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So Saturday I spent eight and a half hours travelling to spend about four hours in a gallery - which isn't a bad score really. Having recently found First Class cheaper than Standard (to and from Sheffield), I again travelled First, which is tough on principles but softer on the backside, and was only ten pounds more for guaranteed table and wider seat. plus indifferent free coffee. The train was curiously empty. I'm sure the whole journey took less time than it did to drive. It also seems likely that it is quicker to walk from St P to Euston than take the tube.
The point was to see the Magritte exhibition - an artist whom I really like despite his being a one joke artist in the same way that Foucault is a one joke philosopher. It is a very funny joke. Since I anticipate writing on levels of realities as bollocks in at leas two places, it was good to see the work in the flesh. My new favourite Magritte story is how he was asked by a potential patron for a particular painting, which he had already sold. He offered to paint a copy, which would be the same as the original as it was by him. Apparently he thought nothing of painting several copies of the same image and selling it to unwitting collectors. I'd done my homework and bought the catalogue from Tate Britain - in fact an A to Z rather than essays, and it is not clear how far this and the exhibition overlaps (the exhibition didn't have The Rape, I believe the book does).
Despite having seen the Hayward Magritte exhibition in c. 1992, I didn't know or had forgotten his commercial works - which out Warhols, Warhol I guess - nor the photographs, some of which replicate the paintings. I certainly hadn't seen the home movies. What shocked me was the fact that we were warned that some of the art was challenging. This was not, incidentally, the female nudes - variations on The Rape, and the half dozen or so paintings of bits of a woman, as well as half a dozen female nudes are fine. This was the half dozen sketches done for Bataille, a monk masturbating, anal sex, a penis with wings and a giant vagina. Do they really need to be behind a curtain? This was hot on the heels of the Postmodernism exhibition which feels the need to warn about sex (two skyscrapers having sex) but not death (the Hindenberg disaster) and drug use (The Last of England). God forbid that art ever challenge.
I timed my arrival badly - I needed a new belt although on the other hand I skipped coffee - and hit a crowd. It did quieten out again, but when, after two hours, I fancied a second lap, another crowd had emerged and I gave up. I did the Carol Anne Duffy curated exhibition and one by a hat designer, plus the This is Sculpture one, at least one of which I've seen before. Duffy clearly knows more female artists than the other two curators, which really shouldn't surprise me. Finally there's an Artist Rooms feature - Robert Therrien's giant furniture and plates.
After all that, I didn't have the energy to go to the Walker Galleries - which was between exhibitions anyway - nor one of the two secondhand bookshops and went in search of coffee, which was harder than planned. I also bought a couple of Moleskin notebooks, and began scribbling ideas for two of the articles/chapters which are gestating. I have the sense that I have glimpsed the shape of the sculpture, and have but to chisel away the excess rock. At some point I need to do some primary reading but the secondary is going great guns.
Today, not unexpectedly, I was exhausted, but I did get Foucault's This is Not a Pipe read, or I suspect reread, which yields a couple more quotes for the article.
As much for my own convenience, I quote myself, from an article on Lies, Inc, although my immediate future usage of Magritte is not to consider Dick, with wings or otherwise:
I note that in the draft of that article, I invented a Magritte painting for rhetorical reasons. I rather regret I was persuaded to change this
The point was to see the Magritte exhibition - an artist whom I really like despite his being a one joke artist in the same way that Foucault is a one joke philosopher. It is a very funny joke. Since I anticipate writing on levels of realities as bollocks in at leas two places, it was good to see the work in the flesh. My new favourite Magritte story is how he was asked by a potential patron for a particular painting, which he had already sold. He offered to paint a copy, which would be the same as the original as it was by him. Apparently he thought nothing of painting several copies of the same image and selling it to unwitting collectors. I'd done my homework and bought the catalogue from Tate Britain - in fact an A to Z rather than essays, and it is not clear how far this and the exhibition overlaps (the exhibition didn't have The Rape, I believe the book does).
Despite having seen the Hayward Magritte exhibition in c. 1992, I didn't know or had forgotten his commercial works - which out Warhols, Warhol I guess - nor the photographs, some of which replicate the paintings. I certainly hadn't seen the home movies. What shocked me was the fact that we were warned that some of the art was challenging. This was not, incidentally, the female nudes - variations on The Rape, and the half dozen or so paintings of bits of a woman, as well as half a dozen female nudes are fine. This was the half dozen sketches done for Bataille, a monk masturbating, anal sex, a penis with wings and a giant vagina. Do they really need to be behind a curtain? This was hot on the heels of the Postmodernism exhibition which feels the need to warn about sex (two skyscrapers having sex) but not death (the Hindenberg disaster) and drug use (The Last of England). God forbid that art ever challenge.
I timed my arrival badly - I needed a new belt although on the other hand I skipped coffee - and hit a crowd. It did quieten out again, but when, after two hours, I fancied a second lap, another crowd had emerged and I gave up. I did the Carol Anne Duffy curated exhibition and one by a hat designer, plus the This is Sculpture one, at least one of which I've seen before. Duffy clearly knows more female artists than the other two curators, which really shouldn't surprise me. Finally there's an Artist Rooms feature - Robert Therrien's giant furniture and plates.
After all that, I didn't have the energy to go to the Walker Galleries - which was between exhibitions anyway - nor one of the two secondhand bookshops and went in search of coffee, which was harder than planned. I also bought a couple of Moleskin notebooks, and began scribbling ideas for two of the articles/chapters which are gestating. I have the sense that I have glimpsed the shape of the sculpture, and have but to chisel away the excess rock. At some point I need to do some primary reading but the secondary is going great guns.
Today, not unexpectedly, I was exhausted, but I did get Foucault's This is Not a Pipe read, or I suspect reread, which yields a couple more quotes for the article.
As much for my own convenience, I quote myself, from an article on Lies, Inc, although my immediate future usage of Magritte is not to consider Dick, with wings or otherwise:
The nearest other parallel to Dick’s textual effect I can think of are the various paintings by Belgian artist René Magritte which feature an image of a painting within the painting, sometimes including a self-portrait of the artist painting within the frame. In The Human Condition there is a painting of a landscape, standing on an easel in front of a window, through which part of that landscape is visible. The painting-within-the-painting and the partially obscured landscape form a continuous whole. As the painting-within-a-painting is made of the same materials as the painting itself, how can we tell that any painting by Magritte – or any artist – is not a painting-within-a-painting, with the borders of both coinciding? Both paintings are constructed from the same paint and are painted on the same surface; it hardly makes sense to talk of a primary and secondary painting.
I note that in the draft of that article, I invented a Magritte painting for rhetorical reasons. I rather regret I was persuaded to change this
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