A Wandering Eye

 Picture this......

All pictures are in the past. Even what you think you saw just now, for example Anthony Michael Gordon's 55th minute goal against Argentina happened fractionally before you could experience it, with the light travelling through your lenses to your retina then crowding down your optic nerve to be processed by your brain.....  Nothing is what you think you saw.

And so it is with art.....  Hockney has gone the same way that T S Eliot took.  Words and pictures still with us, but the light has gone.....

I am in London again, roaming the interstices of  life and love, wandering partially for the sake of it, partially because to stay still is also an illusion.....

Although I think I prefer my rustication [sic] in far flung Norfolk there is a vibrant stimulus in the hectic miasma that is London.  Almost an aversion therapy......

So I prowl about, a camera, or an iPhone, at the ready, snapping images that later may help me remember where I have been or what I saw. Pictures which, along with the estimated 5 billion to 5.3 billion photos that human beings currently take every day worldwide, will mean less than nothing to no one. 

This figure equates to over 61,400 photos snapped every single second, resulting in roughly 50 petabytes of new image data captured daily, which average leads to more than 2 trillion photos taken annually across the globe, of which around 90% are now captured using smartphones, leaving conventional cameras and film to account for less than 10% of daily images.

So, there we aren't.  Here I am.  

Yes, here I am.  Competing with the rest of the world, remembering that the essence of competition is that there are always losers.......

But.....  WTF?  Other people breathe. That doesn't mean I shouldn't.

And, as Hiromix says:

Though what she doesn't say is that every image, whether it is a painting or a photograph or (perhaps) a sculpture, is a selfie.....  It's not a new thing.  The first artist ever was expressing something of his or her self.  The last artist ever will still be trying to say something that emanates from the self.....

Here is David Hockney telling us about his house in France, wanting us to appreciate his life, possibly subconsciously wanting us to share his life, without - obviously - intruding......

And here is Andy Warhol vicariously extending his world to tantalise us with fame and luxury:

And here is Christo wrapping the desirable away so we can only dream of what lies beneath:

While Bob Dylan entices us to follow his lines into the distant imagination of an evanescent world:

Of course, you cry, [Who are you to patronise?  Ed] there are images that involve no artistry, such as those of the Camera Obscura..........

But this device is only designed to monitor or assist imagery. It doesn't happen by itself.....

So what about nature?  The circle of life?  Why are flowers so attractive?

Aren't they just saying, Come, look at me?  Come, smell me?

Come on, come on, come on, come on

Now, touch me, babe

Can't you see that I am not afraid?

What was that promise that you made?

Why won't you tell me what she said?

What was that promise that you made?

Touch Me

The Doors

Anyway, this, by a circuitous route, brings me to Kew Gardens, a somewhat pricey outskirt of the metropolis.  Here, where foxes and badgers rule supreme and hedgehogs are no longer happy residents, a series of sinuous sculptures punctuates the park, courtesy of the late Henry Spencer Moore (not knighted, by the way, in 1951).....

Having recently visited Barbara Hepworth in St Ives, (and having previously written about Henry Moore at Perry Green in https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2013/05/feeling-henry-moore-ish.html) I am shy of opining about the abstract.  There is something grand, something liberating, however, about being next to a substantial three-dimensional art work in an open, natural environment.  

As Moore wished, the work expresses itself from all angles.  You wander around it and it presents differing ideas/thoughts/possibilities as the lights changes as the shapes interact.....

As Moore himself said, in Unit One, edited by Herbert Read in 1934, All art is an abstraction to some degree (in sculpture the material alone forces one away from pure representation and towards abstraction).....

Or, as he wrote in The Listener in 1937, Each particular carving I make takes on in my mind a human or occasionally animal character and personality, and this personality controls its design and formal qualities, and makes me satisfied or dissatisfied with the work as it develops......

Makes me satisfied or dissatisfied...... Art as an expression of satisfaction. Art is an expression of the self.  Not to deny anattā - the Buddhist concept that there is no permanent, unchanging, soul or 'self' but that there is a flowing collection of consciousness, sensation and perception that allows a more sensitive and imaginative connection with the world.....

That may be a hazy view of the life outside the window.....

But a two-dimensional swimming pool is just as elusive......

I must wrap my car......

But I will let Raye say her piece:

And I don′t really like my body

But knowing it′s my only body

I should probably call somebody

I should really show you how I'm feeling inside

Matter fact, I′m glad you called me

I been hiding, I been high and I been sleeping hungry

Body Dysmorphia 

Rachel Agatha Keen, Michael Harris Sabath

Now I'm gonna love you

Till the heavens stop the rain

I'm gonna love you

Till the stars fall from the sky

For you and I

Touch Me

A Day In The Life....

I read the news today.....

It's fifty odd years since John Lennon read the news, today, and worked out how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.  

Having read today's news, I sit in the courtyard of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea under the golden statue of Charles II, while planes pass by his highness,

Waiting for Imelda May, and for Jeff Beck....  Just a day in my life, like, or unlike, any other, as you will.

