Discovering art in the internet age

Short and Stout by Susan Harrell

After musing over the merits of this year’s Turner Prize nominees – and trying to remain open-minded and positive – I was left not with any sense of elation or revelation, but certainly with a need to go back and look at some rather more ‘traditional’ work.

If the big galleries seem to obsess about the latest trend in conceptual art, then the screen on your desk or your smartphone can provide a door to a world where painting and drawing and printing are alive and well – and most certainly not just ‘stuck in the past’.

Technologies may change, new materials may be developed, but that doesn’t have to mean that the only way to approach art in today’s world is a dumbing-down of traditional art skills: rather, it can provide the chance to explore new ways of creating visual images.

Moscow Taxi by Mattias Adolfsson

And so, remembering August’s exercise, which came about as a direct response to an online conversation where someone was voicing the doubt that any real art existed any more, here is another set of brief introductions to artists and their work that I have encountered in cyberspace.

They deliberately range across style, subject and medium – and also place: one of the great advantages of the internet is that it allows us to find things from the other side of the world that we should not otherwise be likely to know about.

But then again, art is a universal.

Southwold by Annie Cowdrey

Annie Cowdrey’s work is varied, from pen and ink to oil to watercolour to lino cuts; while her subjects range from landscape to portraiture.

Based in the south west of France (lucky, lucky her), she maintains a particular interest in the processes of art.

It’s well worth reading any notes she makes on works: for instance, her comments on how working on a portrait is not just about the subject but about the artist themselves, is a fascinating idea.

Three Trees by Annie Cowdrey

It’s so easy to view the artist simply as a conduit when it comes to portrayals of other people, but inevitably part of the painter comes through in the subject.

Her works in white ink on black paper – particularly those featuring trees – have a ghostly and almost mythical quality. They’re so simple, one might think, but they are also so effective that they stay long in the mind.

Personally, they instantly conjure childhood journeys from Tebay to Newbiggin on dark nights, when the car lights lit up the skeletal trees ahead.

Roy's lillies

You can follow Annie in Twitter at @anniethepainter. And find out more at anniethepainter.com.

@fabartstuff is different to anything in the realm of art that I’ve written about previously.

This is a three-way, Twitter collaboration between Dr Theresa Porrett, who works in the NHS supporting nurse specialists, and describes herself as a “would-be photo journalist”, health policy analyst, writer and commentator Roy Lilley, and digital professional Fran Maher.

Their feed offers a range of art-related tweets, including retweets of works by various artists, but it also includes Lilley’s own iPad pictures, which are frankly amazing.

His results are put into particularly sharp perspective by my own rather clumsy digital efforts – ‘how on earth do you even find a stylus that works properly on an iPad?’ I find myself asking, every time a new work pops up on my Twitter feed.

St Paul's by Roy Lilley

And that is no minor question. But even such a technology-related matter doesn’t alter the basic point that, the tech aside, he’s simply a damned good artist.

Although he also paints traditional watercolours too, Lilley’s portraits and landscapes done on the tablet have a distinctive and highly effective style, and are a prefect illustration of what I mean by new technologies not meaning a waning of skills.

@fabartstuff is new, but what it also shows is just how much talent for and love of art there is out there, across all walks of life – and also how the internet can offer us a portal both to discover and share a wide range of art.

Washed Clean by Susan Harrell

Meanwhile, taking a leap across The Pond, Susan Harrell is a self-trained oil painter from North Carolina, who creates photorealistic works on canvas, wood and aluminium.

I’ve loved photorealism since my teens, and these works simply make me awed at the effect.

Her work ranges across subjects, but it’s in her still life paintings where the approach really works – not least in her sometimes quirky compositions and unusual takes on otherwise traditional subjects.

In the 2013 oil on panel, Washed Clean, for instance, she takes a very conventional bunch of red grapes, but gives it a distinctly modern twist by painting it from a bird’s eye view, in a metal colander, gaining wonderful light, textures and reflections in the process.

