In the Sebastian Guinness Gallery in Dublin, Wolfe von Lenkiewcz melds Victorian imagery and concerns with twentieth and twenty first century artworks and images to provide an unsettling effect.
If you're in Dublin over the next month or so, you should check out Wolfe von Lenkiewicz's new show, Liberation. Their Story Begins at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery on 42 Dawson Street. The exhibition features 25 works of art by von Lenkiewicz, all of which refer to images from popular culture reproduced sharply in charcoal and pencil. The images are warped by unusual juxtapositions and new contexts -- within each image, at least two works by different artists are referenced.
Von Lenkiewicz's art is somewhere between the postmodern and the gothic - in Danse Macabre, skeletons vie for pride of place with Mickey Mouse heads hung on strings, whereas in Comrade of the Sky, the central Christ figure is obliterated by modernistic dots and optical illusions. In a statement, he explained that his art "demonstrates that no image is sacred and thus the artist is free to disseminate subject matter as they see fit. What is important is distinguishing when such combinations 'work'." He is arguing, he said, against the "complacency of art towards famous images", and the juxtapositions serve to reappropriate, and (appropriately for the title of the exhibition) liberate the vocabularly of cliché.
When looking at von Lenkiewicz's works, one immediately gets a sense of the philosophical understanding that goes into what he terms the 'disturbing' of these images (he studied art and philosophy at York University). These are images that pervade our daily sense of what to do and how to act, images that serve as signposts in contemporary culture, though we know not towards what they point. His art allows a reevaluation of these signifiers that permeate daily discourse and an appreciation of the seriousness that our taking-them-for-granted should be approached with.
Hon. Sebastian Guinness, the owner of the gallery, says that it is this intellectualism which is the initial draw to von Lenkiewicz's art.
"There is a well thought and rigorous intellectualism to Wolf's work - I find his references intriguing - Boccioni melded with Jeff Koons, Picasso with Gericault, Michelangelo and Bridget Riley, seemingly disparate artists painting in distinct idioms, some of which is obscured by time and modern ignorance, but here are fused together, reopening debate and resetting our notions of what an image stands for," he said via email, though he also admires von Lenkiewicz for "his sense of humour and his technical accomplishment." Indeed, looking at a von Lenkiewicz is not only an intellectual, but also a fun and humorous experience.
Guinness also pointed out that von Lenkiewicz seems to follow a trend towards the Victorian fascination with "mortality, romanticism and craft" among contemporary artists, but that he manages to focus it through his juxtaposition of these elements with the images of modernity. With this, Guinness is keen to point out that technical skill is becoming once again more valued in the art market (following the highly conceptual fallout from the YBA years), and that he is optimistic about its return.
Said Guinness: "Once more, there seems to be an appreciation of draughtsmanship and excellence creeping back into a rather tawdry world market, and I for one am happy to be dealing with quality once again."
Liberation. Their Story Begins runs from the 6th of October until the 5th of November at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery, 42 Dawson Street, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
]]>Steve Jobs is Mourned at the Apple Store as Business Continuestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9989742011-10-06T17:07:57-04:002011-12-06T05:12:02-05:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/ Onlookers at the Apple Store on Regent Street examine tributes to the late Steve Jobs.
People gathered outside Apple Stores around the world this Thursday the 6th of October to mourn the loss of Steve Jobs, 56. Though Apple's shares increased in value and stayed strong throughout the day, people seemed more shaken at the news.
I visited the London Apple Store on Regent's Street in order to gauge what the British reaction has been to his death. Britons, as far as I can tell, were initially resistant to Apple products, but soon followed their American cousins in adopting the iPod, Apple Mac and, recently, the iPad.
Reporters interview mourners outside the Apple Store.
At the store, a small crowd af about 40 onlookers had gathered outside by the front window, where a small shrine of bitten apples, flowers and cards had been erected.
Many were tourists who were passing by and then remembered Jobs's death and came to pay their respects.
Bruno Amaral, a Portuguese Technology and Strategic Public relations expert said he had been passing by and had come to visit because of his admiration for Jobs.
"He was a great man," he said. "As a CEO, he did great things with Apple and Pixar."
Business as usual in the Apple Store as customers browse through iPads and iPhones.
Inside the store, however, it was business as usual as customers perused the offerings of new Apple products on show and legions of blue-shirted shop assistants waited to help them make their decisions.
It seemed that this was the road that Apple wanted to be taking - sorry for the death of their driving force, but continuing to innovate and sell their products.
Digital Strategist Yoshinori Kawamura didn't know that Jobs was dead when he approached the Apple Store, but stayed to pay his respects when he found out.
Yoshinori Kawamura, a Japanese Digital Strategist was also in the crowd outside the store, taking pictures on his iPad and sporting a Mohawk hairdo. Kawamura, who works in Germany, said he had been in a meeting and unaware of Jobs's death before he passed the Apple Store, but that he had come to investigate the gathering outside the store out of curiosity. Though he praised Jobs, who he said was a "person who could do everything himself - business strategy and activation", someone who "had "motivated thousands of people" and "had thousands of ideas", he didn't think Apple would suffer.
"Overall, one man has died - it's business as usual", he said. "Maybe it [Apple] will stay the same, why not?"
Kawamura is probably right for the time being. Indeed, as I watched customers browse the stock inside the store, I understood that the legacy that Steve Jobs had left could stand the shock of his death, but also that Apple will quickly need to find someone with Jobs's powers of innovation and motivation to propel it into its next phase if it is to continue that legacy.]]>Behind the Gates at Dale Farmtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9786562011-09-25T19:00:00-04:002011-11-25T05:12:02-05:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/ Dale Farm residents celebrate the postponing of the ruling until next week.
Mary Slattery's careworn face belies the uncertainty of the situation the Dale Farm travellers find themselves in. At 57 years old, she has already lost her only daughter, a trainee nurse, and now will potentially lose the place she calls home. Mary moved to Dale Farm three and a half years ago to find some stability -- her life before had been spent living in caravans and moving from place to place every time the police showed up.
