Empires looking at empires. History written by the winners. I’ve spent too much time in an English museum. Oh actually many english museums. I was spending a lot of time in the national gallery and british museums drawing, while I lived in London. I think I drew the original of this sculpture at the british museum. Hypnos, and Keate had a copy of it. I hung the drawing so it faced the sculpture, but they still couldn’t look at each other.
I was reading Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His Orientalism hanging out. Dreaming of spaces and times and luxuries. A soppy imagination.
A contemporary framing of traditional painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Art is a luxuriant experience. The paintings making available a world of sensuousness to the viewer. Rich scenes of luxury. Stuck firmly in the view that art is a window to privilege, a celebration of the riches of the ruling classes plus their carefully picked out beige faces looking on from walls of silk.
Sunny days spent in Keate’s back garden drawing figs.
A good year for wasps, and a a great year for figs, a hot year – the previous year was wet, and there was an unnerving absence of wasps – not this year. Lots of wasps. Figs and wasps have relationships. The most likely relationship in the case of this fig tree, is wasps pollinate figs. Wasps also like eating figs. So: relationships. Why stick with only one perspective – when there are systemic views from non-human cognizance.
It was not part of my initial proposal and only occurred to me when I visited the house to begin drawing, while I was relaxing with a cuppa at the back door. The intern was about and she was supportive. Drawing figs.
My belief is that this is a fascist society – English society has ever present foundational values which are written into scripture by our ruling class – that the ethos of fascism is running through our culture. Normally I refer to it as empire.
The threads of this ethos can be identified. They are a part of our schools of thought. English as a language is remarkable for many reasons, it’s beautiful too, and its capacity to be ambiguous and hide intention or ideology is a big part of its power. Plus people accept basic principles without acknowledgement due to them always being there – there but unsaid. The power of the status quo – the argument that you can’t argue with reality as in how things are.
Part of the strength of the surrealists was that they were very happy arguing with reality.
English can develop propositions with gorgeous counterpoints of contrasting – even contradictory – poetry. But can be applied to justify atrocity.
Picking out the ethos of fascism in any culture is worthwhile.
Prince Myshkin meets Don Quixote, digital print 2025.
Treating the library of David Keat like another library and looking for narratives of empire – and observers who refused the narratives of empire – is an interesting experiment. And no disrespect to the man. We all represent our context (up to a point, on many points probably) .
Empire and the English. There’s a sucking hole of nihilism at the heart of English culture. The ruling ethic has always been ‘dominate’ and profit and exploit. For the mother of parliaments. No other ethics are given weight. In a culture like that where are the people who do not ‘dominate’? What is the status of the people who have slid out from under the jackboot? What happens to morals or empathy….
What’s in England’s innards.
The post war administrations attempted to – in their patriarchal way – raise the population’s quality of life and in doing so curtail ‘the need to succeed’ that drives our grinding up of life. That was a blip until proven otherwise.
If one is a participant in the dominating is one being dominated? Well yes. But one scrapes a living off the back of it. (One can observe, and reject the ethos while participating – complain about it, and maybe involve oneself in the politics which seek to bring more uh humane elements to the subjugation and exploitation and abuse. Maybe curb it.)
Many years ago I was talking to a mate about voting in a national election; he was anti and I was pro. His argument was that no politician was ever going to do anything for us. I think he meant himself and his family, and his extended family. He might’ve meant me too. I uh didn’t ask. I remember it very clearly. He has been proven right – many times. I think it an interesting and weird moment of solidarity, and deliberately ambiguous threat of no solidarity, as in: who are we. Who deserves solidarity – which values or circumstances reward people with the right to solidarity – which differences are ignored and which similarities are enshrined?
The refusal of English politics is one I’ve seen many times from many perspectives, I uh I understand it; and would accept it as an argument. The sense that there are those who will have solidarity and those who won’t – that also is familiar – and a philosophy I reject. (Solidarity is due. But not to fascists. But in a fascist society everyone is tainted with it…?)
Another view I’ve heard is – we need a strong leader – and we will be strong supporting a strong leader. But that’s all that will be done. The strong leader will demand, and their demands will be the only things of value. They will be supported and the supporter will be sanctified in supporting and only in their support.
The world is divided into predator and prey. The predator may have tools, people are tools.
There is a very simple and direct consequence to this ideology. And it’s total environmental breakdown and the painful death of all life on this planet. There’s another effect, a part of the process: humanity is reduced to two types, 1) single minded half wits. 2) barely functioning, entirely ineffective stressheads.
‘Figs and Wasps’ was taken down this time last weekend – more or less – it was a relief to finish it in one way, and also a somewhat damp ending to a difficult exhibition.
My original plan was followed through more or less as I’d intended it. The intention was to engage with the collection of David Keate. An artist and architect, he had collected art from the Cambridge School of Art students throughout the seventies and eighties. He had also collected a significant number of artist’s books and books which were facsimiles of artist’s books, famous journals, sketchbooks, etc.. and had a decent collection of literature – nothing surprising or too strange.
I put in a proposal in which I would make drawings from the books (and possibly some works they had by Elizabeth Frink). The proposal was accepted and dates were set.
This was directly after a small exhibition with Helen Cook and Elspeth Owen, and before that my MA degree show. I was quite excited. I wanted to expand how I might approach creating work and research; and combining them into an exhibition.
My intention was roughly approximate to post-colonial interests. The books that were canon and the books which hold importance in the book collections of the sort of people who collect books hold talisman like qualities – fetishes if you like. Maybe for sentimental reasons. You hold onto a book because of its significance, and perhaps with the intention of rereading with maybe a mind to using it’s contents for something or other at a later date. Books are objects of beauty too, and once one begins collecting there’s an opportunistic element added – something found cheap or something chanced on which is rare and which has somesort of value (any sort – doesn’t have to be pecuniary), or maybe will be useful at a later date. Obviously I speak from experience.
I’ve been ruminating on totalitarianism, fascism and empire. Reading up on it too. The William Blake research project intensified my focus. Reading Blake’s deconstruction of the values of the English predatory classes. Further reading ensued. Hannah Arendt is a little soft on the British empire (‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ Hannah Arendt). The British empire was fascist in nature. Or yknow had ‘strong parallels’ with the murder cults that are named fascistic.
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