On Pollock

There is a scaffolding to some of Pollocks work that the painting hangs off/onto that can be detected by staring at any given point whilst allowing the periphery to emerge in multi dimensionality out from the canvas and into/inside it. Stare at one shape, one line or one colour and the painting reveals itself, its rhythms, mechanics and layers of thought, non-thought, behaviour, response to internal landscape. In fact its only when one has scanned the surface, letting ones eyes run helter skelter around the lines and forms, finding nothing, and then focusses on any point that the universe of multi-dimensional electrical activity opens up in all its glory. Wave, line and particle and terrifying rhythms of dark matter and gravitational waves of the macrocosm and the ageless archetypes of the macrocosm.

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Pollock No. 4 (1954) Above. whole figures, beasts emerge until I detect a twisting, squatting female form allowing itself to be seen by him (or him forcing his way through the undergrowth of the wild wood (The Unconscious) attracted by the sounds of goddesses and nymphs at play, to see her) three heads, buttocks exposed, menstrual blood gushing into the earth, its Diana/Artemis seeing him, Actaeon, seeing her, the Anima in all her terrible beauty and there is a price to pay. (In the myth Artemis transforms Actaeon into a deer and he is torn apart by his own dogs. Pollock died in alcohol related car crash – pursued perhaps by his own Black Dog). On the left 2 penis fish and a penis whale stare entranced, at worship. (or are they the severed heads of Kali’s necklace? see below). Jung suggested that a mans encounter with his Anima ( or the Woman’s encounter with her Animus) is the “masterpiece” of his development and central to the creative process. Pollock was interested in such matters.

Or is it Kali, Goddess of Destruction that is required for Creation often represented as being bathed in blood, many headed, bent at the knee and standing over Shiva

On sculpture

The sculpture i find is thin and spindly with no mass or volume. one view point. 3d paintings. of no interest to me. But I should look again.

De Kooning

cave painting and hieroglyph in particular of the female form – comparison with British Museum Ice Age Art (Netherland Neanderthal? ouch)

Rothko

7 paintings beautifully hung and lit on 5 sides they provide a backdrop for the visitors who move in the choreographed rhythms of a congregation observing a religious rite, pace pace pace stand stare adore pace pace pace its mesmerising. But i think Rothko would be appalled – he was trying to express human emotion, not have others consume his. Theres too much worship here to allow the paintings to speak.

Note: re-reading this I realise that to say “I think Rothko would be appalled” is a silly statement. What do I know about what he would think of it!?  However he did say “im interested only in expressing basic human emotions…The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.” (reference pending). Which suggests an interest in empathy and common humanity rather than the worship that this exhibition seems to cultivate. But dont all gallery exhibitions invite or deliberately design in, this sense of iconography and is this a good, bad or natural thing?

Top – Victoria and Albert Museum Cast Room undergoing works.

The casts, as artefacts that are not only valuable as secondary source reference and as a Victorian alternative to stealing the primary artefacts, but also as a primary source for students of the art of plaster casting, are crated up just to be moved around the floor of the gallery. The combination of the timber batten, polystyrene softening and casts make fascinating structures and a great literal representation of Form, Frame, Fracture. they are like sculpture turned inside out. And they’ve all huddled together – a new conversation.

However here is my FFF project so far:

Below – The Wasteland II (Pennant Sandstone) trial sculptures. April 2016.I think I have been resisting using my current practice to address this project – Perhaps I thought it was too obvious an interpretation to create the form within a frame and then smash off parts of the form. But in fact it gives me the chance to revisit this work that I had set aside after doing them as kind of trial/maquettes. The initial sculpture was conceived as a landscape, resonating De Chirico and H G Wells deserted structures at the end of the Human era in The Time Machine, as well as images of the great Mediterranean avenues of Beirut during the civil war 1975 – 90 when I was young.

And now seen again in Syria. Aleppo.

The Wasteland (Ancaster limestone 2014)

I had already decided that Form would represent birth, Frame life and Fracture death, but that the word Fracture was an open ended word that leads back to Form – Death and Life are inseparable. Here is Beirut now.

Rebuilt but underpopulated.

The Square by De Chirico (1914),

Strange similarities with the photo of Beirut Rebuilt. The photo almost out-Surreals the painting! The painting is full of Phallic dream imagery. This makes me think of the ruined buildings as phallic. In the Arthurian Romances (15th Century Europe) the land is wasted because the King is wounded. His wound is described as being in the groin or thigh, a metaphorical impotency. He was wounded by a boars tusk or by a spear thrust, both having phallic symbolism. Can the ruins of Beirut and Aleppo be seen to symbolise, or be an expression or a symptom of the impotency of those who are causing the destruction?