"When you're travelling on the roadside, the council and the police say to you, 'move on, get your own place,' so we did, by buying this as a scrap yard." Slattery said. She then went on to detail how a group of travellers clubbed together to buy the scrap yard and the years of hard work that it took to clean up the area and make the site a viable place to live.
She says of her new way of life at Dale Farm: "I love it - I'd rather be here than on the side of the road," although she would consider living in other places if the option were provided.
Children, travellers and activists protest the moving of their homes.
Now Slattery might have to move on again, as a High Court decision is pending as to whether Basildon Council has the right to evict the travellers. The council alleges that greenbelt land has been developed illegally; the travellers argue that they never bought it as greenbelt land but as a scrap yard.
Marie McCarthy, a 55-year-old resident of Dale Farm, who has lived there for the past 10 years said over the telephone on Thursday (she was in court on Friday) that she thought it was the government's fault that the clearance is being attempted.
She said: "The council never had all the money, so they went in to the Prime Minister, and he said 'go ahead with the clearance'," referring to David Cameron's support for Basildon Council at Prime Minister's Questions earlier this month and the £18 million that the council has been allowed to spend on the case.
An injunction filed on Monday extended Dale Farm's lease of life until Friday, and the atmosphere among the travellers was tense on Friday afternoon, as some expected to be moved at the closing of the High Court session. When the news arrived from court at about 1:30 pm that the travellers would not be evicted and that a further appeal action had been lodged, a group of four platinum-blonde adolescent traveller girls, highly made up and sporting pink and black tracksuits and T-shirts, jumped for joy at the entrance to Dale Farm. The judge presiding over the case, Mr. Justice Edwards-Stewart has indicated that the decision on moving the travellers will take place next week and the Metropolitan Police vans stationed near the farm in preparation for the eviction moved away.
But what of the Farm itself and of its residents? So much time has been spent debating what is happening with the current legal action, the morals of the situation and whether or not the situation constitutes "Ethnic Cleansing" (as one the banners outside the front entrance to the site reads), that not much time has been given to understanding what Dale Farm and its southern Irish traveller community. I went down to Dale Farm on Friday to find out who exactly these travellers are and to see the scrap-yard-turned-home for more than a hundred people.
I was informed before I went that Basildon taxi drivers only took people as far as The Cattery, a pet shop specialising in cats at the top of Oak Lane. When I arrived in Basildon itself, one local resident spoke of the problems the Basildon population had with the travellers. The resident did not want to give their name or gender for fear of reprisals from the travellers at Dale Farm.
"It's getting silly," the resident said of the injunction filed on Friday. "I'm frustrated that it keeps going to court."
The resident added that they wanted the travellers out because they were unaccountable to the local authorities: "the police don't help anybody when something happens - they don't have the resources," they said. The resident also blamed them for various crimes in the area, pointed out that a local garage had been refused planning permission and had to shut down without nearly as much fuss. They questioned what the travellers did for income and whether they paid council tax or were on the electoral roll.
The resident's questions highlighted the problem of the rift between the local residents and the Dale Farm travellers, which locals blame on travellers and travellers blame on local prejudices towards travellers.
Some blame the travellers for pushing down property prices - especially in the neighbouring Cray's Hill area - and others don't like them as they say that they think they are above the law. Another resident (also declining to give a name for the reasons stated above) said that people didn't like the mess the travellers make, though conceded that Dale Farm is less untidy than the scrap yard that preceded it.
In fact, explained Slattery and McCarthy, the locals have never (besides laying flowers at the at the site of a burned traveller house a few years ago) responded to their outreach and never attempted to interact with them. They said that the travellers do pay council tax and that the council currently gives benefit pay to 25 travellers living on the site and their relationship with the police is very good (Slattery called the police "lovely" and "more than welcome" - though the bailiffs, she conceded, were "the the worst bailiffs that God sent into the Earth"). Furthermore, both said, the travellers applied for planning permission and were consistently ignored by the council - McCarthy blames an institutionalised prejudice against travellers at all levels of government. They insist that they are good citizens with a welcoming but "tight knit" community and, what's more important, that their children want to learn - Slattery uses her daughter's nursing training at university level as an example.
Some residents of Oak Lane have put up gates and use guard dogs - locals told me they were erected to keep travellers out.
Still, the "settled community", as travellers call them, doesn't seem to be very fond of travellers. A local business which declined to be named also because of fears of reprisals said they had been "having a lot of problems with travellers recently", although another resident said their main problem was the police helicopters:
"We don't get any trouble with travellers, we don't get any trouble with media, we don't get any trouble with anything but the bloody helicopters!", the resident said, also declining to give a name for the reasons stated above.
After such warnings, any approach to Dale Farm is bound to be ominous. I have been dropped at the Cattery and make my way down Oak Lane towards Dale Farm, watched by two policemen standing the turnoff. But soon, I relax -- bar a few gated homes (I had been told to look out for these by locals), Oak Lane is a pleasant English country lane, complete with chirping birds, berry bushes and houses with names like "Rose Villa" and "Ivy Cottage". After a brisk walk of about a quarter of a mile, the road that leads to Dale Farm is marked by a sign written in felt-tip and adorned with a drawn flower.
The site outside and around Dale Farm is surrounded by fences, some made from old tires, wood and tarpaulins. But the atmosphere soon changes when one passes the blue press cordon keeping swarming news teams at bay and under the banner-strewn main gate erected by travellers and activists from the Dale Farm Travellers Solidarity Group. Hidden behind a Russian made truck are more permanent structures, though Slattery tells me that these are still caravans and trailers, even though they've been rooted to the ground by brick bases. There is a low-lying brick wall that separates trailers from each other and delineates decently sized courtyards and gardens. The site, though, according to the council, not technically zoned for residential use, has been transformed into homes for the hundred or so travellers who live here. Far from being an unsafe slum as some have depicted it, on this sunny day, discounting the barricades erected to deter bailiffs and press alike, Dale Farm looks pretty much like any slightly untidy other suburban centre in the UK.
