draw

this mode of drawing is not easy – and rarely comes to anything particularly attractive…

the responses from people sitting has been variable. (frequently bemused responses.)

as such it forces me to look & it’s severity of ‘style’ will not allow for easy solutions – drawing is after all problem solving.

at least one of the problems is how to make use of the two dimensional form…

a composition should lead the eye not fool it.

[someone once called them ‘brutalist’  which is a bit daft. maybe post brutalist… post ironic post brutalism… etc…]

london ii

still nothing on william blake in london – there were nothing in the victoria & albert museum when i went.

i have not attempted to copy blakes colour directly…

approximate it perhaps.

the image is of newton – too concerned with measuring particulars to see the beauty around him.

aesthete

“Economy of form, & a sensibility fine tuned to minimilist stimuli, are elements of Bauhaus aesthetics that appear bleak & puritanical for post modern tastes that tend to be based on much higher stimulas threshholds.”

Eva Forgacs ‘The Bauhaus Idea and Politics.’ Trans. John Bakti.

this came up in my reading around the bauhaus – i would like to continue this study i think, fascinating to look at artists for whom it would be very easy to become reactionary (given the circumstances) ploughing on to make something as pro-active, & pragmatic, & idealistic as the bauhaus – and that for all its’ flaws.

aesthetic value is a precarious thing.

taste being subjective…

?

so quality is subjective.

both being products of lifestyle. taste, fashion, lifestyle, self, culture: all being cultural capital… constructs to define ‘status’, convince the ego that it has importance.

uh…

that is all.

free

link

“And all the Arts of Life they changed into the Arts of Death in Albion./…

William Blake from ‘Jerusalem’, chapter 3.

 

medieval times. getting more medieval.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1985&layout=html#chapter_127621  (not strictly medieval i’ll grant you – the great missed opportunity of modernity. see ‘the world turned upside down’ by christopher hill)

(great resource)

 

this is a study from the illuminated naples bible.

meta-physics

Spring again, & so more opportunities to work towards my ambition of an exhibition of flower painting.

flowers in watercolours: very popular. everyone likes them.

after all flowers are spirals: many make the whole; dragging the eye into their centre…

trouble

you never know when a dead rabbit might come in handy

Arney from  ‘The Trouble With Harry’ dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

the picture is of a woman on the razzle as depicted by adrien brouwer, a greatly under rated painter. you can find it in the v & a. i spent a lot of time there recently – some fantastic medieval stuff i’ve not seen seen before and a donatello i’d not seen before: the statue of that (amazing looking) woman hacking a mans head off (holofernes?).

i was researching the bauhaus for a project in the library there. fantastic library.

spirit

Too cowardly to try making it to a body, the spirits, those volatile  farts more frivolous than than any suffering body, roam around in the empyrean where their  emptiness, their nuls and voids, their downright laziness keeps them spiritual.

Antonin Artaud. ‘Shit to the Spirit’. 1944 (?)

the angel gabriel.

in the v & a.

worn

not often i come up with the title before a post / piece of work.

titles ought to be interchangeable.

rodin would give his pieces names as & when the whim took him, [happily fitting in with whatever might sell the work].

eyes

ghost mask – experimental.

made from old drawings and newspaper – there maybe some ‘evening standard’, ‘goldsmiths annual degree show’ & the circular from the ‘british national party’  (found, not paid for).

 

plenty more to come.