We need to talk about Rupert Murdoch

I have just finished Lionel Shrivers extraordinary novel, "We need to talk about Kevin". I found the book extremely thought-provoking. It made me recall a conference that I attended many years ago on Attachment Theory at the Tavistock Institute in London. This conference too was very thought-provoking and I remember discussing with a friend of mine the nature of delinquency and who as a society we concentrated our attention upon when considering this issue. It seemed to both of us that society tended to focus on individuals who fit into the category of generally socially estranged, low income youth who commit acts of petty violence or vandalism. These acts clearly have a great impact on those who are directly affected and through the lense of the media they become a concern to all of us. However, for my friend and I there were other kinds of delinquents who escape in this way the attention of the media. Indeed, in one specific case they are the media. Reading Shrivers book makes one wonder why a boy turns into a mass school playground killer, is this nature or nurture. I want to ask the question as to why certain individuals grow up to become individuals with enormous power but seem to pass below the radar of this kind of analysis. The impact of Kevin is direct and visceral. The impact of other well known figures in our society is more blurred and perhaps less amenable to the kind of analysis Shriver undertakes for Kevin but I am convinced that "We need to talk about Rupert Murdoch."

Acting The Part

We live in strange times. Authenticity is a key aspect of the current Zeitgeist. I have only watched about ten minutes of "Big Brother" and this was enough. It bored me to pieces. I didn't get it. Why? The thing that struck me immediately was that these supposed "real people" were clearly acting. Now I have never been a great theatrical fan. I have seen some wonderful productions but I have also seen things in west end theatres that have made me want to cringe in my seat. I do however love cinema and in this context the performance of the actors is critical to the emotional experience. But there is something curious going on here too. The bigger the name of the actor (with some exceptions) the less I am impressed by their performances. I think this is partly because we see these "actors" in the media to such an extent that it becomes difficult to separate their persona from the part they are playing. Another thing is the obsession the media seems to have with, already well known personalities, taking part in TV shows where they are doing something other than what they are essentially known for. Whether this be dancing, cooking, surviving, or whatever, they are are playing another role for our supposed entertainment. It could be said that one reason why this obsession with "reality TV" has emerged is because it is cheap television but another factor is that personalities have become more important than expertise. We want to see the people that we know as personalities undertaking almost anything so long as they are there. I must say that for my taste this is unsavoury. I think I could finally say that it would be the end of the world as we know it if David Attenborough was seen on some reality TV programme learning how to cook or garden or something.

Old Enemies

Damien Hirst's recent decision to sell some of his work directly through auction at Sotheby's rather than through the more traditional means of galleries brings up the old question of old enemies. In my experience there is always going to be a friction between artist and gallery. Having run a gallery and as a practising artist I feel that Damien may be being a touch too sensitive about the "snotty" gallerists, after all, at an earlier stage in his carreer they were essential to him. Indeed, one of the criticisms that might be levelled at Damien Hirst is that he is the product of the gallery world. I do not think that his work has come to the public attention as cream simply rising to the surface. For good or for bad galleries make artists in this day and age. I happen to be quite a fan of some of his work and can understand why he would rather Robert Hughes leaves him alone. There is good and bad in the ouevre of Hirst but this also so true of many other great artists, Picasso being a very well known example. By the by, anyone interested in this question should read the Success and Failure of Picasso by John Berger. A great book.
I discovered as a gallery owner that the maxim that "if the work sells this is because the artist is great and if it doesn't sell, it is the fault of the gallery."

Cy Twombly and the rain

Cy Twombly I do not get. The name is magnificent. The work has never touched me. I know many people who would disagree with me but the majority of his work leaves me stone cold. I wonder why? I mean that. Is it that I can't get in touch with some part of me? Is the problem me and not the work? I don't think so. For me his work is essentially vacuous in that it leaves no trace on my memory. I cannot recall in my head a Cy Twombly moments after having looked at one. For me I like an image to sear itself into my memory. For example, there is a painting by Howard Hodgkin with a title something like "After Rain". The first time I ever saw this painting I almost cried. It did not represent a physical image but contained everything in the feeling. I feel as if Cy Twombly is trying to tell me something but the language that he uses is in itself confused. I think it is work that deludes rather than illuminates. This of course may be its purpose but I doubt it. I am sure that he is earnest but I suspect that those that are around him might be less so.

Gehart Richter and Duality

Richter is one of the great living artists. His work is sometimes astonishing. I have often shown people his figurative paintings and they cannot believe that these are paint and not photography. And yet of course they are photography translated into paint. That is why he is so interesting. He is still working on this complex relationship between the eye of the camera and the eye of the artist. But if this were all I think it could be argued that Chuck Close maybe made this theme his own with the great paintings of the 60 and 70s. I remember standing in a gallery in Frankfurt and there was this huge Chuck Close on the wall in front of me. Some Japanese came up to me and asked whether the image was a large photograph or a painting? In the end does it matter? Well I guess it does for some reason. We love to think that the hand of person can achieve what a machine can achieve. Such a strange game, like a machine conducting an orchestra. We have always battled with machines. We probably always will. But Richter has a dual personality. Along with these extraordinary figurative images comes the "abstract" work. Paintings that are about pushing paint across a surface. Some people think these images are soulless as they are about the mechanics of paintings. They resemble the pallet of the artists at the end of work. Smudged paint that is often more beautiful than the image on the canvas. Perhaps this is it. Both the work from photographs and the abstract paintings are just the result of an artist at work who knows that at the end of the day, the image is all but the hand of the artist is the genius.