After being politely refused an interview with the "head man" of the camp, a wiry silver haired gentleman sporting an old cowboy hat and suit (he tells me: "I would love to live here, if I was allowed to"), I am advised not to ask the men of the camp for interviews, but rather the women.
"It's a cultural thing, I guess," a journalist who's been trying to get interviews tells me. Later I learn from Slattery that the men fear being interviewed by the press because they are worried that they will be discriminated against as an "Oak Lane traveller" when they next try and find work.
Mary Slattery
It is here that I meet Slattery, and we sit down for a brief chat in the shade of a brick wall. From the outset, it's clear that she's thought about her potential future a great deal and is devastated that she might once again be uprooted and forced to find a home.
Slattery's story is somewhat remarkable in the modern world, but is the norm for many Irish travellers in the UK. She was born in 1954 to a family of travellers in Ireland on the side of the road in a horse-drawn caravan, arriving in England by boat in 1961 with her family. Her and her siblings were dressed, she said, in "little bundles of rags - like refugees". They were following in the footsteps of her father, a feather and scrap salesman who had already set up sometime before in the UK so his family could come over - when they arrived, they lived in the back of his Austin van, travelling from location to location, constantly moved by the police and local authorities.
"England was supposed to be a goldmine in them times - you come over to England and get a bit of work" she explained, but they faced huge levels of prejudice when they arrived, and that has not abated.
"Everywhere we go, we're getting prejudice - it's still just as bad as it was," she said.
Her accent (which remains strongly Irish, like that of many travellers across the UK) is one of the few things that betrays her origins. She seems for all the world a normal member of society, having taught herself to read and write - she sports a printed T-shirt, a jumpsuit (to stop her dog nipping her, she says), a beanie and short red hair. She looks serious, but matronly - caring and wise despite a lifetime on the road. Activists working for the solidarity campaign confirm my suspicions when they say that Slattery is a strong voice in a community filled with strong voices and an inspiration to the other travellers.
The travellers are incredibly grateful to the activists who have come out to Basildon to help plead their case to the world.
Said McCarthy: "Without [the activists], we never would have managed - our message of being homeless would have never got out without the help of these young boys and girls who have so much understanding in their hearts."
But the activists tell me later that they have also learnt a great deal from spending time among the travellers
Dale Farm Travellers Solidarity spokesperson Kirsty Jones, 30, a charity worker has been impressed by the travellers, despite the preconceptions of them she had before the campaign.
"They're all such amazing and inspiring people," she explains. "It's almost heartbreaking."
Even though the women of the camp are hard-pressed at this time, she adds, they consistently offer her "pearls of wisdom" and have been incredibly friendly. She says that all the travellers have "opened up their homes" to the activists. What's more, the travellers often provide them with food and beer and welcome them into their "strong, close-knit community".
Jones recalls some particularly moving words Slattery offered on Friday morning before the court decided to postpone the ruling.
Recounted Jones: "She said, any glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for us will be the most brightly shining star."
]]>Communists, Trade Unions call for "Massive" Strikes on the 30th of Novembertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9798132011-09-25T15:00:00-04:002011-11-25T05:12:02-05:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/ Junior Vice President of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) Hank Roberts (centre), addresses assembled Communist Party and trade union members on education, resistance to ConDem policies and strike action.
The event, attended by about 50 people, drew attendees from as far afield as Manchester and Scotland. Issues debated were the use of Trade Councils, the European Union (and whether or not it should be supported by Communists), the government spending cuts, solidarity with the workers at Bombadier in Derby and planned for strike action on the 30th of November. The "mobilisation" in question was a planned "day of action" for unions over ConDem pensions cuts - what member of Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) executive committee Tony Conway called "in effect, a general strike on that day".
Speaking to me during the lunch break of the event, Communist Party executive committee member and President of Oxford and District Trade Union Council Gwayn Little, 30 explained that there were 20 unions balloting for action on the 30th of November and that he thought the action would be necessary to get the government to rethink its policy on pensions, on the cuts to public services, the attacks on jobs, rising unemployment.
He explained that the duty of Communists was now to "come together and start making plans" for the day of action.
"The unions that are planning on taking action are starting to come together and discuss, but action on this scale hasn't been seen for so long that the mechanisms in one sense don't exist or don't fully exist," Little said. "We're going to need to respond in every aspect of our lives, and certainly I feel that's going to need to be led by the organised labour movement, the Trade Union movement, but it will engage people on many different levels."
One reason that Communists and trade union officials are hopeful for the strikes is that middle and senior managers will also be affected by pension cuts and will go on strike as well. This summer, even the National Association of Head Teachers voted to ballot for strike action for the first time in the history of the organisation.
Hank Roberts, Junior Vice President of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) union criticised the government for making everything in education about business and entrepreneurship and for the academies scheme.
"Many many people are convinced that this government is a pile of c**p, that the ruling class are completely and utterly wrong, but they don't think they can do anything about it," he said. "Our task is to convince them that yes, they can do something about it."
Quoting Dirty Harry, he added: "Stop talking, start shooting. Keep shooting 'til they're all dead, then start talking."
Many in the Working Classes and Middle Classes feel disenfranchised by the current cuts programme of the current government. Indeed, with no party winning a clear majority of the votes, many have said that voters never gave a clear mandate for the (largely Conservative backed) cuts to be implemented. It is clear that many people feel frustrated at the government's stubborn push to implement cuts that will most heavily affect the poorest in society, while giving financial institutions that many blame for the current crisis tax cuts and benefits.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis told The Guardian this summer that unions were considering mounting the "biggest [industrial action campaign] since the general strike" of 1926, and the 30th of November strike looks set to be the first of many in a long fight against ConDem policies.
