The Engine

YAYOI KUSAME RETROSPECTIVE AT THE TATE MODERN

2012-02-08T08:50:00.000-08:00

YAYOI KUSAME RETROSPECTIVE AT THE TATE MODERN

Yayoi Kusame (1929-) was born in Nagano Prefecture in a hill town in the Japanese Alps about 130 miles west of Tokyo just before the second world war. She grew up in a traditional Japanese family with a traditional set of Japanese values that maintained that a woman should complete her education, then marry and have children. However, Yayoi possessed creativity and wanted to fulfill herself through her art rather than taking on a traditional role. This meant that she soon came into direct opposition to her family and especially her mother.

Her parent's business was marketing seeds and they were very opposed to Yayoi's artistic vocation. However she managed to complete one year of art school training in Kyoto in 1948 but the constraints of family, gender and being Japanese led her rebel against these constraints and to become familiar with contemporary American culture but also the legacy of French surrealism, experimental art and the techniques of frottage found in Max Ernst and the work of the Catalan artist Joan Miro. Her work is often a symbiosis of the vegetal, physical and human and it is often marked by her own experience of war and the defeat of her country in WW2.

Kusame's work has often been compared to that of Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) and to her colleague Eva Hesse (1936-1970) and perhaps her real strength as an artist lies in her painting rather than her sculptures which do seem to resemble closely the work of Hesse, for instance. Kusame's works seem to reflect on an existence found somewhere between the mountains and the seashore since there are so many references to the maritime and the aquatic, to the sea's edge, to seaweed, tendrils, to underwater sea anemones that also resemble dildos, to floating sperm that might also be floating sea wrack, to roots that wind and wind around each other and disappear into the depths of the ocean or to the infinite horizon. Kusame has expressed her dread of both phalli and industrially produced foodstuffs hence the repetition of symbols of phalli and also mass-produced pasta which is literally stuck onto her canvases.

In 1957 Kusame moved to America at the behest of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) who she was previously in correspondence with. At first she lived in Seattle but eventually moved to New York where she became a colleague of the American artist Donald Judd, completed an important set of large abstract works presented here as the Infinity Net Paintings which were probably a response to the Abstract Expressionism of artists like Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), the then dominant aesthetic movement in America. Kusame joined the New York avante garde, her ambition was to rival the paintings of the great abstract expressionists. However she moved on swiftly from the public sphere of art museums and public competitions to the private realm of commerce, moving her preoccupations from high art to pop art. Her interests and activities embraced soft sculpture, installations, collage. By the mid 60's she had moved to the street, involving herself in 'happenings' which placed the artist at the centre of her own work rather than her earlier works which were more impersonal. She also worked on films, multi-part sculptures and eventually, by the 1980s and 1990s, to the brightly coloured phatasmagoric canvases which are the continuous diaristic renderings of what the artist sees today. She now works with acrylic paint, a temporary, fast drying medium which is the antithesis of traditional oil painting with its evocation of the work of the Great Masters.

Her sculptures evoke tentacular creatures as in Heaven and Earth (1991) and brittle mosaics as in her work Prisoner's Door (1994). Her artwork is typically eclectic, utilising a mix of mediums such as ink, ballpoint pen, watercolour, gouache and india ink. In her work Yellow Trees (1994) endless tentacles or roots are folding and unfolding through and around each other. In Sprouting (The Transmigration of the Soul) (1987) bubbling spermatozoa becomes a typical, synaptic patterning or Weeds (1996) with its infinite pattern, minimalist repetition and blank surface. The big acrylic canvases evoke brighter more buoyant work and a release from the dour abstraction of her repetitious collages of the 1970s which also summarise an entire decade of American pop art influence. The polka dot pattern that Kasume assumes throughout her work as a series of dots and nets as in I'm here but Nothing (2000/2012), a work which is a living room inverted through dim lights and the glistening coloured polka dots that cover everything.

Kasume returned to Japan in the 1970s and feeling herself unable to cope with the real world self-admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital where she lives to this day, although she somehow escaped its confines to be with us at the opening of her retrospective event at the Tate Modern, London, earlier this week. She apparently makes the journey from the hospital to her studio everyday, returning each evening. This begs a question, why did she return to Japan, to its conservative, sterile confines which were ultimately summed up by the walls of the hospital that became her home? A work like I Who Committed Suicide (1977) seems to evoke this period and Kusame said at some point that without her art she would have committed suicide. The last exhibit is the Infinity Mirror Room, an installation which she first utilised in 1965, evoking as it does the infinite regress of art that moves between the earliest memories of the artist to the very last. Perhaps that's a good place to end this retrospective because the faded remains of those artworks summarise a life lived richly in a period of vast transition and energy between two worlds. These imply both beginnings and endings, east and west, tradition and revolution, sanity and madness or better still, the sensitivity of the artist in a world desensitised to subtlety, ambiguity, carefully arranged revolutionary statements or happenings bypassed by the conduits of power summed up in her invite to have sex with President Richard Nixon in return for ending the Vietnam War. Nixon never took up the invite but he eventually had to end the Vietnam War anyway which might lead us to believe that he might as well have had sex with Kusame because as every fortunate scholar realises the truth of Robert Herrick's formula: 'gather ye rosebuds while ye may'.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London, February 2012

ANDREA HEWITT AT THE WIGMORE HALL

2011-11-27T05:54:00.000-08:00

ANDREA HEWITT AT THE WIGMORE HALL

The internationally famous Canadian pianist Andrea Hewitt performed works by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Gabriel Faure (1845-1924), Paul Dukas (1865-1935) and Albert Roussel (1869-1937) at the Wigmore Hall on Friday, 25th November, 2011. The Debussy works, including Suite Bergamasque (c.1890) and L'Isle Joyeuse (1904) all typify the impressionist style of music where there is no dominant key and harmony is the most important element.

Hewitt's performance was perfect in terms of tempo and was never circumscribed by critical or audience expectations. The works were played quite slowly so that the music should not become muddied and confused. Her interpretations of these works was warm, humane and forgiving, never machine-like or cold. She allowed few improvisations, however, which might have been appropriate in Golliwog's Cake Walk which needed a bit of jazzing up. Hewitt's attitude to the audience and the music was never calculating or cold but spontaneous and deeply felt.

Paul Murphy, Wigmore Hall, November 2011

IMAGINARY SYMBOLS OF END TIMES: THE SCULPTURE OF BARRY FLANAGAN 1965-82

2011-11-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

IMAGINARY SYMBOLS OF END TIMES: THE SCULPTURE OF BARRY FLANAGAN 1965-82

Barry Flanagan at the Tate Britain

This is a retrospective of the work of the sculpture Barry Flanagan (1941-2009). Flanagan attended St Martin's School of Art from 1964-66 but his approach to sculpture isn't essentially very academic. He uses non-conventional materials such as sand, canvas, rope, sculpted cushions, installation-like assemblages resembling landscapes or even some organic entity or animal, a blue volcano topped with an aluminium object with blunted edge which may also be a face in profile (al casb 4 '67 & aaing j gni aa 1965)). A giant gourd may also resemble sagging testacles or heaped, coloured sand accompanied by two small sacks which may also be testacles stuck on an evaporating sand penis. There's also the influence of Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) and his Pataphysics, 'the science of imaginary solutions' and the work that made Jarry famous, his 'Ubu Roi'.

There are imaginary organic objects such as distended plants, a clothesline completed by brightly coloured fabrics. The play of light and shadow, the open spaces, cream walls and sand-coloured wooden floorboards of the Tate Britain become part of the sculptures. Ropes that undulate like giant snakes among indigo sub volcanic stacks but really elongated cushions stuffed with sand as in Flanagan's work rope (gr 2sp 60) 6 '67. Piles of blankets, a yellowing canvas shot through with a pattern of bullet holes that is both concentric and eccentric. Flanagan experiments with expectations of what the public defines as sculpture, creating fluid yet transitory shapes and images.

The recurrent spiral symbol found in works like vii 78 moonthatch 1987 is reminscent of the gidouille, the spiral on the belly of Ubu Roi, Jarry's Pataphysical anti-hero. Flanagan's travails to the continent also led him to northern Italy, to an artisan community which symbolised some of the ideals of his art but he also managed to work with the marble found in that region to create works like The Road to Altissimo (1973), Ubu of Arabia (1976) and Hello cello (1976).

There are also a great many of Flanagan's paintings and they are intense, child-like, hard-edged in a sculptural sense but always imbued with Flanagan's trademark humour and playfulness. They toy with great ideas in physics and mathematics but Flanagan also hardly appears to take them seriously. I'd question whether the sequence Cup drawings i-vi (1874) really needs to be here since the effect is not one of seeming naivety but of naivety. Flanagan is a primitive artist constructing the imaginary wigwams that children hide in and the real hares that they chase on moonlit nights. In some ways he seems to mock the pretensions of high art but his works rarely become legitimate artworks except by relating the most basic sense of child-like wonderment at nature and the natural world.

This exhibition only deals with the early Flanagan (1965-82) so it ends with his depictions of hares which he gained an interest in after reading The Leaping Hare by George Ewart and David Thomson which explored the mythical attributes of the hare through history. Flanagan clearly began to find a lucrative career for he now began to work in bronze, the typical, traditional medium of the sculptor, to make his Large Leaping Hare (1982). Since he then gained respectability the aura of an anti-establishment sculptor began to fade away slightly and these large scale sculptures are just a bit over-bearing but this is only part of a really enjoyable retrospective of Flanagan's work.

Paul Murphy, the Tate Brtain, November 2011

JOHN MARTIN: APOCALYPSE at the TATE BRITAIN

2011-11-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

JOHN MARTIN: APOCALYPSE at the TATE BRITAIN

John Martin (1789-1854) was a British artist born in Newcastle into a working class family. Martin's work contrasts with that of contemporaries William Blake (1757-1827) and JMW Turner (1775-1851). Technically he was compared to Turner and his subject matter overlaps strongly with that of Blake. His reconstructions of biblical scenes offer a great urge towards verisimilitude even if there's always a hotch potch of details as in his painting The Fall of Babylon (1819). Ancient Babylon with 18th century-style ships, Babylonian soldiers in Roman uniform climbing into Victorian carriages under what seem to be Japanese bonsai trees. However, Martin wanted to be taken seriously and often provided keys and appendixes to his paintings demonstrating their links to actual history. He sought to engage with Victorian populism, which was very unfashionable among the intellectual elites but also dearly wished to be taken seriously by the art establishment.

Contemporary critics were often uncertain about Martin's art even though the general public uncritically endorsed it. Martin was also endorsed by aristocratic patrons like Prince Albert. However the Royal Academy never opened its doors to him and probably disdained the mix of populism, biblical apocalypse, sensationalism and what William Hazlitt called the 'gaudy panoramic view'. His skills are not those of the oil painter either for he commits many errors especially in using non-naturalistic colour, laying down inert blocks of paint alongside his trade mark and oft repeated lightning bolt. However, Martin was a technician with visionary scope. His basic training was in craft painting, for he had been apprenticed, but not in fine art. It's easy to see then the reasons why his art was never accepted critically but for all that Martin made a fortune, then managed to squander it.

Martin's art is grandiose, sensationalising subject matter and quasi-biblical apocalypse in his blockbuster period which began after his period of early development (1807-1820). The height of his success can be traced to the years 1816-1824 in a series of blockbuster paintings which include Belshazzar's Feast (1820), Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand still upon Gibeon (1816) and The Fall of Babylon (1819). He didn't always choose biblical subjects but even idiosyncratic or odd choices of thematic material based on popular public poetry of the time such as James Ridley's Orientalist popular fantasy Tales of the Genii (1764). He never really matched Turner in terms of technique, his approach to his subject matter pre-dates yet anticipates photography but moreso cinema. It also offers a contrast to Blake's idiosyncratic yet vivid, primitive approach. Martin seems to be like D.W.Griffith who made 'Birth of a Nation' then realised that public opinion viewed the film as racist then made 'Intolerance' which demonstrated that the film maker was actually a liberal interrogator of history. In fact Martin's painting The Fall of Babylon can be seen as an adumbration of 'Intolerance'. Because of Martin's technical failings but visionary scope he seems to anticipate the blockbuster films of our era but, as the exhibition demonstrates Martin was a showman who went out to create works for the public imagination which then went out of fashion as contemporary culture changed. Martin's work was immensely popular and large chunks of it went on travelling shows throughout Britain. The later mezzotints also ensured that his work was seen all over the world. Martin constantly circled his subject matter, endorsing then distancing himself from it. Biblical topics provided him with a good deal of his subject matter but also Milton's 'Paradise Lost' which he illustrated but he would also depict other kinds of apocalypse such as his work The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum (1822). This is an undoubtedly portentous work. It's hard not to attach the tag 'great' to it with its depiction of the death of Pliny the Elder against the backdrop of the catastrophic destruction of Pompeii in a swirl of boiling hot reds. This is great panoramic painting achieved with immense talent and obvious showmanship. For all that it encountered criticism for its populism and bad taste.

Martin experienced financial vicissitudes as the public lost interest in his work but later on managed to re-invent himself. He was therefore palpably capable of a degree of self-criticism. Martin's re-inventions were mainly in terms of technique, abandoning oil painting in favour of mezzotint from 1824-37. Mezzotint was a form of printing popular in the early Victorian era. It preceded photography but offered a similar range of effects. Martin had real dramatic, narrative skills although only one theme, destruction, or damnation, and, concomitantly, salvation. There's no evidence of a neutral middleground or even the sublimity evident in Turner's painting. Martin was an artist with one grand theme that he circled endlessly. Martin depicts crowds effectively, whether vast armies, hordes or banqueteers but seems to ignore portraiture or the individuated subject. Martin's figures are always part of a vast homogenous crowd. He therefore seems to have no interest in the individual but only in stirring, sensational public effects which deliberately worked upon an enormous God-fearing public who had a seemingly endless appetite for his work. Once Martin found his blueprint he stuck to it unlike the great masters who were capable of self-criticism and of instigating new periods throughout their lives.

Martin's key innovation was undoubtedly his work in mezzotint but he eventually abandoned these to work on vast engineering schemes which included the reform of London's sewage and transport systems. However, these ultimately came to nothing and were probably blocked by then prevailing interest groups. Martin was a reformer but also a commerical artist, a contradictory figure who summons up all the sublime, slightly tragic tropes of the era: immense endeavour, incredible energy, fervent moralising, apocalypse or salvation. He had many flaws but it is still impossible to pin down exactly what he was although he was undoubtedly an important Victorian reformer and prophet.

Eventually Martin returned to oil paint and his favourite topics which became ever more extravagent, garish and absurd. Two works depict the flood, The Eve of the Deluge (1840) and The Assuaging of the Waters (1840). The first painting was criticised for its garish colouring and artificial effects but was bought by the Prince Consort. Martin was extremely proud of the connection with the Royal Family and of his other achievements. He seems to have been extremely vain yet inherently decent, an odd combination. At the same time he painted his only realist painting, Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838, depicting a real-life moment of crisis when a peer tripped on the red carpet. Victoria is humanised by her instinctive attempt to help. Martin wanted to celebrate the new monarch who turned out happily to be an improvement on the previous two.

Martin lived in a pre-Freudian era, his work The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (1852) undoubtedly underline the brilliant qualities of Martin's art alongside the tripe, the populism, the bad taste. It's hard to see such a work being presented in our own era without a great deal of ensuing laughter but Martin was painting in the mid-Victorian era when biblical concepts of judgement (and populist homophobia) were rampant. The painting is still amazing, presaging blockbusters like Roland Emmerich's recent 'The Day after Tomorrow' and '2012' which keep alive the spirit of Martin and of the public's obvious enjoyment of grand spectacle, destruction on a vast scale alongside a grandiosly obvious, bombastic biblical moral message. His last work, the triptych The Great Day of His Wrath (1851-3), The Last Judgement and The Plains of Heaven are similarly gargantuan offering terrifying visions of apocalypse, judgement, damnation and salvation. They have to be seen to be believed. They also influenced the Hollywood animator Ray Harryhausen and other sci-fi artists of our own era and continue to do so.

Martin's life was also tainted by tragedy and crisis. His brother went tragically insane, burning down York Minster and consequentially became a patient in a mental hospital. Martin busied himself with his brother's legal defence, later visited him in hospital, bringing him artist's materials where he painted a version of Martin's own painting The Fall of Babylon with the Houses of Parliament replacing Babylon. Obviously Martin was able to harness the grandiose visions whereas his brother unfortunately succumbed to them. His son Charles was also a gifted artist, his painting of his father exhibited here provides evidence of these gifts.

This exhibition is a great introduction to the works of John Martin who pre-dated our own era but also foretold it. His work went out of fashion in the early Twentieth-century but is now part of our artistic language and heritage again.

Paul Murphy, The Tate Britain, November 2011

GERHARD RICHTER AT THE TATE MODERN

2011-10-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

GERHARD RICHTER AT THE TATE MODERN

Gerhard Richter (b 1932, Dresden, Germany) typifies German suburbia, a Dresden artist who settled in Duesseldorf the middle class twin of neighbouring working class Cologne. As an Ossi who became a Wessi Richter settles on the disturbing facts of German history but also provides a commentary on perception, ways of seeing the past through unsettling images of his father, who he hardly knew, clownishly gaping at the artist through soft focus grey tones. His Uncle Rudi in Wehrmacht gear smiles endearingly at the artist/camera, for Richter early on decided upon photorealism as an art aesthetic through the then dominant medium of black & white photography. He gravitates through this to emerge into full colour abstraction as a further plausible re-invention before returning to grey photorealism in his depiction of the German autumn, the killings or suicides of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Esslin in 1977. In a retrospective view from a decade later when the Red Army Faction, still active but infrequently so, and just before their final implosion ten years after the end of the Cold War. Richter is bringing into question art as a historical narrative form, saying that it has limited ability to focus on the event itself which is shattered, refracted and formless. Richter was never so close to the Baader-Meinhof Gruppe to be named as a member of 'the outer circle', the journalistic description of activists, intellectuals and sympathisers including such eminent kuenstlers and auteurs as Gunther Grass, Heinrich Boell and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. There's a sense in Richter's painting of an artist obsessed with historical authenticity, ways of seeing, his own supposedly objective gaze and putative involvement in the events he's depicting. That's what makes his art so suburban but ultimately dissatisfying.

The early Richter is all about readymade, blurred photographs, seascapes, landscapes and his immediate family. There is genial Uncle Rudi, who died at the front, Aunt Marianne, mentally ill and a victim of the Nazi's T4 euthanasia programme. These blurred snapshots are painted with an austerely limited palette of greys. Impasto is often employed to suggest the difference between viewing large scale works close up or far away. Two different paintings are suggested within one using this technique and Richter is also influenced by colour theory and colour charts. He rarely reaches into art history for inspiration but one notable exception is his interpretation of Titian's Annunciation. Once again Richter utilises the gauzy soft focus lens seemingly more akin to the pornographer than the artist. Richter leaves behind his grey period, which straddles the mid-60s and 1970s, beginning a series of large scale abstract canvases, a form very typical of the period. By the late 1980s Richter has returned to his grey, monochrome palette to offer a retrospective glance at the period of crisis when the Red Army Faction was a distinct threat to peace and stability in West Germany but has no sympathy for their agenda. These paintings are translucent snapshots that circle their subject, close ups that gather momentum but also offer us lurid, exploitative kitsch. The past, Richter intimates, is shifting beneath accrued perceptions. Memory is hazy, pertinent details even salient facts are shifting between the urge to forget and the tendency to revise the past in the light of the present. Baader-Meinhof dissolves into earlier history paintings: cities wrecked by aerial bombardment, formations of Mustang fighter planes, B52 bombers but also fading to a yet greyer surround. The influence of the 18th century painter Casper David Frederich (1774-1840) is also felt especially in Richter's work 'Iceberg in Mist'. Richter actually went to Greenland to find icebergs just like the ones Frederich saw in order to complete this painting.

Icebergs in mist, lambent clouds, cityscapes, the Himalayas. The camera eye pulls away from the specific to the universal. Richter's personal narrative is a narrative of mankind as well. His work hovers between realism and abstraction, Richter never fully abandons photo-realism as an aesthetic approach. Photorealism becomes a genre choice rather than a deep felt approach to his art. There's something static, disengaged (and probably Warholian) about his RAF paintings, for instance, as if the artist's objective, neutral gaze is beginning to wonder about the actual feelings he has for the whole Baader-Meinhof gang and how his feelings about Germany are changing too. Is Richter exploiting the RAF for his own narrow ends, intruding on a tragic public event with a lurid scheme guaranteed to attract public attention? Is he exploiting German history or enlivening it with a renewed debate about 'historical objectivity' and 'revisionism'.

Andreas Baader's record player concealed his gun but his crimes and politics are unconcealed. The scene of their arrest and the funeral of the three main RAF figures are awash with grey intention and change according to the viewer's distance. It’s up to the viewer to decide about his or her own feelings and about Richter's too.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London, October 2011

POSTMODERNISM: STYLE AND SUBVERSION at the Victoria & Albert Museum

2011-10-25T13:02:00.001-07:00

POSTMODERNISM: STYLE AND SUBVERSION at the Victoria & Albert Museum

The curators of Postmodernism have traced the origins of the so-called Postmodern movement back to the '60s, to the work of Ettore Sottsas (1917-2007) and Alessandro Mendini (1931- ). The focus on radical design and dystopian possiblities is reminiscent of some of the typical movements of the former part of the 20th century and Postmodernism does seem to be an outcrop (or a barren outcrop) of both Surrealism and Futurism (which also originated in Italy). The exhibition binds a host of diverse artists, architects, alternate movements to it's thesis that Postmodernism was a driving force in culture from the 60s onwards, eventually feeding into the mass culture of the 1980s before ultimately dissipating.

Postmodernism is presented as binding together different cultural possibilities such as the typifying admixture of high art, classicism and pop culture owing aesthetic loyalty only to the next hollow cliche to be circumvented. In its earliest format it tended to sweep away the still-persisting Modernists in cultural wars generally more bitterly fought out than the ones concurrently happening between Capitalists and Communists in the Cold War. Postmodernism was quintessentially the artwork of the bricoleur. The social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss defined bricolage as 'oddments left over from human endeavours'. Postmodernism is a cultural lego kit built out of bricolage, pastiche, irony and homage, even homage of a sneering, elitest, condescending kind. The movement was internationalised incorporating figures as diverse as the archtiect Frank O'Gehry (b 1929 - ), Tudanori Yokoo (b 1931 - ) and Pieter de Bruyne (1931-87). Eventually Postmodernism modulated through a series of re-inventions: firstly as Strada Novissima, which speaks for itself, Studio Alchymia (Milan: 1978) and Memphis (1981) who's potent image was of founder member artists in a boxing ring. It was defined by its critics as an 'avante garde of reversed fronts' (Jurgen Habermas).

The Postmodern objects themselves deserve some attention. There are toys with abstract planes and block colours, toasters and vacuum cleaner prototypes. There's a Madonna with jigsaw puzzle colouring but the colours dwell upon the varying planes that logically, unerringly bind the eye into the image. There's a surreal metallic object with a copy of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream scrawled on the side as a kind of afterthought saying perhaps that abject neurosis can be a fashion too. There's also a pontillist chair which intimates camouflage within a previous, defunct aesthetic. The names allied to these objects are Bernhard Schobinger (b1946), Gaetano Pesce (b 1939), Danny Lune (b 1955), Heinz Landers (b 1961), Cinzia Ruggeri (b 1945), Michele de Lucchi (b 1945), Nathalie du Pasquier (b 1957) and George Sowden (b 1942) one of the few British artists to be included in the exhibition.

Surprisingly film is mentioned rather than foregrounded. Ridley Scott's 'Bladerunner' which presents a dystopian future, borrowings from earlier films such as Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' a slick aesthetic of decaying cities, replicants, empathy testing and androids all lifted from the original Phillip K Dick novel. Two clips emerge from the film, the opening sequence where the surface of a city is adumbrated distinctly like the surface of the moon and, a later sequence, the death of Zhora, who crashes bloodily through sets of glass and multitudinious mannequins. 'Bladerunner' is a Postmodern re-boot of Fritz Lang's original film 'Metropolis' with the android Zhora replacing the robotic woman Maria, it represents the triumph of style over substance. The death of Zhora typifies the film as the mannequins imply the androids, seeming human beings devoid of life, of actual empathy.

The exhibition ultimately dwells upon pop music as the vehicle of Postmodernism. Some graphic artists and pop musicians sought to incorporate the European avante garde of the early part of the 20th century. Wassily Kandinsky's incorporation of music in art adorned the cover of The Damned's album 'Music for Pleasure', for instance. Although the exhibition claims that Postmodernism dissolved the boundaries between the avante-garde and mass culture the truth is that the avante garde is only referenced when it had been safely dead for a long time. Music critics of the era focussed on Postmodernism as a sterile confession of defunct creativity, a confession of creative paralysis, a criticism that became more common and plaintive as the movement progressed. Other artists referenced are Klaus Nomi and the video of his song Lightning Strikes. Wonderful, undoubtedly bizarre as Nomi's opera singing training manages to combine a pop music idiom with a science fiction aesthetic, an undoubtedly mad suit of glossy plastic fabric, a plastic bow tie and excessive make up combining to create another hollow Postmodern conundrum. There's David Byrne's big suit from Talking Heads 'Stop Making Sense' tour, videos of Devo's 'Whip it' and Laurie Anderson's synth music sounding the artist's earliest experiences. The exhibition dwells on Grace Jones seemingly futuristic or neo-fascist slant on black power combined with androgyny and an amazing bodily transformation into a plastic sculpture which is jarring, grotesque, seeming to confirm stereotypes rather than challenging them. As a witty, final Postmodern conundrum Jones is the finale of the exhibition and Postmodernism itself, the trend of yesterday now labelled, catalogued as a museum exhibit.

We might surmise that Postmodernism was a bold attempt to stave off change with daring brands of incorporation. It seemed to be bold, daring, imaginative, new, avante garde but it also resembled an artifical attempt to resucitate capitalist culture at a point when it seemed to have become vapid, lifeless and exhausted. This false optimism is something that the exhibition expertly comments on as a running critique accompanies the many and varied exhibits that complete this amazing exhibition.

Paul Murphy, The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, October 2011

THE VORTICIST MOVEMENT at the Tate Britain

2011-07-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

Monday, 18 July 2011
THE VORTICIST MOVEMENT at the Tate Britain
The Vorticist Movement flourished in Britain in the years immediately before and during WW1, culminating in the second and last edition of Blast, the movement's journal and the death of one its major luminaries/activists, the sculptor Henri Gaudier Brzeska (1891-1915) in 1915. The American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and the Canadian artist Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) provided the main dynamic to the group's collective ethos which was aggressive, powerful, incendiary but also adolescent and arrogant.

The hysterical manifesto prose style of Blast 1 is unpalatable, unbearably arrogant, bullish, extreme, harsh, verging on angry fascistic ravings (for Pound and Lewis were both to drift to the extreme right after WW1).

The movement is paralleled with the Russian Constructivist art movement and Italian Futurism, illegitimate children of the Great War perhaps. Blast 1 is characterised by its hysterical, hilarious, extreme manifesto (the manifesto was the favoured summary of any avante garde art movement in this period and still persists. Take for instance the recent Stuckist manifesto.):

1. Beyond action and reaction we would establish ourselves.

2. We start from opposite statements of a chosen world. Set up violent structure of adolescent clearness between two extremes.

3. We discharge ourselves on both sides.

There's more but this offers an overall impression of the group's writing, simultaneously doing the fingers at the Establishment while also being inherently more conforming and obedient than its members.

Women such as Julie Dismorr and Helen Sanders were central figures of the movement but most of their work has been lost, as the exhibition tells us. Perhaps more could have been made of their involvement even though the overall impression that the movement gave was its hardness, adolescent outlook, arrogant, narrow-minded, male. Presumably Pound failed to transpose his background in small town, mid America to the cultural metropolis of London or Paris as both he and Lewis paradoxically harked after elites while esching elitism but Vorticism is not just their story.

Some of the key locations of the movement were the Rebel Art Centre in London founded by Wyndham Lewis, the Dore Galleries in New Bond Street, where some of the first exhibitions of Vorticist art were arranged, the La Tour Eiffel Restaurant in Percy Street, central London, a popular haunt of the Vorticists and the Camera Club. These are detailed by the exhibition as the movement moved restlessly from location to location.

The Great English Vortex ended as suddenly as it began with only two copies of Blast ever produced yet it managed to establish, in embryo, the course of 20th century culture, the poetry of TS Eliot and Ezra Pound, Lewis's paintings and writing. Other marginal figures such as Richard Nevinson and Frederick Etchells are also celebrated as intrinsic rebels within seeming outward conformists. Their subject was the tragedy of WW1 as futurist images melt into lines of infantry, trenches and all the needful devices of death and destruction.

The formula of historical retrospectives at the Tate Britain is now faintly predictable, perhaps needing more energy or engagement to make us think a bit more deeply about the subject matter depicted.

Paul Murphy, Tate Britain, July 2011

dear lorraine

2011-06-17T02:11:00.001-07:00

Hi Lorraine,

yesterday I went to see a new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 which more or less covers the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris and then Oscar Wilde and the aesthetes. The aesthetes were a loose movement rebelling against the stuffy ethos of the Royal Academy and the Establishment. Of course their posturings were regarded as ridiculous, silly and vain. Oscar Wilde became their emblem, the movement was discredited for two generations after his death. William Morris advocated beauty in our everyday lives and began the movement for interior decor which until then was restricted to the homes of the rich. He is the reason why we have flowery carpet patterns, wallpaper and many other intricately designed ordinary artifacts.

I'll write more later.

Paul

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

2011-05-31T14:08:00.000-07:00

CAVE of FORGOTTEN DREAMS (dir Werner Herzog)

I went to see 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' by Werner Herzog yesterday with a friend from Belfast. It’s an interesting work in 3D but becomes a bit predictable after the initial impact although I'd recommend it, but cautiously. Interestingly those early men played the flute (constructed from a vulture's hollow wing bone) and understood the pentatonic scale. One of the researchers played The Star Spangled Banner (just like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble...).

The cave was littered with the skulls of cave bears that inhabited the cave long after those cave men came to make their paintings but, honestly, I was a bit confused about the time scale. Herzog was at pains to point out that the cave wasn't a fraud and that he hadn't completed the paint job an hour or so before with his many bemused Igor’s but that it was actually done tens of thousand of years ago. The lime scale that covered everything could be accurately dated, according to Herzog, by dipping it into a solution of coca cola and vodka, then spreading it out on one thigh which then began to turn green. This proved the absolute accuracy of Herzog's calculations.

KELVIN CORCORAN: HOTEL SHADOW: SHEARSMAN BOOKS: 2010

2011-05-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

KELVIN CORCORAN: HOTEL SHADOW: SHEARSMAN BOOKS: 2010

Kelvin Corcoran is possessed of several preoccupations in his new collection Hotel Shadow. He's clearly a fan of Ezra Pound, mostly he attempts Poundian effects, assembling arcane knowledge of ancient Greek civilisation or poems just loosely imitating and/or praising Pound.

It seemed to me that Corcoran is a writer with nothing to say, witless, styless with no really original style or content. The Greek stuff (Corcoran namedrops Greek thinkers and poets as if merely repeating the names Pythagoras, Socrates, Hesiod actually impresses us that Corcoran knows their thoughts or books. Why does he do this? His strategy is predictable, vain and meaningless.) is very tedious indeed and has been done better by a plethora of orthodox scholars.

Furthermore, it never seems that anything happens to Corcoran the man. Does he fall in love, feel bitter ennui or even enjoy a good meal? Is he connected at all to the lives of others? There's never a point where Corcoran's poems say anything at all about his own life, but the writer probably wants to hide behind his own verbose ravings and his execrable, meaningless ramblings about the ancient Greeks or Ezra Pound.

I'm unsure what Corcoran intends us to take from this collection but its not a collection anyone but the author could like. If Corcoran intends to please himself then he's done a good job. He's written a lot of collections already and should know better by now or has not been told: he is not a writer or any kind but let's see more of his work so that it can be consigned to the rubbish heap of history.

Paul Murphy

WATERCOLOURS: TATE BRITAIN

2011-05-27T05:05:00.001-07:00

WATERCOLOURS: TATE BRITAIN

Watercolours are usually accorded the status of a conservative medium as opposed to oils that achieve permanence and magnificent tones and lustre. Watercolours are known for their portability, immediacy, durability. Watercolour is a kind of early pre-camera, extending the possiblities of paint into fulfilling cartographic functions as well as depictions of terrain, fortifications. Their usage for military purposes from the late Medieval period onwards is documented in this exhibition as is their use by naturalists.

Naturalists also found watercolours a convenient medium for use in the field, abroad in inhospitable or difficult terrain for pragmatic, functional purposes but they could also be quintessentially painterly in their expressive usages beyond simply mapping terrain or depicting an orchid. Watercolours also documents the use of the medium by war artists, paintings of soldiers (after Waterloo and WW1) with grim wounds and also of battlefields intimates the range of usages beyond the merely aesthetic.

Watercolours is connected together by chronological and genre strands but also by the inter-connections found between individual artists and the appearance of alternate painting genres such as Orientalism. Richard Dadd somehow coalesces with Samuel Palmer. Incidentally paintings from earlier exhibitions such as Orientalism seem to appear as if part of a vast strategy of re-cycling of earlier exhibitions by the Tate Britain.

Watercolours is at pains to say that watercolour is a serious artform finding some banal examples from the likes of Tracey Emin who has once again bullied her way into a major retrospective. There are samples from the work of Turner whose late watercolours are informed as much by his experiments in an early kind of impressionism as by his failing eyesight. My overall impression of Watercolours is that it could have been much fresher and invigorating and could have arrived at more interesting conclusions and posed better questions to the viewer.

Paul Murphy, Tate Britain, May 2011

Damien Hirst

2011-04-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

Damien Hirst

Thursday 5 April – Sunday 9 September 2012

Press release: 3 March 2011

Press Release
3 March 2011

Damien Hirst
5 April – 9 September 2012 (Press view: 3 April 2012)
Sponsored by the Qatar Museums Authority
Tate Modern
Open every day from 10.00 – 18.00 and late until 22.00 on Friday and Saturday
For public information number please print 020 7887 8888

In 2012, Tate Modern will present the first substantial survey of Damien Hirst’s work ever held in the UK. Hirst is widely regarded as one of the most important artists working today and has created some of the most iconic works in recent history. This exhibition will provide a journey through two decades of Hirst’s inventive practice.

Damien Hirst first came to public attention in London in 1988 when he conceived and curated Freeze, an exhibition of his own work and that of his friends and fellow Goldsmiths College students, staged in a disused London warehouse. In the nearly quarter of a century since that pivotal show, Hirst has become one of the most influential artists of his generation.

Bringing together over seventy of the artist's seminal works, the exhibition will include sculptures from the early 1990s: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, in which he suspended a shark in formaldehyde and Mother and Child Divided, a four- part sculpture of a bisected cow and calf. Also on show will be important vitrines, such as A Thousand Years 1990, in which the cycle of life is represented by a cow's head, flies and insect-o-cutor. Alongside these sculptures will be cabinets displaying rows of pills, instruments and medical packaging, as well as paintings made throughout Hirst's career from his spot, spin, butterfly and fly series. In addition, two major installations will be on view: In and Out of Love 1991, not shown in its entirety since its creation, and Pharmacy 1992.

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, UK. He lives and works in London and Devon. He is one of the most prominent artists to have emerged from the British art scene in the 1990s. Hirst’s exploration of imagery is notable for its strong associations to life and death, and to belief and value systems.

Damien Hirst has participated in numerous group exhibitions including the Venice Biennale in 1993 and 2003; Twentieth Century British Sculpture, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1996; Extreme Abstraction, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 2005; Into Me / Out of Me, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2006; Re-Object, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2007 and Color Chart: Reinventing Color 1950 to Today, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008. Solo exhibitions include Internal Affairs, ICA London, 1991; Astrup Fearnley Museum Oslo, 1997; The Agony and the Ecstasy, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2004; Museum of Fine Arts Boston 2005; For the Love of God Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2008 and Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 2010/1. He received the DAAD fellowship in Berlin in 1994 and won the Turner Prize in 1995.

Damien Hirst is curated by Ann Gallagher, Head of Collections, British Art, with Maeve Polkinhorn, Assistant Curator. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye

2011-04-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye

Press release: 4 March 2011

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye is a major exhibition which will radically reassess the work of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944). It will propose a ground breaking dialogue between the artist’s paintings and drawings made in the first half of the 20th century and his often overlooked interest in the rise of other media during that time, including photography, film and the re-birth of stage production.

Few other modern artists are better known and yet less understood than Munch. He is often presented primarily as a 19th century painter, a Symbolist or a pre-Expressionist, but this exhibition will aim to show instead how he emphatically engaged with 20th century concerns that were thoroughly representative of the modernity of the age. It will feature around sixty carefully-selected paintings and fifty photographs, alongside his lesser-known filmic work. These will reveal Munch’s interest in current affairs and how his paintings were inspired by scenes he had observed in the street or incidents reported in the press or on the radio. Far from confining himself to the studio, he frequently worked outdoors to capture scenes of everyday life.

