Blaugustine's Other Blog

DIGI-ME ON QARRTSILUNI

2012-02-01T14:52:00.000Z

Part of my 2006 series of digitally painted self-portraits "in-the-manner-of" are included in the latest issue of qarrtsiluni whose current theme is Imitation. I'm so happy to appear again in this consistently, persistently, stubbornly excellent online magazine.

Speaking of digital painting (Hi Hockney! I don't have an iPad but my Wacom graphic tablet has been in constant use since 2004) I love it, it's fun, absorbing, exciting and stimulating to my eye and hand and brain but something entirely different takes place during a direct interaction of the hand and the whole mind-body with a live, un-mediated surface in a live un-mediated environment. I can't define what that difference is and I can't be entirely certain that it's better than its digitally orchestrated version, but somebody sometime somewhere will surely write a thesis on this subject.

DAVID HOCKNEY: does size matter?

2012-01-31T03:57:00.002Z

Yesterday I went to see this very BIG exhibition at the Royal Academy.

David Hockney is loveable. The politely jostling, smiling crowds lining up to bask in the glow of his latest pictures surely agree. His status as a National Treasure is not in doubt and even though he's lived a large part of his life in Los Angeles, Englishness can never be divorced from Hockney anymore than it can be from cups of tea, Monty Python or the Beatles. However, California did leave large thumb-prints in the Hockney psyche and, in my irrelevant opinion, that is a shame.

Before I launch into my critique, I must affirm that I am among those who love Hockney. I wish he was my friend so that we could have stimulating conversations about painting, buzzing with insight and discovery. I love his mercurial enthusiasms, his analytical and perceptive eye, his humour, impishness and no-bullshit bluntness, his inventiveness, committment, and the loneliness lurking behind the panache. So, with all that loveability plus the National Treasure status to contend with, I feel rather hesitant about airing my view of the current exhibition. There must be many sycophants in Hockney's entourage and I wonder if even his friends dare express anything along the lines of: hey, Emperor, aren't you feeling the cold? Well, here goes. Deep breath.

Too many of the paintings in this show are there because of their BIGNESS, because that was the agreed gimmick, but I can't believe that the curators, and Hockney himself in his heart of hearts, could not see the eye-watering superficiality of, for instance:The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire (oil on 32 canvases joined together). As a cheery restaurant mural or a backdrop for a Disney frolic, okay, it could work. But the appropriate format for it is a greeting card, ordinary greeting card size. What is the point of a super-gigantic painting, whether on a single canvas or a grid of 32 canvases, if everything about it is small and superficial, both in concept and execution?

As for the painting inexplicably chosen for the poster and all the advertising:Winter Timber 2009, am I the only one who sees limp spaghetti or McDonald fries instead of logs laid out on the road? Is it possible that the famously acute Hockney eye did not notice this unfortunate ressemblance? As a brilliant draughtsman, how could he be satisfied with this banal image, which doesn't even have the saving grace of being a joke? Contrary to the BIGGER PICTURE theme of the exhibition, it is the largest works which are the least interesting, the most contrived, whereas it is in smaller single canvases, sketchbooks, and some marvellous charcoal drawings of trees that the unique Hockney talent is evident.

David Hockney Winter Timber 2009 (oil on 15 canvases)

Van Gogh in Arles was obviously on Hockney's mind much of the time when he was painting en plein air in Yorkshire but Vincent's engagement and struggle with nature is a world away from David's in every respect. I don't mean this negatively: my favourite landscapes in this show are those in which Hockney has translated Van Gogh into Hockney-ish. My least favourites are those in which he lets his California, or rather his Hollywood, take over his Yorkshire. The iPad-ish cleverness, laid-back speediness, ice-cream colours and shadowless light, the cinematic showmanship - all very L.A.

But the Hockney I deeply admire is the terrifically original boy of the 1960s and 70s, before California had seeped into his Bradford psyche. His paintings, drawings and etchings of that period are truly inspirational to me. Now that he's back in England (for a while?) maybe the next stage in his work will be the fusion of those two worlds - perhaps a Smaller Picture, but a deeper one. David Hockney still has a lot of creating to do.

By the way, a lot of the reviews and catalogue commentaries mention the fact that he painted most of these landscapes en plein air, actually standing in front of the actual scene, outdoors in all kinds of weather, as though this is something extraordinary that nobody has done since the nineteenth century. Huh? What planet do they live on? Artists, brilliant ones as well as mediocre ones, Sunday painters and every day painters, have never stopped painting and drawing en plein air. So there.

I loved the 9-camera, 18-screen films at the end of the exhibition. Eye and mind-expanding.

If you're in London, go see this exhibition, it's absolutely worth a long, slow look. Disregard my comments and make up your own mind. Try to ignore the crowds and plant yourself assertively in front of anyone blocking your view. And it's easier to get tickets in person at the Academy rather than online.

RESOLUTIONS

2012-01-20T23:46:00.001Z

Here is another video experiment, deconstructing and reconstructing parts of the first image from my ever-in-progress gnovel . One of my unspoken New Year's resolutions is to do something with this idea, maybe turning it into monoprints for an artist's book, or perhaps abandoning it altogether. Things that are left too long on the shelf tend to disintegrate anyway, according to the law of entropy, but declaring that you are giving up on a long-delayed project might just re-start its motor.

To embed this video, I'm trying out an extension I've downloaded called the Dreamweaver Video Inserter. If you don't see the screen at first, try again later. I haven't got the hang of using it yet and am getting some help from the makers.

Here's the VIMEO permalink in any case.

THANKYOU

2012-01-17T03:08:00.002Z

to whiskeyriver

for these two quotes which are precisely what I need to hear right now:

"At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose your self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in one of them is there a congruence of the elector and the elected. Only one - which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your I." Dag Hammarskjöld

"I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers.
The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." Ken Kesey

Back soon with resolutions to resolve.

2012-01-07T10:31:00.000Z

HERE'S HOW TO START THE NEW YEAR RIGHT

Go for it!

MORE

NEW YEAR GREETING FROM ME TO YOU

2012-01-01T04:26:00.000Z

It's on VIMEO

MORE

SEASONAL GREETINGS

2011-12-25T00:36:00.002Z

For some unknown reason, I haven't been able to upload a new post to my main Blaugustine blog (link at MORE below). If you too are unable to open it, please let me know in comments here.

Meanwhile, I want to wish everyone a happy Christmas - or whatever you may be celebrating - and a New Year that brings you all you wish for, and a little extra.

ETERNAL RETURN

2011-12-20T07:43:00.001Z

It took me almost the whole of December to make this very short video and what I've learned is that I want to go back to painting.

I started with a desire to express feelings of nostalgia, sadness and mystery about my Russian ancestry, my father and his relatives, known and unknown, and bewilderment about the impermanence of life and the tenacity of personality, of family resemblance, of faces fusing into other faces.

I wanted to make a video that would be like a painting but with gentle movement taking place at various distances from the spectator. I built a kind of mini stage-set out of three cardboard boxes, one inside the other, with windows cut out of the back, roof and sides. I painted the inside of the boxes so that when lights were placed between them, you could see the colours of rooms behind rooms. On sheets of acetate I printed (digitally, through ink-jet printer) small photos of my Russian relatives, cut them out, then hung them on gold threads from wooden bars and from the ceilings of two front boxes. What I didn't take into consideration was that the camera and the naked eye are two altogether different species. The depth that my naked eye perceived was completely lost when the camcorder was pointed in the same direction.

Here is the final version, after discarding about seven others. It's a compromise but I don't dislike it. I borrowed one of Alexander Vertinsky's songs for the soundtrack because he fits the mood so well and because my father liked him so much. I couldn't find a clip of his particular favourite, which started with (pardon my phonetics - I don't speak Russian but understand a few words): Ti sidish adinoke....(You sit alone, staring at the flames....) There are lots of Vertinsky songs on YouTube and if you like the nostalgic chansonnier style, look him up.

Here's the permalink from VIMEO (it's a bigger screen over there) if you can't see it below.

A MOVING POEM

2011-11-29T08:19:00.000Z

My blogging report card this month is shameful. I'm standing in the corner, dunce cap on my head, red-faced and staring at the floor.

Digressed again, off-piste again, 7ism resolutions postponed again. I don't have a valid excuse except that I really have been thinking a lot and trying to see where I'm at, as they say.

But I couldn't let November end without a modest ode to falling leaves and darker days and the melancholy of approaching winter. Another rough experimental animation, started yesterday afternoon and finished at about six o'clock this morning, without a break.

I didn't choose the music beforehand but as soon as I watched the silent video I remembered Bachianas Brasileiras, by Heitor Villa-Lobos, sung by the extraordinary soprano Bidù Sayao. I've only used a short extract from Number 5 - if you've never heard the whole thing, it's definitely worth looking up. There are many recordings of it but Sayao's interpretation is my absolute favourite.

This is the VIMEO permalink in case you don't see the video here.

AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY...

2011-11-14T04:59:00.002Z

Today, the seventh day of my first 7ism work, herewith my report and results.

Decided to start with something small and insignificant so I chose to make an improved version of my stop-motion animation NOT a celebrity, the first rough cut of which I posted here last month. Since I declared then that I was definitely going to improve it, this seemed like a good way to test the 7ism movement's effectiveness.

My usual approach is to declare that I am going to do something, then put whatever it is on the shelf (virtual or literal) with all the other things I have declared I am going to do in the immediate future. In my vocabulary, the word immediate is elastic and infinitely stretchable. Unfortunately, reality doesn't understand my vocabulary. Hence the pile-up of broken declarations, which 7ism is going to fix. I hope.

I began at about 2:30 pm on Tuesday, November 8th. The first requirement was to devise a more efficient arrangement to hold the camcorder. A book I have (Get Started in Animation) includes a diagram for building a simple copy-stand with camera mount. While the plan is perfectly feasible, I didn't want to spend too much time on this so I opted for improvisation, my favourite modus operandi.

An old portable easel was given a new function which you can see in the photos below. I pushed the normally vertical canvas-supporting arm into horizontal position, adjusted the legs to the needed height and tightened all the bolts. Then (here's the clever bit) I took one of those tiny tripods available in any camera shop, put its legs together flatly and taped it down firmly to one end of the easel's horizontal bar. The camcorder could then be screwed into the reclining mini- tripod, allowing the camera lens to point straight down. I attached a cable to connect camera to power socket and a Firewire to link my Mac to the camera (I'm using iStopMotion software).

The above photos were taken in the downstairs study where I ended up making the third and final version, but I first set up the rig in my upstairs studio. By the time I was ready to shoot, daylight was gone and I had a lot of trouble positioning lamps even when using daylight bulbs. Version Two was a big headache (literally) for many reasons but I learned a useful lesson.