Said Little: "We hope that the November 30th Strike will persuade the government to listen -- if it doesn't persuade this government to change its policy, then we need to set about changing this government."]]>Rachel Rose, Artist, is very much "ON IT" : Interviewtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9769642011-09-22T19:22:35-04:002011-11-22T05:12:01-05:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/ Rachel Rose, OH, Acrylic, Toto dye, gel on Perspex, 20 x 24". 2011
Rachel Rose is a young American artist who has worked for the past two years in the UK producing a largely abstract body of work made from untraditional materials. Recently, an exhibition entitled OFF SITE at the Rod Barton gallery in London featured her work alongside that of other young British Artists, and she held a solo exhibition in Rome, entitled ON IT, in the crypt of the Venerable English College this summer. Her use of building materials and paints give heavy surfaces that defy surface superficiality in a world where the abstract and the ideal seems to be undermined by representation at every turn. Rose has now turned some of her attention to poetry (she is still painting in New York) and plans to publish a book of poetry next year. Over Skype, we discussed art, the creative process and poetry - one of Rose's poems, AT NIGHT (2011), is reproduced below.
Q: So, as a young artist, what are the major problems you face today, in your historical position?
A: I think a lot about the history of representation, but try to use it as a material- like any other- to bring together an idea. I'm not so interested in forming a "historical position" - I'm much more into allowing my ideas to be both porous to influence (right now: Lee Lozano, Blinky Palermo and Yves Klein) and remain undefined by it. I also use "history" materially in an actual way: right now, I am working on learning 19th century ceramic techniques. But yeah, I think it's important to know about this steady articulation of ideas through time in representation - it makes what we make a choice.
Q: Would you say that you're trying to subvert the idea of historical lineage - does one have to subvert to transcend?
A: I like the idea of just working with one idea and pushing it through filters of what have come before it to develop it and allow things about it to be more known. I think there is a certain alchemic process that happens when you push together different parts of time in an image, even when that pushing together is only implied. Asking specific questions about how forms have exposed content before- without trying to subvert or transcend the lineage - necessarily does. I always find that what I find when I ask the question is a cumulated assemblage of ciphers.
Q: In this "de-ciphering" you end up producing paintings that don't take for granted the materials they are made of. In a world where things increasingly occur on surfaces like screens, billboards, etc., where do you find the ciphers that lead to such heaviness and materiality?
A: Right now I am looking at late 19th Century American ceramics, but I like things that are physical and there to be touched - the kind that are there directly and straightforwardly and penetratingly. But also - I look in poetry, which I guess is the voiding of material
Q: Your poetry is still far more bodily than the Post-Confessionalism many young contemporary poets have adopted. What interests you about poetry?
A: What interests me about poetry is that it is not material. That I know so little about it that I can acess it with the part of my brain which is totally ameoba-like, I can move and gravitate around it without a vague neutrality. I mostly like being able to use words to express things about being alive-the immediacy of feeling something and then writing something is basic and human. Poems for me are marks of what can't be said or felt but you get shines of in seconds sometimes. Like, most of the time I write my poems on my Blackberry - where the words have to be spare and straightforward and true to their material, the Blackberry keyboard.
--
AT NIGHT
In the matte brown of the night
I saw your blank blue and felt right
Did you want me over here
I want you there
Did you like it phosphorescent
I like it is what I meant
]]>Get to the Dulwich Picture Gallery this weekend for the last days of "Twombly and Poussin" + Interview with Dulwich's curator: Dr. Xavier Braytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9768962011-09-22T19:00:00-04:002011-11-22T05:12:01-05:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters (closes Sunday the 25th of September). In fact, remove the "politely recommend" from the last sentence and substitute with "insist".
The exhibition places works of Old Master Nicolas Poussin (1594 - 1665) next those of the late contemporary artist Cy Twombly (1928-2011). Now I know the concept of pitting contemporary art works against old masters isn't exactly new (Twombly himself is pitted in a rather aesthetically simplified way against Turner and Monet in an exhibition in Stockholm next month) - some have raised the objection that it could devalue the artworks of one or both artists. But I found that the pairing of Twombly with Poussin allows new readings of both artists and allows new interpretations of the work.
Aesthetically, Twombly's paintings and sculptures allowed me to experience the sculptural aspect of Poussin's artwork. The 17th Century Classicist used light boxes and wax models to understand how light fell on fabric and skin, and the physicality of Twombly's work - especially the thick paint of Hero and Leandro (To Christopher Marlowe) (1995) and the uneasy physicality of sculptures like Cycnus (1975) - brings this to the fore. I found myself admiring the weight of the classical paintings such as The Arcadian Shepherds (c. 1628-1629) (most of them rendered matt for the exhibition) and the incredibly advanced way that Poussin has of creating a transcendent situation by understanding how perfectly to place his figures. Twombly's (somewhat more scattered) understanding of this placement is also shown in works such as Apollo (1975), where the work creates a sort of ordering by listing (in Twombly's trademark untidy calligraphy) all the names of Apollo, and animals and plants that were "sacred to" him (as Twombly writes) under the name "APOLLO" on a canvas.
Jonathan Jones in The Guardian calls the relationship between the artists "uneasy". For him, Twombly is "a Romantic" and Poussin "a classicist" - Twombly, he says, "lets it all hang out" and "Poussin keeps it all reined in", but these stark definitions don't do justice to the sheer energy that crackle through Poussin's situations. Poussin's work at its best "lets it all hang out" with the immense wash of spirituality created by imposing a rigidity and then, necessarily subverting and transcending that stiffness through sheer placement of figures to give a sense of the ethereal and the divine. If that's not proto-"Romantic", I'm not sure what is.
The connection between Twombly and Poussin is not simply a visceral one, but rather one of intellectual influence. Most reviews of the show (including this indignant one in The Daily Telegraph) ignored the fact that Poussin and Twombly do share more than the fact that they were artists living in Rome. In the Bacchanalia (1977) series, the younger artist directly referred to his predecessor through a "footnote" (a photocopy of a Poussin affixed to the surface of his own), and he once said that, if he could have been any painter, he would have been Poussin. His work is flush with references to the older painter that help us understand the shifting terrain upon which Twombly locates himself, in some cases just as much as the rich tapestry of Graeco-Roman mythology.