Organised in close cooperation with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Munch Museet in Oslo, the show will also examine how Munch often reworked and repeated a single motif. It will gather together numerous versions of his most celebrated works, such as The Sick Child 1885-1927 and Puberty 1886-1916, from collections including the Gothenberg Konstmuseum and the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo. Like other painters such as Bonnard and Vuillard, Munch adopted photography in the early years of the 20th century and his photographic activities were largely focused on self-portraiture, which he obsessively restaged and reworked. Self-portraits also lay at the heart of Munch’s painted oeuvre. In the 1930s he developed an eye disease and made poignant works which charted the effects of his degenerating sight. His last work, which will be on display, was one such self-portrait.

The use of prominent foregrounds and strong diagonals are among the formal qualities which particularly distinguish Munch’s work. These clearly reference the advancing technological developments in cinema and photography of the era. Creating the illusion of actors moving towards the spectator, as if looming out from a cinema screen, this pictorial device can be seen in many of Munch’s most innovative works such as On the Operating Table 1902-03 and The Yellow Log 1912 from the Munch Museet, Oslo. Munch was also keenly aware of the visual effects brought on by the introduction of electric lighting on theatre stages, and used this to create ethereal drama in, for example, his 1907 Green Room series. The theme of the duality of presence and erasure is further explored elsewhere in his work, where matter takes on an ephemeral or ghostlike appearance in key works such as The Sun 1913-15 and Starry Night 1922-24.

The exhibition will be curated by Nicholas Cullinan, Curator of International Modern Art at Tate Modern. The exhibition will be presented at Centre Pompidou, Paris from September 2011 to January 2012 and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt from February to May 2012.

WATERCOLOUR

2011-04-29T05:25:00.001-07:00

Watercolour

Tate Britain Linbury Galleries
Wednesday 16 February – Sunday 21 August 2011
Admission £12.70/£14.00 with Gift Aid ( £10.90/£12.00 with Gift Aid concessions)
Public information number: 020 7887 8888.

Press release: 14 February 2011

Tate Britain presents a fresh assessment of the history of watercolour painting in Britain from the Middle Ages through to the present day. This major exhibition shows over 200 works including pieces by historic artists such as William Blake, Thomas Girtin and JMW Turner, through to modern and contemporary artists including Patrick Heron, Peter Doig and Tracey Emin. Spanning 800 years and celebrating the variety of ways watercolour has been used, it shows how important the medium is within British art.

Drawing out a grand history which traces the origins of watercolour back to medieval illuminated manuscripts, the exhibition reassesses the commonly held belief that the medium first flourished during a ‘golden age’ of British watercolour, from roughly 1750-1850. It reveals an older tradition evident in manuscripts, topography and miniatures. It also challenges the notion that watercolour is singularly British by showing some key watercolours from continental Europe which influenced British artists, such as examples by Anthony van Dyck and Wenceslaus Hollar.

Watercolour is the most accessible of all paint media, used widely by professionals and amateurs alike. Unlike oil paint which is viscous and slow-drying, watercolour is clean, cheap and easy to use. Before the advent of photography it was used primarily for recording eye-witness accounts. Artists used the medium because it was so versatile and portable. This exhibition shows the wide range of contexts in which watercolour was employed including documentation of exotic flora and fauna on Captain Cook’s voyages, spontaneous on-the spot-recordings of landscapes by artists such as Turner and John Sell Cotman and on the battlefield by war artists such as William Simpson and Paul Nash.

Often thought of as a medium for traditional representational painting, notably of landscape, the sea and picturesque buildings, this exhibition overturns such assumptions by introducing work by contemporary artists who have reinterpreted the medium including Andy Goldsworthy, Ian McKeever and Anish Kapoor. It also shows how these contemporary pieces form part of a longer tradition where watercolour has been used for visionary or abstract purposes with examples ranging from Blake through to the Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolists and Neo-Romantics in more recent times.

Ranging from loose, vibrant washes of colour to precise draughtsmanship, wet sponging to scratching out, the great variety of watercolour techniques are surveyed in this exhibition. It shows how exhibition culture of the 19th century inspired artists to vie with one another in the pyrotechnics of sophisticated techniques, Turner raising the stakes with new methods and levels of showmanship. This set a precedent for later painters such as A.W. Hunt, Arthur Melville and artists today who continue to push the boundaries of what the medium can do.

Watercolour is part of The Great British Art Debate supported by The National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. The exhibition is curated by a group of Tate curators headed by Alison Smith, Head of British Art to 1900. The exhibition is also accompanied by an illustrated book produced by Tate Publishing.

Joan Miro: THE LADDER OF ESCAPE: Tate Modern: April 2011

2011-04-19T09:45:00.003-07:00

Joan Miro: THE LADDER OF ESCAPE: Tate Modern: April 2011

Joan Miro (1893-1983) is the least known of Spain’s twentieth-century triumvirate of great artists: Picasso, Dali, Miro. This is the first retrospective of Miro in London since 1964, quite a long time then since any notable interest in Miro’s work, but now he is clearly a part of history rather than making it.

Miro’s career straddled two centuries, born in the late 19th century but living into the latter part of the twentieth, he witnessed the great conflagration of the Spanish Civil War but also the Great War and WW2. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and Miro’s response to it shaped his career as it did Picasso’s and Dali’s to a lesser extent. Furthermore his career went on after the fall of the Republic and his subsequent exile.

Miro’s approach to art was to dissolve his own formal constraints once he had attained them, therefore his work passed through a kind of negative evolution from complexity to utter simplicity to bold late anti-art statements which he, being Miro and totally established, could formulate and complete. A younger artist would have been laughed out of any art gallery for presenting such works.

There are recurrent symbols, such as the ladder symbolizing philosophical propositions perhaps to be discarded once they are surmounted, a dog barking at the moon symbolizing futility, or a Catalan peasant’s cap summoning up Miro’s connection to the forces of Catalan language and nationalism, a nationalism ultimately suppressed by General Franco. Franco insisted on authoritarian rule by Madrid’s Cortes, suppression of regionalism, alternate language or nationalist movements and, of course, repression of the Left. These forces were mostly represented by the cities of Barcelona and Madrid, the regions of Catalunya and El Pais Basco.

Miro’s influences were the German-French painter, poet, sculptor Jean Arp (1886-1966), the surrealist Andre Masson (1896-1987), Paul Eluard (1895-1952) co-founder of the surrealist movement and Andre Breton (1896-1966) principal initiator of the surrealist movement. Miro’s art evolved from plastic post-realism to more politically conscious work in the Franco era plus Catalan Modernism, an art closely connected to Miro’s Catalan roots but also representing a cosmopolitan consciousness and intellectual awareness extending far beyond Catalunya.

Miro’s work is quite liquid yet also conceptual. Artists usually create depth of field through their use of the rules of perspective but in Miro’s early work colour contrasts create depth but also intimate a cold, abstractness devoid of strong feeling. In his later stark canvases, a single colour, usually a cold blue but sometimes a red or yellow, dominate the canvas alongside one or two black dots. It is as if Miro discovered colour again in the post-Renaissance era.

In later life Miro exhibited rarely in Spain, his preferred art locations being Paris and New York. He seems to have disowned Spain as a recalcitrant, backwards dump shunned by most politically aware people. Spain’s isolation and Miro’s painful political progress meant that Spanish people were unable to share in or even truly appreciate their own artistic heritage.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London

SUSAN HILLER AT THE TATE BRITAIN

2011-02-18T14:45:00.000-08:00

SUSAN HILLER AT THE TATE BRITAIN, March 2011

Susan Hiller (born Florida, USA, 1940) is an American artist who relocated to London some thirty years ago after a brief flirtation with academia, leaving a PhD thesis on anthropology unfinished. Hiller possibly found academe too constricting, too rational for the purposes of creativity. Hiller’s work is concerned with the unconscious which was purportedly discovered by Sigmund Freud, but also seeks to related the unconscious to art & creativity, religion, magic, the paranormal and other modes of modern discourse that perhaps exists now in an era of uncertainty where religious precepts being overturned yet not quite convincingly replaced by the next thing. In this sense her work hardly seems more informed than does the poetry of WB Yeats, informed as it was by all sorts of Occult experiments, alternate, esoteric wisdom and experiments, items such as planchettes, ouija boards all referenced by Hiller in the various installations and exhibits presented here.

Hiller completely renounces traditional ways of making art. There are no drawings, no oil paintings, acrylics or watercolors on show here. Each installation seeks to re-draw the boundaries of art, yet Hiller has also, to some extent, forgotten what the roots of art are, those roots being traditional practice. That’s not necessarily a problem, yet Hiller, at times, almost seems to be sawing off the abstract branch she’s sitting on. For instance her installation Psi Girls juxtaposes five films featuring youthful female psychics who can move objects at will or set things alight or cause temporary spontaneous combustion. The five film excerpts are all given a colour wash rather than being presented in their original colour or black and white formats. An entirely new soundtrack has been inserted which seems to be a percussion track of some kind. The work is entirely bizarre; no attempt is made to mediate the bizarreness between artist and audience. It’s all left to hang weirdly distended as some social comment or odd sideways joke. But really Hiller is examining two connected things. Firstly, the art of cinematic special effects; secondly feminine otherness which become entwined in this explosive piece. Hiller will hardly be forgiven by purists but do we care?

Hiller is very much in love with British popular culture; fairground attractions, postcards, Punch & Judy shows whose bizarreness, she believes, offers us ways to view the unconscious mind in terms of Freud’s achievements. She’s made an amazing collection of postcards from around Britain all united under the rubric ‘rough seas’. (Some of the seas seemed rougher than others; in fact some seemed of Tsunami proportions.) She’s made this collection and presents it as an unfolding social document which is at once a record and also a plausible geographical/ historical mapping of rough seas and British coastal resorts. There’s something indefinable about this work which retains some uncanny or hilarious element, as if the pattern Hiller’s creating aims at something other or external. Indeed the uncanny is what Hiller’s work is all about. She believes, for instance, that sound recordings allow us to communicate with the dead, just as photography and film making allows us to visualise the dead, not in memory, but on a white screen. That's true and both photography and sound recording have an unmistakable uncanny element which may have something to do with human beliefs in eternity and the immortality of the soul, which can now be captured forever (or as long as the film stock survives). In her work Magic Lantern (1987) Hiller juxtaposes the flickering lights cast upon the screen, their after reflection with the ghostly voices one Russian investigator hears in tape recordings of silence in empty rooms. We hear what are purportedly the words of Winston Churchill then an unknown 'ghost' from the Black Forest in Germany speaks. At one point the voice whispers the name James Joyce. This has to be a weird parody or a send up, but whichever it is, it happens to be very funny indeed. The other exhibitions such as the Victorian memorials to heroic people who died in the service of rescuing others are also offbeat but absolutely human in their simultaneous emphasis on unsentimental nostalgia and memory. The Punch and Judy show is also unbelievably potent as the images play out and Judy cries 'wicked, wicked, wicked' as Mr Punch beats the baby's brains out with his truncheon/club.

The Susan Hiller exhibition is highly recommended to those who want to see and experience the cutting edge of conceptual art.

Paul Murphy, Tate Britain, London

SUSAN HILLER AT THE TATE BRITAIN

2011-02-18T14:09:00.001-08:00

Press Release
27 October 2010

Susan Hiller
Supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
1 February – 15 May 2011 (Press view: 31 January 2011)
Tate Britain, Level 2
Admission £11 (9.50 concessions)
Open daily 10.00 – 18.00 and until 22.00 on the first Friday of every month for Late at Tate
For tickets visit www.tate.org.uk/tickets or call 020 7887 8888

Susan Hiller (b 1940) is one of the most influential artists of her generation. This major survey exhibition at Tate Britain will provide a timely focus on a selection of her key works, including many of the pioneering mixed-media installations and video projections for which she is best known. It will be the largest presentation of her work to date, providing a unique opportunity to follow her exploration of dreams, memories and supernatural phenomena across a career of almost four decades.

Emerging as an artist in the early 1970s, Hiller’s output has taken many different forms. Her works however often derive from a similar process of collecting, cataloguing and restaging cultural artefacts and experiences. This exhibition will bring together key examples of this practice, with which the artist highlights the subjectivity of perception and imagination. Enquiries/Inquiries 1973-5, for example, exposes the inconsistencies found in comparing an American and a British encyclopaedia, while Magic Lantern 1987 uses converging projections of coloured light to create after-images in the mind’s eye. On other occasions, Hiller’s work excavates hidden layers of cultural history, whether as recordings of extinct languages or as collections of British seaside postcards. In the mixed-media installation Monument 1980-1, the viewer is invited to sit on a park bench and listen to a tape of the artist’s voice, while looking at photographs of a neglected Victorian memorial. In bringing together these diverse works, the exhibition will allow visitors to survey the many ways Hiller’s unique approach has been used to explore meaning, memory and perception.

The exhibition will also focus on Hiller’s interest in the subconscious or unconscious mind. From early in her career, she explored these themes by collecting the memories of dreams and by using ‘automatic writing’, performed as a continuous stream of consciousness. This investigation into the undercurrent of human thought or vision was later expressed in installations such as Belshazzar’s Feast / The Writing on the Wall 1983-4. Sitting at the heart of the exhibition, it takes the form of a living room environment, in which a glowing TV screen shows images of a burning fire, accompanied by a mysterious, hypnotic soundtrack. More recent work continues this interest in visionary and supernatural experiences, such as Psi Girls 1999, a five-screen projection featuring clips from Hollywood movies about young women with telekinetic powers, and the compelling audio-sculpture Witness 2000, in which a cloud of hanging audio speakers offers the visitor hundreds of accounts of extraterrestrial encounters.

Susan Hiller was born in Florida, USA in 1940. She studied towards a PhD in anthropology in New Orleans before becoming disillusioned with academia. She moved to London in 1969 and began her career as an artist, first exhibiting her work in 1973. She continues to live and work in Britain and has been the subject of many exhibitions, including at the ICA, London in 1986; Tate Liverpool in 1996; and BALTIC, Gateshead in 2004.

The exhibition is curated by Ann Gallagher, Head of Collections (British Art), Tate, with Sofia Karamani, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain. The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue published by Tate Publishing.

For further information contact Duncan Holden / Alex O’Neill, Tate Press Office
Call 020 7887 4939/8732 Email pressoffice@tate.org.uk Visit www.tate.org.uk

SUSAN HILLER AT THE TATE BRITAIN

2011-02-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

31 January 2011

Susan Hiller

1 February – 15 May 2011
Tate Britain

Supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Press Information

• List of Works
• Related Events
• Visitor Information

For further information, please contact Duncan Holden / Alex O’Neill
Call 020 7887 8732/4939 Email pressoffice@tate.org.uk Visit www.tate.org.uk
List of Works

Dedicated to the Unknown Artists
1972–6
305 postcards, charts and maps mounted on 14 panels; book, dossier
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Painting Blocks
1970–84
Oil on canvas, cut and bound with thread into blocks
Courtesy the artist
Courtesy the artist Gimpel Fils, London
Courtesy the artist Robin Klassnik, Matt’s Gallery, London

Hand Grenades
1972
Ashes of paintings made in 1969, 12 glass jars, rubber stoppers, labels, Pyrex bowl
Private Collection, New York

Big Blue
1976
Oil on canvas (1973), cut and bound in a book, slide
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design
Richard Brown Baker Fund for Contemporary British Art

Work in Progress
1980
Installation of thread works, made from deconstructed painting
Courtesy the artist

Dream Mapping
1974
7 notebooks
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Sisters of Menon
1972/9
4 L-shaped panels: blue pencil on A4 paper with typed labels (1972)
4 panels: typescripts and gouache on paper (1979)
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

10 Months
1977–9
Ten black and white composite photographs and 10 captions
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Acquisition 2007 with means from The Second Museum of Our Wishes

Midnight, Baker Street
1983
C-type prints enlarged from handworked photobooth images
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London

Monument
1980–1
41 photographs, park bench with audio component
Duration 14 minutes 23 seconds
Tate. Purchased 1994

Magic Lantern
1987
3 channel 35 mm slide projection with sound, synchronised
Duration 12 minutes
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on Your Wall
1983–4
Video with sound, 12 collages, interior furnishings
Duration 21 minutes 52 seconds
Tate. Purchased 1984

From the Freud Museum
1991–6
Vitrine containing 50 boxes, video
Duration 15 minutes
Tate. Purchased 1998

An Entertainment
1990
4 channel video installation with sound, synchronised
Duration 25 minutes 59 seconds
Tate. Purchased 1995

Voyage on a Rough Sea: Homage to Marcel Broodthaers
2009
20 digital prints
Private Collection, London

Voyage: Homage to Marcel Broodthaers
2009
24 digital prints
Private Collection, St Moritz

Auras: Homage to Marcel Duchamp
2008
50 digital prints
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Levitations: Homage to Yves Klein
2008
150 digital prints in 25 framed composites
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

The Tao of Water: Homage to Joseph Beuys
1969–2010
Felt-lined cabinet, felt squares, bottles of water collected from holy wells
Private Collection, London

Psi Girls
1999
5 channel video projection with sound, sychronised
Duration 15 minutes
Tate. Presented by Digby Squires 2004, accessioned 2007

The Last Silent Movie
2007
Single channel projection, with sound
Duration 20 minutes
24 etchings on paper
British Council Collection

Witness
2000
Approximately 400 speakers, 10 audio tracks, each with multiple recordings; wires, lights
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Enquiries/Inquiries
1973–5
2 carousels, each with 80 slides; neon sign
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

The J. Street Project
2002-5
Single channel projection with sound
Duration 67 minutes
Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Related Events

Visit www.tate.org.uk or call 020 7887 8888 for more information and to book tickets.

Susan Hiller: Curator’s Talk
Friday 25 March 2011, 13.00 –14.00
Clore Auditorium, £5
Ann Gallagher, curator of the Susan Hiller exhibition, discusses the artist’s process of collecting and restaging cultural artefacts and experiences.

Susan Hiller Conference
Saturday 7 May 2011, 10.00 –17.30
Clore Auditorium, £25 (£15 concessions)
In conjunction with the Susan Hiller exhibition, this conference will examine interrelated themes in Hiller’s work across four decades.

Visitor Information

Address
Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG

Public Information
Call 020 7887 8888 / Email visiting.britain@tate.org.uk

Exhibition Hours
Daily 10.00  18.00 (last admissions 17.00)
Open until 22.00 on the first Friday of every month for Late at Tate

Ticket Information
Admission £11 (£9.50 concessions) including Gift Aid or £10 (£8.50 concessions)
Book online at www.tate.org.uk/britain or call 020 7887 8888

Tate Shops
Catalogues, books, posters, cards and gifts
Open daily 10.00  18.00
Visit www.tate.org.uk/shop or call 020 7887 8888

Café and Restaurant
Tate Britain Café open daily 10.00  18.00
Tate Espresso bar open daily 10.00  18.00 (Manton Entrance)
Rex Whistler Restaurant open for breakfast 10.00  11.30, lunch 11.30  15.00 and
afternoon tea 15.15  18.00
To reserve a table call 020 7887 8825 or email britain.restaurant@tate.org.uk

Transport
Tube: Pimlico (Victoria Line), Westminster (Jubilee/District and Circle Lines)
Buses: 87, 88, C10; also 2, 3, 36, 159, 185, 436 and 507 stop nearby
Rail: Vauxhall Station
Tate to Tate Boat: This service runs every 40 minutes between Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
Tickets are available from the gallery ticket desks as well as on board.

Tate Members
Tate Members enjoy free unlimited entry to exhibitions at all four Tate galleries as well as access to exclusive Members’ rooms at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, priority booking for exhibitions, TATE ETC magazine and a bi-monthly guide to what’s on, sent throughout the year. Individual membership starts at £52 per year.
For more information visit www.tate.org.uk/members or call 020 7887 8888.

Tate Online
Visit Tate at www.tate.org.uk

NORTHERN STAR by STEWART PARKER at the Finsborough Theatre, London

2011-02-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

NORTHERN STAR by STEWART PARKER at the Finsborough theatre, London directed by Caitlin McLeod with Jonathan Harden, Clare McMahon, Michael Byers, Sean Pol McGreevy, Adam Best, Helen Belbin, Gemma-Leah Devereux, Mark Edel-Hunt, Anthony Delaney

The Finsborough theatre is an intimate venue meaning a miniature theatre set above a wine bar and restaurant in the Kensington & Chelsea area of London. The theatre specialises in re-discovering neglected masterpieces, this is the first revival of this play in ten years, so it comes as no surprise that a late Stewart Parker play is being re-examined here in the context of Ireland's recent bankruptcy. For we can also suppose that the default will trigger another great exodus of Irish people (but where?).

The play deals with the life and times of Henry Joy McCracken (1767-1798), sometime member of the United Irishmen, revolutionist, nationalist in an era before Nationalism. Firstly its obvious that the minimal resources of the theatre were stretched to the limits, in fact most of the plays undoubted intelligibility depended on the quality of the acting which was always extremely good but placed extreme demands on a young cast. Jonathan Harden as Henry Joy was undoubtedly exceptional. The mise en scene was bare, except for a noose, always hanging menacingly over the stage, as if to say that all the events are dominated as they were historically by the spectre of sudden, violent death. For both McCracken and Theobald Woolf Tone (1763-1798) were executed by the British government (or as in the case of Woolf Tone, committed suicide before being hung). All the props, sound effects, lighting effects were accurate, efficient and complete within the terms the play proposes. Production values were minimal, all the accents native although sceptics might argue that they occasionally sounded more akin to Father Ted than 18th century Ireland. The costumes also insisted on a high degree of verisimilitude, this depended on the credulity or ignorance of the audience who might not be aware of what a late 18th century Irish musket looked like, how British regular soldiers in Ireland dressed or how McCracken himself might have been dandified, uniformed or whatever. Of course exactitude hardly matters if the spirit of the time is captured.

The play looks back at the events of the past in order to examine the failures and dilemmas of the present. The defeat of Wolfe Tone's rebellion in 1798, the destruction of the French fleet off Bantry Bay and a French army in Ireland is the context within which stark alternatives for Ireland are re-told with complete intellectual vigour, a vigour which is surprising, indeed shocking in the context of today's vapid celebrity culture. Of course there's no better place to go to observe that than Kensington and Chelsea. However this play is never exacting drama, boiling down as it does to a number of important dialogues. It is peculiarly bereft of any dramatic dynamic being more like a thesis or exposition and that's a major fault of the play.

The theatre itself seemed to lay some especial emphasis on the kind of committment necessary to sit through and enjoy this play. The alternate context for the play which seemed fully realised, was the backstreets of Belfast, where McCracken himself grew up, eventually being executed at Corn Market in the very heart of Belfast. McCracken muses on the various invasions of Ireland, noting that he himself is a mixture of French Hugenot and Scottish Covenanter. He's offered a stark choice between a life as a revolutionist and a (so-called) normal life, a pen portrait offered to him as a trader in Philadelphia, for instance. In a sense McCracken is a paradigm of the writer, choosing to live beyond society in order to activate his revolution, separated from that society by the sense of some over-whelming mission or, as in Stewart Parker's case, merely by the position of almost permanent illness. One thinks of Keats or Alexander Pope (who famously remarked "This long disease, my life...").

The play could have dealt with the various revisions of Irish history that have been put forward, portraying McCracken as victim, martyr, villain. Is the play positioning itself in the 18th century or in the 20th and what about all the intervening history? Do we view McCracken's idealist pronouncements through our own vision of Ireland that has been distorted by centuries of propaganda from all sides? The revisionist debate itself could have been a topic of the play, distancing itself from its material by being a play about making a play about Ireland rather than a lucid demonstration of what actually happened. History itself is a script that is constantly altering, a beachy margin constantly shifting between time and tides.

This play is only the beginning of the exposition, a constantly unfolding nightmare that we are condemned to, just as McCracken is condemned becoming a martyr who's death is constantly re-enacted in both mythical and actual terms.

Paul Murphy, Finsborough Theatre, London

KATALIN VARGA

2011-02-09T07:05:00.001-08:00

KATALIN VARGA

The director of 'Katalin Varga', Peter Strickland, has been watching far too much Werner Herzog. The film is more than admiring of Herzog's 'Nosferatu'. Its a rip off. I'd be ashamed to steal so many ideas from a single source, but obviously not Strickland who made the film from an inheritance that happened to fall into his lap. I suppose if some money fell into your lap the best thing you could do with it is to make a crap film built out of the salient fact that your a talentless little English swine and then con the Germans into giving you some award. Avoid.

Hi, the problem with Katalin Varga is that its so derivative of Herzog's film 'Nosferatu'. Too derivative. Actually many directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, who ripped off Herzog's Aguirre for his 'Apocalypse Now', have looked to Herzog for inspiration. But Katalin Varga also speaks of an original talent and perhaps Strickland may make a good film in time. Last night I saw 'True Grit' which was a really great film. Looking at it now the original was stuck in the 1960s, the era of the Vietnam War and all that. Glen Campbell played the part of LeBouef which says it all, 'is this a film, a pop song promo or what is it?' Remember his song Galveston? When Rooster and LeBoeuf talk about the Civil War they really mean 'Nam. John Wayne's acting was horribly wooden, he only ever played one person - himself - yet he still won an Oscar for it. Unbelievable! Now with Matt Damon in the role of LeBouef this is a film that is self-confident about film as an art form and not something else. Which shows that the art form of the future is now waiting to be born, because film is now becoming ossified as high art, derivative and elitest.

Hi, thats a great opportunity to submit a poem for the royal couple through that Forward Poetry comp - show them your good wishes, i know how excitied you are about the wedding, I'm sure you'll be down there outside Westminster Abbey bleary eyed waving your union jack !!? I remember from my uni course and sociology a level that Gramsci was a really interesting read, forgotten most about it though, must try and dig out some of my notes. i thought Katalin Varga was an excellent film, yes certainly shades of Herzog in style but very convincing acting from amateurs, fantastic scenery which reminded me of a trip through Romania on the train in 1988 the year before the revolution, great experience going through Transylvania & carpathian mountains i would so love to back there for a visit. I only stayed in the country for a few days before heading back to the safety of yugoslavia. Went to see the Kings Speech the other night, interesting as well, thought it was well acted and put together. Still doing you various sports, what are you up to this weekend, hope you have a good one!
regards

ROMEO AND JULIET AT THE ASHCROFT THEATRE, FAIRFIELD HALL, CROYDON

2011-02-06T05:05:00.001-08:00

ROMEO AND JULIET AT THE ASHCROFT THEATRE, FAIRFIELD HALL, CROYDON

This production of Romeo and Juliet at the Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon, attempted to contextualise Shakespeare's great romantic tragedy within relevant, contemporary themes of knife crime and gang violence in south London. Using pop music and back projected newspaper excerpts, the director attempted to bring the play up to date, to emphasize its completely constant relevance. It largely followed in the footsteps of Baz Luhrmann's film version of 1996 but also stopped short of the baroque excesses and occasional silliness of that production.

The director seemed to fail to pursue the contemporary themes throughout the play, leaving them to dangle in space at the very beginning. After this initially successful sequence the production reverted to an old-fashioned interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, thus making the bare, sparse mise en scene and contemporary dress a bit purposeless. Unlike Double Falsehood the point of staging Romeo and Juliet is not to prove it is actually by the Bard but to point up its contemporary relevance. The initial impetus of the play stalled among some predictable Shakespeare stuff, although the acting and production values were always thorough and professional.

However, the lack of consistency of engagement by the director and the production values meant this version of Romeo and Juliet is still not much more than a visual introduction of the play to schoolchildren. Perhaps, and I think this is probably the case, nothing much more was intended, then it might be worth embarking on two versions, an evening version and a matinee for the inevitable coach loads of children who will definitely want to see this.

After the play there was a great cabaret in the bar area and some boxing in the hall and, all in all, this play is definitely recommended although not for Shakespeare purists who would probably prefer to stay in or around the West End anyway. The bar and restaurant facilities were also first rate.

Paul Murphy, Croydon, February 2011

GABRIEL OROZCO AT THE TATE MODERN

2011-01-25T14:06:00.000-08:00

GABRIEL OROZCO AT THE TATE MODERN, February 2011

The artist Gabriel Orozco was born in Mexico in 1962, began to rise to prominence in the 1990s and now lives internationally, strung out, you might say, somewhere between New York, London and Mexico City. That sounds depressingly rootless, many of the works offer testimony to his constant shifts and possible escape acts.

Some of Orozco’s works imply possible new horizons but many are rooted in art college banality. An enormous chess set with hundreds of squares, fifty or so knight pieces. The knight, uniquely, is the only chess piece that has two simultaneous moves within its single board move. In psychology a knight’s move is an attempt to connect two disparate concepts or implies the disconnected or fragmented though process of the psychotic. Modern art, Orozco is saying, is very like psychosis in its attempt to describe chaos or fragmentariness and the connections in between without collapsing into total chaos itself.

Orozco’s sports car for a very fat man or two very thin ones, for instance (LA DS 1993), is another sideways portrayal of the urge towards everything shiny and new, fast, modern gadgets that do more than move you between A and B. His game of carambole, a French form of billiards with a pocketless rectangular table is transformed into a pocketless oval table and (Carambole with pendulum, 1996) is played out interactively as visitors are also allowed to play the canon off the white ball into the red ball swinging from a pendulum, a feat that this reviewer accomplished once anyway. It’s as if the table itself bent perspectively in a distorting invisible mirror. Orozco’s work has undoubted connections to surrealism obviously, where the everyday is imagined new, yet Orozco casts his decaying laundry hung out on invisible lines or empty cardboard box in a way that allows you to smash into it or even ask: is this laundry or a cardboard box? Indeed they are, is the answer. However Orozco’s work seems connected more intrinsically to the games of perspective and infinite regression configured by the Dutch artist M C Escher. Escher was hardly original as Rembrandt, Turner or Picasso were, but he was more than a gimmick or one hit wonder, managing to re-interrogate ways of seeing in a perplexingly original sense.

Sometimes Orozco depicts the repetitive symbol of two yellow mopeds in some presumably Latin American city, images like atoms or atomic symbols, machine code computing binaries like the infinite regression of perspective found in the work of Escher, for instance, that turns out instead to be pages from a telephone directory, jaw-droppingly repetitive yet intrinsically comfortingly so. There are symmetries as well as asymmetries, decaying truck tyres salvaged from an elephant’s graveyard of trucks it seems, the kind of pure waste that we are accustomed to in the west being transformed into art but which might indeed seem gob smackingly original in contemporary Mexico. Orozco salvages waste, yet it remains detritus until re-forged or re-imagined in the artist’s imagination. In short, it’s not clear if Orozco is this artist but his work is tending in the right direction. Perhaps Black Kites (1997) is his most quintessentially Aztec work with its intimation of human sacrifice and tribal decoration yolking together the violence of contemporary Mexico with its Aztec antecedents.

There was very little text accompanying this exhibition, possibly because little has been written about Orozco in Europe generally and in Britain particularly.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London

DOUBLE FALSEHOOD

2011-01-23T06:06:00.001-08:00

DOUBLE FALSEHOOD

By William Shakespeare and John Fletcher

Directed by Phil Willmott

Designed by Javier De Frutos

Produced by Ellie Collyer-Bristow for MokitaGrit in association with The Steam Industry

The Union Theatre, Southwark

204 Union Street, London SE1 OLX

www.doublefalsehood.org

The issues surrounding the authorship of this play have been bubbling away for quite some time, since Double Falsehood was known in the 18th century to be a re-writing of the lost play Cardenio by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. The play is set in Andalucia and was originally a story told as part of Miguel Cervantes masterpiece Don Quixote. Double Falsehood was one of a number of collaborations which also included the Two Noble Kinsmen, a play which was not included in the first folio but which has come to be accepted as a work of the Shakespeare canon even though lots of it is the work of Fletcher. The play was then re-written and re-presented as a lost Shakespeare by the theatrical entrepreneur and Shakespeare scholar, Lewis Theobald, in 1727. Theobald was a great rival of Alexander Pope, his contemporary and England's greatest poet at the time. Theobald has come down to us as the chief dunce in Pope's scathing satire The Dunciad but Theobald was an important yet flawed figure. The underlying issue of authorship at work here is the division between concepts of writers and authors in Shakespeare's time which viewed literature as functional and/or entertainment, thus inherently collaborative and the myth of quasi-divine inspiration of often diseased genius loner writers purveyed by the Romantic era.

The Union Theatre is an intimate (meaning small) context to present this ‘new’ play by Shakespeare, new because it was recently included in Methuen’s Collected Works of the Bard, thus re-igniting the old controversy about its authorship which is also vigorously detailed, in fact exhaustively so, in the Methuen text. Later this year the RSC will shape a new piece, Cardenio, out of the surviving source material. The small ensemble cast delivered their lines passionately, enthusiastically during the several Acts and a number of underwritten scenes which contained no great poetry but lots of very competent stuff. There seemed to be a division between Leonora (Emily Plumtree) with a Home Counties accent and Violante (Jessie Lilley) with a Scouse - Liverpool - one, this was generally echoed through the rest of the play intimating the interesting regional or gender implications. Shakespeare himself originated in the Midlands and must have been regarded as a rural type, rustic or rude mechanical in London for some time after his arrival in the later part of the 16th century. Also he happened to have begun his career in rough, nasty Southwark where the Union theatre happens to be based then moved to Silver Street near Enfield as he began to make his packet – career began to gather momentum.

There are a number of reasons why Double Falsehood has been rejected by the makers of the Shakespearian canon. Generally speaking it is slight, a curiosity rather than a major play for there are several indications of authorial naivety. For instance, some scenes end with a character that then opens the next one, a kind of primitive jumpcut. The bumptious, predictable, patriotic dirge of the opening prelude is another sign, the general lacklustre dramatic verse another. If Shakespeare's early plays read like cut up poems that he had rejected as poems then learned to re-use as supposed dramas, he is fully in charge of the dramatic craft by the time of his Macbeth, for instance. But this play is not another Macbeth. Double Falsehood has the power to inspire us, to make us love Shakespeare again. This production in this intimate venue with a cast that is clearly both passionate and charged by what it is doing, is really a must see of the London theatre season and it is now unsurprising that it is having an albeit short run in the West End. It offers more than a chance to partake in a jaded parlor game of Shakespearian allusion. This play is undoubtedly a product of the era of Shakespeare, but the question of Shakespeare's authorship is meaningless. It is really a question of the difference between views of literature in Shakespeare's era and our own.

Paul Murphy, the Union Theatre, Southwark, London

DOUBLE FALSEHOOD

2011-01-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

SKY NEWS PROFILES PROFESSIONAL PREMIERE OF CONTROVERSIAL 'LOST' SHAKESPEARE PLAY

DOUBLE FALSEHOOD

By William Shakespeare and John Fletcher

Directed by Phil Willmott

Designed by Javier De Frutos

Produced by Ellie Collyer-Bristow for MokitaGrit in association with The Steam Industry

The Union Theatre, Southwark

204 Union Street, London SE1 OLX

18th January − 12th February 2011
Tuesdays to Saturdays at 7.30pm

Sundays at 4pm (30th January & 6th February)

Tickets: £15
£5 tickets for U21s (limited availability, first two weeks only)

Box Office: 0207 2619 876

Book Online: http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/uniontheatre

Cast: Adam Redmore, Emily Plumtree, Gabriel Vick, Jessie Lilley, Richard Franklin, Richard Morse, Sam Hoare, Stephen Boswell, Su Douglas & William Reay.

www.doublefalsehood.org

Next week Sky News profiles DOUBLE FALSEHOOD on Wednesday 12th January in bulletins throughout the day and on their website to include sneak scene previews, the reaction of one of Britain's most celebrated actors and bard connoisseur, Simon Callow, plus interviews with the production's Director, Producer and Cast Members.

In 2010 Methuen books controversially introduced this disputed drama of love, betrayal, rape and reconciliation into their complete works of Shakespeare. But were they right to do so?

Did Shakespeare write enough of it to justify its inclusion or is it just an audacious 18th Century fake?

Decide for yourself. Don’t miss the first professional production since 1792.

Double Falsehood is a fast moving tale of young love, treachery and reconciliation. The Duke’s youngest son rapes a village girl and sets out to steal his friend’s bride. The aftermath of these traumatic events drives the four into the wilderness and the Duke’s eldest son must find a way of reconciling everyone and reuniting the missing young people with their squabbling parents.

Director, Phil Willmott says, 'This has got to be the perfect night out for Shakespeare fans. You get a thrilling evening of loyalty, villainy, vibrant poetry and surprisingly modern psychological motivation in a close encounter with what may or may not be a “lost” Shakespeare play, PLUS, you’ll be able to show off afterwards with your own theories on the plays authenticity!'

In December 1727 DOUBLE FALSEHOOD was premiered by English playwright and editor Lewis Theobald at Drury Lane claiming it was based on a lost play by Shakespeare and John Fletcher of 1613. The production enjoyed several popular revivals despite critics questioning its authenticity. The piece fell out of favour and into obscurity dividing academics as to its worth until 2010 when Methuen published the play as part of its scholarly Arden Complete Works of Shakespeare, igniting debate as to which, if any, passages are by Shakespeare.

This production is the first professional revival since 1792 ahead of the RSC’s production of THE HISTORY OF CARDINIO (The play’s 1613 title) which will reopen The Swan Theatre later in 2011.

Suitable for anyone studying Jacobean texts at GCSE or A-Level DOUBLE FALSEHOOD offers U21s £5 tickets in the first two weeks (limited number available).

