Cunt of the week.. THE UGLY!

Yummy

Portraits of you in pieces and destroyed ( that doesn't exist anymore)

The memories are not intact. The dissection apparent. Lobotomy of the part of my mind that was with you. it doesn't matter anymore. The purpose of the portrait is complete. 

Miro at The Tate Modern

It has taken me a while to do this post and I am not even sure why.
The main thing I have to say is that I (personally) loved this exhibition - the reason that this is the main thing that I had to say is because - I really didn't think I would. I have to be honest, most of the Tate's exhibitions disapoint me. I find the curation frustrating and all too obvious and everything a bit dry - especially with their "Painting" exhibitions. . . but I have fallen in love with Miro and have to say (possibly with painting again!)
  The retrospective was huge and the work vast - it was not a sparse exhibition and this was great. All the work was so vibrant and energetic - it screamed Barcelona at the viewer - something that excites me personally  (maybe a romantic attachment) - I don;t know what it was but this exhibition made me feel happy. I never really understood why anyone would really "buy" a painting - but you know what - I would fill my house with Miro's if I could!

The Head of a Catalan Peasant

Dog Barking at The Moon

The Hope of a Condemned Man

Burnt Canvas

"The Most Surreal Of Us All" Andre Breton on Miro

Portrait of me with tear in blue (whatever that means) ready for later destruction

Portrait of you in colours that don't exist in reality in my mind ready for later destruction

I am going to paint again.

Painting means something.

The painting means nothing.

The act is everything.

The content irrelevant.

At least that is what I am telling you.

But this is something?

Deep Impact

Keith Tyson's Deep Impact was definitely the highlight of The Summer Exhibition 2011 and for me made it  a completely worthwhile visit ( whilst sifting through all that TWEE!!) . The painting is outstanding and incredibly beautiful. It is full of energy and feeling, fire and colour and did what art should - moved me. The Summer Exhibition is always frustrating because of its sheer nature and although this painting deserved far more space and perhaps a different setting its reflective nature sucked in the energy of everything. Its mirror like surface made its hanging come alive as the audience moved about within its surface and the colours of the other (crammed) paintings in the room.

This apocalyptic and fiery work seems incredibly relevant in my mind today as the riots continue to spread through london. The fear of the end and danger is everywhere bubbling under the surface. I can't help but think what this all means. What is the end?

BP Portrait Award 2011

Paintings are mostly lost on me. Portraits confuse me. Generally I am more drawn to photography and film as a medium. Painting is a skill. A skill I don't have. Or maybe it is a patience I don't have?
If I could and loved it.. I probably would paint more.
I am not sure how they pick these portraits, it must be a mammoth challenge? Some I like. Some I don't.
"Holly" the second prize winner I thought was beautiful.
I was also surprised to see a familiar face hanging on the wall. That of David Carter. The thing about seeing a painted portrait of someone is that it has some kind of authority and grandeur that you don;t link with people you might actually know face to face... even though Mr Carter is more than GRAND!
I would go see... It's interesting because we forget where art comes from. We forget there are still artists painting portraits and self training and artists from all over the world just loving there craft and wanting it to be seen. Whatever you think of the painted portrait. This is good. And I love people, I think any portrait is a celebration of this.

"HOLLY" by Louis Smith.. described by the Independent's Jonathon Jones as "a retro-academic soft- porn fantasy" (and in a good way)  is definitely my favourite. 

"Beauty is convulsive or not at all"

Andre Breton

Picasso never officially joined the surrealist movement but his work is heavily connected to that of the surrealists. Andre Breton the author of the first and second manifesto’s of surrealism admired and championed Picasso because of “the emotional violence” and “expressive distortion” in his work. It is also clear that Picasso was also influenced by the surrealists work.  Whereas Picasso moved naturally and “internally” towards Cubism, for him Surrealism was an “outside” influence. Instead of embodying surrealism  “Picasso took from it only those elements which could enrich his own art; he used it just as he had used the art of the past or of non-European cultures.” Picasso was closely connected and friendly with many members of the movement including surrealist poets such as Paul Elard. He even attempted writing some of his own surrealist automatic poetry which he planned to publish in 1939 along side some etchings (he never did!).