The exhibition is subtitled "Arcadian Artists", and the examination of the use of the idea of "Arcadia" in each is integral to the show. This is a theme that spans both the Classical and the Romantic, and is essential to the reading of both artists' work. The Arcadian ideal - a rugged but beautiful pastoral, where Death is also (Et in Arcadia Ego) - precedes the ordered, Apollinian Georgic and allows for multiplicity and chaos. Their paintings both inhabit this Dionysian space - a space of myth, dream and possibility, but in very different ways. This comparison allows not only a new view of Poussin, but also of Twombly. The former allows one to understand the ordering in the latter's work, the fencing of the différance of the Arcadian world and the mapping he is subjecting this world to. Without Poussin it is very hard to understand how this Arcadian world works in Twombly.
Exiting the show past Tacita Dean's moving video portrait of a day in Twombly's life, I realised I had learned something about both painters, the history and mythology they were engaging with and the very similar world in which they located themselves. Despite their vast and noted differences, Twombly and Poussin work incredibly well together (especially in Dulwich's wonderfully lighted halls) and allow us to see new things in the work of both - a spiritual and intellectual transcendence in Poussin and the sense of order and a created space in Twombly.
-
The exhibition was the brainchild of Nicholas Culliman, a Twombly expert from the Tate, with the help of the experts at Dulwich. For more information, I telephoned Dr. Xavier Bray, Chief Curator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, a Poussin expert, who assisted Culliman in putting the show together, to find out a bit more.
Q: How do Twombly and Poussin interact in a show like this?
A: The more I think about it, Twombly uses Poussin almost like a framework, a frame of reference. Poussin is an artist who is trying to go back to the emotional self, for example in the Extreme Unction (1644), but the way he works on it is by reconstructing, by providing a composition which is so perfect that you're not just witnessing it visually, but also intellectually. And Twombly's quite fascinated by that, but he does it in a very different way - he likes to break it down to an instinctive abstraction of the Dionysian moment. I'm wondering if one can apply logic to Twombly (which is sometimes worth not doing at all and letting the visual take over). But the way he uses that drawing in his composition of Bacchanalia (1977) - it's a photocopy of a [Poussin] drawing which he puts graph paper in front of - he almost attempts to give it a structure by squaring it out, like the traditional artist's technique where you square everything out to see how it fits. There's a sense of using that graph paper to give a bit of structure and contrast it with that stampede-like paint underneath it that looks like mud that's been stamped on in a Dionysian moment. With Twombly there is a real return to instinctive painting - he was always trying to do that by drawing with his left hand, by drawing at night to get him into the right mood to come out with these kind of pictures and I think referring to Poussin would be a very good jumping-board.
Q: Are exhibitions like this useful excercises?
A: I think they are because they make you question things - a lot of people are saying that they rediscovered Poussin and seen him in a different light and likewise with Twombly. [These] are exhibitions that try and make you think about things and make you think about style, make you think about composition, make you think about the individuality of the artist. Twombly and Poussin are very different and yet they share similar fascinations and interests. I think it's a very good thing to do and it depends on your public. I think the public likes to sometimes see what it is used to, but other publics are more inquisitive and like to compare and contrast and find their own way.
Q: How have the public reacted to this show?
A: I think this is quite a difficult show - not a blockbuster as such, but what's been really nice for Dulwich is that it's attracted a lot of artists - a lot of student artists, but also a lot of well-established artists, it's attracted a young audience as well and it's attracted those who like Poussin. The artist Leon Kossof, for example, who visited yesterday, did not look once at Cy Twombly, but he was fascinated by Poussin, so you sometimes get people coming to see one artist or another...
Q: I came wanting to see the Poussins and ended up appreciating Cy Twombly more than I did previously...
A: I think that can happen - normally you see Twombly in a very sterile or very clean-cut architectural space on his own. I think this is probably very good for those who want to push Twombly into the limelight as well because you're showing him next to one of the great Old Masters, but I think you have to be selected, you have to curate it. I think this had to be a curated show, it's not a show that the artist, Twombly, would have put on himself, and it's probably thanks to the friendship he had wit the curator that it ever happened. Some artists refuse to be seen next to a great old master, because they're petrified to do so and others are more confidant, like Lucien Freud - we had a Freud show once in the gallery and his work was interspersed in the space - you'd be looking at an Old Master and suddenly Freud would pop out on the wall, so there are different ways of doing it. The reason I liked the Twombly / Poussin exhibition was that it wasn't an obvious visual connection and therefore you had to really search longer and the rewards were greater, where maybe with Turner and Twombly it's visually more obvious and though it may be very beautiful at first, it may get repetitive, whereas with Poussin it was surprisingly rich. What was so good about this exhibition was that they both had these themes that they worked on throughout their careers.
Q: Which for you was the most interesting juxtaposition and why?
A: Coming in, I love seeing Twombly's sculpture next to the Poussin's Landscape With Travellers Resting: A Roman Road (1648), where you've got blocks of stone in the composition. Poussin was interested in using shapes and orifices and space as a way of expressing something. There's something very funerary in Poussin's compositions - it's a very spiritual painting, even though it's just a landscape with a road and people on the side of it. There's something very special about that picture and seeing the sculpture by Twombly (Pasargarde (1994)) next to it brought out aspects of that painting that worked for me.
Q: Finally, which was your "top Twombly" and what was your "top Poussin" in the show?
A: My favourite Cy Twombly painting was by far the Hero and Leandro, which I found very sensual - the pinks he uses are very feminine as well and there's a sense of being washed away as well through the movement of the painting you can feel Leander being pulled away and drowning - the narrative is there, even if it's being treated in a very abstract way. And tha'st in front of our two sensual Poussins that are about Love (Rinaldo and Armida (1628-30) and Venus and Mercury (1626-27)) - where Poussin is trying to explain what Love is in his composition. I think that's one of the nicest rooms, actually.