The Union Theatre, atmospherically located beneath a railway arch near the Old and Young Vic, has won great acclaim and a series of high profile award nominations for their innovative productions under the artistic direction of Sasha Regan.

Director Phil Willmott’s recent production of ONCE UPON A TIME AT THE ADELPHI is the best selling show in the Union Theatre’s history. His annual summer season of family shows and classical revivals at the Scoop outdoor amphitheatre on the South Bank won a Peter Brook award for innovation and entertainment and his past Shakespeare productions include MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at Liverpool Playhouse, MEASURE FOR MEASURE at the Riverside Studios, A WINTERS TALE at the Courtyard, HENRY VIII at the Bridewell and TITUS ANDRONICUS at BAC.

MokitaGrit's recent productions include ROMEO AND JULIET at Mosaica@ The Chocolate Factory, ONCE UPON A TIME AT THE ADELPHI at The Union Theatre and A CHRISTMAS CAROL at The King's Head (Best Play 2010 - London Festival Fringe Awards). DOUBLE FALSEHOOD proceeds their production of Stephen Sondheim's musical COMPANY at The Southwark Playhouse (2 Feb - 12 March 2011).

Press (3000) and Web (600) production earlies attached. Photography by Scott Rylander.

8th London Short Film Festival

2011-01-04T13:47:00.000-08:00

GENERAL PRESS RELEASE

“In a time of major cuts and a period of recession, short films
are not high on the agenda in the general scheme of
things…It’s year zero, but it’s also a creative time for UK
film; a time where the possibilities are endless and the rulebook
can be re-written.”
Philip Ilson, Director of the London Short Film Festival.
The 8th London Short Film Festival will run from the 7th – 16th of January 2011 at
more than 20 venues across London. The festival will celebrate the very best in
contemporary British short filmmaking, with 19 programmes of new shorts,
showcasing more than 200 new short films from British filmmakers.
The LSFF is funded by Film London and the UK Film Council, with additional
sponsorship from Channel 4, Animate Projects and Future Copyright.

NEW SHORTS PROGRAMMES

The London Short Film Festival will host a total of 21 programmes of new British
shorts including: On Road: Black and Asian Stories, highlighting stories around the
black and Asian experience in the UK; Shorts in the Dark, a late-night screening that
will range from the surreal to the nightmarish; and Femmes Fantastique, a selection
of films bringing us femmes with attitude. We’ll also be returning to some well-loved
festival favourites like Night of the Living Docs, a marathon evening of short
documentaries; Fucked-Up Love, a selection of shorts that tell romance like it really
is; and Lo-Budget Mayhem, ranging from bad taste depravity to no-budget lunacy.

RETROSPECTIVES

The London Short Film Festival will host a total of 5 retrospectives this year, starting with a look at some of the early short films of Clio Barnard, who recently won the Best British Newcomer Award at the BFI London Film Festival for her feature film THE ARBOR. In partnership with VBS TV, we’ll also be taking a peek at some of
the early work of notorious erotic photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern, a
leading figure in the New York Cinema of Transgression movement in the 1980s.
British artists Rosie Pedlow and Joe King, known collectively as FOLK///Projects,
will be joining us, as will impassioned experimental filmmaker Ruth Paxton, who
will take us through some of her most surreal and sexy shorts, including
PARIS/SEXY and LITTLE RED HOODIE. Finally, Ben Rivers will chat to
renowned filmmaker Andrew Kötting (IVUL) about his work, after a screening of his short films.

SPECIAL EVENTS

From the traditional to the downright strange, the London Short Film Festival will
host a series of Special Events in 2011. Documentary filmmakers Luke Seomore and
Joseph Bull will present their new non-narrative installation Solace, which explores
the daily lives of London teenagers, while Kino London will take us on a journey
round the outskirts of London, asking groups of filmmakers to make short films that
start and end in specific locations around East London (Kino London: Borderlands).
We’ll play a programme of experimental films on tabletops as diners eat at Inamo
restaurant in Soho (Shorts a la Carte), while at Amnesty Human Rights Centre, we’ll
explore some of the issues facing and the resources available to disabled filmmakers
(Disability and Filmmaking). Finally, in Shoreditch Church, Branchage Jersey Film
Festival will host a surreal and spectacular exploration of weddings and marriage,
featuring live performances, silent film and wedding cake (Branchage Proposes
Marriage).

GUEST SCREENINGS

Partnering with some of the most important and influential film organisations and
screening groups in the UK, the London Short Film Festival will this year play host to a wide variety of Guest Screenings. Queer Brit, a programme of shorts curated by
Rushes Soho Shorts, will showcase films with queer and transgender themes, while
Straight 8, an innovative group that invites people to make a film on a single cartridge of Super 8mm then screens the best results at Cannes, will show a selection of their finest entries. Queer feminist film festival Club des Femmes host a night of film and live music dedicated to all spinsters, misfits, malcontents and miss-behaviours (Club des Femmes and Spinster Take New Berlin) while Digicult, an organization renowned for its commitment to developing filmmaking talent, will screen awardwinning work from their back catalogue (The Shame and the Glory: 10 Years of Digicult).

LIVE EVENTS

Known as much for its love of live music and performance as for its impeccable taste
in short films, this year’s London Short Film Festival will feature a number of live
performances, from music to poetry, DJs to VJs and more. Tonight We Go AGleaning
will be an evening of recent artists’ films that use archive footage, featuring
poetry and a live score, while Cabinet of the Living Cinema will collaborate with
Whirligig Cinema to present Making Tracks, an evening of exciting new films with
brand new scores, from the animated to the abstract. Finally, Electrovision, London’s
only regular night exploring live cinema, present a one-off evening of live
performances, from techno music to silent film and found images.

AWARDS
The London Short Film Festival will recognise achievements in the following
categories;
The UK Film Council Award for Best British Short
The Shooting People Comedy Award
The Little White Lies Lo-Budget Award
The Sheffield Doc/Fest Short Documentary Award
The Radar Music Award
The Animate Projects Experimental Award
The LSFF Best Short Film Jury will consist of: James Mulligan (Shooting People);
Kate Taylor (Abandon Normal Devices); Rose Cupit (Film London); Philip Ilson
(Artistic Director, LSFF) and Chloë Roddick (Producer, LSFF),

Do you not hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence? - George Buchner

2010-12-14T14:04:00.001-08:00

Do you not hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence?
- George Buchner

THE ARBOR

2010-11-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

If you want to see a bleak northern drama go to see 'The Arbor', account of the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine who came from a mixed marriage. I didn't believe there were people like that in England, neanderthal right-wing thugs but they are all on the Buttershaw Estate, Bradford where Dunbar came from. You have to see these things in order to believe, people who are terrified of immigrants, terrified of losing their jobs to younger, more energetic people who happen to be Asians. Its hard not to feel sympathy for the beseiged white scum in the film, because they're also, in some way, your community, real Orangefield types.

Paul

CANALETTO AND HIS RIVALS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON

2010-10-12T10:37:00.001-07:00

CANALETTO AND HIS RIVALS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON

Sponsored by Credit Suisse

A lustreless protrusive eye
Stares from the protozoic slime
At a perspective of Canaletto.
The smoky candle end of time

Declines.

T.S.Eliot: Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697-1768) was an Italian Rococo era painter whose views of Venice have come down to us as the epitome of view painting (vedute). They seem mathematically precise as to be miraculous, seeming to be the highest point of development of this technically exact genre. Was Canaletto really just a hack, churning out genre pieces for aristocratic clients in foreign countries (the artist was especially popular among English milordi)? Or is his work really an exploration of Venice, a city of poverty, squalor, disease, and his, Canaletto's, own place in society and all the social relations implied by his art?

Canaletto began his career like his rival and slightly younger contemporary Michele Marieschi (1710-1743) as a theatrical scene painter. This explains his willingness to tweak perspective, alter viewpoints or move buildings. He was given instruction in scene painting by his father, who worked as a scene painter, creating some undistinguished vedute. Canaletto never attended the academy where he would have been exposed to the works of the great masters, to concepts of art theory, instruction in technical aspects of painting, but in the theatre where a different scale of values operated and where different techniques of art were required. As a theatrical scene painter Canaletto would have been expected to operate with an instantaneous palette responsive to the demands on the night rather than to any art blueprint or rigid academic integrity.

Canaletto used optical devices, such as the camera obscura making swift drawings of complex Venetian cityscapes and views possible within limited timescales although he was also notorious for the length of time it took him to complete his orders. The use of these devices may explain distortions in Marieschi's The Rialto Bridge from the Riva de Vin (circa 1737), for instance. Marieschi is a rival of Canaletto's early career in Venice. But there were many others, such as Johan Richter (1665-1745), a Scandinavian, born in Stockholm, crediting with inventing the genre (although its foreshadowed in earlier view paintings made in Venice.), Gaspar van Wittel known as Gaspare Vanvitelli from Holland and therefore trained in the traditions of Flemish art but working mostly in Venice (1652/3-1736) and Luca Carlevarijs (1663-1730) born in Udine but also working mostly in Venice. At first glance their work seems indistinguishable from Canalettos, but on closer viewing stylistic imprints, vast differences in approach, materials and technique become clearer.

In Canaletto's middle period a further rival, Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780), appeared, for he was indeed the artist's nephew. It's hard to know whether Bellotto was working for Canaletto, produced works under Canaletto's imprimatur or whether Bellotto was really working autonomously, an authentic rival of Canelletto. Bellotto goes back to many scenes made by Canaletto to make more detailed views, but intrinsically there was little difference between the two artists. Bellotto was decidedly a follower of Canaletto.

The last of Canaletto's rivals was the Venetian artist Francesco Guardi, brother in law of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). Guardi's painting is raw, more immediate than Canaletto's. In paintings like Guardi's The Rialto Bridge from the North and The Palazzo dei Camerlenghi (1768-1793) Venice looks like an actualised city of poverty and squalor while Canaletto's seems completely idealised. Everything in Canaletto's painting is viewed through a glowing Rococo bloom. But the real rival to Canaletto is the festival itself, the exhibition implies and the main festival in the Venetian calendar was Ascension Day or the Festa da l'Ascenza, when the Doge threw a golden ring into the Adriatic. This festival was known as the 'Marriage to the Sea', in other words the wedding of Venice to the natural element. The gilded state barge bore the Doge and the Venetian Senate to the Lido where the ritual was to be performed. Canaletto captures this ritual in The Molo from the Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day (1733-4), but Carlavarij's painting of the same event is even more aesthetised than Canalettos. It’s as if an artistic event is occurring to be summarized in a further painting, then repeated in yet another painting. The raw, visceral reality, dark odor coming off the lagoon is hardly suggested, but at times its there too, real, impalpable, deadly.

Canaletto's paintings are hardly realist documents although they certainly provide us with details of eighteenth-century Venice. Canaletto sought the approval of his foreign, mostly British, aristocratic clients who wanted scenes that confirmed their world and worldview. Scenes of poverty, squalor, disease, (especially given the polluted waters of Venice's lagoon) were excluded in favor of scenes of opulence, festival, grandiosity. Caneletto hardly manages narrative at all in favor of views that are entirely static even timeless, apart from his painting The Stonemason’s Yard (1725) probably made for a Venetian rather than foreign patron. No doubt this timeless quality was what his clients sought, for it confirmed their worldview that maintained that everything was essentially unchanging. Views of sky and lagoon are uniformly blue or blue grey. This uniformity is almost a signature, for unthreatening banality was probably required of him and the other vedutti. Even a brilliant sunset in the manner of Turner is never contemplated, for this would be a decisive break with uniformity and banality, which is the most important point of the Rococo aesthetic. The artist is there merely to depict what can be observed between the sky and the lagoon, the more exaggeratedly realist the painting happens to be the better. The individual is always delineated as part of a crowd, except when he or she happens to have some eccentric characteristic. Likewise Canaletto often portrays dogs with simian characteristics, underscoring their ridiculousness. Canaletto's patrons weren't interested at all in individuals but in the entire commune of Venice, so the paintings often exhibit the kind of gaiety and pleasure in simple peasant, or in this case urban, rituals to be found in the works of, for instance, Pieter Brueghal the Younger (1565-1636).

Canaletto was also depicting the Venice of Casanova (1725-1798). Casanova was a younger son and younger sons inadvertently became priests since they would hardly inherit land or property under the laws of primogeniture. As if to underline all the repression connected with the priesthood and religion generally, Casanova lived the life of a libertine heterosexually (and sometimes homosexually) hyperactive. Daughters were mostly unwanted and were often just left at the gates of orphanages. Details a procession of such orphans.

Canaletto’s view paintings of Venice also lead onto depictions of Venice in films such as Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice or Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. In these films a darker, pestilential aspect to the city is outlined, in fact all the aspects of Venice that Canaletto and the other vedute sought to suppress. Visconti/Mann’s protagonist Aschenbach, whose decadence and decay is partly an extension of the city as it crumbles into the lagoon, is symbolic of a certain class whose destruction he also symbolizes, whereas in Don’t Look Now Roeg’s protagonists encounter both pity and terror in the city summarized by the appearance of the two weird sisters. Again these were the aspects of Venice that Canaletto sought to marginalize in his view paintings of the city, but Canaletto’s paintings are also undeniably, possibly inadvertently, dark and atmospheric.

The exhibition ends with a comparison of three depictions of The Torre di Malghera by Canaletto, Belloto and Guardi, which is meant to summarize the ways that artists depict the same thing in entirely different ways. Belloto’s depiction made in 1744 is photographically exact emphasizing the architectural qualities of the building, whereas Canaletto’s made some ten years later offers us a depiction of the lagoon with the torre operating as a suitable framing device. Guardi’s, made sometimes in the 1770s, decides to almost ignore the torre, instead foregrounding the meeting of lagoon and sky. Guardi is telling us that the poetry of painting, its essential other-worldiness, is what inspires him, rather than the magnificent architectural, mathematical compositions of Canaletto and Belloto which are essentially concerned with the concrete roles that men and women play in the city and the marketplace for art and much else that the city encapsulates.

During the period international events dictated the course of Caneletto's career. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) blocked off trade routes, so Canaletto left for England in 1746. He was to stay away from Venice for nine years. Canaletto depended on trade routes, sea lanes being open, for many of his works were shipped to England after completion. In 1797 Napoleon's invasion brought the Venetian Republic, which had stood for a thousand years, to an end. Changes in the education system in Britain also hastened the end of vedute painting, but its imprint is still to be seen, in paintings and in cinema. Canaletto himself is thought to have died in the room where he was born, possessing little more than a change of clothes, with nothing to show for all those years of labour. Although he departs from our romantic image of the artist, he may indeed be closer to it than we know, his destiny is just as tragic as Rembrandt’s bankruptcy and last years of isolation.

Paul Murphy, The National Gallery, London

PAUL GAUGIN: MAKER OF MYTH: AT THE TATE MODERN

2010-10-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

PAUL GAUGIN: MAKER OF MYTH: AT THE TATE MODERN

This exhibition offers us delights about the life and times of Paul Gaugin (1848-1903). These are structured thematically but not necessarily temporally: self-portraits, still lives, Breton landscapes, reclining nudes in Tahiti. Gaugin was a man essentially alone, undergoing a journey from conventionality to outrageous infamy, the pain of total isolation and death.

Gaugin’s paintings exhibit pastel tones of indigo, vermilion, magenta. Relaxed, cheerful, invigorating, joyful. The paintings are about openness to experience: suffering, rejection, the misunderstanding of an ignorant, uncaring world. Gaugin persistently refers to himself as a suffering Christ in his paintings, as in his 1889 painting Christ in the Garden of Olives; alone, rejected by everyone. Christian themes absorbed him and he seemed to need a moral arbiter of his own actions. The influence of Christianity and conventional morality was one he sought to escape by increasingly distant wanderings, firstly to Denmark, then Brittany, Panama, Martinique lastly to Tahiti and then an even more remote chain of Tahitan islands, the Marquesas.

Gaugin’s family fled Paris after the 1848 revolution that brought Napoleon III to power. Gaugin’s father, a journalist of Republican views failed to survive the then hazardous sea journey to Peru. Gaugin grew up in Peru, later referring to himself (in a letter to van Gogh) as an Inca. The family then returned to Paris some six years later, when the din created by the revolution died down. There’s no doubt that Gaugin lived through interesting times. He sought to exploit French prestige and colonialism, becoming part of the empire but also in unique contradistinction to it.

Gaugin precociously began whittling wood, making wood carvings from childhood onwards. The exhibition provides little information about Gaugin’s early life, apart from the barest biographical details. Eventually he went to sea, living a life (one imagines) made up of work, constant drinking and amusement with prostitutes. He eventually returned to Paris at the age of 23, landed a job at the Paris stock market, marrying a Danish woman, Mette Gad, having five children with her. While he worked at the stock market Gaugin painted as a hobby, managing to have work accepted by the various Impressionist exhibitions in Paris that represented the cutting edge of art at that time. However, the stock market crash of 1882 changed Gaugin’s life. He decided to relinquish his former existence, pursuing his art as a profession, abandoning his wife and family. It’s a story we’re familiar with through the novel by Somerset Maugham ‘The Moon and Sixpence’. Selfish, self-possessed artist Charles Strickland abandons his family for a life of wandering in exotic locales while making paintings of naked Polynesian women. It’s reprised by Tony Hancock in 'The Rebel', another portrait of Gaugin that manages to summarise Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards the French, attitudes that incorporate fear and loathing of intellectuals and a large dollop of reverse snobbery.

Gaugin's unsentimental voyages into the unknown are very like those of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), who abandoned one life for another, travelling firstly to Java, as a soldier in the army of the Netherlands (first he enrolled in Spain's Carlist war, was given a small sum for his efforts but Rimbaud used the money to travel to Paris, pick up his royalties, then enlist in another army bound for the Java) then to the most sketchy existence imaginable as a slave trader in Abyssinia. But Rimbaud seems a character from the adult world. Gaugin is forever fighting with his constant need for self-gratification. In many ways he represents the repression inherent in bourgeois society of that time rather than an antagonist. Gaugin is summarised by his selfishness, abandoning his wife, taking pre-pubescent Polynesian girls for lovers (even though this was the norm at the time) without informing them, of course, that he was in the throes of syphillis. Gaugin seemed unable to shake off the passions that often make him seem more brute than man. Indeed he's quite aware of a basic philosophical question: is man an animal or an angel or, better still, am I, Paul Gaugin, a sublime creator or a monster?

On the way Paul Gaugin encountered another, possibly more genuine, outsider figure Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) in one of the most intense encounters in art history. The relationship is famously depicted in Vincente Minelli's film 'Lust for Life', where van Gogh, rather than Gaugin, is an intimately realised portrait of a new kind of man who is unpretentious, intensely driven, realist yet visionary. He encounters the truths of bourgeois society, the lurid emptiness, pathetic unreality of the job at the bourse, the vain social intercourse of the interminably respectful. Yet van Gogh is a doomed figure, useless at the business side of painting, as Gaugin points out. This is an image that would appeal to American audiences in the 20th century. Indeed van Gogh/Kirk Douglas, Paul Gaugin/Anthony Quinn seem to represent ordinary Americans, hammy, ham fistedly inarticulate, yet determined and decent. Gaugin's celebrity, unrecalcitrant enfant terrible, paedophile and pornographer. It's hard to imagine a more unsuitable pairing as housemates, driven together to find mutual protection from all the uncaringness and ignorance out there.

One sense of Gaugin's life is an escape from the West to a pre-Edenic existence, at once naive, primitive, uncomplicatedly (and heterosexually) erotic, yet also intense and passionate. His vision is also that of Jean Jacques Rosseau's vision of the 'noble savage', a Polynesian idyll replete with antique religions, stone idols and fences adorned with skulls (like Mistah Kurtz's fence in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness). Encounters with savage customs, exotic languages, totems, erotic taboos completely removed from the reality of Tahiti, for the truth is that the island had become thoroughly Europeanised and Christianised by the time Gaugin arrived. Gaugin struggled to find evidence of native religions in Tahiti, so he transposed images of artifacts and idols he had seen in photographs in Paris into paintings he made, as in his 1892 painting Parahite te Marae. Obviously he sought to entertain his French audience with a Rousseauesque version of paradise, but had to begin to invent one when it became apparent that the Tahiti he sought to depict was a figment of his own imagination.

Gaugin's wish to escape from Europe was later echoed in the exile of the Die Bruecke group of artists in Germany, who left Europe behind, simply ceasing to be Europeans. Both van Gogh and Gaugin were largely self-taught, like Die Bruecke (which consisted of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Emil Nolde (1867-1956), Max Pechstein (1881-1955), Otto Mueller (1874-1930)) consisting of architecture students from Dresden. Their style is thus unrestrained by academic conventions, since they simply didn't know about them. Gaugin distanced himself from his contacts among the Impressionists, since he wanted to move onto forge his own style, which is sometimes thought to be post-Impressionist, but could be more accurately described as pre-Expressionist. He was also influenced by artists from the previous generation like Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) and Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875). In paintings such as Still Life with Three Puppies from 1888 and Vision after the Sermon: Jacob's struggle with the Angel from the same year Gaugin pushes the horizon line above the canvas and flattens perspective. He adopts a self-consciously primitive style of drawing. What Gaugin has realised is that perspective, the ne plus ultra of post-Renaissance art, is arbitrary and conventional. It's thus unsurprising to hear that Gaugin influenced Picasso, Matisse, Vuillard, the Nabis, the Fauves, die Brucke, das Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky: a role call indeed of all the important names in modern art.

Gaugin's relentless self-promotion, personal myth making makes it impossible for us to separate out the myths he created, the often brutal realities he encountered, yet who would want to. In many ways Gaugin anticipates Post-Modernism, where the division between 'truth' and the myths created by individuals about their own existence become indistinguishable. Gaugin's life was restlessly poised between fantasy and reality, incumbent in his Maison du Joire (House of Pleasure or House of Orgasm). This boisterous titling is especially joyful since Gaugin happened to live near the Catholic Bishop of Tahiti. He wandered through the more remote islands of the archipelago, dying in 1903 of a heart attack induced by syphillis. He had previously suffered several heart attacks and - its thought - attempted to commit suicide two years before his death. He was simultaneously engrossed in a dispute with the colonial authorities over his rabble rousing and refusal to pay taxes. Gaugin patently believed that he was big and strong enough to take on the system and win. The Catholic authorities relented, sanctioning his burial in the Catholic graveyard, but many of Gaugin's paintings and sketches were destroyed by the Tahitan authorities, the rest being auctioned off.

This exhibition brings together a great deal of material to present a new vision of Gaugin but more particularly the era he lived through. In a sense we now have a view of Gaugin unclouded by the shimmering romances of Minnelli et al. It’s a tale that tells us about Gaugin’s personal odyssey through a world that was crumbling around him, about his personal opportunism but also his intense idealism. He comes out of it as a creator Hell bent on forging the consciousness of a new age.

Paul Murphy, London

DIAGILEV AND THE BALLET RUSSE AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

2010-09-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY: DIAGHILEV AND THE BALLET RUSSE AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

Diaghilev's creation of the Ballet Russe, an amalgamation of talents from diverse backgrounds, was a response to the drying up of creative opportunities in Russia in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) and the subsequent revolution. Diaghilev began to move westward in order to exploit those opportunites to be found in Paris and other Western European capitals. The Ballet Russe was eventually to tour throughout Western Europe and North America, but seems to have been especially popular in countries like Spain (where it visited every large city) that lagged behind the rest of Western Europe and North America economically, but not artistically.

Likewise the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) also moved to Paris, where he came under the influence and the spell of the music of Claude Debussy (1862-1918). Stravinsky synthesised the music of his mentor, Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), with the new musical impressionism of Debussy, the then leading European composer. This was all done in opposition to German Romanticism, particularly the music of Richard Wagner, his musical technique of lietmotifs or leading motives which signal a particular character or situation. Debussy was influenced by eastern, non-European music making, particularly the Javanese gamalan which began to be heard in Europe in the late 19th century. Unlike the brash, bumptious music of Wagner, Debussy's music was subtle, gentle, ambient, hallucinatic. Debussy’s championing of harmony can be contrasted with Stravinsky’s emphasis of rhythm over harmony, as evidenced in his ballet score La Sacre du Printemps (The Rites of Spring).

Diaghilev (1979-1929) came from a wealthy Russian family who lived in a region between St Petersburg and Moscow. They owned a vodka monopoly, granted to them by the Tsar, but experienced financial difficulties, as many others did, at the end of the 19th century, a situation outlined in Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard. Diaghilev was both a saint and a monster, according to contemporaries like Eric Satie, Jean Cocteau and Sergei Prokofiev. Diaghilev was often 'terrific but awful' (Satie). Lover of Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950), chief dancer and choreographer of the Ballets Russe, Diaghilev had few possessions, since he lived mainly in expensive hotels while on his many tours with the company. He sought to amalgamate a unique group of composers, set and costume designers, dancers, choreographers for his productions. The company included artists such as Stravinsky, Picasso, Debussy, Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava Nijinsky who also made major contributions to the work of the company, Georges Ballanchine. The history of the Ballets Russe was tinged throughout with triumph and tragedy, as innovative works such as Stravinsky's La Sacre du Printemps and Debussy's Prelude a l'apre midi d'un Faun caused confusion and revolution. However Nijinsky was later diagnosed with schizophrenia which ended his career prematurely. Diaghilev himself was often poverty stricken in later years. Diaghilev produced Stravinsky's great opera L’Oiseau d’feu (The Fire Bird) but the premiere of La Sacre du Printemps was the real succes de scandale. The premiere in Paris was on the 29th of May 1913. The audience rioted when confronted with a piece of music that combined primeval myth, Modernism, polyphony and dissonance. Yet Diaghilev completely expected this response, indeed he had made exact preparations for such an occurrence. The ballet only played nine times, but today it is at the very heart of the repertoire of modern music.

The political backdrop to these developments was the immense upheaval of WW1, the Russian Revolution, yet in most ways Diaghilev remained completely untouched by all the turmoil. After WW1 Diaghilev abandoned Russia, even though the early phase of the Revolution was a period of great artistic ferment. He incorporated yet more of the prevailing Modernist and avante-garde aesthetic into his works, but remained in many ways conservative and intransigent in his views. Matisse replaced Picasso as the company’s in house set designer: avante-garde French composers such as Francois Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger were adopted. Debussy's death at the end of the Great War was an immense blow to the company, yet Diaghilev set out to create yet more intriguing, innovative ballets. Modernist authors such as TS Eliot, James Joyce, Marcel Proust and Maurice Maeterlinck were on the fringes of the company, influencing it and being influenced in turn. Typically Matisse eventually refused to work with Diaghilev again, finding him to be both unbearable and selfish. The company had changed, yet it also bore the hallmark of Diaghilev’s efforts, immense continuity amongst absolute destruction that affected all artists of the era convincing them that modernity and progress were not necessarily linked.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is offering us an overview of all the turmoil and greatness that Diaghilev unleashed upon the world, which includes an assessment of his legacy. Diaghilev brought together the vestiges of the modern world we inhabit, through the trauma of The Great War whose legacy was in turn to be the violence and catastrophe of WW2. Diaghilev's legacy is enduring, since the music of the composers he commissioned to write for the Ballets Russe now comprises much of the modern orchestra’s musical repertoire. He influences our culture through the artistic vision the company encapsulated, a contrast to Wagnerian opera its nearest and possibly only rival. This exhibition synthesises a great deal of audio and visual information, including many wonderful costumes, paintings by major artists such as Edgar Degas among many others of the company in action, accompanying videos by musical and choreographic experts, set and costume designs. It’s a fantastic introduction to the work of Diaghilev but also a portrait of a lost era, the belle epoque. We can only wonder at the scale of ambition of producers like Diaghilev and the company's other geniuses and ask ourselves: will there ever be anything like this again?

Paul Murphy, London

THE MEDIUM & A HAND OF BRIDGE, BERLIN INTERNATIONAL OPERA

2010-09-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

October Tue 5, Wed 6, Fri 8 - Sun 10 at 8pm
coproduction: Berlin International Opera & Theater Thikwa
The Medium & A Hand of Bridge
Two American Chamber Operas

A bright flippant bridge game suddenly turns into a dark seance, but in the end, they all play at cards again. An ingenious conflation of Samuel Barber's society satire "A Hand of Bridge" and his friend's Gian-Carlo Menotti's esoteric thriller "The Medium".

"a musical and theatrical bull’s-eye" (Orpheus-Magazin)

produced by Berlin International Opera & Theater Thikwa
Venue: Theater Thikwa, Fidicinstraße 40, 10965 Berlin Kreuzberg
TICKETS: 16 / 10
read more http://www.kulturkurier.de/veranstaltung_208339.htm

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE AT THE TATE BRITAIN

2010-09-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE AT THE TATE BRITAIN, PIMLICO, LONDON, SEPTEMBER 2010

This is a major retrospective of the Anglo-American photographic artist Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge was born Edward Muggeridge in Kingston on Thames in 1830, departing for the US in 1852. His changes of name possibly chart an attempt to distance himself from supposed, yet to us unknown, painful events of his past, or to chart a new artistic beginning. Muybridge was one of the first pioneers of photography, very quickly realising that the new art form belonged not only to a new century, but also to a new continent. In France the Impressionists had adapted photography into their work, realising that so-called photographic realism was a separable aesthetic that needed to be integrated into their practice. For Muybridge photography meant commerce and the place for his commercial activities was America, more specifically the west, with its great unexplored vistas, rising cities, railroads, Indians, settlers, buffalo. Muybridge was a combination of artist, scientific explorer and confidence man purveying snake oil and much else.

Muybridge's commercial and scientific activities offer us insights into his character and identity. Muybridge was prone to constant misrepresentations due to his salesman's aplomb. Being self-dependent on a continent that encouraged independence Muybridge had to sell his product, initially using the nom de plume Helios, the sun god of Greek mythology. The name has mythological yet also sexual reference. His own name went through many permutations. Eadweard came from his reverence for Saxon Kings, who had a historical connection with Kingston. In the UK he is known as Muybridge, pronounced Mybridge, but in the US as Muybridge, pronounced Moybridge. The name on his tombstone is Maybridge, but it’s only a salient point because Muybridge represents a European entrepreneur intent on establishing a reputation in America. His name changed because no one knew anything about him in the USA. Furthermore, no one knows how he became an adept photographer, but it’s believed that he learned the craft in London.

Muybridge resembled Moses or Jehovah in later depictions, with flowing grey hair and a great grey beard. His self-proclaimed role as artistic aborigine and Old Testament prophet is underlined in photographs of the artist as an athlete in his 60s, but again Muybridge is exaggerating for at the time he was only 54 (possibly looking a lot older). Later he was to shoot dead his wife's lover, a theatre critic called Harry Larkyns who supposedly sired his daughter. However, she also appeared to strongly resemble Muybridge. Muybridge was acquitted at the subsequent trial. The jury, composed of married men of Muybridge's race and class, agreed with his defence of 'justified homocide' but Muybridge also used insanity as a defence. His own images of himself perched somewhat precariously in Yosemite were used at the trial to convince jury members of the irrationality of his behaviour. Subsequently Muybridge had to lie low in Guatemala for a year or two while he ostensibly completed a new photographic commission, calling himself Eduardo Santiago Muybridge. He created a compulsive, elegiac portrait of Central America. Muybridge contrived, quite sensibly, to avoid the American Civil War, since he had to return to London after being injured in a riding accident. He spent six years in London from 1860 to 1866, known as 'the lost years' since little is known about his activities at this time. Muybridge completed panoramas of San Francisco, his adopted home, where he was supported by his patron, wealthy Californian and first Republican governor of that state, Leland Stanford. Although he was later to sue Stanford, whom he accused, quite justifiably, of plagiarism, the two men worked together on his portfolio entitled 'Animal Motion'. This was a project developed in tandem with the University of Pennsylvania, a groundbreaking study in the physics of motion that was to settle various controversies, such as the galloping movement of a horse which actually does 'fly' when all its four hooves leave the ground. Muybridge was the pioneer who compiled the proofs for this and other mysteries, yet his work also evidences a quasi-fascistic fascination with body culture. This is sometimes compulsive, obsessive, homo-erotic, pornographic and even downright odd. Muybridge was ostensibly interested in the physics of motion, extended this interest to depict the movements of amateur and professional athletes (but the image that interested Francis Bacon was of a black professional boxer) but his human tableaux are rigidly gendered. Men are athletes, women perform menial domestic tasks. His images of athletes influenced the work of Francis Bacon, but also of contemporaries such as Edgar Degas. Bacon was particularly interested in the image of a paralytic boy who walks on all fours, incorporating this into his painting. It also resurfaces as a theme in the fading moments of Cobra Verde a somewhat over the top film by Werner Herzog, featuring manic Klaus Kinski as the eponymous slave trader and adventurer.

Muybridge began his career as a bookseller, importing many improbable sales man's strategies into his photographic work. He began to create portfolios of landscapes, such as his (perhaps somewhat stereotypical) depictions of Yosemite, an 'American Eden', which were nevertheless acclaimed at the time as a landmark and step forward in the depiction of clouds and natural light, which he captured through double exposures. Muybridge also sought to depict minorities and outsiders, demonstrating remarkable and untypical (for the time) sympathy, such as his depictions of Chinese labourers, who arrived in California in their thousands at the time of the gold rush in the Yukon. Furthermore, Muybridge was employed to document the Modoc War of 1873. The Modoc were an Indian nation who managed to leave their reservation moving back onto the colonised land they had formerly occupied. Muybridge naturally enough couldn't get any images of the Modoc but employed pacified Indians instead to pose for him. The Modoc were eventually returned to their reservation after much bloodshed. Muybridge's photographs remain a remarkable document and commentary on early America.

Muybridge completed other portfolios before his death in 1904, in Kingston, also inventing the zoopraxiscope, a kind of primitive film projector that connected his images together using the illusion of persistence of vision. Muybridge's appearance, the mystery, creativity, sometime ridiculousness of his life, his eventual disappearance and legacy are adumbrated in this exhibition at the Tate Britain, London. It’s a fine adjunct to the previous Francis Bacon exhibition. There might have been more mention of Muybridge's influence, particularly on contemporaries such as Etienne-Jules Marey, perhaps a room devoted to Muybridge's influence and legacy. The exhibition is an excellent survey of Muybridge’s impact on photography, science and early cinema.

Rachael Whitehead at the Tate Britain

This retrospective of the work of Rachael Whitehead is an adjunct to the adjoining Eadweard Muybridge exhibition. Whitehead creates stark geometrical surfaces and interior design collages. Typically she uses materials such as graph paper, resin, ink, correction fluid, i.e. materials possessed by most secretaries. Like Jackson Pollock, Whitehead underlines the ordinariness of the artistic artificer, insisting on using commonly found materials, rather than specialised, expensive art materials.

There is an architectural unity, mathematical, formal qualities that combine to create a mixture of the everyday and the esoteric. The designs are mainly sketches for her major works, Holocaust Memorial, Judenplatz, Wien (2000) and Monument (2001). Her work implies primitive, untutored chaos of a rambling yet fascinated visionary, reminiscent of the work of Cy Twombly. The artist hasn't forgotten her possible pasts and these are integrated through a range of everyday materials into her work on a variety of sites.

Paul Murphy, London

OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW, dir Sophie Fiennes

2010-08-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

Hi, I braved the rain tonight and went to the screening of 'Over your Cities grass will grow' by director Sophie Fiennes which turned out to be a bio-pic of an artist I know well, Anselm Kiefer (1945 - ). In 1993 Kiefer left his home in Buchen, Germany for La Ribaute, a derelict silk factory near Barjac in France, which happens to be near Montelimar, Avignon and Nimes. This region is also known as Provence. The people there speak Provencal, a dialect of Occitan, which is in turn related to the Langue D'Oc, for Oc means yes in Occitan. Dante writes in the Langue D'Oc in The Divine Comedy, the language of the troubadours of Provence which was also the home of the Albighensian Heresy. The language is closely related to the Catalan language spoken around Barcelona.

Director Sophie Fiennes has clearly enjoyed the films of Stanley Kubrick and employs the music of Ligeti featured in his film, '2001; A Space Odyssey'. She obviously wishes us to understand that Kiefer's artworks are as monumental as the visionary themes of Kubrick's films. Kiefer is busily transforming the derelict site of La Ribaute into a theme park or installation, using bull dozers, drilling machines of all kinds, cement mixers and just all kinds of mechanical aids, gizmos. Sometimes he is working in his studio with his assistants who just pose as minions, faithful Igors who adjust the screens or the cement but who play no meaningful part in the creative process. Kiefer is a hands on practitioner of his art, not a dull theoretician compartmented in a office with a tedious script. He is interviewed in the library he built in la Ribaute, speaks in German to an interviewer about the meaning of meaning while small boys miculate or do hand wanking signs behind his head. Candidly his art flows from him, but all around him evidence of the monoliths he and he alone created flow in and out of the landscape, while the music of Gyorgy Ligeti drones on in the background and then in the foreground and then perhaps in the background again.

