Summer solstice … bone and stone and feather

Rosary

Bone and stone and feather

Leaf and stick and shell,

Scent of purple heather

Sound of ocean swell.

Green of grass below me

Blue of skies above,

Iced beck burbling freely

Cooing of a dove.

Thunder up in heaven

Drizzle in the breeze,

Kronking of the raven

Snow upon the trees.

Swooping murmuration

Swirling Northern Lights

Swifts’ airborne gyration,

Bumble bee in flight.

Fledgling’s hungry calling

Curlew’s haunting cry,

Wind through grasses rushing

Breeze’s gentle sigh.

Mist through woods now pouring

Ghost of breath in air,

Sun in azure soaring

Moon in ink set fair.

Bone and stone and feather

Leaf and stick and shell,

Whatever be the weather

Such things will keep me well.

Freedom Bid

A budgie, pretty in lilac, cream and brown

Perches on the trellis,

Glancing all around and seemingly

Unafraid.

Yet just yesterday,

The next-door blackbirds lost a chick.

Fledging too soon from the shielding hedge,

It dropped from the ledge and once on the ground

Was trapped.

Easy meat for a magpie to peck.

The budgie, charming colours so striking here,

Perches on the trellis

Alongside dowdy sparrows,

Pecking at jasmine flowers.

Ceramic white petals float to the ground.

Forget the local sparrowhawk or passing peregrine.

Staying alert, a black cat leaps

To snatch.

The budgie breaks away with a squawk,

Escaping – this time at least.

But having leapt from some shielding cage

Spread its wings and flown free,

How long can it survive?

The budgie, exotic in its parrot hues

Returns to the trellis,

Glancing all around and seemingly

Still unafraid.

But up and down and all around,

They watch.

And wait.

4 June 2020

Haring exhibition shows what 'pop art' can be

Untitled (Apartheid) 1984

It’s not uncommon to visit an exhibition and find something that you didn’t expect. More rarely, though, is visiting an exhibition that goes way beyond the unexpected and offers something revelatory.

The Keith Haring exhibition, which opened last month at Tate Liverpool, is in the latter category.

Knowing I would be in Liverpool for a week for work, I’d done my usual and checked what was on art wise in the city.

There was an exhibition of Charles Rennie MacIntosh at the Walker (on until 26 August), but it’s a push to get the time, during a particularly intense working week, to get that ‘far’ from the conference centre.

Mickey Mouse eyes

However, the Haring exhibition was scheduled to have just opened at the Tate, which is only a short walk away from where I would be working, so it was a simple matter of remembering to pack my Tate membership card.

I was familiar with Haring’s simple figures – pop art’s answer to Lowry’s stick figures. In the 1980s, you couldn’t miss them – they were ubiquitous.

But context can make all the difference.

Here, we see works from the very beginning of Haring’s all-too-short career: the early Mickey Mouse cartoon eyes and examples of the drawings that Haring, with a deep belief in art being for everyone, executed on paper stuck up in New York Metro stations.

On a personal note – God, I remember drawing those eyes myself. Since, I’ve remembered how I drew and then drew again Mickey Mouse and more off the Disney icons.

But setting such personal memories aside, these are interesting enough and show his style evolving, but what really starts to resonate is later works.

Silence = Death

Haring rarely titled his works, so the only guideline to what he wanted to say is mostly on the surface he worked on – and his ‘canvases’ ranged from the yellow hood of a New York taxi to squares of tarpaulin.

While I knew that Haring had died of AIDS-related causes – and had, late in his life, campaigned around HIV/AIDS – I had not been aware that his political awareness had begun far earlier and went far beyond that.

Perhaps the best example of the HIV/AIDS works is 1989’s Silence = Death, a moving combination of the pink triangle and the idea of ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’.

But in terms of wider political awareness, there are works here that specifically speak out against apartheid in South Africa, while others examine the links between money and war.

An A5 page of my studies from The Matrix

Even more fascinating – and complex – are Haring’s works exploring new technologies. Intrigued by the possibilities offered by growing computerisation, the artist was also aware that there could be downsides.

It’s been suggested that Haring’s line can be compared to Picasso’s, but in it’s effortless, it reminds me more of Matisse – and indeed, many of the later works have a decorative quality, created out of densely-packed glyphs, that is pure Matisse too.

And as glyphs, they also have a sense of continuing a form of human expression that is millennia old.

The vast (and unusually titled) The Matrix, from 1983, seems at first almost abstract: it needs attention to understand anything it, so densely is it packed with ideas.

A day after my visit I returned in a lunch break, complete with sketchbook and pens. Trying to replicate some of the figures is a great way to more fully appreciate the sureness of Haring’s line.