When something doesn't work because I haven't prepared well enough, my usual tendency is to keep nagging away at the faulty item until I've knocked it into some kind of unsatisfactory order, even though a much more effective solution would be to start from scratch. I went through my old routine in the second version and wasted several days painstakingly re-drawing frame after frame of a whole sequence because I'd filmed it too close and some of it was out of frame. The obvious answer was to re-shoot it. But no, I had to be the masochist.

However, because this was a 7ism project and I was committed to it, I then threw out all those files I had so obsessively been re-doing, re-uploading and... well, you don't want to know every twist and turn of that winding road....decided to do a third version. That's when I moved everything downstairs.

Finally here are the two versions of NOT a celebrity my seven days produced. The animation is still not even close to perfect but I'm satisfied with this particular project and pronounce 7ism a success in enabling me to finish something I probably would have abandoned.

All comments/criticisms etc. are welcome.

THE FINAL VERSION OF NOT a celebrity is here on Vimeo and also on YouTube

THE SECOND VERSION is here on Vimeo and also on YouTube

NEW ART MOVEMENT BORN HERE AND NOW!

2011-11-08T23:09:00.000Z

Heh. I've just created a new art movement.

So far I'm the only member. I don't mind if I remain the only member but in case anyone wants to join, here is the manifesto. If I, the founder, should fail to stick to it, then the movement will automatically self-destruct. Dissolve like sugar in hot coffee.

7ism MANIFESTO

I hereby announce the birth of a new art movement. I name it 7ism.

The aim of 7ism is the creation of Complete and Wonderful artworks, in any medium, within the time frame of seven days, no less and no more, in a continuous procession of seven day periods, ad infinitum.

Complete = Finished to the best of the creator's ability.

Wonderful= Full of Wonder. Unexpected.

To Wonder= Not know. Reflect upon.

The reasonable objection that Wonderful artworks cannot always be created in seven days is not relevant because this movement does not pretend to address all art and all artists but only those multi-faceted, undisciplined ones who, like myself, find it very difficult to:

a) Finish within a reasonable time what I start .

b) Choose which of my many projects and interests to prioritise.

c) Avoid the frustration and guilt of accumulating un-achieved goals.

Setting short fixed time-frames will encourage sustained attention to one goal at a time, provide the satisfaction of seeing it achieved, and the motivation for moving on immediately to the next (perhaps similar, perhaps very different) seven-day goal.

Joining the 7ism movement requires members to note the day and time they will have to complete the first task they've chosen.

I will embark on my first 7istic slice tomorrow and will report on my progress.

If you are joining, please say so below and on your blog if you have one, and in a week report on the results of your first 7ism experience. Heh!

GOD vs MAMMON: the fight continues

2011-10-29T21:44:00.001+01:00

I don't mention politics very often in this space but that isn't because I'm indifferent to the world outside my imitation ivory miniature tower. I am aware and I do care, a lot. But the feelings I have about the injustice, horror, hypocrisy, deceit, greed, selfishness, violence, insanity and stupidity of so much that the words 'politics' and 'economics' embrace are mainly inarticulate anger and outrage. All I can do is splutter incoherently or cry helplessly so I prefer to leave it up to more eloquent and knowledgeable others to write or speak about such things.

But what's happening right here in London in front of St.Paul's Cathedral, as part of the current global protests about Mammon's domination of almost anything you can think of, has made me want to say my little say.

Whether or not you believe there is a God or a Mammon is irrelevant. For sure all the people camped on the steps of St. Paul's are not believers. But they are certainly convinced that they belong to a movement which is opposed to a dictatorship: the powerful dictatorship of money, and those who control it, over the lives of every person on this planet.

Today's Independent front page has the headline: God vs Mammon: Britain takes sides. Interestingly, the debate is now questioning what the church's role is, what being a Christian means and whether the clergy, especially those in high-ranking positions, should take a strong stand (against Mammon) or sit back and say nothing out of fear of rocking the church politics boat. So far, two clerics have bravely resigned in protest against the St.Paul's administration decision to seek a court injunction for evicting the protesters. There are many letters from clergy all over the country to newspaper editors, supporting the protesters and lamenting St.Paul's Cathedral authorities' attitude. Thus far the voice which should take the lead - that of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury - has been deafeningly silent.

Surely this is a golden opportunity for him to define what being a Christian means and what relevance Christianity has in this Mammon-led world? If speaking out in support of the protest will endanger his position in the church and cause shock waves to ripple through the halls of hierarchy, well, so be it. Such a courageous gesture would do more than hundreds of sermons and conferences to inspire those who have given up on Christianity for not being Christ-like enough.

El Greco: Christ Drives Merchants from the Temple

AGGRAVATED AND ANIMATED

2011-10-28T04:33:00.003+01:00

Another month has streaked by. Where have I been all this time? Well, here's my first excuse:

Persuaded by dire warnings of ever more virulent types of flu waiting to attack us this winter if we are not vaccinated, I went obediently to get the shot. As soon as I walked out of the local health centre - I'm not making this up - my throat began to feel prickly. By the time I got home I was sniffling, sneezing and limbs ached. The doctors say a reaction may set in after twenty-four hours and will last only three or four days. I must have a speedier and more contrary immune system because my reaction was instantaneous, has lasted over a week and is still not quite okay. I may or may not now be resistant to the latest flu virus but I sure as hell am not getting shot in 2012.

Second excuse: I was making a stop motion animation. Or rather trying to make a stop motion animation just because I said I was going to, didn't I? As everybody knows who has ever tried, animation, especially stop motion, is a slow, painstaking process requiring infinite patience and precise attention to detail. Well, I wanted to see instant results and so did my usual thing of cutting corners, lots of corners, and improvising - all the while sniffling, sneezing etc.

I had already made the Naugustine paper puppet (see October 7th below) but her wire joints weren't holding so I had to re-do her and hinge her parts with needle and thread - excruciatingly fiddly! I wrote a short script and made the Doremy Faxman puppet, hinged in the same manner. Too impatient to build a proper copy stand and get proper lights, I set up the camcorder on a tripod above my desk but couldn't, of course, make the lens point straight down because the tripod legs were in the way. For lighting there was only my desk lamps, so there's a pinkish cast on everything and the dialogue, written by hand on the white backgrounds, is barely visible. And when I started moving the puppets, I didn't do it smoothly or slowly enough. I used iStopMotion Mac software (bought ages ago and never used until now so my version is already obsolete) to capture the frames and put them on my computer. Then began the editing process: tooth-grindingly, eye-wateringly, repetitive-strain-injuringly slow and tedious but being obsessive as well as undisciplined, I stayed up all night, several nights, then did it all again in iMovie, adding all sorts of effects in attempts to slow down the jerky action and improve readability, but then deleted it all after realising that the original simple rough cut was much better. Imported that rough version to Garage Band and added an improvised musical sound track - couldn't add speech because the action is too fast.

So, here is the very very rough, very very fast fruit of all that impatient labour. I will do a smoother, more proficient version by and by, but have to say I am not entirely displeased with this amateurish first draft. Because the text flashes by too dimly and too quickly to be read, here is my script:

NOT A CELEBRITY

Doremy Faxman (Hard-hitting Media person/interviewer): So, Naugustine, why are you here?

Naugustine: That is the question I ask myself every day.

Faxman: Come on! I asked you why you're on this show and you start waffling on about the meaning of life!

Naugustine: Sorry, I thought you meant...

Faxman: I know what you thought I meant. Just answer the question!

Naugustine: Well, I'm on this show because I'm not a celebrity and I thought it might...um...give me some...um...publicity.

Faxman: I'm afraid I have to terminate this interview, Naugustine.

Naugustine: But why? I haven't even started!

Faxman: You've broken the rules of this show . NOT a CELEBRITY dot com does not permit non-celebrities to seek celebrity by appearing on this show. This is Doremy Faxman saying goodnight non-celebrities, wherever you are!

The video is on the main Blaugustine blog, on Vimeo, on YouTube and here:

REVISITED PAINTINGS

2011-10-13T00:35:00.001+01:00

About a year ago...or is it two years?...my Italian grand-nephew, when asked what he wanted for his birthday, made a rather unusual request for a young boy: a painting of my sister and me. He was thirteen only a few days ago and he and his father are coming from Rome to see me this weekend.

I started the painting...whenever that was...but wasn't happy with it and turned it to the wall for quite a while. I scraped out and re-started umpteen times until the canvas acquired a rough textured surface. Unable to procrastinate any longer, I have finally finished it. Probably it could still be re-worked but I'm going to leave it as is and hope Emanuel will like it.

I've called it Two Sisters in Time and inserted images of ourselves as children in the faceted background. Dividing a background into vertical strips of variegated colour is something I have found myself doing over and over again for a very long time, going way back to some of my earliest paintings as a teen-ager. It's not a conscious decision - it just happens. The feeling behind it, I think, is a desire to escape from realism into a more abstract dimension, but not entirely.

Two Sisters in Time Oil on canvas, 2010-2011

Below is another painting using vertical facets but I allowed abstraction to dominate this one. It's from 1994 when I had a SPACE studio in Hackney - the first photo was taken there. I had the idiotic idea of using this unstretched painting as a coffee table covering, folding the edges down all around. Thus it remained until a few weeks ago when I suddenly decided that it deserved to be rescued from a utilitarian role and treated more like art. I had to cut off the damaged edges, so the canvas is somewhat smaller than its original version, but I think it's survived life as a tablecloth pretty well.

Hackney studio 1994

Music and Love Oil on canvas, 1994

VISITORS AND A PUPPET SELF

2011-10-07T00:32:00.000+01:00

It was my great pleasure to welcome Beth/cassandra and Jonathan to my home on several occasions during their séjour in London and a few of us UK blogger friends, including Dick/patteran pages, met for lunch at a pub in my neighbourhood on Sept.28th. Here are a few photos of that occasion, not including the camera-shy and the camera-phobic.

Beth and Jonathan chez moi.

Dick Jones chez moi.

At the pub.

You must visit Beth's blog to get the full flavour of London seen through her eyes. Jonathan's photos will also, I hope, appear on his site at some stage - it doesn't seem to be online at the moment.

Enthralled by the clive hicks-jenkins maquettes and by his idea of having an online exhibition of some made by blogger friends, inspired by his example, I decided to try my hand at articulating paper figures. What emerged was a creature who is an amalgam of Natalie and Augustine, somewhat flattering both of them. I haven't got the hang of making smooth joints between the articulated parts yet so it's very rough but I like it anyway. I love the possibility of making Naugustine move and am considering doing some video animation experiments with her.

CAN IT REALLY BE THE END OF SEPTEMBER ALREADY?

2011-09-28T00:06:00.001+01:00

And I've been absent from blogging all this time! My excuse is that I was too busy making order in my messy studio to attend to blogging business. The truth, in a more analytical kind of way, is probably that anything which requires regular attendance in a disciplined manner over a long period usually brings out my delayed adolescent rebellion. Well, anyway, I really did spend a long time organising my studio, getting rid of stuff etc. and here are some pictures to prove it.

