerism doesn’t actually have a creed.
Tuesday 7 April 2015
[accelerate] art as game as machine at NAC
Since reviewing Alice in Plunderland, the question of Alice as she relates to contemporary life has been very much on my mind. I do not think anything drastic has been done to put her forward as a role model where current attitudes are concerned. To demonstrate this, I would like to take her on a tour of this show at NAC and listen to her comments.
On the wall to the right of the entrance to the back room, you see a series of probing, invasive questions devised by Brian Kent Gotro. Steve, who was showing me round this exhibit, said they were intended to mirror the way we are constantly invited to give information about ourselves in all kinds of mundane circumstances. I asked Alice for her comment. She said that they called to mind several passages in the “Alice” books, starting with the one where the caterpillar smoking a hookah asks her “Who are you?” in a very contemptuous way and is not impressed by her reply. Other similar passages are the ones where Tweedledum and Tweedledee refuse to believe that she has proved her reality and the Unicorn calls her a fabulous monster. Already way back then we were being asked to prove ourselves.
The next item we come to is a table made ready for a game at Happiness High, devised by William Robinson, where you are dealing with people with various perceived handicaps, such as being poor, ugly, gay or stupid, and you have to relate to these people in one of three ways. You can make a friend, bully them or kill yourself. Alice would have no difficulty with this game. After her initial faux pas with the Mouse on first entering Wonderland, she makes a real effort to be considerate and polite, and she is even capable of making a friend out of the disconcerting Cheshire Cat. Other people set out to bully her a lot of the time but she refuses to give in. It looked as if she was risking killing herself at the beginning by falling down a rabbit hole, but Steve told me it is possible to kill yourself and still win the game.
Next, on two opposite walls are feminist messages from Hannah Epstein, who is interested in showing how women who stand up for themselves get attacked by men in power, condemned as evil and immoral, and put in jail where they are systematically ill treated. Again that is not all that far from Alice, who is constantly ordered about and insulted, this it quite possible that she might go to prison if her punishments were saved up for long enough, and is threatened with having her head cut off. Even when she achieves her goal of becoming a Queen, the barrage of bullying and insults reaches a peak where she is forced into an act of violence to defend herself.
Finally on the far wall there is an installation by Andrew Roth that appears to be a campsite lit by artificial moonlight. After studying Andrew Roth’s statement I think I can understand him too in terms of Alice. What springs to mind is the claim by the Gryphon and Mock Turtle to have learned “the different branches of Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” These quite untruthful distortions of the actual branches of Arithmetic, coupled with the fact that if they went to an English public school these reprehensible activities probably were what they were studying, seems to fit in with what Andrew Roth shows about a mixture of truth and lies in current language. Or one might refer to Humpty Dumpty’s statement “Impenetrability, that’s what I say!”, meaning “there’s a knockdown argument.” I would almost suspect Lewis Carroll of being able to predict the approach of the French Postmodern philosophers when he comes up with this example.
The French (the ordinary French) say that the more things change the more they stay the same, and these four artists are using the most subversive, innovative methods to uphold certain traditional values: self respect, respect for others and respect for the truth. Right on!
Thursday 19 March 2015
Alice in Plunderland at NAC
A review of Alice in Plunderland by Steve McCaffery with illustrations by Clelia Scala and also of the original collages for the illustrations currently on display at the Niagara Artists’ Centre (NAC) in St. Catharines.
I first thought of writing this review as my current
contribution to “Once Upon A Time,” a Newsletter on Teen and Children’s Fantasy
issued in Minneapolis by an APA – amateur publishing association – and restricted
to a small group of fans of this genre, mainly children’s librarians. Although based on Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, Alice in Plunderland is definitely not intended for
children, since it has much to do with the contemporary underworld and drug
scene. But the original “Alice” is such
a standard children’s classic that I think my fellow contributors should be
interested. I mentioned this project to
Natasha, who helps run the office at the Niagara Artists’ Centre, and she has
asked me to leave off copies of my review as a way of starting an in-house
dialogue.
Clelia Scala's illustrations were my introduction to Alice in Plunderland, which I have bought and read. The blurb on the back of the book says that Steve McCaffery is a "multi-award winning poet and scholar" whose "innovative poetics ...transform this classic story according to McCaffery's theory of 'palindromic time' by which the past is contemporized and the present historicized" and open new vistas for "fans of experimental writing and linguistics." I know very little about experimental writing in the 21st century, having limited my scholarly endeavours to the study of 20th-century French literature in general and of Marcel Proust in particular. That gentleman died in 1922 while working on his novel, A la recherche du temps perdu ("In Search of Lost Time") on which he had been exclusively engaged for years and to which he was so committed that he used his own first brush with death as the basis for a death scene in the novel. Insofar has his work is experimental, it is an experiment in challenging and transforming sexual and temporal and social identity.
