FROM ‘KING JANE GERMANY’
A Contemporary Poem
Over a breakfast
of corn flakes,
damp toast
a single fried egg
and metallic tea
– in the darkened and
somewhat makeshift
dining room
of a very crappy
but sort of acceptable
boarding house –
she said that
the doctor
had told her
the mystery illness
causing her delirium,
her inner emptiness,
her swollen breasts and ghostly complexion
was, in fact,
‘schizophrenia’.
Nice one.
But happily
she had already worked out
– for and by herself –
that all she really just needed was
‘more protein’ –
meaning ‘another egg’ –
for breakfast.
Later on,
some years after…
APPRECIATING CONTEMPORARY ART
Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #6
The idea behind this series is to let the individual artworks speak directly to us from their own mysterious realm, rather than interpreting and ‘explaining them away’ in conventional terms.
When it comes to Cindy Sherman it doesn’t make sense to focus on any single work and to pull it out of context — you have to enjoy her oeuvre in its magnificent totality. So the artwork above is no more than symbolic.
Cindy ‘occasionally came to work as someone else — a nurse in a white uniform, a fifties secretary-type — and everyone found that weird and funny, but…
Understanding contemporary art
A philosophical definition
Abstract: For art to be art it has to present the viewer with a distinctly out-of-the-ordinary perspective on everyday reality. Art is to be clearly differentiated from all forms of decorative craft, which are essentially concerned only with aesthetic experiences. Art is essentially about finding ways, through the manipulation and orchestration of presentational media — such as painting, sculpture, literature, film, and performance — to bring to life strange and unusual perceptions. All these media are quasi-theatrical and poetic in nature, in that they are essentially gestural, referential, and symbolic, and they present material in a condensed and allusive form…
From ‘King Jane Germany’
A Contemporary Poem
Lunchtime, and John
arrived at the dining room late as usual, long
after the dinner bell had been rung.
And on a Saturday
- when this kind of thing took place -
he would shuffle up to the dining room door,
grab on to its wooden frame,
fix his eyes on his chair at the head of the table
and then move unsteadily towards it,
desperately keen to reach safety before possibly
tumbling forward on to the carpet.
His grim deliberation meant
he had been drinking all morning,
and was by now
well beyond reach.
John liked to lie about…
APPRECIATING CONTEMPORARY ART
Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #5
(The idea behind this series is to let the individual artworks speak directly to us from their own mysterious realm, rather than interpreting and ‘explaining them away’ in conventional terms.)
Warhol’s real ‘art’ was himself, not his artworks
Andy Warhol is one of the more difficult modern artists to write about straightforwardly because, like many of the most outstanding contemporary artists, his real ‘artistry’ is not where most people instinctively think it is. …
From ‘King Jane Germany’
A contemporary poem
Whenever
you called on him
unexpectedly
in his rented room
on a hot summer’s afternoon
during our student years, you
would find him lying on the bed
totally naked, and totally
fast asleep.
Nothing wrong with that:
a hot day, a hot afternoon,
the sun blazing,
what else to do
when you’ve nothing else to do. …
APPRECIATING CONTEMPORARY ART
Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #4
(The idea behind this series is to let the individual artworks speak directly to us from their own mysterious realm, rather than interpreting and ‘explaining them away’ in conventional terms.)
‘Since the middle of the 1980s visitors to the Haus u r have been reported as having had frightening experiences inside the house.’ (Wikipedia)
For the purposes of this article Haus u.r. and Totes Haus u.r. will be referred to as if they are a single work, which, as the similarity of the names implies, just serves to confuse things nicely. Haus u.r. is a fixed three storey building in…
From ‘King Jane Germany’
A contemporary poem
We parted on bad terms, Grandad and I.
He wasn’t a blood relation, more of an in-law, but he was
‘Grandad’ to all of us all the same.
And one evening around suppertime he and I had an argument and
I had threatened — in a manner of speaking — to punch him,
which forced him into
manly posturing which
could only end with someone
–ie Grandad–
having to back down, humiliatingly.
And all about rubbing a dog’s nose in its piss
to train it, Pavlov-style, B.F. Skinner-mode, CBT-method,
not to piss that way again.
So I said that if, for example, I came up to him
and simply punched him in the…
APPRECIATING CONTEMPORARY ART
Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #3
(The idea behind this series is to let the individual artworks speak directly to us from their own mysterious realm, rather than interpreting and ‘explaining them away’ in conventional terms.)
Figure in a Landscape was once described as ‘attesting to an unspecified catastrophe’ — and it would be hard to find a better opening gambit. It puts us right where we need to be without weakening the force of the imagery in the least. All further commentary is a bit downhill after that.
Unlike Warhol, or Koons, or Beuys, Bacon himself — as a private citizen — was not a…
Appreciating contemporary art
Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #2
(The idea behind this series is to let the individual artworks speak directly to us from their own mysterious realm, rather than interpreting and ‘explaining them away’ in conventional terms.)
‘This Unnameable Little Broom’ is a 10 minute stop-motion animation — from 1985 — by the Quay Brothers.
It is often said that art reviews are written for people who will most likely never see the exhibition in question, so they have to be presented in such a way that the reader experiences the event ‘vicariously’, and so is left feeling both well informed as well as oddly involved, with…