Untitled, 1983

But back to the complexity of technology. Could aliens save us – or slaughter us? Will technology enslave us? Will we end up fucking computers or being fucked by them?

Things here are not necessarily as obvious as they seem. The last works displayed are Boschian in their nightmare view.

Equally interesting are works such as No Sin ... run off on printers, yet interestingly designed and with an eye to mass communication of an idea. 

This is the first exhibition of Haring’s work in the UK.

It’s a revelatory experience: work that built upon pop culture and pop art – Haring might have been the successor to Warhol and Lichtenstein, but he was far more grounded in the community in which he lived and worked, and in political struggle, while he also believed in art for all.

Untitled, 1984 –  no doubt a Boschian hell, though

While I have seen little Warhol and only a small Lichtenstein exhibition (ironically, at Tate Liverpool a year or so ago), I would suggest that Haring was streets above both of them.

In his work, there are what now seem prophetic questions about the nature of technology.

While the last stage of his career was bound up with his own struggle with HIV/AIDS, there is no self-pity and no mawkishness anywhere, but a boisterous sense of joy that is present in every line he executed.

In his work, Haring often dealt with death and the means – or potential means of it. Yet ultimately, this is a life-affirming journey: his work bows to nobody and no god. It is out, it is not ashamed and it is most avowedly concerned with equality for all

It is on until November and is well worth a visit.

Keith Haring is on at Tate Liverpool until 10 November. Find out more here.

Matisse drawings create an exhibition of beautiful purity

“Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.”

That quote is at the heart of a new exhibition celebrating Henri Matisse’s mastery of line drawing, which opens tonight at the Eames Fine Art Gallery in south London.

In our familiarity with Matisse as a master of vibrant colour, it’s easy to forget the striking simplicity and purity of his drawing.

Throughout much of his career, he also utilised a wide variety of printing techniques, and the collection that the gallery has put together unites lithographs and etchings to great effect.

However easy he made drawing look, Matisse was quite clear that it was an effect that resulted from long discipline.

“If I trust my drawing hand,” he said, “it is because, in training it to serve me, I forced myself never to let it take precedence over my feelings.”

The works here – and all are available for sale, with prices ranging from £400 to £4,000 – are linked by poetry.

From Florilège des Amors de Ronsard

Matisse himself loved poetry so much that he would start each day with reading verse before he began work.

The prints in this exhibition come from three suites: Poésies from 1932 was inspired by the work of the same name by the 19^th century French poet Stéphane Mallard, while Florilége des Amours de Ronsard from 1948 illustrated the courtly love poems of 16^th century poet Pierre de Ronsard.

The third series was inspired by the poetry of Charles-Antoine Nau, which was in turn inspired by visits to the Caribbean and, in particular, Martinique.

Years after Nau’s death, Matisse decided to create an album of poems, linked to a series of lithographic studies of models from Martinique.

The project began in 1945 and was completed by midway through the following year, but the album remained unpublished.

In 1972, 18 years after the artist’s death, his heirs and Fernand Moulot, the intended printer, agreed to print the album as Poésies Antillaises.

Portrait of Charles-Antoine Nau

“I have always considered drawing not as an exercise of particular dexterity … but as a means deliberately simplified so as to give simplicity and spontaneity to the expression, which should speak without clumsiness, directly to the mind of the spectator,” stated Matisse.

Here we see that simplicity in all its beauty: works that seem at once light years away from the bright textures and decoration that filled so many of the artist’s canvases, and yet also so instantly recognisable as works by the same man.

As if to remind us of the contrast and connection, a cabinet holds a vividly-coloured lithograph of a cut out from 1954, the year of Matisse’s death.

It is a joy to be able to let the eye take a walk around the lines of such deceptively straightforward drawings – a reminder (were it needed) of Matisse’s timelessness.

Matisse – The advantage of permanence opens tonight and runs until 30 October at Eames Fine Art Gallery, 58 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UD.

Find out more at www.eamesfineart.com.

Graphic genius: Escher at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

House of Stairs

Now don’t get me wrong: regenerating 10 derelict houses is A Good Thing – but come on, is it really art?

That is the question triggered by the announcement a few weeks ago that this year’s Turner Prize has been awarded to Assemble, an architecture and design collective, for its work on derelict properties in Toxteth, Liverpool.

Of course, if you can label a ‘supernatural study centre, which screens interviews with people who claim to have had paranormal activities as ‘art’, then perhaps it is.

If you can use ‘art’ to describe an avant-garde, a cappella 24-minute opera (rather than ‘music’ or ‘opera’), then that regeneration might well qualify as art.

