Scouse and about

And so, another busy week passes by. It all kicked off with a Sunday lecture at Conway Hall in London, home of the Ethical Society, followed by a swift trip to Leicester and back on Tuesday to do the same 'Skeptical Bobby' talk.

Wednesday saw me hanging out with renowned photographer and long-time chum Mark Page and nosing around his new Black Swan Studios premises before jumping on a train to Liverpool on Thursday to do my talk for the third time in a week for the Merseyside Skeptics. Three lovely gigs, three fantastic audiences.

And, as I was staying over in Liverpool for a night, I did have the opportunity to explore a little the next morning. I decided, therefore, to visit the Walker Art Gallery in St Johns. It's one of the few galleries, museums and places of interest that I've not visited in the city. I wasn't disappointed.

The exhibitions are a pleasant pot-pourri of styles, art movements and eras with 17th century paintings and sculptures rubbing shoulders with Pop Art, Pre-Raphaelite and Modern. There was also a very nice exhibition of early works by David Hockney . But it was the more recent stuff that really floated my boat. Like this piece of fabulousness - Harmony in Green by Dan Hays:

Yes, it's a hamster cage. But it's a hamster cage painted in oils and it's about six feet high. And when you look closely at the painting and you see all of the different colours - particularly greens - that make up the chrome bars and the spaces between the chrome bars it becomes quite abstract and quite beautiful.

One thing I LOVED about the Walker is that you can get really close to the artworks and look at them in detail. Some, like Fritz Spiegl's whimsical Loophonium (also known as the Harpichord) are even interactive - you press buttons and it plays music. Handel's Water Closet Music maybe?

Other pieces I liked included Sam Walsh's Three Figures in a Warm Climate and The Dinner Party:

 



Anish Kapoor's Red in the Centre:

 

... and Ivor Abrahams' Head of the Stairs:



 

 

 

There are so many others I could have mentioned by the likes of Terry Frost, Richard Slee, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Jacob Epstein, Steve Howlett, Gillian Ayres, Lucien Freud, L S Lowry, Stephen Farthing, Alexis Harding and so many more but this blogpost would become unwieldy. Just go and look for yourselves!

 

I will, however, mention my favourite painting in the gallery. It's this one - The Exiled Forever Coming In To Land by Ged Quinn. 

It's an epic-sized painting in a classical style with lovely touches of surrealism.

Isn't it great?

Lastly, I must mention the gallery's collection of more classical art. It boasts work by Rubens, Poussin, Rembrandt, Turner, Stubbs, Rossetti, Millais, Degas, Monet ... but, being a Modern Art kind of a guy, I won't go into them too much. However, I will pay homage by mentioning this classic work by William Frederick Yeames: And When Did You Last See Your Father?

It's a powerful piece isn't it? We see the little boy being interrogated by Cromwell's Roundheads regarding the whereabouts of his royalist Cavalier father. It's an innocent child being asked to give up his parent, in all likelihood having no idea that this will mean certain execution for dad. Is the young girl behind his sister? Is she crying because, being older, she understands the implications of his answers? As I said, powerful. And, once again, I have to stress what a joy it is to get so close to the artwork and see the individual brush strokes and the use of colour.

A lovely morning spent among lovely things. What makes the Walker Collection so interesting is the mix of old and new, classical and modern. There are touches of humour and whimsy too, such as the Loophonium and this marvellous unlabelled bust with the pixelated face. Just pull your face back from the screen a little. Brilliant isn't it?

 

That kind of sums up Liverpool's aesthetic; a strong artistic heritage, a celebration of history while moving forward, and all coupled together with a robust sense of humour. Wherever you go, you see street art, street theatre and performance. Even as I waited for my train back home, Lime Street Station was hosting Suitcase, a series of platform-based promenade performances that tell the story of the 1938 exodus of Jewish children - the Kindertransport - from mainland Europe to the UK. The stories were simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking and performed beautifully.

A splendid send off from a splendid city. I will go back again soon.

Glasgow in a Day - Part 2

As promised, here are some thoughts on GOMA in Glasgow.

I have to say that it's a curious building; it looks huge from the outside but feels quite small inside like an inverted TARDIS. And while I'm the last person to want to stereotype people, much less nationalities, much of the artwork on display does have a ... well ... 'dour' quality to it. For example, here are a few I snapped:

Children's Books Don't Count (2013) Lotte Gertz

Dr Strangelove (2013) Andrew Kerr

Representational Error (2013) Tony Swain

See what I mean? That's not to say I didn't like a lot of it. But it was all rather dun coloured. Or bleak. Another piece consisted entirely of plaster heads in baskets as if freshly guillotined. However, the mood changes completely when you get to the fourth floor and discover the Eric and Jean Cass gift of sculptures and other art by the late Niki de Saint Phalle. Immediately you see her work, the world is a better place. With her brightly-coloured chubby figures, her dragons, cows and devils, and her dancing couples all around you, you can't help but smile. It's the complete opposite of most of the other art I saw.