The Benefit Worker

I heard the other day that the painting of the Benefit Worker by Lucien Freud is expected to reach 17 million (something) at auction. There was interview with the famous model for this painting. The interviewers on the BBC were saying how much more attractive the real woman was from the model. "You are prettier than the painting". Can we not escape this trite observation? Who cares? The painting is magnificent. She is beautiful in the painting. But, maybe, as Marcel Duchamp once said, she has a beauty that is devoid of the notion of beauty. I feel that we are so bound by conventional notions of beauty that we don`t look any more. The plastic faces of CNN, the plastic people who are striving for beauty are missing something. The Benefit Worker in the painting is as beautiful as the rolling hills of the Dales, the cragginess of a mountain side. What she is not is an airbrushed vacuum.

True of False?

I love Cezanne. For me he is the great father of modern painting (as he is for many artists). The apples of Cezanne are THE apples. By this I mean that they are not real apples they are the essence, the "last" from which all other apples come. They seem to possess a form that is beyond explanation. They hover and wobble, they curve in space and have a weight that seems to pull them into both a metaphysical and quantum place. And then there is colour. Colour that screams at you. "I am an apple but not as you know it. Apples are made from me". But there is one very curious aspect to these apples. I do not know whether this true or false but I have read that due to Cezanne´s painstacking way of working, the fruit that he wanted to paint went rotten before he had finished. He therefore had wax fruit made so that he could spend the hours he needed to finish the work. This raises an interesting question. When I look at this fruit I am looking at a painting of wax fruit transformed into the essential fruit. Strange and wonderful.

Dylan gets Pulitzer

At last. I would like to argue that Bob Dylan is the greatest artist of the twentieth century. I shall try to expand on this claim. I cannot be considered to be a Bob-Cat in the true sense of the term. I do not have every detail of his life etched on my memory, I do not have every version of every song that he has written over the last forty years and I do not sit and try to interpret all of his words. However, I do love his work and what is more I think he has a genuine claim to be the most important artist of the twentieth century. There are many reasons for this. The twentieth century was the period in which popular culture was created (or at least became recognised as being significant). It was also the century of popular revolution and an explosion in methods of reproduction. The century saw art movements such as surrealism, cubism, pop, and minimalism all flourish in the world of the visual arts. In music Stravinsky, Stockhausen and others radically changed the way in which we thought about discord. In poetry and writing James Joyce, TS Eliot, Jack Kerouac and many others changed the way in which the word and the idea of story was presented. In popular music Elvis created the mega-star, in painting Salvador Dali created the character of the artist. And then along came Bob Dylan. A gawky teenager with a mind like a sponge soaking up all of these different influences mixed with a cynical astringency that hit the nerve of many of the youth of his time. But it was more than this that he achieved. He created a bridge between the notion of pop culture (as perhaps defined by Elvis) and high-brow culture. I do not believe that there is anyone else in the twentieth century who can lay claim to this extraordinary achievement. He has continually tried to change, never comfortable with being boxed in by others interpretations. This cannot be said of both Dali and Picasso. Dylan explores the domain of being human. He is neither a prophet nor a saint but if the twentieth century has an artist who embraces the cultural achievements of the century in one body of work, for me this is Dylan.

Flesh in the Age of Plastic Surgery

Lucien Freud paints us as we really are. I do not give any credence to the notion of him as a post-Freudian painter. Indeed, I would say that he is the opposite of this. It seems to me that the importance of Lucien Freud is that he is the painter of flesh as independent of psycho-analysis. These people are mirrors to ourselves. Maybe it is because I am reaching fifty that I see in these bodies what I see in the mirror. Freud has escaped the Greek and Roman notions of perfection in human form. These lumps, creases, bumps are us. Maybe some people feel uneasy in their presence as they all too convincingly portray our frailties and yet I also feel that they pass dignity to us. These are not air-brushed humans but living and breathing people captured on canvas. I once had the pleasure of briefly talking to Lucien Freud. I so wanted to tell him how much I loved his strange paintings. Most of all I wanted to tell him that he made me feel real.

Are the Diamonds Real?

Are the Diamonds Real? This question comes from seeing images of the skull (For the Love of God) by Damien Hirst. It strikes me that the greatest irony of this piece would be for the diamonds to be fake. It is interesting that according to one report I have heard, the sale of this piece for about 50 million (UKS) is "shrouded in mystery". Maybe because the diamonds are fake. Under-pining this is a question about the art within the piece. To my mind it does not really work if the diamonds are real. Why make them real? Art is artifice. The point about art is that it should hit us at an angle. "For the love of God" suggests many things about the time we live and the times before. Money, greed, the inevitability of death, various religious connotations etc. but if the skull is also about the notion of something being fake when it is presented as being real then I think it becomes more interesting. An art critic who shall remain nameless wrote about the experience of seeing and being close to the skull. His words reflected a rather grotesque slavishness, not to the art or the artist but to the money ostensibly built into this piece. For my money, I hope it is a fake.