For example, a couple of big paintings were cluttering up the floor space so I had the great idea of hanging them (with essential help from dear friend Nuala) on the sloping attic ceiling.

And in this corner cartoon Augustine and long-ago Natalie are questioning each other forever. On the floor is an unfinished abstract painting. On the cupboard door, some proofs of prints and a poster from the NdA exhibition at the Museum of the Book in The Hague, 1992. This is all meant to spur me to leave the past behind and get on with new creations. But will it work?

Above the tools, a painting of rocks I painted in Paraguay when dinosaurs were still roaming the earth.

And I found a practical use for one of my scarves (a Mondrian-ish one) as a curtain to hide ugly cables below some bookshelves in the living room.

To atone for my blogging absence (if anyone noticed!) here is the most wondrous version of a jazz classic, played Indian-style. You have to see as well as hear this to get the full flavour. Thanks to Dominic Rivron for this terrific link.

Tomorrow is a special day: a few of us UK blogger-friends are getting together to celebrate the presence in London of Beth, the wonderful cassandra, and her husband Jonathan, the wonderful photographer. They've been here a week and are leaving, all too soon, in another few days. I hope I'll have some photos of this occasion to post.

BORN FROM SCARVES

2011-09-06T15:21:00.001+01:00

This African spirit emerged from digitally painting over one of my scarves photos. There may be more.

EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY

2011-09-06T01:09:00.000+01:00

Everything visible, no matter how familiar and ordinary, can suddenly seem miraculous when the eyes and consciousness home in and absorb a scene, drinking it in like a bee feasting on nectar. Astonishment - better expressed in French as emerveillement (making marvellous) is the key to creativity and maybe even to eternal youth. Forever amazed - that's my motto and goal.

The movie option on my new camera gives me a perfect tool for recording random glimpses of activity that delight me by their rhythms and patterns. Here is a video-collage, combining the rain walkers in Trafalgar Square, a street performer below the National Gallery, and a magic instant in Salisbury Cathedral a few days ago.

I had a dental appointment in Salisbury last Thursday - why, you may well ask, make an hour and a half train journey to a dentist in another town when there are so many dentists in London? The reason is too boringly dentally technical to go into but anyway, I've never been to Salisbury. So, after my dentist appointment, I wandered through the charming town, ending up at the deservedly famous cathedral. Its serene majesty is enhanced by the tranquil bucolic surroundings in which it stands. The giant spire (123 metres/404 feet) is like an arrow straining to break free from the ground and zoom up to the stars.

Astonishing to me were the contemporary figures by Sean Henry unexpectedly scattered outside and inside the cathedral. This is a temporary event titled Conflux, a union of the sacred and the anonymous. I didn't know anything about his work and was impressed with it, although the shiny plasticky varnish that most of the sculptures are coated with is offputting. I took a few photos but there are better ones here.

RAIN AND REMBRANDT

2011-08-31T23:47:00.000+01:00

Outside and inside the National Gallery a couple of days ago.

SCARFED

2011-08-29T20:50:00.001+01:00

I love scarves. I was cleaning out a drawer and realised just how many I have, far too many, the picture is only a small selection. I buy them on impulse, seduced by some gorgeous colour, pattern or texture and then only ever wear the same three or four. I took the whole lot out and hung them on a clothesline, wondering what could be made out of them.

Ideas, anyone? The more unusual the better.

And below I am in Middle Eastern/ancient Egyptian mode.

CHAPELLE LAFITTE IMAGINED

2011-08-18T20:59:00.002+01:00

I had trouble drawing the chapel built by Père Lafitte and Susan without some kind of model so after many false starts, I made a very rough cardboard structure loosely based on the idea of a hollow tree trunk. Of course I didn't go as far as working out how many plastic bottles and other junk would be needed to build such a thing but I thought it would be fairly small, more or less human-sized.

Below is the cardboard idea and you can see how it developed in the illustration below which is now inserted at the end of Episode Eighteen of La Vie en Rosé. There's another new image at the start of this episode as well. I hope to finish the rest of the missing illustrations pretty soon.

TOO MANY WORDS

2011-08-14T01:16:00.001+01:00

Not writing about the riots because thousands of words are being written and spoken about the situation and I don't have anything useful to add. Those who have said the most useful things are not politicians or pundits but people whose actions are better than words, people like Camila Batmanghelidh. Or like the man in the street who had served time in jail and told a reporter that instead of wasting money and time to lock young mayhem-makers in jail for a few months, they should be put to work clearing up the mess and making amends to the communities, and individuals they have damaged. And though I'm certainly not a Daily Telegraph reader, this article also hit some nails squarely on the head.

I had no intention of making a word-painting and the image below evolved like this: first I covered a large sheet of paper with splashy abstract shapes of the gestural kind. Then I decided to do a splashy self-portrait over the top. Then I painted over it with a grid of heavy white brushstrokes. Then I wanted some abstract shapes to fill each rectangle of the grid. Then I saw that letters made the best shapes. Then the words emerged.

Greenyellowbluered Acrylic and ink on paper

The next picture is not relevant to anything and I regret falling into the cat-blogging trap once more but Pushkine (she is female) dropped in again and is just too photogenic to resist.

BIRTHDAY

2011-08-07T00:43:00.002+01:00

Here it is again, turning up regularly on the same day at the same time, midnight, every year. I wish that it would forget to turn up and then I could stay whatever age I was when it stopped coming round.

But since something must be done to mark this date and since it's all about identity, leaving one's handprint on the cave walls of time, I've gathered photos of a few of the self-portraits I painted over the years - many many years. They're arranged more or less chronologically but the actual dates are probably lost in prehistoric mists. I must say that seeing these portraits together makes me realise that I could be quite a good painter one day. Must get back on track. A renaissance is due.

All the actual paintings are in colour. Apart from No.3 and 4, I still have these and they are for sale, if anyone's interested. By the way, in real life I don't have a long neck, unfortunately.

More recent ones, including the digital series, are here and here .

MORE

GHOSTS

2011-08-05T12:17:00.002+01:00

There's been a very lively response to Dave's post about ghosts, inviting poems on the subject. I've just added my own, here it is. I made a videopoem for it and have posted it to Vimeo as well as the main Blaugustine.

HYPNAGOGIA

They exist
just not here
not now
the way to see them
is to wait
for that moment
before sleep
when your eyes are closed
but you’re still conscious
I forgot what it’s called
never mind
that’s the moment.
a little window opens
as if you’re in a cave
looking out
to brilliant sunlight
and there they are
not pale zombies
but ordinary people
tiny figures moving about.
I saw them last night.
Some of them I recognised.

ABSTRACT versus FIGURATIVE? IS THAT THE QUESTION?

2011-07-28T06:11:00.002+01:00

A demonstration

Imagine that one day, as you're in the middle of painting yet another of the realistic pictures you're known for and are good at, you suddenly stop, put down your brush, and say:

Enough! I've had enough of this! Why must I go on endlessly depicting what I see? Music doesn't have to tell a story or imitate familiar sounds - why shouldn't I too break free from representation?

So you take some blank canvases and papers and boards and paints and solvents and you start exploring ways of creating a visual art which doesn't describe or interpret known objects but is its own reality.

Immediately you become aware that certain options are open to you. Gradually, depending on your tastes, moods, influences and the random effects which the materials themselves provide, you choose to pursue one or more of those options. Having put aside the figurative content which previously dominated your attention, you now focus on process, invention and concept.

Links below are to relevant works by some of the innumerable abstract painters who created personal styles out of some or all of these eight modes. The processes often fuse or overlap, but I found it useful to single them out.
1. STAINED
Free-flowing, transparent or dense, indeterminately-edged, ethereal. Bissier, Frankenthaler, Still
2. BUILT
with informal blocks of interlocked shapes, creating perspectiveless depth by colour and texture. De Stael, Hodgkin, Diebenkorn
3. GESTURED
with brush, charcoal, fingers, etc. A spontaneous calligraphic means of creating form. Kline, Blow, Hitchens
4. GEOMETRICIZED
Devising and obeying invented rules, proportions, concepts, hard-edged, rigorous. Mondrian, Nicholson, Malevich
5. PATTERNED
Over-all, edgeless, whether patiently drawn or made by controlling random processes. Pollock, Tobey Davie
6. FIGMENTED
fragments of imagination and chance. Shapes invented or loosely based on remembered objects. Mirò, Gorky, Friedlaender
7. SCRIBBLED
Linear signs, perhaps words or hieroglyphs, on smooth or rough surfaces, coloured or plain. Klee, Twombly, Tàpies
8. FILLED
Large empty fields of intense colour, atmospheric, enveloping. Rothko, Olitski, Newman

That's my over-simplified but fairly accurate summing-up of some of the paths taken by any painter who sets out on a journey away from representation. 'Art for art's sake' makes sense when perceived as a desire to escape from the prison of the seen - or rather, the scene - in order to paint something other. How do you get to that otherness and still remain a painter? The eight processes shown above are possible ways to get there which have been explored and elaborated by most of the abstract and semi-abstract painters of our time.

However, they are not exclusive to modern times or to abstract art. If you isolate details from well-known figurative paintings of any period, it's very clear that those modes crop up everywhere and that they play a role in shaping the styles of individual artists, whatever their subject. What was new about some modern abstract art is that it made process become the master, the subject, rather than remaining merely technique, the servant.

But ABSTRACT versus FIGURATIVE is a false dichotomy. Great figurative art of any period never re-presents reality as we know it so it's already abstraction. But it does offer startling new ways to see the familiar and, sometimes, shows us things that are completely unfamiliar.

The fragments I've selected merely show examples of the eight abstract modes in the handling of paint or the composition of these particular figurative paintings. I don't mean to imply that these artists' work can be categorised under such labels.
Links to the full pictures from which the details are taken:

1. Watteau
2. El Greco
3. John Singer Sargent
4. Vermeer
5. Klimt
6. Bruegel
7. Rembrandt
8. De La Tour

MORE

LUCIEN FREUD IS DEAD

2011-07-22T21:53:00.000+01:00

HEAVY-WEIGHT CHAMP LUCIAN FREUD R.I.P.

Last year I caught his exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and wrote about it on July 26th . I wasn't a big fan but I pay homage to his life-long dedication, his single-minded focus and his prodigious skill. There was something athletic, something of the spirit of the weight-lifter and body-builder in his work: those huge muscles developed through sheer will-power and obsessive exercise. Maybe I'm stretching the metaphor too far but it sums up the impressions of Lucian Freud's painting I gathered over the years. Freud and Francis Bacon were close friends and both of them, in their work, were deeply concerned with flesh. But in my view, Bacon was the greater painter because he dared to look beyond or behind matter and those glimpses, though terrifying, allowed his paintings to break through the density, the weight of matter, in startling ways. This is just my opinion of course and it may be completely skewed.

Next post, I'm going to write about abstract art. Stay tuned for further skewed opinions.

The weather in London today.