Yet it is indicative of the mess that art is in these days – not least in the UK – and of the just how far up it’s own fundament that the art establishment is, that it still treats with disdain anything that might be a bit ‘graphic’ – and that’s not ‘graphic’ in the sexual sense.

All of which brings us to what is one of the best exhibitions to be seen on these shores this year, having first been seen at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and now at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Ascending and Descending

The Amazing World of MC Escher is the first major UK retrospective – even more incredible when you consider that there us only example of his work on display in a UK gallery (Day and Night at the Hunterian in Glasgow).

Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands in 1898. A sickly child, he failed his final exams – except for maths – and went to study architecture at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem, before he was talent-spotted by the head of the graphic art section and hauled across to that discipline.

If his name isn’t on the tip of everyone’s tongue, millions are familiar with his work – particularly the illusory pieces that feature, for instance, impossible staircases.

Adored by mathematicians and hippies alike, he remains suspect for the art establishment – doubtless not least because he was a graphic artist.

And in an era when UK art schools no longer even bother to teach drawing, his dazzling skills as a draughtsman could be viewed as unfashionable for those who might prefer to pretend to enjoy turgid filmed rants or photographs of ancient vases being vandalised.

The works are even more extraordinary when you realise that many of them are prints – and as someone who has done a teensy weensy bit of printing this year, the level of complexity and detail proved almost mind blowing.

Reptiles

The most famous works are here: the illusions of impossible buildings include Ascending and Descending, a lithograph from 1960, which was one of the first of Escher’s works that I became aware of – if memory serves me correctly, via a feature on Blue Peter.

These works also include House of Stairs, a 1951 lithograph, with its rather delightful little ‘curl-ups’ trundling up and down and around.

And there are also pieces that demonstrate Escher’s fascinating with representing flat and three-dimensional objects, as with the little Reptiles (1943) that crawl out of the paper and become ‘real’ before crawling back into the paper, while Drawing Hands (1948) is another dazzling example of that same fascination.

You can quite easily get lost in 1938’s iconic Day and Night, which incorporates Escher’s famous tessellations – a technique inspired by studying Islamic geometric patterns during a trip to Alhambra in Granada.

Day and Night

The tessellation-based lithograph, Encounter, from 1944 has something about it that evokes Dante – a point that may (or may not) be related to its being produced during WWII.

And of the tessellations, Metamorphosis II, a woodcut from 1939, takes us on an extraordinary graphic journey of transformation – here, taking up one wall of the exhibition rooms.

The statistics are incredible. This print measures 19.2 by 389.5 cm and was printed from 20 blocks on 3 combined sheets.

A similar, but much larger version – Metamorphosis III – of this adorned the post office on the Kerkplein in the Hague, made in 1967-8 as a commission. It was moved to a new home at Schipol Airport in 2008.

Still Life and Street

But as with all the works on display in Dulwich, here you have a supperb opportunity to get really close up to them to be able to revel in the detail.

Eye, with its reflected human skull, is one of his eight mezzotints and has wonderful Manet-like blacks – evidence (were it required) of Escher’s mastery of more than one print-making technique.

But there are plenty of less-familiar works here too.

For me, one of his earliest works, the woodcut Bonifacio (1928) created after visiting Corsica, is just astonishing – not least for the extraordinary variety of marks that he used.

Still Life and Street, a woodcut from 1937, is one of those deceptive pieces that it takes a moment to realise are impossible.

Bonifacio

For all the surreal nature of much of Escher’s work, he was not attached to Surrealism and doesn’t seem to have known or communicated with any of the Surrealists artists.

For all that his work appealed to the likes of hippies and the Flower Power generation, he refused a commission for Rolling Stones cover after Mick Jagger made the mistake of writing to him by his first name.

A quiet man, he was far more interested in corresponding with mathematicians, Harold Coxeter and Roger Penrose.

But that’s not to say that his works are po-faced. They’re often playful and full of irony. And they remain technically astonishing.

A relatively small exhibition by the standards of the vast blockbusters found in central London galleries in recent years, it nonetheless takes plenty of time to view – simply because you need the time to concentrate and digest.

But if the art establishment continues to turn up its nose, then that should not stop us relishing just what a fabulous artist Escher was and just what a magnificent legacy he leaves – and as an example of just what graphic art can mean.

The Amazing World of MC Escher is at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until 17 January. Find out more at dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk.

Snapshots of the morning commute

For many millions of Britons, the working day starts with a journey. It may be many miles or not so many; it may take hours or could be numbered in the minutes.

But whether on foot or by car, bus, train or tram, we travel to our places of work.

And while many people use that time to listen to music, read – or check up on social media and email – others have discovered that you happily use it as art time.