We don't find out much about the practicalities of Kiefer's life, ie where the money comes from, but instead we have a portrait of the artist as an old dodger. Kiefer constructs his installations encountering problems of interpretation, construction (or deconstruction) of meaning, but always ready to seize a spade or welding torch, to go in alone and sort whatever hitch or technical glitch might occur. His faithful minions always obey and never, ever complain of lack of pay or long hours or anything (they're no allowed). But the film has real poetry, if that's the word, and real poetry is concocted somewhere inbetween Kiefer's paintings, Ligeti's tone poems and Fiennes skillfully crafted images. Although the film could have flowed over with pretension, it all seems remarkably spare, pared to the bone, reduced and minimal.

Paul Murphy, the Soho Screening Rooms, London

GRACE KELLY, STYLE ICON AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON, LONDON, AUGUST 2010

2010-08-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

GRACE KELLY, STYLE ICON at the VICTORIA and ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON, LONDON, AUGUST 2010

This exhibition is a retrospective view of the style icon of the 1950s, Grace Kelly (1929 - 1982), tracing her personal evolution from New England Irish Catholic girl in white gloves to make believe princess of the silver screen to her marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco. Kelly thus lived out Hollywood's typical self-fulfilling prediction, that it can make fantasy become reality for a very few.

Kelly’s career began in modelling. She was able to transpose some of the skills of dress, make up, hairstyle and care to the silver screen and beyond. The exhibition traces Kelly's do it yourself approach and improvisational elan through her career as an actress with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock.

If anything it’s the conventional person she was that shines through the glitz that seems to have summed up her later career. The early costumes enable her to appear both as a voluptuous 'sweater girl' and as the girl next door which is perhaps best illustrated by her performance as Lisa Fremont in Hitchcock's Rear Window. Kelly is a populiser of seemingly ordinary, mundane things, such as sunglasses and handbags. Unusually for a female celebrity of the 1950s Kelly admitted to the fact that she was short sighted and was often photographed wearing glasses or even reading a screenplay with their aid. She popularised the Hermes bag, which evolved from a saddle bag. This over-sized lady's bag later became known in time as the Kelly bag. Her clothes are often functional, but later on she experiments with a Christian Dior dress in the manner of Piet Mondrian. There are dresses for her films by Edith Head which seem functional, designed to draw attention to Kelly herself. This is her rawly underwritten signature.

Reading between the lines it’s hard not to see Kelly being mistaken in marrying Rainier, perhaps continuing with her burgeoning Hollywood career. Kelly was born in Philadelphia, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had made his fortune in the building trade in the States. Her subsequent marriage to Prince Rainier may have been of political importance. The exhibition documents her visit to southern Ireland to visit Eammon de Valera in 1957 thus foreshadowing Kennedy’s election in 1961. It may have been easier for Kelly to marry into European aristocracy than into ruling WASP elites in the US thus underlining the social status that (Irish-American catholic) actors enjoyed.

This exhibition has a very condensed feel to it. There isn't perhaps enough detailed research and historical context could have been expanded on. There was the possibility to make an amazing exhibition that could encapsulate the 1950s era and comment freely on our own, but this isn't quite it.

However as a starting point to understanding its subject this exhibition is excellent.

Paul Murphy, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

EXPOSED: VOYEURISM, SURVEILLANCE AND THE CAMERA: THE TATE MODERN

2010-08-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

EXPOSED: VOYEURISM, SURVEILLANCE AND THE CAMERA: THE TATE MODERN,August 2010

This exhibition at the Tate Modern is a contrasting mess with some more coherent strands, a formula the Tate Modern seems to be now quite adept at. The exhibition wants to ask the central question: is intrusion inherent to camera technology? It does this with reference to examples from both private and public life.

Voyeurism is examined as a celebration of prying, then as a kind of dirty yet enjoyable perversion, then as something lurid leading to its eventual criminalisation (2003 in the UK). The exhibition examines celebrities and celebrity culture. The exhibition makes us ponder over the celebrities contradictory need for the oxygen of publicity versus the needs of a private life with reference to images of Taylor and Burton enjoying some intimate, yet public moments, Kim Novak sitting down in a train's diner compartment, all the men's eyes suddenly to the right, Jack Nicholson in an ill-advised moment of road rage, the Queen with her corgis and some guys in 18th century costume. There's a snap of Paris Hilton being returned to gaol. The image is emotionally plausible, yet Paris Hilton seems ultimately vapid, a deliberately, consciously created celebrity bubble that has burst.

The word surveillance, like voyeurism, is of French origin, so it’s unsurprising to find that the root of some of the techniques of voyeurism and pornography date back to the French Impressionists. The techniques of surveillance may be regarded as the bad or rejected ideas of the Impressionists. Auguste Belloc (1800 - 1867), by no means a failed painter and photographer, began to produce images of women with their skirts around their heads and their legs spread under the nom de plume Billon. His activities soon brought him to the attention of the police. In another revealing image Edgar Degas is observed leaving a pissoir, thus maintaining celebrity’s connection with olfactory smells and bodily functions. French Impressionists are extending the possibilities of perversion. Indeed they are coming up with some new and surprising perversions to add to the already burgeoning list of possible perversions established in the 18th century.

Voyeurism is obviously not just an instrument of titillation, but also of control. The first surveillance device may indeed have been Jeremy Bentham's panopticon designed in 1785. The device allowed the viewer to observe prison inmates without being observed in return. The earliest usages of surveillance are from this country: the suffragettes, for instance, were photographed by the police who also possessed detailed descriptions of them alongside a list of their offences. These techniques would later be used against “terrorist” organisations such as the IRA or the Baader Meinhof gang. The evolution of surveillance techniques often seem to precede a change in society that makes the original offence, in this case votes for women, an offence no longer. So much of the exhibition is oddly retrospective, or somehow debating its very own retrospectivity. The Zabruder film of the Kennedy assassination, which might be regarded as a kind of watershed in surveillance, is also mentioned. However there’s no detailed account of how Zabruder's home movie altered contemporary views of the assassination, but also re-opened the case when the film was first viewed by the public after it was initially banned. There's no mention either of its re-use in Oliver Stone's film JFK, but films like Hitchcock's Rear Window are referenced. The exhibition doesn’t always do enough to connect up the strands of painting, photography and cinema.

Public photography relies on the proliferation and cheapening of camera technology through early cameras to the introduction of the first noisy flash photography to the modern iphone complete with camera and movie-making technology. Some of the photographers, mostly working in America, that are mentioned include: Lee Friedlander (1934 - ), Garry Winogrand (1928 -1984), Robert Frank (1924 - ) and Harry Callahan (1912 - 1999). Their subjects are anonymous photography of urban scenes and their inhabitants. These photographers encapsulate the urge to document but also to capture ordinary people in candid moments, not so much subjects as victims. The exhibition is an account of the evolution of American amateur photography in contrast to American state surveillance and military photography.

Military surveillance seems to have been begun by the British during the Crimean War and British colonialist involvement in China during the Boxer rising. During the American Civil War (1860 - 1865) corpses were re-arranged into romantic poses for the newspaper reading public, an early example of the realisation of the impact of war journalism on public opinion. Of course, graphic depictions of the fighting may have been regarded as too disturbing for the general public of that era. They are also hardly an attractive recruiting poster. Memorable events such as the execution of President Abraham Lincoln's assassins are also recorded for public and posterity. The public record is now just that. After the ACW amateur photography takes off in the USA. Amateur photographers begin to evolve methods of taking snaps without their subject’s knowledge, tactics later adopted by photo-journalists: cameras are placed into walking sticks, watches, the heels of shoes: the camera can be absolutely anywhere, sometimes in the most ordinary, everyday of places.

Watching and being watched is intrusive, disturbing, yet simultaneously pleasurable, the exhibition implies, aspects of human nature perhaps, or human behaviour, that are dealt with in a seemingly quite neutral, non-judgemental way, yet a framing moral judgement is often intrinsic to the exhibition's working. The exhibition imitates the Kinsey report, which it also references, attempting to describe the functions of titillation while becoming titillating in its own way. In laugh out loud images subjects are captured in the full flow of coitus or coupling gratuitously in cinemas, cars, on beaches or roads. In fact, just about anywhere.

Military involvement in surveillance continued on through WW1 and WW2, being especially useful in 1918, when Allied tactics advanced significantly, in 1944 during the Normandy landings and in documenting Nazi atrocities at the end of WW2. It was not until the Vietnam War that we see the mass media bring the war to the American living room with disastrous consequences. Since the war is now summarised for the American public by images of a napalmed Vietnamese girl in agony running down a road, the execution of a possible Viet Cong sympathiser by a South Vietnamese chief of police or tax collector. These images became bad propaganda for the US government. During the two Gulf wars access to the warfront was carefully controlled by the military leading philosopher Jean Baudrillard to claim that the first Gulf war did not exist, being the first virtual war in history. A new kind of war is conceived meaning new vocabulary built on euphemisms redolent of Orwell: 'smart' technologies, precision bombing, collateral damage (indiscriminate killing of civilians), WMDs in the wake of the symmetrical attacks of 9:11 assymetrical means are being employed to counteract "terror".

The exhibition touches on most sites of Cold War and post-Cold War conflict: Kuwait, Northern Ireland, Germany, the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, CCTV footage of shopping malls, recorded footage of stings, set ups, framings, the proliferation of infra-red and militarised camera technologies. But also private, intimate spheres such as Kohei Yoshiyaki's 1946 infra-red photographic study The Park. Romantic couplings in Tokyo's parks are being observed by voyeurs who are in turn being observed by cameramen, who are in turn being observed by us, the audience. It’s easy to be disgusted or amazed by the activities of these voyeurs until we reflect (somewhat ironically) that we too are implicated.

The Tate Modern's new exhibition requires a sophisticated response, since it refuses art movement aesthetics or canonical aesthetics, so that none of the photographs are in any way 'good'. In fact they even veer away from tastefulness yet lots of ultimately hilarious and simultaneously revealing images are offered up to us.

Take this exhibition with a pinch of salt but do take it.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London, August 2010

THE SACRIFICE

2010-07-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

The Sacrifice (1986, dir Andrei Tarkovsky, starring Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood)

I went to the Arsenal in Potsdamer Platz on Monday 12th of July to see the former Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky´s last film ´The Sacrifice´. It was unbelievably hot in Berlin, but cool enough in the cinema (which obviously must have been air conditioned).

The programme began with a charming Tarkovsky short from his earlier period working in the Soviet Union, The Waltz and the Violin. The film demonstrates Tarkovsky´s story-telling capabilities and ability to depict character in a shorthand of disparate images. The film is not typical Soviet propaganda nonsense, but a sensitive depiction of childhood.

The main feature, Tarkovsky´s final film ´The Sacrifice´, dating from 1986, therefore wedged inbetween the final years of the Cold War and the beginning of the era we live in that began in 1989. ´The Sacrifice´ is a mish mash of constricted art house pretentiousness and visionary epiphanies that aim to reveal something unbelievably important. The film is obviously influenced by the films of Bergmann and the plays of Beckett, although it seems, at times, that its just being derivative. The symbolism is so stark and refined to somehow evoke the minimalism of a play like Beckett´s ´Waiting for Godot´ yet also places itself within the context of a nuclear conflict. The pessimism is strongly contextualised, for how can a nuclear holocaust be a cause for joyful, unrestrained laughter? Alexander is a pretentious philosopher debating Nietzsche to the shrieking sound of overhead jet fighters on their way no doubt to deliver a payload of bombs. The editing is unbelievably slow paced, the delivery and pacing of the film also crawls like a snail, but sometimes to good effect. We savour the images rather than being rushed through them. We can dwell on the characters, images look sombre and somehow packed with importance. There are few close ups and many long takes. When a close up appears it seems like a portrait in miniature. Even the simplest effects in a Tarkovsky film can take on a meaning that is lost in the works of other directors.

The film is set on the Swedish island of Gotland which is interesting because Gotland still has a great deal of undiscovered history, mainly from the Middle Ages when it was the site of a protracted and very bloody battle fought at the town of Visby. The excavations from the site provide us with a unique glimpse into a Medieval battle, especially since this one was uniquely bloody and one-sided, decided ultimately by professional soldiers from the mainland, rather as Tarkovsky is the professional expelled from his native land, coming to the island of Gotland to leave his final, lasting impression of the light that surrounds us, the depth and silences within and ultimately northern lights and the darkness. But the film is mainly preoccupied with presenting an abstract, reduced portrait of anyplace that might figure as any bleak or ruined northern landscape. Instead what matters is what's happening inside the character's minds. Therefore the bleakness clearly counterpoints Alexander's disintegrating worldview as he finally sets light to his house and possessions.

Paul Murphy, Berlin

VENICE: CANALETTO AND HIS RIVALS

2010-06-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE
VENICE: CANALETTO AND HIS RIVALS

13 October – 16 January 2011
Sainsbury Wing
Admission charge
Sponsored by Credit Suisse

‘Antonio Canale…astounds everyone in this city who sees his work, which is like that of Carlevarijs, but you can see the sun shining in it.’
(Alessandro Marchesini, painter and adviser to collectors, July 1725)

This landmark exhibition presents the finest assembly of Venetian views by Canaletto and his 18th-century rivals to be seen in a generation. Bringing together around 50 major loans from the public and private collections of the UK, Europe and North America, Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals highlights the extraordinary variety of Venetian view painting, juxtaposing masterpieces by Canaletto with key works by artists including Luca Carlevarijs, Michele Marieschi, Bernardo Bellotto and Francesco Guardi.

Featured works span the 18th-century, from one of the first accurately datable Venetian views by Luca Carlevarijs of 1707 to the death of Francesco Guardi in 1793. The age of the veduta (view) reached its zenith around 1740, by which time the acquisition of this choice souvenir had become an important element of the Grand Tour of Italy. In the first half of the century, aristocratic travellers, led by English milordi, fuelled a vibrant and highly competitive market for Venetian view painting which saw artists jostling for commissions and fame. Together they immortalised some of the best-loved landmarks of the city including the Grand Canal, the Piazza San Marco, the Rialto, the Molo, Santa Maria della Salute and the Lagoon.

Foremost among these artists was Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto (1697–1768). Trained, like many of his rivals, as a painter of theatrical scenery, he visited Rome in 1719, which inspired him to try his hand at view painting. In the late 1720s, in response to market demand, he began to replace the moodiness of his earlier works with views bathed in warm sunshine. Within a decade, Canaletto had come to dominate the genre. The exhibition features some of Canaletto’s greatest masterpieces, including The Riva degli Schiavoni, looking West, about 1735 (Sir John Soane’s Museum, London), The Stonemason’s Yard, about 1725 (The National Gallery, London), and four of his finest works from the Royal Collection.

Room 1 opens with a pivotal work by Canaletto’s earliest precursor and the founding father of Italian view painting, Gaspare Vanvitelli (1652/3–1736): The Molo from the Bacino di San Marco, 1697 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). Trained in the Netherlands and based mostly in Rome, Vanvitelli is thought to have visited Venice in 1695, a trip resulting in some 40 views over the following decades. Yet despite being filled with anecdotal detail, Vanvitelli’s Venice remained distinctly placid in comparison to the work of Canaletto and his contemporaries.

The immediate successor to Vanvitelli and the first view painter in Venice to depend on foreign patronage was Luca Carlevarijs (1663–1730). Important early works by Canaletto – including The Piazza San Marco, looking East, about 1723 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) – are displayed alongside depictions of similar locations by Carlevarijs, the artist he had already begun to eclipse.

The largest room of the exhibition celebrates the floating city’s dramatic festivals, regattas and ceremonies, a highlight being Canaletto’s The Molo from the Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day, about 1733–4 (Royal Collection). Here too, for the first time, Canaletto’s masterpiece,The Reception of the French Ambassador Jacques-Vincent Languet…, about 1727 (The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg) is displayed alongside the pioneering composition by Carlevarijs, The Reception of the British Ambassador Charles Montagu…, about 1707–8 (Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery).
During the 1730s and 1740s the only artist to pose a real threat to Canaletto’s domination was Michele Marieschi (1710–1743), perhaps the most spontaneous of the Venetian vedutisti. Comparisons made in Room 2 demonstrate Marieschi’s characteristically broad brushstrokes and fondness for unexpected view points, a highlight being The Rialto Bridge from the Riva del Vin, 1740s (The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg).

At the height of Canaletto’s fame, his workshop offered the finest training a view painter could receive. Among those to benefit was his precocious nephew, Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780). By the age of 18 he could already imitate his uncle’s style with extraordinary dexterity and increasingly sought to introduce ‘improving’ flourishes of his own. Having worked closely with Canaletto during his ‘cold’ period of 1738–42, an almost wintry light remained characteristic of Bellotto’s style for the rest of his career. Yet just as characteristic of Bellotto’s style were his uniquely vibrant blue skies, perhaps most dramatic in The Piazzetta, looking North, about 1743 (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa).

During the final decade of his life Canaletto had a new rival – Francesco Guardi (1712–1793) – who was to outlive him by 25 years and to provide a glorious final chapter in the history of Venetian view painting. By the 1770s Guardi was considered something of an authority on Canaletto’s work and throughout his career showed a willingness to borrow his compositions. Yet, as juxtapositions in the final section of the exhibition demonstrate, Guardi’s concerns were very different from those expressed by Canaletto.

In his promotion of nature over the works of man, Guardi anticipated the rise of romanticism in the 19th century, and crucially emphasised the fragility of Venice rather than its permanence. Out on the Lagoon, where Venice’s human element is at its most marginal, Guardi appears at his most poetic (View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Tower of Malghera, probably 1770s, The National Gallery, London). While Guardi took this composition from a drawing by Canaletto, his intense concern with mood transforms this quiet backwater into something else entirely.

Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals presents the finest view paintings of one of the world’s most enthralling and beautiful cities. As well as celebrating the great works of Canaletto, one of the best-loved artists in Britain, the exhibition highlights the exceptional achievements of his now less well-known rivals and associates.

Frederick Cayley Robinson: Acts of Mercy

2010-06-08T06:02:00.000-07:00

FREDERICK CAYLEY ROBINSON: ACTS OF MERCY

14 July – 17 October 2010

Sunley Room
Admission free
Supported by the Wellcome Trust

Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862–1927) is one of the most distinctive yet elusive British painters of the early 20th century. This will be the first exhibition of his work to be shown in the United Kingdom for over 30 years.

The four central paintings on display are the summation of Cayley Robinson’s artistic ambition. Executed between 1916 and 1920, his masterpiece, Acts of Mercy, comprises four large-scale allegorical works commissioned to adorn the new Middlesex Hospital, rebuilt between 1928 and 1935. Combining modernity with tradition to remarkable effect, the artist emulates the spiritual integrity and methods of the Old Masters he encountered in the National Gallery.

Alongside Cayley Robinson’s modern works, National Gallery paintings by Piero della Francesca (The Baptism of Christ, 1450s), Sandro Botticelli (Four Scenes from the Early Life of Saint Zenobius, about 1500) and Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes (Summer, before 1873) will be shown.

The Acts of Mercy rank as the most important decorative commissions of the early part of the 20th century, but they are also among the most singular works in modern British art. Their underlying message concerns the sanctity of human altruism expressed through medical healing and the care of orphaned children.

The two pairs are titled The Doctor (1916, 1920) and Orphans (both 1915). In the former, one panel represents the traumatic effects of conflict on those invalided out of the First World War. Wounded soldiers and sailors gather in silence at the entrance to a hospital, juxtaposed by the looming presence of an equestrian statue. In the companion piece, a doctor is thanked by a kneeling mother – echoing traditional images of the adoration or crucifixion – and the daughter he has treated.

The panels titled Orphans depict the refectory of an orphanage, under the patronage of the hospital. In one picture, girls sit at a table reminiscent of Leonardo’s Last Supper, while their stillness and steady gazes recall Dutch 17th-century painting.

All four works were displayed in the entrance hall of Middlesex Hospital until 2007. Subsequently purchased by the Wellcome Trust, they are normally on public display in the Wellcome Library in Euston, London. After this recent sale, the exhibition offers the chance to reassess Cayley Robinson and his stature, and also track the wide range of sources from which his work derives.

Other works by Cayley Robinson will also be shown alongside Acts of Mercy, including Pastoral (1923–24, Tate), The Old Nurse (1926, The British Museum) and Self Portrait (1898, National Portrait Gallery, London)

Cayley Robinson’s pictures are almost always of people; denizens of a silent, timeless world. A frequent theme is the care for the young and the old. Essentially a British Symbolist, Robinson created a striking variety of moods and atmosphere in his paintings to evoke complex emotional responses. His work characteristically incorporates a rich variety of altruism and symbolism, but often meaning is reserved, or implicit, creating an aura of mystery or ambiguity. There are symbolic allusions but no clear-cut messages.

The exhibition celebrates a British heritage success and provides a timely opportunity to re-examine a little-known yet highly distinctive artist who now seems to stand outside the main developments of British art. Taking the form of a modern allegory or history painting, Acts of Mercy memorably explores the positive forces of the human spirit in the face of destruction.

Frederick Cayley Robinson: Acts of Mercy is a National Gallery exhibition created in collaboration with Tate Britain.

SAVED FOR THE NATION:

2010-06-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE

SAVED FOR THE NATION:
BAROQUE MASTERPIECE GOES ON DISPLAY AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY

One of the greatest works by the Italian Baroque master Domenichino (1581–1641) is to remain in Britain and is now on public display in Room 32 of the National Gallery, having been acquired by an anonymous private collector.

This is a tremendous outcome for the nation and a triumph of collaboration between the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) and the anonymous private collector, resulting from the application of the ‘Ridley Rules’.

Saint John the Evangelist (1620s) is the finest painting by Domenichino to remain in private hands and the most important example of his work in this country. Measuring 259 x 199 cm, this monumental oil painting is a must-see highlight for visitors to the Italian Baroque rooms of the National Gallery.

National Gallery curator Dawson Carr said: ‘Depictions of divine inspiration were a mainstay of Baroque artists, and the heroic pose and focused, serene gaze of Domenichino’s figure make it one of the finest interpretations of the classical tradition. Although Domenichino is well represented in UK public and private collections, none of the paintings can equal the grand scale and conception of this, one of his greatest easel paintings. It is undoubtedly the best work by the artist remaining in private hands and its export would have been lamentable for the representation of Italian Baroque painting in this country.’

This successful outcome comes just months after the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) placed an export licence deferral on the painting, owing to its outstanding aesthetic importance. It had already been sold to an overseas buyer for £9,225,250 at an auction in December 2009.

With the export licence deferral in place, a new collector came forward wishing to acquire the painting, to keep it in the UK and to make provision for its regular public display.

This agreement was made in accordance with the ‘Ridley Rules’, which can only be applied after it is clear that no UK institution is able to raise sufficient funds to acquire a work. The Ridley Rules then allow for offers from private individuals, who will guarantee public access to the painting for 100 days within a 12-month period.

In the first phase of this arrangement, the painting will be on display at the National Gallery from 10 May 2010 for a period of 18 months.

National Gallery Director, Dr Nicholas Penny, said ‘I want first of all to pay tribute to the private collector who has had the imagination and confidence to take this step. I hope that their example will be followed. They have acted in exactly the way that the Reviewing Committee has hoped. I also want to record my admiration for the Reviewing Committee, currently chaired, firmly and fairly, by Lord Inglewood. This committee operates independently, promptly and conscientiously without any rewards. The result is a triumph for the National Gallery, but also for enlightened legislation and its efficient administration.’

NOTES TO EDITORS

Domenico Zampieri (1581–1641), known as Domenichino, was one of the most important Italian artists of the 17th century, and was particularly celebrated for his religious and mythological compositions.

Saint John the Evangelist is a key masterpiece which epitomises the grandeur and nobility of Roman Baroque painting. The saint, author of the fourth gospel, is shown in a moment of revelation, his pen poised, his eyes lifted towards the source of his inspiration. At his feet is his attribute, an eagle, the bird thought to fly closest to heaven. The landscape behind him presumably represents the island of Patmos, where John was exiled by Domitian and where he is believed to have written the Apocalypse.
The painting is striking for its monumental size, its arresting composition, the inspired expression of the Saint’s countenance, and the splendour of the colouring – particularly the rich red of his robe. It is related to Domenichino’s great pendentive frescoes in the Roman church of Sant’Andrea della Valle (1624–5) which had a strong influence on later European artists.

It was painted for the Giustiniani family, who rank among the most important collectors and patrons in Rome in the first half of the 17th century (they were also great patrons of Caravaggio). Saint John the Evangelist entered the UK in the early 19th century, and in its most recent history the painting was hung in the organ room at Glyndebourne, East Sussex.

The National Gallery has several works by Domenichino, including three small paintings (Landscape with Tobias laying hold of the Fish (about 1610–13), Saint George killing the Dragon (about 1610) and The Vision of Saint Jerome (before 1603) and eight scenes in fresco executed with assistants (Apollo slaying Coronis, The Judgement of Midas, The Transformation of Cyparissus, Apollo pursuing Daphne, The Flaying of Marsyas, Apollo and Neptune advising Laomedon, Apollo killing the Cyclops and Mercury stealing the Herds of Admetus (all 1616–18).

Buried Child by Sam Shepard at the English Theatre, Luftbrücke Platz, Berlin, 1st May 2010

2010-05-02T06:34:00.001-07:00

Buried Child by Sam Shepard at the English Theatre, Luftbrücke Platz, Berlin, 1st May 2010

There´s a fundemental distinction in all art, poetry, film, theatre between showing and telling. Perhaps ´Buried Child´ crosses the line, becoming too didactic as any work made in a time of economic depression tends to (John Steinbeck´s ´The Grapes of Wrath´, echoing in itself ´The Battle Hymn of the Republic´ which more or less goes ´the Lord will smite those our enemies down with much wailing and gnashing of teeth...´. There´s a deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth in ´Buried Child´ though.) An aged patriarch, Dodge, decays on the sofa pickling himself with a conveniently hid bottle of whisky. His sons are: the imbecile Tilden who gathers vegetables from the fields, Bailey who has been left crippled in an agricultural incident. So there´s paralysis, emasculation and a buried child. I mean why would anyone bury a child? Children are born in order to be loved by their parents. The clue to all this is the context of the play, the economic depression of the 1970s. Sam Shepard can be heavy-handed, trowelling on the symbolism and to some extent the sentiment, but for all that the dialogue simply crackles along.

This Pulitzer Prize winning play is about a playwright learning his writing skills yet for all that the freshness of vision and to a large extent its naivety are endearing, essential attributes rather than deep flaws. The reason for that is also the quality of this production. The acting is simply the main point of the play. The mis-en-scene is reduced to the barest essentials, but it is the acting that grasps the audience in some kind of flurry of emotional attractions. The artistic director intends a certain interaction between cast and audience, but this production is more on the side of Stanislavsky than Brecht. The fourth wall placed between the actors and the audience is broken mysteriously or mischieviously by the percussionist who also plays the role of Father Dewis, a Protestant minister who is also having an unconcealed affair with Halie, Dodge´s wife. Dodge malingers on the sofa as everything falls about him, I mean, what else is there to do? The characters are ensnared in a crisis seemingly not of their own making, but as the play intimates, much of what is happening has been brought on by their mistakes which are all part of a surrounding booze-fuelled haze. Dodge´s grandson Vince arrives with his girlfriend Shellie, at first all sobriety and tact, but descending into anarchic humour, some bottle throwing later on.

Tilden is the most pitiful character, clearly implying the character of Lennie Small in John Steinbeck´s novella ´Of Mice and Men´, eventually bearing a potato-shaped bundle to the back of the stage. The breakdown of the economy is echoed in the breakdown of family structures with the resultant incest and murder creating a portrait of bleak disillusionment with American mythology and the American Dream.

Paul Murphy, Berlin

Buried Child by Sam Shephard at the English Theatre Berlin

2010-04-27T04:37:00.000-07:00

ENGLISH THEATRE BERLIN
formerly known as Friends of Italian Opera www.etberlin.de
Pressematerial zum Download: www.berlin-buehnen.de/-/presse/47.598
F40, Fidicinstr. 40, 10965 Berlin-Kreuzberg, Reservierung: 030/691 12 11 tickets@etberlin.de
TICKETS: 18,- / erm. 10,- / 3-Euro-Ticket / Gruppenrabatt

Do 15. (Premiere) bis So 18. April um 20 Uhr
Di 20.- Sa 24. und Di 27. April bis So 2. Mai um 20 Uhr

Koproduktion: English Theatre Berlin & 7 Stages/Atlanta/USA
Buried Child
Pulitzerpreis 1979: Sam Shephards bissiges Familiendrama.

mit / cast
Dodge - Del Hamilton
Halie - Faye Allen
Tilden Jeffrey Mittleman
Bradley - Harvey Friedman
Vince - Tomas S. Spencer
Shelly - April Small
Father Dewis - Errol T. Harewood

Autor / written by Sam Shephard, rights with kind permission by S. Fischer Verlag
Regie / directed by Veronika Nowag-Jones
Bühne und Kostüme / set and costumes by Tomas Fitzpatrick
Musikalische Leitung / musical direction by Errol T. Harewood
Licht / lights by Katri Kuusimäki
Fotos / photos by David Baltzer

In seinem 1979 mit dem Pulitzer-Preis ausgezeichneten Drama gewährt Sam Shepard nicht ohne Witz makabren Einblick in eine Familie, die ihren amerikanischen Traum durch ein Familiengeheimnis zerstört hat. Statt sich mit den Tatsachen zu konfrontieren wurde ein Inzest durch Mord vertuscht. Der Vater wurde zum grantelnden Säufer, die Mutter fand Trost in der Religion und dem attraktiven Priester, die erwachsenen Söhne sind beide völlig schräg drauf gekommen und wohnen plötzlich wieder bei den Eltern. Da taucht der scheinbar unbekannte Enkel Vince mit seiner Freundin auf, die durch ihre direkte Art die Familie so heftig aufmischt, dass die Vergangenheit ans Licht drängt. Es kommt zu einem herben aber Happy End.

Sam Shepard gilt als einer der wichtigsten lebenden US-amerikanischen Bühnenautoren. Mit seiner Mischung aus Witz, Action und trockenem Realismus seziert er die Rituale, das Vokabular und das moralische Korsett der amerikanischen Lower Class.

Buried Child first premièred on 27 June 1978 at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco, directed by Robert Woodruff. Sam Shepard reworked the play for a production at Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago in 1996, directed by Gary Sinise. The English Theatre Berlin / 7 Stages production is based on the reworked version.

Plot Synopsis www.theatredatabase.com

In his 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning family drama, Buried Child, Sam Shepard takes a macabre look at one American Midwestern family with a very dark secret.

When Vince brings his girlfriend, Shelly, home to meet his family, she is at first charmed by the "normal" looking farm house which she compares to a "Norman Rockwell cover or something"--that's before she actually meets his crazy family - his ranting, alcoholic grandparents (Dodge and Halie) and their two sons: Tilden, a hulking semi-idiot, and Bradley, who has lost one leg to a chain saw. Strangely, no one seems to remember Vince at first, and they treat him as an intruder. Eventually, however, they seem to accept him as a part of their violently dysfunctional family.

Gradually, the family's dark secret begins to come clear. Years ago Dodge, the grandfather, buried an unwanted newborn (possibly the product of an incestual relationship between Tilden and his mother) in some undisclosed location in the backyard. From that point forward, the entire family lived under a cloud of guilt that is finally dispelled when Tilden unearths the unfortunate child's mummified remains and carries it upstairs to his mother. This act seems to purge the family of its curse. Corn now grows in the fields where nothing would grow for years.

The play ends with a proclamation of hope from Halie who says:
"You can't force a thing to grow. You can't interfere with it. It's all hidden. It's all unseen. You just gotta wait til it pops up out of the ground. Tiny little shoot. Tiny little white shoot. All hairy and fragile. Strong enough. Strong enough to break the earth even. It's a miracle."

Sam Shepard:

"We don´t know each other in America. It starts on the family level, and there are certain areas in the country like in the west and in the south where 'family' is very strong, and there are other areas where it doesn't even exist! People don't have any connection whatsoever to each other, to their siblings, or know who their father is or their mother, they're just wild.

I'm haunted by that character. The American character is more about that than anything else, more than success, more than power and strength and all the other things that we present ourselves to be. It's more about the strange, strange lack of identity. We don't really know who we are, we never have known who we are. We've invented it! We don't have a clue! We're like wandering vagabonds!"
"Where do you even begin with Sam Shepard? With his Pulitzer prize? His Oscar nomination? The fact that he's routinely described as 'America's greatest living playwright?' Or if you're going to be superficial about it ... maybe the place to start is with the image of him as the tall, taciturn test pilot, Chuck Yeager, the cowboy-ish character he played in The Right Stuff; a man whose life was spent exploring the outer edge of what is and isn't possible.
(...)
He's still, even after all these years, he says, an outsider. 'I'm inhabiting a life I'm not supposed to be in… and at certain times in my life I have felt a wrongness. And not a moral wrongness but a sense that this isn't what I was born to be doing.' The writers who he responds most to are those who seem to share a sense of 'aloneness', and 'writing is almost a response to that aloneness which can't be answered in any other way'.

For Shepard, the heart of this, seemingly, and a recurring theme in his work, is bound up with the relationship he had with his alcoholic, abusive father. It's there in True West, Fool for Love, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and A Lie of the Mind, and even now, at the age of 66, it troubles him still. In Fool for Love, written almost three decades ago, the main character is haunted by the chilling possibility that he is turning into his father. Back then it was a fear; now, he says, it has become a fact."

(Caroll Cadwalladr, The Observer, 21.10.10)

Sam Shepard, born November 5, 1943, raised on a farm in Illinois, moved to New York in 1963. He became involved in the Off-Off-Broadway theatre and rock music scene. Even he acted occasionally he was more interested in writing, mostly for the stage, but he also had early screen-writing credits for Me and My Brother and Antonioni's Zabriskie Point. His early science-fiction play The Unseen Hand influenced Richard O'Brien's stage musical Rocky Horror Show. Since 1963 he has written nearly fifty plays including Curse of the Starving Class (1978), True West (1980), Fool For Love (1983), and Kicking a Dead Horse (2007). He collaborated with Bob Dylan on the surrealist film Renaldo and Clara (1978) and wrote the scripts for two Wim Wenders movies, Paris, Texas (1984) and Don't Come Knocking (2005).

His acting career began in earnest when he was cast in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven in 1978. This led to other important films and roles, most notably The Right Stuff, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1983, Steel Magnolias, All the Pretty Horses, Black Hawk Down, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and many others. On Broadway he was last seen as the father in Caryl Churchill´s A Number. He has received numerous awards for his work both as an actor and a writer. After a long-standing affair with Patti Smith, he since 1983 lives with actress Jessica Lange. They have two kids.

Veronika Nowag-Jones has been working as an actor and director for numerous theatres in the US and Germany; in the 1970s she was a member of George Tabori's famous theatre ensemble in Bremen and has since directed for the Clarence Brown Theatre Tennessee, the Theater Center Philadelphia (PA), 7 Stages Atlanta (GA) and the Teatro Ateneo Caracas, Venezuela. Veronika appeared in more than 50 movies and was last seen in Bis nichts mehr bleibt, a controversial TV movie about the Scientology sect; she is an acting teacher for film and TV at the ISFF Berlin;

Del Hamilton, co-founder and Artistic Director of 7 Stages Theater has directed over 60 productions and has also acted in numerous ones. He directed a very successful production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at Teatr Nowy in Poznan/Poland, and he has acted and directed at theatres in Atlanta, New York, London, Paris, Belgrade, Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Del is the author of several plays and has received numerous awards.

Faye Allen, co-founder of 7 Stages Theater has acted in numerous 7 Stages productions. As producing director, she serves as the primary coordinator for all production aspects of 7 Stages' plays, including selecting designers, casting productions, coordinating rehearsals, and managing all other production elements. 7 Stages has produced two of Faye's own plays, Hunger Pains and Reclaiming Your Garbage.

Jeffrey Mittleman, originally a native from New York, he has studied with the likes of Uta Hagen, Susan Grace Cohen before setting here in Berlin in 1994. Since 1995 he has performed in numerous film-, tv-, theatre productions while living in Europe. He currently works extensively as a voice-over artist for a myriad of projects. He is happy to be alive performing Sam Shepard for the stage in Berlin.

Harvey Friedman, born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, studied acting at Carnegie-Mellon University. He toured several continents with the polish theatre ensemble "Teatr Kreatr", the first non-state theatre ever invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen. Harvey completed the Berlin Marathon in 2:51:13 in 1993. He plays Dr. Joseph Goebbels in Valkyrie.

Tomas S. Spencer lives and works in Berlin since 2002. He's been in several productions at English Theatre Berlin, i. e. The Age of Consent, The Caretaker, Fallen Angels. His movie credits include Beyond the Sea (Kevin Spacey), Vollidiot (Tobias Baumann) and most recently The Last Station/Ein Russischer Sommer (Michael Hoffman) where he played Tolstoy's son Andrej opposite Helen Mirren.

April Small began her training at Ballet School and completed her first Degree in Professional Dance at Bird College in 2005. During this period also studying part time at the Acting school Rose Bruford/London. Furthermore one year Advanced Classical Acting at The City Lit/London. Recent credits include The Seagull, Pinter’ s Progress, John Boy, Pause To Wonder, Assassins.

Errol Trotman-Harewood was born in Guyana and moved to the UK in 1967. He began studying drums at the age of 9, has been performing since age 10 and started teaching percussion after doing service in the British Army. He has been acting in numerous plays and musicals in Germany and can be seen in movies such as Straight Shooter, Lippels Traum, and most recently Polanski's The Ghostwriter.

