Banskied again (Warning! Disturbing content)

I've been Banskied again. This time it was knowingly though. Bansky came to town, but unlike London he probably deduced that local authorities wouldn't take too kindly to his art on the walls of the city (unlike gang graffiti which they don't seem to mind at all). So instead he took over a store front on Seventh Avenue near Houston, the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill.

I would like to offer my usual speculations on whether this was art, ahhhrt, fun, or just bizzare, but don't feel quite up to. But take a look and decide for yourself.

There were bales of Hay out front that you can't see here:


Bansky loves his CCTV's so much that he brought a flock of them with him to NY:


Never did like gumballs myself. This probably wasn't my concern though:

I've been Banskied

Just before leaving London I borrowed my friend Clementine's camera to take a few pics. One of my favorite pictures was this one:

(Hola! This image belongs to me! The art, I suppose, belongs to Bansky?)

I thought I was very clever to capture this street scene, the ominous graffiti and the public going about their business below, oblivious, inured.

Then today I saw this on the BBC:

An artwork by street artist Banksy in central London will be removed to send a message to graffiti artists in the city, a council has decided.

Westminster City Council has ordered a 23ft-high (7m) mural, entitled One Nation Under CCTV, to be removed from a building on Newman Street.

The artist's sketches have sold for thousands of pounds at auctions.

But deputy leader of the council Robert Davis said keeping the mural would mean "condoning" graffiti.

The mural has the words "One Nation Under CCTV" stencilled above two painted people.

One appears to be a child in a red hooded top apparently painting the words, while a police officer holding a camera and a brown dog look on.

The mural is painted on the wall of a building shared by Royal Mail and another business.

Of course he is not going to fill in a form and apply for permission. Notoriety is what makes Banksy exist Rupert Maas, art critic

The council said the artist did not gain the necessary permission and, once it has established who owns the painted wall, the artwork will be removed by the owner.

Mr Davis, who is also chairman of the council's planning sub committee, said: "I take the view that this is graffiti and if you condone this then what is the difference between this and all the other graffiti you see scrawled across the city?

"If you condone this then you condone graffiti all over London."

Mr Davis said the building's owner had "every right" to sell or exhibit the Banksy graffiti - as long as it was removed from the wall.

"What we are against is people coming around without proper permission or consent and exhibiting their work without permission."

'Vibrant and interesting'

Art critic Rupert Maas defended Banksy's graffiti, saying it made the city "vibrant and interesting".

"He is doing something that is quite valid," Mr Maas said.

"Here he is making a point that we are increasingly governed by CCTV cameras. I think it's great - good for him."

Mr Maas added: "Of course he is not going to fill in a form and apply for permission. Notoriety is what makes Banksy exist."

Banksy has created at least one other artwork in the borough, in an underpass in Marble Arch.

But that mural has not been removed as the whole area is being redeveloped, the council said.

The mural will be removed once the owner of the wall is established

More on the Bansky installation in New York soon...

BB

Polaroid SX-70

My parents had one of these. I wish I still had it.

I remember exactly where it was kept. Middle drawer of the long desk... If I recall correctly it had its own carrying case -- I seem to remember red with a shoulder strap, though I'm not certain of the color. What beautiful camera and object.

If you can watch the entire thing, you'll get a fun little surprise in the closing credits.




Thanks to The Midcentury Modernist for this great link.

BB

Portrait of a lady

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it … you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”

T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady, inspired by this wonderful portrait -- and in this case I do urge you to take this quotation out of the context of the original poem!

BB

Beautiful place, indifferent pictures

I really need to stop using my cellphone camera. But I was visiting a friend in Oxford when I wandered into St. Catherine's college, and I couldn't help myself. Well, wandered in isn't being quite honest. I knew it was there and I was going to go, even if meant sneaking into a conference.

Arne Jacobsen designed the college in the mid-1960s, and when I say designed the college I mean he designed it all: the buildings, the gardens, the door fixtures, the chairs, and the cutlery I believe he reused from designs for the SAS Palace Hotel in Copenhagen (lazy or what?)