Woke up.  Fell out of bed.... Found my way downstairs....It started with disruption, as any train journey does these days.  When I bought my ticket, the 9.49 was on time.  When I reached platform 1 it was 'delayed.'  I noticed I was late..... It then went to second place as the 9.53 moved into pole position.  Then the 9.53 was 'cancelled.'  Then the announcer said it wasn't cancelled.  Then it approached.  Then it drove straight past the crowded platform, someone standing in the driver's compartment with an arm across the driver's shoulder.....  He didn't notice that the lights had changed.....

Well, I just had to laugh.....  Eventually the 'delayed' 9.49 arrived.  Although it was originally scheduled to get to St Pancras International for 9.26, it was now going to stop at all stations, though the announcer still promised we would be in London for 9.30.  We weren't....  [Yeah, OK, I should be grateful..... But.....]

A crowd of people stood and stared....

But from then on the day just got better....  I made it to the Photographers Gallery to see two new exhibitions: Tisha Murtha's black and white documents of British social history, where skinny young people dive into images from desolate backgrounds; and Alex Prager's Silver Lake Drive, technicolour stagings of American life, where everyone is detached, uneasy, pre-occupied, perhaps overweight.....

Then, after a cool relaxing spot of lunch at The Drones with a chum, I potter off through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to visit my aged Aunt in Putney, pausing to admire the finishing touches to Mr and Mrs Christo's Mastaba (a flat topped pyramid; a house of eternity) floating in the Serpentine....  It is an impressive slice of colourful oil-drum fantasy burial ground in the middle of London: a monument to the fragility of our economy perhaps?  A caricature of the echelons of our governmental structure? 

Then to see Frida Escobedo's Serpentine Pavilion; dark, rough tiles,  and smooth reflecting surfaces; it delights with quiet and irregular space.....  But I just had to look.....  

There is no regional architecture, she says. There is an architecture that absorbs the context and is informed by where it is from and where it is going to.   I stumble to grasp what she intends, but instinctively lean towards her.  It is a fine contrast with Christo's multicoloured barrels....

Frida looks a little wan, but she is charming, and for some inexplicable reason insists on taking a selfie with me chuckling like a loon....  She must be exhausted, poor lamb.  Perhaps she thought I was Christo?

Anyway, a cup of tea and a drop scone with dear Auntie and her troubles, and then, carrying a sisterly message for my poorly ancient mum, it is time to wander back to Chelsea, for my tryst with the stars.  

I beg costly refreshment in the vicinity of the Saatchi Gallery, then present myself to the bag-handlers at the Royal Hospital.  No food?  she queries.  I wish, I joke, trying to be friendly.  Did she want a sandwich?  Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.....

I have come to see and hear Jeff Beck, a god of sorts.  A crowd of people stood and stared.....  It is hard to think of any living instrumentalist with such a million-hour command of technique.  We are in the realm of the lucky men who made the grade: Art Tatum, Pablo Casals, Stephen Hawking, George Eliot..... (insert names of gods at will.  Ed.)

I catch a glimpse of a tattooed arm, snapping at ankles, guarded by the militia.....  Could this be Jeff?

I am disappointed.  'Tis but a a Dorset Lad, posing.....

 

But then, as the beers become more expensive, Imelda May graces the stage, all tonsils and emotional grit.  I have no idea when I last went to a show like this.....  Kiri Te Kanawa at Hampton Court (supported by Andrea Bocelli, with champagne and smoked salmon in the dressing room after)? or was it Bob Dylan and Santana in the Palasport in Rome?  

[I did see the Lowlamps at the Carpenters Arms, recently.... and they are really good....]

But, with no disrespect, this is something else.  A Chelsea Pensioner, probably not much older than Jeff, stands centre stage and draws the crowd.  One of us, he says,  went to see a physiotherapist in the gym the other day, asking for some help loosening up a bit.  'Well, are you flexible?' she asks.  'I can do Tuesdays or Thursdays,' he says.

Boom, Boom!

The audience, in general marginally younger than the Queen (or Jimmy Page), applauds, politely, and Jeff Beck appears.  He plays.  A crowd of people stood and stared.  He plays, with support from bass, drums, 'cello and vocals, and all is right with the world....  He plays a white guitar with a left-handed neck.  He plays with his thumbs and fingers.  The range of tones and harmonics is aaaaaastonishing.....

For me, perhaps, though it was a close call with Little Wing (a wonderful tribute to Jimi Hendrix, who Jeff saw perform this piece), the highlight is an extraordinary version of A Day In The Life....  Fifty years or so since John Lennon read the news.  And today here we are, though the news [is] rather sad....

Well, I just had to laugh.....

*      *      *      *

And then, the day after, James, and me, and Roy, with his family, gather to celebrate the life of Moyra (Moyra Daphne Dodds):

Another day.  Another life....

And so it goes.....

I'd love to turn you on.....


Love you all.....