I'm about to make sweeping statements
but this is my blog and I'm allowed to sweepstate as much
as I like. You are encouraged to refute, agree, elaborate,
contradict, and I hope you will do one or more of these things
because, frankly, comments are few and far between over here
lately and I'd like to boost the participatory factor. So,
here goes.
There are two types of creatives: receptives and obsessives.
Receptive-creatives have
hyper-sensitive antennae which are continually picking up
visual, verbal and subliminal information and sensations
from the surroundings. Receptive-creatives are easily distracted
because of the abundance of stimuli bombarding them. When
an object or subject captures their attention, they will
give it total concentration but only until the next
stimulus becomes impossible to ignore. The variety and intensity
of input vibrating their antennae is such that the degree
of success (in worldly terms) which their creativity achieves
depends on the amount of time they are able and willing to
give to any particular message the universe sends. A state
of readiness to absorb, combined with uncertainty about whether
the material really merits absorption, is the
receptive-creative's normal modus vivendi. I, ahem, am among
those who fit into this category.
Obsessive-creatives are driven
by a compulsion which demands single-minded focus
on a chosen path and the avoidance of anything which might
disturb, distract or question this choice. They too are receptive
but in a one-track way and they arrange their lives so as
to feed their compulsion and insist that anyone who comes
close should either support it or stay out. Dedicated, opinionated,
blinkered, uncompromising, workaholic, eccentric,
egocentric, extraordinary, are some of the adjectives
frequently used in describing them. I would prefer
to be an o-c rather than an r-c but I have
never succeeded in remodelling myself. Lucian
Freud is among those who are probably born into this
category.
I have not been one of the many admirers
of Sigmund's grandson's painting (or of his grandad for
that matter - don't let me get distracted!) but
I didn't want to miss this
exhibition because I hoped to be goaded
into pursuing a completely contrary path. So
I took my lethargic body to the Pompidou -
nowadays ressembling a decaying community centre designed
by committee - and escalated, via a bird's eye view
of the Rue Beaubourg, to the sixth floor galleries where
Freud's Atelier paintings were impressively hung.
Pompidou Centre entrance hall.
View from sixth level
of the Pompidou Centre.
I did not expect to be impressed. But
I was. Not impressed as in awestruck but as in, this
is important stuff - must sit down and take it in slowly.
First of all, his colours.
They are greys, browns, ochres, meat-red, black
and the occasional dusty yellow-green. They are Old Master-ish,
museum-ish colours, destined for posterity and weighty
gold frames, defiantly academic, you could even say anti-modernist.
Then there's the light. The grey
light of London bed-sitters in lonely winters and sweaty
summers. The cold light of dawn, post-coitum triste.
The sleepless night light of regret, apathy, desperation.
The merciless light of hospitals, morgues and bus stations
at 4 am.
Then there's the flesh,
his subject. Passive flesh
offered up to be penetrated by his dominant, hypnotic
gaze. Naked but not erotic bodies splayed in apparent abandon
on the bed, sofa or floor, seemingly obeying the master's
stage-instructions to "be themselves" but, in truth, being
only what he requires them to be. He
says that what interests him in people is their animal side
and that he likes seeing his subjects "as naturally and physically
at ease as his dog." However, far from
being at ease in their theatrical set-up, Freud's actors
are more like tranquilised laboratory animals, their vitality
suppressed, coerced by the painter's will into becoming still-life
- even the dog must relinquish all doggy energy if he's to
play a part
in a Freudian tableau. But in the coruscating
self-portraits, perhaps the only time the artist allows his
model to confront him as an equal, Freud achieves magnificent,
courageous insight.
I understand the necessity
of establishing rules of engagement when absorbed in
the intensely difficult process of looking at
and transcribing a human presence. The artist may be
inwardly
saying to his subject: go away! I mean stay,
but don't talk, don't move, don't interact, just be still
so I can observe you without being observed. So it makes
sense that Freud prefers his models to be asleep
or in a kind of trance induced by long hours of posing,
but his determined focus on flesh as meat, to the exclusion
of any other aspect of identity (as far
as he's concerned, the matiére of his portrait
of a person is that
person) must be the reason I left Lucien Freud's Atelier
very impressed, but ultimately disappointed. The old
Peggy Lee song ran through my mind..........Is
That All There Is?
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The purpose of this trip was
to accompany my sister to a worrisome medical
appointment
which, thankfully, turned out not to be as worrisome
as expected.
She went back to Rome the next day and I decided to
stay on for a few days. Unfortunately, some time
between
arrival and departure I was caught by one of those
bugs (not les
moustiques:
in addition to les
moustiques) which gets you by the throat, nose,
lungs,
limbs, intestines and joie de vivre. What with the
heat-wave
and intense pollution, joie was
drastically reduced and vivre consisted in
shuffling
very very slowly between cafés and
any place with conditioned air, a modern convenience
which
in normal times I shun, but these are not normal
times.
I had made an appointment to visit
Andrei
Korliakov as I was eager to meet the Russian
historian
who had found a long-lost painting of mine (see January
20, 2010 ) and I
brought my camera but, engrossed in conversation,
stupidly
forgot to record this encounter. Never mind, I'll do
it next
time I'm in Paris. Seeing again my bold,
enthusiastic painting
of cypress trees in Florence after all these years
was a
big thrill and I happily complied with Andrei's
request that
I write on the back to confirm it really was painted
by me.
It is now part of his very interesting collection of
works
by Russian (or Russian-connected) artists, most of
which
he discovered by chance during forays in the marché
aux puces.