Three's Company by Susan Harrell

Short and Stout is a beautifully-realised picture of an old-fashioned, stove-top kettle – but standing outside, so that the sky and landscape are reflected in the curved metal.

Three’s Company takes a trio of apples, but this is no cliché. Instead, she paints two of them in a damp plastic bag that is clinging, in places, to the fruits.

Follow Susan at ‪@susanharrellart and find out more about her work at www.susanharrell.com. 

David Stamp hails from Plymouth and is now based on the other side of the Tamar in Cornwall.

Self taught, he works in acrylic, watercolour and mixed media.

We Have Green Light by David Stamp

We Have the Green Light – a mixed-media, semi-abstract work – is indicative of the light that he conveys in his flower paintings.

And here seems the perfect moment to mention another little point: David’s subjects matters of choice include flowers – surely a ‘feminine’ subject, while Susan Harrell’s photorealism is a style that is most often associated with male artists.

The reality is that art is a world where we can find such stereotypical and limiting ideas being happily ignored, as artists find and develop the styles that suit them – not on the basis of preconceived gender roles.

Market Jew Street, Penzanze by David Stamp

But back to David’s work. The mixed-media, semi-abstract approach is not just to be found in the flower paintings.

Market Jew Street, Penzance (the name comes from the Cornish, Marghas Yow, which means Thursday Market), includes aspects of collage and, as David himself challenges viewers: “spot the tin mine chimney in the centre”.

How much more Cornish can you get?

To find out more, David’s own website is at ‪davidstamp.co.uk‪, while he tweets at @stamper485‪.

The sheer breadth of art that you can find online is illustrated by ‪@GardenGallery2, which‪ is the Twitter feed for Frances, a Derbyshire-based artist who creates felted art, most of which is inspired by the wildlife in that county.

Felted Hare by Garden Gallery

This is art that is craft-based – which would have been looked down on snootily in the past.

The works produced have lovely colour, while the felting provides textural interests that Frances matches extremely well to her subjects.

Frances doesn’t appear to have any obvious outlet for selling her works, so – and I’m guessing here – for her, this seems to be mainly a hobby.

It’s another way of seeing that the desire to create goes far beyond the walls of galleries and beyond those who studied at art school.

The internet offers the chance to explore a hugely democratic world of art.

‪Check out (and ‘like’!) her Facebook page for more examples of her work.

Raygun by Mattias Adolfsson

Mattias Adolfsson is a freelance illustrator from Sweden, producing some highly imaginative – and fun – ink drawings and, with these, some exquisite books.

Raygun, for instance, brings to mind steampunk, but then gives it a delightful, fantastical spin by turning a sci-fi hand weapon into a dragon.

Similarly, Unorthodox Friendship takes the idea of a boy meeting a dinosaur and turns that on its head by making both of them robots.

These works have real charm and humour, while his blog is a wonderful insight into an artist’s sketchbooks: Moscow Taxi is gloriously, bonkersly detailed – something that’s far from unique in Mattias’s work.

Unorthodox Friendship by Mattias Adopfsson

Ilustration is a particular art form, but what you find when looking at works like these is that it also provokes another way of examining that old question about what constitutes art, particularly when it comes to highly graphic work.

When I was in my teens and my teachers were busy mapping out a career path for me as a graphic artist, I couldn’t see that as having any link with ‘fine art’. Or put another way, with what I considered to be ‘real’ art.

Knight by Roy Lilley

Nowadays, I look at works like this and conclude that they’re all art, and that one thing that conceptual art achieves, oddly enough, is to help to eliminate some of the old definitions that created a sort of artistic caste system.

And after all, who paints history or mythological or religious scenes any more?

So whether it’s Mattias’s illustrations or Garden Gallery’s felted hares or Roy Lilley’s digital creations, it’s all art: simples.