THE FINAL EPISODE....

2011-07-21T04:13:00.000+01:00

OF La Vie en Rosé HAS ARRIVED

We hope for your abundant feedback. The rest of the illustrations will follow by and by.

REAL CHAIRS, UNREAL CHAIRS.... PROCRASTINATING

2011-07-19T00:21:00.001+01:00

Took the photo in a nice Camden teashop where the chairs have personalities. Painted this abstractified version while "resting" - ie avoiding finishing the last episode of La Vie en Rosé.

Why is it that when something needs to be done, other things seem so much more inviting?

ABSTRACTING

2011-07-18T03:58:00.000+01:00

Still not used to my new camera, tried it out at Borough Market near London Bridge, on my way to the Miro exhibition at Tate Modern. More on that later.

Which do you prefer: the photo of the 'real' scene, or the abstract digital painting I did based on this photo? Does detail matter when conveying one's impression of something seen?

THE NEXT TO LAST EPISODE...

2011-07-11T02:44:00.000+01:00

of La Vie en Rosé is now posted

You didn't have to wait so long this time, did you? And the last episode will come even quicker because it's already fully worked out in my head. However, all the missing illustrations will take a bit longer. Sorry about that, I'm a slow worker as well as an itinerant rhizomath. Can't help it, as Marlene Dietrich said.

BECKENHAM LIBRARY INDEPENDENCE DAY

2011-07-04T00:00:00.002+01:00

Plus: I now know who I am
Plus: I have a new camera

Beckenham Library in Kent will mark the 4th of July tomorrow with a self-publish and be blessed day and I am one of the people invited by Michael J. Weller to come and talk about my own experiences. I'll give a short PowerPoint presentation and then perhaps have a chance to dialogue with Mike about that alternative universe known as self-publishing.

The mikonoclastic maker of HomeBaked Books is a friend and fellow self-publisher who has described me as an itinerant rhizomath . Forgive my ignorance but I had to look it up. Here's what botany and philosophy have to say about rhizome and rhizomatic:

...a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes.....If a rhizome is separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant.

Rhizomatic thought is non-linear, anarchic and nomadic ....Rhizomatic thought is multiplicitous, moving in many directions and connected to many other lines of thinking, acting, and being.

...rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.

Here, at last, is the answer to my lifelong question: WHO AM I?

Thanks to Mike Weller's brilliant insight, I can now carry on in my itinerant rhizomathic way with complete confidence that I am fulfilling my destiny.

I HAVE A NEW CAMERA

My old Fuji Finepix bought in January 2004 has died. Is a digital camera too old at seven? Not by my reckoning but I'm old school and believe things should last and last and last. Unfortunately I've had to accept the unfairness of its demise and start searching for a replacement. This is a process that awakens my inner anorak and there's no snippet of information, however boring, which escapes my detail-hungry eye. After weighing up the evidence concerning those cameras I could afford, I settled on the Canon PowerShot A3300 . All the options will take some getting used to and it feels more fragile than my old camera but it's too soon to say what I think of it. Here are some of the first shots I've taken with it.

La Vie en Rosé continues at last!

2011-06-24T05:24:00.001+01:00

Today! Right here!

Not many more episodes to come. All missing illustrations will follow.

SURFACING

2011-06-18T23:10:00.000+01:00

It's been a peculiar few weeks. Blank brain indiscriminately filled with random television fodder. Body weak, uncooperative, sore. Too much sleep broken at eight-hour intervals by the alarm clock reminding me to take another stomach-disturbing antibiotic tablet. But it seems to have worked. I feel more or less normal today. Thinking machinery clanking and creaking rustily back into gear. Legs not so wobbly, nose not so stuffy. Vague desire to Do Something Creative.

APOLOGY FOR ABSENCE WITHOUT LEAVE

2011-06-04T21:14:00.002+01:00

to anyone who is longing to read the next episode of La Vie en Rosé and/or to see what's new here at Blaugustine, I beg your pardon. I have been out of sorts.

Indisposed, like. Indisposition is not interesting blogging material nor is there any desire whatsoever to blog when out of sorts.

Therefore silence.

A sinus infection combined with toothache, extreme lassitude, brain-fog etc. You get the picture? I'm doing all the right things to deal with this, taking antibiotics, consulting the medical profession in all its wisdom and bureaucratic chaos, sleeping, steam-inhaling aromatic essential oils, sleeping. But not blogging.

Don't worry, I'll be back. Hopefully restored and re-energised. All expressions of concern, love, encouragement, health-tips, praise etc.etc are very welcome. Sorry I didn't ask sooner.

NOT CAT BLOGGING

2011-05-24T01:17:00.001+01:00

I am not a cat blogger. I don't have a cat and don't want a cat. Or a dog. Or a hamster or a rabbit or a parrot. I love all animals but do not want any of them as household pets. Not ever.

However.

In the street where I live there is a strolling cat, a flaneur. This cat probably lives in a house nearby, is well-fed and well cared for but is not a home-loving cat. He - I assume it's a he - is a free spirit, a wanderer. He hangs out. Everybody knows him and caresses him - he ambles by and rubs up against your leg, anybody's leg. He's promiscuous that way. For a while I thought I was his favourite because if he saw me coming he'd run across the road and follow me to my doorstep, demanding to be allowed in. So I took him up to my flat once and let him wander around, offered him milk, cake, ham, ice cream - all of which he refused. After a short inspection of my premises he demanded to be let out. Next time I saw him on the street he ignored me. Then disappeared for weeks. Okay, I thought, see if I care. But I bought a box of cat biscuits, just to have on hand. We met again by chance and I invited him to my place once more, just casual-like, no committment. He tried the cat biscuits and liked them. I called him pussykins but that sounded too soppy so I changed it to Pushkin.

When I came home yesterday evening I saw Pushkin sitting in the open garage of a house near mine, looking vague, spaced out. If he were a human I'd say he was stoned. I called him and persuaded him to follow me home which he did without enthusiasm. Inside the apartment he walked around dreamily, apparently remembering the layout of the rooms. He stretched out on the floor of my studio for a while then went downstairs and laid on my bed.

I got my camcorder and filmed Pushkin as he nodded off. Sam Taylor Wood made a movie of David Beckham sleeping. I'd rather watch Pushkin than Becks sleeping. I edited the movie and put together a soundtrack with bits of loops from Garage Band.

After a nice long nap Pushkin ate some cat biscuits. Then I let him out to continue his wanderings. I am not a cat blogger.

OUR DAVE IN LONDON

2011-05-20T22:35:00.000+01:00

The Via Negativa is a road well-travelled, at least in Dave Bonta's cyber-corner of it, even if in the real world it is hidden in Plummers Hollow, a Pennsylvania mountain woodland richly populated by a great variety of animal, vegetable and mineral wildlife, every specimen of which our Dave knows personally, addresses by proper name, and often photographs, films or writes poems about. I say our Dave because he's a friend among good friends, first encountered in the blogosphere, then in New York in 2007, then last week right here at home. Here he is looking at the cyclops-eye of my camcorder while we talk - a rambling conversation which he recorded and which will eventually appear on Via Negativa as a podcast.

It takes a very good reason to lure this hermit-ish poet/ philosopher/ naturalist away from his porch in the woods and the excellent reasons which brought Dave to the UK for two weeks were a book, a reading and an exhibition. The exhibition: Clive Hicks-Jenkins' 60th birthday retrospective at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, beautifully documented on Clive's Artlog. The book: The Book of Ystwyth for which Dave contributed poems; and the reading of his poems, along with the other poets, as part of the festivities around this prestigious event. You can see more about all this on Via Negativa including links to other bloggers who have written about it.

I enjoyed Dave's visit so much, savouring the peaceful attentiveness he gives to everything, a rare quality that I can learn from. The attention I give to the world is often agitated by ego-driven judgements and coloured by emotions - not the best way to use one's perceptive faculties.

EPISODE EIGHTEEN OF La Vie en Rosé

2011-05-13T23:58:00.000+01:00

AT LAST EPISODE EIGHTEEN OF La Vie en Rosé IS NOW POSTED!

Go there now and please continue to be patient. Illustrations coming soon.

DISCOVERING ALBERTA HUNTER

2011-05-05T18:51:00.002+01:00

ALBERTA HUNTER

I found her by chance on YouTube and I am making her my role-model from now on. Here is proof, if proof is needed, that age cannot wither the singing/dancing/creating/celebrating spirit if you only let it fly. Inspiration for us all.

ALTERNATIVE ROYAL WEDDING

2011-04-29T15:16:00.000+01:00

A much better version of the pompous circumstance hypnotising much of London today.

MORE

BLAUGUSTINE'S BLOGDAY

2011-04-28T01:34:00.001+01:00

It was yesterday and I almost forgot to congratulate myself:

8 YEARS OF BLAUGUSTINE!

In blog-time that's either 8 minutes or 80 years. Anyway, bravo Blaugustine but I wish I was a more faithful and frequent blogger. I'm very bad at time-keeping, consistency and continuity and if anybody's got a recipe for improving that situation, can you please let me have it right now?

Must do something to mark this day so I'm going to pick one image from each year of the Blaug. Click on the images to go to that year in the archives.

MIRACLE AT THE OLD STILE PRESS

2011-04-23T20:25:00.025+01:00

Last Easter I posted here a few of the ink drawings I had done many years ago on the life of Jesus and lo, Nicolas McDowall saw them, declared them to be good and decided to publish the whole suite as a book.

And behold, with perfect timing, the latest Old Stile Press publication Scenes from the Life of Jesus is ready and glowing: my ancient drawings resurrected in a stunningly designed and hand-printed by Nicolas book. The intense blue-black lines inhabit the pristine white space of the paper as if they were born there while the minimal text in pale grey and blue Aries type acts as a whispered accompaniment. You can read all about it on the Old Stile Press blog and the book's pages and close-ups are in a slide-show at the main website of the Press, linked above. Concerning the subject, this is what I wrote as the foreword to the book:

I went to Wales this week to sign the 60 copies of the book and stayed overnight at Frances and Nicolas McDowall's marvellous home, a place so magical that even if it was not also the site of their Old Stile Press, it would be stored in my memory as one of the most inspiring places I have ever been privileged to visit. The inside of the house blends seamlessly with the outside and in both, every corner yields a discovery, a lovingly tended treasure. The McDowalls have an extraordinary art collection, mainly of neo-romantic English art, but also some idiosyncratic pieces dotted around the grounds, such as the slabs of slate engraved with Pilgrims of Solitude a poem by Cecil Collins. The sculpture framed by the living room window is by Michael Ayrton.

However you celebrate this resurgence of Spring, have a beautiful weekend.
MORE

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER THING

2011-04-11T21:53:00.001+01:00

Recent mention by Marja-Leena and Cassandra Pages and Tasting Rhubarb of La Vie en Rosé led to a very welcome upsurge in my stats which, like every other blogger in blogdom, I obsessively check now and then - oh allright, very frequently - to see whether I am loved more than I am ignored. Come to think of it, that's a life-long preoccupation.