   In “The Three Dancers”  we see the surrealist ideals come alive. Andre Breton wrote that “Beauty is convulsive or not at all!” This is so apparent in Picasso’s erotic dislocated and frenzied bodies, his expressive use of colour and strong gestures. Picasso’s cubist influences make his work “violently explosive” and passionate. The work is certainly beautiful and convulsive. The contradiction of these two words is central to the surrealist practise of taking random objects or words and finding them fitting together.

 “The three dancers” is a focal point in the connection between Picasso and the Surrealists. “Within weeks of completion, The Three Dancers appeared in a journal illustrating Breton's manifesto Surrealism and Painting. It is Picasso's public confession of surrealism” as well as another glowing acknowledgment of Picasso from Breton.

    Another piece of writing by Breton, “Surrealism and Painting “(1928), is described by Bataille as installing (whithin the text) “ the older artist a transcendental beacon, whose cubist break with mimetic realism had inaugurated surrealist painting and whose recent art represented a liberating evasion of reality.”  

  Whereas Surrealism began as a writing practise to do with the subconscious, unconscious, dreams and the automatic, when it did eventually break into the aesthetic Picasso was featured in the first group exhibition (although the work shown was Cubist).

 “Painting could indeed be fruitful terrain for surrealist work. Breton’s model for this is Picasso.” 

    Breton writes “It’s very nice to paint, and it is very nice not to paint as well.” In his essay Surrealism and Painting - he obviously thought Picasso was perfect for the job of “painter” and included him amongst and above the surrealist painters such as Max Ernst who were obviously admirers of Picasso’s work as he was for them the gateway between painting and surrealism. However, the opposite also holds. The “grattage” technique invented by Ernst apparent in the paintings in room one was a way of letting chance take hold of the work. Whilst Picasso controlled his paintings he took note of the fact that “the creative imagination is stimulated by amorphous or irregularly shaped objects, such as clouds, rocks, fragments of walls, and tree barks.” He used the fact that the human brain will see different and dream like things within marks and images. Picasso did not use “grattage” but it is apparent in some of his drawing  that he used this idea. Hallucinatory imagery and secrets are revealed in trees and plants in his works playing on the idea of the subconscious eye. The difference being that Picasso controlled this whereas Ernst left it to chance.

  The main reason that Picasso would not fully include himself in the surrealist group was because of his failure to accept the automatic. One of Breton’s demands did not fit Picasso’s artistic endeavor- “the desire to make the unconscious mind the sole wellspring of artistic activity.’

   Picasso did not practice  "automatic" painting or drawing. Instead he had his own and approach to the surreal. He did not want to “ lose sight of nature." (Pablo Picasso)  “His concern was with "a deeper similarity, which is more real than reality and thus attains to the surreal."

  In the essay “Picasso Meteor” by Georges Ribemant- Dessaignes it is  argued that “The surrealists unjustifiably lay claim to a man who, for various reasons, acts as their beacon, their keel, their wind and even their ocean.” I would argue that they worshipped but they did not claim. Picasso did not join the surrealist movement because his work was not surrealist but the influences remain. His work was key to the inspiration of many surrealists. Picasso did not rely on chance but the aesthetics were that of the surreal. He embraced the things he believed in, tried the automatic and applauded the surrealists. I would like to finish with a poem written about Picasso in surrealist publication DOCUMENTS in 1930:

HUMORAGE TO PICASSO

“Our pal Picasso,

Long live his brush – oh!

Pirate and Corsair,

Here’s to the horsehair!

(Apollinaire)

This star like a digit,

This tree like a tomb,

This sun like a mollusc,

Picasso, that’s whom!

This nondescript newsprint,

Twin screw- clamp bazoom,

This gateau- crumb sawdust,

Picasso, that’s whom!

This plant-pot with hair on,

Eyes like a birds bum,

Top brass-knocker’s knapsack,

Picasso, fo- fum!