]]>Abercrombie Strikes a Surreal Chord in Subdued Saville Rowtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9723612011-09-20T16:36:26-04:002011-11-20T05:12:02-05:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/
When we were inside (greeted by the all-too friendly "Hey Mate, how's it going" by every Abercrombie model strategically placed around the shop -- according to a friend who knows someone who works at the shop, the greeting is specified in their contract) we were enclosed in a world of towering dark wooden clothes shelves stacked with every shade of jumper and polo possible and pumping Eurodance hit "Story of My Life", by Tess. Enshrouded in the darkness of the ground floor, like H.G. Wells's Morlocks, our eyes naturally gravitated upwards to the Mezzanine balcony about fifteen feet above us where the shelf-towers end. There, ensconced in light were two dancing Eloi, Beautiful People complete in short tartan skirt (for the woman) and shapely jumpers, grimly performing dance moves that might have been off Top of the Pops 1995. What were they doing up there? Were they paid to dance? Were they just elated / ironic customers who'd seen their chance to express themselves among the kindly store staff?
We marched to the back of the shop to the changing rooms (yet more "mate, how're you doing?"s from the store staff) and we started to feel, weirdly, that we were among friends. The staff seemed so nice, their accents shorn of any geographic or class markers, their stances in relation to the world were so cool, their features were so chiseled (I later found out that it has been publicised that Abercrombie discriminates against ugly folk -- though I heard that's fixed now). We too began to feel like happy, integrated members of the vast, a-political preppy conspiracy to create a world without irony, without politics and hardship. But at the back of the store, by the changing rooms, the veil started to tear. Though the elegantly wood-panelled saloon-doored cubicles are full of Asian tourists, my brother's comment comparing them to the seedy loos at a South Ken nightclub complete with all the pertinent vices was far more believable.
Soon we were running for the door, but not before asking one of our new-friend-store-employees whether the dancers on the Mezzanine were bona fide.
"Hey, how are you, mate?" he asked.
"Fine", I answered, and then, pointing to the dancers, "Are they employed by the shop to dance?"
"No --" he stopped, embarrassed, almost as if he was a Cold War Pole confiding his dissatisfaction with the regime to a US tourist "-- they're not employed to dance, but they're not dancing out of choice. They're forced to dance."
With that, my brother and I ran from the shop, howling with a mixture of fear and laughter, crazed by the idea of these Faustian dancers who've signed their youth away to gyrate to eurodance for tourists in a fake Mayfair boutique. Even as we ran, we felt sucked backwards as the thuds of the bassline (were they in our heads or in our ears? followed us past the Haunch of Venison Gallery all the way to the Burlington Arcade.
]]>Latest misuse shows Official Secrets Act must gotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9719452011-09-20T12:35:40-04:002011-11-20T05:12:02-05:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/
The OSA is the act which is gives the government the power to do this and enables injunctions against passing on sensitive material in the UK. Section 4 (2) of the act outlines the guidelines for prosecution for "a person who is or has been a Crown Servant or government contractor" and who leaks information
"the disclosure of which--
i) results in the commission of an offence; or
ii) facilitates an escape from legal custody or the doing of any other act prejudicial to the safekeeping of persons in legal custody; or
(iii)impedes the prevention or detection of offences or the apprehension or prosecution of suspected offenders; or
(b)
which is such that its unauthorised disclosure would be likely to have any of those effects."
We learned on Saturday that Scotland Yard is going to use the act against reporters from The Guardian in order to elicit information about their sources who provided information during the Hackgate scandal. What is even more disturbing is that the word "damaging" was bandied around, the police ostensibly believe that they could use the clause in Section 1 (4) of the act that stipulates OSA can be used if "[the leaking of information] causes damage to the work of, or of any part of, the security and intelligence services". But read it again, and it doesn't seem to apply to the police, but rather to the "security and intelligence forces" (that is, Mi5 and SIS). Why the Met believe they can use this legislation when it is phrased like this is beyond me.
Yesterday, the plot thickened when it was reported that Hugh Grant and MPs Simon Hughes and Tom Watson have criticised the move, putting pressure on the Home Secretary Theresa May, Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Attorney General Dominic Grieve to order the Met to back down. Even The Daily Telegraphpublished an article condemning the Met's actions.
Today, The Guardian's front page informed us that by way of a provision in Section 9 (2) of the act, OSA requests must be filed through the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). Worryingly the officers in charge of filing the OSA request only contacted the DPP for advice on the case last night.
This latest twist in the 'phone hacking scandal (Hackgate) suggests that the OSA as it currently exists is not being used within the terms outlined above and it can be used to unnecessarily stifle information that is in the public interest in order to save ministers and the police from embarrassment. It seems that the interests of the State, however petty they are, are often placed above those of the general public.
I agree with The Independent, which argued in an editorial that it is a "travesty" that these powers are being used to stifle journalists, and the suggestion in Stephen Glover's column that it is plausible that "the boys in blue may be trying to get their own back" also wouldn't surprise me. After all, it was the Guardian's reporters that pioneered the Hackgate investigation; while the rest of us might want to give the paper an award for exemplary investigative reporting, there were more than a few feathers ruffled not only at News International, but also at Scotland Yard and at Number 10. Connections with Murdoch executives caused a great deal of embarrassment to the police and to the Tory Party. Especially telling is the fact that, while Lib Dem and Labour MPs have been quick to criticise the Met for their OSA action, the Conservatives have maintained their silence.
But the problem lies not simply with the Metropolitan Police and the case against The Guardian, but with the OSA legislation itself, if it is being used like this. The OSA has failed to be used against journalists and writers before (in the 1998 Wilde and Geraghty case http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/16/phone-hacking-met-court-order), so it is unlikely it will work again. Government attempts to suppress information resulted in embarrassment (as in the Spycatcher case in 1988) before the act was introduced. These high profile embarrassments were part of the reason that the 1911 legislation was renewed in 1989 was to provide a more robust framework within which the government can prosecute those who leak vital information. Unfortunately, as this episode has yet again proven, these strictures are not robust enough. The government needs to seriously consider clarify the guidelines of OSA and restricting the times when this act can be used so that it is not used to essentially stifle free speech and freedom of the press.