(The above from an anonymous wiki picture -- it was not sunny when I was there.)


I am having some trouble adding more external images, so first go here and here and here to see the exterior of the college (thank you wiki friends...) Initially of course you just pick up the boxiness of the place. But then as you look closer you feel the beautiful sense of proportion. We all know it is easy to build a boxy building, but to build a well proportioned box is much harder. Then as you pass through the buildings you notice the basic shapes repeat. Lack of imagination? No. The repetition is like a theme and variations. Each reincarnation of the same theme makes you appreciate it more and admire how versatile the design is. Wish I had photographed the columns and (architects help me here!) horizontal supports. Like a concrete box. But then sometimes the box has a double-height lecture theatre or dining hall. Other times it has two levels of classrooms. In some of the buildings the first level is cantilevered over the footpath. In others he outlines the cantilever but it is empty space. There is a sense of harmony.

The building below is one of the dorms. Seems a bit like a modernistic canvas doesn't it? With reach room outlined in its box but the windows varied:



Then to go in, you put your hand on the best door handle ever designed:



I mean it. Think how often your hand fumbles to grasp a door handle. And if you haven't then after today you will always notice this. It's one of my pet peeves, and you will soon agree that most door handles in the world are badly designed. Not this one! It fits perfectly in the palm of your hand, and of course its shape beautifully expresses and underlines its purpose, looking a bit like a propeller.

Inside the dining hall:


I even sat in on a session of hydro-flugel-whatevery to get this picture:


I love how he screens the outside so that you can look out, light gets in, but you don't get distracted by stray movements outside. And of course you are sitting in ant chairs modified for a lecture theatre, with tear-drop tablet arms:


Finally, I slipped into the Senior Common Room unnoticed. And here is what it feels like to be there:



Magnificent! Even the place settings were designed by him:


The only disappointment was the salt and pepper mills - not Jacobsen's fault I know because he designed a set for the SAS in Copenhagen*:




Here are the swan chairs designed for St. Catz, that's right for St. Catz.




Or if you prefer you can always lounge in one of these:



Next trip... Copenhagen where I must stay in the SAS Palace...

BB

* The original looks something like this.



So much nicer, no?

Ultimate Road Trip Film: Wild Strawberries

This weekend I was watching the ultimate road trip film, Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman. It was Saturday, and the morning sky looked like the sun was about to set. It was cold in my garret, the computer comfortingly warm sitting on my lap.

Watching the film made me think of many things. Although nowhere near the 78 years of the main character, Professor Isak Borg, and the actor as well (the wonderful Victor Sjöström), it made my reflect on my own life, of opportunities missed, loves lost. The wonderful thing about entering one of these nostalgic, indulgent reveries after a Bergman film is that his exemplar - nostalgic, but cleared-eyed and unsentimental - doesn't let you slip into self-indulgent slush. It's the nature of life: if you live, and if you remember, then you will regret. I suppose when you are 78 you can't do much more - no time left to change things - but at my 30-something age, time still to make changes for whatever things I think I have missed (or so I told myself, the magic mantra I repeated to myself again and again -- don't worry I was at home, not on the street!)

The film also made me think about great art and feeling , indeed great feeling. Though I love many cerebral masters of many art forms, there is something about great art that rouses great feeling that is powerful, that makes you alive, that indeed adds a reason to life. And then I thought of - with pleasure and longing - the great films, music, poetry, novels, paintings, theatre that I had seen. And all their ideas and feelings were somehow concentrated into a powerful melancholia. I didn't want to cry, nor sleep, nor escape, but to create. Have you ever seen a beautiful color when you're out walking and wanted somehow to rub it on a piece of paper and capture it's essence? That's want I wanted to do with this feeling. I was restless, and no song I could put on would calm me.

