Category Archives: arts

Advent Calendar 1

1 December 2018 Keith

An Advent Calendar : Artistic Eroticism

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arts, freedom of speech, thoughts

Art, Nicety and the Patriarchy

9 October 2018 Keith

Over recent months there has been a certain amount of fuss over the appearance (or not) of art which is deemed inappropriate for public spaces (metro systems and the like) but which is acceptable in a museum context.

Elle Hunt’s article …

Repulsive to children and adults: how explicit should public art get?
Censorship in metro stations and other public places reveal limits
to how far we’re prepared to be challenged by art

… was printed in the Guardian on 8 October and looks at some of the recent controversies including the refusal of advertising regulators in Germany, US and UK to allow explicit, uncensored images by Schiele, and the brouhaha in Stockholm over images by Liv Strömquist depicting menstruation on their metro (below). To this I would add Carolina Falkholt’s giant penis mural in New York.

I’m sorry guys, I don’t get it. There really should not be a problem.

It’s art, and art is supposed to reflect life.
Even if it isn’t art, it still reflects life – and life that we all know exists.
I know, it pollutes children’s minds. Pah! That’s about as likely as me being Chinese. Just as they do nudity, children take these things in their stride unless they’ve been taught not to. Children know about these things and they’re curious; if they don’t know then they need to learn, and/or have an explanation. That way they become well adjusted adults.
As I keep saying, sex, bodily functions, anatomy, nudity etc. need to be normalised for the good of our health – mental and physical. They do not need marginalising and criminalising.
Isn’t the ability to display such images all part of freedom of speech?
Obscenity, pornography etc. exist only in the mind of the beholder. There is no external arbiter. It’s down to you, and what you were brain-washed into believing.
Why do public institutions (like metro companies) think they can be the arbiters of what’s appropriate? If some people get upset, so what? There are many things I find distasteful from dog shit to rococo architecture, but I’m not about to have a hissy fit if there’s a poster of one on my local bus shelter; nor would I expect it to have been censored – I may not like it, but that’s my problem not yours. No-one is responsible for another’s thoughts, emotions or beliefs. We have to trust people to make up their own minds and look after their own emotions – ie. treat them as adults.

But let me go one step further. Is all this concern that people might get upset not all part of the patriarchy controlling people and keeping them in their place so the great, the good, the white and the male remain in their dominant positions?

It’s long overdue that everyone woke up and realised there was coffee brewing; lots of flavours of coffee too!

arts, beliefs, nudism, sexuality

Life Drawing

13 August 2018 Keith

Thanks to @ldsdrawingclub on Twitter for drawing attention to this piece from the Daily Telegraph of a few days ago.

Life drawing can help teens overcome
social media body confidence issues

The Telegraph website is paywalled, so here are a few snippets:

Experts including the former president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters have advised that drawing nude models could help youngsters understand what “real” people look like, compared to those on social media.

What is out there online for youngsters is often superficial and does not accurately represent what people look like in real life … images seen online and on social media are having an impact of distorting reality and … cause people to have body confidence issues or think how they look is different.

I would urge people to get involved in life drawing which has the benefit of allowing people to question what the ‘ideal’ body is.

Life drawing is an opportunity to study the human form, folds, blemishes and all – not wondering if the image you’re obsessing over has been photoshopped.

Those who follow along here won’t be surprised to learn that I entirely agree. I can’t draw for toffee – I was so bad I wasn’t allowed to take O-level Art at school, but I have been to an art class since school (to little effect, I may say). But in many ways one’s drawing ability doesn’t matter. What’s important is the exposure, the ability to see so many different forms, the opportunity through drawing to see how all the pieces and shapes fit together, and to realise it is all normal.

More power to these people for doing their bit to cure us of this toxic ethos and these ridiculous taboos.

arts, history, personal, pleasures

Waltham Abbey – 1

14 June 2018 Keith

Monday of this week saw us on a special away-day to Waltham Abbey, but I’ll keep you in suspense about the specialness until part 2.

I was brought up in Waltham Cross, just a couple of miles as the crow flies across the Lea Valley and marshes from Waltham Abbey, and although we didn’t go there frequently, I remember the town from my childhood.

I’ve not been to Waltham Abbey since Valentine’s Day 1979 (a day with an inch of ice on every road!) when Noreen and I went out to an expensive restaurant there. And it’s even longer since I was there in daylight.

We didn’t have to be at our appointed place until midday, but having contracted a friend to drive us, we decided to leave early, at 8am, as we knew we had to negotiate the London suburbs to the M25 and then one of the most notorious sections of the motorway. After a slow start we were amazed to be parked up outside Waltham Abbey Church before 9.30. So we had time to spare.

The first requisite was breakfast, and The Gatehouse Café opposite the west door of the Abbey church was calling. Full English Breakfast all round as we didn’t know whether we would get lunch. I’d spotted the café had good ratings on TripAdvisor, and we weren’t disappointed.