Anyway, Dorothee Lang who, amongst many other things, is editor of the Blueprint Review noted Jean's mention of the Augustine comic strips and invited me to join mycomics.de an online community of comics creators. Of course I was happy to do so and, thanks to Dorothee's help, my complete INERTIA strip is now uploaded there.The site is mainly in German but comics from other countries also appear and international participation is encouraged. Gradually I will be posting more strips to this friendly and well-designed site.

Yesterday was the christening of Lewis - my niece Sarah and her husband Elliott's second baby - and the occasion was blessed by fabulous Spring weather and perfect location: an English village's 13th Century church with great pub across the road where we all gathered for lunch after a cheerful Anglican service during which the round infant, dressed in pinstriped mini-waistcoat, white shirt, green socks and black corduroy trousers, seemed puzzled but smiled graciously.

When the guests were eating lunch at long wooden tables in the pub garden, I remembered part of a dream I had about a week or so ago in which the same image appeared. I've been thinking about so-called pre-cognitive dreams, which I have fairly often. The pre-cognitive bit is usually quite banal, just ordinary scenes from ordinary life which I see in a dream and then, a variable time later, encounter in waking life. I'm aware of the theories, debates, experiments etc. on this subject but I want to follow my own ruminations about it and see where they lead.

I'm starting from the premise that some dreams can foresee events/scenes which have not yet taken place in 'real time': how would this process work? My intuition says that there's nothing supernatural about it but that it's an actual process happening constantly although we are rarely aware of it. Here's the gist of notes I was writing while having breakfast this morning:

Suppose the events of our day are like the successive frames in a film - say, 24 frames per second or some other fps - but we don't see separate frames, only one continuous strip. Suppose something different happens when we're asleep and dreaming: the film speeds up and the gaps between frames narrows, they become somewhat compressed. But our perception remains the same as it was when awake so we're actually seeing some of the next frames because they overlap. So maybe what seems like foreseeing a future event is simply looking at the present that we haven't caught up with yet in 'real time' because 'dream-time' goes faster.

Yes, I know there are all sorts of problems with this conjecture but it's only a start. I will expand it with some animation/video experiments when I've worked out how to do it. These are the kinds of questions that really excite me and it doesn't bother me that I'm not qualified to explore them - no degrees in physics, neurology, psychology, biology, you-name-it-ology. So? Who's gonna stop me?

JUNG THOUGHTS FROM A WISE OLD MAN

2011-04-08T21:23:00.001+01:00

It's many years since I first encountered C.G. Jung's autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections. At the time, in my habitually over-eager way of demonstrating camaraderie with certain thinkers, I emphatically underlined many passages in this book. I have been re-reading it now and am amused to find that those passages are exactly the ones that I would underline now if I hadn't already done so.

Here is Dr. Jung, after his trip to India, reflecting on the differences between his outlook and the Indian form of spirituality:

I, on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychic images. I do not want to be freed from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles. Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded - and what more could I wish for?To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is , not that it is not or is no longer.

To me there is no liberation à tout prix. I cannot be liberated from anything that I do not possess, have not done, or experienced. Real liberation becomes possible for me only when I have done all that I was able to do, when I have completely devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to the utmost.

Amen!

A new illustration has been added to EPISODE FIFTEEN of La Vie en Rosé. Go there to see it full size.

EPISODE SEVENTEEN of La Vie en Rosé is now posted

2011-04-06T02:24:00.000+01:00

EPISODE SEVENTEEN

Illustrations, however, are still in the making and will be uploaded when ready. I was waiting until I'd finished the last two before posting the text but now I think it's better to keep the story flowing and I can always add images later

ARE YOU BEING ZAPPED? DO YOU CARE? MICROWAVE RADIATION FROM WIRELESS DEVICES

2011-03-31T20:08:00.000+01:00

Watch this YouTube video and think about it. The Swiss government is warning its citizens about cordless phones and other wireless devices - why isn't every government doing the same? Obvious answers:

1. Because there's really nothing to worry about, folks. This level of radiation is perfectly safe. Anyone who thinks different is either ignorant, hypochondriac, a conspiracy-theorist nutcase, or all of those.

2. Because there might be plenty to worry about but the industries producing all of this technology are far too profitable and far too advanced to stop their progress or to go back to drawing boards and re-think the whole thing. And they are certainly not keen to publicise any data which points to the dangers.

3. Because hey, life is brutish and short! So why not enjoy our dangerous and delightful gadgets while we can? And if we, or our children, or grandchildren, die from cancers caused by constant and close contact with such gadgets.....oh, too bad! That's life! Deal with it!

We've all seen young children (and of course adults too) with mobile phones pressed against their heads, having hours-long conversations. And pregnant women resting their laptops (or iPads) on conveniently swollen bellies as they surf the net. And men with laptop between their legs as they sit on a train working or playing computer games. All perfectly safe? I don't think so. And yes, I do care.

I'm getting rid of my one cordless phone. I've never liked it anyway, sometimes it sort of buzzes against my head. And I don't have an iPad or a SmartPhone. And I've never rested my laptop on my lap. Anyway I mainly use a desktop and have no WiFi devices. Whew!

ONE-TRACK LONGING

2011-03-29T02:03:00.001+01:00

It takes me so absurdly long to write those short episodes of La Vie en Rosé and to draw some illustrations for it, plus the normal daily routines, that I've rarely got enough energy left over for a blog post. Maybe I'm just getting less multi-faceted than I used to be. Now I desperately long for one-track mindedness. But which track? Which platform? Which train? What time does it leave and where is it going?

Next week is my last singing class of the series - can't believe it's been ten weeks already. I've learned a bit about breathing in and out at irregular intervals, such as: out for 4, in for 4, hold for 8 and so on. The out breath always comes before the in breath in these exercises - I don't know why. I've learned that my voice is a Contralto, sort of. I've learned to look at the audience while singing and not somewhere above their heads.

We've only had two solo sessions and next Friday will be the third. For my first solo I did Piaf's Je Ne Regrette Rien . My second was 99 Miles from L.A. (Albert Hammond's version) and on Friday I'll do the Bryan Ferry version of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. I know - my choices aren't hip but I don't care - I love those songs and they're in a vocal range I can more or less manage. Everyone brings a CD or iPod to use as a backing track for their chosen number so it's not as scary as it would be without accompaniment.

If you spend most of your time at activities which make use of your eyes and hands and brain but leave the rest of your faculties idle, it's very refreshing to go out and open your mouth and throat and chest and make musical sounds, along with a group of other people doing the same and, occasionally, to sing all by yourself in front of them. So I've signed up for another series starting late next month, a Singing Improvers class.

UPDATE at 7:30 pm

Due to popular request (well...one request ) here is a video rehearsal of my number for Friday's class. Not my fault if Bryan Ferry can't get the timing right. Embarassing, isn't it?

NEW EPISODE of La Vie en Rosé

2011-03-23T04:58:00.000Z

EPISODE SIXTEEN of La Vie en Rosé

Is now posted. Illustrations will follow shortly.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, events continue to tumble down their apocalyptic course. I even turn on the news in the daytime now, expecting further disaster.

NUCLEAR IS NEVER SAFE

2011-03-15T20:14:00.001Z

That's the title of an article in today's Guardian, on the Comment & Debate page, by John Vidal. But I can't find a link to it on the Guardian website so, because it is of such vital relevance to the events in Japan right now and to the future of this fragile planet, I've scanned it and am posting it in its entirety below.

Please link, copy, quote and disseminate it by whatever means you use - blog, Tweet, FaceBook etc. to share the things that really matter to you. The internet is said to be the newest and most effective instrument for people power: could it generate enough people power to influence the nuclear industry, and the decision-makers who support it, to reconsider their short-term and long-range plans?

THE EARTH QUAKES, WE TREMBLE

2011-03-13T22:49:00.000Z

Who has seen the videos and photos of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, made even worse now by possible nuclear meltdown, and not thought: what does anything mean when faced with such devastation?

Even if we are presumed safe, doubts bubble up, rattling the foundations on which our daily lives rest. It's not only physical certainties which suddenly seem unreal: watching cars, trains, ships, planes, streets, buildings, towns and all sophisticated technology - not to mention people - being swallowed up, crunched and spat out in bits by the inexorable advance of a monster wave - but also the To Do lists on my desk, the projects, the things I've done or am doing seem completely irrelevant, insubstantial, confronted by such irrefutable proof of the fragility of all human activity. You could say that simply facing one's own mortality gives rise to the same existential angst. But it's not quite the same, is it? As long as something remains after you've gone, there's continuity. But what if it all goes, on the kind of scale they're witnessing in Japan right now and perhaps, in future, even worse? Don't you wonder: what is the point?

The answer given by many creative people would be: the point is the point. You do what you do because that's who you are and you would go on doing it even if there is no point - the meaning is in the doing.

Well...h'm...okay...sort of. Intellectually I kind of go along with that but it doesn't satisfy my soul, if you know what I mean. Or even if you don't know what I mean. It doesn't satisfy my guts either, those pesky guts which always demand other answers, something beyond intellect, beyond words. Gutsy answers.

Photo from BBC news

KEEPING THE CHANNEL OPEN

2011-03-04T03:14:00.000Z

A brilliant review titled Keep the Channel Open by the poet Jared Carter of a biography of Martha Graham by Agnes de Mille is on his excellent new blog on books and literature: Rushing the Growler . His review covers so much ground, so profoundly, that it's enough for me even if I never read de Mille's book. I was never a fan of Martha Graham but the quote below (from advice Martha gave to her friend Agnes when the latter was plagued by self-doubt) is so inspirational that I'm going to put it up on the wall where I can see it daily:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have a peculiar and unusual gift, and you have so far used about one third of your talent.
MORE

La Vie en Rosé NEW UPDATE

2011-03-04T01:11:00.000Z

EPISODE FIFTEEN is now posted.

MORE

UPDATE ON La Vie en Rosé

2011-02-28T20:59:00.002Z

EPISODE FOURTEEN is now posted.

HATSHEPSUT RIDES AGAIN

2011-02-28T03:44:00.000Z

The latest issue of the >Language>Place Blog Carnival Edition 4 is hosted by Jean Morris at tasting rhubarb and sizzles with scintillating contributions. It includes part of the Luxor travel journal I wrote during my one and only journey to Egypt, way back in 2005.

I'm glad I went there before the upheaval that is rocking the country at present but I hope this upheaval when it settles down will bring the positive changes that the courageous, creative, humorous Egyptian people want and deserve, now that they have succeeded in dismissing their nemesis Mubarak. You can always tell dictators by the size and ubiquitousness of their portraits: I remember seeing huge posters and banners of the Mubarak mug all over Luxor - is it something to do with hypnosis, I wonder? Something like psychic surveillance cameras? Keep the people subjugated by making sure they see your eyes, larger than life, at all times. Come to think of it, those ancient Egyptian monarchs must have known a thing or two about mass hypnosis - look at the size and power of their sculpted portraits!