My morning journey usually takes around half an hour on two buses, so there’s not really time to sketch much, while I find that having nothing to rest on is awkward, particularly when you’re moving as well.

Then there’s always the question of whether people will be getting off at the next stop, leaving you with just the beginnings of a sketch.

But since I have, for the best part of the last year, adopted a routine of travelling early and then spending an hour over coffee in a café near work, that’s the drawing time.

It makes a good and relaxing start to a day, but it’s also a discipline and a challenge – the former simply because it has now become a habit to sketch/draw every day, which is good practice, and the latter, simply because of subject matter.

There’s only so many times I can draw what’s on the table in front of me or my surroundings.

Sometimes, I’ve created a still life out of what’s in my bag or even something I’ve carried with me for the purpose.

But another way around this is provided by my fellow travellers.

If there isn’t time to actually get out the pens and sketchbook on the bus, there’s often time to snap off a surreptitious shot on my phone – and then draw from that when sitting down with a coffee.

Street photography taught me some years ago that people are often oblivious to a great big camera being pointed in their direction, so the smartphone version is no difficulty.

That having been said, though, it does mean that all of the pictures are particularly well lit – even more so at this time of year when my morning journey takes place well before it’s light – while focus can also sometimes be a bit askance as we jolt around London’s roads.

But that, I think, can also add to the challenge – not least because a lack of precise detail can help you remember to look for the spirit of the picture without fretting about it being photographic (a trap I can still fall into).

It’s particularly fascinating to see how people lock themselves into a personal bubble, often – but not always – with music and/or social media/email.

There’s a tendency to consider these things as the preserve mainly of the young – to an extent that, in Germany at least, it’s even entered the language.

In a look at some of the best new words or phrases of the past year, mentalfloss.com highlighted the delightful ‘Generation Kopf unten’ – or ‘generation head down’ to give it its literal translation – as being a description of the generation that is always looking down at assorted devices.

As a slight aside, I love the combination of wonderful German literalness of this – the nation’s language keepers did worry about whether a TV picture should be ‘on’ or ‘in’ the screen – and the sense of it representing a far wider idea.

Anyway, as some of the sketches here show, it’s far from being a generational rule in London.

People are, of course, fascinating. And catching them candidly offers a totally different result than having anyone pose for you.

One of the things that these illustrate is the sense of how people use the in-between time that bridges home and work, when our options are limited by the facts of the journey, but these days, increased by technology.

But perhaps that is also indicative of why I hear so very few actual conversations on the bus too. They reveal a sense of isolation that is also indicative of a big city.

In the winter, when people are bundled up against the inclement weather, that isolation – that creation of a personal bubble – seems even more complete.

I’m beginning to see this as a project. After all, it records a different London from the one so often recorded: this is an early-morning city of ordinary people going to work, getting themselves psyched for the working day ahead – the motor of the capital.

They range from administration staff to cleaners some of the thousands of construction workers that are changing the landscape of the city – and goodness knows how many more roles that the city rarely celebrates, but without which it could not survive.

The evening bus rides home are different: more crowded and more noisy – not least with young people heading home from school and college, plus shoppers with the same aim in mind.

I hope you enjoy the selection of pictures posted here: it’s probably fair to say that, since these have all been done in the last three months, I’m on the cusp of becoming expert at drawing huge, padded coats.

Some are very light sketches. Other, depending almost entirely on what I was able to snap and from what position, are closer to portraits. I think that both sorts have a value.

From the top, the first one was done this morning – and what a wonderful look of concentration she has.

In the second, the huge hood makes me think of a fantasy character: every time that I look at this I think that he could be a modern version of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.

There’s no gadget component to the third, but again, what a characterful face – and that is worth its weight in gold.

In the fourth, her beautifully-done hairstyle made me think of Josephine Baker, while I found it amusing that she was ‘plugged’ in to two devices.

The fifth down was the first I did (and is the only one done in sepia ink) and again, the concentration is extraordinary.

The sixth has a lovely sense of dignity – it was the one time thus far I've been tempted to add colour, since her dainty umbrella was red: a massive contrast with the heavy clothing.

The seventh also shows great dignity – and great serenity; newspaper folded neatly on his lap as we approached his stop.

The eighth is one of the sketchier pieces, but gives a little more of a sense of physical context.

The ninth gives more context yet, but still conveys the sense in which, at that time of day, people are very much in their own bubbles and concentrating on the day ahead

All are in black India ink (apart from the one mentioned above), on light-weight 16.5x15.5cm paper that is slightly tinted. I have made sure that all scans are on the same basis.


• All drawings copyright.