Of Croatian Beasts and London Artistic Feasts

'suspended'

It has been an orgy of art since I arrived back in London just over a week ago. Russian/Communism inspired exhibitions kicked off my visit as I enjoyed Red Star over Russia, Centre for Russian Music: Inside the Collections at the Barbican, and The Currency of Communism. There was no planning, just a desire to reacquaint myself with my favourite artistic haunts and, inevitably, connections started forming. Obviously I am catching the tail-end of exhibitions put on to commemorate the 1917 Russian Revolution, but it's always possible to see beyond the obvious.

Croatian Painting on Glass; and other tales

M Hodge "Bear's Dream" 2012

It's taken me a year to finally get around to this piece but it somehow seems appropriate writing about painting on glass under the clear light of the Adriatic, where colour bounces around with the sharp precision of painstakingly applied oil paint. This so-called naïve method of painting came to my attention last April when I met a modern master of the art at a British Croatian Society event. Melanie Hodge is the reason why, out of the two museums I visited in Zagreb, one of them was the Croatian Museum of Naive Art.

Seminar: Museums I have known - reflections on being a guest curator

These notes were quite difficult to write up because in the end I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. I'm seriously regretting not going to the exhibitions mentioned, and given that one of them closed early Jan 2014, there is no excuse. However I wonder if I had seen it, these notes would have become a review of the exhibition rather than an intellectual discussion about the challenges the guest curators faced in their respective shows. This was also a trial of a new lecture format; each gave a brief overview of the exhibition, and then had a ‘conversation’ where they discussed the challenges, differences, goals, ideals etc of the different venues. I bring them all together because it made better sense.

Dr Tag Gronberg immediately struck a chord with the small audience which was dotted around the large theatre in lonely isolation. She stated that writing can be solitary. Therefore when an opportunity to share research and collaborate on a project with fellow scholars arises, it's a good thing to do. Combine this with working with different types of institution and it results in new challenges and opportunities. This lecture came out of the curating experiences of two academics, Gemma Blackshaw and Leslie Topp. They joint guest curated an exhibition both at the Wellcome Collection and Wien museum called 'Madness & Modernity'. Gemma Blackshaw curated the recent 'Facing the Modern' at the National Gallery - the one I really regret not seeing.

Rothko and the Late Series: A very late review...from 2009

This review has been sitting on my bookshelf for a few years but I still think it has something of value to say about Mark Rothko. Revisiting the Tate rooms a short while back, his Murals remain some of the most monumental pieces of art I've ever seen. For me, a backdrop for contemplation and dreaming, self examination and inspiration. For others, something darker and more terrifying.

Exuberant and Orgiastic: Wyndham Lewis and his 'Kermesse'

This is a follow on from the Modernism posting and is also inspired by the current exhibition at Tate Britain on Picasso (and I may even have the Damien Hirst retrospective in mind too). It concerns an anti establishment figure from the British avant-garde. Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a controversial cosmopolitan figure, frequently at loggerheads with fellow artists, friends, critics, gallery owners, patrons and the public. What I wanted to focus on here was the decoration of London’s so called first modern night club and the creation of his influential Kermesse in 1912.

He recognised the potential of any kind of publicity very early on in his artistic and career. Though his background and education was already unconventional he cultivated an exotic appearance, with the writer Ford Maddox Ford describing his appearance in 1909 as Russian, Polish or Spanish, looking ‘every inch the genius’, ‘tall, swarthy…with romantically disordered hair, wearing a long black coat buttoned up to his chin’. Hemingway described him as ‘the nastiest man he has ever seen, looked like a frog and had the eyes of a frustrated rapist’.

Everything Wyndham Lewis said and did was designed to fight against the conservative reaction against modern radical art, Robert Chapman writes ‘Augustus John in Chiaroscuro presents Lewis as a wild mysterious figure, playing the part of an incarnate Loki, bearing the news and sowing discord with it’. Indeed, ‘harsh, sardonic and hard hitting, Lewis and his associates struck out against one and all and everyone they considered atrophied and outworn, not sparing the Cubists, Futurists or Expressionists from the ‘blast’’. His odd behaviours, sexual liaisons, uncompromising and confrontational attitude and his determination to blast the artistic and literary establishment in London guaranteed public interest and press controversy.

Strange Creatures at UCL

Yesterday took me to my first pop up art exhibition. And it’s going to take some beating in terms of both the art and the venue. Far away from the commercial luxury of the west end and the soulless white cube spaces of east London, there is nothing ordinary about the Grant Museum of Zoology.

The website tells us that it is the ‘only remaining university zoological museum in London [and] houses around 67,000 specimens, covering the whole animal kingdom. Founded in 1828 as a teaching collection, the Museum is packed full of skeletons, mounted animals and specimens preserved in fluid. Many of the species are now endangered or extinct including the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine, the Quagga, and the Dodo.’ It isn’t a large space but even without the non permanent art, there is more than enough to keep the non biologist enthralled. They have embraced interactive displays and social media so that visitors can get involved about the role of science in society and how museums should be run. The highlights of the collection for me were the skeleton of the dugong, the video of the artistic bowerbird, skeletons in the gallery and the brain coral (helpfully tagged with ‘not a brain’). The whole galleried space is crammed with curios and reminiscent of a renaissance cabinet of curiosities.