Next Vie en Rosé episode coming up shortly.

La Vie en Rosé EPISODE THIRTEEN

2011-02-17T03:13:00.002Z

is now posted here.

Better to post short chunks more often, right?

PLATONIC SCHMATONIC

2011-02-15T22:47:00.000Z

The sound clip from the Platonic Love podcast which aired on Via Negativa yesterday is now also on the main Blaugustine. I didn't take the theme as seriously as it should be taken, and was taken, by some of the other contributors, maybe because the tune of Hello Young Lovers kept playing in my head. So I went along with the tune and thought about a familiar situation, when one of the two in a platonic relationship is anything but platonic with other people and the platonic friend feels betrayed but can't admit it because jealousy isn't supposed to be part of the equation.

Love is possessive, innit? Whether it's lover-love, friend-love, parental love, platonic love, schmatonic love - some exceptional beings manage to escape the perils and pains of possessiveness, but not many.

PLATONIC VALENTINE
(to the tune of Hello Young Lovers from The King And I )

HELLO PLATONIC LOVER WHEREVER YOU ARE
I HOPE YOUR PARTNER IS TRUE
IF NOT ALL MY SYMPATHY'S WITH YOU TONIGHT
I'VE BEEN IN THAT SITUATION TOO.
BE BRAVE PLATONIC LOVER AND GET IN YOUR CAR
DRIVE OFF QUICKLY INTO THE BLUE
THE ONE YOU LOVE IS PLATO WITH YOU
BUT CASANOVA WITH BOB AND CAROL AND SUE.
OH I KNOW HOW IT FEELS
WHEN THE TRUTH IS REVEALED
AND IT JANGLES AROUND IN YOUR HEAD
THE PACT THAT YOU MADE
ABOUT NOT GETTING LAID
NOW YOU'RE COLD.....
AND ALONE IN YOUR BED.
DON'T CRY PLATONIC LOVER WHATEVER YOU DO
DON'T CRY BECAUSE YOU'RE ALONE
ALL YOUR SORROWS ARE OVER TONIGHT
I'M LOOKING FOR PLATONIC LOVE TOO.
BE BRAVE LOVER AND CLICK THE WORD SEND
REPLY TO MY AD RIGHT AWAY
LET'S NOT WASTE TIME
LET'S MAKE THE SUN SHINE
BE MY FAITHFUL PLATONIC VALENTINE.

POOR VALENTINUS

2011-02-14T00:52:00.004Z

Saint Valentinus was one of several martyrs by that name in ancient Rome. Although being a martyr for love is a common human experience, I don't think that's what the purveyors and consumers of chocolates and champagne have in mind on Valentine's Day. Why, on every fourteenth of February, the tragic Valentinus has to endure posthumously carrying the weight of all this sugar and bubbling sentimentality is a mystery nobody want to solve. Of course any day is a good day for celebrating love and all its derivatives, sacred or profane, so I'm not going to object if anybody wants to shower me with sweetness in any form whatsoever today. Or any other day.

One who is not toeing the standard Valentine line is Dave Bonta at his humming beehive of internetted creativity: be sure to tune in to his Platonic Valentine podcast today and listen to the contributions which his request for submissions brought in, including one from me. Dave has many talents, not the least of which is a knack for creating a welcoming village atmosphere at Via Negativa, eliciting and encouraging others' inventiveness whilst continually exploring and developing his own.

By the way, I've added an illustration to Part 12 of La Vie en Rosé. Next episode coming soon.

La Vie en Rosé....IT'S BACK!

2011-02-09T05:33:00.001Z

Yes! And you can read installment Number Twelve right here. I haven't drawn an illustration for it yet but I will. I've done some editing of the earlier text and, I hope, improved it. I'm very grateful to those of you who are still interested in this story and have been so patient with me. I will try and post the next installments much more frequently, aiming to reach a conclusion soon. Can't believe I started the story in June 2009!

What has held me back wasn't only procrastination - though that too, in buckets - but the extreme difficulty I have in writing fiction. Finding the right words and stringing sentences together when I'm inventing a story is an excruciatingly slow process whereas 'straight' writing doesn't usually cost me such tremendous effort. Comparing it to physical activity, writing fiction is to me like climbing a steep and craggy mountain in icy weather wearing a heavy back-pack. No wonder I've never hankered to be a novelist. I suppose it all depends on how much discomfort you're willing to endure for your art. I tend to prefer enjoyment rather than pain in any process of creation.

ANYONE FOR SINGING?

2011-02-02T05:56:00.002Z

Sometimes habits and routines have to be challenged by doing something completely different. So I decided to sign up for an evening class in singing - nothing too serious, just popular music, to open lungs and throat and take a break from everything else.

It's a ten-week, once a week beginners' course and the first class was last Friday. Twelve people of varying ages, nationalities and backgrounds, all keen to sing for fun, taught by a sympathetic, and professional tutor. We did warm-up and breathing exercises and ended with the group singing the old Otis Redding number, Dock of the Bay. By the end of the course, each of us will have chosen one song we want to perform alone (I've already decided on mine) and we'll also be doing some group harmonising etc. It's not necessary to be able to read music, thankfully, since I've forgotten all I ever learned. Lyrics and links to internet sound clips will be provided by Max, the tutor.

I love to sing but somehow never do it nowadays, not even in the shower or for blogging entertainment - you may remember some of my past efforts along those lines: a sound clip of one of them (Cucurucucu Paloma in Spanish with accompaniment improvised in Garage Band) is among video clips here.

This does NOT mean I'm again avoiding the continuation of La Vie ....Coming up, soon.

MORE

APPLES AGAIN

2011-01-22T20:39:00.000Z

Before I get back to La Vie en Rosé as I promised to do, here's a stage of the latest apple painting I started while procrastinating about La Vie.

Multi-tasking is not really my thing but I pretend that it is in order to have valid reasons for procrastination. While one thing gets under way the other thing doesn't get done and the more things you start, the less you finish. True or false?

Anyway, the apple series will - come hell or high water and other distractions - get done this year and so will La Vie en Rosé. The current apple is, for art's sake, patiently enduring being suspended in front of a mirror above a mirrored surface. I began this painting last Monday and it's probably nearly finished, more or less.

Apple suspended, reflected, painted - NdA (work in progress) January 2011. Oil on canvas.

THE SILENCE OF CREATION

2011-01-15T04:24:00.002Z

Standing in the shower a couple of days ago I started to think about creation - not the Creation but simply making something that wasn't there before - like this, I suppose. First it was a thought...then words typed on a keyboard...inserted into software...digital drawing added.... uploaded to the internet...and finally: a Blog Post. Not worthy of the fancy name creation yet fitting the description of something which didn't exist before I caused it to exist.

Our articulated thoughts - however repetitious, witty, profound, perceptive, polished, crude, cliché, original or derivative, are our products and we are floating in an ocean of our own and other people's products. The books on our shelves, the CDs, DVDs, downloads, pictures, posters and objects we cherish demonstrate our need to be fed by the creations of those minds we choose to consort with, as well as our own urge to be creators. We feel that creativity is a state to be attained, nurtured, promoted, prized and rewarded. When we are not being creative we feel guilty, worthless, ordinary. We worship at the altar of the Great Creatives and aspire to be in their pantheon, or to knock them out of it, or to serve them.

But what if it all vanished suddenly? Not a single book on our shelves, nothing on our walls, blank pages in notebooks where there were poems, stories, sketches, ideas. Nothing on television, nothing on the internet, nothing in the cinema, theatre, club, gallery, museum, concert hall. Whoosh! All gone. Silence.

So, standing in the shower, this is what I was thinking. Creation, as I experience it, comes out of nothingness. Silence. The absence of creations.

PRAGUE

2011-01-04T02:02:00.001Z

That's where I was at Christmas.

They say that Prague is a beautiful city and there is much to see. I'm sure this is true but the piercingly cold, wet, sleety, slippery, snowy, windy weather made it impossible for shivering chickens such as me and my sister to see anything much besides the foam on a cup of hot chocolate. I exaggerate: my sister is much braver and more of a sightseer than I am so I dragged along reluctantly to make sure I'd be there to pick her up if she slipped on the ice. That's how heroic I am. I know it's reprehensible but all I really wanted to do was to sit in a warm cafe or in the hotel room.

Maybe some time, not in winter, I could go back and see all the interesting things I missed this time. Maybe in other seasons the people of Prague become more friendly and maybe they even smile or reply when you ask for directions. I've been to lots of cities and lots of countries and in some of those places I didn't speak the language but never, ever, have I encountered such ubiquitously unfriendly attitudes as in Prague - shopkeepers, tram conductors, ticket sellers, information people, passers-by, etc. etc. either did not respond or responded in a manner which can only be described as hostile. Very few people we came across spoke any language other than Czech - fair enough, but did they need to be so brusque and dismissive? Maybe some foreign tourists behave badly in Prague so the citizens have decided all foreigners are a nuisance. There were a few exceptions: the staff at our hotel and the taxi drivers booked to and from the airport.

Anyway here are a few pictures I took in Prague. I wish you all whatever you most desire in your heart of hearts. Bonne Année, mes amis.

SEASONAL IMAGE

2010-12-18T01:32:00.003Z

Whether you celebrate this season with different images or with no images at all, my warmest wishes go out to you all and may your spirit be moved by all the beautiful things in the universe, visible and invisible.

Meanwhile, I sent a submission to the latest >LANGUAGE>PLACE CARNIVAL and am very pleased that it's there now (video of my stay in Tavira, Portugal) under the heading Slipping Boundaries, amongst the other wonderful entries on Nicolette Wong's blog Meditations in an Emergency.

I have made a firm resolution to return to La Vie en Rosé as soon as the New Year kicks in and you have my authorisation to remind of this resolution, loudly and clearly.

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR

2010-12-12T23:26:00.002Z

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR...

when everything accuses:

YOU'RE LATE LATE LATE AGAIN!!!

The calendar, the weather, the people streaming in and out of shops, the seasonal cards arriving already, the Things To Finish This Year list I made last year and all the lists I've ever made....my whole life suddenly seems like one big end-of-year guilt-ridden apology to myself and others:

SO SORRY I'M LATE!

No. Not true that I'm sorry. Can't be true. If it were true I wouldn't keep on being late. Lateness must be a state I enjoy. A state I prefer to the state of punctuality, the state of finishing things, the state of satisfaction. Lateness must be what I'm really good at. If I annoy, disappoint or inconvenience others with my lateness, my unfinishedness, that's their problem, isn't it? And if I disappoint, enrage, inconvenience myself that's my problem, isn't it?

Yes. That is my problem.

(I did the drawing below using the wondrous HARMONY application created by Mr.doob, Ricardo Cabello).