I thought about all the art that I had created in the past in such moods - not great art perhaps, but art nonetheless - like leaves pressed between the pages of books on my shelf. They are beautiful, my babies (still on the art -- don't get any wrong ideas), beautiful in their humanity, if not great in their imperfection.

* * *

"Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?" ~ John Keats.

* * *

"Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther." ~ John Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

Very annoying commentary (or Monkeys in the funhouse)

With New Year's resolutions come New Year's confessions. Here's my first of 2008. I've been defrosting. Not food from the freezer. (I'm just not organized enough to freeze in the first place). But blog posts. (Gasp!)

The New Year is rolling along, indeed probably already more appropriately the new year, and my head isn't quite in the game. So I've been putting out entries that I wrote earlier but for some reason or another never posted (actually, today's is the second).

I'm back at the wheel of the flugelbindery now, so I'm hoping soon there will be new stories to tell.

In the meanwhile, here's something I wrote a while back. The commentary seems rather annoying, so you can just ignore it and look at the fun pictures.

Cheers,

BB

* * *

Title: Monkeys in the funhouse

OK, I admit it. That's the meanest thing I have ever written. But in fairness, I'm included myself among the monkeys. It's really more attributing malicious intention to the creators of Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern and the artists who exhibit there. They are taking cruel pleasure in creating displays for us to huddle around, to pod, poke, and explore, exactly as if the zookeepers had put a new toy in the enclosure.

OK, I admit it wasn't that bad: Oooo, here it comes the crack:

Notice how everyone huddles around it, like a beached whale.
Some of the brave even look it in the eye, some even braver test its depths:



Just give me ahhhrt. Boring art.

BB

P.S. I promise to be more generous and fun-filled next time...

Q for A
or Extreme Sport English Edition: Queuing
or Queuing for Art

I went last weekend to the Royal College of Arts' Secret 2007 sale. It's a secret not because no one knows about it, but because you don't know the artist's name till you've bought the piece. Each work is postcard size and costs 30 pounds. It could be anyone from art student to famous designer (Sonya Rykiel, Paul Stewart...) to famous artist (Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin). You first go to the preview to pick off a few that you like. Then on the day of you arrive early. By the time I reach at 6.30 am - let me repeat 6.30 am - there were already 300 people - let me repeat, 300 - ahead of me. Note also that it was -4 C.

Though the British may lack something in hihowareyou chitchat they make up for it in stiffness of the upper lip. We were all joking about the mild weather and professing our ignorance about the event (This queue - happened to be walking by and decide to join in). Extreme conditions (think the Blitz) also seem to break down social barriers and you can smile and chat with your queue neighbor. Someone lent me a chair for a while. A long while, since we were in the cold for about 4 hours.

Then after a heartbreak hill moment (being just at the edge of the door but having to wait another 15 minutes while being unable to feel my legs below the ankle), the real sport began. As you entered, you began crossing off items that the previous 300 people had already snapped up. Many of these included pieces I had guessed were by some of the famous artists in the show, but also many pieces I happened to like:










(a little bit textbook but very pretty)



Gone, all gone... And this one too which I didn't love but recognized as Tracey Emin:


When it came down to my turn, I was left with a few numbers on my list. Here's what I scored:



by Thomas Winstanley a (I hope!) promsing art student at the RCA.

by Johnny Miller (what you can't see in the picture is that there is palimpsest effect, where you can see the lines to the Lone Ranger theme etched in the paper).


by Karoly-Zold Gyongyi, a Roman artst (also subtle features not seen in the picture). And finally my quasi-coup:


Of course you recognize it. It's by what's his name. (See comments.)

Cheers

BB

What would you have chosen? Take a look at the RCA Secret 2007 web site.

Flugelbindery disavowed - new career options

My friend Hannah pointed out to me the other day that flugelbindery (or at least its variant, fluglebindery) was the profession discussed by Tom Cruise in the film Cocktail. Incorrectly, it is referred to as the plastic bit that keeps the ends of the shoelace together. We all know that that that plastic bit is an aglet, and that flugelbindery is the craft of binding flugels together. And some craft it requires too, to render them both beautiful and useful.