What's it worth? : Sounding out art

A few years ago I wrote a piece about the commoditisation of art and then this week an article in the Independent rekindled my interest. The story is nothing new – people have always spent large amounts of money on big name paintings. I don’t have a problem with that because it’s their money, their investment and keeps the art market interesting. Currently London’s commercial galleries can afford to experiment and are putting on some seriously thought provoking stuff, e.g., Lazarides and their Old Vic Tunnels shows.

Everyone is agreed that the majority of art, for better or worse, is a commodity that can be bought and sold for stupendous amounts of money. As the Indy article says, ‘it emerged this month that Qatar had bought ‘The Card Players’ by Cezanne for a world record $250m at the end of last year’. Writing in the late 1990s Julian Stallabrass naively noted ‘the rise of art prices in real terms through the 1980s was a sign of the commodification of the art world as a whole, not merely the result of excess funds looking for investment projects’.[1] However I think this has changed; the wealthy are looking for a safe place to invest their money. But it still makes me think, what about art you can’t put price on? The art you can experience but can’t buy? 

Mending Broken Hearts: Meaningful not mawkish

Let me put this to you straight; I don't have an issue with Valentine's Day. I am secretly an old fashioned romantic and a day in cold mid February celebrating the hotness of love is to be enthusiastically lauded. In fact knowing it to be rooted in ancient Roman feasts celebrating Juno Fructifier and Lupercalia makes it far sexier, fascinating and visceral than a semi Christian non feast day. It's more the tenuous connections commercial organisations make that get me steaming. An excuse to sell you something meaningless when your lover would rather more time with you; to simply hold hands in a park, giggle in a gallery, or something far more intimate.

This isn't going to be a tedious diatribe about the evils of commercialism (or religion). Though I retain my art critic's hat, I'm embracing and exonerating this exhibition from my usual cynicism. I'll allow them to seduce as many visitors into buying art objects for charity.

Definitions of Modernism: The New Objectivity

I have been meaning to thank Nick Lambrianou from the 'Shock of the New' course at Birkbeck College for some time. I went into that course in 2009 with a rather closed mind and during the class introduction, I laid out the challenge he faced: 'I'm a Renaissance girl. Modern art? Convince me!'.

Then I started doing research into what modernism was and the resultant effect stunned me; all this modern stuff in some ways felt more real and relevant to my life. So I set out before you (and to refresh myself) what I initially found and presented to class.

After reading and discarding many dictionary and encyclopaedia entries of the term modernism, I want to simply define it as an ethos which dominated Western 19th- and 20th-century culture – a celebration or reflection of the possibilities – or impossibilities of the present. It is impossible to define because:

Art Erotica 2012: 'It's all a bit wanky'

Sex has been very much on my mind recently. One way or another I've been confronted with a lot of sexual imagery. What with art (Johnathan Yeo), film (Shame) and a lot of people kissing around the City of London (I blame the time of year), I wondered if I'd reached sensory overload when I contemplated visiting the ArtEroticaExhibition2012 in Cork Street, W1.

Turns out I'm insatiable and there were a number of pieces with which I'd quite like to have another encounter.

This open exhibition has two aims; to showcase new talent and raise money for charity. This year was their first themed show and they wanted 'to explore the erotic in a wide variety of ways, to be a showcase for contemporary work in the genre, and to make a meaningful contribution to the genre'. With these thoughts in mind let's turn to the art.

London Art Fair - decoding Mark King

It is difficult to be unaware of the ubiquitous QR codes which are popping like some kind of technological graffiti. And without a reader they are meaningless which is what makes this piece of art so intriguing. Having resisted the need to download one, today I paid a visit to the app store. All in the name of art.

At first glance the piece is a simple clean back and white A1 print hung and stretched by unassuming bulldog clips; a clear nod to the artist's graphic design background. A design of old fashioned computer game space invaders line up mid game. One on the bottom line is missing and a shot is being fired downwards.

Look closer and suddenly these little aliens take on a new dimension. Away from the 1980s nostalgia, they are made up of any number of modern QR codes representing the block pixels of old.

So far computers are unable to 'read' pictures; so far we remain unique in this ability to decode symbols and context in art to enrich our experience of it. However to interpret what this picture is saying we require a computer to instantly read and interpret. Our human intelligence perhaps merely suggests fond emotional remembrance of these retro space invaders.

So what is the picture saying? Without scanning every single code we don't know. A random selection linked to tweets:

Environment; 'there is no real excuse for choosing to be an ignorant polluting society without respect for the ecosystems we exploit. Believe that :-)'
Friendship; 'hey I torture my friends but they deserve it'. Another came up with roughly, 'every terrorist owns a Casio watch'.
Media; 'Mainstream media - Better name is US Government Department of Propaganda and Misinformation'
Media; 'Maybe us white folks lean to be PERFECT like black folks...to hear the propaganda machine (media), the only bad people are whites'
Media; 'it's a sad DAY in America when reasonably intelligent people are called ignorant & propaganda is treated like manna from heaven'

The last three being from one invader.

A few others inevitably are broken links. This interpreting immediately adds a whole new view of the space invaders; fascinating fragments of random humanity hidden by code.

 For further information go to his blog and website

La Musica

Vibrating deep within the hall
With the thrilling stirring
Swirling notes
The musician sits in our centre;
Circles of light rippling outwards
Ribbons of melody
Colours of chords
Intense building of sound
To a vital crescendo
Leaving us breathless
Only to echo away
Leaving us illuminated, minds throbbing
Humming
Musical memories

Inspired by La Musica (1911) by Luigi Russolo