I have to walk past this monstrosity to get to Saint Philips Cathedral in the center of town. I haven’t been able to ascertain the name of the building yet. I’m not sure anyone would want to own up to it; it’s probably shared by a number of smallish financial services companies. What you can’t tell from my pictures is that it sits next to an eight-lane motorway. The image here is taken from an almost unbelievably bleak footbridge above said motorway. A face-on view can be seen here.
What I am going to do with this series is avoid noting Birmingham’s obvious and controversial Brutalist structures, and instead point to the designs that somehow sneaked through without anyone really noticing yet nevertheless have a largely detrimental effect on the life of the average citizen, the buildings that are so bad that we just try and ignore their existence. I’ll try and get more details about this first one too.
Shahzia Sikander, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, The Illustrated Page Series #1, 2005-6. Work on paper (gouache hand painting, gold leaf, and silkscreen pigment). 80x66 inches (framed).
Whilst looking looking through previous shows at Birmingham’s ikon gallery I happend upon the work of Shahzia Sikander. Her work embodies many of the formal characteristics that currently interest me. Sikander was schooled in miniature painting in Pakistan.
I recently found a book of Persian miniatures that had belonged to my Grandmother. The works contained within share many qualities with those of Sikander (who is Pakistani in origin but lives in New York). I can gaze at many of the pieces at length – they are just exquisite. Persian Art was coveted and ripped-off by avant-garde artists in the early twentieth century. Now the contemporary art market is a global one with dealers vying with one another to show the latest sensations from China, India, wherever.
What is significant about creating anything of this nature is that it’s so labor intensive. Every minute detail of every surface has been highly worked. The tradition originates from a time when it was some guy’s only job and purpose in life to create such things. He wouldn’t have had a day job getting in the way. This accounts for why watercolor landscapes are so popular with the amateur artist – they’re quick.
But I think also that it is this very sense of their having been labored upon that explains their appeal. They are artifacts from an opulent and luxurious past that seems at odds with the Ikea world we inhabit today.
Lately I have had the desire to keep a blog again. In part this is due to my having more time on my hands. But also because of a change of heart about certain issues relating to artistic practices. A lot of the worries I had about art have dissipated and I now see things more clearly. My mission will be to write my responses to art as honestly as I can and cut through much of the bull shit that so often accompanies discussion about fine art. I hope to write in an accessible manner and be fearlessly opinionated.
Although art critics are more powerless now than they ever were historically, it seems to me that they are all the more important too in the face of an art market controlled by a super-rich elite. Further. as I shall try to show, I think that the tide has turned. I believe people are beginning to look again for transcendence in art. There’s a return to valuing craftsmanship; people are looking for a more obvious sense of substance. Was Richard Wright’s triumph at the Turner Prize really such a surprise? Even Damian Hirst creator of ‘For the Love of God’ has started painting. `In my view there is an appetite for the spectacular again and the dry and inaccessible conceptual stuff just seems underwhelming and passé. Maybe it’s the economic conditions, or perhaps we’re collectively beginning to get over the gargantuan hangover from the party that was modernism. Theses are some of the issues I would like to explore here.
From now on I intend to keep a record of all the exhibitions I visit. Currently I am based in Birmingham and so for the mean time the focus will be here in the West-Midlands and perhaps the North West. But I also hope to visit London as often as possible. In the last couple of years I have started painting again myself and become interested in non-western art. It was an great privilege living in London because it allowed me to have the enormous revelation that some of the best art I have ever experienced is contemporary. It feels good to be alive right now.
John Gray has entered what is fast becoming ‘the big debate of our post 9 11 age’. Most people have read something from the swathe of anti-religion literature and are genuinely thinking and talking about the issues; the comments of prominent religious figures are heavily scrutinised by the media, and it appears as though Muslims are experiencing a sort of collective identity crisis (in this country anyway). Religion is a hot topic in a way that would have seemed unfathomable ten years ago.
Could this article be a précis of his newest book ‘Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia’? Joe, with his atheist(ish) stance thinks it’s right on the money (It must be fun being an RE teacher at the moment). I’m not so sure. I wonder whether Christopher Hitchens will write a response.
Just got a calling card through the front door. We get these sort of things quite a lot. I’m going to start a collection. It reads:
Sheikh Malick: International Clairvoyant Spiritual Leader. The 11th generation of the family member of the African medium order.
Initiated healer of well known plants in the wild sacred forest; 15 years experience in Europe. Specialises in desperate cases which seem to be unwordable. He is a specialist in bringing back your loved ones, relationship problems and court cases. He can help with sexual impotency, exams, infertility, lose weight, depression, fidelity between husband and wife and many more, like immigration problems. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Wow! Is there anything Sheikh Malick Can’t do? I particularly like the enigmatic Specialises in desperate cases which seem to be unwordable. I wonder what his rates are like.
When I first saw this piece my immediate thought was that it was a spoof. Something about the ‘living at the top of a hill in North London’ didn’t quite ring true. Then, like many others I thought it must be viral marketing for tv show ’skins’. But no, it turns out this was a genuine piece of Journalism. What a spectacular own-goal by the Guardian’s travel editor. This has surely damaged the reputation of the paper. I can’t believe that they thought the obvious nepotism would go unnoticed.
What has been interesting is the way it’s highlighted the fanaticism of the CIF crowd making one wonder what really motivates those people. A real shit-storm has ensued. Though many of the comments were pretty funny (I wish I’d been following the feed during the day), I actually find myself feeling sorry for the teenage author of the original blogpost; is he himself really deserving of that level of vitriol? I mean, there’s already a very unkind fake facebook profile for him. Maybe we should all just take a deep breath.