Korliakov is a genial
and dedicated researcher who has made it
his life's work to build a record in photographs and
documents
of a fascinating slice of human history: the exodus
of thousands
of Russians from the cataclysmic revolution in their
homeland
to the many other countries where they started new
lives.
Working alone in his well-equipped Paris studio
(state of
the art scanner and computers) with the dogged
patience
and astute persistence of a detective, Andrei
assembles the
information which he finds or is sent to him by
exiled
Russians and their descendants, into impressive
albums that
are produced, published and distributed by himself.
His next
volume will be about Russians who went to South
America and
I promised to send him all material I have about my
father's experiences in Paraguay and Brazil. If
anyone reading
this has Russian relatives or friends with
connections
to South America, or anywhere else in the world, do
get in
touch with Andrei (email and postal address are on
his website).
Such fortuitous links are the raw material his
research
depends on.
I mentioned a painting I did
long ago
of an old man, Colonel Kermanoff, who lived near
my father's property outside Asunciòn and to my
astonishment,
Andrei instantly located a photo of Kermanoff as a
young
man: it seems he was an important person in the
pre-Soviet
army and the records show he eventually ended up in
Paraguay.
Who knew? Another serendipitous happening!
Colonel Kermanoff by NdA. Oil on canvas.
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LES MOUSTIQUES PARISIENS: 15 AUGUSTINE: Nil
(Mosquito cartoon respectfully
borrowed from here )
It
was in room 301 up
three
steep flights of stairs in a small undistinguished
hotel
near the Porte de Versailles metro station that, on
the night
of the World Cup final, I fought my own brave battle
against
a ruthless and perfectly trained team, determined to
steal at least one goblet-full of my fresh, formerly
French blood, if not the whole bloody barrel.
The temperature in Paris was
around
38 Centigrade and humid so of course I had the
window
open (air conditioning? Hahahahaha. Ventilateur? Pas
possible.)
Outside this window were other windows
and a very green, very leafy tree whose very tall
trunk
stood in a courtyard littered with indeterminate
junk
of vegetable, mineral or possibly animal origin.
How could I know that all these factors combined
provided
the perfect conditions for the enemy to perform at
its lethal
best?
The first I knew that there
even existed
an enemy in my room was when, right up against my
ear, I
heard its sinister high-pitched ziiiiiiiiieeeee cry,
instantly
setting off the rage and panic bells in my
brain.
Whether it's because that sound reminds me of
nights
under mosquito nets in Paraguay, or some more
ancient
atavistic fear, the fact is that the buzz of a
mosquito
drives me nuts, completely bonkers. I began by
merely
flailing and flapping, then hiding under the
sheet, then feeling I might suffocate, then
tried to
build a kind of tent with a suitcase supporting
the
sheet on the right, a bag on the left, and me
in the
middle preventing the sheet from sagging by
keeping
knees bent and elbows raised. When I realised I
would
have to stay awake all night to maintain this
position
I wrapped every bit of my body, apart from the
head,
tightly in the sheet, first spraying my face
with a
hair-volumising product (okay I use hair
volumiser sometimes,
okay?) because it says on the label that it
contains
limonene and didn't I read somewhere that
mosquitoes
don't like lemon? The stuff is sticky and not
meant
for the face but what the hell if it repels
mini-vampires.
Then I wanted
to watch Spain beat Holland but the
television was placed way up on the wall opposite
the bed
so I had to unwrap myself and get on a chair to
turn
it on. During this process, the dreaded
mosquito war-cry was heard again, more
piercing
than all the vuvuzuelas in Africa. This time I
yelled
back. But is a creature who's been around since
Jurassic
times going to be impressed by
a pipsqueaked FUCKOFF ? No, it is
not. My
strategy had to be more radical.
I decided to sleep
on the floor of the bathroom, the tiny
bathroom,
and to close the door so the enemy
couldn't
get in. I took the heavy bedspread, folded it
and put it down on the tiled floor,
between
the toilet, the shower cubicle and the
basin
(if there was a bathtub I would have slept in it).
Leaving
the door slightly open so I could watch
the
match in the crack I laid down in a
Z-shaped
position. Suddenly a faint movement on
the white-tiled
wall caught my eye. No no no! A
mosquito was
sitting there, calm as custard, waiting. In the
split second
before my hand obeyed my brain's order
to squash
him dead, he slipped away.
I looked upwards and noticed for the
first time
a very small open window, high on the
bathroom
wall. Kaputt my bathroom plan. But crazed
logic said that by locking him in the
bathroom, at least I could make sure this one
blood-craving
addict didn't get to me . Then
I went back to bed and sort of watched the rest of
the World
Cup final until, worn out by my inept
exertions,
the unbearable heat and the lack of
oxygen under
the covers, I drifted into unprotected
sleep.
In the morning I counted 15,
FIFTEEN
great big ugly itching flaming scarlet welts on my
right
wrist and forearm, my hip and the left side of my
face. The
buggers can score right through a cotton sheet.
Later today
I'll blog about what I did in Paris apart from
being attacked by les moustiques. Stay tuned
for a visit
to Andrei Korliakov (remember? He found my painting
of Florence
in the marché aux puces ) and also to Lucian
Freud (the paintings, not the person).
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To anyone who visits here
regularly,
sorry for the long gaps lately. I've been otherwise
engaged
but will return and take up all unfinished business
(including
La Vie en Rosé) very soon. Am away from
tomorrow
until early next week but meanwhile, here's an
update on
the painting. The palette and brushes in the corner
on the
right of this photo are the real ones - just in case
you're
wondering.
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