To round off my last post, I must say something about Snow which I have just finished reading. I now have no doubt that the mythological KA or double was present in the author's mind when he worked out the structure of this book.

First of all, the fictional narrator 'Orhan' is the double of the real author, Orhan Pamuk. Secondly, Orhan tells the story based on his dead friend Ka's diaries and re-traces Ka's journey, trying to see things as the poet did four years ago. The 'double' theme is taken up again in the close relationship between the two teen-age boys, Necip and Fazil, who read each other's minds. After Necip is shot, Fazil says to Ka: "It's possible that Necip's soul is now living inside my body."

Other instances of doubling, as well as of duplicity, are scattered throughout the story. This is particulary intriguing to me because I was searching for the lesson implied in my dream. I have yet to figure that out but never mind the dream - was I impressed by Snow?

Impressed, yes. It's an impressive achievement. If it was a sculpture, it would be a public monument standing in a town square. A realistic sculpture but with modernist touches, lots of intricately crafted detail and symbols. Was I moved by it? No. Its monumentality, its intention to be an important novel creates a distance like those barriers not letting you get too near valuable works of art in a museum. While I admire Pamuk's grasp of the complex politics and beliefs of his compatriots and the tremendous skill with which he weaves them into a story, he doesn't make me care about individual characters. Apart from being told repeatedly that Ka's love-object, Ipek, is stunningly beautiful, what do I know about her personality? It has less substance than the snowflakes which dominate the setting. I feel the same about the other protagonists (perhaps Necip is the exception). They are all actors on a stage, reading their roles, and once I've left this theatre, I forget them. The other factor which alienates me from this novel is the surfeit of information: too much, too much! Just when my attention is captured by an incident or conversation, I'm immediately pulled away to look at something else, some irrelevant detail. This is infuriating.

Voilà. I'm obviously not going to join the ranks of those who adore Orhan Pamuk's writing but I will, definitely, take my hat off to him.

MYSTERIOUS DREAM CONNECTIONS

2010-11-29T04:27:00.001Z

At about 2 am a couple of days ago I pulled out a book on Egyptian mythology from the shelf where it sits with many other books about ancient Egypt. As you know if you're a regular visitor here, I feel an intimate familarity with ancient Egyptian culture, art and ambiance, even though I have no actual connection to Egypt. It's one of those déja vu things, if you believe in reincarnation, or simply affinity if you don't. Anyway I suddenly wanted to re-read about the Ka.

In art the ka was portrayed in several ways: a person identical to the person whom it was associated with, as a shadowy figure, as a person with two upraised arms on his head.........The ka is a manifestation of vital energy........The ka could also be seen as the conscience or guide of each individual, urging kindness, quietude, honor and compassion......In images and statues of the ka, they are depicted as their owner in an idealized state of youth, vigor and beauty......The ka is the origin and giver of all the Egyptians saw as desirable, especially eternal life.

EventuaIly I went to bed and had this dream: I was watching a panel of critics discussing a book which was either called SNOW or had that word in the title. The people on the panel were very c0mplimentary about it but one of them began arguing vehemently. She was a gnarled old woman with a prominent nose and mouth and dusky skin colour. She was sarcastic about books and films portraying Jewish subjects in banal ways and I thought she meant that SNOW was one of these. But her tone suddenly changed and she began to praise it warmly, saying it wasn't like any of the others.

That's all I remember but the dream was extremely vivid, as if I'd been watching a live debate on television. When I woke up I immediately turned on the computer and googled snow to see if there is a book by that name. There is: it's SNOW by Orhan Panuk. I'd never heard of it (shame on me) so I read a summary of the plot:

Pamuk's hero is a dried-up poet named Kerim Alakusoglu, conveniently abbreviated to Ka: Ka in kar in Kars. (The word for snow in Turkish is Kar).

Though most of the early part of the story is told in the third person from Ka's point of view, an omniscient narrator sometimes makes his presence known, posing as a friend of Ka's who is telling the story based on Ka's journals and correspondence. This narrator sometimes provides the reader with information before Ka knows it or foreshadows later events in the story.

As if that wasn't enough synchronicity, I wanted to find out if there was yet another link in the dream to ponder, so I googled snow together with Jewish . I got Phoebe Snow (real name Phoebe Ann Laub) a jazz/blues singer, best known for her 1975 hit The Poetry Man, a video of which I found here . Pamuk's character in SNOW is a 'poetry man' - Phoebe Snow is Jewish but changed her name (her double, her KA).

What are all those dream and real connections trying to tell me? What do you make of this sequence of serial synchronicities:

1. Ancient Egyptian KA or double> 2. dream: discussion about book called SNOW> 3. dream: old woman with dusky skin dismisses banal Jewish productions>4. in reality SNOW is book by Orhan Panuk >5. main character is poet called KA> 6. in the book KA has a 'double' called Orhan Panuk >7. Turkish word for snow is Kar >8. singer Phoebe SNOW is Jewish, her real ('double') surname is Traub 9. another doubling: she has become a Buddhist> 10. her skin colour is dusky: people have thought she is black>11. her hit song was The Poetry Man.

I have, of course, ordered Panuk's book SNOW.

MORE ABOUT MY FATHER: Part Four

2010-11-23T02:41:00.000Z

I stayed on in Florence for a year after we all left the Villa Ulivi but that story will go into my autobio when I get around to filling in the many blanks in time and space. Right now we're talking about my Papa. In the photo below he's arriving at an airport - I'm not sure where or when - but it's so characteristic of him: the eternal traveller, always arriving or leaving

My father had many theories and one which he wrote, re-wrote and talked a great deal about over the years was called: The Focus of Perception . It was the basis for his next project and also influenced his observations of people in general. Here are some edited quotes which I've selected from his notes:

The premise of The Focus of Perception is that the mind contains a mechanism or process similar to a camera lens which, by its aperture and angle, determines the way people, situations and events are perceived and thus one's emotional and intellectual responses to them. This process is psychological, not visual, but the camera is a useful metaphor to describe it.

Not only do we contradict one another, but we also tend to contradict ourselves. Human contradiction and its effects, whether on a personal or a global scale, might be better understood if the Focus of Perception was observed in action within one's self and in others' behavior and attitudes. Relationships, whether between individuals, groups or nations, often undergo a cavalcade of contradictory states, affirmations and negations, depending on the angle at which the Focus is set, how wide the angle is and whether it is static or fluctuating.

There is a great difference between understanding another person through their focus and trying to understand them only through one's own. In the absence of a strong motivation - such as love, a specific goal, or the desire for truth - we see no reason to change our Focus of Perception and we passively accept whatever focus is provided by our upbringing, environment, or the winds of fashion. But if we become aware of our focal position in relation to others, it becomes possible to change what had seemed immutable in ourselves.

We are prisoners within the boundaries of our current focus only if we accept to be imprisoned in this optic. To change one's focal position, it is necessary first of all to change it on a specific subject or problem: to make a leap. This might result in moving to a position diametrically opposed to our current stance. With further small steps, a change may occur in our perception of the particular issue, and thence a gradual opening of our understanding of the larger picture.

Sacha's new undertaking, although rooted in the above premise, took shape in a less theoretical way. He called it Who Do You Think You Are . This happens to be the name of a current television series but I'm fairly sure they don't know that my father thought of the title long ago. Anyway the TV series is about celebrities looking into their genealogical history. Sacha's project was something else entirely.

He began by contacting three people: Françoise Sagan, whose slim first novel Bonjour Tristesse had propelled her to instant fame; Art Buchwald, the witty satirist whose regular column in the Washington Post my father loved; and Gipsy Rose Lee, the burlesque stripper/actress. When his project was described to them they agreed to take part. There was no connection between these three and I have no idea what prompted Sacha to choose them as subjects for his enquiry.

He recorded audio interviews with each of them, asking them to describe how they saw themselves. Separate interviews were then arranged with some of their friends, acquaintances and colleagues, to record their own views of these individuals. The aim of the exercise was to demonstrate that the image we have of ourselves frequently contradicts the impressions others have of us. No conclusions or judgements were offered as to which views were the 'truer' ones. We were simply asked to consider the possibility that 'who we think we are' is open to many interpretations.

In one of those amazing synchronicities that the blogosphere occasionally generates, Jean in her perceptive review of Summertime by J.M. Coetzee, seems to have tuned into my father's thinking and into what I was about to blog concerning it. She wrote on 19 November:

It's something we could all do: speculate on how our intimates might describe us. But, think about it, put yourself there... I can quickly see that I'd do one of two things: construct a rosy, seamless image - the wish-fulfilment version, or go way the other way and indulge my darkest fantasies of how they all disliked and despised me really.

The audio interviews were only the preliminary stage: Sacha's intention was to make a film, if funding could be raised. This didn't happen and Who DoYou Think You Are was shelved and forgotten. But at least the memory of it now lives on, here in this tiny corner of cyberspace.

Before ending this flashback into some of my father's creative adventures, there's one more I must mention: the thirteen minute film, Report on Love , a comic commentary on the Kinsey Report, produced and directed by Sacha in 1955.

When Dr. Kinsey first heard of the film he prepared to sue, without having seen it. But after a preview was arranged especially for him at Indiana University (where he was Professor of Zoology) he changed his mind and the film went ahead, screened in cinemas across the USA as the 'featurette' along with major films; it was even nominated for an Academy Award. Below is a write-up from Picture Week in New York.

I have a copy of the film on VHS tape and watched it again a few days ago. It is extremely dated conceptually and technically but quite clever, combining animation and live action. Light-weight stuff compared to Sacha's other projects but I think he was hoping this one would achieve commercial success. It didn't, but so what? It was not gold but a little glitter never hurt anyone.

MORE ABOUT MY FATHER: Part 3

2010-11-19T04:51:00.000Z

To give you some idea of how Sacha's concept was presented to the students, I've done the rough sketch/montage below but it's nowhere near accurate. Why didn't anyone think of keeping a photographic record of the whole experience? Too busy, I guess.

My father had gathered an enthusiastic team of volunteers and everyone pitched in with ideas and work. Two giant wooden spools were built by a local carpenter and a very long roll of canvas was wound around them. With the spools positioned an appropriate distance apart, mounted on spindles and rotated by two people standing at either end, hidden by curtains, the sequence of images painted on the canvas slowly unrolled before the audience.

The students - no more than about five or ten at a time - sat on high-backed chairs in one of the large, beautiful rooms of the house. In dim light, a recorded narration and music were played, paced to match the unwinding canvas. A film, without film technology. There were no computers, no PowerPoint, no DVDs or CDs at the time but the performance was all the more intriguing for being so low-tech and DIY.

Where is that recording of the House of Contrasts script? I don't know, but I do have a copy of some of the text. Where is that huge roll of canvas? Possibly in Rome, in storage, unless destroyed. And who painted it? Um...moi...with slight assistance from an Italian multi-media artist and conversationalist.