Nepotism is a fact of life. I worked in a mail room with a father and son for a bit and I doubt whether Guardian readers would be too bothered by that. When the nepotism arouses the jealousy of a load of frustrated writers they quickly turn to inverted snobbery for comfort. Well, we’ve all been there I suppose.
That said whoever commissioned and published the piece should be ashamed. It really was a piece of crap. A very sorry episode indeed.
I can understand that you did, you probably aren’t as flawlessly tasteful as me, but I really can’t believe that I fell for it too. I resisted the Block Party hype and laughed at Arcade Fire’s stadium prog. But CSS? Not only did I tolerate them, I actually paid for the album. I even put one of their songs on a compilation cd that I made for a girl who I was trying to court. Now, only a few months later, I hear a bar of one of their songs and instantly recoil. It may that they remind me of the rough side of a particularly debauched week in Spain this summer, or it may be that they are not ‘just a bit of fun’ any more than Robbie Williams’ Angels is ‘actually quite good’. They’re both total utter shit in their own ways, and CSS’ way, screaming art school whimsy, is only slightly less offensive than Robbie’s good bloke pop. I’ll sign off now and put my CSS cd where is belongs, somewhere between the Darren Emerson and Libertines releases, in the What The Fuck Was I Thinking section.
Not so much a post as a quick plug for the philosophy bites podcasts available form itunes. David Edmonds, who wrote the hilarious Wittgenstein’s Poker, and Nigel Warburton, of whom I’ve never previously heard, interview top names from modern philosophy on topics as diverse as Physicalism and Wine. The programs only last Ten to Twenty minutes (hence the ‘bites’ of the title) but they don’t dumb things down at all. Rather they take an irreverent issue past perspective and focus on modern ideas rather than they history of philosophy. Easily the best podcasts I’ve come across since little atoms.
You may have noticed a new page has appeared in the top right corner called ‘the list’. This is a new mammoth project we’ve undertaken to objectively and qualitatively place absolutely everything in the world in relation to everything else in an infinite borometer of goodness. You may see that so far things like ‘Jeremy Vine’ and ‘vitamin supplements’ are somewhere in the middle of the continuum, while Semisonic are bringing up the rear. At the top are things like ‘Cate Blanchett’, ‘dogs’ and ‘The Stooges’.
Our projects does bear some resemblance to British Sea Powers’ one to deem things ‘rock’ or ‘not rock’. Except ours will encompass everything even the seemingly banal. For example, are The Charlatans better than fashionably dressed teens? The answer is probably yes, for although the Charlatans are perhaps the most perpetually mediocre of bands, they’re still better than that feeling of wasted youth one experiences at the sight of happy fashionable teens buying Japanese lager in a Shoreditch off-license. But even the most cynically minded would have to admit that fashionably dressed teenagers are preferable to Christianity. At the moment the design is a bit crude but this will be refined. We welcome suggestions for new entries, and debate with regard to placement.
I have a mental list of ‘Things That I Find Sinister’ – basically something fairly un-taxing to keep my brain entertained whilst my face is doing something else at work. Frighteningly, two out of the top five cropped up together in a newspaper article yesterday. They are, in chronological order, collarless shirts and The Apple Mac, both of which seem perennially attached to the same man, Steve Jobs (pictured).
The article wasn’t really about Mr Jobs, rather the ultra-thin rectangle of glowing white menace that is the new Mac Air. Just repeat those two words again to yourself and let all other thoughts drift carelessly away. Mac…Air…..Aaaaah. Now, I’m not a technophobe. TV/film streaming has got to be the next big step in our consumer lives, and Apple seem best placed to do it. The iPod’s brilliant, and I’m sick of trudging down to the local overpriced, under stocked video shop down the road. I will be entertained. Now. Fine. It’s just that there’s something about the design of these things – white, soft edges, eerily bereft of clicky buttons and industrial sized fans – that never fails to ignite a tiny little micro-paroxysm of disquiet somewhere deep in the back of my skull. Maybe I’m just jealous. As the only writer of this blog not to own a Mac I feel like I’m being blindsided by these bastards. Even in a completely darkened room they retain a ghost-like presence, two pale lozenges lying prone on my desk mocking my ole’ PC with their sleek lines and impossibly long battery lives. It’s sickening.
The Japanese believe in the capacity of inanimate objects to have a soul. If that’s true, the Mac Air has already sold it to the devil. They are the faithful foot soldiers, Steve Jobs the scheming mastermind. Gliding onto stage at the annual Apple conference yesterday, effortlessly balancing one of his children on his forefinger, he appeared the epitome of tech-cas; somewhere between Grand Moff Tarkin and an evil Gandhi. It’s amazing what a collarless shirt can do.
A new study claims that, contrary to what many had assumed, the process of evolution in human beings is actually speeding up. Ever since first understanding natural selection I’d always believed that technology and culture would have slowed the process down because they some how accomplished things more quickly than nature ever could; why evolve wings when we can build airplanes? It seemed reasonable to assume that evolution took place with much more urgency for our hunter gatherer ancestors than for us central heating enjoying, pill-popping, telly watching automatons. This idea still permeates through our culture to some extent. But as I now understand, this was a stupid assumption. It’s lucky we have scientists to sort these things out for us.
I think these findings ought to be a source of optimism. I find it comforting to have a reminder that humanity is still subject to the same processes now as millenia ago, that the development of civilization didn’t constitute a bowing out from the cosmic jam. It’s reassuring that on some fundamental level anyway, we’re no different from the simplest living organisms on earth. Above all it’s nice to know we’re still in a condition of flux rather than atrophy.