You’ll find Mattias’s blog at mattiasa.blogspot.co.uk and you can follow him on Twitter at ‪@MattiasInk‪.

Turner Prize nominees offer no delights

Okay, m'kay?

A few weeks ago, with my new(ish) Tate membership card clutched firmly in hand, I was enjoying a wander around the Tate Britain, when I spotted the door for the galleries where this year’s four Turner Prize nominees are exhibiting.

Now in the past that would have had me scuttling away, but the past is a different country, and armed with the knowledge that I could enter without having to pay any extra, I decided to grasp the opportunity.

Pushing beyond the heavy door, I tried to shove my equally weighty reservations firmly to the back of my head and maintain as open a mind as possible.

First up was artist and composer James Richards, who uses ‘found images’ in his own black and white films. His entry here, Rosebud, includes, for instance, mutilated photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Man Ray that he found in a public library in Japan.

The methodical efforts of an anonymous individual or individuals to scratch out any signs of genitalia is an interesting reminder of how censorship is not just something done by the state.

Moving on, Tris Vonna-Michell’s audio-visual installation, Finding Chopin Dans l’Essex, is about the artist trying to make sense of his own background as a German, born and raised in Southend.

Meanwhile, in the exhibition’s one step away from lengthy video installations, Ciara Phillips has pasted an entire room with her splattery screen prints, together with frames that spell out a gigantic ‘OK’, to create Things Shared.

And it all finishes with Duncan Campbell’s 55-minute film If For Others, which casts an eye over how art is used and commoditised.

Umm.

Of the three lengthy films, Vonna-Michell’s is primarily a biographical/autobiographical documentary: there’s nothing remotely wrong with this – but is it ‘art’, other than an example of the art of documentary?

Richards’s piece, as mentioned, raises questions about censorship – but again, is it ‘art’ or a form of art film?

Phillips’s screen prints warmed the cockles of my old-fashioned heart – although that was rather more because I recognised them as being something that I could understand as ‘art’, but beyond that, they didn’t really have much else going for them.

The professional critics are hailing Campbell’s piece as the obvious winner among this quartet, but after being harangued by a female voice for several minutes on the subject of ‘parasitical art dealers’ and how It’s All The Fault Of The ‘Neo-Liberal Elite’, I chose to exit stage left, marking the first instance where I have found myself being irritated by someone actually objecting to neo-liberalism.

Censored Mapplethorpe

Campbell’s work may well be a very good polemical film essay – and there is nothing remotely wrong with that – but if that is what is for ‘art’ these days, then why isn’t the BBC’s fabulous three-part TV essay on concrete brutalism by Jonathon Meades in contention?

What is it that sees these video exhibits classed as ‘art’ and that not?

All of these video entries have a place – they all had more to offer than I expected – but is that place really in a gallery? And what, ultimately, do we mean by ‘art’?

The art establishment is, by and large, completely out of synch with the majority of the population.

Art has become divided into two worlds – and rarely do the twain meet.

In one, art has become about the concept – see above. You no longer need to able to even use any of what most people would consider the main skills associated with art: drawing, painting, sculpting, ceramics etc.

Throw some images together on film – the rougher-looking the better – and suggest that they convey some deeper, philosophical meaning.

Alternatively, do something similar with objects arranged in an apparently haphazard fashion.

Just to point out – I am not opposed to installation art per se: Anish Kapor’s Marsyas convinced me that there could be plenty of merit in such an approach.

But away from this sort of approach, most people want something less solipsistic – they do not want to look at a piece that takes hours to explain before you have a chance of ‘getting’ it (that’s why Marsyas worked: it didn’t need you to be told anything).

This is not to assert that people in general are unsophisticated when it comes to imagery or that they afraid of the ‘modern’ in general – the Matisse cut outs at the Tate Modern earlier this year was a blockbuster not just in name, but in terms of crowds too.

Art can – should? – “wash away from the soul the dust of everyday life”, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be infantile or unchallenging, as Picasso, who said that, illustrated.