I suppose all of you have known this all along but have been too polite to tell me (do I also have spinach in my teeth?). I don't think I can really be in a profession mentioned in any Tom Cruise film. (Unfortunately this rules out not only flugelbindery, but also secret agent, self-help guru, and Nascar race driver. Damn.)

In my own defense, although I have seen the film many years ago, I had forgotten this connection.

Nonetheless, I'm seeking a new profession. I came across some interesting options at the Biennale in Venice. Let me know if you think any of them are suitable.

Cheers

BB




(See if you can match each image to the profession: accounting, managment, production, public relations, and reception.)






(Check the comments for the answer.)

Chick flick. Persona by Ingmar Bergman. (Really.)

Don’t you think I understand?
The hopeless dream of being.
Not seeming but being.
Conscious at every moment. Vigilant.
At the same time the chasm between
what are to others and to yourself.
The feeling of vertigo and the constant
desire to at last be exposed.
To be seen through, cut down.,
perhaps even annihilated.
Every tone of voice a lie, every gesture
a falsehood, every smile a grimace.

Commit suicide? Oh, no.
That’s ugly. You don’t do that.
But you can be immobile, you can
fall silent. Then at least you don’t lie.
You can close yourself in,
shut yourself off.

from Persona by Ingmar Berman

* * *

A little heavy, no? Must be the Boston effect. Things will lighten up this afternoon on the flight back to London (think bubbles).

Cheers,

BB

Lomography

I don't know (yet) if this is a hoax, a cult, or just a joke, but regardless I want to join:

http://www.lomography.com/about/

BB

***
Update: Yes, Mia, it's real. I went to Trafalgar Square expecting people singing and dancing and trying to convert me, but there were none. But there was a giant wall of photographs. I must confess I was a bit disappointed, not with the pictures but with the wall. Too much repetition, and but without any fugal or contrapuntal pleasures. Perhaps I was expecting too much. But I'm in touch with a Lola, who is ready to part with hers (after all, cats really don't need Lomos do they?)

The funhouse takes over the river

From today's New York Times, a telling comment by Roberta Smith, the Times' art critic:

[Musuems]... have happily become producers because these days installation artworks are often crowd pleasers, circuslike in their appeal. Viewers gasp at their scale or their sensational optical effects, as with “Sleepwalker,” the Doug Aitken video display on the Museum of Modern Art’s facades last winter.

Yet the experience can be very superficial. It’s strange to think that these big temporary installations may be the only contemporary art that some people know or enjoy. And there are dangers, including the possibility that in controlling the purse strings, a museum starts thinking of itself as a co-author who knows what the artist wants better than he or she does.

In my own simple way I have been grappling with this not only only previous visits to the Tate Modern - that has one of the funnest fun house art spaces around in its Turbine Hall - but also in previous posts (here, here and here). I feel torn between different impulses: the desire to give in to fun, to stop being such a pompous serious type who believes that art should instruct as much as anything else and the desire, well, just to have fun. Who cares if a series of giant slides is adults playing at children, or art; it's just fun.

These digressions were all inspired by an out-of-doors happening at at the Tate on Friday, Alvin Curran, Maritime Rites. As I walked toward the Tate, I heard, in fact felt, music in the background, as though there were the sound track from a science fiction film accompanying me. I've got to say, it was creepy, as though I was being watched and the music was offering a continuous commentary on my steps. As I got closer, I realized it was from a barge on Thames - later I learned members of the London Symphony Orchestra performing music by Alvin Curran - and was being blasted on speakers. Curiously, there were people sitting on the lawn, enjoying the sun, right next to the speakers. I suppose the British will tolerate anything in exchange for some sun. The scene looked and sounded a bit like this:



And I'm not sure whether this was intended to be part of the art or not, but it certainly became so: you could see the trails of airplanes flying overhead, making x's overhead, as in X marks the spot:




For me this was more interesting and disquieting that fun house art. But for the people around me sipping their white wines, it was quite a spectacle. There I go again. They were just have fun. So was I. There's nothing wrong with that. Not at all.