The Engineering of Consent

2010-04-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.

– (Edward L. Bernays, "The Engineering of Consent", 1947)

www.theenginge.blogspot.com

Peer Gynt at the Maxim Gorki Theater, Unter den Linden, Berlin

2010-04-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

Peer Gynt at the Maxim Gorki Theater, Unter den Linden, Berlin, April 25th, 2010
Last night the performance of Henrik Ibsens play "PEER GYNT" at the Maxim Gork Theater, captivated the sold out audience. It was a well chosen location for the play as the classical style of the the decor and ambience of the theatre, juxtaposed with the modern techiniques such as incorperating video projection onto the set, mirrowed the theme of the play nicely.

It was a dynamic performance about the struggle of one man´s conciousness and how to find your true self amidst the turmoil of todays expectations of how to achieve happiness, health and wealth. The demons and the angels of the mind were well performed by the supporting actors, with an extraordinary performance by Jens Harzenas the main actor, and his mother Karin Neuhausen.

The theatre had a wonderful ambience of comfort and a friendly staff. I found it to be a unique experience located in one of Berlins finest cultural arenas.

Sharon Bauch (USA), Berlin

Bordellballade (is a coproduction: Commissioned by "Kurt Weill Fest Dessau" and produced at Theater Koblenz), Operneukölln, Neukölln, Berlin, April

2010-04-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

Bordellballade (is a coproduction: Commissioned by "Kurt Weill Fest Dessau" and produced at Theater Koblenz), Operneukölln, Neukölln, Berlin, April

Another fantastic production from Operneukölln, but with some predictable elements (the makers of this really need to check out David Lynch´s ´Lost Highway´, ´Inland Empire´ or ´Mulholland Drive´). The scenario is a dinner table, lots of low sex talk, bawdy ballads such as ´do you like animals´(wank into a rollmop, shag on top of an elephant dropping, such was the gist of the lyric...). Initially the work seemed a bit of a mess, but like a Jackson Pollock painting, began to make sense eventually and even became highly enjoyable. However, the makers will have to watch cliches such as the gun produced and fired at the end, the starlet strangled with the plastic bag etc But if you want to see some high octane theatre - musical happenings, then Neköllner Oper is the place to be in Berlin. (by the way my date, a girl from Halle ran off half way through the performance. Obviously they must eat too much wurstl in Halle, affecting the concentration. But it all added to the mayhem. Soon some other people left too, initiating the kind of action on the premiere night of Úbu Roi´ by Alfred Jarry when half the audience walked out, but every audience member who stayed became world famous.) This has something to do with Brecht/Weill ´Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagony´ and there you go. Hard to get on the Berlin stage without some chumminess with those two. Let´s hope we see more work by von Franzobel (Text) und Moritz Eggert (Musik) on the Berlin stage soon.

Paul Murphy, Berlin

It's every times the question of point of view.. The production was made for three very different sorts of audience: Kurt Weill Fest Dessau, Theater Koblenz (106.000 inhabitants, 3/4 of Christians = Catholics), Berlin-Neukölln. Robert Lehmeier took a clear-cut way whithout too special brainteasers. I think, he as right.

The photos are made by Matthias Heyde. It would be nice to notice the fotocredit.

Best regards

Benjamin Stein
ÖA / Presse

Hi, can you send me some stills from the production that I could put up at the site? One thing: you know the way at the end of every Berlin theatre or music production one of the actors gets a pistol out and uses it? This is becoming too predictable. Why not get an over the shoulder cannon out and use it instead? That would also petrify the audience and maybe the musicans too. Blow away the back wall and try to miss the customers. Also strangling the pretty young actress with a plastic bag is too predictable, as are songs about animals (fucking a rollmop herring or wanking into an elephant stool). Otherwise try to watch some David Lynch especially ´Lost Highway´ (I´ve never seen it...), ´Inland Empire´ and ´Mulholland Drive´, then wank into the elephant dropping...

Hi, I liked the opera, although at first it was hard to get into, like an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock. Maybe the pattern began to emerge a bit later, but in the middle of it my date ran out of the theatre which just added to all of the pandemonium. The strange thing is that I didn´t even try to feel her bum or even make lewd suggestions, but she said that the musical was filled with ´low sex talk´. I think that´s fine, what´s wrong with that? ´Low sex talk´ furnished civilisation with Mozart, Bach and Arnold Schoenberg. Without ´low sex talk´ its hard to see the pyramids being built, Michaelangelo completing the Cisine Chapel or Napoleon crossing the Alps, for f**** sake, where do I meet these people?
I´ll write up something about this within the week.

best wishes,

Paul

No Problem, fine! "Bordellballade" is a coproduction: Commissioned by "Kurt Weill Fest Dessau" and produced at Theater Koblenz. You will see: Not typical Neuköllner-Oper-style...

All the best, Benjamin

von Franzobel (Text) und Moritz Eggert (Musik)

Do. 15.04., 21:00 Uhr , Fr. 16.04., 19:00 Uhr . Neuköllner Oper, Saal

Claudia Felke, Adrian Becker und Isabel Mascarenhas (v.l.), Foto von Matthias Baus für das Theater Koblenz

Wir befinden uns an einem Ort jenseits der Grenze. In einem kleinen Bordell mit Namen Menschenhaus. Die Freier kommen von drüben, weil es hier billiger ist. Die Schutzgelderpresser stammen von hier. Und die fleißigen Lieseln, also die Dirnen, stammen von irgendwo …

„Ein kleines dreckiges Stück, anstelle großer Oper“ nennt Moritz Eggert seine „Bordellballade“.
Inspiriert vom „Mahagonny-Songspiel“ Weills und Brechts hat Franzobel einen Text erfunden über die Verrohtheit des Menschen in Zeiten der Wirtschaftskrise. Sowieso sei „das Leben grauslich und schmutzig“ – „das Verdrängte, das Unverheilte“ interessieren den Bachmann-Preisträger. Eggert wiederum zeichnet sich aus durch Werke wie ein „Fußball-Ballett“ für den Wiener Opernball oder eine Collage aller 22 Mozart-Opern für die Salzburger Festspiele.

Uraufführung: 04. März 2010 in Dessau
Premiere in Koblenz: 11. März 2010 in den Kammerspielen
Premiere in Berlin: 15. April 2010

Rosl, Puffmutter: Ks. Claudia Felke
Ferkelchen, Dirne: Dorothee Lochner
Zuckergoscherl, Dirne: Isabel Mascarenhas
Bussibär, Mafioso: Mathias Schaletzky
Kirschgarten, Mafioso: Adrian Becker
Alfred, Metzger: Marcel Hoffmann

Musikalische Leitung: Arno Waschk
Inszenierung: Robert Lehmeier
Bühnenbild und Kostüme: Dirk Steffen Göpfert
Dramaturgie: Judith Pielsticker

Presse:

"Dreigoscherlnstück": Koblenzer "Bordellballade" unterhält tiefgründig

Koblenz. Manchmal liegt in einem kleinen Buchstabendreher schon der ganze Unterschied. Zum Beispiel wenn aus der "Dreigroschen"-Oper von Bert Brecht und Kurt Weill das "Dreigoscherln"-Stück von Fanzobel und Moritz Eggert wird. Eine Puffmutter und ihre beiden Dirnen mit Namen Rosl, Ferkel und Zuckergoschl: Da entwirft der österreichische Autor Franzobel ein Personal wie aus einem Mutzenbacher-Erotikroman. Und er bleibt zunächst auch nah an Konstellationen, wie man sie aus der "Dreigroschenoper" oder "Mahagonny" von Brecht/Weill zu kennen glaubt.

Und auch Komponist Moritz Eggert stößt in dieses Horn: Viele der 21 Songs dieser "Bordellballade" sind direkt als Reflektion auf Vorbilder wie den Mackie-Messer-Song, die Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit oder - aus diesem Zeitrahmen fallend - Hilde Knefs "Für mich soll's rote Rosen regnen" geschrieben. Das ganze hochunterhaltsam, virtuos orchestriert für kleines Ensemble - offensichtlich ein Herzensanliegen des Komponisten. Aber richtig spannend wird es, wenn das Auftragswerk für das Dessauer Kurt-Weill-Fest, das Koblenzer Theater und die Neuköllner Oper in Berlin sich von dieser Beschäftigung mit den Wurzeln entfernt. Dann entfesselt Franzobels Sprachkunst ihre skurrile Faszinationskraft, dann verlässt Moritz Eggert die schmeichelnde Tanz-Harmonie scheibchenweise und irritiert das soeben noch schmeichelnd-verwöhnte Ohr der Zuhörer: So entstehen immer wieder Chanson-Preziosen, die tiefgründig unterhalten.
Die Geschichte, die dabei erzählt wird, ist tatsächlich das schwächste Glied. Ein Bordell an der Grenze ruft in der Wirtschaftskrise den altbewährten Tauschhandel aus: Verkehr gegen Naturalien. Der örtliche Schutzgelderpresser sieht seine Felle davonschwimmen und wird brutal, und die (Zahl-)Moral von der Geschicht': Eigentlich hätten alle ein besseres Leben verdient gehabt, aber selbst dann, wenn die großen Träume nicht in Erfüllung gehen, kann man dieses Leben sehr lieben. Die Ansiedlung im Bordellmilieu hat den Vorteil, alle Konflikte schnell und knallhart auf den Punkt bringen zu können - und bietet den Startpunkt für einige ganz bewusst eingesetzte Schweinigeleien, die von der dann besonders gefälligen Musik konterkariert werden ("Do You Like Animals?" - "Haben Sie schon mal mit einem Tier?").
Regisseur Robert Lehmeier und Bühnenbildner Dirk Steffen Göpfert brauchen in den Koblenzer Kammerspielen keinen Puffplüsch, um die Geschichte zu erzählen: Ein Lagerregal tut's auch, der Akt selbst ist mit dem Wegschmeißen von Kleenextüchern genug angedeutet. Die Regie trägt der Taktik der Musik und des Textes Rechnung: Vor allem am Anfang immer wieder kleine Flirts mit den Grundfesten des (Brecht'schen) epischen Theaters, dann schwimmen die Figuren sich frei - eine gelungene Gratwanderung zwischen Vorbild und eigener Interpretation. Die musikalische Umsetzung der Produktion schließlich ist hinreißend: Was Dirigent Arno Waschk mit seinen neun Musikern und den Schauspielern herausholt, könnte (und sollte!) sofort auf CD gebannt werden.
Die sängerische Bandbreite ist aufregend groß: Adrian Becker gibt den zweigesichtigen Lokalmafioso mit Musical-Eleganz, Kammersängerin Claudia Felke als Puffmutter Rosl ist in den Chansonnummern ohnehin trefflich besetzt - und darstellerisch ganz in die tiefe Tragikomik ihrer Figur eingetaucht. Dorothee Lochner und Isabel Mascarenhas nutzen als Hurenduo zwischen Freiheitsdrang und Opferschicksal die Gelegenheit, ordentlich Gas zu geben. Matthias Schaletzky vollzieht den gar nicht so weiten Weg vom frustrierten Fliesenleger zum Hilfsfolterknecht Bussibär mit knorriger Entschiedenheit. Schließlich Marcel Hoffmann als gesangsstarker Metzger Alfred, dem die Franzobel'schen Sprachumwege wie in die Kehle geschrieben sind: eine runde Ensembleleistung in einer gefeierten Premiere."

Rhein-Zeitung

Thanks to Operneukölln for the juicy visuals.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

2010-04-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

Hi, if you do feel you want to submit something to The Engine don't forget to include an SAE otherwise there'll be no return. Also include 5 or 6 poems, not just one or two, since only a small batch like this gives an editor any kind of overview or choice. best wishes, Paul

THEO VAN DOESBURG AT THE TATE MODERN, LONDON, MARCH 2010

2010-03-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

THEO VAN DOESBURG AT THE TATE MODERN, LONDON, MARCH 2010

One question this exhibition begs is: who is this exhibition really about? Not just Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) but the works of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, the Surrealists intrude upon van Doesburg's work. Perhaps van Doesburg might modestly be described as a cypher meaning an entire outlook on life, an avante garde moment beyond which is an entire sunrise replete with sea monsters.

This is a retrospective of the Dutch de Stijl art group best known for the works of abstract artist Piet Mondrian, van Doesburg's older mentor. Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) was an artist entrepreneur, today practically forgotten. Every art movement is summarised by it's leading artist, but de Stijl possibly more than others. Van Doesburg's own art is often painfully derivative of Mondrian's but his range of influences, activities is vastly more eclectic. Theo van Doeburg comes over as an eccentric figure, inventing pseudonyms such as Aldo Camini, avante garde poet publishing iconoclastic pamphlets (this reflects Van Doesburg's Nietzsche phase, which seems to have gone on longer and been more painful and excruciating than usual) and IK Bonsett, an anti-philosopher celebrating the new pragmatic power of physics (in other words Albert Einstein, creator of the new doctrine of Relativity Theory that was then sweeping through artistic and intellectual movements in Europe including those - de Stijl, DaDa - that Van Doesburg was chiefly involved with.) De Stijl was founded at the very end of WW1 in Holland in October 1917 by the painters Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck and Vilmos Huszar along with the architect JJP Oud and the poet Antony Kok. De Stijl reflects an exploding worldview as the vast rupture that the war caused unfolded and a total upturning of values occured: authority seemed criminal, figures of the establishment such as judges, policemen, professors, teachers, lawyers are representative of corruption and all the forces of jingoism, militarism, aggressive nationalism, chauvanism, all of them despairing, that led to the war and which were anticipated in the great works of late expressionists such as Edvard Munch and Frank Wedekind. Van Doesburg unusually mixed an essentially individualistic, eccentric, anarchistic approach to art with an internationalist, cosmopolitan, intensely group oriented one. Van Doesburg had many international contacts, such as Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964), whose work 'Woman combing her hair' (1915) is presented in this exhibition. He began to cultivate international connections right at the beginning of his career. At this point Van Doesburg had contact with Brancusi and the Italian futurist painter Gino Severini (1883-1966). His areas of interest were large and unfocussed in contrast to Mondrian, who specialised in a tightly organised body of work that evolved organically, almost mathematically. Van Doesburg harshly criticised Mondrian's inability to move on, either unable or unwilling to make new, revolutionary leaps forward.

Van Doesburg only gradually began to move away from realist depiction to abstraction. This movement can be viewed in the paintings in the first hall of the exhibition. He bases his notions of abstractions on things that he could readily observe and the same pattern is even more apparent in the work of Piet Mondrian.

Piet Mondrian was born in Utrecht, Holland in 1872. In 1911 he moved to Paris, then the art capital of the world, but returned to Holland in 1914 upon the outbreak of WW1. In 1919 he returned to Paris to begin again. By this time he was a member of de Stijl, but he left the movement in 1925 after being exposed to criticism and hostility from Van Doesburg. His work 'Composition with Blue, Yellow, Black and Red' (1922) is represented here, illustrating the stark contrasts, relative simplicity, even paradoxically the sensuousness of his work, in contrast to Van Doesburg's which became increasingly cluttered. The painting expresses the relationships between the individual and the collective, a new vision of society. The incompleteness of the lines expresses both the disappearance of the individual into the collective, the individual's concomitant inability to make such a transition. There is more subtlety in Mondrian's paintings than appears at first sight, since there are often several varieties of white or yellow or black in each painting. The sensuousness of the work is the hardest element to analyse. In contrast Van Doesburg's works look like harsh, abstract experiments with little or no emotional effect whatever.

The exhibition also details Van Doesburg's involvement with art movements such as DaDa and his forays into other art forms, such as architecture, which really underline Van Doesburg's eclectism and seem to have made him just as many enemies as friends. For Van Doesburg DaDa was a necessary adjunct to de Stijl. His DaDa writings and artworks were published and presented under the pseudonym IK Bonsett in his own DaDaist review Mecano. Van Doesburg also forged links with Constructivist artists such as El Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Sandor Bortnyik and Lajos Kasak. His interests were in magazine publication, the new media of film and in attempts at multi-media presentations. He even attempted to join the German Bauhaus movement in Weimar as a member of staff. In 1919 he attended classes at the school but was unable to secure a teaching post there. Instead he set up his own classes, which were officially frowned upon by the teaching staff, but which were attended by Werner Graeff, Karl Peter Rohl, Maz Burchartz and Egon Engelien. He opposed the Bauhaus ultimately, whom he viewed as Romantics, favouring instead objectivity, impersonality, machine production and technology. Van Doesburg appears to have been viewed as an individualist and an eccentric by most of the established European avante-garde art movements of the day.

The exhibition also gives us works by Sandor Bortnyik, a Hungarian artist, who created The New Adam (1924) and Geometric Forms in Space (1924) that underline the avante garde fascination with the new ideas in physics of relativity and the fourth dimension. The multi-media installations of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mach (1893-1965) and his Colour Light -Play: Sonatine II (Red) c1923-4 demonstrates de Stijl artists fascination with sound-image syncopation, metaphors and images for music and architecture, their willingness to create metaphors for the unities of all the arts and to move freely from art form to art form.

Ultimately Van Doesburg's works become more intriguing, breaking the hold of the ideas of Mondrian. His last works are more mathematical, works such as Arithmetic Composition 1929-30. Indeed Van Doesburg eventually seems an under-represented person in our historical understanding of the 20th century avante garde, albeit eccentric, undoubtedly a person who deserves our sympathy and attention.

This exhibition is one of the most remarkable I´ve ever seen mounted in London. The documentation, depth of scholarship, curatorship, presentation, even the very helpful work of the staff at the exhibition mark this off as something very special indeed. It is simply the must see exhibition of the year, anyone going along should take an entire day to look around.

Be open-minded at least about what you see there. Sometimes inhuman surfaces amid much that is absorbing, hilarious, tragi-comic and, it must be said, great.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London

HENRY MOORE AT THE TATE BRITAIN, MARCH 2010

2010-03-18T11:52:00.001-07:00

HENRY MOORE AT THE TATE BRITAIN, MARCH 2010

The new exhibition at the Tate Britain is a relatively condensed retrospective of the life and work of Henry Moore (1898-1986). The exhibition traces the origins of Moore's art in his interest in very early history sculpture which he saw at the British Museum while a student in London before WW1. Moore's work was shaped by pre-Columbian art, sculpture especially, but also by the architectural sculpture of the Sumerian and Biblical era. Moore served in the trenches during WW1, narrowly escaped death, was traumatised by the experiences, as was his entire generation. WW1 politicised Moore, pushing him to the Left in politics. Moore supported the Republican side against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, opposed the rise of fascism generally, later helped to found CND, providing it with its quintessential image of a mushroom cloud formed into a human skull. Moore's Modernism evolved out of an unusual set of interests, for at this time Victorian sculpture imitated an inert realism or shallow neo-classical design. Moore made the break from Victorian art and design and, like the literary Modernists, was influenced by some of the very earliest art, design and sculpture, rather as James Joyce and Ezra Pound, for instance, adopted the formal design of Homer's 'Odyssey', even if only to parody it (cf 'Ulysses', 'The Cantos').

The exhibition follows the chronological development of Moore's art, from early work that is located within generic movements in sculpture such as his depictions of mother and child (which some critics see as a consequence of the childlessness of his own marriage, although he and his wife did have a daughter after about ten years...) which must have evolved from Moore's interest in Renaissance sculpture and stereotypical depictions of Madonna and Child made by many artists of that time, or even from the pieta, the Madonna cradling the dead Jesus. His other realist location is his reclining figure, a typical Henry Moore theme, which seems to take on a monumental quality as much located in pre-Colombian art as in Modernism. The human figure takes on a superhuman power and concentration, as found in depictions of Aztec God Kings in pre-conquest Aztec art where the figure neither sits nor quite lies down.

The exhibition details Moore's leap into abstraction, his varied influences from the Surrealists to Freudian psychoanalysis. Everywhere Moore is tight lipped about his work, he doesn't want to speculate about it's meaning which he sees as essentially threatening the mystery of his art. This quality propels him forward. In being asked about the mystery of art, Moore feels, quite rightly, that this is hardly something that can be talked about without crushing loss of insight. So Moore feels satisfied with more modest themes, such as the form his work takes, how it begins to play upon our expectations of form, how our expectations about the shape of things are formed by deeply innate unconscious motives, ideas. These often have no intellectual foundation, but an emotional or even irrational one. Obviously this thinking brought about his alignment with the Surrealists and Freudians. Works like 'The Helmet', completed just before WW2, mix up the conceptual and abstract. Moore was willing to reflect on the nature of war in order to celebrate the resistance of Britain in the face of the rise of Nazism and fascism on the continent, since he was obviously deeply involved in this resistance in the WW1 era. Also Moore became an art celebrity at a time when 'celebrity culture' was unheard of. He clearly formed a link between all sorts of people from very diverse fields.

Some of the most moving of Moore's images are his mixed media sketches of miners at the coalface and depictions of sleepers in the Tube during WW2. Moore's father was a miner, so he never quite disowned the working class melieu he evolved out of. Moore is a unique figure, like D.H.Lawrence, moving among elites, heirarchies but never becoming a member of them, evolving a complex artistic practise averse to theorising and rooted in practical, everyday experiences that are commonplace yet simultaneously unique. Every new sculpture is worked out with plastecine and clay firstly, later a plaster model is developed. At every point of the art process Moore is a practitioner, experiencing the physicality of his materials. Moore's drawings are hard etched sculptor's drawings with a uniquely sophisticated use of light. There's absolutely no doubt that his paintings and drawings would stand up today had there never been any sculpture.

This exhibition is expertly curated, each sculpture fits its own space in the open areas of The Tate Britain. The exhibition is informative, but allows unique space for the viewer to develop a relationship with Moore's works. Its best to bring a sketch pad, pencils to this event in order to facilitate that.

Paul Murphy, The Tate Britain, London, March 2010

Van Doesburg Exhibition at The Tate Modern - Press Release

2010-03-18T03:53:00.001-07:00

Press Release
1720 May September2 February 20092010

John BaldessariArshile Gorky: Pure BeautyA Retrospective
Vvan Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World
Supported by The Tate Patrons, Tate International Council and
The Van Doesburg Exhibition Supporters Group
IIn association with Rolex
Supported by Supported by Mondriaan Foundation, which supports visual arts, design and cultural heritage projects, Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation
(Straver Foundation), The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
, and Dedalus Foundation Inc.
The John Baldessari Exhibition Supporters Group Sponsor credits??

1013 October February2009 – 10 3 January May 2010 20104 February – 16 May 2010
(Press view: 12 28 October February 20092010)Admission £10.00, (concession £8.50)
Tate Modern, Level 4.
Open dailyevery day from 10.00 – 18.00 and late night until 22.00 on Friday and Saturday

Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World is the For public information number please print 020 7887 8888

Tate Modern presents tThe first major exhibition in the UK devoted to the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931). will open at Tate Modern in February 2010.

AA radical and multi-disciplinary artist: painter, architect, designer, typographer, poet, art critic and publisher, he founded the magazine and movement De Stijl, and played a pivotal role as a conduit for the international exchange of information and ideas within the European avant-garde during the period 1917 to 1931.
advocated Dadaist concepts under the pseudonym I.K. Bonset, taught a De Stijl course in Weimar in opposition to the Bauhaus, forged links with Constructivist groups and established the group Art Concret.

A self-publicist, networker and strategist, van Doesburg travelled extensively in Europe after 1921 promoting De Stijl, and the Dutch contribution to International Modernism. He played a pivotal role in stimulating the the international exchange of ideas and debate within the the European avant-garde during the period 1917 to 1931an avant-garde. A painter, architect, designer, typographer, poet, art critic and publisher, van Doesburg advocated Dadaist concepts under the pseudonym I.K. Bonset, taught a De Stijl course in Weimar in opposition to the Bauhaus, forged links with Constructivist groups and established the group Art Concret. His essential contribution lies in his pursuit of abstraction in all forms, in the interrelationships of different media, in artistic collaboration and in international cultural networks. Van Doesburg travelled extensively in Europe after 1921 promoting De Stijl and the Dutch contribution to International Modernism.

Controversial and opinionated van Doesburg’s formed relationships with the most influential artists of mid-century Modernism such as Dadaists including Hans (Jean) Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Sophie Taeuber and Kurt Schwitters, Constructivists including El Lissitszky and, László Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Schwitters , Sophie Taeuber and key members of De Stijl including Bart van der Leck and Piet Mondrian. During his intensive and uncompromising life, h.., and established the group Art Concret. A self-publicist, networker and strategist, van Doesburg travelled extensively in Europe after 1921 promoting De Stijl, and the Dutch contribution to International Modernism.
goes beyond a movement-based art history of De Stijl, ingcontradictory and. Over 350 Wworks and supporting material by some around 80 artists will beare presented in the show alongside van Doesburg’s own, highlighting their exchanges, dialogue and in some cases collaboration, in the areas of film, typography, poetry, music, design, stained glass, painting, sculpture, and architecture. This exhibition will reveal vVan Doesburg’s, not only other De Stijl collaborators, but artists associated with a plethora of groups from Dada, the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivismconnections with artists such as Alexander Archipenko, Hans (Jean) Arp, Raoul Hausmann, El Lissitszky, László Moholy-Nagy, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber and key members of De Stijl including Bart van der Leck, Vilmos Huszár, Piet Mondrian, J.J.P. Oud, Gerrit Rietveld and Georges Vantongerloo.
will be revealed in this exhibition..
VComprising more than 300 works in a diverse range of media including paintings, sculptures, scale-models, furniture, posters, films, typographical designs and magazines, the exhibition will focus on the most influential artists, architects and designers of mid-century Modernism, from a wide range of backgrounds, looking at their various multi-disciplinary practices and how they became increasingly interwoven. Among the artists represented will be El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, László Moholy-Nagy, Raoul Hausmann, Hans (Jean) Arp, Sophie Taeuber and key members of De Stijl including Bart van der Leck, Vilmos Huszár, Piet Mondrian, J.J.P. Oud, Gerrit, Rietveld and Georges Vantongerloo.

Works by these artists, amongst others will be presented in the show alongside van Doesburg’s own, highlighting their exchanges, dialogue and in some cases collaboration, in the areas of film, typography, graphic design, plastic arts and architecture. The exhibition will also re-evaluate the importance of van an Doesburg’s essential contribution – (in his wide-ranging activities – ) lies in his pursuit of abstraction in all forms, in the interrelationships of different media, in artistic collaboration and in international cultural networks. The exhibition will feature will open withincludes a series of van Doesburg’s rarely seenremarkable semi-figurative and abstract early abstract developments in paintings such as Composition IX, Opus 18: ‘Decomposition’ of The Card Players 1917 (Collection Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Netherlandsxx) through to the emergence of the diagonal in his later dynamic ‘Elementarist’ paintings of the mid to late 1920s in works such as:, Counter-Composition VI 1925 (Tatexx) and Simultaneous Counter-Composition 1930 (MoMAxx) as well as rarely seen architectural works on paper.. Equally the exhibition traces Van Doesburg’s role as a ‘constructor of the new life’ in connection with the his interest in the new discoveries in the sciences (. (in particular the specially the Ffourthorth dimension). Like his contemporaries Moholy-Nagy and Lissitzky, van Doesburg sought a synthesis of art and life. He achieved this through real architectural spaces such as the interior renovation of the cinema-dance hall the Café Aubette in Strasbourg, which he completed in collaboration with Sophie Taeuber and Hans Arp. Model reconstructions and interior designs for this monumental project will be presented in the exhibition.

It will also explores tThe importance of the van Doesburg’s interdisciplinary practice will be explored in the exhibition. through researches toworks which give visualize visual form to sound throughin pPoetry , stained glass, ,painting or screenand film. Highlights The show will include present the graphic scrolls and abstract films of , throught promotion of the graphic scrolls and Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter which which became awere revolutionary modelmodels for expressing time in the space ( the page or the plan in painting ) as it isand influenced and the attested bytypographical innovations of artists such as Kurt Schwitters ((Merz, 1923, (Collection Merrill C. BermanIVAMxx), László Moholy-Nagy (Bauhaus Books, 1926) and ElL Lissitzky ((Dlia golosaFor the Voice, 1923), (Private Collectionxx) in their experimental magazines and publications. The exhibition will demonstrates van Doesburg’s architectural collaborations including model reconstructions and interior designs for the Café Aubette’s of the cinema-dance hall,, the Café Aubette in Strasbourg, which he completed in collaboration with Sophie Taeuber and Hans Arp. ; and achitectural collaborations including van Doesburg’s and Cornelis van Eesteren’s architectural representations of time (Axonometric drawings). A selection of innovative furniture by fellow De Stijl member and architect
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld includes his famous Red and Blue Chair 1923willis also be displayed in the show.. who has been too often overshadowed by the De Stijl movement. It will feature many works, including his eye-catching ‘Composition’ paintings: Simultaneous Counter-Composition 1929, Counter-Composition VI 1925 and Simultaneous Counter-Composition 1930.

Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World
forms part of a series of exhibitions at Tate Modern that re-examine similar periods in early Modernism. They present the period and artists from a perspective of exchange, dialogue, collaboration, contrasts and correspondences.

An extensive supporting material section will include rarely exhibited journals and magazines, reflecting the exchange and dissemination of ideas and through avant-garde publications, and ephemera relating to Theo van Doesburg and Nelly van Doesburg’s Dada performances and soirees.
Highlights will also include model reconstructions and interior designs of Café L'Aubette, a cinema-dance hall in Strasbourg, France, a joint project between van Doesburg and artists Sophie Tauber and Hans Arp. The show will feature a selection of innovative furniture by fellow De Stijl member architect Gerrit Thomas Rietveld’s, including his famous Red and Blue Chair 1918, Berlin Chair 1923 and Hanging Lamp 1922 and there will be a display of rarely exhibited journals and magazines illustrating iconic typographical experimentations by artists Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy and EL Lissitzky.

Tate Modern will present the first comprehensive survey of the work of Arshile Gorky in nearly three decades, celebrating the extraordinary life and work of the Armenian American artist, a seminal figure in the movement toward gestural abstraction that would transform American art in the years after World War II.

Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective will present 180 paintings, sculptures and works on paper reflecting the full scope of Gorky's prolific career. Drawn from public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe, this retrospective will reveal the evolution of Gorky's unique visual vocabulary and mature style.

The exhibition is curated by Matthew Gale.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. It is curated by Vicente Todolí, Director, Tate Modern, Juliet Bingham, Curator, Tate Modern with Michael White, Consultant Editor, Gladys Fabre and Doris Wintgens Hötte. The exhibition is organised in conjunction with Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden, Holland.A fully illustrated catalogue, by Tate Publishing, will be published to accompany the exhibition. The exhibition is curated by Vicente Todolí, Director, Tate Modern, Gladys Fabre, Independent Curator, and Doris Wintgens Hötte, Curator, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, with Juliet Bingham, Curator,
Tate Modern, and Michael White, Consultant Curator and Iria Candela, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern, London, in collaboration with Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, Holland. A fully illustrated catalogue , by Tate Publishing, will be published to accompanyaccompanies the exhibition.

.

The exhibition will travel to The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (June 6 – 20 September 2010) and had its debut at XX in Philadelphia.

John Baldessari (b1931) is widely regarded as one of contemporary art’s foremost conceptual artists. Tate Modern presents the first major retrospective of his work in the UK opening on 13 October 2009.

John Baldessari: Pure Beauty will bring together more than 130 works and examine the principal concerns of this legendary Californian artist. With humour and irony, Baldessari’s work dissects the ideas underlying artistic practice and questions the historically accepted rules of how to make art. Fascinated by language and meaning, he has always been interested in the connection between working in the visual field and working with words.

The combination of film, photography and painting has become one of the key elements in Baldessari’s art. Beginning with his early photo-and-text works from the late 1960s, the exhibition includes his extensive use of found film imagery in the combined photographs of the 1980s, the irregular-shaped and over-painted works of the 1990s, as well as video, and concludes with his most recent works to date.

In the 1960s he notably painted statements derived from contemporary art theory and instructional manuals onto canvas. These early major works from Everything Is Purged …1966-68 to Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell 1966-68 will be included in the show. From the 1970s he marries his humorous pursuit of a new visual language to film., I Will Not Make Anymore Boring Art 1971, sees Baldessari record himself on videotape repeatedly writing the lines over and over again in a notebook for the duration of the tape. This period also begins his experimentation with collage using film stills and his own photos to conceive a series of aligned images. In the Blasted Allegories series from 1978, Baldessari explores the language of associated images by assembling a literal dictionary of photographs ranmdomly sampled from commericial television.

The exhibition will examine the increasingly elaborate formal structures which Baldessari introduced into his work in later years and which have become a key component to his art. Abandoning the standard rectangular canvas or photographic format, he has produced a series of works combining numerous images to create various unconventional formats. Bloody Sundae 1987, for instance, forms an inverted T shape on the wall. On top, two men attack a third beside a stack of paintings; on the bottom, a couple lounges on a bed, a breakfast tray between them, all five faces obliterated by Baldessari’s signature circles of colour, increasing the unease.

Baldessari’s production of books and prints will feature in the exhibition as well as lesser-known works and installations. There will also be new installation made specifically for the Tate Modern exhibition.

John Baldessari: Pure Beauty has been organised by Tate Modern in association with and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show is curated by Jessica Morgan, Curator of Contemporary Art at Tate Modern) and Leslie Jones, Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings at LACMA and assisted by Kerryn Greenberg, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition will travel to Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 5 February-25 April 2010, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 20 June-12 September 2010, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 17 October 2010-9 January 2011. The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with essays by major writers, curators, art historians and former students of John Baldessari.

John Baldessari was born in 1931 in National City, California and studied art at San Diego State College (1949-57). He taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA from 1970-1988 and the University of California at Los Angeles from 1996-2007.

His artwork has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions and in over 900 group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. His projects include artist books, videos, films, billboards and public works. His awards and honours include memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, the California Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, the Oscar Kokoschka Prize, the “Spectrum” Internationaler Preis für Fotografie, and the BACA International 2008. He has received honorary degrees from the National University of Ireland, San Diego State University, and Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design. He lives and works in Santa Monica.

For further information contact Bomi Odufunade/Oliver KrugBomi OdufunadeDaisy Mallabar, Tate Press Office, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
Call 020 7887 4941/4942 873149428730 Fax 020 7887 8729, Email pressoffice@tate.org.uk.

HENRY MOORE EXHIBITION AT THE TATE BRITAIN - PRESS RELEASE

2010-03-18T03:51:00.000-07:00

Press Release
15 March 2010

Henry Moore
Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation
Sponsored by British Land Company PLC, Finsbury and Goldman Sachs
With additional support from Tate Patrons and The Henry Moore Exhibition Supporters Group
24 February – 8 August 2010
Tate Britain, Linbury Galleries
Admission £12.50 (£11 concessions). Visit www.tate.org.uk/tickets or call 020 7887 8888
Open daily 10.00 – 17.50, and until 22.00 on the first Friday of every month for Late at Tate

Radical, experimental and avant garde, Henry Moore (1898-1986) was one of Britain’s greatest artists. This major exhibition re-asserts his position at the forefront of progressive twentieth-century sculpture, bringing together the most comprehensive selection of his works for a generation. Henry Moore presents over 150 significant works including stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings.

Henry Moore reveals the range and quality of Moore’s art in new ways – sometimes uncovering a dark and erotically charged dimension that challenges the familiar image of the artist and his work. Henry Moore first emerged as an artist in the wake of the First World War, in which he served on the Western Front. This exhibition emphasises the impact on Moore’s work of its historical and intellectual contexts: the trauma of war, the advent of psychoanalysis and new ideas of sexuality, and the influence of primitive art and surrealism.

The exhibition explores the defining subjects of Moore’s work, including the reclining figure, the iconic mother and child, abstract compositions and seminal drawings of London during the Blitz. The exhibition assembles a group of four of Moore’s great reclining figures carved in Elm wood. These beautiful, heavily grained works show the development of the reclining figure over the course of Moore’s career. The recurring motif of the mother and child is explored throughout the exhibition. Moore called it his ‘fundamental obsession’, and presented a complex vision of the maternal relationship, ranging from the nurturing bond of Mother and Child 1930-31 (Private Collection), to Suckling Child 1930 (Pallant House).

As Official War Artist, Moore made a series of drawings of Londoners sheltering in the London Underground from the Blitz. Henry Moore includes a selection of the most important of these, made between the autumn of 1940 and the summer of 1941. The drawings transformed Moore’s reputation, not only documenting, but helping to build, the popular perception of the Blitz. His depictions of rows of sleeping figures lying huddled in claustrophobic tunnels captured a sense of profound humanitarian anguish and the fragility of the human body. This continues in his work of the 1950s, reflecting the aftermath of war and the prospect of further conflict.

The exhibition looks at the influence of world cultures in his work, through Moore’s primitive masks and works such as Girl with Clasped Hands 1930 (The British Council). It includes abstract sculptures of the 1930s such as Composition 1931 (The Henry Moore Family Collection), threatening and sexualised works that suggest the influence of Freud and psychoanalytical theories such as Reclining Figure 1931 (Private Collection), and sculptures that capture the political tension and anxiety of the Spanish Civil War and the approach to the Second World War, such as The Helmet 1939-40 (The Henry Moore Foundation) and Three Points 1939-40 (Tate).