 

Isn't it great? Catherine Marie-Agnes Fal de Saint Phalle was born in 1930 near Paris to a sexually abusive aristocratic banker father and American mother. The family lost a fortune during the Great Depression and relocated to New York where Niki, as she preferred to call herself, gained a reputation as something of a 'problem child' among her teachers. She was eventually expelled from her convent school for painting the fig leaves on the building's statues red.

 

 

She became a model but developed an interest in sculpture and architecture - particularly the work of Gaudi and Le Facteur Cheval. Whilst in hospital recovering from a serious nervous breakdown, she started making collages from pebbles, leaves and found materials and began to develop her own style through the combination of painting and assemblage. She began producing her first paintings in 1950. This led to assemblages in plaster and her 'shooting paintings'. These pictures were plaster with containers of paint beneath the surface which would explode when she shot them. More sculptural work followed and in 1965, she created her first 'Nana'. These large, voluptuous and brightly painted female figures were made originally from chicken wire and wool or fabric and later in polyester. She also designed stage sets and costumes, created movies, furniture and large-scale sculptures, fountains and parks including the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris, Golem in Jerusalem, Queen Califia’s Magical Circle in California and Grotto in the Royal Gardens in Hannover. Her most ambitious project was the Tarot Garden near Tuscany which took 20 years to complete. Her highly original form of self-expression helped her to overcome her personal crisis and health problems, and throughout her life, art became her means of coming to terms with feelings, emotions, dreams and nightmares. You can see the nightmare aspect in some of her darker works which, frankly, sometimes look like the work of another artist. Here's her Great Devil and the truly odd Altar to a Dead Cat, also both at GOMA.

Goodness knows what her state of mind was like when she did Autel du Chat Mort in 1963. I guess it wasn't too healthy, but it's encouraging to see that the happy, colourful work she excels in came later in her career indicating that things might have got better for her. She had a very successful career and died of emphysema in California in 2002 at the age of 72.

If you like what you see, do google her name and look at more of her stuff. I love this piece, for example, the L'Ange Protecteur in the hall of the Zürich Hauptbahnhof.

I was so taken with her work, I even invested in a couple of prints. I wish I'd had the money to buy the giant inflatable 'nana'.

 

 

So there you go. Hope you enjoyed your little tour around GOMA with me. One thing that was a delight to see was how many parties of school children there were on site. Nice also to see them using new technology to enhance the experience. They were being asked by their teachers to find a piece they particularly liked and then do a short video - using iPads - to introduce the artwork and the artist and then explain what they liked and why. What a great idea.

Glasgow in a Day

It's been said that I'm some kind of masochistic workaholic. That's probably justified - I'm not known for doing much in the way of relaxing. The fact is, if I'm working, I'm happy because the work I do is what I love doing! For many years art, writing and speaking were hobbies; things I did for fun after work. Now they are the work and I can't get enough. Which is why, over the past eight months, I've been popping up all over the place. Yesterday that place was Glasgow. Yup, I travelled all the way there - six hours travelling - to do a two hour appearance at a Skeptics in the Pub meeting, and then spent another six hours coming home today. I'll admit to being a bit knackered but what fun it was.

The trip to Scotland entailed getting a train from High Wycombe to Birmingham Moor Street, scuttling across the street to Birmingham New Street, and from there to Glasgow Central. This particular route takes you via Lancaster, the Lake District and Carlisle and there were some moody, misty hills to be seen from the train window.

Arriving in Glasgow, I was delighted to see that my hotel, the Artto, was just a short walk from the station in Hope Street. The hotel was very nicely appointed, lovely room, nice staff etc. I was struck, however, by what appeared to be a crack and a smear of blood on my bathroom mirror. Eek! Of course, it turned out to be water damage to the rear of the glass rather than any indication that I was staying in a premises owned by the Bates Motel chain.

Anyway, as I say, lovely hotel. And, after a wash and brush up, I headed off to the venue for the evening's gig, The Admiral Bar in Waterloo Street. My route took me past the front of Glasgow Central Station and the wrought-iron glory of the Grand Central Hotel and its attendant tiny fireman.