BB

ART <+?=> CELEBRITY = did-i-underdress?

I began worrying the moment I stepped out of the house and was walking toward White Cube. My only previous experience of this in London was at Gagosian, where I had been to the opening of the Jeff Koons exhibition. On that occasion I had spotted Stella McCartney and a number of super/model types whose names I couldn't quite pin down. Since White Cube sits pretty high up (at the top?) of the pecking order of London galleries my worry was mounting that I had underdressed. True, why not think of these things before you leave the house? But I was in the uniform that could take me anywhere in New York: well-fitted jeans and a well-fitted black sweater, to which I added my own touch, a pair of gold and velvet shoes that I somehow or the other convinced myself completed the look. But of course I should have worried. Previously, at Gagaosian, I had noticed a proliferation of men and women dripping in designers. Men in the tie-off, immaculately tailored suit (that London pulls off so much better than NY) look. Women in everything from sexy co-worker to sequined glamor bombs looks.

This time around there were many of those, but also two other types. The eccentric trying-to-be-arty types wearing all sorts of crazy things. And then the just plain dowdy. And alas where did I fit into this triangle? In the very boring middle.

I haven't mentioned anything about the art, or about the Elton John sighting. The what? you say. Indeed, the man himself. I'm impressed by how A-list celebs come to art openings in London (albeit primo openings) and stand (if not mingle) with the masses at what are entirely open-to-the-public events. In London, people seem to be too discreet to gawk and just stare out of the corners of their eyes.

Oh yes, getting back to the art. Gary Hume. Pretty, sometimes. You'll have to look here. I couldn't grab the images, nor should I probably. Gloss paint on aluminum, in this case the media are the message exactly in terms of what you imagine of these materials. But sometimes pretty, let me not deny it.

These pics give you some sense of the scene.




Well Toto, I guess we're not in America anymore.

BB

What is opera?

(Every time I listen to Wagner I feel the rising urge to invade Poland -- Woody Allen .)

Blah, blah, blah (couldn't resist)

So as you've gathered I was at MoMA the other day admiring the new works by Richard Serra. I'm just part of a big crowd who believe that he is a great artist producing great art. But wandering through his works (literally) I was mulling over two ideas.

In our post-modern times, we are hesitant to crown artists with laurels of greatness. We are more than willing to bid up their auction prices into the 8-digit range, but shy when it comes to asserting their greatness shoulder to shoulder with the giants of the past. Why? The burden of historicity (we won't know who is truly great until the dust has settled), or perhaps a reflection of our own insecure age. But I think we shouldn't shy away from it. Even if we are wrong, and history rates our greats to be second-rate hacks, we are still participating in the process of art, which is almost as important as art itself. The process of art involves the patrons, the artists, the public, and the plate tectonics of critical opinion.

It's refreshing to see so many people celebrate Serra's work, but also a bit jarring. There was a fun house atmosphere, with children running up and down the snaking alleys between huge, torqued sheet of metal, delighting in the echo of their shouts. Adults - art lovers and tourists alike - also approached the works with a child-like wonder. What holds them up? What do they feel like? How do they sound (metallic, not surprisingly). I'm not a snob, not at all -- I don't believe in exclusion. But I can't deny a touch of the elitist in me: not the desire to exclude, but a belief in a certain set of values. In the case of art, these values seem a little old fashioned (or perhaps reactionary). A belief in form, a belief in idea, a belief in feeling. All of which explains why I like Serra.

Having recently mused in London on whether fun house art could be serious art, let alone great art (for example, most of the installations in Turbine Hall at the Tate), Serra steps forward to answer the question.

Enough self-important musings for the day. Next post will be on fashion!

Cheers,

BB

FUN




ART                                 HOUSE



I could blah, blah, blah - I am quite good at it - but though grainy, these pictures give you the idea.