Henry Moore is a collaboration between Tate Britain and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. It is curated by Chris Stephens, Head of Displays at Tate Britain, and Michael Parke-Taylor, Associate Curator of European Art, Art Gallery of Ontario. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Tate Publishing.

For further press information please contact Louise Butler/Duncan Holden
Call 020 7887 8732/4939 Email pressoffice@tate.org.uk Visit www.tate.org.uk
For high-resolution images visit http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressimages
Notes to Editors

Henry Moore was born in Castleford, Yorkshire. After serving in the First World War he studied at Leeds School of Art in 1919, and won a scholarship to the Royal College in London in 1921. He lived and worked in London and Kent, teaching at the Royal College and Chelsea School of Art. He won the International Sculpture Award at the 1948 Venice Biennale. From 1940 Moore lived at Perry Green, Much Hadham, in Hertfordshire, now home to The Henry Moore Foundation.

The Henry Moore Foundation is the UK's largest artist foundation, running a visitor programme at the artist's former home in Hertfordshire, an exhibition and research programme at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and staging Moore exhibitions all over the world. It awarded over £1.5 million in grants in 2008-9. Visit www.henry-moore.org

CRISTEN KOBKE, DANISH MASTER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON

2010-03-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

CHRISTEN KOBKE, DANISH MASTER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, MARCH 2010

This exhibition trumpets Christen Kobke (1810-1848) as the greatest master of the Danish Golden Age, which more or less means Danish history from the defeat at the hands of Lord Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) to Denmark's defeat by Prussia in the Second Schleswig War of 1864, when the states of Schleswig and Holstein were lost. Christen Kobke's life was lived against this backdrop of militarism and militarisation. Denmark was ruined financially by the Napoleonic Wars, Kobke lived during the period of economic reconstruction that followed and which was ended by the succeeding wars against Prussia. By 1864 Denmark had virtually ceased to be an independent country, becoming instead a satellite of a Greater Germany.

Christen Kobke's father was master baker in The Citadel, a military barracks, home to 600 soldiers and their families, on the edge of Copenhagen. The Danish author Hans Christian Anderson depicted The Citadel as a dangerous, unsavoury, insanitary place. Both Hans Christian Anderson and the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard came to prominence in this period, as did Christen Kobke.

Most of Kobke's early, non-academic paintings are of The Citadel, of the red painted bridge that straddled the moat at its entrance, of the many itinerant or semi-itinerant tradesmen, such as the portrait of the cigar seller, who made their living by serving the local community. Kobke's paintings are always personal, intimate, reflecting on a life lived among a tightly knit community during a period of relative crisis. His early portraits are of his family, for though he was well known to possess excellent painterly skills he surprisingly received relatively few commissions. He was thus unable, rather than unwilling, to travel. Kobke's emphasis is on the conservative, restricted, bourgeois life of his sitters and the landscapes reflecting the tranquility of the area surrounding The Citadel, underlining Kobke's fascination with light and the effects made by light. Kobke's plein air painting and his necessary tools: his art box (Kobke fastened paper onto the roof of the box so he could work out doors), his portable stool (which is depicted in his portrait of the landscape artist Frederick Sodring, with whom he shared an artist's garret near, but not within, The Citadel). Another famous, well-received portrait is of his mentor, the German sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund. Freund is depicted among the Pompeian decor of his home pondering a statue of Odin. Kopke is considering the Nordic influences of his art, but his chief influence is not Nordic but neo-classical and then romantic. The imprint of the German Romantic Master Casper David Frederich is apparant upon Kobke's art, but Kobke lacks the manic visionary quality of much of Frederich's work, such as his 'Monk by the Sea' (1809), 'The Abbey in the Oakwood' (1809-10) and 'The Wanderer above the Mists' (1817-18), all quintessential Romantic, visionary artworks, where the individual is poised against the backdrop of an elemental natural vista. Kobke's most important portrait is his depiction of the landscape artist Frederick Sodring. Sodring looks chipper. Behind him are his studies in Classicism and Nature, the two arms of Kopke's art.

At art school in Copenhagen Kobke began by working on male nudes. This helped the artist with his study of human anatomy. The paintings evolved from the male stronghold of the art academy and are undeniably homo-erotic in impulse. Kobke married his cousin Susanne Cecilie Kobke in 1837 and they had two children. Kobke's social horizons were so limited that the marriage must have been virtually arranged. Most of his personal relations were with his family and his artist friends. In 1833 the Kobke family moved out of The Citadel to a better area of the city, Blegdammen on Lake Sortedam, on the edge of Copenhagen. In 1835 Kobke painted his magnum opus study of Fredericksborg Castle, the grandest Renaissance palace in Scandanavia, a building that had attracted the attention of many artists before Kobke. His work 'Fredericksborg Castle in the Evening Light' (1835) is a very conventional painting indeed, using a conventional composition of the site, but he made other, more radical compositions that cut away most of the building in order to concentrate on the landscape beyond. Kobke understood that he must complete the painting that would please the Royal Danish Academy and thus persuade them to allow him to become a member and that would persuade them to give him the money he needed to continue his work. His other paintings of Fredericksborg Castle disavow the conventional so abruptly as to be almost a rejection of it, as if the artist is saying 'screw you' to the Academy. But he never did, instead dying in 1848, the year of 'The Spring of Peoples' at the early age of just 38. His father died in 1843and clearly Kobke was unable to survive without his firm hand.

He made one visit to Italy a few years before his death. His views of Naples are refreshing, bold, free exercises, entirely different from his images of constricted bourgeois complacency, engaging uses of light, yellow or purple sunsets and his landscapes. Kobke is an artist engaging with convention, seemingly divided by the pressures of conformity that bore down upon him, that finally overwhelmed both his life and art.

This is an intimate exhibition that uses space well to suggest the vistas of Kobke's art. It is excellently documented and researched.

Paul Murphy, National Gallery, London

Delaroche and Lady Jane Gray: National Gallery, London

2010-03-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

Delaroche and Lady Jane Gray: National Gallery, London, March 2010

Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) is an inherently historical, then dramatic artist, spinning his own history in the guise of English history, as a consequence of sensitive recent events in his homeland, France. First and foremost is his work 'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey' (1833). The painting evokes immense pathos, then the spectacle of Lady Jane Grey as innocent victim groping for the execution block, an account at variance with official history that states that Lady Jane Grey went to her death with dignity. Delaroche, by the standards of his own day, is a consummate researcher of his own works. This was hardly the norm back then. Delaroche's work is possessed of vivid historical verisimilitude. Hardly a brush stroke is apparent in this painting. There’s a tangible objectivity about Delaroche's work, as if the artist himself had to somehow disappear in favour of realist technique, supposed historical facts, historical truth and a practical use of expression through empty space summing up all the things left unsaid about the unfolding events. Unsurprisingly Delaroche's work was totally neglected after his death when the subjective power of imagination was preferred instead of accurate technique and meticulously rendered content. Delaroche's was the art of the establishment that had to be kicked over. But even though the critics began to hate Delaroche's work as a summary of all of the faults of establishment art, the public have always liked it. After the Modernist period Delaroche was rediscovered. There's a kind of Post-Modern irony in all of this, for Delaroche's work is eminently suited to the era of Post-Modernism. His insistence on dramatic irony, technique over imagination, the total coherence of his images at the expense often of absolute historical accuracy make him an artist (I'd say cursorily) like Andy Warhol, but quite unlike Picasso, Dali or even Vincent Van Gogh.

When we view Delaroche's work 'Cromwell and the corpse of Charles I' we're meant to read it as a comment about the old and the new of the French Revolution. Delaroche seems to have practised a subtle self-censorship in such a way, mindful perhaps not to antagonise the powerful, but also because he wanted to make implicit statements about art and its connection to history. In his work we view history through a certain lens that is sometimes cloudy, sometimes opaque. Delaroche's art is a mystifying process, in Marxist terms, but also a technique centrally concerned with the truth of historical, public events. He paints mind-bogglingly vapid historical canvases, which possess undeniably dramatic, even filmic effect. Very often these canvases make expressive use of empty space, rather as a dramatist utilises silence for ironic, satirical effects. Indeed these paintings are effects driven, might be a kind of usable portfolio of work for any film art designer to draw upon. His work 'Stratford on the way to Execution' (1835) shows Stratford, a scapegoat and sacrificial victim of Charles I, kneeling to receive the blessing of Archbishop Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury who indeed was soon to suffer the same fate as Stratford, another vivid example of Delaroche's usage of off-stage space. To Theophile Gautier the work was excessively dark, but opinions were polarised across the Channel. Many English critics admired Delaroche's work and it was bought by English buyers and dealers, perhaps a classic instance of a prophet without honour in his own country. If the French failed to take Delaroche seriously the case was inverted across the channel. In his work 'The Princes in the Tower' (1830) Delaroche once again opens out an episode from English history, a perfect example of the dramatic nature of his work. Light seeps under the door as the two Princes huddle together for comfort on the bed. To add to the pathos of the scene their little dog's ears are pricked to the sound of approaching footsteps, the inevitable fate of the two Princes.

'The 7th of December, 1815, Nine o'clock in the morning' (The Death of Marshall Ney') (1868) by Delaroche's student Jean-Léon Gérôme is also an amazing example of dramatic appeal, as the corpse of Ney falls in the street, the group of soldiers detailed for his execution simply march off into the morning haze, making the scene all the more effecting in its pathos and pitilessness. Other fine examples of Delaroche's influence can be found in Louis Gallait's (1810-1887) 'The Last Homage paid to Counts Egmont and Hoorne' (1855) and Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921) The Hostages (Les Otages, 1896) have knowingly reduced Delaroche's composition to its bleak essence. The latter painting is virtually a reprise of 'The Princes in the Tower' where the use of empty space is suspenseful and suggestive.

Delaroche's work consists of dark, moody period pieces, vignettes from the troubled past with a single exception when he visited Italy to examine the work of the great Italian Medieval and Renaissance Masters. Then his palette lightens, but in a painterly idiom that strains at its own coherence. Because of this Delaroche hardly seems a serious artist, certainly not one to weep bitter tears of frustration into his cup or hack a recalcitrant ear off in impotent rage. Delaroche gets on with the work of painting, making essential compromises as they come along, essentially uncaring about larger historical movements in art, or even being at all cutting edge, but his work is, in some vital senses, cutting edge. He's an artist who was important in his day, then suffered neglect after his death, only to be rediscovered later. His work 'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey', for instance, lay for more than 50 years utterly neglected in the National Gallery until it was discovered to be undamaged in 1973. The point is that no one really bothered to find out what state the canvas was in but the years of neglect more or less coincide with the birth and death of Picasso. Delaroche had many imitators and pupils too, who plagiarised his poignant usage of empty canvas to convey rhetorical, dramatic effects.

This is a fine exhibition to attend if you want to discover both history and painting, because Delaroche is poised between the two as a kind of illuminating material. The curatorial work has been handled intelligently and the supporting materials, the printed material and audio guide, are magnificent.

Paul Murphy, National Gallery, London, March 2010

hI, MEANING OF LIFE: Lady Gaga meets Paris Hilton meets Marxo Polo meets Meanjin Injun. Its not only the empty space, but the concept of painting as drama. This is new and points forward to film. many film makers plundered work of dELAROCHE FOR IDEAS. Also there's a new concept of emotion being in the unsaid, understated, whereas earilier art seems to have been all about statement, even over-statement.
Incidentally Peter gREeENAWAY has a new film about Rembrandt, NIGHTWATCHING. In it the truth about art and the aMSTERDAM MUSKETEER MILITIA, really arquebusiers. tHE PAINTING contains an allegation of some kind, also something to do with Amsterdam's Jewish community. Jews bought many of Rembrandt's early works, but as his prices rose later he began to feel robbed by them. Later on the Nazis incorporated him into their thing, but Rembrandt's relationship with Amsterdam's Jews was not as straightforward as this. It would be nice to see the film anyway.

Hi Paul,

I could have gone to this today, since I skived off work and went to the NG. but I chose Kopke based on your review and wasn’t disappointed. I bought the catalogue too. But for you I’d have missed this, since though I’m a Tate and RA member, and keep an eye out for all NG events, this one wasn’t flagged up.

Delaroche is interesting. I had to critique several essays at Chichester about him and this painting which I’ve been staring in replication at too long; so he’s green in memory. It’s the supporting canvases I’d like to see as well. The empty space of course is striking, as but for that you’d say this was Pre-Raphaelite avant le lettre, out of Ingres and David. But there’s an emotionalism, a sentiment alien to both these painters (The Oath of the Horatii conjures different feelings, as does The Death of Socrates or indeed that of Marat). Delaroche’s genius was to strip away the heroic, and leave empty spaces and as you say superbly of Ney, pitilessness. He does skirt early-mid 19th century sentiment very nearly and very well.

I’ll have to go and see it after all.

Thanks,

Simon

REVANCHE

2010-02-23T12:03:00.000-08:00

Revanche (dir Gotz Spielmann, Austria, 2008)

Revanche (Revenge) is a film from Europe looking very like an old Hollywood western. The storyline, for the film is narrative driven, concerns a couple, one a Ukrainian prostitute (Tamara), the other a craggy Austrian ex-con (Alex) who plan to go on the run after leaving Vienna and attempting a heist in a small village, then running over the border to lawless Spain (standing in for Mexico). The whole plans seems quite naïve (for an experienced ex-con) and the heist goes predictably wrong, as the local cop, a man with a true shot and a big conscience gets the girl in the back.

The film evolves out of a Vienna which is not like the Vienna of apfelstrudel and Mozart but more the Vienna of Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s The Third Man, a dark, sordid dive of a place replete with awful brothels, Russian lapdancers with their horrid, seedy pimps, awesome dumps looking, indeed, like awesome dumps. There’s a neat division between the city and the countryside, where the second half of the film takes place, which is contrastingly endearingly naïve. The ex-con turns out to be an ex-country bumpkin with aged da living out on an idyllic farm beside a large pond and the cop’s vast bungalow where his wife eventually takes Alex, fucks him, coincidentally impregnating herself with his craggy yet awesomely effective, fertile spunk.

The cop is meanwhile having a torrid time, accused initially of manslaughter by his bosses who attempt to play it, rightly by the book, obsessed by the prostitute Tamara, then cleanly incapable of making an impression on his wife either until she informs him that his baby is on the way, (yet, as we know, it isn’t really). Sometimes the film makes a gauche impression by making the viewer as innocent and uncritically naïve as the protagonists. The symbolism (the empty/loaded gun = impotence ??? and the statue of Jesus frowning ominously over the unfolding events) is heavyhanded, ultimately the tone unsure. Do we believe that women really can’t leave their husbands for the man they love? Do policemen worry this much? Do seemingly innocuous small villages really harbour such dark secrets?

There are no great answers to these questions here, but the film makes an intriguing, enjoyable melodrama nevertheless and it would be interesting so see where this director goes from here.

Arshile Gorky at The Tate Modern, February 2010

2010-02-20T11:09:00.001-08:00

Arshile Gorky at The Tate Modern, February 2010

After the recent look back at Rothko there’s an attempt to resuscitate yet another lost American Master, Arshile Gorky.

Lost because of his tragic early death, but also lost because his influence is now indecipherable, because he basically established the conditions for the rise of Abstract Expressionism and then Pop Art.

The central focus of the exhibition is Arshile Gorky’s portrait, taken from some extant, discovered photograph, of the young artist with his mother. She was a victim, for the exhibition is very quick to establish Gorky’s victim status, of a historical footnote, the 1915 Armenian genocide of which Adolf Hitler once declared: “who remembers the Armenian genocide?” His mother’s starvation at the hands of the retreating minions of the Ottoman Empire, his subsequent flight to America with his sister to be with their father is the stuff of romance fiction, yet Arshile Gorky nevertheless maintains a tragic pitifulness, for his art is clearly large in scale, large in heart and large in ambition.

Firstly it’s important to establish that Gorky’s personal paintings are broadly realist whereas his landscapes, and other works, that seem to anticipate abstract expressionism, are abstract. Gorky is taken to depict his emotions, to lay bare his soul on canvas. Yet it’s a soul, and a mind, that’s worth discovering. His influences were Cezanne first, Picasso second. He took the name Gorky in homage to the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky, who had been a fellow travelling Bolshevik later murdered, its thought, by Stalin. Gorky is staking his claim from the outset to be an internationalist and a revolutionist. Almost a robust paradoxism in the name, he didn’t intend to imitate the former's fate. But fate and fatalism are enshrined in Gorky’s paintings, especially the personal, translucent paintings of his mother, Master Bill (Willem de Kooning, who seems to have been an acolyte…) and his own overwhelming self-portrait, where his hands are closed over, abstracted.. his mother’s pale emaciated features contrast with the orange crimsons of the background, her hands thrust forward, open, as if she is indeed begging for bread or for life. An earlier version of this painting is much sharper, much more downbeat, understated, muted in its use of colour.

Works from his Garden of Sochi and Image in Khorkon are simultaneously revelatory depictions of Gorky's lost childhood, mark a deepening engagement with surrealism and the works of Hans Arp, Giorgio de Chirico and the Catalan Modernist Joan Miro. At this time Gorky moved to Virginia to depict the landscape there, his work becomes increasingly involved, colourful and lyrical.

Gorky's painting life, poised between his desire to be an internationalist and revolutionist (plus possibly some actual puzzlement about his real identity...) and the intimacy, knowingness, colour of these mid-period canvases, that often almost coalesce into complete images, but never quite. His work Waterfall (1943) looks almost like a depiction of two Balinese or Chinese dancers, then melts back into disparate elements, maybe a mountain landscape, torrents pouring down a mountainside. Gorky habitually works through this image, then a whole sequence of modulations on an overall theme.

Gorky's life was difficult, even during the depression era when he had a good job and all his work from this period was on paper. Nevertheless Gorky was beginning to amass a considerable reputation. The year 1946 was fraught with crisis: a fire destroyed all his recent work, he was diagnosed with cancer and had to go through a serious operation, his wife leaves him, taking the children. But these events he is determined to resist, rebuilding his portfolio of work patiently, purely from memory. Two years later, his painting arm in a sling as a result of a car crash, Arshile Gorky (1904?-1949) commits suicide.

But its possible now to see that he was a precursor of the Pollocks and Warhols, and this exhibition should provide the viewer with a chance to see how an Old World artist in the New World began to re-fashion art and to create new possibilites in expression, colour and style.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London

SHAKESPEARE ON SILVER STREET

2010-02-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

Fare enough! Teaching 'Macbeth' presently in Silver Street, actually an old address of Shakespeare in London. He left Southwark sometime after 1600 because it was growing increasingly rougher, also he may have had more money by this time, and moved northwards. I've seen no evidence of his existence, but the students love reading 'Macbeth', which surely must be WS's magnum opus? Tis very cold here. Its hard to walk about so I take buses everywhere.

CHRIS OFILI EXHIBITION AT THE TATE BRITAIN

2010-02-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

CHRIS OFILI EXHIBITION AT THE TATE BRITAIN

Chris Ofili's work replaces actual art with a reliance on gimmicks. The gimmick for the early canvases presented here is a lump of elephant dung set into each painting and further pieces serving as base props for the canvas. This might be stimulating if it were done once or perhaps twice but it is simply done ad nauseum, representing a tremendous heave (for the elephant) and a tremendous sigh of relief for the visitor leaving behind this awesome stool. Ofili might be better served finding a Daliesque moustache or some other actual gimmick, tic or identifiable sign. Try growing a silly tache, dying your hair some weird or wonderful colour etc etc etc.

There's nothing weird about Ofili's further work which is largely to do with the female nude, thus confirming the salient fact that Ofili is a man like any other man, not some effete South Ken woofter. (That's fine Chris but do we really need to see that nude over and over again?) Ofili has some good ideas and demonstrates his graphic art skills and use of colour even though the work can be repetitive in places.

Paul Murphy, London

JOYCE DIDONATO AT THE WIGMORE HALL, LONDON

2010-01-29T14:42:00.000-08:00

JOYCE DIDONATO AT THE WIGMORE HALL, LONDON, 28th January, 2010

Last night I was at the Wigmore Hall to see an American soprano, Joyce DiDonato, a Yankee presumably of Italian origin but actually an Irish-American (real name: Joyce Flaherty). She sang some anitche arie, mostly of Italian origin, but some Italian song settings by Beethoven while he was a student of Salieri. Poems by Metastasio, whom he also met in Vienna. DiDonato's apparantly a big figure Stateside, now to be found in the Wigmore, as the RFH presumably becomes oversubscribed. Also the audience in the Wigmore is probably more sophisticated, something DiDonato alluded to throughout, in fact she seemed sometimes a bit over-awed.

Turning up early is a good idea as that time is one of the best for me to speak to people, to lap up the ambience. In the bar were many photos of the greats: Jacqueline du Pre, Benjamin Britten, Yehudi Menuhin etc. It really felt like a brush with history, although it would have been even more inspiring had one of the German Masters, Wagner, Mozart, visited, leaving a presumable calling card, but the Wigmore isn't that old (1900-01).

The antiche arie were mostly stereotypical Italian poems made into little songs or arriettes, mostly ending up as models for would-be singers to practise upon. The fantastic backdrop to the whole proceedings was an amazing Pre-Raphaelite, neo-classical or art noveau image placed above the stage, that seemed to summarise a scene from Dante. All the time my eye ran over the piece, but the music was fantastic. Basically DiDonato did some very clever things with some unprepossessing material. The songs themselves, especially the early ones, are packed with stereotypical images of loving couples parted or seperated with all the usual nonsense about unrequited love. The accompianist, French pianist David Zobel, seemed a bit out of sorts for some reason, the piano sounded harsh as if he hadn't come to terms with the acoustics or the piano. The later songs boast of more intriguingly sophisticated lyrics, more modern sounding, plausible and ambiguous. Obviously its hard to do much with doggerel, so much pop music flounders on the basic incomprehensibility of what is being said, for the lyric has been tweaked so much that it isn't simply meaningless but bizarre (I have this particular problem with a lot of David Bowie's songs on his four most famous albums.)

Paul Murphy, London

MORE NOTES ON LITTLE PETER

2010-01-20T04:52:00.000-08:00

The Yellow Man

19 yrs old, a typical age for a soldier and also the most virile time for young men. Iris halted at 19, the age she wed Peter. She expected a tough quasi-commando, but got a little (he is very small) harshened Ulster yellow man. Laughably he's just shaken McGuinness's hands, who must be bemused at the affair. Peter halted at age -19, is still thawing out of the womb he left some time ago. He talked's about how he just wanted to go home, get into bed and fold up into a foetal position. He's ready for re-entry, no one else is loving it though.

The Occidental Sun

Haiti has vanished back into the Carib. The island that stopped Napoleon's American ambitions is now a trampled down anti-image of a slave republic. The Americans arrived to see that never happens, for who knows what might evolve out of the ruins of Port au Prince or Cap Haitien? The TV news talked about the Haitien's voodoo preferences, abrogating the Christian God, the God of Big Ian and Little Peter. Big God has spoken, his wrath is all aroung Port au Prince, its written in the eyes every dead child there. Big Ian is hyperventilating to his congregation in Whiteabbey: Jewboys are taking over the world, manufacturing the apocalypse, taking over even the Carib. The Pirates of the Carib are out and about now, navigating the straits even Homer ran aground on.

THE WHITE RIBBON

2010-01-18T15:33:00.000-08:00

The White Ribbon (dir Michael Haneke, starring Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch, Ulrich Tukur, Ursina Lardi, Josef Bierbichler)

The build up of disturbing events on the local level is echoed by the assassination at Sarajevo, as everything begins to go weirdly wrong. Essentially there's no answer to what's happening. Society is on a certain trajectory towards self-destruction. No one seems to be guilty, no one seems to be to blame. No culprits can be found, although everyone has a theory about what's happening. The film has a supernatural lilt as all those wide-eyed creepy blonde children peer out of shutters or sit in dimly lit shadows. The future belongs to them and they know it!

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (2008 dir Terry Gilliam, starring Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law, Tom Waites)

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a real return to form for Terry Gilliam, proving that the spirit of Monty Python still exists and is reforming and evolving yet. The Imaginarium is a kind of mirror with a piece of split tinfoil that you walk through. Some people walk through the Imaginarium and enter a kind of nirvana others enter their own personal Hell others still just walk into the back of the set replete with foul, musty rags masquerading as curtains. The contrast between the world of the Imaginarium, even the contrived stage world where Lily Cole and her father, Dr Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) squabble intermittently, and the London we all know and love is where the film really begins to work on us. There are strong echoes of The Tempest, with Dr Parnassus easily equalising with Prospero, his daughter as Miranda and the stranger, Tony, who they rescue, perhaps poised mid-way between Ariel and Caliban. There are lots of faults and excesses but these somehow enhance the character of the film, rather than detracting from it, for Terry Gilliam is a director like Ed Wood or even resembles a writer like Ezra Pound, when pages of dreadful, boring gibberish are somehow contrasted with yet more pages of wonderful, uplifting poetry, changing what went before into something entirely different. So the faults are all part of the knit and probably necessary.

Hi, I'm at Leicester Square and the premiere of Sherlock Holmes is just happening. Apparantly Jude Law, Downey Jnr arrived and went into the cinema to be interviewed and will appear again soon, but it’s too cold for me. The PR people have attempted to create an Olde London atmosphere, but, to be perfectly honest, where I'm staying is as Olde London as it comes. I mean, all they have to do is go over to the East End to see some fog, dark, dank streets, gangs of feral youths. BTW have you seen 'Harry Brown'?

Tonight I'm going to see 'The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus' on the strength of the Sight and Sound review which was so positive, saying that this is a return to the old Terry Gilliam after debacles like 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' which, although it is a debacle, is nevertheless an interesting one.

I'm also reviewing John Baldessari at the Tate Modern and tomorrow have an invite to a Simon Callow one man show where I hope to meet him too, but will probably end up sitting next to the reviewer from The Daily Telegraph like last time.

EVA HESSE AND KATJA STRUNZ AT THE CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE

2010-01-16T09:34:00.000-08:00

EVA HESSE AND KATJA STRUNZ AT THE CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE

Katja Strunz (1970-), a contemporary concept artist and sculptor living in Berlin, has created an exhibition of brass musical instruments stuck into metal drainpipes. Some of the instruments are decrepit, others newer. Some are idenitifiable as typical brass instruments, trumpets, trombones, horns, others more fanciful, bizarre, almost Daliesque creations. Most of the instruments are wired for sound. Low pitched metallic grind music plays constantly, sometimes interrupted by higher pitched sounds that tremble and modulate. Pieces of paper are strewn on the floor saying:

"Times falling and folding over each other."

The blurb at the entrance to the exhibition tells us that Katja Strunz has created the "sound of the Pregeometric Age", whatever that is. This reviewer found the exhibtion itself to be a tad derivative of surrealism, Dali, whatever.

Eva Hesse (1936-1970) was a Jewish German American artist who, presumably, was taken from Germany at the time of the rise of the Third Reich, and lived in her adopted country but returned in 1964-5 at the bequest of a West German indutrialist. Hesse and her husband lived in a disused factory in the Rhine-Ruhr industrial complex, re-using typical manufacturing items in their sculptures and found object exhibits. The works on show here constitute Eva Hesse's sketchbook, experimental work for possible major installations and sculptures. Eva Hesse evolved out of the abstract expressionism movement, found a Dadaist orientation and then became a Minimalist.

Some of the exhibits look like prehistoric sea creatures, ancient sea anenomes or trilobytes, tubular plants built out of latex, plaster, cardboard, resin, fibreglass, polyester, cheesecloth, metal screen, plastic, cotton, rubber, enamel, cord. The eclectic range of materials deployed by Hesse counterpoints the minimalist simplicity of the images. There are wall hangings, objects hung in nets from the walls that look like bits of coal, a boxer's punch bag or a dildo. There are candle's with immense wicks, latex objects that look like old clothes or gloves rolled up. There are long cords looking like communication cords, umbilicals oddly suspended from a latex box (not a human womb), a parachute cord, empty shells, gourds, pillows, bowls, little boat-like objects. All in all material seems to dictate form. The objects fail to have a meaning other than their own internal coherence, serialist repetitions, traditional notions of meaning are given over to utility, although the objects seem useless both in terms of everyday use and in terms of design. The work is colourful and somehow erotic, a pastiche of our greed or passion for phallic symbols found in seemingly everyday objects.

Some commentators have made a sensationalist reading of Hesse's life in terms of her affinities with Sylvia Plath or Diane Arbus, but Hesse's continuity of pictorial impulse, clean industrial vision unique in its physical use of light, is far from being melancholic. Indeed Hesse didn't die of melancholia but of cancer and, obviously, she didn't want to die. But this exhibition is a little homage to her life and work. Its worth looking over this retrospective and then watching the informative film about Hesse's life and work afterwords which is, sadly, all too brief.

Paul Murphy, Camden Arts Centre, London

TURNER & THE MASTERS, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

2010-01-13T10:32:00.000-08:00

TURNER & THE MASTERS, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

JMW Turner (1775-1851), visionary founder of the Turner Prize, is given another lease of life with an exhibition examining artist jealousy. Jealousy, a fundamental emotion underpinning civilisation itself, perhaps providing the motor for art, innovation, even face stamping, acts of war. Turner is poised somewhere between all of these, an immensely ambitious young artist who wanted to be better than the Masters, he completely realised, though somewhat immodestly, that he was the major figure in painting of his day.

The exhibiton details in some cursory then exhaustive way, Turner's palpable anxiety of influence, a creative dynamo that partly consisted of jealousy, grudging admiration, actual influence, sometime plagarism, outrageous copying and everything else inbetween. Turner inherited his passion for sunsets, for warm, golden, seemingly oriental or mediterranean light from Claude Lorrain (1604-1682). His intense admiration for Claude led him to insist in his bequest that his paintings be placed beside Claude's in the National Gallery. But Turner went beyond Claude, and the other masters, such as Canaletto, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Poussin, by changing, as they had in their time, the language of art, which was built from the work and dicoveries of the Masters themselves.

Turner takes original artworks by the Masters then somehow manages to squeeze it into form, to make it palpable, to allow it to happen. He sees in recent, already existing paintings the kernel of ideas, develops them, as in his interpretation of Poussin's The Deluge. The original is a static, narrative-oriented work which the audience is meant to 'get', but Turner's re-imagining of the piece imbues it with passion, with visionary significance. He challenges himself to better the work of recent masters, such as Van de Velde. The original is static, unemotive, conservative, the re-imagining forms a cloudy, hazy diaphanous assembly of elements, entirely subjective as if the artist is somehow implicated in the work. Turner's subject is art and nature, or rather how mere paint can portray elemental passions and yet still remain mere paint.

The exhibition details whole series of influence as those between Turner, David Wilkie (1785-1841) and the Flemish Master David Teniers the younger (1610-1690). It demonstrates how works like Turner's The Country Blacksmith, Wilkie's Village Politicians (1806) and his The Blind Fiddler re-interpreted the work of Teniers, providing sufficient creative tension between past and present. Turner embraces the Grand Style but is also drawn to smaller Netherlandish images, especially influenced by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) but even moreso by Rembrandt Harmentz van Rijn (1606-1669). Rubens was especially admired by Joshua Reynolds, founder of the RA. Turner respected Reynold's opinions immensely, looking to works by Rubens such as Landscape by Moonlight (1635-40) which influenced his work The Forest of Beere. Ruben's cold pallete somehow collided with Turner's ascending, glowing colours.

Turner deliberately emulated Rembrandt, making subtly attenuated likenesses, such as Pilate Washing his Hands (1830), a re-working of Rembrandt's Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (1644), a painting widely admired in Britain, becoming hugely influential. As was Rembrandt's work The Mill (1645-8). The Mill has a sombre, brooding menace, as if this technology somehow resembles nuclear energy in our own day, invoking power, grandiosity, technological progress, yet also simultaneously implying a Luddite fear of progress, as the dark, almost supernatural atmosphere of the painting evinces.

Turner's re-working of Rembrandt is brighter, opulent, figures are freer, less severely defined. Turner's approach is more 'impressionistic', defining the feeling behind the work as subjective, as being part of a process, rather than a static, limited vignette, with narrative at its very centre, the artist remaining outside the process as a seemingly omnipotent judge or god-like artificer.

Another major positive influence was the Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal or Canaletto (1697-1768). The exhibition details several series of depictions of Venice, the first being the work The Bacino de San Marco on Ascension Day (1733-4), then Turner's Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom House, Venice: Canaletti Painting (1833) and the Depositing of John Bellini's Three Pictures in La Chiesa Redentore, Venice (1841). The middle painting contains a little depiction of a Caneletto painting, for a sophisticated audience would have been expected to immediately make a palpable yet imaginary comparison between the works. Turner builds on Canaletto's earlier achievements, yet paints actual paintings, suffused with unbelievable light, rather than the mere architect's paintings of Canaletto that depict Venice yet tell us nothing really about that city. Canaletto's work is entirely accurate, convincing portrayal of Venice, yet his methods are rather flat, unconvincing, even primitive or preposterous as in his attempts to paint waves which are really child-like ripples, wholly unlike Turner's mature studies of water.

A painter who had definite creativity though, was John Constable (1776-1837). His work The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (1832) is a painting deliberately designed to challenge the dominant position of Turner at the RA's summer shows, where on so-called varnishing days, (these were days before the opening of the RA summer exhibition when artist's could touch up their work) became contests or unallowed, unoffical combats between artists eager to outdo the rest of the field. Constable's painting is unbelievably detailed, complex yet also painterly, visionary. The painting is an amazing reply to Turner and evidence of unbelievable competition between the two artists. Turner ultimately acknowledged that Constable was his only rival.

Turner and the Masters allows us access to Turner's studio and to the secrets of his art. All that remains is for us to make those connections that seem implicit yet also removed and impalpable. This is a fine exhibition for anyone beginning to uncover the major artworks of the past.

Paul Murphy, Tate Britain, London

THE NEW WORLD

2010-01-12T09:05:00.001-08:00

THE NEW WORLD (dir Terence Malick, starring Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer).

The New World seems to be too derivative of Herzog's 'Aguirre', for instance, the use of Wagner's prelude from 'Das Rheingold' is a real give away. The film attempts to build some compelling images, rather than to relate a tightly organised story. Characterisation is something the viewer has to put together, but the film does get to the way people of the time thought and behaved. That was the genius of this film. Malick has managed to project himself into the European mindset of the 16th century, but his handling of Indian (the naturals) society is less assured. We don't seem to find much out about them except that they are primitive, not different, other.

JOHN BALDESSARI AT THE TATE MODERN

2009-12-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

JOHN BALDESSARI AT THE TATE MODERN

This exhibition represents a retrospective of the work of Italian-American conceptual artist John Baldessari (1931- ). Baldessari was interested in a whole series of developments in his own work, including (in chronological order) pop art (yes and isn't that somehow tautological, a terminological incongruence, pop and art being mutually exclusive opposites. Perhaps another name for pop art is American Imperialism, offering the harsh pill Empire within the framework of something that is or SEEMS to be easy, accessible, groovy, happening, with it. In fact most 'pop art' was often dull, meandering, intensely repetitive to the point of autism.), abstract expressionism, graphics, design, photography, performance art, film (the artist lived close to Hollywood), photo montage.

Is Baldessari's work heartless avante-garde flummery ultimately emboldened by his successful leaps into culture: does he re-tread the wearying cliches of post-modernism just one more time, encountering and becoming a vast, empty cul de sac? Or are his structuralist methodologies closer to those of Andy Warhol, intimately related to his moment in American history: blown up images of dead gangsters, strips of meat being lifted by a (faceless) butcher, pointed yet yellowed or yellowing images of the Holocaust, drab bits of meat all piled on a railway car surrounded by their liberators who unfortunately happened to arrive too late.

Living in an image-driven society where the image subsumes everything, including the meaning of the image itself, this is surely art for museums not for fans. There’s a certain 1970’s condescension within Baldessari's work, as if there was an arrow, alongside explanatory text, pointing at everything. An arrow pointing at the artist's brain, explaining 'this dawgone thang is overheating, will explode like a thermo-nuclear device, immolate the remaining Injuns...' The artist burned all his work in 1971 and was probably waiting for everyone to beg him to reconstruct the deconstruction when he did it anyway. Ultimately I had to ask myself: is this the kind of art I'd like on my wall at home? The answer is no. This looks fine in a museum. But I'd love to own a Warhol.

Its all been done before: Marcel Duchamp, Warhol himself and Joseph Beuys, but even within Vermeer, Rembrandt, Goya there is the will to question reality, their art is innately conceptual if the viewer has the interest to find that out. Baldessari's work is made for the Tate Modern, an analytical factory building (which closely resembles a factory and in fact is a former factory) where industrial art workers can pull apart previous deconstructions of the Western tradition, where the tradition itself is all laid out in some implausible graph replete with the okay names of artists, the names of the okay movements, all the rest of the heartless sophistry, mental masturbation of a civilisation rapidly declining into a sunset position. Baldessari's own self-portrait seems (in some sense knowingly) to resemble Charles Manson, there's a certain willingness to view this as artwork of the ultimate deranged serial killer or slasher who's taken his stanley knife and ripped out the heart of mankind to lay it bare in this drab analytical deconstruction of a deconstruction.

Paul Murphy, Tate Modern, London

Maharajah: The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington

2009-12-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

Maharajah: The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington

This is an unbelievably impressive exhibition maintaining the usual high standard of events at the V & A.