 

 

The height was the first thing that struck me about Kenny Hunter's 'Citizen Firefighter'. He/she seems, at first glance to be about five feet tall. But it is deceptive and the statue is actually about average male height. I've kind of got used to statues being larger than life, so this guy - erected in 2001 as a monument to Strathclyde firefighters past and present - is unusually human. In fact, for a short while, I thought it was a living statue performer. The fact that the statue looks like it could be anyone dressed as a firefighter means that, for me, it achieves its purpose perfectly. Of course, that doesn't stop the art critics from bolstering the work further. Here's what one website says:

 

'Citizen Firefighter was conceived primarily to celebrate Strathclyde Fire & Rescue. But it is also an attempt, through a recognition of their work, to reclaim the political and civic space associated with the historical form of the public statue. While maintaining the clear, formal language of the past, the content and narrative of this new work differs in many ways from the historical tradition, and it is precisely through this rupture between Citizen Firefighter and what is generally understood to be the impact of historical works that we can begin to assess what kind of relationship now exists between citizen and resident, between statue and sculpture. The space opened up in this way creates the possibility of a dialogue of historical and sociological change. Through the work's symbolism, Citizen Firefighter appears to rekindle the onlooker's reflexes when faced with a nineteenth-century public monument. It differs, however, by both the neutrality of its stance and by the prominence given to the breathing apparatus, which has a democratising effect on human identity. The generic or quotidian aspect of the figure is further accentuated by a reductive treatment of form, in which all naturalist or realist traits have been suppressed. Subtraction peels away pathos, creating enough critical distance to enable the viewer to consider the complex 'charge' inherent in the way the subject is presented. In this way the meaning of the monument itself is left partially open, thus creating a space that can be reinvested by the onlooker. This in turn prompts us to come to terms with our own responsibility, not only as an onlooker, but also, more importantly, as a citizen'.

 

So now you know. That may very well have been what Kenny Hunter intended in creating the piece. But I rather suspect that the public, if they notice it at all, see a tribute to the selfless bravery of firefighters rather than any 'generic and quotidian aspect'. I then went on to the venue to do the gig, which seemed to go down well with my audience.

 

 

Afterwards, I had an ample intake of Deuchars IPA, a great chat with Ewan Hoyle (and his mum) and organiser Ian Scott and his band of brilliant critical thinking chums, and one of the worst battered sausages (from a nearby chippie) I've ever had the misfortune to attempt to eat. I crawled into my hotel bed at 1am and slept as well as any man can sleep with windows that don't open and a log of batter in his tummy.

 

Next morning I was up with the starlings - Glasgow has three main bird populations: pigeons, herring gulls and starlings and they're all fucking noisy - and, after a fine breakfast I headed off to the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art or GOMA as it's known. My train home wasn't due to leave until 12pm so I had a few hours to soak up some culture and to try to walk off that damned sausage. Honestly, it was as if it had been coated in cardboard and then fried in sump oil. I'm still getting indigestion now.

 

My route took me up Gordon Street and into Buchanan Street. There's a lot of great architecture in the city and some quite curious statuary built into doors, roofs and architraves.

 

 

In Buchanan Street itself, there's an extraordinary piece of art nouveau built into the roof of the Princes Square shopping centre. It's a massive metal peacock, all twisty steel curlicues and chrome feathers, and metallic vines dripping down the façade. It's gorgeous. It's just a shame I can't really do it justice with these photos, captured on my phone:

 

 

It's the work of Alan Dawson who, along with the Workington firm Shepley Engineering, and a team of traditional artist-blacksmiths, started the piece in 1987. In 1990 the peacock - a popular art nouveau motif - was unveiled as a contribution to the City of Culture Festival in Glasgow that year. It's made from coloured hand-forged wrought iron and steel with tail 'feathers' made from bronzed aluminium rods. It measures a colossal 10m high and 20m wide. As I said, glorious.

On then, past various shops and bistros celebrating the brilliant Glaswegian artist and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (and a TARDIS) and into Royal Exchange Square to visit GOMA.

 

 

Ah yes, the iconic cone on the head statue of the Duke of Wellington (sculpted by Carlo Marochetti in 1844). For many years the authorities regularly removed the jauntily cocked cones, only for them to be instantly replaced. And, after a time, the cone came to represent he city's light-hearted attitude to authority and the city council left it alone. It now regularly appears in tourist guidebooks, and on posters, fridge magnets, T shirts etc. It's become part of the city's identity. During the Olympics last year, the cone was painted gold.

 

I enjoyed my look around the gallery and, in my next blog post, I'll show you some of the art I saw; what I liked and what I didn't like so much. However, it was soon time to catch my train and head home, this time with better weather and less moody views.

 

 

I like that last photo and how the speed of the train, coupled with the speed that the sensors in the camera register the image, has skewed the shape of those metal boxes.

 

A splendid, if tiring 'day out' to Glasgow. Pop back tomorrow and I'll show you some art that made me smile.