Le Flâneur

I was just idly looking at stuff on Amazon when I remembered a book that my tutor on the ill-fated pgce recommended to us.  It’s called ‘Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotaged Art’, written by one Roger Kimball.  Take a look at this man, he’s wearing a bow tie for fucks sake.  Kimball is a conservative U.S. art critic, essayist, and social commentator whose book purports to ‘expose the charlatanry that fuels much academic art history today and leaks into the art world generally’.  Amazing.  I didn’t think you could really be a conservative art historian; you certainly can’t be a conservative art theorist!  Still more amazing, when you look further down the authors list of publications, you see one entitled ‘Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution’ for which he was the editor.  The tutor in question was much enamoured with his purchase of this book, and I am reminded again of what a confused and reactionary tosser he was.  I mean, the man in charge of The University of  ******’s art teacher training program is enthralled by the work of a right wing neo-creationist art ‘commentator’, and nobody, apart from me, seems particularly bothered with this.  Not that I’m bitter mind, he’ll make a great character for my novel.  The dogmatic and reactionary art teacher, who thought of drawing as a quasi-religious system of enlightenment.  He had the most strange way of clearing his throat after every few turgid and monotonous utterances, more in the top of his mouth than in his throat, so it came out sounding like small mammal in distress.  And, I think he may have been impotent.  Ooh, is that going a bit too far maybe?  It would explain a lot.  Both Rudyard Kipling and Kingsley Amis took revenge on old University Professors they had taken a disliking to by making thinly veiled characters of them in their work.  I can dream can’t I?

Nick Cohen was on Start the Week this morning defending his book.  My copy has not arrived yet because I think Amazon has buggered it up somehow.  Last week I keenly read the extract in the Observer though and found a great deal to agree with.  I’m glad he’s written this book as it is reassuring to those of us who, though we believe we are coming from the left, feel uncomfortable with certain tendencies of the left in the turbulent times we now live in.  It sounds as though most of his targets thoroughly deserve the skewering they receive.  I would stop short of saying I feel vindicated because I’m still very much a fence sitter as regards the war in Iraq.  As some of you may know I’ve been flirting with the Hitchens/ Amis/ Euston Manifesto position for some time, but political cowardice has stopped me from making a decision either way.  In that respect I bet I’m just like many in the parliamentary labour party, who deep down feel a similar ambivalence.  Who’s set of ghastly statistics is one supposed to believe?  Throughout the Iraq war I have hardly wavered in my support of this Labour government.
One criticism of Cohen’s book is that he fails to address the position of the mainstream left who opposed the war i.e. Robin Cook, Clare Short etc.  Robin Cook in particular came out of the whole debacle with dignity and his presence in British politics is sawly missed.  I think I’ll save the rest of my rant for the pub (mainly because I can’t be bothered to get it down here), and for other bloggers to rehearse (I think I’m a bit behind the ‘blogosphere’ on this one, and besides, nobody reads this anyway), but I’m looking forward to reading what will no doubt be a refreshing polemic.

An artist smiled at me once

Today the Observer magazine had a feature about a great British art institution that moves me to the pose the question:  Are Gilbert & George the Terrence & Phillip of art?  Two cohabiting scatologically obsessed men in more or less identical attire.  If you need any further persuasion then read the following passage:
Here they are talking about the long struggle they had to persuade the Tate to give them a retrospective:

George: ‘We said: “If you won’t do the show, simply write us a letter saying no” - which they wouldn’t do.’

Gilbert: ‘They wanted us in Tate Britain, but we said no.’

George:’We believe it is wrong that there is a Tate Britain and a Tate Modern. You can’t judge artists by their passports. It’s an apartheid. An apartheid in art!’

Gilbert:’Then they said: “OK, half in Tate Britain and half in Tate Modern.” So we said: “Oh, yes! And then we will have a ship [they mean going up and down the Thames between the two galleries] with a big shit round it!”‘

Cue uproarious laughter.
When in London recently I bumped into George (originally from Plymouth), in the street.  The artists live near Brick Lane and it’s almost impossible not to run into them at some point if you are there.  What a peculiar yet distinguished looking man I thought, and then I looked away.  Then, on realising who it was quickly looked back.  George had clearly registered that I had recognised him as the famous artist and seemingly then favoured me with a very sweet and benevolent smile, though I fancy somewhat suggestive at the same time.  From what I gather I should in way feel myself to be particularly privileged by this encounter, by all accounts both of them are friendly and popular in the community, but it was edifying all the same.  It’s not often a living sculpture looks right back at you.