India was overwhelmed by stronger neighbours, then by Western Imperialists, seeking a colony that fitted with their nostrums, that might be strategically advantageous. Even today the current war is based really on Indo-Pakistan relations representing the Islamification of east and west India (now Pakistan and Bangladesh) first brought about by the Moghuls. The Moghuls, a nation that originated in Persia but actual descendants of the Timurids, hence their homeland Moghulistan (Mongolistan). The Moghuls were essentially militaristic, even more militaristic than the native Rajputs, who seemed to have lived by a kind of Zealot ethic, preferring suicide to dishonour. They were clearly a very powerful presence until their influence waned and the British came to establish the Raj, but the words we have of 'Indian' in English (for instance, bungalow, pyjamas, khaki) are really Persian words. The Moghuls also adapted firearms, this is where they probably scored more highly than the locals. They liked to mount rockets on howdahs (the little cabin perched on top of a war elephant beside the mahout or driver who held an ankus, a sharp-ended hook, with which the Mahout controlled the elephant or killed it, for the elephants were often driven mad in the heat of battle, especially when firearms were discharged in their close proximity...) fill howdahs with musketeers, experiment with rocket armed camelmen, also powerful bombards, arquebuses and (merely primitive firearms typical of the era) matchlock muskets.

Warfare is a focus of the exhibition, but the overwhelming focus is on the art of the Maharajah era (which is still unfolding, of course). Basically the progress of the art is mainly primitive yet highly decorative era that followed the Moghul invasion, then increasing Westernisation (usage of perspective on an ad hoc basis. Basically the scale of heirarchies implicit in pre-perspectival art, ie the size of the person in the image is decided by their importance in the social heirarchy, not by their relation to the artist viewer. This reflects an uneasiness about the Western discourse of art, as if both traditions can somehow co-exist and are implicitly equalised, creating a variety of fascinating yet bewildering, confusing paintings.) The Maharajahs (meaning 'Great King') were expected to process with their elephants, servants, fans, parasols, attendants, but also to deliberate on law, politics, possess proven martial valour, endorse and encourage the arts, hence the plethora of artistic depictions of Maharajas made by artists specifically in receipt of a Maharajah's patronage.

The paintings in this exhibition are really a complete exhibition in their own right. Firstly they are historical documents, depicting often crucial moments in Indian history, but also offering the modern viewer insight into the leisure time of India's Maharajahs; the nature of processions, religious rites, holidays, ceremonies, military formations and the court of the Maharajah. Indian art becomes increasingly Westernised until it coincides with Modernity and the Indian Maharajah becomes entirely capable of being at home within his own culture or in the West, learning to waltz, fascinated by new western artforms like photography, possessing a Rolls Royce Phantom (with lots of additions) or dressing in western clothes while reclining in a rather louche fashion to be painted in a very Modernist, yet realistic way. The Maharajah's encompass the passion and wonderment of the sub-continent bound up in feudal rites, ceremonies, habits while entertaining Modernity, Westernisation and anything else that seems decadent, amoral and outrageous. Somehow it seems that something must ultimately give: tradition and obedience seem barriers to the rest.

In some ways this exhibition is ultimately too exhaustive, perhaps attempting too much in a given space, almost justifying two exhibition tickets, for one attempt to see everything is a squeeze. However the material is ultimately worth the expense which is really saying something.

Paul Murphy, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

VERTIGO

2009-12-04T04:54:00.000-08:00

Hi, am watching film 'Vertigo' again. Really a companionpiece to 'Rear Window' Hitchcock's dark obsessions spill over into this genre piece. Have you heard the story that he attempted to rape Kim Novak? Misogyny is part of Hitch's character but I think he attempts to confront it, unlike the vast mass who leave it an unquestioned entity. There's a good deal of pop Freudianism in his work, which was the dominant ideology in Hollywood and America at the time. Just look at the persecution of Wilhelm Reich, for instance. America was hot on the trail of the Freudian Holy Grail and any preposterous imposter, which Reich was not although they supposed it with his orgone accumulator and other gadgets. To make a gadget as hot as that is something. All the talk at the time was that anyone who climbed in immediately gained an erection. Barbara Belle Geddes also appears there, and the fun is in finding the bit where Hitch himself appears. Rear Window concerns voyeurism but more honestly scopophilia, which is a more blatant perversion.

ANDY WARHOL

2009-11-14T04:28:00.000-08:00

Andy Warhol was a designer not an artist. Campbell soup cans is the greatest design poster of the last century, but a painting such as 'Guernica' by Picasso is probably the greatest painting. Warhol began his career in advertising, so always had an view to the commercial, hence 'pop art'. Pop art has all the strengths and weaknesses of any other pop art form: accessible, relevant but also crass, simplifying (if done badly which it often is). Warhol's own personal wierdness may be attributed to ashperger's syndrome or he may have been merely wierd, whatever. Warhol also perceived that Christianity was still a dominant cultural/spiritual/ideological force. The 20th century, after all, was the triumph of Christianity over paganism (Totalitarianism). Although he was homosexual he acknowledged that this was unacceptable or had to be negotiated within the terms of Judeo-Christian culture. That's interesting since one thinks that such a radical figure would have shaken off Christianity in some Nietzschen rite, but this was not so and probably even Nietzsche would not have agreed that an artist should abandon the main point of cultural reference for the last 2000 or so years entirely, except merely to react against it.

MAJOR MCNUTT

2009-11-06T05:24:00.000-08:00

"This war is being fought over certain genre expectations in 1920s German Expressionist films," bellowed Major McNutt

Unloosening the webbing around his personally owned Luger McMachine gun McNutt fired randomly into the gobsmacked assemblage of shell shock victims and psychiatrist colleagues.

"I think The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is a decent starting point." Nurse Amblege flirted gingerly with McNutt as blood poured out of her mouth, onto the floor around the place where her lacerated body had only recently died.

"I haven't seen it," condescended McNutt as he tippy toed inbetween the corpses, relinquished his battered copy of Lacan's Ecrits from the grasp of Captain Flynn, sat down to make the umpteenth correction to his 1980 essay "Beyond Psychosis: an Examination of Fractures in Lacanian Hyperstringtheory."

"The madmen take over the asylum," gasped Captain Flynn as he sullenly expired.

"I see. You don't think that's actually happening do you? I've got it: Lacanian Mathemes aren't good science at all," he murmured. Pulling off his eyebrows suddenly Major McNutt ruminated:

"The madmen take over the asylum, I see."

ALEXANDER

2009-11-03T03:58:00.000-08:00

yes Oliver Stone is off the boil. his creativity has waned lately, especially in his films W, World Trade Center and Alexander. Essentially he's become everything he detested at the start: a boring conservative with little to say. as he's become established he's gravitated towards the centre (if not the right). His views on 9:11 establised in World Trade Center more or less summarised as cowardly barbarians just fail to wipe America's eye, Jesus more or less saves the day. Dubya - not really so bad after all, a bit like his apologetic for Nixon in his film 'Nixon' but on a much more profound level of sycophancy. 'Alexander' maybe not so bad, but what about Colin Farrell's fright wig?

I agree but in spite of its flaws there are some very poignant scenes. I like this Oliver Stone better than the ones nowadays.

I also watched another Oliver Stone movie at the weekend 'The Doors'. Val Kilmer looks remarkably like Morrison, but there is a disjunction between JM and the other artists (Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde) in Pere Lachaise, Paris. In the film JM is depicted as a rampant heterosexual. In fact there's not a moment that Oliver Stone doesn't waste on depicting JM as 100% heterosexual, as if anyone cares. His abysmal behaviour towards his girlfriend Pamela Courson, such as the scene where she opens the lift to find JM receiving fellatio from Nico (yes that Nico) underscores the entire film. Why is this scene here, why am I watching this? Wouldn't it have been better emphasizing the moments of actual creativity, rather than the enfant terrible behaviour we all know about and either simultaneously snigger at or detest or whatever? I'm sure its all part of being creative, but we know all about it already. But Jim goes to Paris because of the Parisian tolerance for erotic dancers since Jim's show had become a concoction of songs ending with self-exposure. Since the days of Josephine Baker and before Paris was the place for high-profile self-exposure on stage with appreciative applause not the imminent arrival of the police as in the US.

Anyway the film fits into the trilogy (JFK, Nixon) as Stone's trilogy about the '60s. The sequence depicting JM's The End is the most powerful in the film, esp Stone's usage of landscape, symbols of New Mexico/California: the desert, mesas, thunder & lightning, puma/jaguar, eagle, large hissing reptiles, old indians who appear in all of the mystical passages of the film to depict JM's connection to history/landscape/climate, all of the things that constitute stark elemental symbols of life, death, suffering in JM's songs, poetry that we have all come to love. The blue bus, the blue bus is calling us, but what the f*** is the blue bus anyway? Although JM is some kind of intellectual appearing out of a haze of cigarette smoke and pretension, he manages to synthesize these symbols with his own mode of speech, with everyday language. Initially a film student at UCLA his creativity is only really initiated when he meets other members of the band at Venice Beach, California, in other words when he is removed from the groves of academe. However the film underscores the reality of his pitifully early death, of how everything failed but somehow persisted afterwards.

Most of the stuff in the film is based on facts, but it took a long time for a thought-provoking film about the assassination to be made. I'm not an expert on the Kennedy assassination, so much has been written about it and most of the controversial stuff, such as the dictabelt recordings has a very fine scientific basis, that its hard to know either way. But there is immense scope for someone like Stone to step in and sway public opinion one way or the other. But I wondered if the film wasn't an attempt to whip up homophobic hatred, since the conclusion was that an unproven conspiracy among the Gay underworld in Louisiana was the starting point? I mean what about EVIDENCE? If the Warren Commission attempted to cover things up, as it seemed to have done, then a conpsiracy undoubtedly existed that went to the very top. Presumably the conspirators, or their descendents, are freely going on with their lives now somewhere in the US, at liberty to do exactly what they did again?

I still think that 'Alexander' was a better film than it was generally made out to be. A lot of people objected to the fact that the Macedonians had Irish accents. Why? Macedonian Greeks spoke Macedonian Greek, a variant of the Greek of Athens, just as the English spoken in Ireland is possibly rougher, filled with dialect words and local flavour, but still comprehensibly English compared to the English spoken in London. I think this is an example of cultural arrogance on somebody's part. Irish people can't be compared to the Macedonians, the Macedonians had a great and eclectic civilisation. In comparison the Bog Irish drink guinness and shoot each other! But the truth is that the Irish inherited the US, where 40 million Irish descendents presently live, inheriting the greatest civilisation in world history along with the other immigrants and settlers there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seen JFK long time ago. A great provoking challenging movie. Its conclusion is both shocking as probable.The Oliver Stone that was lost...With 'Alexander' a major failure.
Not the illlusionist.

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De: paul murphy [mailto:quinqureme@hotmail.com]
Enviado el: lunes, 02 de noviembre de 2009 8:42
Para: d a
Asunto: RE: Need your help

I'd like to see that movie again. Over the weekend I reviewed Oliver Stone's movie 'JFK' a retread of the Jim Garrison trial in New Orleans. I did some basic research on the movie this morning and discovered that Zapruder's home movie featured in JFK wasn't shown publicly until 1975, obviously because it shows...well, what? I think it shows evidence that there must have been a second gunman and the second gunman had an elephant gun with bullets that exploded on impact which is why it was frankly supressed for more than 10 yrs. Its obvious that the coup de grace bullet is different from the other ones, I mean flames appear around JFK's head. This wasn't a bullet, this was a rocket and intended to make a DOA (dead on arrival). Have you seen that film? I suppose there's still a controversy here.

CREATION

2009-10-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

Jenner is spotted travelling to South America. When he arrives he experiments with dead dogs. He sees the engines of compassion, he makes the right conduits. He is brave enough to be the Pinochet machine. He sees Eichmann inside a dead dog each day. Eichmann's eye leers up at him, he understands completely evolution from fox to rat to Semite and back to blue whale again. It is only now possible to construct a full narrative of the journey of the plague ship X and anyway Jenner is now returned to Plymouth with potatoey cancer, a mouthful of black uns and y number of untold tragic whooping iguanas.

THE FOUNTAIN

2009-09-19T04:20:00.000-07:00

THE FOUNTAIN

Querido Amigo, did you see 'The Fountain' on television last night? Some of it was quite pseudo-poetical but in the end I found it amazing to see how many cliches of romantic hunger pangs of sensibility, hazy lemon-yellow dawns, strings dangling everywhere, New Age hippy wierdness could be stuffed into a single movie. There's even some barmy yogi bogey bullshit, something about the Conquistadores. Of course there's no attempt at all to investigate what happened in the Conquest of LAm by the Spanish and Portugese and no politics at all on show here. This isn't anything I recognise as a film, although some of the scenes and images are superficially compelling, but overwhelmed by a superficial shallowness. If you can wallow here you can probably also find a gutter to sleep in because no house in London would have you after you'd seen and actually enjoyed this. To think that Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackass put their names to this!

First, the good news: The Fountain is only 97 minutes long. Now the bad: that's 97 minutes of rampant metaphysical codswallop.

SEX LIVES OF THE POTATO MEN

2009-09-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

I've been watching some films though, like the most recent version of 'Frankenstein' and reviewing some others. Also reading Malcolm Bradbury's book about 10 great writers of the modern world, from Dostoevsky to Joyce. Most of the writers (apart from TS Eliot) wrote prose and that's very notable. Ezra Pound isn't included although he's talked about a lot in the preface, having said the most interesting critical comments about the Modern Movement but generally being ignored because he made the 'wrong' political committment (but what's interesting about him is that he made any political committment at all, something that is always ignored when Pound and his era are talked about.). Generally the other Modernist authors were fence sitting liberals like Thomas Mann, out and out reactionaries like TS Eliot or stunningly silent exiles like Joyce. Otherwise they communicated political things through allegories (Kafka) which had always been the way for those living in bad times. The only woman mentioned is Virginia Woolf, the book could well be convicted of tokenism, in women authors as well as in poetry. One of the great problems for modernity is that it entered a period where prose and prose accounts dominated everything, an era of nihilism where brain-washed fanatics were listened to rather than idealists or poets. This is parallel to Goethe's fourth epoch (the first is one of poetry, the second one of theology where thought becomes increasingly complex, the next is one of philosophy and then finally an era of prose) with presumably a substantial bang at the end of it when all those washed out Hollow Men explode or more likely implode against the oncoming or next idealism. Perhaps this will be a great poet, another Homer, who'll signal a general ending and a new era of growth, rebirth, whatever for so much had been presumably destroyed, so many annhilated in the previous brown era. I think Bradbury never successfully brings out to examine his own assumptions: that the prose of men is the only future, that poetry and women are antithetical to purported civilisation, that poetry itself is inherently weak or effiminate, uselessly antithetical to labour, purpose, the cemented skyscrapers of the future brushing the skies and reaching onwards and upwards towards infinite nihilistic blue (presumably a nice rubbery blue sky efficiently constructed on a backlot).

I did not know about NATO's partnership call. And you are totally right. Better get all Western and eventually Russian before they defeat them in Iraq and Afganistan coz they have General Time on their side and little by little they will overwhelm NATO's armies in General Space. Raw colonialism like this has never succeded throughout History (good point of yours I totally agree), has been defeated anywhere anytime.
Tell me the Russian reply or is it pending?
How about a future partnership between Russian and USA as Obama had the clever decision -sensible as you say- to stop work on the missile shield that could have turned out pretty nasty rapidly.

Hola amigo! I just saw that the head of NATO has just called for a partnership with Russia over Iraq. This makes sense in the light of Obama's (very sensible) decision to stop work on the missile shield in Eastern Europe. The reason for this is that NATO could be defeated by the Taleban and the only other army in the region who can stop them is the very large Russian army, made up entirely of raw but eager recruits. Thus its a good idea for Obama to have Putin et al on his side at this point. Its an enormous army in comparison with the much smaller professional armies of the West, but I don't think it'll fare any better than the NATO army has, as history has demonstrated. My advice to the NATO chief would be to get his men the hell out of there asap. Otherwise he may not have any men or any head or anything at all. He can run away just in time to run into the Russians who will also be 'retreating'. bw

Good point but who will take the lead if USA declines, and no longer can be the world's policeman?
To put it short, who are the next to fuck us all over?
Corporations or a nation ?

Hola! (in my view) China has exhausted its evolutionary potential and is a sterile society that is essentially now intent on maximal growth and maximal conservation. Its just a big country with lots of people. The US is a much smaller country with much fewer people but it is far richer, far more successful than China. The reason for this must be viewed in evolutionary terms. In the past Chinese civilisation evolved, made great breakthroughs in mathematics, invented the abacus, but this great period has ended. Essentially it ended its period of growth with a monopolisation of the empire and ceased to exist as an empire although its people persist and their innovations are also still influential. The same is true of Britain. Its era of dynamism peaked after WW2 and ended, giving way to US imperialism. China has lots of people but there is no sign that they are anything but endless ranks of blockheads. bw

MOON and ANTI-CHRIST

2009-08-17T15:49:00.001-07:00

Hi, I went to see 'Moon' but it didn't seem to add anything to what '2001' had said more than 40 yrs ago now. In fact it said less which is worrying. But its quite pretty to look at. I also saw 'Anti-Christ' which is an undoubtedly powerful and important film, not for the squeamish and probably does go a bit further than any mainstream film yet in its depiction of horrible violence and (genital) mutilation. There are some eccentric flourishes too, such as a talking fox, but what does it all add up to? Certainly everything I've been through, for in some contorted way the relationship between Dafoe and Gainsbourg is compellingly real and that's reassuring, I suppose.

BRUNO GANZ

2009-08-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

Hi Paul,
Wolfgang Winter stood me up in the summer time but I forgive him.
Did you want to meet him, when you were in München? Maybe he hade no time to come.

Im writing now to a Munich poet, Armin Steigenberger and our dialogue is v interesting.
Where do you know him from?
Im painting and am busy with my work. Tonight I will watch Downfall, a recent film about Hitler with Bruno Ganz in the lead. I like this Swiss actor very much since the days when he worked with Werner Herzog.
I haven´t yet seen the film "Der Untergang", but I am sure it must be very good. Although some people criticize that it shows human sides of Hitler , "the Evil". I think this is absolutely O.K. because Hitler was not a monster from a planet far away. I am sure that more or less normal people in certain circumstances can develop evil, and when these people get power it is a catastrophy. And this is most terrifying!
Every film I saw with Bruno Ganz was excellent. Do you know the film "Brot und Tulpen" with Bruno Ganz. An absolutely lovely story about a nice middle aged Italian housewife, who casually makes holidays in Venedig (for the very first time a few free days alone without her family- the reason for this was a mistake!) She enjoys being in Venedig, although life there is not gorgous but old and pure and simple and poor like she herself is ( her husband is a wealthy man, but she has no money of her own) She meets nice people, makes friendships and even finds a job. After returning to her everyday live and to her family (the children
are adults already, her husband doesn´t even notice her) she decides for her own new life in Venedig. Her friends there are very happy about that and Bruno Ganz plays the role of a man who is most happy of all!
I think this film was in the cinemas 2 years ago or so. You should go and see it if you have the chance to and if you haven´t yet.
This is exactly the kind of films I like.

Other famous films with Bruno Ganz was "Himmel über Berlin" by Wim Wenders ( I didn´t see it yet) or "Messer im Kopf" (I saw it more than 20 years ago but I am afraid I cannot remember the director or the story of it any more)

Viele Grüsse

Martha

COLOUR ME KUBRICK

2009-07-23T06:26:00.001-07:00

i read this really cool book called 'eyes wide open' where the writer who's been apporached by kubrick, frederick raphael, to concoct the 'eyes wide shut' script from the original schnitzler material beautifully renders something very insightful about the person, the alleged and perhaps real genius, before he finally dies ... also love the poem in the new whitechapel cafeteria about spielberg going to heaven and asking to meet stanley until it turns out that he's actually god in the paradise where steven went ...

i know that film making is the ultimate art at this time and age. everything i do shall be combined therein, i suppose. and yet – www.divineperformingarts.org – traditional, real chinese culture. people are apparently starting to cry from bliss. every perfomer / artist is a divine being, according to mr. li hongzhi, the founder (he's also my cultivation teacher) ...

well, doing lots of fridge magnets from all the images i've ever done at the moment. they look really amazing. this really could work ... also designing cute boxes for some of the editions ...

and a funny listening experience, particularly the second guy on it. a link from my dear friend ben who's digging the outer linings of knowledge for many many years now – http://www.americanfreedomradio.com/archive/Project-Camelot-32k-071609.mp3 – also intersting website, by the way ...

later,

r.

Colour Me Kubrick

Hi, also I meant to add I never saw this film about a Kubrick stalker, but it probably deals with the society we live in which produces mild schizophrenia as a bi-product of its processes. Its an interesting epitaph to the man and what it says is that absolutely everything is mediated or conditional or just temporary, but in a very Kubrickesque way. The truth is that the person we know as 'Stanley Kubrick' was merely a series of stalkers who robbed the original Stanley Kubrick of his identity. Once he ceased knowing who he was he quickly died but that doesn't matter in identifying or knowing who or what Stanley Kubrick was and is: a series of filmic portrayals which insinuate but never amount to the meaning of meaning or the meaning of what it means to be Stanley Kubrick.

You should get out of painting btw, a tired artform synonymous with the often heroic struggles of the 19th century, and get into cinema. The cinema is the pictorial artform of our time, of two times. Art is dead and for the crows. In fact the crows are also in Van Gogh's last paintings and the crows are coming for you and for your art. One day a team of archaeologists will open your sealed garret and find a skeleton grasping a brush painting the last crow that is ever to be painted and then seal it up again for who, after all, wants to be reminded of it? And there will be dozens of dead crows littered on the ground, for that is their last evolvement since spreading their wings, since ceasing to be raptors. Of course Christiane Kubrick's painting was shite: she was a figment of a Kubrick stalker brought to life for one moment in order to make you feel that it all had meaning but it doesn't, not even for the crows.

bw

Two films:The Orphanage and Let the Right One In at The Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London

2009-06-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

Two films: The Orphanage and Let the Right One In at The Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London

Two films about abused youth, bizarre, empty canvasses filled with emotional blancmange, manipulative, bare and yet in some sense beguiling.

'The Orphanage'(dir Juan Antonio Bayona, 2008) seems to me to be more of the usual politically correct tripe that Spain is capable of, mixing gore, sentiment, emotional manipulation, spurious anti-fascism and not a lot of blood in the manner of Guilermo Del Torros even though this film isn't quite up to his usual high standards (unsurprisingly he happens to be executive producer of 'The Orphanage'). The Orphanage is a place where unloved children are placed, usually to be abused (who wrote this script?) and some of those children turn up later thanks to a passing expert on the paranormal. The Paranormal, Catholic Spain viewed through a modern day agnostic filter and lugubrious long shots of the gloomy orphanage, tripe about kids murdered in the basement and a morbidity that's as Catholic as Spain is all make this a film I could hardly warm to, probably because it half believes in its own paranormal premise.

Nothing very shocking but the final curtain the only slight tremor of a shock. The narrative and characters held no surprises so little point recounting here. This is a film by a director yet to find his own voice.

The second film 'Let the Right One in' (dir Tomas Alfredson, 2009) is a film hung together with an albeit bizarre Gothic premise but with narrative inconsistencies and laugh out loud unintentional hilariousness.

Young Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is being bullied and yet he finds an unlikely friend in Eli (Lina Leandersson) who happens to be a 'good' vampire who goes about setting wrongs right. Eli's reclusive father (played by Per Ragner) is a slasher cum serial killer, draining the blood of his victims, eventually having his blood drained in turn by Eli after his arrest and hospitalisation. Eli then sets upon a woman, Virginia, draining her blood and fleeing. Virginia begins to turn, well, a bit pale, and visits the apartment of the eccentric Gostas. Its unclear why Eli decides to attack Virginia (except that women, by being housewives, mothers, girlfriends, also drain men's blood!!!) but she is attacked by Gosta's cats in a laugh out loud scene of unintentional hilariousness and is then seemingly set on fire by the sun, since a nurse accidentally draws the curtains (whoops!). Eli is seemingly androgynous yet an unlikely sexuality underpins her relationship with Oskar, since he takes pains to notice that her vagina is sewn or sealed up.

The final scene is definitely naively hilarious and the whole film is engagingly naive, often touching yet also a bit pathetic in its silly and inconsistent misogyny and other lapses. Therefore a naive effort from a director who seems to have hit on something, yet this requires immense development too.

The Riverside Studios is definitely a good place to watch films since the facilities are excellent, such as the bar/restaurant where its possible to eat great food and quite reasonably too. There are also temporary art exhibitions in the foyer and a pleasant ambience combining the heat and rush of London with the relaxing pleasures of the River Thames which can be viewed from the beer garden.

Paul Murphy, Riverside Studios, London

Battersea Ironsides B against Sopwith Camels, Sunday May 17th, 2009

2009-05-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

Battersea Ironsides Sunday A versus Fawe Park CC, Sunday 14th June

Hi, sorry about gestern. After the game on Sunday I stiffened up overnight, but I think the real problem is being overweight and putting too much pressure on the knee and ankle joints. Sunday was an amazing day, playing Fawe Park CC, a club at least 3 notches above us. They batted first and made 202 off 40 overs. Then we batted and made just 85. Five of the guys made ducks and I made just 4, a late cut boundary, typical openers shot, but stuck around for 5 or so overs with my partner, a Pakistani batsman called Walleed who made just 8. Eventually one popped up on me and bounced up off the splice then a good catch by one of their fielders. Then the captain Neil O'Brien made8, superbly caught as I was, but this time by the slip. An Australian batsman came in and made 43, he looked an aggressive hitter. The other opener made a duck (0) and 4 of the other guys, not showing enough determination to stick around even for a while. Training makes a lot of difference.

There were no sightscreens and the pitch caused the ball to alternately pop or creep. Hard to know what it all meant except that it was very sunny and there were lots of half-naked girls in the long grass.

Yes the pitches are drying out and getting bouncier so time for the helmet and the arm guard. Found running in the helmet tough, but not as tough as I thought and it is definitely restrictive. But I don't look upon batting as gladiatorial combat so I think its best to have it when playing for Sunday A or the Firsts and Seconds and maybe the Thirds. Made a small stand of 20 or so with Walleed which is the usual and stuck around for 5 overs or so but want to learn how to go on from this and the only way is probably through practice.

So I hope this feedback is useful. I always like to write reflection on the games, not necessary for you to comment, bw, Paul

Twenty20 Match Battersea Ironsides versus The Bricklayers Arms, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Hi, another great match, this time a Twenty20 game against The Bricklayers Arms. This time I was put on as first change bowler, basic cannon fodder but reversed the scenario by bowling the opening batsman with an off break through the gate, a ripper and could have had 4 or 5 more wickets, if catches had been held and a plumb lbw upheld. So in the final analysis: 4 overs, 0 maidens, 1 wicket for 39 runs. They made 103 and we got them with 5 overs to spare. yeah bring 'em on! bw, Paul

Ps I'm just gobsmacked my pitiful off beam bowling wasn't tonked for 90 or so, but there you go!

Battersea Ironsides 3rd XI vs Old Hamptonians, Hampton, May 31st 2009

TOAD IS CAPTURED AND GANGBANGED BY THE WEASELS

Dear Steve, a blistering day yesterday and this time I had a game with the 3rd XI, a friendly against Old Hamptonians at Hampton. We drove to a beautiful pitch, like a great green meadow, a church spire in the background, oak trees and brilliant sunshine.

So our opening bowlers began but nothing much happened until the first change in the bowling and a big South African called Paul Todd took 6 wickets in no time, but they clung on to get 179, a good total on this wicket. Then our response began steadily until one of the openers, an Australian, chipped the ball into his own face and retired hurt for 31 (bet he'll wear a helmet next time.). Then there was a clatter of wickets, a couple of guys got ducks, but the South African again got in and hit a fifty in even time. They'd put me down at number 8 to bat, but I went in when the fifth wicket fell because of the injury and the score was on 140 for 5 with about 15 overs in hand. (I knew that I'd get plenty of batting, even though I went in at 8, because I reckoned that 3 or 4 of the batsman were playing too far up the order and I also knew I could bat well and better than they. In fact they could have saved themselves some hassle by promoting me to open or to number 3 which seems to be my natural position in the batting order.) Anyway I chipped and nudged the ball around for singles, Paul Todd hit some fours, but when we got to 162 I was run out for 4 going for an implausible run off a mis-field as a result of Todd's call which left me well stranded. They say never run on a mis-field and it's true. So then the captain went in and hit his second ball for 4 and the innings was over and we had won. A run chase like this seemed implausible but we got them with 5 overs to spare.

Well the whole thing was played competitively, aggressively and probably too much so for a friendly, but there you go. Winning the game is definitely better than losing and puts individual failures into perspective.

Battersea Ironsides Sunday B team against Sopwith Camels, Sunday May 17th, 2009

TOAD STEALS AN AEROPLANE

Hi Eric, yes another fascinating game of cricket. Basically the story went this way: they had us at 24-4 so I went in and did my Geoffrey Boycott impression. When I left the wicket it was 54-4, so we had a chance. Eventually we amassed 140 but they chipped them off for the loss of 2. best wishes, PM

Ps there was a Scotsman batting number 11. I hope this doesn't happen again. We can't encourage them.

Battersea Ironsides Sunday B team against Wind in the Willows, Sunday May 10th, 2009

TOAD'S INVITIATION

just played Wind in the Willows CC. Opened the innings, got off to a great start with the ball snorting off a length sometimes and sometimes shooting, when the captain ran me out. I made 6. We made 102 and then they got the runs in 20 overs, just time enough for a 15 over a side contest with batting and bowling orders inverted. So I opened the bowling. Bowling a load of rubbish and then produced a snorter of a ball that went through everything and had the batsman plumb lbw. Cricket is a funny game. Then I scored 1 not out second time around. But we lost again even though I knocked Ron Badger's block off with a bouncer. Believe me, that's the last time I'll let those fictional characters try to invent a cricket match in my dream.

Hola Guapo! Last night up in Mill Hill Village for net practice, not as well organised as in BICC. Some guys turned up not dressed for cricket but turned out to be decent sorts enlisting their 12 yr old son for action at the club. Some young 'cricketers' turned up for a hit, one went into the nets without a box (???), within a minute there was a sudden piercing scream, for he had taken a direct hit on the nuts. But a young Australian leg spinner arrived who seemed talented and organised, then Liam Maloney arrived, club secretary who seemed to have a genius for being humble, constructive and giving advice both simple and profound. Anyway they gave me a game on their 4th XI on Saturday as a reward for seeming to know what a box was and being able to protect my nuts (which may still, indeed, come in handy. you never know what might happen: a beautiful woman might fall in love with me and agree to have my baby? or maybe just that I simply don't want to live in constant pain in my nuts region!) best wishes, Paul

Hi, today out at Perivale for a match with Mill Hill CC 4th XI. I soon found out that I was brought as a spare and was to bat at number 8. Not giving a newcomer a chance to either bat or bowl and yet expecting that person to pay a full match fee? However, the team quickly showed that they couldn't bat and I was soon in the action coming to the wicket at 60 for 6. At the other end the Aussie leg spinner Chris O'Shaughnessey had 34 but soon holed out to an awesome ball from their Pakistani leg spinner, a tall chap who spun and bounced the ball prodigiously. He took 8 wickets, the other 2 were run outs. So I quickly got on top of the medium pacer hitting him for two 4s and then took the quick single. Facing the leg spinner I made a classical forward defensive but the ball spun and bounced massively taking an edge. Getting an edge on that ball totally demonstrates that I am a batsman of genius. I was caught for 10. In all we made 95 in 25 overs. They knocked these off for the loss of one wicket (run out). I fielded at gully saving 20 or so runs in the process and bowled the last over. The keeper missed a straightforward stumping and then the batsman hit the next ball from me straight at mid-wicket who helped the ball over the boundary for 4.
When Chris came to bowl his bowling was simply dismantled completely and he gave them back the 34 he made in only 2 overs.

The conclusion? Not giving me a chance was a mistake they'll live to regret.

best wishes,

Paul

Hi Des, another victory in the T20.

Fleet Street Strollers vs Battersea Ironsides, 24th June, 2009

I was wheeled onto the square for some 'old timer' googly bowling. My bowling analysis: 4 overs 0 maidens 5 wickets 36 runs. Biff! Pow! 2 men bowled, one stumping, one caught and one hit wicket. Gareth also got runs and everyone contributed down the line. They made 96 but didn't bat out their 20 overs. Then we got them for the loss of 2 wickets in 17 overs. best wishes, Paul

Mill Hill Village 4th XI versus GWR XI, Perivale

Hi Liam, today a great victory, making 193 this time with Nadeem a centurion, but the rest of the batters making the wicket look hard work. Then we got them for 103, 4 bowlers chipping in with 2 or 3 each including moi: my off spin bowling harvesting 3 overs 2 for 14 and a good catch too off Ravi, who got 3 wickets but also made 2 with the bat (me too). So all in all everyone contributing to a substantial victory.

best wishes,

Paul

CIYMS vs Portadown in Mid Ulster Bandit Country, circa 1995

I remember once playing a game of cricket in mid-Ulster. We arrived in cars and someone remarked: 'I don't think people here are very loyal.' There was a mural depicting Karl Marx, Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams, another of Bobby Sands, yet another depicting an IRA guerilla in full combat gear, brandishing a kalashnikov assault rifle with the caption: Tiocfaidh ár lá (our day will come). Sometime around 1972 someone detonated a bomb in the village pub, killing everyone who could pay to be there. Afterwards relationships between catholics and protestants in the village were strained, to say the least. God, I thought to myself, am I not some kind of fascist turning up here with a cricket bat and white clothing to impinge upon these people who probably want to be left alone, who probably don't need to be reminded of the Plantation of Ulster, the triumph of King Billy in 1690, defeating James at the Battle of the Boyne, the Act of Union and every other aggressive Imperialist British action historically retrograde or whatever. I thought, how can we even get out of here (if things turned nasty, as they invariably did in Ulster.). Okay I can quote Lenin, Che and Marx, pretend to be an Australian touring side: I'm the captain Paul Murphy, these are the Melbourne Desperadoes or something and I'm their captain Paul O'Murphy (because that sounds even more Irish).

So I went into the wee shop to ask directions, addressing the shopkeeper:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it. That's Marx, Karl Marx. You know what Lenin said: the Kulak has one hand in his own pocket and one in the pocket of his serf. Can I have a packet of Protestants? Shit, sorry I meant a packet of milk and six bags of crisps and a large bottle of coke."

The only other time I'd been in a situation like this was in County Antrim at the John Hewitt Summer School. I met this seeming nutter in bar and got into a heated debate with him about the poetry of Louis MacNeice. This chap looked as if he'd got over the wall of the local booby hatch the night before and was in vital need of a dose of largactyl.

"By the way, can I just ask your name?"

"Who, me? I'm Tom Paulin. Perhaps you know me as Kirsty Wark's concubine?"

Hi, just back from Harrow where we, Mill Hill Village 4th XI played Harrow and were beaten, but narrowly. We made 120 all out from 40 overs and they made 121 for 7 in 30. Basically the team consists of 3 fathers and 4 or 5 sons and some other pathetic also rans such as moi there simply to make up the numbers, bat in the lower order, do no bowling and then tender a cheque at the end of the game. You also get to be insulted, 'your batting is ugly, that's why you bat at No.9' - 'no my batting is beautiful, your an ugly kinda liar'. Of course the whole thing is an insult to the intelligence of a house fly but there you go. The contact came via Gumtree which is basically a mugger's paradise and ought to be shut down.

best wishes,

Your correspondent in Sils Maria, Switzerland
Fifth Test, Ashes 2009 The England selectors have chosen Trott (too hot to..) but the money is safe IF the Aussies win....

Out of Africa (2005, Directed by Sydney Pollack. With Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Klaus Maria Brandauer. In 20th century colonial Kenya, a Danish baroness/plantation owner has ...

Subject: Cafe, Frederichstraße
Hi, sitting at a cafe tonight, mulling over some chilli and a coke. A man came up to me, addressed me in German, then some women came over, talking at me while I couldn´t understand. Seemed they wanted me to move to a smaller table so that their group could be together. Anyway, I thought this man was familiar, it turned out to be Klaus Maria Brandauer, the Austrian actor, who is putting on a production of Die DreiGroßenOper at the Berliner Ensemble somewhere nr Frederichstraße, the main theatre boulevard in Berlin. Here am I, an itinerant observer, a real symbol/victim of our celebrity culture, being moved aside or trampled on to make way for a defunct celebrity who had his 15 minutes of fame. The man next to me nudged me and said 'you've met a famous person tonight'. 'O you mean that c*** who just stole my seat?' Little did this man know, for he was demented and too plastered to speak, that Klaus and I were actual colleagues, for I had contrived to be made a freelance reviewer at the Berliner Ensemble where KMB was principal actor. KMB was looking aggressive, kept looking over at me, wanted a fight, (but then what about those yrs of schooling at the Roger Moore Academy of karate and kick boxing. Take him out there, beat the shit out of the Austrian manachean muffler, get in the car, run over his limp, bleeding body, then load it into the boot, depositing his broken corpse into the Landwehr Kanal. Drive back to the cafe, throw a party for the cast at my apartment, shag his girlfriend 'til dawn, then go to the BE and trash his changing room. I mean, the f***er was asking for it, wasn't he?