If this alarming trend towards using OSA to limit government information for the sake of it and the clamping down on the freedom of the press continues, the United Kingdom might end up like the USA. I took a course a couple of years ago with the editor of a major North American broadsheet, and half of every class was spent lamenting that Freedom of Information had been severely restricted by the Bush administration in the US. Requests under the Freedom of Information Act to view quotidian statistics and information on any civil projects were most often denied by the paranoid regime. For the past few days, I've been trying to read US spy Valerie Wilson Plame's autobiography, Fair Game, and it's impossible -- so much has been censored. She was made to redact even personal information about her pregnancy by the CIA. Word is that under Obama, things aren't any better -- in fact they're often worse -- as the Democrats seek to cloak things like deficits and government failings.
Thankfully in the UK, we have an alert and attentive press today, and things like MPs expenses and Hackgate can still come to light in respectable newspapers. Due to ill-defined and legislation with the potential for misuse, however, we might soon see the end to these freedoms. With this demise would surely come an unchecked police force and a state that is less accountable to its electorate and freer to act in a rash and impetuous manner.
]]>January Gets its Desertstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8140972011-01-26T02:03:50-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/
Now don't get me wrong, it's great to stay in beat-up motels and tents out in the desert, but somehow, that seems more appropriate for a longer trip. With its magnificent framing of the landscape around it, the Amangiri puts you in situ from the moment you arrive. Architecturally robust, the clever design of this hyper-modern hotel makes you feel at home in the desert and quite alone. It's the perfect place for a short getaway from the hustle and bustle of city life and offers spa treatments and detox menus to wow even the most experienced of health-gurus. In short, a trip here cannot help but relax you, opening your mind on the vast desert plane around you and massaging it back to health and happiness.
I'm no expert on spas, so I won't go on. I suppose I'm not a geologist either, but it's hard to feel that I haven't had a whirlwind education in the formation of the Earth. The amazing thing about the valleys surrounding Lake Powell is that the rocks show several million years of erosion, sedimentation and attrition. Climbing and roving around them is a kind of Kantian experience -- through observing nature, you're given an idea of the internal relation of things, and also how we came to be here. This is the sort of country where, nearby, a couple of years ago, an amateur geologist tripped over a dinosaur's claw and discovered an entirely new species of feathered raptor; the history of the Earth (and consequently, the tininess of our own existence) washes over you again and again as you explore secret canyons and forgotten caves.
The most impressive canyon we visited was called, appropriately, "Secret Canyon"; accessible only for the most hardy of vehicles, the canyon was known only to the Navajo people until a few years ago it was shown to the owner of a local adventure group who dirt-biked frequently in the area. This wonderful play-by-play exhibition of four or so million years of water erosion is a maze to send the imagination wild, and traversing its windy corridors is quite different to huddling down Whitney Avenue at this time of year. In this part of the country, you can also climb through millions of years of Earth history, and there are some strategically located vie ferrate (iron rung pathways in the rock) that allow you to do it without risking life and limb. Climbing up, you travel through the Jurassic period into the Cretaceous period. At the top, standing on the batholiths (giant layers of Cretaceous conglomerate that form plateaus), you can see for miles and miles -- huge, empty valleys filled with the quiet remains of the Earth's surface.
The only human life that's really in evidence (apart from the gigantic Hoover Dam, and the subsequent Lake Powell) is the odd hogan or Navajo hut. That said, there is evidence of a great deal of human history in the valleys and an important archeological site (the most important in the state of Utah, according to our guide) can be found on the Amangiri property. Next to a set left by the makers of Broken Arrow (1996) is a cave full of 4,000 to 6,000-year-old petroglyphs. Used by humans up until eight hundred years ago, the cave points out how little the customs of the local population have changed. For instance, markings on the roof are an ancient example of the still extant tradition of throwing feathered mud-balls against the ceiling as offerings to the gods. Unfortunate though the history of the native Navajo has been (only a few survived the US Cavalry, hiding out at the base of the holy Navajo Mountain), they now live in the shadow of their holy mountain once again. No wonder the place is considered holy -- there is an almost magical energy that infuses the surroundings, and really has to be felt to be believed.
I've had a couple of "weird weekend" trips in my time, but few so restful and so interesting as this one. As a short trip to go to get away from the hustle and bustle of metropolitan life, it Amangiri ranks with the best, but with a solid lesson in science and American history added, it's pretty much unrivaled. And no, there's no skiing involved.]]>A Call to Protesttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7919782010-12-07T10:01:00-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/
Student protests have spread across the UK like wildfire in the last two weeks in response to the Con-Dem government's proposals to raise tuition fees at universities by £9,000 (about $14,000), with children as young as 13 joining together in a mass protest across the country yesterday. United by social networking sites it's hard not to read in these protests the beginning of the Revolution described in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Multitude. Huddled against the incoming winter, we felt we were seeing a microcosm of what was going on around the country -- mass outrage at a government that was trying to make higher education accessible available only to those with money.
Of course, the consequences of the cuts will be horrendous, and already some of the student voices ringing out across newspapers and television sets have the tone of a people that have little hope left. They speak of the future doctors, nurses and teachers of this country being condemned to a life of unskilled labor. Doesn't the government realize that policies such as these can only further destroy the country, stultifying the population and creating worse and worse class divides? The only people that will benefit are the wealthy who have constantly complained about the lower classes outperforming them at university.