Kramer.  All that nasty business with the racism soured my Seinfeld viewing experience for a bit; I was part way through the box set of series seven at the time when someone gleefully sent me the video evidence on YouTube.  Thankfully I have learned to see him differently; he’s still funny, just less lovable, instead slightly weird and creepy.  It’s as is there’s something bubbling below the surface that is somewhat unsavoury, nevertheless we’ve all known people who we thought were odd, unpleasant even, but still made us laugh.  This adjustment of attitude is something akin to an optical illusion where an object or representation can be made to appear as either hollow or protruding, and one can flip between the two choosing which aspect is perceived at a given time.  Arguably the principle characters in the show keep him at arms length anyway, and any true fan knows that the best thing about the show was the dialogue between Jerry and George, and that Kramer was just the clown at the party.  I mean, he’s friends with Newman for god’s sake.

Maybe I’m taking this a bit too far now and yes I need to get out more.  I just need one person to agree with me here to prove I not crazy, sad yes, but crazy no. I know that Michael Richards and Cosmo Kramer are different people, one real and one complete fiction, and that it’s only a somewhat dated situation comedy show.  So yeah, I’m over the shock of that whole nasty, depressing, unpleasant incident you might say.  I’ve gotten over it in my own way.

The Larry David connection is intriguing, as far as I know one of Hollywood’s true liberal, environmentalist, scourge of Republicans everywhere, and ‘friend of Lesbians’, if Michael Richards was harbouring some dodgy views, how come, as it seems, everyone was in the dark about it?  One can only speculate.
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I had to stop watching Celebrity Big Brother last night.  It’s awfulness just became too much.  The introduction of Jade’s family was more than I could bear.  In my last post I wrote ‘Johnny Tourette’ when in fact it’s ‘Donny’. I feel such a fool.  Apparently he’s hopped it at the prospect of being a Servant to Jade’s mob.  Interesting chap; do you think he is self-aware enough to realise how much of a cliché he is?  Is that the whole point?  This clip from his band’s television show is priceless though.  If Ken goes, and he almost certainly will, there will be absolutely no point watching at all.  Just washed up actors and pampered d-list pop stars left, they’ll probably all get along fine, even though they’re all practically dead anyway.

I’ve not had a drink since New Years Eve and though it may be premature to say so, I think I’m over the hump.  Whist out walking today I had a distinct self-congratulatory glow about me, perhaps an aura even bordering on smugness, though someone else has to be present for smugness to be experienced of course.  I don’t really know who I’m trying to impress with this, except myself that is.  Amazingly I think I’ve lost wait! (yeah I’m vain enough to notice).  It’s brilliant being a man, all you have to do to go on a diet is stop drinking beer for a couple of weeks.

My newest friends on MySpace are Will & Dan Cook who have the collective pseudonym of ‘Odbro’.  They have some of their music on their profile.  I just love their picture (above).  It cracks me up every time I see it.  Just thought I’d share it with you.

I feel tempted to write the confessions of a failed art teacher here for that unfortunately is more or less what I’ve become.  There are a myriad of complex reasons for my quitting this course and I’ve become sick of reiterating them over the course of multiple friend and family reunions over the Christmas period.  The more I here my own explanations the more absurd sounding they become to my ears – they are over rehearsed and remind me of how painfully deluded I’ve been about things at times.  All I will say is that it’s a very demanding course and one I entered into somewhat naively.  I feel that without total commitment I was always doomed to fail so I dropped out instead of wasting any more time on the enterprise.  What can I say?  I always felt like the odd one out on that course for a number of reasons not least of which was the fact that everyone else seemed much more settled than me.  I feel I still have wild oats to sow and other clichés of that nature.  The trouble with the PGCE is that it completely takes over your life for a year.  Then you have your NQT year that by all accounts is hellish, and then it’s a couple more years until you feel you’re any good at it.  Basically you’ve really got to want to do it to succeed.  I knew I needed to adopt an attitude of “well this is what I do now”, but unfortunately this always eluded me.  The thought of a teacher centred social life was not a prospect I relished (sorry to any teachers reading – that’s not meant to be a dis).    Anyway I could go on and on this but the debacle is over now.  I’ll never get those four months back but what the hell, I got a pretty sweet new laptop with all the money the government gave me.

So what to do now?  I need to be gainfully employed in some capacity.  I know I’ll do TEFL course and live somewhere hot!  That’s what people do when they want to defer getting a proper career isn’t it?  So I’m applying to do a course in Barcelona in March.  Eh up, things are looking up:  the days are getting longer, I’m going be out of here soon, and Celebrity Big Brother has started.  It’s not looking like being as unmissable as last year but, well, I have quite a lot of free time on my hands now so I’ll be watching.  The Johnny Tourette vs. ‘H’ showdown is a potential mouth waterer, and Ken Russell is clearly unhinged, perhaps about to have heart attack at any moment.

Right, where’s the gin?