When I first walked into the Villa Ulivi, I was astonished by the buzz of creative activity. My mother and little brother had arrived from New York as well as several relatives from France, recruited to help with the proceedings. There were also the Italian crew and of course my older sister Annie (autobio P.16) a key player in my father's scheme. Annie was working at the time for a student travel company in New York and it was she who organised the visits of students to the House of Contrasts, as well as taking them to meet leading personalities on the Italian cultural scene. There she met her future husband, the writer Gerardo Guerrieri, but that's yet another story.

My main role was to illustrate Sacha's Dante-esque script on that huge roll of canvas but I had insisted, even before seeing it, that I would need help. So my father found and somehow - unbelievably - managed to persuade a very busy artist/architect/designer to be my 'collaborator'. This collaboration was the most enjoyable I've ever experienced but it consisted almost entirely of talking.

Before coming to Italy, I did not know that talking could be an art-form or that a mere verbal exchange could be a performance, with all the colour, magic and mystery of opera. Or that it could actually be a substitute for action. All Italians can talk this way but some are more gifted than others and Giorgio was a genius at it. I don't remember a word of what we talked about but it must have concerned the task we were supposed to be working on. Did Giorgio ever apply brush to canvas? I don't remember that either but he did have great ideas.

The canvas had to be ready for the first presentation of the summer and Giorgio was very busy with his multiple activities so I found myself inevitably and urgently responsible for covering that six-foot tall and endlessly wide ribbon of canvas with interpretations of Sacha's verbal panorama of hellish and heavenly stereotypes. I think I used a lot of red and black in painting the hellish and a lot of pastel hues for the heavenly but apart from that, don't ask me what the finished work looked like because it has entirely escaped my memory.

What I do remember nostalgically was the table at mealtimes. There were usually at least a dozen people around the long, chunky table and much laughter and animated talk while huge bowls of pasta and fresh green salad were devoured and glasses were refilled with the local wine. Outside on the stone terrace small green lizards dozed in the sun. My little brother loved the lizards and imitated their shy, watchful concentration. Here he is at that time, making like a lizard at Villa Ulivi, the House of Contrasts.

MORE ABOUT MY FATHER: Part 2

2010-11-17T03:56:00.002Z

Fast forwarding, skipping over Sacha's South American and other ventures because I want to focus on the more off-beat things his restless imagination drove him to undertake. Come to think of it, everything he undertook was off the beaten track.

Here he is in Florence - I don't know who took the above photo but it strikingly captures him in inward-turned, isolated mood, oblivious to his surroundings. Whatever the triggers which could set off his recurrent bouts of melancholy, Sacha's response was always to leave, move, travel far away and begin something new. In this instance New York was the place he left and the something new was an idea he conceived - perhaps on the way from one city to the next - for which a special house in special surroundings was required. Once an idea had taken root in my father's mind it began growing instantly, spreading antennae in all directions and locating with extraordinary serendipity all the elements needed for its realisation. Thus he found the special house in the special surroundings: it was called Villa Ulivi, within walking distance of the heart of Florence - you could see the Duomo from the rooftop terrace.

How Sacha came to discover this magnificent fifteenth century residence I do not know but he did, and it happened to be for rent, and so he rented it for several months. Apart from a photo of my recently resurrected painting (see January 20, 2010) of cypress trees in the garden, the only picture I can find of the villa is the black and white snapshot below. Yesterday, on the off-chance, I googled Villa Ulivi and...what do you know?...the Villa is alive and well and has become a hotel (I borrowed the colour picture of the house from their website). A very nice hotel apparently but I don't recognise the current interior decoration. When Sacha moved in, and later on all our family, there was very little furniture, only a few beautiful, darkly austere Renaissance antiques.

Sacha named his project The House of Contrasts. Here's a summary, taken from a description written after the event:

It was proposed that a demonstration of positive and negative stereotyped views about each other held by two cultures, American and European, presented in dramatic fashion and in uninterrupted succession, could produce an enlightening psychological shock. This shock would help to crystallize one's own manner of seeing and perhaps also come a step closer to the goal: a kinder and more tolerant understanding of one person, or one nation, towards another.

The experiment was tested on groups of American college students on a cultural tour of Italy. A Florentine villa was the setting for the demonstration and the script, narration, music and graphic presentation was prepared by voluntary collaboration between American and Europeans. The stereotype views were shown in allegorical fashion, inspired by Dante: the negative clichés were 'Inferno' while the positive ones were 'Contrastland'. The reactions, opinions and criticisms of each group of students who visited the House of Contrasts were tape-recorded to serve as valuable records for further exploration of this theme.

I was in New York pursuing my art education when my father's idea and Villa Ulivi got together and the House of Contrasts began to take shape. At first I resisted his urging me to come and work on the visual presentation - I felt it would distract me from my own path. But Sacha's power of persuasion was hard to resist, especially when it offered such an intriguing situation in such tempting surroundings.

I'd better continue this in another post, otherwise I'm just going to be at this computer all night. Part 3 coming up next - is anyone still here?

MORE

MORE ABOUT MY FATHER: Part One

2010-11-10T05:32:00.003Z

Young Sacha from a photograph NdA 2003. Acrylic on canvas. 40 cm X 30 cm

I had decided to post something on October 30th, the fourteenth anniversary of my father's final departure (1996) but I've been finding it really hard to get down to blogging recently. It could be the blogging blues, which we all experience from time to time, or it could be the advancing dark dreariness of winter, or it could be that I'm concentrating on other things.

Whatever the reason for this twelve-day delay, I will now write this post for Sacha, my dear father Alexander d'Arbeloff (not the same person as Alex V. d'Arbeloff who died in July 2008 - see my blog post July 9, 2008).

I mentioned Sacha on this page of my ongoing autobiography - yes, the autobio will be updated: it's on my to-be-continued list so of course it will be continued - and also blogged about him on October 23, 2003 but such a many-sided individual can't be summed up in a few family memories or an obituary - he deserves a whole book to himself. I wouldn't be the person to write it but there's no doubt that he had a tremendous influence on me and certain things in his story stand out particularly sharply in my mind.

Sacha had already undergone several life-shaking traumas by the time he was in his teens: boiling water from a samovar accidentally spilled on his chest when he was a child. Confusing (or repressed) memories of intense family upheavals. Seeing dead bodies on the streets of Baku during chaotic political riots. Escaping from Russia during dramatic circumstances of the revolution. A hyper-sensitive and deeply introspective young man, it's not surprising that he then had a nervous breakdown - or what we would now call clinical depression - and was sent to a sanatorium. There are a lot of blanks and question marks in the information we tried to gather about those years in Sacha's life but I do know that after some temporary periods in Switzerland and the U.S.A. he stayed in Paris and became involved in cinema and publishing.

The film-maker and film historian Kevin Brownlow when researching his book Napoleon, about Abel Gance's film of that name, interviewed Sacha in the 1980s about his role in that production (my father's comments are on pp 99-101 of Brownlow's book). Briefly: a small film company was formed by Sacha and his cousin, Jacques Grinieff and other associates. Eventually, they were able to raise the funds to make Abel Gance's ground-breaking movie. By then my father had resigned from the company but Grinieff went on to become a film producer in America. (Many many moons later, in New York, Uncle Jacques gave me a job adapting film scripts. But that's another story).

After the cinema experience, Sacha decided to publish a magazine. It was called AUDACES (boldness in the plural: boldnesses?) Below is the cover of one 1934 issue. The magazine was a mix of current events - eg: article by J.B.Priestley about an ominous fascist demonstration in Manchester. Themed interviews - eg: What role have men played in your life? answered by actresses Colette, Gaby Morlay and others. How they judge - Judges talking about their experiences. Some comic pieces. A sensational crime story. Lots of pictures of women in 'seductive' poses. Photo-montages of people in the news. Cinema reviews etc.

I don't know how long Sacha persisted in the magazine venture but apparently it was successful. It must have been around this time in Paris that he also wrote and published two novels under the pseudonym Alexandre Darlaine. One was: Il Etait Une Fois Une Femme et Une Jeune Fille (There was once a woman and a young girl). The other was titled Crépuscule de la Raison (Twilight of reason). I have a very time-scarred copy of the first. The latter was turned into a play but was never performed, although many years later, probably in the 1960s or 1970s, the well-known Italian sound-track composer, Mario Nascimbene, composed two pieces of music for it - I'm unsure about dates but I do have these music sheets: Chanson de Florine and Scène Florine et Daniel.
Sacha's novels were poetic, romantic, melancholy - more reveries than stories. I'm incapable of judging them objectively because I know that they were about his view of Blanche, my mother, and their relationship, however fictionalised.

My aim with this post is not to analyse my father's personality but simply to present some of the achievements of his life that are little known. I'm getting the references together for Part Two so don't go away.

MORE

PURSUED BY APPLES

2010-10-24T20:38:00.001+01:00

I have a thing about apples, not so much about eating them as painting them. I like eating them too but that's nothing to do with my attraction to them as models. There's something basic, down to earth and yet mysterious about the shape and colour of an apple and, if you want to dwell on the mysterious,of course there's all that mythological apple-lore. The fact that I happen to have an Apple computer is neither here or there.

Every so often I go back to painting an apple in order to try and capture what else is going on: what is Appleness? What's happening when my eyes and consciousness meet this apple? What is there that isn't obvious?

Here's my latest apple, finished yesterday, painted entirely with a palette knife. My model was just one apple placed on a slanting drawing board, supported by a bit of BluTak so it wouldn't roll down. The lower apple is not another apple but the top one repeated.

Appleness Oil on canvas. 41 cm X 30 cm October 2010

And this one, painted a few years ago in the same spirit of exploration.

Yellow apple in space Acrylic on wood. 46 cm X 28.5 cm

BUILDING BLOCKS

2010-10-17T03:07:00.001+01:00

Here they are, the things I saw in my studio out of which I composed the painting Frames of Reference.

Whether based on life or imagination, artists are always composing, assembling, organising selected fragments into something more than the sum of their parts. Not only artists - isn't everyone engaged in the same task, within the composition-factory that is the mind? Our memories, opinions, beliefs, the story of our lives - isn't all this a carefully constructed composition that we create and re-arrange daily, a work-in-progress?

How about this for an experiment:

Identify a number of things which you consider to be most significant in shaping your life, your self. Give them each a visual form - could be symbols, photos, cut-outs, whatever - doesn't have to be literal. Assemble these fragments into a composition of some kind. Publish it to your blog. Discuss!

MORE

I THINK IT'S FINISHED

2010-10-13T19:30:00.001+01:00

Unless I see something else that needs changing (and I may) Frames of Reference (formerly known as Prism, formerly known as My DNA ) is done. Here it is along with a close-up of the top left-hand corner where I've painted a version of the whole snapshot of my parents which was the basis for the two central figures.

I believe this painting is about different dimensions of space and time and maybe multiple universes but any and all interpretations are welcome.

Frames of Reference October 2010 Oil on canvas. 121cm X 91cm