Breakfast over, we still had plenty of time to investigate the Abbey church – which I had not been in since singing in a choir there 50 years ago! And let me tell you this is a church well worth a visit.

Waltham Abbey was re-founded by King Harold 1060, there having been a place of worship there since the 7th century. It is said that Harold’s battle cry at Hastings in 1066 was “For the Holy Cross of Waltham” – the Holy Cross being an early 11th century “relic” owned by the Abbey. And it is also reputed that Harold was buried in the Abbey church – there is today a memorial stone (the Harold Stone) some way outside the east end of the church, where the original high alter would have been – the church was originally at least twice the size of what you see today (indeed what you see today is only the nave of the original 12th century church).

The Abbey church itself is of Norman architecture, with decorated round arches in the nave, clerestory and triforium, and substantial round pillars some of which are decorated with spiral or zigzag cut stonework.

The abbey was re-founded (again!) as an Augustinian priory in 1177 by Henry II as part of his penance for the murder of Thomas Becket.

In 1290 the Abbey at Waltham was one of the resting places of Queen Eleanor’s body on its journey from Lincolnshire to burial at Westminster. On the orders of Edward I a cross was erected at each overnight stop, and the one at Waltham was placed at what is now Waltham Cross, being both the nearest solid ground to the Abbey and on the then road north out of London. Waltham Cross is one of only three of the original 12 crosses which survive; the others are at Geddington and Hardingstone. (The cross outside Charing Cross Station is a Victorian replica, and several hundred yards from the original site – but that’s a different story.)

Waltham was the last abbey in England to be dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540 – a mark of its importance – with the last Abbot and the cannons receiving handsome annuities or other payments. This included Thomas Tallis who had been a senior “singing-man” since 1538 and who went on to a post in the choir at Canterbury Cathedral. The Holy Cross also seems to have disappeared at this time. Since the Dissolution the Abbey church has been the local parish church, with the addition of a 16th century tower but demolition of the remaining Abbey buildings.

The Denny Tomb

The church still contains a couple of Tudor monuments; there is a section of painted wall and a Tudor window in the Lady Chapel; as well as some hideous Victorian additions. The 16th century tower is faced with some rather pretty flint-work and the church stands in a substantial, well-kept and treed churchyard. Much of the Abbey grounds are still preserved, although the only remains are a gateway and the remnants of a bridge.

All in all it is well worth a visit.

From here we went on to our to our midday appointment, which I’ll tell you about tomorrow in part 2.

arts

Review: Modigliani at Tate Modern

15 January 2018 Keith 1 Comment

This morning Noreen and I went to Tate Modern. Despite living in London, I’d not been there before and it is even more vast than I had expected, to the extent that they seem to have far more space than they really know what to do with. This is good as it means all the circulation areas are wide and accommodating; there are loos on every floor and several cafes and shops. The use of glass makes the space feel open, even on the dullest of January days, although I felt there was too much use of black/very dark colours in the public areas.
We went specifically to see the Modigliani exhibition. It is an absolute delight! For an artist who died at just 35 he produced a stunning array of paintings and sculpture – effectively all of which is portraiture (there is just one small landscape). In eleven rooms the exhibition takes you sequentially through Modigliani’s life in Paris from 1906 to his death in 1920. This means you see the interesting development of his style, from drawings and small, rather sombre, paintings to the larger portraits for which he is perhaps best known.
These later, larger portraits are especially delightful. The exhibition shows as many male portraits as female ones, although the only nudes are female: largely because Modigliani was painting for a male audience (photographic erotica then being largely still in the realm of the B&W postcard). The paint in these later works is especially luminous and bright, something which shines especially well on flesh tones. This helps make the female nudes particularly gorgeous and erotic – the nude paintings in Modigliani’s only solo exhibition, in Paris in 1917, were removed because the local police chief thought the displays of pubic hair to be obscene.
What I had not expected was a room of Modigliani’s sculpture. I wasn’t aware that he did any sculpture! Given that he knew Brancusi well, one should not be surprised that the sculptures in the show, all of which are life-size or slightly larger portrait heads, are very much influenced by Brancusi. Many of the heads are sharp and elongated in the way that many of Modigliani’s later portraits are – as Noreen observed, they explain the style of the later paintings which are almost paintings of sculpture.
There is also the obligatory short film, which shows scenes from Paris of the period, including some of Modigliani with Picasso and Brancusi. I would have appreciated this much more had it not been so jerky that it was doing my head in – that is partly the down to the film technology of the day, but wasn’t helped by being projected on too large a screen for the viewing distance. There was also a VR experience, which we declined.
Despite missing a couple of Modigliani’s best known female nudes, this is a great exhibition, which, having brought together works from around the world, has taken a huge amount of work and money to put on. It is well worth seeing, especially if, as we did, you can get tickets for a quieter time. The exhibition runs until 2 April.
Overall Rating: ★★★★★

arts

Advent 24

24 December 2017 Keith