Hi, today played for Mill Hill Village 3rd XI and the oppo made 291 for 1 off 40 overs. We only had 9 men and 5 fourth XI players. Then we made 92 all out in reply. So a bit of a massacre but I was happy playing as a wicket keeper and doing well, only letting through 5 byes, not dropping any catches and sticking around for 7 or so overs with the bat although making a duck (0). They had one particular fast bowler, he was a bit terrifying, just like the demon bowler Spofforth of lore. Perhaps he was the ghost of Spofforth or the ghost of Flashman, come back from the grave to give me a damn good beasting, but I spat in his eye (metaphorically). best wishes, Paul Murphy

Battersea Ironsides Sunday A vs Cheam

Hi, that sounds great! Yesterday's game was even better. They made 211 off 40 overs and then we were reduced to 50-7 when there was a recovery to 124-8. Then I came to the wicket with a broken hand and managed to put 50 on with the incumbent batsman who made 55 but was out with just 4 overs to come. Then the No.11 came in and we put on 27 quickfire runs, ending on 201-9. I carried the bat for 16 not out. Putting on 77 runs and only making 16 sounds paltry but there were a lot of extras. bw

good job!

i've been a spectator lately: we went to see the san francisco giants play the pittsburgh pirates, and our cy young award winning pitcher for the hometown giants
pitched 15 strikeouts in the night game!! a career high for possibly the best major league pitcher today: tim lincecum. reading 'satchel,' a book about possibly the greatest pitcher ever. many of his records are lost as the negro leagues did not
tally much, but he still played the majors, given at an older age due to racism. he was a rookie of the year at age 42 in the major leagues and pitched up to the age of 59!!

http://www.amazon.com/Satchel-Life-Times-American-Legend/dp/1400066514

play ball,
jonathan

so just coming to terms with the game as the season draws to a close. only played a handful of games before, in the off season after the hockey was finished. always loved cricket though, much more than hockey. the game has many legends, hockey just St Trinians. will probably try to play on through the winter. maybe I'll go to South Africa but probably Gerlitzen in southern Austria. I want to get a log cabin there and learn to fight bears. seriously though the views are stupendous, the isolation terrific, the Austrians...the Austrians are a bunch of swarthy, short, stocky Hitler buddies. I hope to eat my shoes in Chaplinesque fashion. After that I'll eat my belt, then I'll work on a slim volume, eat it. then I'll eat my cricket bat.

My friend Armin Steigenberger in Munich said, incidentally, that he thinks Andy Strauss' father was a black engineer from the Projects district in Detroit. No one had ever heard of Randy Frauss there and, if they had, would never have bought his lps. bw, PM

an interesting, detailed account. I hadn't heard of Jake, but played against Patrick in the nets. Patrick can extract decent bounce but basically needs to work v hard on his bowling in order to challenge decent, technically competent batters. With a lot of hard work he could be a very good first change bowler and number 8 batsman.

yes of course send me more of these, basically its all fascinating to me.

your right, I can't swing through straight because of my weight. the bat starts pointing at cover and ends up at leg.

On Saturday I played squash against an SA county player (played for Natal), a woman. It was nice to play against a woman, they are so much more thoughtful. She immediately realised I had tendenitis in my knee and made all sorts of pragmatic suggestions. Jon Slinn thought this was a sign of lack of fitness, that I had to go to a gym! He's a bit crass, rather undeveloped social skills that mostly rotate around being cold and arrogant.

I have to get back to my editing and other duties. Presently I have some books to review, new South African poetry, a new book by my editor Andrew Nightingale (editor of Liminal Pleasures, hailed a few yrs ago as the Great White Hope of English poetry, but died a death on landing. Still its the best thing to have happened for years in English poetry, a real engine room for the British avante garde, or what remains of it (apparantly they have me down as a member of the British avante garde along with honorary Cornishman once of the British Library reading room Lawrence Upton - makes me puke a bit - Giles Goodland, Rupert Loydell and OTHERS. I met Giles Goodland at his home in Ealing, works on the OED a lot, inbetween times writes to be a member of the British avante garde like me. I wish I could hit an off drive as well as I work out an ode! Maybe I should write 'ode to my off drive' or 'ode to my arsy parsy pointing in the direction of cover then leg!'. Bring down the house or the harse or whichever. BTW is that curmudgeon Mick still at the club? I asked him what he thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein 'Logico Tractatus Philosophicus', quoth he 'e's a nutter.' Dripping or dropping his aitches an all, remember Mick man that cro magnon defeated neanderthal! Then he rollicked on about how he never reads anything else but The Sun and The Mirror sometimes the Daily Mail - the Daily Mail for fucks sake!! - real arse wipe material. I mean, who prides themselves on reading that muck, just expensive toilet roll? But he's an incidental diversion from the other happenings, reminds me very much of one of the characters in Bernard Shaw's 'Man and Superman' although I can't remember which.)

KUNIYOSHI at the ROYAL ACADEMY

2009-04-10T04:21:00.000-07:00

Hi, no thank fuck I didn't see that. An exhibition of prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) at the Royal Academy, many of them dramatic falling into several genres: samurai, geisha, kabuki actors, surreal humour. In every way Japanese art in the 19th century just as good as European. Monet et al openly acknowledged their indebtedness to Hokusai (everyone knows his Tsunami print but why? is it not a cornucopia of shit.) and the other great Japanese print makers (but who gives a flying fuck about them? who even knows their names? They are, after all, just a bunch of slanty eyed little yellow fucks with blue bum marks.). But why? How can a bunch of slanty eyed yellow fucks make great art?

I must confess to not being much of an expert on Japanese or even East Asian art. But I do realise the skill implict in the art of Kuniyoshi. Kuniyoshi's many historical triptychs talk about events of the past heavily circumscribed by censorhip for he was forbidden to talk about events after 1573. Obviously the rulers of Japan had killed a good number of people while establishing their (mis-) rule. Therefore Kuniyoshi is contextualised within a discourse that must seek allegory and metaphor to talk about what everyone must know but cannot name. Also he must evade his own sudden violent death if he is to talk about almost everything that is of any importance in the world he occupies.

I don't want to get bogged down in issues of Japanese history or aesthetic topics that mightn't be very accessible to any reader of this article and that is clearly only going to lead to further obscurantism surrounding this topic. Kuniyoshi wants to make prints depicting Yoshiwara, Edo's (Tokyo) red light district, but is forbidden to, so every pimp, prostitute or client becomes a sparrow. At each and every turn Kuniyoshi paints but a bleak frowning man in a black kimono is breathing down his neck. Also: he doesn't want to pay Kuniyoshi and that, as far as Kuniyoshi can see, really sucks. In this sense the censor is the absent presence in each Kuniyoshi print. Its as if Kuniyoshi wants to say: 'hey censor eat a geisha's bearded clam' (go fuck).

Kuniyoshi, it is clear, can paint and draw and attains all these skills through constant practice.

Hi, I stepped into see work of up and coming Irish artist Colin Watson. I thought his work looked like a selection of painted snapshots from exotic locales he had visited. The brushwork was fine, the compositions elegant but none of the paintings spoke to me, said anything personal. All of them dealt with (what the Arabs call the) Maghreb, North Africa, a place beloved of Auguste Macke, for instance, who made many representations of the region, but also of many other depictions of exotic locales by 19th century (male, white) European artists such as Paul Gaugin. Macke's works fall into the genre 'Orientalism' as do these, they cover the same material as do most works of this genre, being coldly unengaged as British Orientalism always tends to, unlike French Orientalism which is constantly underpinned by eroticism. Examining a locality is one thing, but why this distant place, why not the streets and scenes that are all around? Those perhaps lack qualities of exotic grandeur and reserved eroticism, a feeling particularly interesting to members of the 19th century urban haute bourgeoisie or even young aristos mingling in torpidly sunny spaces with scantily clad native trollops enjoying an unbreakable idyllic nothingness. What's wrong with this exhibition is what's right with Britart of the Tracy Emin variety: direct, relevant, even scandalously salacious works, brutally pertinent and even saucy. Works from the heart and from the street.

HAVANA RUMBA! RIVERSIDE STUDIOS, LONDON

2009-04-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

Havana Rumba, Riverside Studios, London

Riverside Studios have brought over to London a group of Cuban dancers, musicians and singers but possibly at an inopportune moment given the backdrop of the economic crisis. Still this is a moment as well for the press since it was brought over too to the Riverside Studios en masse last night clearly to support this premiere. The production was a typical Riverside Studios effort, with aspects of competence unsupported crucially by the choreography, for instance, and then by unfortunate bleeps and blarts emitted by the PA system. Of course the production was corny, but it was meant to be and perhaps some of the more embarrassing moments, such as the knife throwing, might have been deleted. But overall this was a tremendous fun event and I don't wish to be too critical, since it was intense and enjoyable, well worth seeing, supporting and the performers deserve to be supported as well.

Paul Murphy

BRONSON

2009-03-27T04:04:00.000-07:00

Hi Reinhard, I think its been proven that great novels never make great films, hence the unfilmability of 'Crime and Punishment' or 'Ulysses'. I always find filmed versions of 'Hamlet' particularly cringeworthy, especially in the hands of crap actors like Branagh and the rest who make a pig's arse out of everything they do. Even so Branagh is still head and shoulders above the likes of Cruise etc. I recently watched 'Valkyrie' and Branagh was the only reason I didn't walk out half way through. I also saw 'Bronson' film about the life of Luton hardman Charlie Bronson, which is a half-way decent film and Tom Hardy's performance is undoubtedly powerful and poignant. The soundtrack is daring, considering how conservative most films are and the overall concept is brash but the depictions, for instance, of the psychiatric hospital, don't rise above the level of 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' which the film too obviously references and Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange' also. The film is too derivative and too exploititive of its subject who isn't praised or blamed in the right ways. He emerges from the film as nothing more than a big child who has never learned to vary his tactics or change his approach to life as he bangs his head off a brickwall for the zillionth time. But he's much more preferable than those who surround him, such as the camp gangster who uses him as a bare knuckle fighter during one of his short spells on the outside, or the pretentious twit art teacher who begins to tease out some of Bronson's undoubted creativity, and who he assaults in a very imaginative way (in fact both these characters are merely ludicrous stereotypes that its easy to dislike. With people as ridiculous as this surrounding Bronson, as well as the 'evil' prison governer, it thus becomes much easier to take his side, to perceive Bronson as a hero.) Its noteworthy that many of the redtops (yellow press) had to attack this film in great detail for the way in which they perceive that it lionises Bronson. But Bronson is undoubtedly a victim and his victims are lesser people than he, according to the film anyway and Bronson, unlike ETA, the IRA, didn't kill anyone or advocate killing people as a tactic. For all that he's still spent more than 30 years in gaol, far more than the average homocidal IRA man.

THE BEACHES OF AGNES

2009-03-25T06:01:00.000-07:00

THE BEACHES OF AGNES is really a retrospective journey for Agnes Varda which details her personal evolution in Sete, France during and after WW2, then the beginning of her career as a film-maker and, most importantly, her connection to the French novelle vague and subsequent marriage/relationship with Jacques Demy, detailing his death from AIDS in 1990. The motif of painful memories is repeated throughout the film and sometimes the bitter sweet nature of memory itself becomes the subject reflected through the prism of decaying film stock and sometimes through accidental encounters with the past as when Agnes Varda finds some old film posters featuring her, Demy, Max Ophuls (and others) in the local flea market. Agnes Varda is always candid and open about the 'truth' of her experiences, the film takes on a special sense of retrospective since it is about actual famous people, not 'celebrities'. Other figures, such as Jean Luc Godard and Jim Morrison, feature, walking through this slice of 'real history' then finishing somewhere else as Agnes and Jacques drift into their own personal reality and away from the public aperture in Hollywood, Paris or whatever.

GOMORRAH

2009-03-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

Hi, presently I'm listening to Gorecki, 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'. Everyday I listen to new stuff. Some of this work is very memorable as if it has been used for some trashy film.

Last night I watched 'Gomorrah'. The Camora, the most violent criminal syndicate in Europe, are apparantly investing in the reconstruction of the twin towers, but, as you know, in the OT S & G were never rebuilt (or perhaps they were with Sky, telebars, innocuous looking banging tents - one of these is featured in 'Gomorrah' where the prosititute refuses to have sex with the mafiose who is then dragged off to be punished for secreting his pistols.). Of course the garbage problem in Napoli is all the fault of the Camora, a mountain of trash which could reach Heaven and is already higher than Everest (if the Camora have not already invested in Heaven and turned it into a lap dancing venue named Hell). But 'Gomorrah' is best watched in conjunction with 'Il Divo', a recent Italian film about the life of Giulio Andreotti, Italian premiere after WW2. 'Il Divo' (The God) is a much cleverer, much more adept film than this.
best wishes, Paul

Of course the reason why the makers of 'Gommorah' call the film this is because calling it 'Soddom AND Gomorrah' has obvious biblical echoes that simply hands propaganda ammo to organisations like the Camorra (Neopolitan mafia). But the aura of judgement that surrounds 'Gomorra' and the consequent homophobia and repulsion at lifestyles and ways of life that differ from those of the police, the state, the makers of 'Gomorrah' is palpable. The makers of this film want to damn the Camorra to Hell, ignoring the consequent falsehoods of their position, their self-superior Christian condescension, their ignorance of ways in which both the Camorra and the Sicilian mafia were at one time popular, populist organisations who hit out at the monopoly of wealth and property of the Sicilian and southern Italian aristocracies and the way in which public attitudes to these organisations in Naples and Sicily are still ambivalent. Those things would only be apparant to someone who had lived in those societies, a person such as the author of this review, who is also a person who knows not to order Domino's pizzas, that these pizzas are the next thing to eating shite (in fact shite is better) and that the best pizza in Sicily can be found in a mountaintop village, Enna, in central Sicily. If this film had been made in the age of Dante Aligheri, the early Middle Ages, then its message would make total sense and consequentially we would know exactly what would happen to the Camorra, but this is not the era of Dante, this is the era after the French Revolution and political films have to absorb the message of that epoch if they are to be taken seriously. The fact that Roberto Saviano, the author of this work, now has a permanent police escort is saddening, but no one has killed him yet and perhaps if he wrote good works rather than this kind of tripe then he might become really famous and not simply really fatuous.

ANDREA PALLADIO at the ROYAL ACADEMY

2009-02-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

ANDREA PALLADIO at the ROYAL ACADEMY

Today I went to see the Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) exhibition at the Royal Academy. I’d heard that Palladio’s architectural concepts were musical in inspiration, but I didn't see much of that beyond his understanding of proportion, the rule of thirds, incredible symmetry, his understanding of the rules of classical perspective and the perspective used in Renaissance Italy, his contemporary world. Many of his drawings are haphazard sketches clearly made on the job, while some drawings are incredibly sophisticated, many drawn by his son, who clearly had a big hand in the advertising campaign for a new design. Palladian buildings can be found in the UK, where they influenced the dramatist and architect Vanbrugh amongst many others, in Russia, in America in fact they have been imitated everywhere and are an important single basis for modern architecture. The emphasis of the exhibition was on Palladian designs but we were also allowed access to Palladio's mind. Palladio was deeply original, had a very eclectic mind capable of absorbing influences from music, geometry, warfare, mathematics. For instance, some Palladian buildings clearly resemble military formations. Palladio spent some time studying these especially as he was then responsible for defending Venice from a possible attack by the Ottoman Turks for power politics in the region at the time were based around hostility towards the Ottomans but also trading agreements. He was involved in designing churches, folly-like classical rotondas for the country dwellings of aristocrats, bridges, loggias and theatres. Many of these designs turned out to be far ahead of their time. In fact some of his designs are still in use and have not been superseded. Also many of the buildings he planned were never built, so we only have putative blueprints, many of them on view here, to go by.

His career had three main phases: an early period in Rome where he was encouraged by an important patron, Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570) followed by a period in Venice, then lastly Palladio went to Vicenza, a city 60 km west of Venice. Most of Palladio’s villas are located here. The problem with the exhibition is obviously: how can this amalgam of scale models, photographs, paintings, designs, really illustrate the genius of Palladio when the audience really needs to see the buildings themselves? On that basis the exhibition hardly works, but affords insights into Palladio's public works and imagination that might be the basis of further work and study. The scale models can be a bit annoying since they so patently point towards their status as models, somehow resembling those fruitless matchstick reconstructions but obviously a bit more sophisticated than that. There’s also an overwhelming amount of reading that seems ultimately a bit fruitless and unsatisfying, the approach a bit too academic and sterile, as if a book on Palladio might be a better way to begin to find out about his ideas and then a journey to Vicenza and Venice to see the original buildings Palladio designed there, but definitely to get the hands on Palladian things.

Paul Murphy, Royal Academy, London

MAGNIFICENCE OF THE TSARS, VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM

2009-02-25T07:33:00.000-08:00

MAGNIFENCE OF THE TSARS, VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON, LONDON

I was just in the V & A and a girl was working in the cast room on a massive tryptych on an easel with all kinds of bags and materials strewn around. When I tried to have a look she told me to piss off. That's the kind of 'civilisation' the English have created, especially English women, where all property is theirs and everyone else is a sodomist or a fantasy rapist in their dreams. They are taking over our museums and galleries.

Then onwards to 'Magnificence of the Tsars', an exhibition that glories in the opulence and decadence of the Tsars, with little mention of the rest. By 'the rest' I mean nobles, aristocrats, boyars, civil servants, merchants, lawyers, doctors, lecturers, teachers. None of them are mentioned in the exhibition, apart from exhibitions of the cloths of servants such as Heralds and Postillions. The Russian ruling elite was very narrow indeed compared to those in Western Europe, sharing little of their extensive luxuries and comforts with the rest, who would ultimately enact a chilling revenge but firstly replacing then deposing the Tsars in their year of destiny, 1917. Most of the garments on show here were gathered from France and other Western European countries. Essentially Russia had a scarcity of nascent culture and cultural traditions, the Tsars were attempting to create one out of a unique synthesis of traditionally Russian and Western European cultures. This exhibition details their overall success. The Tsars were especially impressed by French culture, French fashion influenced their garb considerably as well as the French language, which was the language used in Russian pre-revolutionary aristocratic circles. The Russian language and Russian culture was essentially secondary, a discarded tool that Lenin later found inviting. The Tsars lavished more wealth on costumes and opulence compared to the courts of Western Europe with ridiculously diminishing returns, as the ruling elite grew increasingly isolated from the Russian masses, who nevertheless looked up to the Tsar with dog-like incredulity, as the 'Little Father', God's representative in Russia. Obviously this exhibition is a prelude to crisis, to what's real and meaningful in Russian history, which is everything that is post-1917, but also points to immense continuity as the Russian Revolution ultimately proved to be inferior to Tsarism, despotism with or without a benign, human face. The exhibition details patterns of isolationism, the impetus to modernisation, but it's ultimately only an introduction to the themes it wishes to depict. The Tsar's costumes evidence combinations of the archaic and the fashionable, complete political tropes as these 'leaders' sought to combine the old with the new as our present leaders also do. There was often immense retreat from openness back to the old ways, the insularity, the seemingly unavoidable innately dark pessimism and sometime despair of the serfs and those, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who articulated their plight.

Today I went to the V & A to cover 'Magnificence of the Tsars' although it might have been sub-titled 'Inconceivable Barbarism of Previous History'. The Tsars were a deal more reluctant to share out the goodies with the rest than their Western European counterparts, in effect they had to invent Russian culture out of a synthesis of things brought from the West and Russian originals. The lasting image is the somehow plaintive visage of Tsar Nicholas II, a man whom its hard not to feel pity for, even though he made many people suffer and was seemingly devoid of pity. All the same he was more and better than what was to come, mainly because the aristocracy had a basic belief in their superiority AND in being somehow benign, helping pathetic serfs off their knees even if just to kick them in the balls. The Bolsheviks fared worse, but nevertheless managed to defeat the inevitable Germanic incursion when it came.

Paul Murphy, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

PENSION F

2009-02-24T11:42:00.001-08:00

what about the new comedy about Fritzl, 'Pension F'? Its being premiered in Wien before Fritzl's trial begins in Sankt Poelten, when 1000s of journalists will descend on that place. But the trial is mere theatre, the real trial, the media trial, happened months ago and whatever happens, the media will say whether Fritzl is guilty or not. Like it or not, that's the truth.

JADE GOODY IS DYING

2009-02-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

I feel so tired deep within myself, so lacking in enthusiasm, looking like Jade Goody another made-up person in a fading universe, fading through the kaleidoscope of brown-inspired colours that jangle up mediocrity with the rest of it. Goody was born on a reality tv show and will die there. She is the apotheosis of Gordon Brown's society: celebrity without merit, fame without effort, vast wealth without hard work/talent/endeavour. No wonder Brown speaks on her behalf now she is 'dying'. Brown is also a talentless boozer, a man thrown into the deep end now and clueless, of course. Goody is an endstop in evolution, looking like cavewoman transposed through some multi-cultural identikit foto, at once a serial killer, a primeval jane covered in thickets of pubic hair, and grotesquely ugly looking like any prostitute on any streetcorner anywhere.

Brown summarises the ancient truism: ´in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.´

Now there´s bigotgate too, but who is the bigot really?

IL DIVO

2009-02-18T05:56:00.000-08:00

IL DIVO (Dir Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, 2007) I've watched 'Il Divo' a film about the life of Gulio Andreotti and thought it was very good indeed, very plausible look at recent Italian political life by Paolo Sorrentino, touching on many aspects of recent Italian history. The main stars of the film are the great political organisations of the era, the Italian Christian Democrat Party, the BR (Brigate Rossi - Red Brigades) and P2 (Propaganda Due 2, an organisation of conservatives, right-wingers organised within an anti-communist, masonic organisation and part of the Grand Orient of Italy, a masonic organisation organised within the state, previously banned by Benito Mussolini in the fascist era with the aim of establishing an authoritarian government. Silvio Berlusconi was a member, so too Roberto Calvi aka 'God's Banker' later found hanged under Blackfriar's Bridge, London, the banker Michele Sindona, the journalist Mino Pecorelli and many others.)

Il Divo is a very well documented film with lots of notes, glossaries and pointers. Sometimes it seems over-complex, as if intended to condescend to the viewer's probably incomplete knowledge of recent Italian political life. In some ways it exhibits the kind of pomposity that makes Modernist art and literature either elitest or positively obscure as if underscoring the poets or artists solipsism with some deliberate purpose in the localism of reference. But some of the locations depicted in the film have invaded the public conscience; the murder/suicide of Roberto Calvi, so called 'God's Banker' because of his services to The Vatican; the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, a fellow member along with Andreotti of the Italian Christian Democrat Party and formerly Prime Minister. Andreotti's role in all this is the subject of 'Il Divo' and what is depicted are Andreotti's historic compromises, his putative role in the bloodbath but by the end of the film its still unclear what Andreotti's actual role in events amounted to.

That is not the point of the film which is completely bound up with Toni Servillo's performance as the flat eared, hunch backed Andreotti. In this sense its a surreal comedy or light hearted political thriller that aims its dart at the heart of Andreotti who refuses to take anything seriously. He is variously dubbed The salamander, The Black Pope, Eternity, Beelzebub and probably also The Prince of Darkness but he cleverly refuses to sue anyone. At one point when Andreotti is watching TV with his wife Livia a comedian declares that maybe we will all know the truth about Italian politics in the Andreotti era when the black box is taken out of his hunchback.

This film is astonishing, a tour de force with an operatic magnitude and form. It is unbelievably complex, integrating mise-en-scene, cinematography, soundtrack in a way not seen in Italy perhaps since Bernardo Bertolucci's magnificent 'Il Conformista' - 'The Conformist'.

Paul Murphy

TITUS

2009-02-16T07:58:00.001-08:00

Hi, thanks for the call yesterday. I was very surprised, but also pleased. The agency was putting me through some extra hoops last week and I can feel it, physically, now. My feet and shins are aching with all that walking and general arsing about

This is the URL of my blogspot: www.theenginge.blogspot.com
Your welcome to send in any recent film or theatre reviews or any other art review you feel might fit the style and content of the zine. As I said on the phone I'd just finished watching Julie Taymor's film of 'Titus Andronicus' which is fantastic and brought to mind that old bong 'Theatre of Blood' with Vincent Price as he tries to knock off all the unfriendly critics with harrowingly camp re-enactments of Shakespearian murders. The Price character is actually Donald Wolfit, who also happened to be in 'Lawrence of Arabia' and indeed felt hard done by and got into a rather paranoid frame of mind about it.

Anyway, the film is incredible. I urge you to watch this to see how Shakespeare could re-imagined.

I also have the recent 'As you like it' to get through with the excellent Bryce Dallas Howard. Well she was quite good in 'Manderlay' by Lars von Treehouse. Incidentally his von is purely imaginary.
O yes Kevin is indeed an Irish name but I'm unsure of the etymology. My surname Murphy is indeed the most common and oldest Irish name, being (I am assured) the Old Irish word for the Scandinavian invaders who began to settle around the Dublin area from the 9th century onwards, literally 'warrior from the sea'.

best wishes,

Paul

Revolutionary Road

2009-02-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

Revolutionary Road (2008, dir Sam Mendes, starring Kate Winslett, Leonardo de Capriccio)

Isn't it odd that American filmart is now focussing upon itself so much rather than looking out into the world for something to say? The film Revolutionary Road is a depiction of failure, of two ordinary, smalltown people who talk about living a Bohemian life in Paris, who can't accept their essential ordinariness. That's not essentially a topic for a book. When you read the opening pages of 'Tropic of Capricorn' or 'Tropic of Cancer' by (you guessed it, an American who made it in Paris, Henry Miller) you immediately realise that this is writing and essentially unfilmable as all great, essential writing is. Revolutionary Road is one of those minor novels whose main characters are essentially the novelist and his wife, the novelist being Richard Yates whose work had little impact in his own lifetime and little after effect either. The one significant moment in the film comes when Frank (de Capriccio) finds his wife April Wheeler's (Kate Winslett) abortion kit, for the idea of escape to Paris mainly signifies escape from the duties of parent, escape from the trap or prison that is marriage or their relationship . But there's no sense in which this moment, although dramatically potent, maintains any form of development for the two protagonists who are essentially unhappy, trapped people with no unfolding sense of dignity or destiny. They're better off in smallsville but that isn't a place they can inhabit either, so they are essentially diminshed characters, neither living nor dead like an adumbration of a poem by TS Eliot and the protagonists therein ,like Prufrock or the suitor in 'The Portrait of a Lady'.

For all that Mendes film is beautiful to look at and the score is fine too, except that we're never really content to gaze on the brutalised mask of failure when success is much finer (and probably best gleaned from a non-literary source or from a 'bad' novel.). So I think you might have guessed that this isn't the film for me, in fact I found it to be quite tedious. I preferred 'Valkyrie' which was never boring except that the ending was foreordained (and that's probably an argument for fiction rather than faction).

In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life.

2009-02-01T05:08:00.001-08:00

In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life.
- Karl Marx

DERRIDA ON DERRIDA

2009-01-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

Hi Simon, I've got a remarkable dvd of Slavoj Zizek and one about Derrida too. Zizek is the less lionised figure and comes across as remarkably accessible human being. Often he appears in bed talking to camera and he's making a tent with his hand as he vigorously masturbates. He's telling us he's alive, both in dialectical terms and in terms of pouring spumes of semen into the atmosphere. By contrast Derrida is rarely so candid. Often he's seen cooking a scrambled egg that never constitutes anything but its own, mere derision. At other times he's treated like a god, a twentieth-century man god who happens to be in a film too. The film is never so innovative as it fancies itself to be, but the Zizek film is the more recommended:

from lacan dot com
http://www.lacan.com
http://www.lacan.com/lacan1.htm

Slavoj Zizek
Beckett with Lacan - part 1
http://www.lacan.com/article/?page_id=78

The achievement of Joyce simultaneously signals his limit, the limit which pushed Beckett to break with him. If there ever was a kenotic writer, the writer of the utter self-emptying of subjectivity, of its reduction to a minimal difference, it is Beckett. We touch the Lacanian Real when we subtract from a symbolic field all the wealth of its differences, reducing it to a minimum of antagonism.

Beckett with Lacan - part 2
http://www.lacan.com/article/?page_id=102

The basic constellation is thus the dialogue between the subject and the big Other, where the couple is reduced to its barest minimum: the Other is a silent impotent witness which fails in its effort to serve as the medium of the Truth of what is said, and the speaking subject itself is deprived of its dignified status of “person” and reduced to a partial object. And, consequently, since meaning is generated only by means of the detour of the speaker’s word through a consistent big Other, the speech itself ultimately functions at a pre-semantic level, as a series of explosions of libidinal intensities.

Alain Badiou
Figures of Subjective Destiny: Samuel Beckett
http://www.lacan.com/article/?page_id=21

Why there is a close relationship between poetry and philosophy, or more generally between literature and philosophy? It’s because philosophy finds in literature some examples of completely new forms of the destiny of the human subject. And precisely new forms of the concrete becoming of the human subject when this subject is confronted to its proper truth.

On Communism - Libération 01/26.08
http://www.lacan.com/article/?page_id=125

My position, reinforced by a recent trip to Palestine, is that today it is absolutely imperative to separate politics from religion, just like it should be separated, for example, from racial or identity questions. Religions can and must coexist in the same country, but only if politics and the State are separate.

NO DIRECTION HOME

2009-01-27T04:00:00.001-08:00

In the evening there was too much to do, but I watched Martin Scorcese's docu about Bob Dylan 'No Direction Home' for the umpteenth time. There's another film about Dylan by D A Pennebaker, have you seen it? Dylan, not good enough to stand alone as a poet, not singing pleasantly enough to be in music like Perry Como or Val Doonican, but somehow finding a niche in a new art form cum way of life - goofy poppiness.

KATYN

2009-01-17T03:22:00.001-08:00

From the director of DANTON, MAN OF IRON and ASHES AND DIAMONDS

KATYÑ (cert TBC)

Directed by Andrezj Wajda

The Polish Entry for Best Foreign Language Film nominee, the 80th Academy Awards® 2008

Starring

Artur Zmijewski, Maja Ostaszewska, Andrzej Chyra & Danuta Stenka

Poland / 2007 / 118 Mins / In Polish with English subtitles / In Colour / Scope

UK RELEASE DATE: May 2009 TBC

An Artificial Eye Release

Images will be available on image.net

For further information please contact: press@artificial-eye.com

Artificial Eye Film Company, 20 - 22 Stukeley Street London WC2B 5LR

KATYÑ is the story of Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in Katyñ during World War 2 and their families who, unaware of the crime, were still waiting for their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers to return. KATYÑ is also a film about an invincible struggle for memory and truth and an uncompromising reckoning with the lie of the communist powers created to force Poland to forget those who had been killed.

At the beginning of World War 2 on September 17, 1939 after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, the Red Army also trespassed on Polish soil on Joseph Stalin's orders. Consequently, all Polish officers found themselves in Soviet internment.

Anna, the wife of an Uhlan Regiment Captain, is waiting for her man, and although she is in denial, she receives undisputable evidence of his murder by the Russians. The wife of a General learns of her husband's death after the Germans discover mass graves of Polish officers in the KatyñForest. Agnieszka, the sister of a pilot who has met the same fate as the other Polish soldiers, is broken-hearted by the silence and lies told about the crime. The Captain's friend Jerzy, who has entered the ranks of the Polish People's Army, is the only survivor.

What will become of these women, waiting for their beloved in the Polish state and who after the war are dependent on Soviet Russia? Will homeland and freedom retain the same meaning for those who have accepted the new system?

Andrzej Wajda was born in Suwaki, north-eastern Poland, on March 6, 1926. He studied painting at Kraków and cinema at the Film School at £ód¼. Andrzej Wajda’s first film, A Generation (1955; Pokolenie), was followed by KANAL (1957) and ASHES AND DIAMONDS (1958; Popiól i Diamenti), to form a trilogy depicting the hopes and tensions of a new Poland emerging from the ruins of World War II. In later films, such as LOTNA( 1959) and Landscape After the Battle (1970; Krajobraz Po Bitwie), Andrzej Wajda returned to the themes of war and absurd heroic myths. Everything for Sale (1969; Wszystko Na Sprzeda) was a moving tribute to the young Cybulski, who had died in an accident in 1967. During the 1970s and 1980s, Wajda dealt, in films such as MAN OF MARBLE (1977; Cz³owiek z Marmuru) and MAN OF IRON (1981; Cz³owiek z Zelaza), with the growing political turmoil in Poland and the rise of the Solidarity movement.

Andrzej Wajda’s films present a unique dramatic narrative of Poland’s post-war history, and even his films made abroad, such as DANTON (1982), about the French Revolution, deal with the moral issues raised by the conflict of individual choice and political action. This theme was also foremost in his 1990 film, KORCAZAK, the true story of a doctor, Janusz Korczak, who taught orphaned Jewish children during the Holocaust. World War II also provided the setting for his films The Ring with a Crowned Eagle (1993; Pierscionek z Orlem w Koronie), HOLY WEEK (1995; Wielki Tydzien) and KATYÑ (2007).

In 1996 Wajda was awarded the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for his lifetime contribution to cinema. He won an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000. (See also Eastern European Cinema.). With KATYN, Wadja has reinforced his position as the key Polish film maker of the last 50 years, who work has reflected and grown with the political and social movements in Poland.

Hi Jake, yes but Communism and Nazism also seem to be Christian heresies too. Nazism is practically synonymous with the everyday practice of most European leaders since the days of Caesar Augustus except for its being tilted to an extreme unknown before. I'm actually now writing this from the first Roman city in Germany named after Augustus - Augsburg - a very interesting place thanks to the Fugger family.

If the cartooning is a 'deliberate distancing device' why then doesn't he stick with 'til the end?

Grüß aus Augsburg

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the feedback, some very astute and enlightening points, I agree with much of what you've said. I'm glad you've picked up on the religious theme, I think this a particularly important element of the film that others haven't mentioned in their responses. In terms of Waltz, my personal view of the film is that the animation is a deliberate distancing device used by Folman so he can come to terms with his personal involvement with the subject matter. That is not to say your criticism is not valid. Thanks again for the feedback, see you at the next screening.

Regards Jake

KATYN (Poland 2008) dir Andrej Wajda

'Katyn' is a new film by the Polish director Andrej Wajda. I'm glad to say that 'Katyn' is a fine film and a really fine addition to the works of Andrej Wajda who has deserved more than he has got of late, probably because he never made the personal trip to Hollywood as other Eastern Europeans such as Roman Polanski or Milos Forman once did.

Perhaps Andrej Wajda is still really quite uneasy about the post-Soviet implosion since this and other Wajda films evince a hard nosed grasp of power politics, insight into human frailty and other tics more ever-present in political journalists, for instance, than film directors. That's not to say that Wajda's films aren't entertaining, they are, but they also need a certain engagement with history to begin with. The controversy surrounding the Katyn forest massacre has been rumbling on for some time, but is clearly now, in political terms, a dead issue or merely a fact of history. The reason for this, something that is implicitly debated in the film, is that for some time no one was quite sure who massacred the entire Polish officer corps in Katyn forest at the very beginning of the war. Of course there were two main suspects, the Nazis and the Soviets, both of whose repressive systems are outlined in the film. Wajda seems to merely describe the excesses of both regimes leaving a certain openness in his 'debate' (if that's what it can be called) about the massacre which is actually a debate about the nature of Totalitarianism.

Wajda seems to posit Christianity as a major counterweight to 'evil' Totalitarian systems who seem to care nothing for the individual but only for the ideals and goals of the regime. At the end of the film the dead Polish officer pilot grasps a rosary as his corpse is covered over with soil by the tractor, a seeming corpse covered by a Polish officers jacket is actually a big wooden Christ. But the point is never pressed home, certainly not to the point of being dull. Wajda seems to be saying that Christianity (or more clearly Catholicism, a very Polish form of Catholicism. Ironically when both Nazi and Soviet propaganda teams make their little documentaries blaming the other side - these are both shown in Wajda's film with a differently weighted commentary - both sides are seen to employ priests to bless the desecration) may be the winner, Totalitarianism the loser, but such a nostrum is never stated baldly but is merely inferred. There is a nice balance in the film between the Polish officers and the women characters who mostly feature in terms of their victim spouses.

'Katyn' could most usefully be compared to the recent 'Waltz with Bashir' as a study in memory and the past. The endings of both films are broadly similar, but a film has more gravitas automatically than a cartoon that, however impressive its technical achievement and 'Waltz with Bashir' really marks an historical improvement in cartoon making, will never be taken as seriously as a film. This is why 'Waltz with Bashir' breaks away from its cartoon format at the end, because the makers realise that a cartoon could never successfully present such material, simply because of the level of important historical material, sceptcism and disbelief that cartooning such a scene would entail. But 'Waltz with Bashir' at least challanges us to think in a different way about cartoons and their possibilities. 'Katyn' discusses its subject matter in an adult fashion entirely in keeping with the dignity, importance, seriousness that Andrej Wajda has managed to bring to the art of film-making. It's a heart-rending glimpse into the making of history that lingers in the memory after such obvious 'hardcore' Holocaust pulp as 'Schindler's List' or 'The Reader', for instance, has long faded from the memory.

Paul Murphy, Soho Screening Rooms, London