At least people in the UK are standing up and doing something about this. Obviously this is no May 1968, but people care, unlike in the USA, where higher education has been hijacked by corporatism and students are so apathetic they won't stand up for anything. Case in point: October 2 at Yale we had an incident where cops raided a nightclub, tazed and beat up a kid for using his cell phone and arrested several others for asking questions and trying to use their phones. The incident was recorded on a cellphone camera, and policemen were recorded shouting, "Anybody else? Anybody else? Who's next?" after beating the student.
How did Yalies respond? They politely filed complaints forms and informed the media. No matter that they knew the police complaints system in New Haven was corrupt, no matter that they knew the University would do its best to gloss over the incident. Even when me and a few Yalies took to the streets with New Haven residents in a protest against the New Haven Police Department's brutality (mainly racially motivated) at the beginning of November, Yale students numbered about 15 in a crowd of 75. Now compare that with the 30,000 students who took to the streets in London last week.
Police oppression is arguably worse than the proposed tuition hikes, but when tuition hikes happen in the US, nobody notices. That's because the university system is almost completely private, and the government doesn't seem to care very much about making sure kids from low income areas are educated at a higher level. Those who are very able are of course allowed access to private institutions through scholarships and financial aid packages, but it's just not good enough. The governments of this world should think less about lining their own pockets and fighting hopeless wars and more about the future of their countries.
So, while the students occupying the Radcliffe Camera are annoyed a couple of people that want to read, they're helping to show the world that people care and should care about getting educated. The right to a good education should be non-negotiable and governments across the world must respect that.
]]>Lennon's Last Days Rememberedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7919792010-12-06T02:03:18-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/Losing Lennon: Countdown to Murder, going up this weekend, back to back with a documentary on John Lennon living in America
Losing Lennon is actually really good, sparing us some of the more lurid elements one would normally expect from a documentary like this. It features never before seen interviews by anchor John Roberts with people close to Lennon and his killer, Mark Chapman, and really focuses on trying to get to know the protagonists, leaving all the CIA-killer conspiracy theories that one's come to expect behind.
Now a great deal has been said about the Lennon assassination, and a great deal more will be, but this documentary manages to paint a compelling portrait of the protagonists. John Lennon, a family man, and artist devoted to his work and that of his wife, Yoko Ono. We're show his first son, Julian Lennon, and the way he was left behind by a Beatle trying to stay in the limelight, and his second son, Sean, whose birth give John a second chance to make a family. We're shown a thin, drawn Lennon listening to Ono's track, "Walking on Thin Ice" (which is, incidentally, very ahead of its time) again and again, trying to perfect it for the one he loves.
In contrast, Chapman is shown as a tormented individual, schizophrenic and struggling against the "little men" in his head. While any history of Chapman cannot help but be disturbing, the documentary goes a good way towards showing him as a tragic result of a society whose primary focus is fame. Chapman may have been brainwashed to kill Lennon, but it probably wasn't by the CIA; the answer, I think, was much closer to home. With abusive parents and a variety of conflicting influences, he was the perfect candidate to become obsessed with leaving a terrible mark upon history. It was the society that raised him that left him decentered and awash in the middle of an America he couldn't deal with; it wasn't money or politics or even beliefs that drove him to do what he did, but merely the feeling of being a "little man" in a world where, even as a "big man" he couldn't get any recognition. The desire to be whole, is somewhat akin to the desire to be recognized, for who couldn't be recognized (we tell ourselves) when they were a whole person, performing to the best of their abilities? Unfortunately, Chapman could only envision himself whole by dealing in holes.
The documentary leaves us thinking about people like Lennon. What a figure like that meant. Someone who wanted to go among the people and raise consciousness about the vicissitudes of modern society. Somebody who wasn't too serious but inspired millions to take up action against a world that was oppressing people and creating the kind of lacks that Mark Chapman felt so powerfully.
I recently marched with Copwatch in New Haven, a group of activists against the Police Brutality that is rife in this city. Without figures like Lennon to inspire us that peaceful protest is the way forward, we might not be marching, we might be channeling our rage in different ways. It is due to him and others like him that people started to imagine a better world without states, money and war. And we know, thanks to him and others of his generation, that, in make that world happen, we need to, in the words of Rudi Dutschke (also victim of an assassination attempt by a mentally unstable shooter) effect a "long march through the corridors of power."
]]>Why Study? Beatles and iTunes Make for Procrastinator's Dreamtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7848652010-11-17T12:20:13-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Nicolas Niarchoshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-niarchos/
That's right -- anyone who's been on apple.com (the default page for apple's Safari browser) will know that the Beatles are now on iTunes. With glee, I forgot Keats's Hyperion beckoning from my bedside table and started to click away. By the time my late capitalist shopping frenzy had ended, I was down a couple of dollars, but up a few epic tracks. Soon, the ordinary morning in New Haven had become a whirlwind tour of my childhood and early teens; walks in the English countryside, my fascination with the Cold War and, of course, the epic images from the feature-documentary series "The Beatles Anthology" (which I watched over and over again as a child) all melted into one long reverie.
Now I'm the first person to say music sounds better on vinyl or even CD, but the fact is that I've now got some of my favorite songs on my computer. The whole Michael-Jackson-not-wanting-them-to-go-on iTunes thing was kind of annoying anyhow, and probably made sure that a lot of people don't listen to The Beatles on their iPod. For better or for worse, people will now be able to listen to the Fab Four wherever they want without having to go to the hassle of illegally ripping them from CDs (like George W. Bush!) or the internet.
And that's a good thing, for one huge, main, basic reason. In Sliding Doors (1998), John Hannah's character remarks to Gwyneth Paltrow, "Everybody's born knowing all The Beatles lyrics instinctively. They're passed into the fetus subconsciously along with all the amniotic stuff. Fact, they should be called 'The Fetals'." So it's pretty embarrassing when you forget the lyrics to one of them. And I have to admit that's been happening more and more to me ever since I started listening to music on iTunes. So, to all the people out there who've been hating on Apple today and saying the release was underwhelming, you can criticize iPods, you can criticize iTunes, but you can never criticize The Beatles. And for that reason, we have to have them on our iPods.]]>