And in a work such as Guernica, he also showed that he could use art for aims other than lifting the spirits.

But a large part of the key to Guernica’s power and success – just as with, say, Goya’s The Third of May 1808, is because they do not require lengthy examination before one can come to a basic understanding of them.

However, in an era when Tracey Emin can be named professor of drawing at the Royal Academy, as happened in 2011 – and that be hailed in some quarters – then we have come to a pretty pass.

As I’ve argued before, the likes of Emin, Damien Hirst and Ai Weiwei create an art that brings to mind the Emperor’s New Clothes, with gushing sycophants falling over themselves in order to show just how hip and avant garde they are.

In the case of Phillips, I feel that her Turner Prize nomination may be rather a sop to ‘traditional’ art, although some have suggested it’s because she runs an artists’ collective in Glasgow that operates in the community (perfectly laudable). It’s like the reserve of that Emperor’s New Clothes coin.

There may well be a place for the video exhibits that are currently on show in the Tate Britain’s Turner Prize nominees exhibition, as I hope I’ve illustrated in a fairly open-minded manner. But in a gallery, displayed as ‘art’, is not that place.

Camp heaven with Pink Martini and The Von Trapps

Pink Martini

There are times in life when something happens that, however quirky and however surreal, it is perfectly suited to the situation.

Last week, finding myself singing along with four members of the von Trapp family to the Lonely Goatherd, was just such an occasion.

It was Thursday, toward the end of what could only be described – at its most polite – as a bit of a bitch of a week, and The Other Half and I found ourselves traipsing out west for the evening.

It had been six months ago that I’d booked tickets to see Pink Martini at the Eventim (Hammersmith) Apollo.

A 10-12 piece combo that founder and classically-trained pianist Thomas Lauderdale has called a “little orchestra”, it has also been variously described as being “somewhere between a 1930s Cuban dance orchestra, a classical chamber music ensemble, a Brazilian marching street band and Japanese film noir”, performing something that’s “part language lesson, part Hollywood musical”.

Or put another way, this is an act that defies easy and lazy labels.

The Other Half was introduced to Pink Martini some years ago, by colleagues playing the 1997 album Sympathique in a bar. He bought a copy – and then introduced me to two tracks in particular: Brazil and Que Sera Sera.

They are glorious versions – the latter, a haunting track, redolent of a ghostly fairground – and for someone who still loves all that old-fashioned Hollywood glamour, it was a perfect sound, although it should be pointed out that the Pinks organised and performed in a concert for the Occupy movement a couple of years ago, so for all that rather privileged backgrounds of some members, they’re hardly ‘Establishment’.

We have, in the years since, got most of their albums, but had never quite managed to catch them on stage – and indeed, had heard from someone who had seen them live, that they were a little ‘too perfect’ and a little flat live.

But six months ago, when tickets for a tour became available, I snapped up a pair – and then promptly forgot about it.

By Wednesday, when The Other Half reminded me, I was almost relieved not to be able to find the tickets anywhere: the last thing I felt like was trekking out to Hammersmith.

The following morning, however, Eventim proved calmly efficient at replacing the tickets and left them at the box office to collect, so there was no backing out.

Thursday turned out to be a nine-hour working day and my eyes were bugging as we caught the Tube west.

The Von Trapps

A hot dog from a van, followed by a (vastly overpriced) glass of Zinfandel rosé in the Art Deco bar served as preparation.

The crowd was still sparse when the house lights dipped and the quartet of The Von Trapps came out on stage.

Sofia, Melanie, Amanda and August are four of six siblings, grandchildren of Werner von Trapp, the fourth son of Captain von Trapp and step-son of Maria.

As one of the girls told us, in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s version of their story, Werner is renamed and becomes the boy who introduces himself to Maria as “I’m Kurt and I’m incorrigible” (oh, I remember the scene exactly).

This all won bursts of applause from some in the audience.