This soft stuff, this tough stuff,

Touched up with a broom,

Pump-grind it to lime-sludge,

Picasso that’s whom!

This topcoat, this back-stick,

This talk, spread like lipstick

On small buttered biscuit-

Picasstic!

This boneless sky, bare leafless view,

Beach-beauty like a lamb jigoo,

This horseflesh like a wooden shoe-

Picashoo!

This Socrates, stove-torso,

Splits diamond-ice from water

To prick a picture-pableau,

Picorso!

This matchstick pricking a mistake,

This scythe that imitates a rake,

To paint a laugh on Frou-Frou – who?

Pickuckoo

Napoleon’s fresh husk-oh,

Fresh husk on the nap-oh,

Fresh nap on the brush-oh,

Picasso!

Roger Vitrac

The Three Dancers

(research for a essay and presentation - some references ommited)

This exhibition saved my life (or at lease my love!)...

"Friedrich Kunath: The most beautiful WORLD in the WORLD"
at Hoxton Square (15th April - 4th June 2011) quite possible changed my life. It was another one of those moments (again) when something just clicks and what you are doing at that very time means SO much. It is beautiful. I can't say how it has saved everything but it has. Just the atmosphere?
I must say I was very impressed with the exhibition as a whole. I loved it. I am not saying I loved the art though. Yes some of it was brilliant I couldn't stop staring or listening but it isn't my normal sort of thing. I like the normal white space but it has black walls and a brown carpet? White Cube? ! No!
I just think the art is so right. So human. So touching. We love. We loose. We are alone. We see beauty. We see joy. We learn. We are alone. We remember. We forgive. .We see. We are alone. We reject. We are rejected. We see beauty. We see pain. We are alone. Solitude can be beautiful.

 I was sitting on a sofa (in the exhibition) and I started crying. At first it was pain but then I started noticing things hearing things and these beautiful words seemed to come out of nowhere. They expressed everything. I stayed sitting. ... till the exhibition closed and I was asked to leave but I left calm, happy, motivated, clear and inspired.

SUMMER IS NEARLY HERE.

Upstairs there is a boy gazing out of a window at stars. We are so small. The world is so beautiful. This exhibition was completion.

pants on fire...

horns

red blur

wax lyrics

constallation

Nymph 3

Dripping and
dragging
Rivulets;
revolting rivers of revenge
She sees
She does not see
She knows not what this is!
Blue dreams?
Hot cold dreams?
Fires freezing minds .

Energy
Ecstasy
Endless eternal misery
Fleeting moments of love
Or just the desperation the desire the burning need
To be loved
To be loved
God
To be loved


Screaming scorching running searching
To be loved
To be loved
To be loved
Or to feel

Not the huntress
Not preying
THE PREY

Not what she seems
Not what she seems
She just needs.

Lost in eternity
Dancing with time
Everlasting life not feeding but draining every last hope

She tries
She tries
She tries to find

Black emptiness
Screaming hollow emptiness
White Blackness

No END

Love me?
Love her
No luck
No end

drip

nymph

Magical water worker
Sex charger
Water flowing
Stone carved, stone cracking
Damaged goods
Dancing, swaying, mystic, singing
Ancient ruin
Priceless precious, sacred serephn
Breastless beauty, battered body.

Danger calling
Throbbig fountain
Limbless lines, frustration forms
Forceless force, shrine of sins.
Bloodless breatg
Col hard palour
Deep delusions, historic amour.

She who knows more years than man
Earths craetion, trancendent crown...
Twining round the men she holds
Nothing more than lovers old
Stark hard light hits her hard
No more bleeding, veinless aims.

Eyes who watch don't understand this is a princess, goddess crowned...
One of three a middle ground
Triad, trinity, triplets then
Seperate from us mortal men
What she is is free from flam.

Carved by some long gone hand
There remains element in sand.
A grain of wonder a wasted world
Wistful glance at whisperng land.

What we know is nothing as of yet
This monument a mark of knowledge, hopes and dreams.

traces

what is red, white and black all over?

marble in motion