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.
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.