Proust said that including theories in a work of art was
like leaving the price tag on a present, and in any case Steve McCaffery’s
theories on poetics are largely unknown to me, since I’d never heard of him
before, so I shall simply attempt to explain my own immediate reactions.
I do know something of Surrealism, under which rubric Steve
McCaffery may be shelved, although I agree with its founder, André Breton, that
it is not a literary movement. Its chief
aim seems to be to innovate and disconcert, and an example early Surrealists
often gave was the placing together of an umbrella and a sewing machine on an
operating table. The purpose of this seems
to have been to shock the viewer out of all his or her accustomed responses and
make him or her see customary objects in a completely novel way.
In my opinion this is more successful in art than in literature. The reason for this is that there is no necessary connection between the sound of a word and the mental image of a thing, so that when you set out to destroy usual connections, words tend to lose a lot of their meaning, whereas it is not so easy to destroy the meaning of a visual image. For instance the word "apple" becomes "pomme" in French, "Apfel" in German, "manzana" in Spanish and a variety of things in other languages, while an image of an apple always remains recognizably an apple despite differences in context. It could keep the doctor away or be an apple for teacher or an apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or from the Garden of the Hesperides. You can have a lot of fun with all these different apples, which is why I responded much more enthusiastically to Clelia Scala's illustrations than to the book, which chiefly interested me because of the illustrations.
Certainly the illustrations are inspired by the book, which
in its turn is inspired by the original “Alice,” just as the illustrations
always retain the original Alice as drawn by Tenniel. And they do take their point of departure
from McCaffery’s text. At the same time
they go beyond it. There are some of her
illustrations which show Dante meeting Father William while exploring his
Inferno. This is a situation which
McCaffery does not name, but his acidhead Alice does seem to be in Hell as she
searches constantly and desperately for yet another fix, a search which could
easily become repetitious and monotonous—one of the points Dante makes is that
this is what Hell is like—if it were not for the extreme variety in McCaffery’s
use of drug users’ slang. As things are,
from the little I know of the drug scene, I imagine it is repetitious
and monotonous, exactly as Steve McCaffery describes it, and it takes Clelia
Scala’s visual imagination to give it real variety.
The original Alice was accused of being mad and by no less
an authority than the Cheshire Cat. It
is easy to forget that the Victorians had a horror of madness which for them
was ultimately evil. You have only to
think of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester’s mad wife in her attic to realise
the fear which which it was surrounded.
Due to more successful therapies, as they have been developed since
then, we have learned not to look down on the “mentally ill.” But we have no such scruples about drug
addicts. So it would seem that Steve
McCaffery has actually restored some of the more sinister connotations of the
original “Alice”—connotations that seem connected to the complete freedom and
joy Charles Lutwidge Dodgson felt on forgetting with his childhood friends that
he was a respectable academic in Holy Orders and allowing himself to make a
mock of the moral teachings imparted to them by their governesses and
mammas. Steve McCaffery may actually
have taken fewer liberties with “Alice” than at first sight it seems. For all I know, he is fully aware of this.
But I still maintain that Clelia Scala takes a step beyond
him. I have bought one of her framed
illustrations and plan to look at it every day for a while. It is quite heartwarming for me because it
shows Alice’s reduction of all the people who’d bullied her to a pack of cards—and
a pack of cards in complete disarray. It
may be relevant to point out that this is a passage taken over almost
completely unaltered from the original “Alice.”
The only thing that has been changed is that the cards, instead of being
the usual court cards we see in the original “Alice” have become Tarot
cards. This appeals to me because I
learned the Tarot from a gypsy master and take my bearings from it early in the
morning every day. This underlines the
fact that what is truly worthwhile in Alice in Plunderland owes its
status to its close association with Lewis Carroll’s original work. If it were not for that, Steve McCaffery’s
Alice would be nothing but a screwed over victim I would not care to identify
with. “Screwed over” is in fact an idea
that occurs again and again in Steve McCaffery’s book in a variety of guises.
In closing, I should mention that André Breton actually
introduced Lewis Carroll to the French reading public as an early and benign
example of Surrealism. The other
examples, such as Kafka and the Marquis de Sade, represented black humour, but
Carroll’s humour, so André Breton said, was rosy pink. Steve McCaffery, or so it would seem, has
brought it more in line with the main trend of Surrealism by turning it
black. Maybe Clelia Scala’s
illustrations are, in terms of metaphor, an interesting shade of violet.
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