Anyway, in opening the concert, the half-hour set by this young group was charming and thoroughly enjoyable. It included a lovely cover of Dream A Little Dream and a new song that they had penned themselves, Storm – but nothing from ‘that’ show.

It was, though, very easy to see how they fit into the eclectic oeuvre of Pink Martini.

I was a little concerned, however, at the minimal level of atmosphere in the auditorium – which is a very large one. Would that report of a flat gig prove to be the same again?

After a half-hour interlude, on came Pink Martini themselves.

I had no need to fret. The hall was now far fuller, and it lifted as the band, with Lauderdale at the piano and China Forbes on lead vocals – looking like Callas in a flowing, black number – took the evening by the scruff of the neck, zipped up the rhythm and had the place rocking within minutes.

Witty spoken interludes included Forbes relating how, after making the mistake of assuming that some words they used for one of their earliest songs were out of copyright, they were sued in France – after which the French “asked us for our autographs”.

They’re playing the Follies Bergères in the next few weeks.

Lauderdale explained how he composed two different songs from the same classical root – a Schubert piece. The results were And Then You’re Gone and But Now I’m Back, the first of which features a woman angrily dismissing her lover after he’s left unexpectedly, while the latter sees him asking to be let back, and coming up with excuses as to his disappearance.

After Forbes sang the first, the second was performed by special guest Ari Shapiro – an American international reporter for National Public Radio who is now based in London, having previously been the station’s White House correspondent, and who sings (and sings very well) with the Pinks as a sideline.

The first of these songs segues easily from the Schubert to Latin beats, while the second moves into a swing style. Both are excellent.

The band seriously upset house management by inviting members of the audience to come up on stage and dance around them: it’s a big stage and there were, after all, steps on either side leading to and from the stalls.

Good-humoured chaos ensued, as a cross-generational crowd piled up the steps and others danced in the aisles, with senior house staff (“sorry to see it’s a police state”, noted Lauderdale sniffily, afterwards) desperately trying to stop the fun.

In a technological first (for this blog, anyway) I’ve managed to upload some video footage to give you an idea.

And when I say “cross-generational”, I mean it: Lauderdale had the house lights raised so as to find a 94-year-old woman who attends every London gig they play, while there were clearly children dancing on stage.

Other songs included a version of Abba’s Fernando – sung in Swedish, with Latin rhythms, and including the von Trapps as backing – which was just wonderful.

Their complex use of percussion reminds me of a drum band we encountered at a street festival in Barcelona some years ago – and which I loved then.

And a special little mention here for Timothy Nishimoto, who is not only one of three percussionists, but also adds vocals on some songs, and has some amazing dance moves.

It’s impossible to sit still to this sort of music: the woman next to me was managing – although I don’t know how, because I simply couldn’t.

And late on, the encores – almost an extra mini set – included the Lonely Goatherd with the von Trapps.

Now, if you think my previous comment of it as surreal is over done, think about it.

These were four young members of a family that has a genuinely remarkable backstory anyway, which was turned into a stage show and film that became such a smash global hit – it’s called ‘Rebel Nun’ in Argentina, by the way – that it’s been a substantial boost for the Austrian tourist industry.

Here they were, singing a song that was written for the fictionalised versions of their own grandfather and step great-grandmother.

And if you don’t think that that could ever be out-camped, it can and was – with Forbes and Shapiro teaming up to ‘do’ Barbra and Judy doing Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy.

Not forgetting, of course, that to finish things off came the Pinks’ biggest hit, Brazil, which had people congaing in the aisles.

Perfection!

It might have been a torrid week, but I cannot imagine a better antidote. Days later, the buzz remains.

Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the very best concerts/gigs that I have ever been to.

And if you haven’t heard Pink Martini before – then do yourself a favour.

They have an excellent website and YouTube channel, which includes footage of the likes of their version of Fernando, while there are seven studio albums and they tour frequently.

pinkmartini.com

Pink Martini on YouTube